Pam calls him my imaginary friend. Lee lives in Burnsville and drives a Metro bus. We became acquainted years ago and started calling each other for no reason. We compare our days, share opinions, and talk stupid. We see each other once or twice a year, usually something to do with baseball. When we do, we greet each other with an over-the-top lengthy embrace, cooing ridiculous affections. It’s a guy thing.
Locally, I have two friends I have labelled the “Tall Bas–s.” Dean and Scott are tall. Well, taller than me. When one or the other of us is suffering some loss, like when my goose died, we share a big ol’ man-hug. I sink into those long arms and feel comforted. It’s a guy thing.
Somewhere along life’s path, I became huggy. I’m not sure how this happened. I didn’t grow up with a lot of hugging. German ancestral stoicism was the rule for our family. I had more physical contact with the dairy cows on our farm than the people. We were nice to each other. Wasn’t that enough?
I never felt unloved; my parents just had different ways to show it. My mom made spectacular meals, enough to cause me to have that ‘well-fed” look. My dad showed he cared by giving me chores. Nothing says “I love you son” like handing him a pitchfork and telling him to clean that calf pen. My brother and I showed affection by hitting each other, pinching, scratching, all the usual ways siblings bond.
My first physical contact outside the home came when my teammates low-fived each other playing sports. Low-fiving was the prehistoric ancestor of high-fiving. This predated chest bumps and flying hip bangs. Some of those sports celebrations look they could hurt me now. I wasn’t very good, so most of my fives were therapeutic rather than congratulatory: “Nice try,” as I walked back to the dugout after striking out, low fives all around.
I remember first encountering people who hugged each other in college. It was a revelation for a kid off the farm. Hugging was awkward at first, more of sideways lean than a hug. That was the best I could muster back then.
Hand shaking is another potential victim of the current pandemic. Let’s hope not. When I meet someone, a handshake is a good first step in a new relationship. Or greeting someone I haven’t seen in a while, an immediate reconnecting. A head nod just doesn’t seem adequate. I remember explaining to son Ezra the import of a good and strong handshake when out in the world. I’d hate to see that skill go to waste.
We are all of us mind, body, and spirit. And until our leave-taking from this planet, the body part needs care and attention. A right amount of nutrition, exercise, and fresh air are necessary for health. Maybe touch should be included in that list.
We’re missing seeing our grandson during this time. He is four. Lifting him, holding him, wrestling with him are part of a relationship at this age, all fun stuff. It turns out necessary, too. Psychologists recognize that young children need a certain amount of touch as part of developing emotionally. Those who are deprived will suffer consequences decades down the road.
I mentioned that my parents weren’t hugging types. But I can flash back to the time just before each of their deaths, twenty years ago. There were moments when holding their hand, or just laying my hand on theirs seemed important, perhaps as much for me as them. In the current crisis, there are heartbreaking stories where this isn’t possible in the final moments for the dying. I can’t imagine the pain for those families.
A few times I have been with a friend who was going through something difficult, and friends gathered around to “lay hands” on them. I don’t pretend to understand that, but something good and even a little powerful was going on there. In that moment of prayer, it was as if mind, body, and spirit flowed together into a single channel instead of behind separate banks.
We know from the Bible that Jesus often healed with touch. In Mark 1, “A man with leprosy came to him and begged him, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus was filled with compassion. He reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean.'” Could Jesus have healed that man simply by looking at him? Sure. But there was something human in the healing that wouldn’t have been conveyed.
There is a striking story, Luke 8, when a crowd is pressing on Jesus on all sides. He stops and asks, “Who touched me?” The apostles are confused because there was a jumble of people. “But Jesus said, “Someone has touched me; for I know that power has gone out from me.” A woman came forward, trembling, falling to her knees. She said in tears that she had been the one who touched him and had been healed in that moment of an awful disease she had borne for 12 years.
Jesus looked at her. “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” Right there, in that touch, we have the meeting of the frailty of the human body, the power of the divine, and a miracle. It presaged the crucifixion and resurrection when all those elements would come together again.
We shall see what comes of the current situation. Some commonsense things like washing hands and staying home when sick will likely be with us into the future. There will be a period of distancing. But hopefully that will pass. And when it does, I plan to share a gigantic man hug with my tall friends.
I keep a monthly calendar where I write down meetings and other obligations. The second week in March, I started to scratch off events. A trickle turned into a torrent, till my calendar was nothing but slash marks. Everything was cancelled. In the past, I liked when a meeting was called off, and I had a newly freed evening. This was a bit much.
So, here we are, the world in a strange holding pattern. We’re not sure where this goes and not sure how this ends. Pam and I are among the fortunate with a home, food, even a big place to be outside. There is much to do as the weather grows friendlier, tasks I’ve always done myself. I’ve never felt so blessed to have this work.
No doubt, the Coronavirus Shutdown of 2020 will be something we remember. It’s impossible to know exactly what we’ll recall when we look back on this in twenty years. Or sixty years for those kids doing their schoolwork at the kitchen table, after all routine was upended.
I was thinking of things that we all remember, things we hold communally in mind. You can strike up a conversation with anyone about the day the World Trade Center fell, and they can tell you the precise spot they were when they heard. The current crisis is different in that it will roll out over an extended period of days, maybe months. We won’t remember an exact moment frozen in time like 9/11.
Growing up, there were two things for sure held in the collective memory vault of my parents’ generation: the Depression and Pearl Harbor. Many of those men and women have left us now, but they formed The World That I Grew Up In. Those two events colored their younger years and contributed to who they became.
The Depression was definitely not a single moment; it dragged on. When my parents and others talked about it, it was in recollections that were vivid. Things like what there was to eat: the giant crock of sauerkraut in the basement that was sustenance in winter months, lard from butchering the hog, very little bought in town, nothing wasted. Or of cold rooms marginally warmed by a corncob cookstove in the kitchen. Or clothes that were worn threadbare. Or Christmases where an orange, a pencil, and a bit of candy were all there was in the stocking.
I’m sure there were families who had more, but I got the sense in talking to my mom and dad and uncles and aunts, that everyone around them was in the same boat. They struggled to make do, hoped to get the kids and animals fed, and worried about hanging on to the farm.
The other memory for that generation was a 9/11 type in that they always remembered the exact moment they heard. Everyone knew where they were the Sunday afternoon when news of the attack on Pearl Harbor came over the radio. Being a Sunday, my parents and young children had gone to Mass, finished chores, and were probably cleaning up after dinner. It was about 1:30 when they heard. The rest of that day spent in sort of a stupor. Sylvester and Alyce knew, as every other American, that everything was different.
They didn’t have the luxury we do today to look back on World War II and see an inevitable march to victory. They couldn’t have known that on December 7, 1941. Just a gut-wrenching foreboding that there would be great costs to bear.
Jump ahead a couple decades. I’m in second grade. I had walked to my sister JoAnn’s house for lunch for some reason. I was attending Public School then, the big old school that used to stand on Maple Street south of Main. As I walked back to school, a patrol kid with the orange flag told me the president was shot. I remember that, but doubt it made sense in my seven-year old head.
I’m 64. Everybody older than me will remember that day, and almost no one younger than me. For the next few days, I watched in black and white as Oswald was arrested, Johnson took the Oath of Office, Jackie and the kids mourned, Oswald was shot, events that play in my mind like a newsreel. We had one TV channel, KEYC from Mankato, so this all came through the words of Walter Cronkite. Cronkite may as well have been part of our family for the time he spent in our living room.
I was aware that in our household, the first Catholic president had a unique status. His sudden death jolted an entire nation and the world, especially given the thick tension between the Soviet Union and the West. But there was additional shock felt by members of our church.
A handful of years later, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King created more “I remember where I was” moments. It strikes me that all these events I’m recollecting are bad things. Perhaps good memories are more disbursed, scattered like leaves and feathers in the wind. And bad memories are like rocks, hard and unmoving.
There were other events that many of us can put ourselves in a place and time: Reagan being shot, the Challenger tragedy, the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Berlin Wall opening was something we thought we’d never see.
If you’re a sports fan, there are memories you share with other fans. When my life is flashing before me on my death bed, I’ll recall the ladder I almost fell from when Jamie Quirk homered off Ron Davis late in the 1984 pennant race after the Twins had given up a 10 to 0 lead.
This coronavirus event is global with special focus on New York City recently. A large memory we all share was set in that city. Given global communications, the collapse of the World Trade Center was likely seen by more people than any other event in world history. It was jarring on so many levels, I still feel anxious recalling it.
A report of a plane flying into one tower came over the car radio as I was putting gas in. I came in the house to tell Pam. We turned the radio on, within feet of where my parents listened on December 7, 1941. Another tower is hit, the towers collapse, the Pentagon hit, a plane goes down in Pennsylvania. For hours there is no idea whether it’s over, or more was to come. Like Pearl Harbor, war would follow, albeit with a less clear enemy.
September 11th, like the weeks we’re living right now will stick in our heads and be written in history books. I’m not sure there is comfort in that beyond we’re in this together.
It’s always tricky to begin one of these. I have to pick a point in time and go. That is in the world we know. Now, in a world that turns upside-downer every day, it’s harder to choose a starting point.
My usual story ideas seem small in the tidal wave of news. Farming, my town, baseball were important and will be again, soon we hope. There is nothing I can add about the virus creeping around the globe. There are enough experts and self-proclaimed “experts.” When the best comp for this experience is 1918, we’re all struggling with what to do and how to feel.
A piece of good news: the sun will continue its tilt to our side of the planet. Spring is here. Soon blessed and welcome green will appear. As I write, though, it is one of those dreary days where winter’s hold on things seems strong. Rainy snow or snowy rain is falling.
Next to me on the desk is a splash of bright orange. It is one of those rubber bracelets with a message printed on it. I keep it in my drawer that has everything: wallet, keys, baseball cards, opener, cut-out articles. Pam would like me to clean it out; I think it’s an apt reflection of my jumbled mind.
Every so often I take the orange bracelet out. On it are these words, “Be kind. Give more. Stay humble.” Folks from Sleepy Eye might recognize them. They are from Tyler Hadley, one of four young men tragically killed in an icy crash west of town six years ago this month.
Tyler and his mom Deb came up with that phrase when they were brainstorming a slogan for a benefit to honor Tyler’s sister Kaylie. Kaylie died in 2013 of an epileptic seizure, cutting short a gifted teaching career. “Kind, more, and humble” matched Kaylie’s initials KMH, a nice fitting.
Tragedy upon a tragedy, the words came to be used for several 5K charity runs to honor Kaylie, Tyler and the other men who died: John, Payton, and Caleb. I took part in those and have t-shirts and the bracelet from then. Those of us who lived through that were seared emotionally and forever. To have that many young people with luminous futures ripped from a community was nearly unbearable.
Mixed with the sadness are memories of people coming together to support and lift each other. Those are good to recall at this time when we may be in for adversity. If we could unite for good here in this little town compelled by tragedy, we can maybe do that on a larger scale.
Be kind. Give more. Stay humble. Six simple words. I like the simplicity. I often read and try to follow complicated and lengthy writings. I enjoy those, even as I get lost in them sometimes. But every so often, simple is good.
Be kind. Any time I get off the farm and out among people, I see small kindnesses in stores or in lines or on the sidewalk. There is much goodness, as I notice folks hold a door or offer an encouraging word. Being a small-towner, I attend a lot of wakes, and it is heartening as visitors console and share memories with the grieving family. That always seems to bring out good.
It can almost lead one to believe that kindness is our natural state. Were it so? I need look no further than myself to see days I am grumpy, short, and judgmental. The constant in these moments is selfishness. Concerned about my needs and desires, it becomes easy to abandon kindness as not essential. I might take that out on Pam or somebody waiting on me at a store in town.
Then we have the constant flow of words on traditional media and newer social media. I think we’re all astounded how mean people can be in comments when anonymously posting. Unfortunately, that seems to bleed over into actual human contact. How awful is it to watch two people yell threw and at each other on some video clip? There is no consensus on how we got to this very unkind state of discourse on a national level. The tweeting president is to blame. Or the people who hate the president are to blame.
The only thing we know for sure is that each of us can be kind as many minutes of the day as we possibly can, and that is fully in our control. We can be assured the Lord will be on our side when we are speaking and acting out of love. Whether that drifts out into the larger world and softens it, we won’t know. But we can try.
Give more. This one is tricky. There are people I know who already do so much. With apologies to my gender, I have to say I have in mind a set of “mature” women who are always doing something for others. They are sort of a glue that holds a small town together. I’m not sure we could ask them to do more.
But the rest of us? Yeah, probably. A couple minutes more a day for my wife, an evening to help a neighbor with a project, volunteering when I don’t feel like it and want to make some excuse. I could give more.
Stay humble. Finally, in the words Tyler chose, is this admonition. It almost seems unfair. We’re being kind, we’re giving more, and we’re supposed to be humble about it, too?
I’m struck how often in the Bible we are warned of pride. Some of these cautions are almost 3,000 years old. So we see this has been a constant for humanity. In Proverbs, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”
A while back, I wrote about the temptation to feel we are better than another person or group. To stay humble, we need only remember that each one of these fellow travelers on Earth is also a child of God, a sacred creation by the Creator. From the poorest refugee living in the most dire conditions in a third world slum, to the ultra-rich CEO of a giant corporation, each is from the same God.
We needn’t feel less though. We are each of us gifted the same birthright. With proper humility comes proper pride, and peace in the balance.
I will continue to get my orange bracelet out from time to time. Be kind. Give more. Stay humble. Six simple words. Thanks Tyler.
Today is Ash Wednesday. Many of us Christians will be walking around with a smudge of ashes upon our forehead.
It might seem odd, but this is a favorite day of the year for me. Ash Wednesday heralds another Lent, another chance to get my messy life in order. Unfortunately, my life is like the sheds on the farm that I never get completely organized. But one shan’t give up, daunting as the task is.
Those ashes pressed upon our foreheads are made from burning palm leaves left over from last year’s Palm Sunday, connecting seasons past and present. Technically one is not “dirty” when you are so marked. “Ashy” would be more accurate. But it looks dirty. I like that.
Often in the work of farming, I am dirty. A good day means there is plenty to clean off before sleep. Dirt, crop dust, grease, oil, sweat can be signs of a full day with lots accomplished. Some not so good days have found me similarly begrimed. Either, they feel like “real” days. Days spent doing paperwork and running errands are important. But they don’t carry the same real feeling. Real days find me bone-tired at the end, with a sense of satisfaction.
Ashes are applied with these words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Thus, the ashes blend with dust in meaning. We are dust; we are of this Earth, at least our bodies are. We shall return to dust. You know what that means. Death is in our future. Our physical selves will return to the Earth. That’s not a cheery message. But it’s real.
It’s not the whole story though. As believers, we know we are only temporarily dust. Our soul is beyond dust, beyond Earth, beyond the stars. It exists not in time and not in place. Being humans and not angels, we can’t comprehend that. Perhaps we will in the afterlife.
In the meantime, here we are. I will look in the mirror later to see if the ashes are the dark, lasting type or the lighter, quick-to-fade kind. They will be a reminder that the figure I see is temporal and transitory. The same as every leaf or bird or critter I see scurrying about the grove.
We have the difficult task of being fully in this moment in this place, while aware of eternity in a place that is no place. It’s an almost impossible undertaking, like trying to walk while looking two directions at once. Wouldn’t we fall over if we did that? We have to care for these vessels we occupy for sixty or eighty years. At the same time, we are to safeguard our souls that are eternal.
“Duality” is a popular word that is used in many contexts. It fits here well. Duality, two things existing simultaneously and complementary. We have these two realities that sometimes seem at odds. There are times something might feel so right for our self here and now. But it could be robbing from my soul. When our body, mind, and soul are on the same waves, those are times we feel connected to those around us and to God. It’s not an easy balance.
What does it mean to live in this duality? A few thoughts. First, we will know that every other one of our fellow travelers is also lugging around a body and a soul created by God. Some of them will be easy to love, and it is a great blessing if we can count such a group as family and friends. Others come in and out of our lives, touching us and moving on, writing subchapters.
Then there is a set who are challenging, maybe downright difficult. This will include some jerks. Especially when interacting with this group, it is good to remember that life on this side of the grave isn’t easy for any of us. None of us can fully know the burdens upon another. We might even be the jerks some days.
All of them, from the loveable to the barely tolerable, all deserve a portion of respect, at least consideration. Jesus even calls us to love our enemy. C’mon. That seems a bit much. But there it is.
If we can be kind to the unkind or caring to the uncaring, those will possibly be marked among our greatest days when our lives on Earth are measured. We can try to be gentle in an increasingly harsh world. Don’t post that snarky comment. Don’t make fun of someone. Don’t speak ill of another, even if they deserve it.
Living the duality means we have an Earthly home and an eternal home. We know this one. A few bible passages and a lot of conjecture are all we know about the next one. The time will come soon enough we will learn of that. For now, we share responsibility to protect and preserve this home. This planet deserves reverence and awe, the same as any great cathedral or temple. God made it and now mankind can destroy it. We must help where we can.
The duality means offering our imperfect selves to a perfect God. Trying and never quite getting it right is our condition here. That is frustrating. But it is the role we have been given to play in the script of our own great drama.
We work every day to get it right. But Lent comes around on the church calendar every year to call forth special effort. Fasting, abstinence, and repentance are paths we can choose these forty days. I will try to spend more time each day in prayer and try to fit in scripture. I will again give up some drinking for Lent. “Some” drinking I guess is an imperfect resolution. But it’s useful to me.
Lent can be a pilgrimage. Ash Wednesday begins the march toward Holy Week. That week, the entire message of Christianity will play out. From Palm Sunday to Holy Thursday to Good Friday to Easter, every emotion known to man will be on display as we bounce from exhilaration to pain and sorrow and finally, the joy of Easter.
Let the Lenten journey begin.
I like to run a couple times a week, usually on Sleepy Eye’s lake trail or a gravel road. This time of year, when the great outdoors isn’t so great, I sometimes use the track at Vogel Arena. I was there, pushing one foot ahead of the other. A ten minute-a-mile pace is a fading memory. But I feel good about myself if I can stay upright and moving forward.
Suddenly over my shoulder, I felt a runner draw even. Shoosh, he was past and out ahead. I went from the feeling of momentum to the sensation of being a fence post alongside the road. It was a young man, maybe a Martin Luther College student. He wasn’t sprinting. Like me, he was going at a nice, easy pace. Only his nice, easy pace was a thoroughbred to my plow horse.
As he shooshed past me a few more times on the oval track, I thought how effortless it looked. The young man was gliding through space, arms and legs slicing the air. It occurred to me I was admiring his youth, a little jealous. Mostly I was impressed. That vitality is a gift that none of us appreciates when we’re young. As we age, we can try to stay in shape. But we can never reclaim the kind of vigor from when our parts were new.
I thought about our different perspectives. I can look at someone that age and have recollections of being 19 or 20. He could look at me but have no idea of what it’s like to be 63, soon 64. Neither could I at his age. We know the road we’ve travelled but can’t know the road ahead.
Humans like to put things in categories, boxes in our mind. In a world that is constantly changing, it is comforting to sort things. Sociologists sort by generations. We’re all amateur sociologists. I was born in the middle of the Baby Boom. Given our volume, we Baby Boomers have had a large effect economically, culturally, and every other way. Now we are moving into our “Golden Years.”
My children fill out perfectly the Millennial Generation, Anna born in 1981, Ezra in 1996. My running partner at Vogel Arena is of Generation Z. I’m not sure who gets to name these, but the labels stick. As I move toward Medicare, I find it engaging to talk with Millennials and Gen Z’ers. It’s interesting to see how a young mind processes the world as I recall how I did the same.
Not to be morbid, but we Boomers will begin exiting the stage in the decades ahead. We hope to be useful citizens of this planet as long as possible. But most of the mark we will leave behind has been drawn; we can begin to reflect on our legacy. Now is the time we should be passing off the best we can to those who will remain.
There is a way this should work. As we move past raising children and wind down careers, while we’re still physically able, these should be the time we have the most to offer our world before we take leave. Past the years when the pressures of job and parenting can overwhelm, we should be in a place where we are more patient and understanding. We’ve been through it; we know what they’re going through.
This doesn’t always go well. “Generation Gap” can refer to tensions between old and young. A modern variation on that theme is “OK Boomer.” You see that on t-shirts and internet memes poking fun at my age peers. As in, “OK Boomer with your old ideas, get out of the way now.”
A couple years ago, our congressional race came down to small number of votes. The winner was proudly an echo of the president. There are some ugly things in his background that he claims were written as humor, although mocking women and minorities isn’t necessarily funny.
He won by a margin in Brown County that was the difference. The next morning my daughter called. Not much in jest, she said, “Dad. It’s your fault. Old, white guys from Brown County. You elected him.” She was right. Same as old, white guys elected this president. He was chosen overwhelmingly by my kind.
It makes me wonder what we Baby Boomers are doing with this, our Golden time? All our experience, the accumulation of our knowledge, the wisdom of years, and this is the person we have chosen as our standard bearer? This is it? The best we have to offer?
Shouldn’t our generation be leading on care for the Earth? Wanting our grandchildren and their grandchildren to have clean air and water should be unequivocal. Instead, our country pulls out of climate agreements and guts regulations that were put in place for a reason. No generation in history has used more of the planet’s resources. Now we want to leave a mess for our kids to clean up?
Shouldn’t we be the ones who are responsible on financial matters, having balanced a checkbook our whole lives? Instead, we pile on debt that has reached incomprehensible proportions. What does 23 trillion dollars even mean? It’s growing wildly to support a tax cut to create an artificial boom. We won’t have to pay for it, so why not? “We got ours” is the message. I might remind fellow Boomers that we’re not taking it with us.
Shouldn’t we have learned compassion from a lifetime of dealing with slings and arrows thrown our way? Having lived long we have seen how difficult and challenging things can be. We can appreciate that good fortune isn’t always earned, and a helping hand can give us a boost. Instead, we harshly close borders to the most vulnerable and cut programs for the poor.
Could we at least be kind? I’m not talking about being kind to our family and people who agree with us. We could do that when we were five. Shouldn’t we have learned manners and decency from a lifetime of interactions? Instead, we have a leader who attacks anyone who questions him, using insults that you wouldn’t let your grandson use.
Shouldn’t we have learned the importance of cooperation and dependability? Our allies wonder what happened to the nation that was the moral leader of the free world. Now we speak glowingly of thug rulers while shredding treaties and trade agreements. Abandoning the Kurds to the Turkish army should have been one of the most embarrassing events in our history. Instead, within days, we were back to arguing about silly things like a football player kneeling. Meanwhile Kurdish soldiers who fought alongside Americans were being killed. We should have been ashamed. We weren’t.
I have heard often that we should “leave this world a better place.” When we think of how this generation will be remembered, we’ve got some time. Not a lot.
Sometimes the successful life we’re livin’ has Pam and me feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys. So, we went to Luckenbach, Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys.
Well, it was just us in our rental car. But we asked around about Waylon and Willie.
If those mangled lyrics spark guitar strumming in your head, you might have spent half the summer of 1977 in Luckenbach, spiritually if not physically. The other half was in Margaritaville. Both those songs came out that spring. It was one of my last Summers of Little Responsibility, with memories of driving around, playing ball, hanging at the City Limits, and road trips to Met Stadium.
Luckenbach was more “Luckenbachy” than I could have imagined: a dirt parking lot with a path down to some sheds nestled in a grove of trees between the South Grape and Snail Creeks. It’s pretty much two buildings. The remnants of a post office, saloon, and general store are where I bought a Shiner Bock and a t-shirt. Over there is the dance hall; throw in picnic tables, an outdoor stage, and old license plates hanging about. Ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain.
We were to Texas to see our son Ezra, who’s living in San Antonio. I’ve never been to Texas, so this was an opportunity to see the Lone Star State while leaving behind Everest-like piles of snow in our yard.
We spent much of a week touristing San Antonio. A couple days in West Texas Hill Country got us out of the city. Luckenbach was on the way from here to there. Only regrets were missing the bluebonnets by a couple weeks and not seeing an armadillo.
While planning our trip, I remembered that the Commodity Classic was in San Antonio. The Classic is the big national winter farm show. Pam was amenable to scheduling around that. Hello tax deduction!
The night before the show, we were out in San Antonio. I ran into a fellow wearing a Missouri Soybean Growers shirt and we ended up visiting. He attends the Classic every year. I gleaned that he runs some-thousands of acres with state-of-the-art equipment. He told me that I would like the trade show, “because it’s only serious farmers.” I didn’t tell him that I run some-hundreds of acres, and my machinery is old enough to vote. I’m not sure I count as “serious.”
Regardless, off I went to the Henry Gonzalez Convention Center. It was impressive. The show floor was big enough that if it was corn, I don’t think I could have combined it in a day. Ag businesses from A Link to Zanner Ag was there. Big companies had large walk-through displays. Channel Seed had a live band. Pioneer Seed had a magician. John Deere and Case-IH found a door big enough to bring in equipment, looking impossibly bigger because it was inside. It’d be like if your car was in your living room.
Booths had earnest young men and women anxious to catch your eye, give you their elevator speech, and hand you literature. Being a polite Midwesterner I found myself talking to some even though I wasn’t really sure what their company did.
There were seminars with superstars of agriculture, names I’d read in Farm Journal and Successful Farming for years. I confess to being a little awestruck. “Oh look, there’s Bryce Anderson!” I learned at a marketing workshop that corn and soybean prices could go up or they could go down. From a panel of ag economists, I learned that farming could get better or it could get worse.
David Hula, 619 bushels per acre corn, and Randy Dowdy, 190 bushels per acre soybeans, were there to tell us we could all grow more. I guess we’ll figure out what to do with it after we’ve grown it. The history of American agriculture is mostly one of oversupply and low prices, so that fits.
After being herded through one of a dozen lunch lines, I went out to my car to charge my phone. Walking from the sun into a dark parking ramp, my eyes were adjusting as I looked for the unlock button on my key. It was then that I found out there were cement curbs in front of the cars. I found this out the hard way. After tripping over one, hitting my head on a car bumper, jamming my hand into the curb, and banging my left side into the floor, I had time to reflect.
My immediate concern was whether any parts of me were broken. As I dragged myself up, I saw my pants were torn and my knee was bleeding. Head and hand were worse for wear, but just sore. Later, Pam pointed out that there was an oil stain on the rear of my pants. Probably best I didn’t know that.
I wasn’t going to keep that from using what remained of my $180 pass. Back inside, despite looking like I’d lost a bar fight, I continued going through the aisles, window shopping and trying to look like a serious farmer.
In the small-world proof of the day, some farmers I know from Renville County were there. Owen told me he was going to see Millennial Farmer at the YouTube exhibit. Millennial Farmer is Zach Johnson, a young farmer from west central Minnesota. Zach is a “vlogger” who posts videos about life on the farm.
A Millennial Farmer video about rescuing a tractor that was stuck in the mud received over 1.7 million views. I wrote last spring about getting a tractor stuck; I didn’t have 1.7 million readers. When I mentioned this to Pam, she suggested that I create Weeds videos. I’m not sure about that.
Zach was on a panel of young farmers who talked about creating their own YouTube channels. I gather it can be a nice side income if you grow enough viewers. In a world where so few people have a connection to agriculture, they are doing a service communicating what it is we do on farms. Besides Zach, there was Stoney Ridge Farmer from North Carolina, Rick from Welker Farms in Montana, and Tara from Beaver Vineyard in California. They were impressive in their enthusiasm, a delight for this old farmer to watch.
This was later in the afternoon, and YouTube had rolled out a beverage cart. A beer was medicinal for my achy knee, hand, and head. I thought about what my father would have made of this. Sylvester grew up farming with horses and using kerosene lamps. Work was hard and profits thin. Millennial Farmer is only a few generations removed from Sylvester, but farm life and work have changed in ways that would have been unimaginable to my dad.
As I sipped my beer listening to the young YouTubers on the stage, I turned to Owen and said, “This is definitely not our father’s agriculture.”
By Dean Brinkman
Ed Blackstad passed away on January 15. Ed was a fellow Lion, patient, and good buddy. I had many great conversations with him through the years. We liked to review movies. In 1996, we did our best “Siskel & Ebert At the Movies” of Mr. Holland’s Opus. I asked him “What did you think?”
Ed replied “I loved it! Glenn Holland arrives in the school parking lot in the 1960’s driving an old Chevy Corvair. Just like the one I had!” I told Ed that I loved the movie, too, especially because it reminded me of him, to which he humbly blushed.
Ed’s first teaching assignment was in Frost, Minnesota. In the fall of 1968, Mr. Blackstad moved to Sleepy Eye with his high school sweetheart wife Cathy, five-year old son Peter, and two-year old daughter Stacy. Through the years, Ed taught Physics, Chemistry, Calculus, Trigonometry, and Computer Programming to three thousand students at Sleepy Eye High School.
Back then, St. Mary’s students could “ride the bus down to Public” for shared-time classes. Hundreds more St. Mary’s kids signed up for Ed’s classes throughout his career. Ed retired from teaching in 1999 but stayed on as the school’s technology expert until 2006. He continued a computer repair business as a hobby in retirement.
Mr. Blackstad had a soft spoken and occasionally monotone delivery. Along with that came a dry sense of humor. He was extremely funny, the kind of teacher that you cannot forget. He was a kind teacher, human being, and family man.
Comparisons to Glenn Holland continue. I like to think that we all have “that” teacher or “that” coach who has impacted our lives. They turn that painful subject into a fun class and motivate us to learn. A great teacher can do just that, even if the subject can’t. Let’s face it. Physics, Trig, Chem, and Calc aren’t usually in most kids’ top ten favorite subjects list. They can also be the subject that “weed out” decisions on which career path one pursues. Mr. Blackstad could empower your drive to clear that subject hurdle and kick that subject in the “mass”.
One of the derivations of “opus” is from Latin meaning, “Work, effort, product of labor, work of art. Commonly referring to music.” Mr. Blackstad’s opus was one of technology and science.
My closest friends have been texting regarding Mr. Blackstad’s impact on their lives. My texting group didn’t assemble in the old high school auditorium to present Mr. Blackstad with his composed symphony like Mr. Holland received after his retirement. Instead, we met cell phone to cell phone honoring the man after his life.
This group of Ed’s former students represent careers in electrical and aerospace engineering, obstetrics and gynecology, dentistry, computer software developer, insurance agent, Delta aircraft lead mechanic, 28-year Air Force, retired full Colonels, and teachers. These best friends are scattered all around the world. All their careers were impacted by Mr. Blackstad, including my own just down the street from where Ed lived.
So, I present to you Mr. Blackstad’s Opus in their words: “I loved Mr. Blackstad. He was both kind and funny. He helped shape what intellectual curiosity is for many of us, and that will continue to live on despite his passing.” “I loved his classes. He definitely influenced my choice of career.” “Mr. Blackstad never understood the logic of golf. He said, ‘If you’re playing something that you enjoy, why would you practice to get better, only to play less?’ I think of that every time I play forty years later.”
“He gave me a D+ in his Physics class, and he said to me privately, ‘You earned the D; the plus is because you’re a great guy.” “I remember he made the whole class hold hands around the room. Two students held wires attached to a hand crank generator. He cranked it quickly and the students became a series circuit. We all felt the electricity. I have one like it in my class now.” “I will never forget shooting a pistol with wax bullets in his classroom to measure projectile velocity.”
“He did have a unique way of making you look at things. He helped me with college, because I didn’t just study for the test. I wanted to understand the ‘why’ behind things. I got that from him.” “He addressed us as Mister or Miss and treated us more like young men and women, kind of training us for that transition. He loved learning and did his best to help us learn.” “He never lost his cool when frustrated. He would rub both sides of his head, take a deep breath and admonish us in a voice of frustration.”
My brother Dave had Mr. Blackstad for physics in 1972-73, eight years before I had physics with him. Dave told me that Ed was one of his favorite teachers. Not surprising as Ed was the kind of teacher who transcended the generations and decades. Ed and Cathy came through my brother’s visitation line to console our family when Dave died in 2008. I will never forget that. Ed cared for his students after school, not just during.
Teachers do not get enough credit for all of the hard work, time, dedication and passion they inspire in changing lives. Our lives. Your children and grandchildren’s lives.
His son Peter asked him for advice before starting to lecture engineers in the corporate world, to which Ed replied simply, “Always remember, no one likes to feel stupid.”
Please share this column with the thousands of students Mr. Blackstad taught. And thank your favorite teacher for making learning fun, changing your life, and inspiring your passion or career.
Since Ed’s passing, I watched Mr. Holland’s Opus again. This time with tears in my eyes, as I was reminded of Mr. Blackstad throughout.
Here is my Siskel review of the movie’s Mr. Holland and the real-life Mr. Blackstad. Glenn Holland aspires to be a music composer and takes the job as a high school music teacher to “pay the bills” and changes lives. Ed Blackstad is recruited after getting his master’s degree from The Ohio State University to build top secret munitions for the government. This was during the buildup for the Vietnam War. After careful consideration he chooses to change lives…by teaching.
Richard Dreyfuss was nominated but did not win an Oscar for his portrayal of the fictional Glenn Holland. Mr. Edward M. Blackstad won more in life than any award sitting on a mantelpiece ever could.
I can picture Ed pulling out of the school parking lot right now in his Chevy Corvair. He, too, was a classic. Rest in peace Mr. Blackstad. Let the sweet music play.
Here’s a mental exercise for a winter night. Think on this: Am I better than anyone else?
I don’t mean in skills. I learned long ago there are people better at baseball. That was followed by discovery that there are people better at singing, dancing, running, you name it. Even things I know a little, like writing, there are people much better, which is mildly frustrating.
I don’t mean better in qualities like intelligence or beauty. We all exist somewhere on a range of those and can only play the cards we’re dealt. I don’t mean in wealth. We know that is an incomplete sum of ourselves.
Am I better than anyone else? Am I superior to or more valuable than another? Hopefully our first instinct is, “No, of course not.” It might come to mind that we are all equal under the law. Or that we are equal in the eyes of God.
The Declaration of Independence announced to the world that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” There are no words more central to our being a citizen of this country.
Those words were a great leap forward in a time of kings and emperors. That government would be by the governed, and the governed were equal was radical stuff. Of course, we know that in 1776, the authors meant “all white men” are created equal. Time would give the phrase deeper meaning. Women who were chattel, Africans who were slaves, and Natives who were considered savages all have come under the umbrella of “created equal” in the 244 years since.
Deeper than civil declarations, those of us who are believers know that our worth comes from being children of a loving God. That precedes any manmade law. God had each of us in mind for eternity, which is boggling to comprehend. As Christians we believe in our hearts that God so loved us that He gave his son. All of us.
So, notions of equality come from the founding documents and the Bible. Those are beautiful words. Equality is great. Now comes the hard work of living them.
Those words were not rendered in some obvious situations. What was it like to own a slave? It seems a bizarre thought now, but people much like us in this same country did. Your slave was obviously not your equal. They were owned like one owns an animal. The slave owners were Christians which makes us cringe. They even used the Bible to justify slavery.
People much like us marched Jews into gas chambers. Some of them were likely related to us here in Brown County. They had to see Jews as inferior, subhuman. Otherwise, how do you convince yourself in what you are doing? Again, most of them were Christians.
Slavery and the Holocaust were long ago and far away. Easy to dismiss, right? Let’s pull in a little closer to here and now. A few years ago, I spent a couple weeks in the South. It didn’t take much scratching the surface to see divisions. I was vaguely aware of Jim Crow laws but have spent time since reading on that.
After the Civil War, most whites conspired to make sure freed slaves wouldn’t be granted all the benefits of liberty. In fact, few would come their way. They were forced to live in impoverished areas, attend poorly funded schools, work for less, and restricted from voting. It was easy to see Blacks as inferior even if they weren’t slaves.
Jim Crow followed Blacks to the North. Zoning laws, lending practices, and discriminatory hiring worked to suppress minorities across the country. Now Jim Crow-type laws are gone, at least on paper. I suppose things are better. Is racism gone? We wish.
Racism, by definition, means that one thinks they are better than another. Because of skin color, birthplace, religion, or some other way we distinguish ourselves from another. I admit I grew up in a sheltered world where Lutherans and Methodists were the different people. In a way, it was easy for me to judge racism negatively.
Our Midwestern, small-town world has changed. There are others here now. In Sleepy Eye, Hispanics have come to fill necessary positions with businesses in the area. As time passes, they buy homes, send their kids to school, and fold into the community. It is in the same way as every one of our ancestors.
I have thought of racism as harbored in the dark recesses of our souls, and that we had to watch out where it seeped into our conscience. Recently in America, there are groups that don’t even try to hide it. Fringe white nationalist groups have always existed in the shadows. Now they have rallies and Facebook pages.
A while ago I was having a beer with a friend in town. A fellow came in and visited with us. He told us he left another place because there were “too many f—— Mexicans.” I didn’t say anything. Later, in bed, I thought that I should have said something. Not for the unlikely chance of changing anyone’s mind. More to show a shred of integrity to myself.
We just commemorated Pro Life Sunday in our church. I support efforts to reduce and someday eliminate abortions. But I wonder if it’s easy to value a baby we won’t know. What about people who don’t fit into our notion of humans of equal worth? If our concern for babies doesn’t flow to this side of the womb, it seems we dishonor and debase the pro-life movement.
As clear as it is to me that a fetus deserves life, Jesus made this clear: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” What about the refugees and asylum-seekers that our nation has turned its back in large numbers? They seem to be among the least, certainly the poorest and most vulnerable.
Remember that it is just dumb luck that you and I were born in this place and time. But for the grace of God, we could have been born to a young, undernourished mother living in a shanty town on an eroding hillside in Honduras with no hope for the future.
Or is it grace? Jesus also says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” It may be that the path to Heaven is easier for that Honduran child than a well-off white person born in the most privileged time and place on Earth.
Farmers had a year about as good as the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers lost 114 games. Ron Gardenhire manages the Tigers, so we know the Tigers “battled.” Those years Twins losses piled up when Gardy managed here, you could count on him to tell us the players “battled.”
Through bad weather, prices, and worse weather, farmers battled in 2019.
Now it’s winter on the farm. The crops are in, the equipment put away, and the cows are hibernating. There’s time to catch up with the bills that are in the basement ’cause your wife got sick of that pile of papers in the kitchen.
It’s meeting time, when farmers gather to learn things and get a free meal. “Free” meals that cost $50,000 when you pay for supplies. But they throw in a hat, and we’re happy as clams at high tide.
Farm organizations hold meetings this time of year. There are commodity groups like the Corn and Soybean Growers, and the Pork Producers Association. I am a long-time member of the Broadleaf Weed Growers Federation. That group has fallen on hard times as it’s getting harder and harder to grow a good crop of weeds.
I’ve reported in the past on the Producers Opposed to Obscene Payments. P.O.O.P. was formed when farming was at historically high profit levels, and the government kept sending us money. No one could figure out how to turn off the spigot when the sink was overflowing.
It seemed like P.O.O.P. might disband when farming profits shriveled. But a new farm program that was written on Bizarro World and cost you taxpayers lots gave P.O.O.P new purpose. Then the Market Facilitation Program (MFP), affectionately called the “Trump Payment,” started flinging money around about as carefully as manure coming out the back of a spreader. That was supposed to make farmers feel better about losing markets that took decades to develop and were incinerated in a couple of Tweets.
P.O.O.P. is a resourceful group. The committee to plan our Annual Meeting came back with two low-cost alternatives for a location: the Orchid Inn in Sleepy Eye or George’s Ballroom in New Ulm. There wouldn’t be much for amenities like heat and running water, but farmers are used to making do.
George’s was chosen because of its proximity to more bars. When P.O.O.P. delegates arrived, we found the door was locked. Thankfully one of the guys had a Sawzall in his truck, and we were soon calling the meeting to order.
It was dark in George’s, but everybody’s got a flashlight on their phone, so “No problemo.” When corn was six dollars, we had meals catered by Lola’s which were excellent. Six-dollar corn is a faint memory, so the meal was brought in by Bob’s Discount Bullheads.
We invited Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to address our group. Historically the Secretary of Agriculture is a leading advocate for farmers. Sonny has altered the job description. You may have heard about his joke at Farmfest. “What do you call two farmers in a basement? A whine cellar!” Ha.
Then Perdue said to a group of dairy farmers, “In America, the big get bigger, and the small get out.” With friends like Sonny, who needs enemies? Unfortunately, he couldn’t make our meeting. Something about working on his stand-up routine.
First order of business for P.O.O.P.ers was to look at the new farm program. Farmers must decide by March whether to sign up for ARC-CO or PLC. As none of you know, those are Agricultural Risk Coverage at the County Level and Price Loss Coverage. They are each convoluted formula for setting a level of price protection that no one understands.
The thing about this is you can get it completely wrong. If I choose incorrectly, I could really screw myself. So, the farm program which in theory reduces risk for producers begins with each of us rolling the dice. What universe does that make sense in?
Over and above benefits from the Farm Program you taxpayers have been extra nice the last two years with the Market Facilitation Program. The “Trump Payment” is to offset damage done to the markets by the trade war. We are told we are winning that war. Funny, I thought winning would feel better.
As we were planting last spring, the ag media was filled with rumors about MFP and how it would be divvied out. There were reports of chaos within USDA. We can hope that more reflection and rational decision-making is going into our foreign policy. You might want to check the supplies in your fallout shelter.
Last year the payment was based on bushels produced, which had problems. This year it was based on planted acres, which has problems. Next year they might base it on number of cats you have around the place. Our friend Sonny said we’re getting payments because, “President Trump has great affection for America’s farmers.” Aw.
$28 billion in MFP payments is more than was spent on bailing out the auto industry, which was fiercely debated by Congress. The administration used a questionable loophole to create the MFP out of thin air and, voila, no congressional approval needed!
In the current ocean of agriculture, I am a guppy. My MFP was over $15,000 last year. If li’l old me was getting that much, farmers running lots more land were getting lots more money. Thousands of farmers got over $100,000.
There is a payment cap of $125,000. Loopholes the size of Iowa mean that large farms with accountants can blow past that about as easily as you can step around cracks in the sidewalk.
Unlike most government programs, there is no means testing. Jim Justice is the richest man in West Virginia. He is a billionaire who made a fortune in coal and runs 50,000 acres for fun. Justice Farms received $125,000. I bet Jim would enjoy pizza and a beer at Carl’s Corner. We could talk tillage and old tractors.
While the Department of Ag was doling out $28 billion to farmers, it was cutting $5 billion off the food stamp program. 700,000 Americans won’t get $190 a month for food. Many of these have mental and physical disabilities, many are veterans, many have children they are contributing to. This is because they should “go get a job.” P.O.O.P. wondered if some of the farmers getting hundreds of thousands of dollars shouldn’t have to get a job.
Should taxpayer money be spent to buffer farmers from the vagaries of the weather and markets? A case can be made for that. Should taxpayers be giving out billions to support millionaire landowners? Maybe not.
There’s an age when a boy is old enough to admire his sports heroes and young enough to not care about the money and politics in sports. I put that at thirteen, the edge between childhood and adolescence. For me that was 1969.
Last year I wrote about 1968, surprised how much of that volatile year was stored clearly in the bins of my memory fifty years later. Assassinations, protests, Vietnam, LBJ, and Nixon all found their way to the kitchen and milking barn of my youth. 1969 saw more protests and Vietnam, plus a moon-landing. But I’m going to go to the sports pages of my mind this year. Fifty seasons ago was a magical time to be a kid-fan.
Around that time, older brother Marvin or older brother Dale took me to my first Twins games at Metropolitan Stadium. I can’t remember which game was the first; memories blur. Whenever it was, Met Stadium was exactly as I “saw” it on the radio.
That began a love affair with a ballpark. I would go to dozens of games, meeting friends in the Baltimore lot. I still get sad if I think about it, knowing the Met would be torn down and the Twins taken hostage, held in a dank, plastic chamber for thirty years.
The 1969 Twins roster was speckled with legends. Harmon Killebrew was American League MVP. Rod Carew won the batting title and stole home seven times, which is crazy. Tony Oliva and Bob Allison had good seasons. Jim Perry and Dave Boswell each won twenty games.
Fans loved the players, but they really loved the manager. 1969 was the one and only year Billy Martin managed the Twins. Billy had played for the Twins, coached, scouted, and managed the AAA team. Even as a kid, I knew that fans wanted Martin to manage.
Martin was passionate, skilled, and knowledgeable. He was also a hothead and battled demons his whole life. He and owner Calvin Griffith were oil and water. When Calvin signed Billy to manage, he said, “I feel like I’m sitting on a keg of dynamite.”
The Twins played exciting baseball, and attendance soared. But as much as Calvin loved money, he couldn’t accept Martin getting in a bar fight with Boswell, kicking Hubert Humphrey out of the locker room, and ignoring requests to meet with him. Calvin fired Billy after the season, despite winning 97 games. Twins fans never forgave Griffith. Martin would go on get fired eight times, five by George Steinbrenner.
That was one of the best Twins teams ever. Unfortunately, the Baltimore Orioles were one the best Major League teams ever. 1969 was the first year of league playoffs. The East Division Orioles beat the West Division Twins in three straight games. They did the same thing in 1970, crushing the heart of a chubby Brown County farm kid two years in a row.
The Orioles surprisingly lost the 1969 World Series to the New York Mets. That was the Miracle Mets team that went from being the butt of jokes to nation’s darlings. The National League was like another continent back then that I followed from a distance.
The other tenants of Metropolitan Stadium were the Vikings. The Met was a baseball park, with a football field shoe-horned into it. Regardless, the stadium became part of the Viking’s mystique. There isn’t a fan my age who can’t picture Page, Eller, Marshall, and Larsen lining up, steam rising from their breath in the cold air.
The Twins and Vikings arrived in Minnesota in 1961, the Twins from Washington and the Vikings from thin air, otherwise known as expansion. The Twins were good most of the Sixties when only one team went to postseason from each league. The Vikings were a novelty under coach Norm Van Brocklin, but not very good.
That changed, seemingly on a Canadian weather front. General Manager Jim Finks who brought coach Bud Grant who brought quarterback Joe Kapp all came from the Canadian Football League.
Finks came in 1964 and built the roster that would become the Purple People Eaters. Grant and Kapp came in 1967. The Vikings finished with the odd record of 3-8-3. This was when men were men, and ties were ties. In 1968, the Vikings made the playoffs, losing to Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts.
The 1969 season opened with a loss at Yankee Stadium to the Giants. Then came twelve straight wins and the best record in the league. (Interestingly, every Vikings game that year was in a baseball park: Tiger, Wrigley, Busch, Fulton. The one exception? A game at the University of Minnesota when the Twins had a playoff game. That’ll win you a bar bet sometime.)
I listened to each game intensely. Listened, not watched. Sports came to me mostly by radio fifty years ago. Usually I was with younger brother Dean who was blind. Having a blind brother may have had something to do with building the fields in my mind where my favorite teams played.
One visual does come to mind. Bud Grant, arms crossed, ball cap on, oblivious to the weather. Bud’s teams practiced outdoors no matter the conditions. There were no heaters on the sideline, gloves were discouraged, most of the players wore short sleeves in December. Bud played at the University of Minnesota after serving in the military. He hunted, he fished; he was stoic, he had a wry sense of humor. You couldn’t have scripted the archetypal Minnesotan any better.
Joe Kapp was Hispanic, breaking with the Norse theme. He was a tough-guy quarterback. He won a championship for British Colombia, and Finks and Grant knew him well. Kapp didn’t throw a perfect spiral, more of a drunken duck. So, it was a shock when he tied a record with seven touchdown passes against Baltimore early in the season, a harbinger to the Vikings’ success.
The playoffs were epic games in Vikings lore, two good, one not so much. The Rams led by MVP Roman Gabriel flew from Los Angeles to 11-degree Minnesota. The Vikings came from behind to win 23 to 20.
The next week (8 degrees), the Vikings beat Cleveland handily 27 to 7. The most memorable play was a QB scramble when Kapp ran over the Browns linebacker, taking him out of the game. Over, not under or around, classic Joe Kapp.
Unfortunately, the season ended with a loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the fourth Super Bowl. The fiftieth anniversary of that is coming up, which seems a perfect time for the Vikings to finally win one of those darn Super Bowls.
Soon after the season, film of Kapp declining the team MVP award went “viral.” Viral in 1969 meant it was on the 10:00 news. It also opened the Vikings highlight film that we got out of school to watch in the auditorium. Kapp insisted the award should go to forty players who played hard for sixty minutes each Sunday. “40 for 60” became the trademark affixed to that team.
Like Billy Martin, Joe Kapp would not return. There was some convoluted contract matter that couldn’t be resolved. The money side of sports reared its head. That’s alright. I was turning 14, and my perfect season was ending.
