Gwen Ruff is filling in for her brother in law Randy Krzmarzick this week.  Gwen lives in Gibbon.

Like many organizations, the school district I work for participates in an employee wellness program. We can qualify for money that can be put into a health savings account by reporting basic health measurements–blood pressure, cholesterol levels, body mass index, etc.– just the numbers you don’t want to think about after a month and a half staying inside your house and snacking. We also have to complete a prescribed number of activities throughout the school year. We’ve had group hikes, after school yoga, pickleball games, sessions on cooking healthy meals complete with taste testing and craft-making classes meant to decrease stress and increase creativity. December typically has been reserved for a month-long calendar of physical and mental activities–like going without electronics for one day–to combat the accumulated calories and tension of the holiday season.

Our last activity of this unusual school year seems especially appropriate. It’s May Meditation. For some of us, we’re staying busy with new tasks, chores or hobbies. We’ve gotten a lot of closets, junk drawers and cupboards cleaned out and perfected recipes for chocolate chip cookies or freezer jam. Parents have brushed up on third-grade math skills. Judging by the empty fabric shelves at Walmart, a lot of people are sewing face masks. My neighbor across the alley says she’s gotten more outdoor projects than ever done this spring. More kids are playing outside and riding their bikes around Gibbon than usual.

Some people I know have been even more busy taking care of grandkids while sons and daughters do essential jobs or deal with changing work schedules.Several women I work with said their kids are extra busy because now that they’re doing high school and college classes from home, they’re also around to help on the farm.

I’ve been making up a list of chores to get done every week, so in a lot of ways I’m doing more than when I go to school, come home and make dinner as my one accomplishment after a day subbing for the phy. ed. teacher. So, the May Meditation calendar got me thinking how you can keep yourself even busier during this stay-at-home period and not take the time to really think about what’s been happening and what we want to make important in our lives.

Take cleaning out those cupboards. One day, the calendar suggests “mindfully” organizing a cupboard or a drawer. I reorganized a kitchen cupboard because it looked messy, but now I’m going to go back and decide whether I really need all those neatly lined up mismatched coffee mugs. Just the “Best Gramma Ever” and the Star Wars movie poster set will do.

Later this week, a calendar entry is especially appropriate. “Everything changes. This is both beautiful and tragic. Set aside some time to celebrate the gifts and grieve the losses.” Most of us have witnessed or performed acts of kindness in the last month and a half or marveled at the creativity of people learning to do things in a new way. All of us have lost something–whether it’s a milestone birthday party, high school graduation ceremonies, canceled summer musicals or the first snuggle with a newborn grandchild.

Later in the month, the task is to “do a chore you normally dislike with extra love and attention.” My first thought was cleaning the litter box, but I might switch to dog bathing because they’ll be more appreciative than the cat.

“Do something different today. Notice what this brings up for you.” This might be tricky because all our lives are pretty different right now. If the point of May Meditation is to be mindful of what you do, think and feel, I’ll have to come up with something. Maybe instead of standing at the kitchen sink staring out at the empty garden beds while eating a toaster waffle for dinner, I’ll set a place at the dining room table using my good china. Feeling weird and self-conscious–Can my next-door neighbor see inside my dining room?–should give way to memories of great family holidays at the same table.

“Be kind to someone that you find challenging in your life.” I don’t know any Stillwater, Oklahoma residents who abused store workers because they didn’t want to shop wearing masks or gun-toting misogynistic anti-stay at home protesters in Michigan, but I’d have to stick daisies in their gun barrels, I guess.

May 21’s task will be easy. “Reach out to someone in your life that you are grateful for and tell them why.” Every family member on our lengthy and hilarious text chain will get a special message along with my latest Bitmoji avatar depicting a wonky grown-out haircut, sweatpants, slippers and the same cardigan I’ve been wearing for six weeks.

Then there’s this calendar prompt: “Name three things that you have gained growing older. Take time to celebrate.” What a great thing to ponder. Growing older does give you a different perspective. My IRA has tanked before. Can you say dot-com bubble? What about the Great Recession? But it’s always eeked back up, and I’m confident it will again when our pent-up demand for decent haircuts and below-the-waist clothing gets the economy flowing. My only grandson was born and lived in Ohio for a couple years, so not seeing him for so long has been hard, but I can’t wait to see his face light up when I finally visit. I might not be as optimistic if I weren’t “older.”

There have been a zillion news stories, Facebook posts and text messages about Americans having a chance to slow down, to bake bread and cook real meals, to play games with their kids. And just as many funny memes about being over it all. There also has been much speculation about what life will be like once this is over. How we get through daily life out in the world again will change, but I hope a lot of the good things will remain.

So, maybe take time to do your own May Meditation. Jot down things you’re appreciating and finding important on the calendar that hangs on your refrigerator. Before you throw it away in December, flip back to May. Write a little note about how you’re feeling May 6, 2020 on the back of your daily tear-off calendar. Stick it under everything in your junk drawer to find the next time you clean it out. If the memory isn’t so great, congratulate yourself for making it through and offer kindness to someone not so fortunate. If the message was more hopeful, remind yourself of the good things you found in yourself, your family and your neighbors and keep them going.

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.

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.”