This column is often written in a form called the personal essay. “Personal essays relate the author’s intimate thoughts and experiences to universal truths,” is one definition. “Universal” seems a bit much for mine. Maybe “township truths.”
Sometimes personal means my thoughts on picking rocks or watching baseball. This one is deeper personal.
I have referenced Dean’s passing before and some unfinished processing by this writer. Each of us has losses and even traumatic events in our lives. “Processing” those is never really finished. They reappear at random and unexpected times. We can suddenly be back in that moment.
I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about the 50th Anniversary of My Home run. That happened in April of my senior year. It was fun looking back. I was talking with nephew Jay on my phone about that. Jay’s a few years younger, and he recalled that was the spring Dean died.
I knew that but hadn’t linked them in my head right then. I was sitting in a tractor cab parked in our shop. After we hung up, I found tears coming to my eyes. “Oh my God, that’s right. Dean was dying then.”
May 24 was a Friday in 1974, as it was this year. On that day 50 years ago, I didn’t go to our teams’ baseball game. There was a wake at the O’Hare Funeral Home and a funeral at St. Mary’s. There were lots of people coming and going. We still had milking and chores to do. A week later, I graduated. More people were around. The time is a giant jumbled ball of dissociated and mostly bad memories.
I’ll back up and tell about Dean in a much too brief manner. Dean was born 16 months after me. A healthy baby, we were destined to be playmates, bound together as brothers on the farm. We would be, but the story took a turn. When Dean was 2, my older sister noticed something not right with his eyes.
My mother spent time with doctors in New Ulm, Minneapolis, and New York, desperately trying to save Dean’s sight. In the end, something called retina blastoma took that. In the spring of 1959, Dean became blind. I was 3; he was 2. As children will, we didn’t dwell on what we didn’t have. We found ways to play with four hands, four legs, and two eyes.
Dean was a gifted boy. He learned to read at the Faribault Braille School. He went there from first through ninth grade, my mom gamely driving him there on Sundays and bringing him home every Friday. I rode along, continuing our play in the back seat. Those are memories that are timeless and distant.
The plan was that Dean would come to St. Mary’s his sophomore year, my junior year. Thanks to some wonderfully helpful staff and classmates, he was succeeding. Also, great credit to our mom who filled in whatever extra reading and help Dean needed. My mom was a force, committed to her son in a way only a parent could know.
When Dean began to get headaches around Christmas, it hardly seemed serious. But taking aspirin gave way to seeing a doctor which led to tests and finally a diagnosis of the brain tumor which would kill him. A number of treatments were tried, not unlike the attempts to save his sight. Again, those failed.
I thought about why I’m writing this. “Keeping his memory alive” came to mind. I’m not sure of the efficacy of that. There are a shrinking number of people who saw him play piano or heard his infectious laugh. I know from conversations, Dean moved people in his last days with his courage and the gracious way he dealt with dying.
I can write about those things, but it doesn’t bring it back. In the end, I can’t keep his memory alive, as noble as my intent might be.
It was a life cut short. All of us have people in our lives who left too soon.
Then, what is too short?
Who can say that?
Feet away from Dean’s burial marker is an older one. It says, “BABY, MICHAEL M. RADL, 1910-1910.” Michael had 16 less years than Dean.
Around Dean’s death, there was more sadness. On May 17, our cousin, 30-year-old Tom Krambeer, died in an automobile accident near Park Rapids. On May 21, 21-year-old Tom Hertling died in a boating accident on Sleepy Eye Lake. Both those young men certainly had plans that were violently taken from them.
I remember hearing then that, “Deaths come in threes.” Of course, they don’t. But it is one of those ways we try to make sense of the senseless.
In Sleepy Eye, the horrible tragic death of four young men in a car accident in March 2014 is still much in mind. Talk about lives cut short. I wrote this then:
“There is a temptation to say their lives were ‘incomplete’ or ‘unfinished.’ That is unfair to their memory. We wanted them to have more time, to go out to the world, to have longer stories. But our lives are like books and there are many types of books. ‘Les Miserables’ is 1,500 pages. “The Old Man and the Sea” is ninety pages. Each is full, complete, and valuable. Each is to be treasured.”
Ten years later, I still feel terribly sad that those boys died.
And I wonder again what would they have made of their lives?
And Dean?
Would he have gone into music with his gifts?
Teaching, law school, were things he talked about. All those are empty holes now.
The processing I mentioned includes regrets that I became disengaged at the end of Dean’s life. I talked about that to friend Judy Surprenant, long time school counselor. Judy said that 18 is an exactly bad age to experience that. There is so much swirling around us as we move from teen to adult, it can be difficult to be in the moment. I suppose that is my excuse, although regrets won’t recede.
Fifty years on, I’m no closer to understanding why my brother was taken. Dean did tell my mom that he felt he’d had a full life, and she shouldn’t be sad. Is that comforting? I don’t know.
“It’s God’s plan.” That’s another of those things we say to make sense of the senseless. So much is mystery to us mortals. I’m not sure about God’s plan. But, in the words of the old hymn, I do believe “We Shall Meet Again.” Godspeed Dean.
I took a photography class in college. On the first day, Brother Zarr informed us that he didn’t want to see any photos of old people or kids. Anyone can shoot a picture of an old guy on a corner or a kid on a swing. It doesn’t take any creativity.
Writing about spring is like that. Whatever blogger or columnist you read is writing about spring right now. It’s such an amazing season of transition, green exploding everywhere, life rushing back to a comatose landscape. It doesn’t take any creativity.
Spring comes on us small and subtle at first: small buds, daffodil blossoms close to the ground, grass shifts from a dead green to a live green. Then one day, you look out and rhubarb is two feet tall with leaves the size of Iowa. There is nothing subtle about rhubarb.
I am especially glad to see our rhubarb this year. In a fit of cleaning up the garden last fall, Pam mowed it. She’s like that. She starts cleaning sometimes and can’t control herself. She wants everything clean. It’s not a quality we share.
Anyway, I expressed my concern that she may have harmed the rhubarb. We agreed to disagree, although I didn’t really agree. Our marriage survived and now the rhubarb is up. All is good. I love you, Pam.
That patch of rhubarb has been there since before me. I never thought to ask my parents about its origin. It’s always been there, the first thing to grow with such gusto every spring.
Rhubarb is not native to North America. Somewhere back in the 1800s, someone brought crowns or seed from the old country, probably unsure it would grow here. I’ll never know who that was or how the forebears of this rhubarb got to our farm. Trees, animals, and people have come and gone; the rhubarb outlasts them all.
That part of the garden is fifty feet from a corn/soybean field. Occasionally herbicide spray drift has wilted things in the garden. Not the rhubarb. I think our rhubarb is indestructible. That includes indiscriminate mowing.
Rhubarb’s main attribute is that it is the first edible of the spring. It’s an interesting flavor in jelly and desserts. It needs to partner up with something sweet to offset it’s tanginess.
When I was a kid, I took my mom’s sugar bowl out back and dipped stalks of rhubarb in the sugar before chomping them. In research for this column, I took Pam’s sugar bowl and tried that. (Don’t tell Pam; she also has this thing about double dipping.) I don’t think it will be the next food sensation, but prep time is minimal. It’s healthier than Twinkies.
Rhubarb has its limits. But the exciting thing about it is that it signifies the beginning of the Season of Eating. Eight months of fresh things from the land are in front of us. After that, we fall back into the four months where snow is all there is to consume off the land.
A lot of us are gardeners in rural places like this. Pam and I are in the group of Gardeners with Occasional Success. If we had to depend on our ability to grow food for our survival, we’d been gone long ago. But there are farmers’ markets and friends who share from their bounty. So, we eat pretty well.
The Season of Eating will soon offer those first things that can go in the ground, things that can handle a bit of frost. Radishes, green onions, leaf lettuce are all spring eating. Soon after, come garden peas. Heaven forbid, temperatures turn too hot for those delicates. A sumptuous green pea can turn into a starchy pebble in hours.
Friends Greg and Cathy Roiger always plant potatoes on Good Friday, per the old gardener’s tradition. Sometimes that means scratching away snow to perform that duty, but I always admired their commitment.
Whenever you get your potatoes in, if you can dine on boiled new potatoes dabbed in butter with green onion chunks in June, that is as close to the divine as you can get in this life.
The middle of summer brings green beans. A little later comes sweet corn. Now, we are full in the glory of local eating. Both of those also take full advantage of the ability of butter to make literally everything better.
The curse that was margarine has mostly been lifted. Whatever crazed scientist invented margarine has hopefully been exiled to some desert island where he can spend his days, forced to eat Blue Bonnet on Wonder bread.
At some point in summer, melons get good. I’ve never had luck growing those, but I enjoy the water and musk types that come up from Missouri and Iowa. You might have to buy one or two mediocre ones, but when you get a good one, oh my.
Among my favorite vegetables and healthiest to eat are broccoli and cauliflower. I’ve mostly given up growing those. In the race to consume those between me and the cabbage loopers, I always finish second.
When we come to August, it is the time of tomatoes and zucchini. Now the possibilities become endless. There is so much you can do with these staples of the veggie world. The good news is they are among the easiest to grow. Most years tomatoes and zucchini are rhubarb-like in their ability to thrive.
They can even tolerate a few weeds. I mentioned Pam and I are Gardeners with Occasional Success. Speaking of weeds, I can tell you the moment each summer that keeps us from being Great Gardeners.
We keep the garden reasonably weed-free through June. Then comes a July day when it’s hot and muggy, and weeds are giving one last push to conquer territory. I’m on the screen porch, listening to the Twins game on the radio, with a cold Grain Belt in my hand. Right then I could go weed another time. Or I can succumb to relaxation.
The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak. I stay on the screen porch. The next day the weeds have won.
The Season of Eating winds down in the fall when we bake the first squash. Acorn, butternut, and buttercup are each unique and each good. And their aggressive vines thrive amidst the weeds that I gave up on in July.
All that delightful eating begins now. The rhubarb tells us that.
There, I wrote about spring. Maybe I’ll go take a picture of an old person. Hey, I can take a selfie!
The Second Reading from 1 John, began with this: “My little children, let us not love in word only, or with the tongue only, but in deed and truth.” It’s a beautiful line, encouraging us to love in fullness, not just wear it as a costume.
John’s letter was to believers in Asia Minor. He is speaking of the truth of God’s salvation. That is something Christians agree with. But in so many other matters, we agree there is truth. We just don’t agree on what’s true.
I’ve been thinking lately about “truth” as we share it with our fellow travelers on the planet.
Shouldn’t true things be obvious?
But once we get beyond the sun rising in the east and the Earth being round, the disputes begin. You find people who think the world is flat, so that’s not even a good example.
Why is it so difficult to say what is true?
We share the same empirical evidence and the same five senses to experience them. It should be easy to say, “We agree this is true.” As the cynic in my brain says, “Yeah, good luck with that.”
In the last few weeks, protests have broken out on college campuses opposing Israel’s war on Gaza. If you are my age or older, the Vietnam War protests come to mind. It is one of those echoes from history you note as you get older.
The Vietnam War almost perfectly coincided with my coming of age. The United States sent combat troops there when I was in third grade; the last ones left the spring of my junior year. Between local soldiers interviewed on KNUJ Radio and Walter Cronkite talking to us every evening, it was never far from my developing consciousness.
My perceptions reflected the nation’s. As a child, I was convinced our soldiers were protecting us all. I remember being a ten-year old doing chores, and having my heart stirred by the “Ballad of the Green Berets” on the barn radio.
As I moved to adolescence watching the protests on the CBS Evening News, my shift in understanding and doubts grew coincidentally with many Americans. I was twelve when the My Lai Massacre struck a blow across the conscience of our nation. I was fourteen when students were killed at Kent State.
In the southeast Asian jungles, it was never clear whether we were winning or losing. It was certain that stateside support for the war was eroding. When students began marching, most Americans thought they knew why we were in Vietnam. By the end, most Americans were not sure at all that the lives of 58,000 young men were worth it.
Who knows? If not for those students challenging our government, might it have taken 68,000 lives to convince our leaders to get out of that slog? 78,000?
What was “truth” shifted. In 1965, Communism was perceived as a giant threat. Sixty years later, we see it never was with its inherent, deep-seated weaknesses. Today, authoritarian regimes in China and Russia are a deeper threat to democracy than Communism ever was.
The current campus protests are hugely different in that American soldiers are not risking their lives. But it is American bombs that are killing Palestinians. We are very accountable for what goes on there, whether our weapons are used rightly or wrongly.
Again, there are two wildly different notions of “truth.” We all know the rough outline. The militant group Hamas attacked settlements in Israel on Oct. 7: 1,200 dead. The Israeli Army struck back: 35,000 dead? “Authorities say they can no longer count all their dead. Hospitals, emergency services and communications are barely functioning.”
My daughter works for the United Nations. That organization has been pressing Israel for a ceasefire. Several resolutions to that end offered at the United Nations were vetoed by the United States as global support for Israel has shrunk to our two countries.
I wrote before about the feed of photos and videos on Instagram that I have seen from Gaza. It is one thing to read 15,000 children have been killed. It is another to see video of a child screaming in pain from having their leg torn off. Or to see a sobbing mother holding the corpse of her child. Or a father desperately digging through rubble trying to unearth a wailing infant.
To say that the Israeli response was indiscriminate is an understatement. Bombing a school where families have gone for shelter after their homes were destroyed is a military strategy, I guess. Does it matter that it is a moral or legal one?
Now we have college students protesting again. Sixty years ago, that presaged a shift in Americans support for a war. We’ll see if that happens this time.
It needs to be said every time that opposition to the Gazan killings is not antisemitism. I have encountered terrible things said about Jewish people here in rural Minnesota. I never understood where that comes from, but it is real, and it is ugly. I have called it out a few times, and we need to all do that. No, Jewish bankers aren’t secretly controlling the world’s economies.
There is in Israel itself, strong opposition to Netanyahu’s campaign. Most Jewish Americans under thirty oppose the Gaza War. They understand that Israel is less safe today than it was seven months ago. Tremendous global support for Israel on October 8th was dashed against the rocks.
So, what is “true?” In this case, I think we can identify one source of conflicting views. I’m certain those young people challenging Israel and the United States to do better have seen the pictures and videos I’ve seen. I don’t know why they have not made it into most media in our country. Perhaps they are too gruesome? I hope it’s not an attempt to cover up things. Most of the world has seen them.
I suspect those who are condemning the protests outright haven’t. It is the difference between reading a number like 15,000 and seeing one child dying in excruciating pain.
In the last days, some protests have been destructive. It becomes too easy to write off an entire movement colored by a few bad actors. I continue to sympathize with the young people opposing military violence against innocents in Gaza. I’ll stand with their truth.
Raise your hand if you remember Vic Roznovsky?
Unless this gets to Vic’s hometown of Shiner, Texas, that would be none of you.
We used teams of cards to “run the bases” while the dice dictated the action. Our lineups were mostly stars: Harmon Killebrew, Bob Gibson, Willie Stargell. Scattered in were players who had funny names or looked funny on their baseball card. Vic, bless his soul, checked both those boxes.
A while ago, Scott Surprenant used Vic Roznovsky to fill a square for Immaculate Grid. That’s an online game where you identify ballplayers who fit categories. Scott somehow knew of Vic, and one day he fit a spot. It was a great play. The rarer the player, the better the score. Few are rarer than Vic.
A group of us share our answers from the day before. When I saw Scott had used Roznovsky, I called to tell him about my connection to that name. Then an odd thing happened. As I was talking to Scott about our boys’ game, I began to feel sad.
The only people who could know about the special status of Vic Roznovsky (and Paul Popovich and Ivan Murrel) to three boys in 1967 are me and two others who are gone. My brother Dean died in 1974 and my nephew Scott in 2019.
My nephew spent parts of summers at our farm. During those, he joined Dean and I as steadfast playmates, the way kids landlocked on a farm back then were. There were chores to do, but also time to take adventures to the creek, conquer the rock pile, and play dice baseball.
My parents are gone now. They would know of the times I spent with Dean and Scott. The Vic Roznovsky moment reinforced that I was the lone holder of memories from those long-ago summers.
By nice coincidence, I ran into Fred Braulick a few days later. He reminded me that I taught dice baseball to him when we were fourth grade buddies. I smiled as we recalled:
2’s a triple, 3’s a double, 4’s a single, 5’s a sacrifice, 6 is an out, 7’s a double play, 8’s an out, 9’s a strikeout, 10’s a walk, 11’s a single, and 12’s a homerun. Fred made me feel not so alone with a memory.
I suppose that’s the natural way it is for memories. They can be shared for years. But then the participants disappear, till one remains who holds that story or event alone in their mind. And when that person leaves, it is gone. Maybe it gets written down or recorded. It might exist on paper or even video. But that’s different than in someone’s thoughts. It is the difference between an organic thing and inorganic thing.
In 2022, I lost good friend Dean Brinkman. Dean had lots of friends; I was blessed to be one. When he left us suddenly and tragically, I was left with the things that we shared. It was stories and events. But it was more reactions, ways of glancing at each other, knowing what the other was thinking. A quick phrase could mean a hundred different things. Since Dean had limitless energy, time spent with him was always planting new notions like that.
It is that way with friends. Small triggers can release a cascade of shared thoughts and feelings that accompany them. I don’t know how many times since Dean left, that I heard or saw something that made me think for a fraction of a second, “I’ve got to tell Dean this.” Then, “Oh. Yeah.” It can take a while for reality to be real.
I remember that with my dad when he died. He was still active on the farm up to his passing at the age of 90. Everything I did in my farming career was rooted from him, first as a boy hanging out in the barn. Later, me helping him, and later still, him helping me.
There wasn’t a day when we weren’t aware of what the other was doing. Along with that came the likelihood we knew what each other was thinking. When he was gone, there was a while I had brief thoughts of wanting to tell him something. Then, “Oh. Yeah.”
In every relationship, one will go first. The remainder will be left to store the memories that were created in that relationship. Memories are like pie; you can eat it alone, but it’s more fun to share.
I mentioned the natural order of things, and most of us will lose our parents. For our early years on Earth, there is no one else who spends more time with us. In a way, it’s an unbalanced relationship. There are years children won’t remember and the parents will recall vividly.
We know those years that are a blank in our memory bank are critical to our development. All the silly words and faces we make with our baby and toddler are essential brain growing time. Perhaps it’s good our memory vault is limited as parents. We remember funny lines our two-year old said, and we block out the diapers and cleaning up baby puke.
Again, the right and good order is for our parents to die when we are grown. Sometimes, the order is upended, and the child dies before the parents. There is a special sadness when the parents are left with a giant pool of memories of someone who’s future was cut short.
I think, too, about Pam and me, and that one of us will go first. Talk about a stockpile of memories to be left alone with. It is something half of us who are married will face. Some, for a long time. Others, like my parents who died six months apart, a short time.
Someday each of us will be gone. We’ll leave behind all those we interacted with and their memories of us. There will come a time when all those people will be gone, too.
Then, we will be a name on records and articles and of course a tombstone. Maybe our ancestors will tell stories that remain. But true memory of us will be gone from the Earth. It will be the turn of others to make memories with each other.
All this, from Vic Roznovsky.
For years, Kevin Sweeney, the retired editor of The New Ulm Journal, wrote up New Ulm’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration. It was his way of poking fun at the dour Germans who surrounded him.
In thinking about my upcoming 50th class reunion, it occurred to me that this would be the 50th Anniversary of My Home run. That is capitalized. In my small life, it was a large moment.
The spring of 1974 was rainy. The first game for Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s was delayed until April 16 at Comfrey. Coach Moe Moran had me batting seventh and playing left field. It was the kind of thing you do for a senior who played six years of school ball despite little evidence of talent.
In the movie Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella says, “There comes a time when all the cosmic tumblers have clicked into place, and the universe opens itself up for a few seconds to show you what’s possible.” That day in Comfrey the cosmic tumblers aligned. I hit a home run and a double. The headline in the Herald Dispatch read, “Knights Win Opener 6-2 On Krzmarzick’s Bat.”
You must understand how unlikely that was. I represent a thin sliver of baseball players between those who are good and those who are smart enough to quit. We are the players who made the indistinguishable outs and unspectacular plays.
My hitting a home run and a double was the blind squirrel and the nut. Mediocrity had it’s day in the sun. The common man was uncommon. It was proof writ large that anything can happen. And don’t most of us wake up each day hoping anything will happen?
Then it hardly ever does?
As fate would have it, it was 10 more days till we played again. That was enough time for a mythology to develop that said I was good. Moe had me batting cleanup at our next game. What followed was what statisticians call regression to the mean. Unlikely or extreme events are likely to be followed by likely events. In brief, I mostly sucked after that.
Now, some less-true things. After the centennial of Babe Ruth’s visit to Sleepy Eye, it made sense to keep that distinguished committee of civic leaders, corporate heads, and captains of industry together to plan for the 50th Anniversary of my home run. (Well, a few of us had a beer together.)
The first task was to seek corporate sponsors. This was easy; who wouldn’t want your business associated with such a prestigious event?
Schartz Farms, Inc. signed on at the Gold Level. John Shwartz was in right field that day in Comfrey. If Schwartz Farms signed on, we agreed to tell everyone how good John was. Look for the Official Bacon of the 50th anniversary celebration.
Miller Sellner Implement was next to sign on. Nine of my cousins work there, so they could hardly say no. As a special during 50th anniversary week, Miller Sellner will be offering $10 off the purchase of the new AF11 combine. Since they retail for over half a million dollars, you’re going to want to take advantage of that.
Randy’s Drug is on as a silver level sponsor. Randy Armbruster actually pitched for Comfrey on that fateful day. To his credit, he pitched three scoreless innings before the Comfrey bullpen imploded. “Army” got me out once before my historic blows.
“Army” is annoyed that I keep bringing that game up. He was a really good baseball player who hit a lot of home runs. But alas, it’s all about timing and self-promotion. Look for Randy’s Drug to offer specials on headache medication, to help Randy get through the Week.
Planning for the 50th anniversary parade was going well. Bands, floats, dignitaries, clowns in little cars, and a marching cat brigade all agreed to take part. Unfortunately, the DOT would not let us close Highway 14 as it becomes Main Street.
So, parade participants will have to wait for a red light at 4 and 14 to stop traffic. Then they’re going to go really fast to the east before the light turns green. It should be exciting. The pace will slow when they turn onto First Avenue. Things could get confusing though as they try to figure out whether to follow the city’s or the county’s stripes. All of us in Sleepy Eye have been doing that while hoping to avoid a collision.
Next up was planning for the 50th anniversary concert. In keeping with the spirit of my home run, it made sense to feature a one-hit wonder. A very few of you might remember “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks, which was briefly a hit in the spring of 1974.
“We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.”
How perfect is that! Unfortunately, plans for Terry’s short concert had to be scrapped when we realized all the places I hung out in 1974 are unavailable. The Orchid Inn, George’s Ballroom, and the Gibbon Ballroom are not currently hosting music. Or anything else.
A slightly younger Wayne Pelzel was my first base coach on that glorious day. Wayne is now mayor of Sleepy Eye. Perhaps some sort of proclamation growing from that odd circumstance is forthcoming?
There will be bus tours from Sleepy Eye to the Comfrey Ballpark. You’ll be able to stand in the batters’ box and imagine scorching one over the left field cable. Yes, cable. In 1974, there was no fence. Only a cable about two feet off the ground. That has led to disputes among baseball historians. Someone told me my double was really a home run, and someone else said my home run was really a double. Along with the question of whether Babe Ruth called his shot in the 1932 World Series, it is one of the great mysteries of baseball.
The bus will stop at the Comfrey Bar and Grill where Leon will be offering a Randy’s Homerun Special. You’ll be able to order anything off the menu for regular price, and they’ll throw in a glass of water. For a small upcharge, they’ll make that a beer.
All of this might or might not be true. It is true that I hit a home run. And it is true that I’m going to celebrate that at the Sleepy Eye Brewery next Sunday, April 14th,, from 3 to 6 p.m. If you want to join me, I’ll tell you how mammoth my home run has grown to be in 50 years’ time.
Easter is unique among holidays in that it skips around on the calendar. It depends on the vernal equinox and a full moon. Regardless, it comes in spring. Which is perfect. New life, resurrection, birth, greening of nature: all of a piece.
There was one Easter morning in history. But we remember and celebrate that single event every year. It’s interesting that we humans commemorate things at regular times on our planet’s journey around the sun. It is a way to make sense of the eternal by connecting it to time and days we can understand.
It doesn’t get old. I’ve lived sixty-eight of these and feel the emotions as strongly as ever. Long ago, Easter included the excitement of an Easter basket and candy that I didn’t get the rest of the year. Now it is the quiet excitement of a deeper connection to the creator.
Dying eggs, hiding baskets, dressing up for church, preparing and gathering around a special meal might be parts of your Easter. If you are fortunate enough to spend time with family or friends, and not everyone is, it is a type of blessing.
Somewhere in all of it, we take a moment with ourselves to remember the why of the day. Jesus’ rising from the dead, the empty tomb, the road to Emmaus: in those is the entire reason we are Christians. It is the root and the stem.
We honor and respect the other religions of the world. There are valuable traditions in those to guide their believers. But this one morning 2,000-some years ago is ours. As Christians, everything spins from that most unlikely and miraculous of happenings.
Like much of Jesus’ life, it is beyond our small brains to comprehend. We can know a lot of what he felt in his time on Earth. It was God’s plan that Jesus would share our humanity with us. His pain, his happiness, his sorrow are like ours. But we certainly can’t perform miracles, and we surely won’t rise from the dead.
I have thought though, that life gives us a metaphor for the first Easter. If we imagine our sleep as kind of a death, then morning is a resurrection, at least to the conscious world. With that thought, our waking becomes a brief morning benediction. “Thank you, God, for this, another day. It is a gift, my little resurrection.”
Back to the first resurrection. After so many of these Easters, it can be possible to lose focus to its majesty. As hard as it may be, we can try to put ourselves back in time at the first Easter. It would be confusing at first. The rock rolled away, Jesus not in the tomb. What the heck happened here?
In that most amazing moment in history, our response would not be small. When the clouds of doubt faded and our minds cleared, and we saw with our own eyes the risen Christ, how could we not fall to the ground at Jesus’ feet?
With the advantage of 2,000 years, we know now that everything changed then and there. Death and sin defeated, salvation for our species. But right then, in the exact moment, it would not have made immediate sense. That’s alright; it was all part of a divine plan.
I try to perform that mental exercise every Easter, going to Jerusalem in my imagination. And when I do, I come to this. I want to be better. How could I not want to be the best person I could possibly be after Jesus suffered for me on that cross and broke the grip of sin on the world with his resurrection?
It is said that we Christians are “Easter people.” I wondered about that phrase and looked it up. St. Augustine first used that around 400 AD, “We are Easter people and ‘Alleluia’ is our song. Let us sing here and now in this life, even though we are oppressed by various worries, so that we may sing it one day in the world to come, when we are set free from all anxiety.”
St. Augustine lived in northern Africa in a challenging time, not unlike ours. He is known as St. Augustine of Hippo, which your children would find amusing. Hippo was the ancient name of the city of Annaba in Algeria. St. Augustine is the patron saint of brewers. So, a toast to him is in order next time you have a Schells Deer Brand, Sleepy Eye Cream Ale, or a Brau Brothers.
Being Easter people points to the centrality of the resurrection to Christianity. I said I wanted to be better because of Easter. More specifically, I want to be better because I am a disciple of Jesus.
How then?
Sure, there are rules to follow. Some of those we argue about, and interpretations will shift. There are rules to live by, and then there are laws we create. But one thing is clear. Jesus commands us to love.
“Commands” is a strong word. But there it is. John 15:12: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
That seems straight forward, no interpretation required. Paul gives us one anyway in Corinthians, words we have heard a thousand times: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
There are 2.4 billion Christians on Earth. That’s 2.4 billion Easter people. This Easter morning, if each of us loves just a little bit more than the day before, that’s 2.4 billion little bits. That’s a lot of love. Happy Easter.
I wrote recently about the school shooting in Perry, Iowa. I mentioned that I don’t have much experience with guns outside of shooting varmints on the farm. Someone posted on social media that since that was true, my opinions on gun control shouldn’t matter. By that logic, since I’ve never been in a war, I shouldn’t write about that either. So, take this with a grain of salt.
It’s easy to overinflate the significance of the current moment in time. What’s happening now is large and in our faces. That said, the Russian invasion of Ukraine will surely ripple into the future.
When Vladimir Putin decided that no number of deaths, Russian and Ukrainian, mattered to his twisted ego, the response was consistent and impressive. The democracies of the world rushed to back Ukraine and say, “This will not stand.” That response was led by the United States. That is as it should be. The United States is the leader of the Free World; with that comes great responsibility.
Now, some are apparently “bored” with that responsibility. United States’ support for the incredibly brave people of Ukraine is waning. If you follow these things, and you should, you know that with the decline in military aid, the tide is turning in Putin’s favor. It now appears likely he will have his way. We should all be afraid of the consequences of that. It will affect your grandchildren’s world in ominous ways.
This is a unique situation in that we are engaged in conflict without our soldiers on the lines. The Ukrainians are fighting for their homeland. But no one believes Putin is done with nation building. History shows that when thugs succeed, they don’t stop. One of these times, it will be our men and women on the front line.
As citizens, the only power we have in these matters is through our elected officials. Both our Senators have consistently supported Ukraine and voted in favor of the most recent aid package. It is a different story for our Representatives from southern Minnesota.
Last July, Michelle Fischbach and Brad Finstad were among seventy House members who voted in favor of cutting off all aid to Ukraine. Our Representatives were early in the group to abandon Ukraine. Then, they were in a minority of their party. Now most Republicans in the House are letting the Senate bill hang in the wind.
I don’t know Michelle. I’m a donor to Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, so I know of her husband who is Executive Director there. I know Brad a little. We have common friends. From everything I know, they are good people who have positively impacted our communities. I’m sure they would be good neighbors and would help shovel my car out from a snowbank.
But they are on the wrong side of this. In many ways, our region is a lot like Ukraine. There are farms with families working to make a living connected to the land interspersed with small towns. Schools, hospitals, churches look like ours. If we could speak Ukrainian, we’d fit right in. That makes it harder to understand the positions of our Representatives.
War is a terrible thing. I was just young enough to miss the Vietnam War. I had friends who didn’t miss it. Their lives were altered by that experience. My son spent six years in the Army National Guard, trained as a crew member in an Abrams tank. During that time, he was prepared to go to war if called. Our involvement in the Mideast had wound down so that did not happen. But I guess you could say I had skin in the game.
I have lived through war in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In each, what seemed like a good cause at first was met with harsh reality and increasing skepticism as time wore on. War is more complicated than we’d like. In hindsight, it’s questionable whether the United States should have sent soldiers to those places. I remember defending George Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. I still think he had good intentions. Good intentions don’t get you far in war.
But there are times when the waters of war are not muddy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is one of those. There’s a clear aggressor and a clear victim. There was nothing surprising in the methods used by Putin’s forces. As in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria, they began by bombing apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, and shopping centers.
That’s modern warfare as practiced by Vladimir Putin. He also has an advantage in that he doesn’t care how many Russian men are killed. It’s a strategy to send wave after wave of soldiers to deplete the other side’s munitions.
Among the far right in this country, there is a weird affection for Putin. That is because he is “strong morally.” As far as I can tell, that means that he persecutes gay people.
Opposite that person who will be reviled by history is Volodymyr Zelenskyy. At my age, I don’t have many heroes. Zelenskyy is one. On a purely emotional level, I want to be on his side. The times he stood before Congress, I was stirred.
As I said, Representatives Fischbach and Finstad were in a minority of their party last July when they voted to cut aid. Now that position has grown in the Republican Party. I know the polls show support for Ukraine slipping. But I really can’t believe most Americans upon reflection wouldn’t want us to stand with the coalition of nations opposing Putin.
There is no guarantee that funding will result in success for Ukraine. Perhaps a Russian victory could be delayed long enough for something untoward to happen to Putin. In the same way that bad things happen to anyone who opposes him.
Some have decided aid to Ukraine should be linked to immigration. Those two issues have absolutely nothing to do with each other. When those sorts of artificial connections are manufactured, that is purely “politics.” Immigration deserves attention. But giving solace to a dictator solves nothing on our border. Quit insulting us with that premise.
Opponents of aid to Ukraine might point to the cost. Can I offer up as an offset the billions of dollars that continue to flow to us farmers in subsidies? We have gotten that despite some of the most profitable farming years in history. The thousands I’ve received are hundreds of thousands for bigger farms. Give that to farmers who have real needs. Like clearing land mines from their fields.
In 1987, a member of Representatives Fischbach and Finstad’s party stood in Berlin and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” It was one of the most significant events of the Twentieth Century. I can hear President Reagan in my mind now. It was a moment all Americans knew we were on the right side of history.
Thirty-seven years later, do we really want to say to Gorbachev’s successor, “Mr. Putin, have your way?” We’re better than that. I hope our representatives agree.
Dear White males,
I’m one of you. I have been my whole life, checking “White,” “Caucasian,” or “non-Hispanic” on surveys and applications. While my skin tone isn’t exactly white, a farmer tan hides some serious paleness.
Face it, being one of us is a pretty good deal. Mostly it’s White males who are presidents, CEO’s, executives, and all but two baseball managers. White males in America are among the most fortunate people who’ve lived on this planet, except for some kings and queens and very rich. A generally good economy, security, health, education, housing have all been available to us if we were willing to work and not be too stupid.
Despite all that, there is a group of us that is still miserable. Aggrieved White Males (AWMs) are getting lots of attention. AWMs like attention. That makes them different from the rest of us. Typically, us guys don’t like much attention.
AWMs worry someone is getting a better deal at their expense and taking advantage of them. Women, the government, non-whites, immigrants, the list is endless. AWMs feel they are threatened by all these groups. They’re certain there is a great conspiracy to replace them. They lay awake at night worrying they will be canceled the next day.
Of course, the absurd thing is that there has been no more advantaged group in history than White American males. If we’d have lived in any other place or any other time on Earth, we wouldn’t have had it so good. If we were any other skin color, we would have lower income and poorer health. That’s just statistically true. If we were another gender, we’d be paid less. Again, statistics.
America works pretty well. Many people would gladly trade places with us. We have schools to educate us, roads to get us where we want to go, police to protect us. A problem for AWMs is that these things are paid for by taxes. AVMs hate taxes. They dread the thought that a young single Hispanic mother might be getting a dollar more food assistance than is allowed. Ironically, AVMs my age are glad to take their Social Security and Medicare, even though they’ll get more than they ever put in.
I was sent down this path when a friend who is an AWM forwarded me a screen shot message. It claimed that the names of White perpetrators of crimes are released sooner than the names of Black perpetrators. “This practice seems racist.”
I cringed. To begin with, I’m not sure it’s true. Perhaps there is a delay in releasing names of certain types of bad guys, but it hardly seems significant. Then to decide Blacks’ names are withheld while Whites’ names are released for some nefarious reason seems to be looking under a rock.
The fellow who sent that is, not surprisingly, a Donald Trump voter. That’s not a coincidence. Trump has made aggrievement into an artform. He is a cauldron of non-stop victimhood. There are so many threats to his white maleness that he can hardly get through them all in one rally. When faced with so many villains, he does the logical thing: he mocks and ridicules them. The worst get an insulting nickname. That’ll show them.
Within the group of AWMs, there are subsets. One is Aggrieved White Male farmers.
In 2021 the USDA offered a small amount of funding targeted to debt relief for Black farmers. This was in response to multiple lawsuits that proved discrimination against Black farmers going back decades.
Immediately, a group of White farmers went to court to challenge that program, claiming it was discriminatory against them. I suppose it is discriminatory if you ignore 400 years of history. Remember, when our ancestors were settling on homesteads backed by the U.S. government, Black people were working on farms for free.
When the Civil War ended, there was a plan for freed slaves to receive “forty acres and a mule.” The idea was to give them a chance to share in the American dream. That lasted about as long as it took the Union soldiers to leave the South. Jim Crow laws were slapped into place to keep Black people suppressed, landless, and poor. Tenant farming and sharecropping became close approximations to slavery.
Spend 5 minutes googling and you can find all sorts of evidence that Black farmers have been discriminated against by every public and private means possible. A small amount of funding to counteract that legacy is reasonable.
AWM farmers were quick to protest. Ironically, the White farmers suing the USDA have been the beneficiaries of a large amount of government largesse in recent years. Between direct payments, subsidies for crop insurance, and generous “Trump payments,” farmers have benefited handsomely from you taxpayers.
For these Aggrieved White Male Farmers to claim harm is particularly laughable. But like all AWMs, introspection is not a strong suit.
Another subgroup of AWMs is Aggrieved White Male Christians. There is religious persecution in the world, and in many places, Christians are truly persecuted. But to claim that our religious liberties are being trod on in this country? If you want persecution, try living in Gaza for a day.
AWMs point to decline in church attendance, and they want to blame someone. Society, culture, liberals, Hollywood, and of course the government. When it comes to blaming something for their misery, “government” is the gift that keeps on giving.
I am a Christian. Here’s a crazy idea. How about if we model lives of love and service?
What if we Christians were the kindest and most decent people there were?
What if we took seriously Jesus’ admonition to love others as ourselves?
When their families are gathered for Easter, AWMs will be talking about the immigrant hordes threatening to pollute our gene pool. Maybe the rest of us White males can show empathy toward the majority of those at our border who are escaping awful situations and trying to make a better life for their families.
When it comes to how angry and divided our nation has become, I’d like to think we white males could work to make things better. To begin, maybe we can convince our aggrieved brothers to take a chill.
I like Terry Helget. He’s a friend. But sometimes I hate Terry.
Terry didn’t mean us any harm. Knowing we were lifelong baseball fans, he introduced a group of us to Immaculate Grid. That is an online, daily game. It’s not for the casual fan. It’s for the fan who devotes each summer to watching grown men play a game, then analyzing it ad nauseum.
Perhaps.
Immaculate Grid was created by computer geek/baseball fans. It’s simplicity is its attraction. A tic tac toe-like grid has nine spaces to be filled in with Major League players from baseball’s long history. There are three categories across and three down. Each player has to match two to fill a space.
For example, a player who played for the Chicago Cubs and the New York Yankees. Or a player who won a Gold Glove and played for the Boston Red Sox.
You get a score depending on how many of your nine guesses are correct. Nine out of nine is immaculate. Plus, there is a “rarity” score. You get more points for lesser-known players who are “rare.” If you choose Reggie Jackson as a player who played for the Athletics and Yankees, you are not going to score as well as if you choose Ping Bodie. Ping played for the Athletics when they were in Philadelphia in 1917 and the Yankees the next year. But you knew that.
Terry whups me most days. Besides that, Terry is younger, more athletic, and better looking. I’m glad I have a few old, fat friends to make up for him.
I really don’t hate Terry, but Immaculate Grid has cost me hours of wracking my brain.
Who was that mildly successful Twins starter who signed as a free agent with the Mariners a few years ago?
I know this. Don’t tell me. I can see him. I could look it up, but that’s against Grid ethics.
We share our answers the next day. Each day I see I could have done better.
But then, hasn’t that always been true?
“He could have done better” will probably be on my headstone.
By the way, it’s Carlos Silva.
You ask why would I put myself through this daily anguish?
I have decided that for all its frustration, Immaculate Grid is a good mental exercise. I can almost feel my synapses firing as they rummage through the attic of my brain where I store useless knowledge. “Okay, Twins pitcher. Seattle. Darn, I know it’s in here somewhere. Look behind that Sandy Valdespino box.”
I am soon to be 68, and preserving the brain cells I have left is the goal. Scientists say the brain is like other muscles. They benefit from use and will weaken if not stretched and pulled. It’s use ’em or lose ’em.
If you are this age, you know people who face some degree of dementia. That is the great fear. In talking to my peers, we agree we would prefer physical decline to mental. But if we live long enough, a percentage of us will struggle with significant memory loss.
The tricky part is that some loss is natural. We joke about losing our keys and forgetting what we had for supper. Trying to remember names has become a principal hobby.
“Remember that guy who used to work for Del Monte?
He had blonde hair and lived down by the pool?
You know who I’m talking about?”
Googe tells that the hippocampus is to blame. “The hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in the formation and retrieval of memories, often deteriorates with age.” I didn’t know I had a hippocampus. I probably knew I had a hippocampus but forgot. Oh, the irony.
Our ability to remember peaks in our twenties. Even Terry Helget is on the downhill slide. The decline accelerates in our sixties. Yeah, we in our sixties have noticed that.
When does it become an area of concern?
Will we know, or will everyone around know before us?
Pam and I joke about taking care of each other someday. She should show me how to turn on Netflix if someday she can’t.
Would she put Twins’ games on the radio for me?
How do we keep our brains fit and hitting on all cylinders?
Some of that is genetic. Looking back a couple of generations can give clues about things we don’t control.
I remember meeting 104-year-old Len Youngman, the fellow who was a kid in the Babe Ruth picture. Len could tell us what business was in each building in town in 1922, and who lived upstairs. He was also versed in current events. He had a remarkable mind till his death at 107.
Good genes are a factor. Beyond the luck of who our parents were, there are millions of choices we have made and make every day that can help our brains, or not.
We know sitting around and eating Doritos all day isn’t good. The connection between physical activity, nutrition, and brain health has been established. We used to think a little alcohol wasn’t bad for us. Now we know that a little is a little bad, and a little more is worse for our bodies and our brains. I like beer, so there’s a challenge.
It seems instinctual that using our brains will help. While I flail away trying to think of a Detroit Tiger who had 2,000 hits, others are putting together 1,000-piece puzzles. A daily crossword puzzle or Sudoku serves the purpose of lubing the mind. I have friends who compete to see who can get the five-letter Wordle the quickest every morning. Solitaire has been boosting brains for centuries. Reading has been around longer.
I’d like to think writing a column keeps a sharp edge on my mind. There are readers who might dispute that.
I’ve read that socializing, being around young people, and being optimistic are good for your brain. All that sounds exhausting. That makes me want a nap. Oh, that’s right: sleep is vital for maintaining mental acuity.
On one of these foggy days we’ve had, I saw that a Dense Fog Advisory had been issued. I was sitting at the kitchen table still in my morning stupor. I wondered about a Dense Brain Advisory. “Mental fog can be expected with patchy slippery thoughts. Low clouds in your head may reduce visibility of the obvious. Allow more time to complete a sentence.”
Does anyone know a Marlin who had a 20-win season?
We all have bucket lists of places we want to visit. I’ve never been to Hawaii. That is on my list. Perry, Iowa is also on it. The allure of that town in the middle of Iowa isn’t its beaches, although the Racoon River does flow through it.
Rather, it’s a unique connection between Sleepy Eye and Perry. They were both stops on Babe Ruth’s barnstorming tour in October 1922. Those two were the only small towns on a trip that included Denver and Kansas City.
I’ve talked to a couple of history buffs from Perry on the phone. The concern there was a threatened appearance by the Ku Klux Klan at the game which never occurred. The Perryites seem a little perplexed about the celebrations we have made of Babe’s visit to Sleepy Eye. But that’s just us.
I have wanted to drive down to Perry with a baseball friend but haven’t yet. Perry is 40 miles northwest of Des Moines. It is 200 miles almost straight south of Sleepy Eye, so it’d be an easy weekend. The ballfield where Ruth played is gone, but the hotel he stayed at is there. We could stay at the historic Hotel Pattee, find the location of the park, and visit with some old-timers. Maybe go to Des Moines for an Iowa Cubs game to complete our baseball pilgrimage.
A few weeks ago, my attention was caught when I heard Perry mentioned on the radio news. It was not good news. On Jan. 6, Perry was the next in a line of school shootings in the United States. It won’t be the last.
As far as school shootings go, this wasn’t as bad as some. That is small relief to the family of the sixth-grade boy and the high school principal who were killed. Ahmir Jolliff was nicknamed Smiley and had a “spirit bigger than his 11-year-old body could contain,” according to his pastor. Dan Marburger intentionally put himself in the line of fire to protect students, a truly heroic act.
Perry is far down the list of worst school shootings. Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Parkland are names seared in our consciousness, 27, 21, 17 dead. All those victims were as alive and life filled as Ahmir and Dan before their shooters arrived.
I’ve not been to Perry, but as a Midwestern town, I’m sure it is like others. Surrounded by farms, it was founded to support agriculture that was spreading west across the prairie soils of the growing country. It has a main street that has had to transition as the economy changed in the last century.
Every Midwestern town had a school, which was the center of the community and point of town pride. In many towns, the school sits empty, a historic relic. But Perry Community School has held up well, with an enrollment of 573, home of the Bluejays. Jan. 6th was the first day back to school after Christmas vacation.
Perry is similar in many ways to my town and your town. The unspoken message of the shooting there is that a school shooting can happen anywhere. But we knew that. Anywhere in the United States that is. School shootings are almost nonexistent everywhere else in the world.
Whenever one of these happens, immediately we hear there needs to be emphasis on mental and emotional health.
But does the United States have a monopoly on unstable and disturbed people?
No, we don’t. What we do have is guns, lots of them.
The United States has 120 firearms per one hundred persons. That is more than double the next country on the list, the Falkland Islands. Most other countries have less than 10. It’s a massive difference.
Is it a coincidence that the country with by far the most guns has the most school shootings?
Do you think so?
I admit, I’ve not used guns a lot myself. I didn’t grow up hunting. Outside of the occasional farm skunk and tin can, I’ve not shot much.
I don’t dislike guns in the right places and in the right hands. I have many friends who do hunt, and I have great respect for sportsmen and women. They lead efforts to protect the environment as they work to maintain habitat for wildlife.
I knew my son had an interest in hunting, and I bought him a .22 rifle for his 16th birthday. When he went into the National Guard, I enjoyed hearing about his training with the various weapons soldiers use.
In my lifetime, there has been a large shift in gun ownership. Less people hunt and there are less guns for that. But there has been a massive explosion in handguns. The purchasers of those handguns seldom had hunting in mind. Rather, it was with their personal security in mind.
All those guns purchased with security in mind have done a funny thing. Americans are more likely to die by gun violence than anywhere else on Earth that is not at war. That is a combination of homicide, suicide, and accidental shootings, all of which are higher here than anywhere else.
In addition to 145 million handguns in the United States, there are 20 million AR style weapons in circulation now. These automatic shooting machines are the weapons of choice for school shooters.
Shouldn’t all of this cause a reasonable discussion about guns, perhaps limiting their proliferation? The licensing and safety standards of driving a car are much greater than owning a gun.
Like too many things, guns have become politicized. If you are a Republican, you can never vote for any type of gun control, no matter that a majority of Americans support it. I have voted for many Republicans in the past. But on this issue, they are simply trapped. Most are pro-life and pro-gun. Guns have become the leading cause of death of American children. Those bullets are decidedly not pro-life.
The next time there is school shooting, we know several things that will happen. There will be calls for gun control. Those will quickly be dismissed by “guns rights advocates.” And the humor website The Onion will post this headline: “‘No Way to Prevent This’ Says Ony Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
I still hope to visit Perry someday. It’s not a large town, so I will get past the school. I will offer up a prayer when I do.
