When I think about what to write, I try to find things that are clever and a bit off-center. Not this time. I’m taking what the world is giving me. It’s spring. I’m going to write about that. It’s a fastball down the middle.
The like-a-miracle quality is multiplied this year coming out of one of the most relentless winters in our lifetimes. Let’s take a moment to congratulate ourselves. We did it. If you didn’t bang yourself up slipping on the ice or pull something shoveling snow, extra kudos to you.
We spent a couple weeks in a warm place this winter. It felt a little like cheating. I knew in my brain that it’s possible to leave winter. But my body was confused. When I stepped outside in Tucson, I instinctively pulled my coat collar up to my chin.
Otherwise, your neck gets cold, right?
As I write, remnants of snowpack on the north side of buildings are all that’s left. Winter was so oppressive, that one could almost forget the Earth was underneath all the snowy ice and icy snow. Now, there is a green tint to the landscape, a color that left us five months ago. There are shoots of plants poking toward the sun. Tree buds are imminent.
Every spring, each of us notes these “firsts:” the first time the sun is warmer than the cold air on our face, the first time we leave our coat in the house, the first time we walk across the yard without mincing shuffle steps.
If you spend time outside in the spring, you will have front row tickets to the most wonderful production. Nature in all its elements is jumping to the attention of the returning sun. So much is going on between the birds, the plants, and the critters.
They all know instinctively what humans learn with calendars: the growing season is short this far north, winter will come back, and they better get things done. That means a flurry of activity as everything sprouts, eats, breeds, and bears young, knowing those all must be done in the few months before the tilt of the Earth shifts again.
There’s a lot of reproducing going on out there. That’s exciting, almost salacious. It’s a very frisky time.
Part of ensuring the survival of the species and passing down genes is a struggle for place. Birds and animals stake out territories. In some cases, that leads to clashes between critters wanting not to share a space. Some of what we know as beautiful bird song is the male of the species announcing, “I’m here! This is my tree! Don’t even think about coming near me!”
Meanwhile he is also attempting to make himself desirable to girl birds. It’s the feathered equivalent of certain stupid guy behaviors in bars. We would hope human males would take advantage of a larger brain than that of a bird. Alas, that is not always the case.
We don’t think of plants seeking territory, but the same phenomenon is taking place there. Every shoot of grass and broadleaf wants room for sun and nutrients. It’s a struggle, albeit one in slow-motion. Trees play the long game. Given an opening in the canopy, a tree will push a branch into it over several seasons. All for the sake of sun to create chlorophyll in the hope of creating more seeds.
If you are a farmer or gardener, you get to play a part in this annual drama. Timing is everything. Peas and radishes need to go in early enough to ripen ahead of summer heat. Tomatoes and peppers go in just after the threat of frost is past. That’s not always easy to know.
My own corn and soybeans need a full northern growing season to maximize yield/bushels. If planting is delayed, and that is not uncommon, you dial back the maturities and your expectations. The 107-day maturity corn you plant in April has all kinds of more potential than the 85-day corn you plant in late May. Same for your 2.3 maturity soybeans vs. your 1.1 maturity in June. If that sounds like jargon, ask a farmer.
There comes pressure with that. If conditions are good and equipment is cooperating, it is the most exhilarating time of year. Nothing feels better than planting seed in a good seedbed when the calendar says “go.” Nothing is worse than planting in lousy conditions when optimal dates are receding. That is stress defined if you are a farmer.
After a winter of lounging in the house on long, cold nights, spring is a wakeup call with Reveille blowing. Time feels compressed, like too much to do in too short of time. We’ll see which kind of spring 2023 gives us.
Regardless of the work, it behooves us to enjoy this all. Spring presents us these glorious moments, but we must let ourselves be in them. That sensation of the sun on our face after an insufferably long winter? We have to allow ourselves time to savor that.
Of course, there are problems. Health, finances, relationships, and a hundred more are there for us to dwell on every day. But it’s spring. Give yourself a few moments away from those to feel the warm breeze.
Spring is a gift. The Creator didn’t have to make this all so pleasant and alluring. The number of springs in our lifetimes are not unlimited either. We only get so many. It’s going to happen whether we’re paying attention or not. We might as well live in the miracle.
Depending on when you pick up the paper or turn on your preferred digital device, it will be, is, or was Easter Sunday. (There’s a sentence that wouldn’t have made sense twenty years ago.) Regardless, happy Easter!
For those of us who wear the label “Christian,” Easter is at the center of that. The empty tomb, the risen Christ, is more than the “reason for the season.” It is the absolute essential core of our faith. It can’t be overstated: everything spins from the first Easter.
All those individual believers historically have come together with others in churches, because “where two or more of you are gathered, I will be there.” It is sadly a fact that those churches have splintered into many denominations despite sharing a single story. It is probably the best evidence there is of mankind’s inability to get along. Divided though we are, the fundamental creed is the same. It’s not God’s fault we meet in separate buildings.
Beyond all those Christians gathered in churches, the effects of the first Easter have rippled through history and around the globe. Christianity has had a large impact on the “West.” There is a line that runs from the ancient Greeks, through the Old Testament, and through the Easter event that transpired in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Of that, grows the Judeo-Christian worldview that the West is rooted in, right up to the 21st century, here and now.
The West is approximately the western hemisphere. As a way of thinking and seeing reality, it centered in Europe and then expanded out to the places Europeans spread their influence. That has not happened without some pain and trauma, often to the native people in those places. Christianity wasn’t always spread by word and love. Sometimes it was violence and control. Again, that’s not God’s fault.
All this is to say that a lot hangs on that first Easter. If you are a Christian like me, the significance is obvious. But even if you’re not a Christian, it’s place in history is undeniable.
That’s the big picture. We don’t live in the big picture. We live in small moments. A bunch of small moments strung together make a life. I will spend part of Easter in a church, specifically Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s. Some of the day will be spent with family. There will be a meal in the middle, a modern-day “feast.” There will be small children, so baskets and an eminent bunny will have a part.
Easter is at the end of Holy Week. Holy Week commemorates a story we’ve known since young. It begins on Palm Sunday with Jesus’ glorious arrival in Jerusalem. There is great excitement and elation. All human emotion is fleeting, and this is no exception. From that high, Holy Week wends its way to the Last Supper, the night in the garden, and ultimately the cross of Good Friday, as far from the joy of Palm Sunday as one can get. But the greatest joy returns Easter morn.
I try to attend the services of Holy Week. I know the story; I know how it ends. But I want to live it again. In those eight days, is every emotion we know as humans. It is exhilarating and breathtaking in its heights. It is crushing and devastating in its valleys. It is called the Passion. A definition I found of passion is “any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.” Love to hate, and everything in between. That’s Holy Week.
We walk with Jesus, recreating in our minds events that are both historic and spiritual. We’re there with palms. We’re there in the upstairs room with the apostles, and later in the garden of Gethsemane. We’re at the foot of the cross as darkness fills the sky. And finally, we’re at the empty tomb and on the road to Emmaus as word spreads about the Resurrection.
We are Judas. We are Pontius Pilate. We are Peter. We are Mary Magdalene. By that, I mean we steep ourselves in the emotions they held and fought with. Again, every feeling our species can feel is in that week.
In that swirl of human beings at their worst and their best, Jesus is. He is fully human, experiencing a death of incomprehensible pain. Then comes the mystery. He is fully divine and conquers human death. In that is our salvation.
I don’t pretend to understand that completely. Here is faith in God and trust in the Bible. It’s also trust in those who’ve gone before us. It is faith of our fathers and faith of our mothers. Like everything we know, it is passed to us.
If we’re paying attention and embrace Easter fully, we should be moved. It’s probably too much to say every Easter Sunday we should be changed people. But if we profess to be Christian, we should be a little better person after that. Can we be a little more patient with those in our house? Can we be a little more tolerant of those in our community? Can we be a little more understanding of the “other side” of issues and even politics? Can we be a little more loving?
The United States is made up of approximately two thirds Christians. In this nation of religious freedom, we respectfully embrace our Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, and all other fellow citizens. But two thirds is a lot. That seems enough that if the Easter story is laid in our hearts, America should be a better, kinder place the day after.
Alas, that didn’t happen last year and likely won’t this. I know I’ll slip back into some of my more undesirable habits and qualities soon after. We are imperfect beings created by a perfect God. It’s another of those mysteries. But I can try to hold Easter in my heart after Sunday.
There is a movement in the Catholic Church to return to historic forms of worship. The revival of the Latin Mass has been at the center of that. Along with that has come criticism of practices that are lumped under “modernism.” A group of conservative Catholics has become known as the Rad Trads, short for Radical Traditionalists.
I am Catholic. Today though, I want to write about my other deeply held belief: baseball.
I might properly be called a Rad Trad in the Church of Baseball. I am radical in my appreciation of its traditions. The game should only be messed with great care and respect for those.
This year, Major League Baseball has adapted a set of rule changes in an attempt to appeal to a younger demographic. I get that I am not in anyone’s definition of younger. But I’m not sure these will make the game better or attract the video game generation anyway.
I don’t deal well with change. Pam will vouch that. A few years ago, she moved the toaster across the kitchen. I’m still struggling with that.
Unlike most everything around it, baseball hasn’t changed a lot through the decades. It is part of its attraction, that generations played the same game on the same field by the same rules. You’re allowed to imagine Babe Ruth batting off Gerrit Cole.
In my lifetime as a baseball fan, the biggest changes heretofore have been the designated hitter and instant replay. I’m not a fan of either. Pitchers batted and umpires made calls since God created baseball “in the big inning.”
This year, there will be a clock in baseball. Fans have long boasted that ours is the game without a clock. So this is a big step. A pitch clock will count down between pitches, requiring the batter to be ready and the pitcher to throw in a designated time.
Players brought this on themselves as more and more of them have found ways to not bat and not pitch for longer times. Watching the batter adjust his gloves or the pitcher toss a rosin bag up and down are not that interesting. This change might be okay, as everyone agrees the games have gotten too long.
A type of shifting of infielders will be banned. This one I don’t agree with. Putting the fielders where certain batters hit the ball is just plain good strategy that shouldn’t be punished. And as hitters have been instructed forever, hit ’em where they ain’t. Watch film of Rod Carew if you want to see how that’s done.
The oddest rule change will be bigger bases.
Say what?
When I first heard of that, it struck me as strange, kind of clownish. But it might contribute to more action and less injuries, so we’ll give that one a chance.
Altogether, it’s a lot for a baseball Radical Traditionalist. I’m not saying baseball’s rules are sacred. But there are theologians who think they were first given to mankind when Moses made a second trek up Mount Sinai. That is not explicitly described in Genesis. You have to read between the lines.
It struck me that if you can mess with the rules of baseball that have seemingly been etched in stone, what other rules can we consider altering?
How about the laws of gravity? They’re due for some changes. Gravity’s even older than baseball. The other day when I fell in the yard carrying groceries, it would have been nice if I had a second or two more before I hit the ground. I could have had time to decide which limb was going to be sacrificed for the good of the body. I’m not saying we do away with gravity. It still is useful for things like playing cornhole. But if we just reduced Earth’s pull a little, it would help. Maybe fewer things would break.
What about rules of nutrition?
We could use a little flexibility there.
What if for the 2023 eating season, doughnuts would count as a vegetable?
We’re supposed to eat three or four servings of veggies a day. If one of those could be doughnuts, that would make it easier to go back to carrots or broccoli for the rest of the day.
Speaking of things that are rigid and could benefit from some loosening up, what about the seasons? If pitchers don’t have to bat, maybe winter doesn’t have to be so long. I’m proposing that we put a two-month limit to winter. And let’s ban 20-below temps. I think that would definitely appeal to a younger demographic. The older demographic would approve, too.
I’m starting to like this rule bending. Maybe I can convince Pam that some of the house rules that are old and stale could use some freshening up.
Do I really need to pick up my clothes?
Do I have to keep stuff off the table?
The Commissioner, aka Pam, should be open to changes.
What about traffic rules?
Maybe they could use some tweaking. Next time I get pulled over, I’ll point out to the officer that a lot of these laws have been around since the last century and don’t appeal to younger drivers. We’ll see how that works.
I thought I was handling all this well for a Rad Trad. Despite the modifications to the game, it’s still baseball. It’s still the pitch within the at bat within the inning within the game within the season that I enjoy so much. I thought I was doing well. Then I read about robot umpires. Excuse me, I’ve got to go lie down a while.
By Randy Krzmarzick
I don’t watch much TV. My wife says I have the attention span of a gnat. That might be one reason. Another might be there are too many choices.
I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid when we only got Channel 12. It was in black and white. I was a teenager before I found out New York City had colors.
Friends watched early in COVID and recommended it. I like soccer a little, so we talked about watching. Finally, this winter Pam convinced me to settle on the couch with my gnat’s attention span to watch two episodes a night. To me, that counted as binge watching. Pam pointed out that real binge watching means staying up past 10 p.m.
This week, the third season of “Ted Lasso” was “dropped.” I figured we’d go back to our two-episodes-a-night routine with snacks and a blanket. Come to find out that one episode a week will be released on Apple TV till all twelve are loosed on the world.
What?!
I have to wait a week?
I flashed to 1967 and my 11-year-old self, having to wait a week for the next Green Acres.
Don’t they know this is 2023?
Of course, that’s the way it worked since the beginning of television in the Fifties. Gunsmoke and The Honeymooners gave you an hour. I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver gave you a half hour. Then you waited a week till the next chapter.
Every story wrapped up in thirty or sixty minutes. Except for those that ended with the dreaded, “To be continued.” That meant you had to wait seven excruciating days to know if Lassie would get help in time to save Timmy, who was trapped in a well or being chased by a bear. Timmy was always in some kind of trouble.
So, we’ll watch “Ted Lasso” and then wait a week. Like the old days. Only I’m not sure I’m as good at waiting as I used to be.
I thought about things I used to wait for. I can remember exact times the markets and weather reports were on KNUJ and WCCO radio. I’d sidle up to the kitchen or truck radio, depending if I was in or out. Now those are instantly available to me on my phone any time. I have six weather apps, so I can obsess about the forecast if I’m trying to plant corn. I tell people I scroll around till I find a forecast I like.
How are the Twins doing? Phone. What about that bill at the legislature? Phone.
What time is that funeral? Phone.
For some of these, you used to have to wait till the evening news. For some, it was tomorrow’s newspaper. It’s like we all had a degree in Advanced Waiting back then.
Similarly, If I want to talk to someone now, I take that device out of my pocket and dial them up. Well, more like tap them up. No more going into the house to call and hoping the person I was calling was in their house, which was unlikely in the middle of the day.
Waiting means patience. It is often said that “Patience is a virtue.” That implies some choice in the matter. In all these examples, we didn’t have a choice. Waiting was built into life. Kind of like eating and sleeping.
Waiting isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While waiting, one can doodle. Or think. Or even pray. Each of those can be a valuable use of time. Doodling has led to engineering breakthroughs, although I mostly do daisies and bunnies.
Earlier this winter, I got myself to an airport exactly two hours before my flight, as we are instructed. Soon, I found out my flight was delayed three hours, then four, then five. It was because of weather. I’m all in favor of caution if I’m going to be 30,000 feet in the air, so I was accepting of my fate.
Outside of shuffling between gates as the airport kept adjusting, I didn’t have much to do for seven hours. It was a surprise quiz in the class of waiting. I walked around, nibbled a bit, read some, and visited with fellow travelers. I suppose I was practicing patience; it wasn’t like impatience would have helped. I thought. I prayed. I didn’t doodle.
Waiting changes as you move through the decades. When we are young, we can’t wait to drive. Then we can’t wait to graduate. Then we can’t wait to get married and have kids. Looking back now, it feels like I raced through those quickly, anxious for the next, barely taking time to enjoy each as it came. Now at 67, I don’t have things “I can’t wait” to do. I don’t mind a little waiting now, slow it all down.
One type of waiting is for the birth of a child. That’s a predictable nine months. Of course, there’s a giant difference between waiting as a father vs. waiting as a mother. Any mother reading this is nodding her head vigorously. That’s the same nine months it used to be. But even there, there’s been a change from The World That I Grew Up In. Now we most often know the gender of the anticipated child. So waiting has changed even there.
If you are a gardener or a farmer, you know the sensation that kicks in about now, when you begin waiting for planting. Golfers and baseball players begin feeling an itch, too. Looking out at giant hills of snow, it appears we’re all going to be waiting a while.
Speaking of waiting, we are in the season of Lent. The church calendar gives us two seasons devoted to waiting: Lent and Advent. We are to do more than sit around and doodle. We’re to take special time to ready our souls for the Lord in the manger and the empty tomb. That is supposed to be every day, but seasons give us focus.
Waiting as part of life has always been. In Psalms, we are told, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” And later, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.”
See. None of this is new. I guess I can wait for Ted Lasso.
It always seemed a little odd that we celebrate the day our mothers birthed us. For children, it’s a way to lift them up with special attention and affirmation. In our middle years, it’s a reason to have a party, especially on those big, round numbers. “Lordy, Lordy, look who’s forty!”
I said to someone that I find myself looking up at the clock now and then. If life was a basketball game, you wouldn’t pay much attention to the clock the first three quarters. But when you’re in the fourth quarter, you start to check how much time’s left in the game.
I am mindful of friends who didn’t make it to the fourth quarter. If you are blessed, you will be in the game long enough to see your children grown. That is not guaranteed. As friends have passed away, those of us left behind say to each other, “You never know.” Now we’re old enough to know that we never know.
The basketball-as-life analogy is imperfect in one way: Unlike set minutes in a basketball game, we don’t know how long the game of life is. Soccer might be a more apt comparison. There is no visible clock. The referee is in control, and various stoppage times and injury times can be added. You play till the referee blows his whistle. Insert your own referee-as-God metaphor here.
I am 67 today. Like I said, oh boy. Regardless of my lack of enthusiasm, it is a fact that as of about ten this morning, I have been out of the womb and breathing Earth’s oxygen that many years. That is measurable. As a sportscaster might say, “You can put it in the books.” As for my time remaining to breathe that oxygen? That’s a mystery. Same for all of us.
I certainly hope I have a couple decades to hang out with the rest of you. But, all together now, “You never know.”
Would I want to know my expiration date?
Part of me says no. I like to think that I’ll just put my head down and keep pushing forward till I don’t, whether that’s tomorrow or twenty years from now.
At the same time, it would be helpful to know how long I’ve got. There are a whole host of matters where that information would come in handy. We’re wrestling with when to take Social Security. If you want to find a hundred different opinions on something, Google that. If you’re going to live a long time, there is benefit in waiting. If you’re going to live a short time, take it now. So, you tell me?
Medicare is another largely confusing thing that is thrown at you in your Golden Years. I had that a couple of years ago. Now Pam is wading into those murky waters. Long ago, Medicare was a nice government program that worked. Then private insurers were let in, increasing our choices exponentially, and enriching a bunch of CEOs.
Some of these decisions might be easier if you retired on a certain day. One day you’re collecting a paycheck and the next day you’re not. There is a before-and-after. Farmers tend to ease out the door over a period of years. I joke with Pam about what she’ll need to know if I fall off the bin. I’d like to quit before I do. The last couple years have been profitable, which means I’m having fun.
Who wants to quit when they’re having fun?
Again, if I knew how many growing seasons I had left to go up and down the rows, it would be helpful to making decisions.
Should I upgrade machinery?
Am I fertilizing for the next year or for the next decade?
Having an exit strategy would be easier if I knew how close the exit ramp was.
Would we want to know our end date?
A few of us will get a terminal illness and have a known time to get our ducks in row. Some will die suddenly and maybe have minutes to say our goodbyes. Most of us will decline over several years, gradually walking a path that healthcare providers know well.
The Social Security Administration has a life expectancy calculator. Just going by my gender and date of birth, they give me 17.7 years to live. I’m not too optimistic about that last .7 of a year. There are other surveys on the internet that consider current health, lifestyle, and family history. If I fudge the number of years I smoked and how much I weigh, I come out better on those. Were it so easy to cheat the Grim Reaper.
All we know for sure is none of us is getting out of here alive. Or as someone told me, 10 out of 10 of us are going to die.
See what cheery thoughts come into my head on my birthday?
A while ago I was at a wake talking to a couple young people. Something about writing came up, and almost in unison they said I should write my obituary. We all should, as it would be a help to our survivors. I can see the truth in that, although writing one’s own obit sounds rather morbid.
But what the heck. As an aid to my kids, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of an obit:
“Randy never got far. He lived most of his life on one farm and got all the sacraments in one church. He raised a lot of corn and soybeans. He was too cheap to pattern tile out his farm. It was a regret. Regrets, he had a few. But then again, too few to mention. (Okay, I stole that.)
“He was better at fantasy baseball than real baseball. He wished it were otherwise, but you get the skills you get. Randy liked all animals and most people. If he offended anyone, there’s not much he can do about it now. His favorite thing to do was drink beer and talk to friends. He never figured out how to make money at that.
“He was most proud of raising three kids who are smarter than him, all doing good and interesting work. The most important thing he did was love Pam for “X” years. Some days he was better at that than others.”
When you do a column, you’re on the lookout for things to share with readers. Sometimes it’s big, like the common threat climate change poses to us all. Sometimes it’s not so big. Like, we all love doughnuts.
The other day, I was looking in the mirror at some old guy who has aged beyond recognition. I guess that’s me. Glancing up, I saw a scruff of grayish, thinning strands. It hit me, “Hair! We all have hair. Or we used to. I should write about hair.”
Last Sunday, I was sitting in church toward the back. The good Lord knows that my focus waxes and wanes during Mass. I’m not around people a lot, so observing them is fascinating. This time I considered the incredible array of heads of hair in the pews ahead of me.
Short, long, none. Blonde, brown, black, red, plus an abundance of whites and grays. Curly, straight, flowing, bobbed. Big hair and tufts of hair. It was a reminder how glorious is our diversity as a species. And this was only one church in a Midwest town on one Sunday. It was a sliver of our planet’s diversity.
Our hair gets a lot of attention. That’s partly because we can do something about it quickly: brush it, comb it, toss it. Other parts of our appearance take more time to alter. Like how much we weigh. Hair gets a lot of attention, considering it is dead cells hanging around the outsides of our bodies. The root in a gland and the follicle are live cells. But once they push one of your hairs to the surface, it is dead. We fuss a lot over those dead cells.
My own history with my hair is short and unimpressive. Kind of how it looks. When I started school, the Sixties was a young decade. Every boy started school with a heinie. A “heinie” was basically a buzz cut. Families were large. Moms already had to spend time with their daughters’ pigtails and ponytails. They didn’t have time to fuss with the boys’ heads, too.
I never thought about the origins of the word heinie in first grade. Turns out heinie was used as a derogatory term for German soldiers in World War I, something to do with referencing buttocks. It also was a common nickname. Heinie Manush was a Hall of Famer who played against Babe Ruth. I’m not sure how any of that leads to a type of haircut.
Regardless, all us boys started school sporting a heinie. Gradually as the Sixties grew into the decade of Vietnam, protests, and hippies, long hair became a fashion and a political statement. Sleepy Eye boys were hardly on the cutting edge of trends back then. But we had Beetles albums and the Monkees were on TV.
Looking back on the Sixties, hair took on an outsized role. Long hair came to stand for many things: anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-Nixon. Peace, love, rock and roll, and hair. I was young but remember hearing of household battles. Fathers and sons were common combatants. Mothers were the referees. Barbers were caught in the line of fire.
If you think I’m exaggerating the role hair took, consider the musical of that name. “Hair” opened off Broadway in 1967 and was immediately wildly popular and stepped into the abyss of the generation gap. From a review, “The musical Hair was written to be controversial, to shock traditional theatregoers with its frank depiction of drug use, nudity, and sexuality, and with its gleeful use of obscene language.”
Broadway is about as far from a farm in Brown County as you can get, but a chubby little kid with a heinie sang along to “The Age of Aquarius” playing on the barn radio.
“When the moon is in the Seventh House
“And Jupiter aligns with Mars
“Then peace will guide the planets
“And love will steer the stars!”
I think the cows liked it.
By sixth grade, all the cool boys had grown out their hair, at least enough to carry around a comb. Fred Braulick and I were the last to give up our short hair. We were both dairy farm kids. The smell of silage wouldn’t be carried in our short hair, which may have been on our moms’ minds. I’d like to think Fred and I wore our heinies long enough that its popularity came back around. I don’t think that was true, though.
By high school even Fred and I had grown our hair out. That led to several years of me trying to look hip, and of course attractive to girls. Despite multiple attempts at parting, brushing, styling, primping, conditioning, and gelling, I don’t think I ever achieved hipness. I’m not sure about the girl thing.
A pivotal moment in my life came in college. I was standing in front of our dorm room mirror brushing my hair every which way, trying to find something that worked with the mop God and genetics had given me. Roommate Jerry Heymans walked over, put his hand on my head and rubbed it back and forth. He said, “Why don’t you try that?”
It was a revelation! Nothing worked with my hair, so why try? I was done with brushes and combs, and a simple quick rub back and forth was all I did from then on. Tussled it was and tussled it has been ever since then. I was liberated from the tyranny of hair care. Besides, my disheveled head more accurately portrays the state of the brain that is inside. Thoughts fly around in there, never really lining up, tapered, or styled. I have thanked Jerry several times.
Eventually I started hanging around with Pam. Ever since, she has told me when I need a haircut, so I don’t need to think about that.
I had a beard for a long time. I could really save time grooming then. Outside of showering and brushing my teeth, I could avoid personal maintenance altogether. It was great. Then whites began to appear in the beard. It made me look old. Shaving is annoying, but I don’t want to look like some old guy. Ahem.
The other time I spent up close with hair was our children’s, when occasionally I was charged with brushing theirs. Mom’s know secrets about brushing that no one ever tells dads.
There is an age I call the ragamuffin stage when hair on a kid is basically a battlefield. Especially in summer when everything from sweat to dirt to bugs might be in there. For my two daughters, brushing before school or church was akin to a type of torture. I’d like to think it hurt me more than it hurt then it did them, but that’s probably not true. Sorry kids.
I was carrying around in my head the death of another friend last week. On the radio came a reference to Stop the Steal from a couple years ago. I thought to myself, “How about a Stop the Sadness movement? That’s what I need.”
But sometimes it comes in waves. It’s as if you are standing to your knees in the ocean, 10-foot waves crashing over you, one after the other, barely giving you time to brace yourself before the next.
Jan Zilka was a friend a long time. I tried to remember when I met her and that is lost in a small-town past. In a place like Sleepy Eye, you’ve known everybody forever. Jan was a California kid; that might explain her spunky and bright personality.
We knew her battle with cancer was nearing an end when we got a call from daughter Sandy. Jan had passed peacefully under the blessed care of hospice, husband Bill and family at her side. It was an end we all would choose if we could only choose these things.
Kraig Boyle was only 48 when he died suddenly two days before Christmas. His passing was a shock, but the circumstances are almost as if from a story. A deeply spiritual man, Kraig was taken from this life as he was bringing his family to morning Mass at St. Mary’s in Sleepy Eye. It was at once an odd and beautiful circumstance that his last moments were by the church which was a second home.
My friendship with Kraig began inside that church. I have the 5:00 Wednesday morning hour in the Perpetual Adoration chapel. Kraig had 6:00. Each week, we had time to share during my going and his coming. It was a moment to check in with each other: family, jobs, plans.
Often there was a nod to the presence of Jesus during our visit. And usually humor. Kraig would ask tongue-in-cheek questions with a serious look, then break into his wonderful impish grin.
How was I to know Dec. 21 would be the last time I would share smiles with him?
I spoke of a time of waves, and this has been one for me. I wrote about friend Dean Brinkman passing in September. There came others. Pat Rosenhammer, Colleen Berkner, Renae Bock are all people who bring a smile as I conjure their memories.
Literally as I worked on this, came word of the death of classmate Jerome Tauer. Jerome lived in Arkansas. It was always a pleasant visit when I’d see him back here. A few hours later I heard of Kathy Spaeth passing. Kathy was a sweet, kind person I’ve known since childhood.
I feel like I should hurry and finish this before there’s more.
If you’re my age, you can make your own list. Wakes and funerals are a large portion of my social life. As we advance in age, everyone in our circle is doing the same. It makes sense that death comes to our door more often. You never think about that when you’re young and the only funerals are your friends’ grandparents.
It’s also true that small towns have aging populations. Everyone graduated with larger classes than their school has now. Nursing homes are an opposite story.
COVID accelerated deaths for a time. Historically, pandemics have reduced population in a cruel way. I thought about other times when death rates rose beyond the ordinary. If you graduated in the Sixties, you likely knew young men killed in Vietnam. War is a pandemic that is totally preventable, one that our species never seems to prevent.
There are statistics and trends, but the numbers are real people. And there have been a lot of real people close to me who have left us lately. I told Pam, I feel like there’s more people I knew than I know.
So, what does one do with this sadness?
I’m trying to figure that out. I have texts on my phone from Dean that I’ve saved. I think of Jan when I take things to the food shelf where she volunteered. Wednesdays at Adoration, Kraig is large in mind by his absence.
Each is a reminder of that person. It’s like pings I get on my phone, something briefly called to attention. Pete Hillesheim died in 2007, a best baseball buddy, and I still wonder what he would say about the latest Twins signing.
The sadness never completely fades. When someone is gone, there is a gradual transition to celebrating the memories. With that is the realization that there will be no new ones. It is all past.
A big part of relationships is looking ahead, to what we might do the next time we see each other. There is an open-endedness to every conversation with a friend. There’s a future. “We should have a coffee” or “We should go to a Twins game.” There’s always the next time I’ll see you. Until there’s not.
I suppose, too, the death of someone close is a reminder of our own mortality. Creaking knees and wrinkles in the mirror are hints of that. But losing a friend is a jolt. Conversations after a death of a friend are filled with, “We need to count our blessings,” and “Each day is a gift.” Perhaps living a good and decent life is the best way to honor those who’ve gone before.
Still, there is a heaviness to it, losing these fixtures in our lives. I can easily tear up talking about them, and I do. I think it is common to cry more easily as you age; it is true for many of my friends.
At the same time that there is darkness in loss, we are called to bring light to the world. It almost seems like too much some days. It’s an emotional roller coaster, and you just want it to stop.
I read this recently. Laura Carstensen, a psychologist at the Stanford Center on Longevity, has studied the emotional changes that occur with age. “We find that older people are more likely to report a kind of mosaic of emotions than younger people do. While younger people tend to be ‘all positive or all negative,’ older people are more able to experience joy ‘with a tear in the eye.’”
Joy with a tear in my eye. Sometimes, a lot of tears.
It has come to my attention that the column called “Weeds” has been showing up in the Marshall Independent. This is a large increase in exposure for my humble column. It is exactly double, from one newspaper to two.
The Journal of New Ulm and Independent of Marshall are brother newspapers. Or sisters. I’m not sure the gender of newspapers. Like other siblings, they borrow stuff back and forth. Columns from the Independent have been appearing in The Journal. I’m not sure it has come to those writers’ attentions.
There was no preparation for Independent readers for “Weeds.” It just showed up there one day unannounced, taking up space that had gone to George Will or Cal Thomas. If you are missing George and Cal, don’t blame me. I didn’t mean to disrupt your morning read over the cereal bowl.
I thought I should give a proper introduction. I began writing “Weeds” thirty years ago. I took a hiatus to chase our kids around and cranked it back up ten years ago. “Weeds” comes from words that knock around in my head. Sometimes they build up to a point where they spill out on to paper. Or they used to. Now they splash onto a keyboard. It can be an unsightly mess, but I always try to clean it up.
This column is achingly local. It is usually about things in front of me, things I can see, if not touch. That means it’s often about things here on our farm. I live on the home place. Outside of a few years in college entertaining possible futures, I’ve been here. I have moved from the small bedroom to the large bedroom, so you can’t say I haven’t gotten anywhere in life.
Longtime partner and wife Pam makes regular appearances. She’d rather read a good novel than a newspaper, so I don’t think she knows about that. I’d appreciate you not telling her.
At times, we raised pigs, chickens, and three children. Along with the kids came a lengthy parade of pets. They were buried in the Pet Cemetery in the grove after an appropriate service. The kids are gone, scattered about this hemisphere. We do have two cats my wife saved when their feral cat mom was killed. The cats take us for granted like all members of that furry species do.
I don’t get off the farm much: church and supplies a couple times a year. Sleepy Eye is the town where we go for rations. You can see Sleepy Eye from our farm. Sometimes you can hear it if it is still out. You used to be able to smell it when the Del Monte plant was operating.
We occasionally trek to New Ulm. When I was a kid, New Ulm was the big city. I heard of bigger cities like Minneapolis and New York, but they were hard to imagine. They may as well have been the Emerald City.
New Ulm is a fun place to visit. They have lots of bars. A guy can get in trouble there, especially an innocent from the country. So far, I’ve always gotten out of there unharmed.
Sometimes I write about that other nearby city located at the confluence of two great waterways, the Minnesota River and Ruheheim Creek. New Wallum was founded by members of the Burner Society. The Burners were free thinkers. They were said to be agnostic, but it was more a case that they didn’t want to get up for church.
New Wallum is home to Mel’s Beer. Mel’s Brewery is the oldest brewery owned by guys named Mel in the country. Mel Sr. recently turned the reins over to Mel Jr. Granddaughter Melanie has begun to have a role. Towering over New Wallum is the imposing statue of Bauer the Sauer. It is a tribute to the most important figure in German history, Bauer, the inventor of sauerkraut.
When I first wrote about New Wallum, I received an angry letter from a civic leader in New Ulm. He said I wasn’t fooling anyone; he knew I was making fun of his city. I’m not sure where that kind of paranoia comes from.
“Weeds” occasionally gets into the tall weeds and touches on religion and politics. We’ve all been admonished to not bring up religion and politics in civil company. That’s generally a good idea. But such thoughts sometime escape my brain, kind of like when the cows got out when I was young. They’d run around the yard, kicking up their legs, and finally go back to their pen. My thoughts are like that.
I’ve been Catholic my whole life. I’ve been both parties at various times. I admit a bias toward kindness, respectfulness, and empathy. I’m not a fan of rigid, close-minded, rule-centric practitioners of any religion or political party. I tend to take that stuff Jesus said about loving your neighbor literally. I also don’t think “neighbor” means just people who look like us. I already look and act like me. I don’t need to be surrounded by others.
Baseball makes regular appearances in this space. I played long ago, not very well. Regardless, I love the game. The creation and promulgation of baseball is the highest achievement of our species. Being on a ball field is as close to Heaven as we get on this side of the grave. The touch and smell of ball and glove, the sound of bat hitting ball, I’m not going to compare those to sex, but you know what I mean.
I’d like to see a lot more baseball and a lot less warfare. Like we used to say back in the Sixties: make baseball, not war. Or something like that.
Finally, I feel a warning is due. Someone told me once that they liked my writing, but I really didn’t have a point. I had to admit that a lot of times I don’t have a point. There are many writers more than willing to share points about lots of things. George Will and Cal Thomas certainly do. Having to have a point is a lot of pressure that I choose to forgo.
So, if you’re looking for meandering writing that doesn’t really go anywhere, this column’s for you. Thank you for reading. If you’re not, thank you for not reading, I guess.
If you follow sports, you know that this has been an interesting and exhilarating Vikings season. The “Purple” have won many close games, including a record comeback from 33 points behind. The playoffs beckon with the Super Bowl as the Holy Grail.
If you are of a certain age, like over ten, you also are cringing. You fear your allegiance and enthusiasm will be dashed violently against the rocks. Again.
I’m not as much a football fan as I used to be, so whatever fate awaits the Vikings will not tear my soul out. I am still as much a Twins fan as ever. The Twins have lost eighteen straight playoff games. That is not even possible. It’s baseball. The worst team in the league wins a third of its games.
As if losing eighteen playoff games, EIGHTEEN, weren’t excruciating enough, thirteen have been against the Yankees. That is like going to school knowing the bully will be there to kick you in the shin every recess. No one likes the Yankees; their wives and mothers root against them.
I have met people who are sports fans from other places, and they also lament painful losses and missed opportunities for their favorite teams. But I think Minnesotans can lay claim to a special kind of sports hell. We have honed the art of fan frustration to a high degree. It might not be coincidence that the creator of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football is a Minnesotan.
I was talking to someone, also old enough to remember the four Viking Super Bowl losses. We considered the heart-wrenching defeats in NFC Championship games since the last Super Bowl: 1978, the Drew Pearson shove; 1987, Darrin Nelson dropped pass: 1998, take-a-knee; 2000, 41-donut; 2009, twelve men on the field; 2018, whatever-you-call-that-debacle-in-Philadelphia.
Given that litany of horrors, Viking fans can’t be blamed for going tepidly into the upcoming playoffs, dipping a toe rather than diving in headfirst. There’s decades of pain and suffering. If this were a marriage, it would be considered emotional abuse.
In the realm of Minnesota pro sports, we can add the Timberwolves, North Stars, and Wild. Between them, they have exactly zero titles, with many distressing losses when it mattered most. The Wolves had a seemingly endless series of first round playoff losses with Kevin Garnett. After 13 years of futility here, Garnett won a championship with Boston. Same as David Ortiz. Has Boston ever thanked us?
We can also look at our major college program. An earliest memory of mine is watching the 1962 Rose Bowl with older brother Dale. I was six; I’m still waiting the Gophers return to Pasadena. Gopher basketball has had some good seasons interspersed with Luke Witte getting kneed, sexual assault in Madison, and Jan Gangelhoff’s term papers.
Add it all up, and it’s possible that we suffer from a particular mental affliction. I’m labeling it Minnesota PTSD. Post Traumatic Sports Disorder.
Have you thrown a remote at the TV? Have you upended a bowl of salsa into the chips? Did you growl at your innocent spouse as Blair Walsh was shanking a kick that she could have made? You may be suffering from Minnesota PTSD.
Have you turned off a Twins game in the fifth inning, even though the Twins are leading? Rocco is going to the bullpen, and you know how this ends. Do you let yourself be beguiled into thinking this is the year Byron Buxton stays healthy? Or maybe the week? You may be suffering from Minnesota PTSD.
(A note amidst my wisecrackery, post-traumatic stress disorder is a real and terrible affliction. I, in no way, want to minimize that. For those who battle that, we pray for your healing.)
I was talking to a fellow recently who was nine years old in 1987. He was peak fan age for the two Twins championships. He assumed then that World Series were something that would happen every so often.
His case of Minnesota fan’s PTSD is mild. Mine is severe. When I was nine, I was listening to my transistor radio as Sandy Koufax struck out Bob Allison, sealing the Dodgers’ World Series win over the Twins in 1965. I was crushed. How could anything be worse than that? I didn’t know that was just the warmup.
Two years later, the Twins lost the final two games of the 1967 season in Boston to get aced out of the pennant. That was when only the best team in each league made the playoffs, aka, the World Series.
In 1969 and 1970, the first seasons with divisions, the Twins lost two years in a row in the newly minted Championship Series to the Baltimore Orioles. This was the legendary Twins team of Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, and Rod Carew. I was 13 and 14 those years, when the fandom of boyhood made it doubly painful.
Years of mediocrity followed before the Twins won it all in 1987 and 1991. Unfortunately, I was boycotting the Metrodome. I had this crazy idea that baseball should be played on grass, under the sun. So, there was a weird space between me and those teams. I finally did go to the Dome when I accepted it was the only way I would be able to take my kids to a Twins game. The Metrodome was as awful as I suspected it would be.
The four Super Bowl losses bridged high school to college for me. This was the Vikings of Bud Grant, stone-faced, arms folded. It was Alan Page and Jim Marshall, seeing their breath steaming from face masks on the windswept prairies of Met Stadium. I get goose-bumpy thinking about it. Unfortunately, they had to go play those Super Bowls in warm places.
The last one was 45 years ago. The current Vikings head coach wasn’t even born when Fran Tarkenton was intercepted by Willie Brown to put away Super Bowl XI for the Raiders. It was one more blow leading to my self-diagnosed Minnesota sports PTSD.
But. This is a new season. Heck, it’s a new millennium. If I am going to see a Super Bowl win, it might as well be now. I’m in. It’s what fans do. Maybe Lucy doesn’t pull the ball this time. Skol Vikings!
It’s not easy being Christmas. We ask a lot of that one single holiday.
The tree should have perfectly placed branches, lights and bulbs spaced just so. The meal will be straight from Good Housekeeping. Presents flow from under the tree. Each is a surprise and magically the right size and just what the recipient wanted.
Everyone should get along and put aside ill feelings they harbor the other 364 days on the calendar. The children behave so well you wonder if there’s something wrong with them. Marriages are sound, families are loving, houses are clean. Outside a delicate snow falls while stars twinkle above.
(I know. How can it be snowing, and the stars are out? Work with me here.)
It’s a holiday and a holy day, the hollyest and holiest. Church service will fill our souls with redemption, our hearts with love, and our ears with carols. Antsy kids behave in the pews, hands folded, the little angels you always imagined they could be.
We all grew up with this ideal Christmas in our heads. It was on TV, magazine covers, and Christmas cards. If you’re my age, you know that the Bing Crosby/Perry Como Christmas Special ended with the entire cast on stage, crooning in front of a toasty fireplace. Everything was comely and bright, Vietnam and Watergate be damned.
Of course, it’s an impossibly high standard we set for this one single day, the 359th of the year. Christmas is good, but not that good. Like all notions of human perfection, it crashes headlong into reality.
The stuffing gets burnt in the oven and sets off the smoke alarm. Somebody brings up Hunter Biden after too much wine. The cat knocks your grandma’s glass ornament off the tree, and it shatters into a thousand pieces right where the kids are sitting to open presents.
Warm loving kindness should replace animosity and acrimony. But if you’ve been steeped in those the last 52 weeks, it’s hard to shed them in a day, even if angels appeared above Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.
As if it wasn’t enough to ask this one little holiday to give us peace and good will, it’s supposed to save our economy, too. There is nothing in the Gospels about shopping unless you assume the Kings had to go to wherever you bought gold, frankincense, and myrrh back then. I just checked. You can order frankincense and myrrh from Amazon. Of course.
I have been blessed in so many ways with loving parents, a great wife, and wonderful children. But looking back, I’m still looking for that perfect Christmas. When I was a kid, I circled things in the Sears Christmas catalog, toys near the back. Then I would find some of them under the tree Christmas Eve when we opened presents. I remember wishing a little bit that I could be surprised by a gift. Which was asking a lot of my ridiculously busy mom.
As a parent, I wanted to create Christmases that would sit warmly in our children’s memories when they grew up. Hopefully we did okay. But there were moments that felt too rushed, as we tried to do too many things. Then there were times the gifts were too many. There’d be a small hill of presents, and nothing could be appreciated in that. Talk about your First World problems.
Part of it was that impossible balancing act between Santa and Jesus. Face it, it’s tough for a baby in a crib to compete with the jolly elf who brings wondrous things in a voluminous sleigh.
When our first born, Anna, was little, I decided we weren’t going to let the commercialization of Christmas spoil this child. Gifts were going to show up under the tree, but they were brought by the Baby Jesus. I hadn’t really thought through how Jesus was going to manage procurement and delivery. Anna was only two or three, so details could be sketchy.
It was back then, that a line that lives in family lore was uttered. Anna had received a Cootie game among her gifts. When asked by her aunt what she got for Christmas, Anna said excitedly, “Baby Jesus bring me bugs!”
Eventually we gave in to the Santa ruse. It’s hard to compete with Santa’s public relations team. After that was the tug and pull between getting stuff and generosity, between selfish and selfless. I’m still trying to get that balance right for myself.
Another problem for this heavily burdened holiday, whatever challenges you are facing in your life are going to be intensified that day. If a relationship is strained, it will be doubly so. If someone close to you is fighting illness or stress, that will cloud your Christmas Day. That’s to be expected as we live lives connected to others.
Then, there are those we Christmassed with in the past who aren’t here. Again, it is natural that grief cuts deeper when we gather. I remember the year after my brother died when I was eighteen and Dean was sixteen. Christmas felt like there was giant hole in the family. Still a hole, 48 years later.
As we try to balance and auto-correct Christmas, there is one tool I’ve found helpful. Every year since 1965, I’ve watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Before streaming, I had to search out when CBS would broadcast that. I took my future wife on a date to a bar to watch it once, which should have told Pam something about what she was getting into.
If you’ve not seen it, spoiler alert! In the scene I’m convinced is the greatest in television history, a frustrated Charlie Brown yells, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about!”
Linus responds with quiet assuredness, “Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about.”
Moving to center stage, Linus asks, “Lights, please.”
With spotlight in the still auditorium, Linus begins, “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not.”
Linus sets his blanket down and lifts his arms. “For behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’”
Linus picks up his blanket and walks off the stage. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” Not much to add to that.
We put a lot on Christmas, but it comes down to a simple message. Merry Christmas.
