But to put order to words and have them partner with music to make a song? That is so far beyond me as to seem mystical. Music touches a deeper part of our brain than words alone. Singer-songwriters are a gift in that way.
Death has taken more than its share this last couple years. It’s been especially tough on favorite musicians of mine. We have their songs, which is a nice legacy they leave us.
John Prine was an early victim of COVID in the spring of 2020. Prine was a Chicago boy who had a job as a mailman after a stint in the Army. He wrote songs on the side, and that became his gig. The Twin Cities were a regular stop. I got to see him a few times, the last being at the Northrup the summer before his death.
No one there knew it was our last time seeing him. In the way these things happen, Prine was introspective that night, telling stories and reflecting. It was as if we were sitting around listening to an old friend. Upon hearing of his death, that it was goodbye made sense. During the last song, the 72-year-old with the flop of grey hair set his guitar down and danced a little jig as his band played, and he shimmied off the stage. It is a perfect last memory.
Prine’s music was not necessarily stuff you hear on the radio, but he was highly regarded, winning a Grammy for lifetime achievement. Johnny Cash called him one of his favorite song writers. Toby Keith said it was like Prine had a fourth gear when it came to song writing.
It was said that Prine had an “old soul.” His lyrics gave voice to those on the margins, often the elderly. “Hello in There” is an anthem of sadness:
“You know that old trees just grow stronger,
“And old rivers grow wilder every day,
“Old people just grow lonesome,
“Waiting for someone to say, ‘Hello in there, hello'”
Prine wrote many fun and funny songs. But he had a gift for heart-aching lyrics. In “Souvenirs,” Prine voices someone looking back at things that are gone:
“I hate graveyards and old pawn shops,
“For they always bring me tears,
“I can’t forgive the way they rob me
“Of my childhood souvenirs.”
A few months after Prine’s passing, Jerry Jeff Walker left Earth’s stage. Again, I was blessed to have seen him a last time. In the summer of 2018, uber-fan Denny Lux got tickets to see him at the Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater. That’s a beautiful setting if the weather is kind, and it was that night.
In his later years Walker battled throat cancer. The night we saw him, he had difficulty walking to a stool on the stage. Throat surgery had not been kind to Jerry Jeff’s voice. No matter, most of us sung along. I think we knew that was goodbye. It was forty-three years before that I’d first seen him in a smoky bar 20 miles west of there.
Jerry Jeff came to me by way of the Sleepy Eye Berdans. Ron the plumber passed his music affection to my classmate Jerry. In 1975, Jerry took a carload to see Walker at the Caboose Bar in Minneapolis. It was an epically crazy good time. Right after, I bought the “Viva Terlingua” album and have been listening to JJ Walker ever since. Sadly, Jerry Berdan died much too young. But I’m ever grateful to him for that night.
Walker wrote some, but he became known for songs written by friends of his. “L.A. Freeway” by Guy Clark, “London Homesick Blues” by Gary P. Nunn, “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother” by Ray Wylie Hubbard are among the greatest songs in the history of the world. Okay, that might be an exaggeration. They sure are fun to sing along with after a few beers.
One song Walker wrote did become part of the American music lexicon. “Mr. Bojangles” is a true story based on a night in a New Orleans jail in 1965. It’s been covered by singers of all types. Few lines are more familiar than these:
“I knew a man, Bojangles and he danced for you,
“In worn out shoes,
“Silver hair, a ragged shirt and baggy pants,
“He did the old soft shoe.”
A couple of weeks ago, I got another tinge of sadness that one gets when you hear of the passing of someone admired. Bill Staines died this winter from the effects of cancer. He was not as well-known as the others, but I feel blessed to know his music. I saw him for the first time at the Coffeehouse Extempore on Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis, when that was old couches and chairs set around a small stage.
Staines was the definition of “folk singer,” traveling thousands of miles each year, performing in small, often intimate venues like the Exptempore. He grew up in Massachusetts, coming of age in the early Sixties, when folk music was briefly the rage. While others shifted to rock, but Bill kept strumming his guitar.
Staines drove the country with his guitar in the back seat, a modern-day troubadour. As he traveled, he wrote about people and places he encountered. It was inspiration by chance. If you allow yourself an hour on YouTube, you will be humming along. A favorite of mine is called simply “River.”
“River, take me along in your sunshine, sing me a song,
“Ever moving and winding and free,
“You rolling old river, you changing old river,
“Let’s you and me, river, run down to the sea.”
Music takes words, sculpts them like poetry, and sets them on a melody. You no doubt, have other favorite music-makers. The singers I’ve listed here have left us. Others will follow. I’ll close with one more stanza from Bill Staines. If you are a parent, you will know the feeling in “Child of Mine.”
“You have the hands that will open up the doors,
“You have the hopes this world is waiting for,
“You are my own but you are so much more,
“You are tomorrow on the wing, child of mine.”
We all have memories. Happy ones, like births and weddings. Some not so happy, like accidents and deaths. Sports fans have all those, plus we have plays and games that stick in our heads.
A song came around on my playlist recently that conjured a memory. “Keep the Ball Rolling” is a fun little ditty from the Sixties. The memory that triggered is turning fifty. It’s not a good one. January 25, 1972, is a day Minnesota sports fans of a certain age will remember.
Musselman was only thirty that year. He’d had rapid success coaching high school and small college. He was a tactician, a basketball prodigy, and most of all, a master motivator. Hence, the pregame firing up players and fans. Gopher basketball had been moribund for years, playing in front of a half empty arena. By January of 1972, Williams Arena was not only sold out, fans were in their seats early anticipating the show.
There was coordinated ball handling, dribbling behind the back, passing by kicks and bumps, all timed to the music. There was a player juggling balls on a unicycle. It was part circus, part tent revival with fans as the congregation. On top of the pageantry, the Gophers were good for the first time in years. Musselman had brought in junior college recruits who clicked with the players there. With the young coach’s acumen, they were winning.
St. Mary’s took a school bus down to Minneapolis back then for a Gopher Day. We had tickets to a game at the “Barn” early in January. I was enthralled to be part of 17,000 whooped up fans. Cheerleaders, pep band, maroon everywhere: it was magical for a farm kid from Brown County.
On January 25th, defending champion Ohio State came to Minneapolis. Both teams were undefeated in the Big Ten and nationally ranked. That was not a surprise in Ohio; it was in Minnesota. It was the biggest basketball game at the U. in decades, maybe ever.
That night, I was at the scorer’s table for a St. Mary’s basketball game. Friend Bill Moran was with me. We were sophomores, keeping stats. Between us we had a transistor radio on the bench. During breaks, we checked the game 100 miles to the east. Holding the radio up to our ears, we tried to catch the score from Ray Christensen, the voice of the Gophers for time immemorial.
St. Mary’s was good that year, so it’s likely the Knights won. Bill and I ended up in the hallway after our game with a crowd gathered around our radio. I remember what we were hearing made no sense. Ray Christensen was describing a brawl, not a game. He was reporting perhaps the darkest moment in Minnesota sports history.
The Gopher-Buckeye game had been close, hard fought, and low scoring. It was physical, and the referees let a certain amount of pushing and shoving go. Luke Witte was the star center for Ohio State. A particularly rough elbow to Gopher Bobby Nix went uncalled right before halftime. That triggered name-calling as the players headed off the court together.
A back-and-forth game turned to Ohio State’s favor near the end. With 36 seconds left, they led the Gophers 50 to 44. Witte was fouled roughly and fell to the ground. Gopher Corky Taylor extended a hand to Witte. Taylor said later that Witte tried to spit at him, which Witte denied. Whatever preceded, Taylor pulled Witte up and kneed him in the groin.
What followed would be headlined “An Ugly Affair in Minneapolis” by Sports Illustrated. Gopher Ron Behagen ran out to stomp on Witte. For ninety seconds, basically a riot ensued. Mostly it was Gopher players and even fans ambushing and striking Buckeye players before referees, coaches, and police could subdue the chaos. The game was called off, three Ohio State players went to the emergency room, and a wonderful Gopher season was tarnished irrevocably.
If ESPN were around then, that violent minute and a half would have played in a continuous loop for days. There is grainy video of it to be found. It’s hard to watch. Behagen and Taylor were suspended for the rest of the season. Dave Winfield was on that team and repeatedly struck a Buckeye player. He would have been suspended, were he not just outside the film taken that night.
The “incident” received national attention. With the slower pace of media then, the Sports Illustrated article a week later came to define the event. A blow-by-blow description meant every punch lived on in print. The governor of Ohio called it a “public mugging.”
Blame fell squarely on the young Gopher coach. Musselman was known for intensity and pushing his players to their limits. Maybe beyond in this case. The pregame show that I loved was called a “Barnum and Bailey act” creating a fevered and frenzied tone among players and fans. The writer referred to the “loud, steady beat of heavy rock music played over the P.A. system.” I’m not sure “Keep the Ball Rolling” counts as heavy rock music.
The article noted slogans painted on the Gopher locker room walls. “Defeat is worse than death because you have to live with defeat” certainly seemed to indicate an over-the-top approach. There were serious racial undertones in the story. That might sound different if written now.
Musselman coached the Gophers for three more years. I met him when he came to the Orchid Inn to speak at the KNUJ Player of the Year Banquet. Even in that setting, he was an intense and serious man.
Musselman went on to coach for three more decades, mostly in the pros. He won most places he went. He came back to Minnesota in 1988 to coach the expansion NBA Timberwolves. With a roster of “vagabonds and long shots” the Wolves won more than any expansion team had before. Some fans were upset. They thought the team should lose more to get a higher draft pick.
Whatever success Musselman had, the shadow of that January night in 1972 stayed with him. He suffered a stroke after coaching a game in Portland in 1999, which led to an early death at 59.
I’ve thought of another favorite Minnesota sports figure, Billy Martin, as sharing a place in my mind with Musselman. Both seemed consumed with competitiveness. Martin lived to 61. That their candles would burn out quickly is not a surprise.
(Recently, I reproduced a “letter” I wrote to our daughter upon her birth 30 years ago. I decided to add a few things later in 1991.)
Abigail, the letter I wrote welcoming you to this side of the womb was the first unsolicited advice from a parent you will receive. There will be globs more. We can’t help ourselves. You’ll ignore most of it as the fitful ravings of ancients whose own childhood dates nearer the time of dinosaurs than yours.
P.S. Abigail, in many ways infancy is a drag: underdeveloped senses, poor muscular coordination, fawning relatives, hanging out in soiled diapers. But I survived it. We all did, the better for the wear. Here are some tips on making the best of it.
Be sure to pee whenever your diaper is off. If possible, pee on your parents’ chest as they hold you. It is important to mark your territory as the dominant baby in the household.
Several times a day, the big people in your house will sit down around a table with containers of food in front of them. This is a great opportunity for family-bonding. Don’t let it pass you by. Immediately wake and demand to be fed and change. They will come to realize warm food is a luxury, not a right.
At night, you’ll notice your parents turn off the lights, lie down in bed, and close their eyes. In that state, they could easily forget you exist. You will need to remind them at regular intervals.
When company comes, you should behave like a little angel. It’s best to spend the time asleep with darling gaseous smiles lighting upon your lips. That way, visitors will know you have nothing to do with your parents’ awful state: slovenly, disheveled, bleary-eyed, short-fused, burp-up on their back. You can’t help it you have such slobs for parents.
Parents are a humorless lot. But there are some neat games you can play with them. Here’s one: when the proud parents have their little blessed event out in the public, let go one of those cute babyfarts. Then quickly look up at them. Such fun to see them blush.
Here’s another game. At night, take a bunch of short breaths. Then hold your breath and see how long till your folks bolt up in bed. If you’re good at this, you might get both of them to jump up and run into each other in the dark. Tee hee.
You’ve got some fun stages in front of you Abigail. There will come the age when you’ll put everything in your mouth. Your older sister ate dog food and drank latex paint from a can. The sky’s the limit! More accurately, the floor’s the limit.
Speaking of eating, not all solid foods are created equal. There are vegetables that adults grow but don’t actually eat. Beets and turnips for example. Every year the surplus of these is turned into, you guessed it, baby food. Yuck. Remember, they can put it in your mouth, but they can’t keep it there.
Later will come a stage when you will have developed skills like crawling, climbing, and pulling things down. Wow, does that offer possibilities! Say your parents have become too attached to some worldly object. That object could be inhibiting their spiritual growth. You should break it. They might scream at you. But remember, “You’re. Not. Responsible.”
As you get older, you might develop some bad habits that will upset your mother. Like tracking in mud, leaving stuff lie around the house, and spilling food. In other words, you’ll be a lot like your father. So, until you see him shape up, don’t worry about it.
Abigail, there are many things I have learned on life’s path with its twists and turns, potholes, detours, construction zones, speed traps, closed lanes, icy bridge decks, rush hours, and flat tires.
First, know when to kill a metaphor.
There are a lot of things you can do without, like trendy fashions and flashy gadgets. But there are two things that are necessary: good boots and a decent scoop shovel. You may not go far in life, but at least you won’t get stuck. Compatible software is nice to have, it’s just not as important as boots and a shovel.
Don’t eat those shrimp that have the little black spots in them. Trust me on this.
Soon, too soon, you will be dating. Avoid boys who change their oil more than their shirt. Beware the ones who crush beer cans on their foreheads. Watch out for Viking fans. There’s a lot of overlap between those last two groups.
Remember that money can’t buy everything. Like good friends and your health. Come to think of it, money can get you a better class of friends and better health outcomes. Ignore what I just said.
Grow your own tomatoes. Use the store-bought ones for garnish, construction, or munitions.
Never make the third out at third base.
Speaking of sports, it is important that you have on clean inner footwear to prevent infections. In other words, always practice safe sox.
Buy low and sell high. If you do buy high and sell low, use it as a tax dodge.
Never leave home in dirty underwear. My mother told me that long ago. Studies show that the quality of medical care is proportional to the condition of the patient’s underwear. After all, doctors are human. “Ick, you touch him.” It says right in our health insurance policy, Page 6, Section 4, “The company designated as the payer will not be bound to reimburse expenses incurred in treatment of the individual designated as the payee if said individual has stinky grundies.”
In closing Abigail, know that life will not always be a bed of roses. Sometimes it is a patch of thistles. You can take the easy route and get some 2,4-D. Or you can face it head on and hoe like hell. Or you can just wear tall boots all the time.
And if any of that makes sense to you, you are definitely your father’s daughter. Good luck. You’ll need it.
On a typical day, our mailbox has the paper, farm publications, maybe a bill, and lots of solicitations, ten or more some days. We donate to some causes, and apparently the word is out.
The other day there was an envelope that didn’t fit those categories. It was from a fellow I know. I occasionally have business dealing with him and thought it was something to do with that. It was neatly folded and nicely typed. My heart sunk a bit when I realized it was a well written letter criticizing me for a recent column.
Occasionally I hear something negative about one of these efforts. Putting these out there with my name on them, it’s not to be unexpected. I had someone ask recently if I get many negative comments. I said not much and conjectured that people who think I’m an idiot quit reading long ago.
I used to have my own troll in the online version. The anonymous and consistently jaundiced “Jimmy Joe” was always ready with a negative comment. I’m not sure if something happened to ol’ Jimmy, or if he gave up on me, but he’s disappeared.
It was easy to brush off Jimmy Joe hiding behind a fake name. But the letter I got was from someone I like and respect. I gave it a couple readings. Since it was politely offered, I put it in that part of my head where thoughts and opinions gurgle around.
I don’t imagine any of us likes criticism. Ben Franklin famously said, “Our critics are our friends; they show us our faults.”
Yeah. Sure Ben. Whatever.
There is a sting to criticism. It is a confluence of embarrassment, contrition, defensiveness, with trickles of shame and anger flowing in. There, in that stream of emotions, I flash back to similar moments. All the way back to being a kid, and my dad is upset that I was doing something wrong in my chores. Or my mom pointing a mess I’d made. In those moments, my mom used to say I was a “lump.” I still call myself a lump when I screw something up.
Moving ahead a few years, Eila Perlmutter comes to mind. When I was at St. John’s, Eila was an English professor of some repute. She taught and wrote and was nearing the end of an esteemed career. I was part of an honors writing course. It was expected that you were serious about words if you were in that.
I remember going to see her about a piece I had written. It was humorous. At least I thought it was. Today we would call it snarky. Eila was not amused. The red marks surrounded my typed paragraphs like they were under siege. To say she had a scowl would be kind.
My dad and mom and Eila were right, and I learned from each of them. Accepting criticism is difficult but useful. If it comes from people who mean well and care about us, it can move us on the path to be the person we want to be.
I was thinking about the value of constructive criticism. In a marriage, it is a tool to be brought out rarely and with thought. If there is too much, that is nagging and can poison the well of married life quickly.
In our forty-one married years, there have been stupid fights and careless arguments. We’ve said regrettable things and forgiveness was needed. At the same time, no one knows me better. Whatever flaws I have would be impossible to hide for four decades. Not giving credence to that person I live with wouldn’t be wise.
I have noticed something and pointed this out to Pam. It takes processing time for me to hear her if she is pointing out one of my aforementioned flaws. An immediate shield of defensiveness goes up, which slowly lowers if I think about what she said for a day. I think that is not uncommon, to need time to accept information when we are being challenged.
There is one person who knows you better than your spouse. That is yourself. We are consciously and unconsciously evaluating ourselves every day. “Could I have done that better? Should I have said that better?” Self-criticism can be constructive. Here, too, it can be harmful if it grows out of proportion. It can become self-nagging. We can learn from our mistakes. But to beat ourselves up over and over can lead to despair.
There was a flurry of self-help books in the Seventies. Among them was the eye-rolling title “Looking Out For Number One.” Now blogs and podcasts have moved into that territory. There is no lack of people willing to improve you for a fee.
I suppose these can be helpful. Be careful in trusting a faraway writer working with stereotypes. Better to seek console from those nearby. Hopefully, we have a small circle of people around us who can offer gentle criticism if needed. That is a blessing if so.
Unfortunately, gentle, well-intentioned, and kind-hearted criticism is easily lost in the deluge of harsh and mean-spirited criticism that is epidemic in our country.
We are in Advent right now. Advent and Lent are seasons for looking inward and trying to make ourselves the best version of us you can. They can be times for reflection and refinement as we prepare for the holiest days. Metaphorically, we want to be the best we can be when we enter the stable Christmas morn, kind of cleaning up and putting on our best clothes.
Recently there was an “examination of conscience” as an insert in our church bulletin. For Catholics, that can be used as preparation for the sacrament of confession. A good examination is more than a list of sins we may have committed. It also asks whether there were times we could have done more. In other words, sins of omission, not just sins of commission are considered.
I see now this work of making myself the best person I can be isn’t a job I can complete like painting a room or combining a field. That task continues. My letter-writing friend is willing to help.
A day in October, we had a nice start to harvest. Weather was decent and yields not half bad. Nephew Jay was combining, and I was unloading. We were ready to chew up some acres.
An hour of work and I got another call from the combine cab. Diagnosis was easy this time. A tie rod had snapped, meaning no way to steer. Back to town, we got the needed parts and began repairs in the field. By now it was dark. We decided to throw in the towel on a bad day and resume work on the tie rod in morning light.
I was grumbly when I went into the house. We’d spent most of 12 hours not harvesting. I poured out my frustration to Pam, a way to decompress. My wise wife listened patiently, and then reminded me I have lots to be thankful for. With pursed lips, I had to admit she was right.
Of course, there is so much to be thankful for. My wife, my children, a grandchild, a home, work I enjoy. I’m healthy at an age when that’s not to be taken for granted. I have extended family I enjoy. There are friends I can call to move a couch or have a beer. I could fill the editorial page with blessings I’ve been given.
Many of you could fill your own page. Some of you, maybe not. I would have to be oblivious to the world around to not know that. People close to us have ailments and demons and just plain bad luck. Go to any hospital, talk to any social worker, stop at any food shelf. You will find people in our community who can’t fill a page with blessings.
That’s here in the middle of a wealthy country. Look further. Moms of my generation told us to eat all our food because there were starving children in China, a small effort by Mom to make us aware of our good fortune. I’m not sure about China, but there are starving children in the world. And adults. And people without decent shelter, people without medical care, people living in servitude.
We are in the thankful season, the time from Thanksgiving going through Christmas. In these busy days, gathered with family at table or in silent prayer, we give thanks. It is good and right.
Beyond a spiritual sense, it is healthy mentally and emotionally to be appreciative. People are encouraged to write down things they are thankful for as therapy. It is one of those things we teach our children from youth on.
In the fall, I have time on a tractor. Time to think. I found myself thinking on thanking. I don’t want to be the Grinch of thankfulness, but like many things, it’s complicated.
We are thankful to God, giver of all good things. But if God gave this to me, why does someone else have so little? You can point out that I don’t deserve these gifts, and that is true. But what of the poor child born into poverty who is likely to starve or succumb to disease long before they see anything like my comfortable 65 years? That child really doesn’t deserve that.
If God willed me to have a home, does God will someone to have a house burn down? Of course not. But how are we to understand these things? Why would God give much to some and little to others?
I have written about an imaginary farmer in Guatemala where my daughter works. This farmer is like me in many ways. He loves his family, loves working the land, loves the Lord. He is like me, except for none of the advantages I’ve been handed. He could be every bit the worker I am, but he struggles to feed his family. He is at the bottom of the world’s economy, and I am somewhere near the top. Why?
God is perfect. We live imperfect lives in an imperfect world. People a lot smarter than me have thought on this. I feel like Winnie the Pooh, “a bear of very little brain.” With my little brain, I can’t pretend to understand the Mind of God.
There are two things that struck me as I bounced across the field doing tillage. The first is that true thankfulness requires an awareness of others. We can’t wallow in our thankfulness. “Oh boy, I’ve got all this. God sure loves me.” Don’t think you hit a triple when you were born on third base.
No. Look around and see those who aren’t so blessed. That’s called empathy. I’m not sure you should call yourself a Christian without it.
Phil Ochs was a songwriter in the Sixties who wrote beautiful, sometimes haunting lyrics. This is from “There But For Fortune:”
Show me a prison, show me a jail,
Show me a prison man whose face is growing pale,
And I’ll show you a young man with many reasons why,
And there but for fortune may go you or I.
Show me an alley, show me a train,
Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain,
And I’ll show you a young man with many reasons why,
And there but for fortune may go you or I.
My other thought on the tractor was that thankful should rightfully be an action verb. If I have all this and someone else has so little, maybe God would like me to work on evening things up a little? Whether that means sharing time, money, or something else, thankful needs to be a starting point, not an end.
Be thankful. Now do something.
I have this picture in my head of us all sitting around when the pandemic is over and saying, “What the heck just happened?”
We’re trained from young on to prepare for bad things. Fire drills, tornado warnings, duck-and-cover in the event of nuclear war: all manner of dreadful events are possible in our minds. A virus that moves around the globe, morphing into deadlier variants, arriving in surges like waves on the beach? Hadn’t really planned for that one.
I remember as a teenage reader being taken with the book “The Andromeda Strain.” That was a 1969 science fiction tale about a satellite that returns to Earth bearing a deadly microorganism from space that kills almost everyone it comes in contact with. It becomes a harrowing story of a group of scientists racing against time to save humanity.
“The Andromeda Strain” was more dramatic and fast-paced than the Covid strain, although the part about heroic scientists follows. Our non-science fiction pandemic is definitely not fast-paced. Here we are, well into our second year of dealing with this wretched virus. We know now Covid is unlikely to “end.” It will eventually join the list of afflictions that make life something of a crapshoot. For now, it is too virulent to ignore and hope for the best.
Historians will have a field day dissecting what happened. This has affected every place on Earth where members of our species abide. Most events we study in history are isolated. The World Wars didn’t cover the “world.” This global pandemic is really, truly global.
As for historians analyzing our actions and reactions, good luck to them. Those of us living this in real time can’t make sense of it. I don’t, won’t, and never will understand how this became something we fight over. We’ve managed to pack an enormous amount of divisiveness, rancor, and just plain old arguing into the last twenty months.
Did it have to be this way? Is it possible to imagine we could have come together for the better of everyone? We faced a challenge that was most threatening to the weakest and most vulnerable. Shouldn’t that have united us?
When a tornado tore through Comfrey, hundreds of people showed up to help. If a farmer is injured during harvest, dozens reach out to the family. I could go on with examples of humanity and compassion. That is in us. In those cases, the reaction is “How can I help? What can I do?”
Since March 2020, we’ve known things we can do. And in fact, most people have done those. I am talking about a minority who fought against the notion of a common good. But guess who stands out in a room of twenty small children? The nineteen behaving or the one screaming in the corner?
When I found myself in a conversation with someone upset at measures being taken here, I pointed out that these same tools were being used in every country on the planet, democracy or dictatorship. Mozambique. Uzbekistan, and Peru are doing the exact same things we are. There is striking consensus among scientists and health officials everywhere.
From the beginning, we have had to waste valuable time and effort quarreling. Mistrust, pettiness, name-calling, you name it. Every negative quality has flowed like a river. Flight attendants, shop owners, waiters have all been abused. Good grief, there are stories of nurses being attacked verbally.
At the beginning, we had a president who told us things that weren’t true. I don’t think he was lying. I just think he is not intelligent enough to know what he doesn’t know and to listen to people smarter than him. Knowing what you don’t know and listening to smart people are important skills.
He wasn’t helpful, but I don’t blame him for the ongoing divisions. The seeds for that were sown before. Analyzing those seeds will be a chore for those historians I refer to. This should be a golden age of cooperation. The internet means each of us has access to all the collected knowledge of humanity, something undreamt of by previous generations.
Turns out the internet is also an ideal way to spread fakery and deception. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone who is disparaging masks or vaccinations say, “I saw a video…”
Mark Twain’s admonition takes on new meaning: “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” A falsehood on Instagram or TikTok is around the world in a nanosecond. The truth might not even be out of bed.
Nothing has been more contentious than wearing a mask in certain settings. Early on I thought if there is a tiny chance that I’m protecting you by wearing one, why wouldn’t I?
Our daughter spent parts of the pandemic living in Europe and Central America. She reports that people there willingly adopted to masks. My six-year-old grandson wears a mask in the Rochester schools. His parents point out to him that he is protecting people. Like his grandparents.
With the instincts of a child, he understands that. Yet, among adults, arguments broke out every day over that simple effort. The ability to focus on a larger good over personal comfort is a mark of maturity. For society to function, the needs of the community have to sometimes rise above the wants of the individual.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of the contentious sides people take on every issue, is that intelligent and reasoned debate is pushed out. There are important discussions to be made about how best for schools, businesses, etc. to proceed as we work through the pandemic’s stages. I have not agreed with every decision made. But when one group won’t accept the science or medicine the rest of us are working from, the foundation for rational dialogue doesn’t exist. Instead of thoughtful deliberation, we have another argument. Just what we don’t need.
We have to worry about problem-solving amidst crises we will face in the future. It’s probable our country will face graver challenges. Are we going to react to those by arguing among ourselves? We may not have the luxury of the time that Covid gave us. If there were a Pearl Harbor today, would 30% of us blame the other party and insist it was a government hoax?
All this is heavy and depressing stuff. What good is a global pandemic if you can’t have a little fun with it? I’ve gone back to wearing a mask during the recent spike in Covid as I go about my business in town. I’ve taken to telling whoever I’m working with, “Yeah, my wife says I look better with it on.” That’s a joke.
There are things I’ve loved my entire adult life: my wife, Miller Sellner Implement, beer. Pam’s not really a thing, but you know what I mean.
Then, there are things I’ve loved even longer, as far back as I have memory: my parents, cheese, baseball.
In the early Sixties, brother Dean brought home an interest in the Minnesota Twins from Faribault Braille School. Summer days with a transistor radio set to WCCO for Twins’ games were as routine as milking cows. I grew up listening to Mom, Dad, and Herb Carneal.
Appealing players like Killebrew, Oliva, and Kaat cemented that relationship. Later there were days meeting friends in the Baltimore lot. In my mind, I can still walk you around Metropolitan Stadium with a smile on my face. I could do that with the Metrodome, but it would be with a frown, recalling the imprisonment of baseball there. That sentence ended with the delightful return of grass and sky at Target Field.
Like any relationship, there were bumps on the way in my long affair with baseball. Strikes and lockouts jerked fans around. Trading Rod Carew stung. The designated hitter: just because we’re used to it doesn’t make it less wrong. Regardless, every Opening Day brought me back filled with anticipation for the lovely marathon that is a baseball season.
2020 was hard on lots of us for lots of reasons. Just as I was starting to engage with Spring Training, boom, it ended. No one knew whether that was for a week or a month. It turned out a truncated season began in August with cutout fans and piped-in crowd noise. Some oddball rules made it seem like a pretend season, and I never had much interest.
2021 was going to be a Return to Normal. I went to a few games at Target Field. Nothing beats a day at the ballpark; that hasn’t changed. But as the season went on, my interest waned. It wasn’t just that the Twins were bad. That’s happened before. My whole attention to baseball was fading to dark. By September, the games barely registered on my mental radar.
It struck me last week that I didn’t watch one inning of the World Series. That hasn’t happened since Kennedy was in the White House. I found myself wondering. “Wha’ happened?”
I’ve talked about this with friends. I hear similar sentiments. “I’m just not as interested as I used to be.” “It’s harder to watch a whole game.” The fact that I and my buddies remain baseball’s main audience is not a good sign for the sport. We are an aging fan base for sure.
I’m talking about pro baseball here, the Twins in Twins Territory. You can still find school games, kids ball, and town teams at the comely ballparks we are blessed to have around here. Those are a pleasant and inexpensive way to spend time outdoors in our short season of sun.
But something is going on with the game at that upper level, where players make lots of money and fans spend a day’s wage to sit in the stands.
Most obvious, is the that the games take longer. It’s always been an attraction of the game that there is no clock. In the past, I considered myself lucky to see extra innings. More time at the ballyard. But now there is tedium, with mind-numbing spaces in the game.
Long ago when I played Bi-County baseball, we had a dear old ump named Otto Siewert. After every third out, Otto would begin chirping, “OK, off the field, let’s go, get out there, hustle it up, let’s go, let’s go.” We found it amusing, but it did quicken the pace. Major League Baseball could use Otto.
A couple years ago, I went to Detroit to see the Twins play the Tigers on Labor Day weekend. It occurred to me that it was almost exactly twenty years before that I took daughter Anna to Detroit to see a couple games at old Tiger Stadium. I looked it up, and the games we saw in 1999 were under two and a half hours. The games in 2019 were all over three hours.
Nine inning games approaching four hours are not uncommon. In the past, a crisply played pitching duel might have us out tailgating in two hours. To blame? Television, batters tugging their batting gloves, and a shrinking strike zone all have a piece.
Then there are pitching changes. Lots of pitching changes. A playoff game this year had sixteen pitchers. Nine innings, sixteen pitchers! No one ever came to the ballpark excited to see a parade of relief pitchers.
When I was going to a game in the past, I would anxiously check out who the starting pitchers were and create scenarios in my mind for that day’s game. The starting pitchers had lead roles in the drama I was about to see. Now a starting pitcher going five innings is rare as hens’ teeth.
Someone figured out that when a batter sees a pitcher a third time, his odds of succeeding go up. So, we come to the role of statistical analysis. A few decades ago, Bill James led a group of smart people looking inside the game and plucking out truisms that weren’t true. That was exciting for young fans like I was then. It was hip to be analytic.
At first analytic believers stood outside the gate and lobbed stones at baseball. Over time, they were invited in and began to appear in management. Now, the former stone throwers are in charge.
Strategy shifted. Strikeouts and homeruns came to be valued, so much that a player can strike out 200 times and be in the lineup if he hits homeruns. Rod Carew took five years to strike out 200 times. Strikeouts and homeruns have their place. But neither is as exciting as a triple off the wall and cheering as the runner rounds second base.
In ways the game has become predictable, dull, and slow. Perhaps this will cycle around and my fandom will return. Pam knows that when I go into the nursing home, I want to watch baseball games all day. That’s still the plan. I guess I can get a nap if the game goes four hours.
We were nearing the end of a tough corn harvest, fighting through downed and snarled stalks. The weather was good, and the stress of the last month was receding. I was pulling a wagon and made the turn to the field. I was met with the warm glow of a low sun.
A thought came that shows up now and then. I looked at the corn stubble stretching to the west, and I thought of the tall grass prairie that was there for the 10,000 years since the glaciers receded. My ancestors started growing things here about a century ago, one per cent of that time.
That changed drastically when Europeans arrived. The tall grass prairie is for all intents extinct, save for remnants and restorations, neither of which can duplicate the ocean of grass that was.
I enjoy raising corn and soybeans. It is challenging work in sync with the seasons. But I can feel loss for what was here. The wealth in these soils comes from prairie grasses dying into the ground and building the deep, fertile dirt I plant into. I am thankful for that.
I wonder if our ancestors could have found a way to preserve some of what was here. I’m not sure what that would look like, but it seems possible. Since the arrival of the plow, could farmers have done a better job preserving that soil? Again, I think that’s possible.
Could I have done better in my four decades farming? I tried alternative practices early on that mostly didn’t work and found myself farming conventionally. I try to do that responsibly. It’s dependent on fossil fuels and chemicals, more than I’d like.
There are positive signs for the future. Cover crops, less tillage, alternative crops, all hold possibilities. I hope younger generations get more things right than mine did.
The upshot? There is nothing I can do about the past. I wish we’d done better, including myself. And I’m hopeful for the future.
I suppose I could ignore the past, pretend the prairie wasn’t here. I could convince myself I’ve done everything perfectly, and that there is nothing wrong in agriculture. Deluding myself wouldn’t make any of that true.
Speaking of past, our nation has spent productive time opening books to the past. Some of those books were collecting dust; some were purposely hidden away. I’m talking about our discussion of race. The murder of George Floyd was a pivotal moment no one saw coming.
If you didn’t learn anything the last year, you had to be trying hard not to. Vague notions I had about being Black in the United States were given flesh, as I listened to and read Black men and women. COVID gets credit for giving me extra time.
Slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, right up to modern tools of suppression, were all things I learned more about. Looking back on my schooling and 65 years on this planet, it is amazing how little I knew. I am grateful to know more. With humility, I know my knowledge remains incomplete.
I learned in sixth grade that slavery ended in 1865. I didn’t learn how that awful institution was replaced with essentially the same economic and societal structure in the South. Ex-slaves and their descendants had no meaningful rights for most of the next century.
Efforts to change society were met harshly. Hanging the occasional Black man was effective in messaging. I read about church congregations that ended Sunday service in time so parishioners could attend a local lynching. The Tulsa race riots, when up to three hundred were killed, was never taught in my 17 years of school.
A black writer told of his father who fought and was decorated in World War II but wasn’t allowed in restaurants when he came home. That, despite wearing the uniform of the United States Army. I wondered how frustrating that would be.
That man took his family to the North, joining a great exodus. Through redlining and other manipulations, Blacks became disadvantaged there, too. Again, these were things I had faint understanding of. The truth is that most Blacks (and other minorities) for our entire history up to today had poorer housing, lesser schools, lower health care, and reduced wages.
That is simply true. Is racism the reason? The phenomenon is so consistent through time and place, it becomes clear it is. You have to perform serious mental contortions to deny that.
You might say that there is nothing today preventing minorities from chasing the American dream. Look around, and you will see yourself and most everyone you know has ended up in roughly the same economic class as their parents. There are exceptions. But most of us used advantages we were given to lead comfortable lives, advantages not proffered to Black, Hispanic, and Natives.
I didn’t grow up in the South, so the Black experience is distant. I don’t have that excuse for the Dakota who were here. The “Indian line fence” on the south side of our property is the border of a long-abandoned treaty. If you can look at the story of the Native people on this continent and not see hot racism, you’re looking through foggy lenses.
I’m grateful to know more than I did. There are those who will say I can’t love my country with these things in my head. I would challenge that to my deepest core. What kind of love is grounded in untruth, deception, and ignorance? Yes, I love this country. I love it enough to want it to be better.
Something no one had ever heard of six months ago has become a cause celebre of people who deny these truths. Critical Race Theory has come to be blamed for an absurd number of ills. It has ignited a craziness that I can only compare to the John Birchers of my youth. Instead of seeing a communist behind every bush, CRTers see a raving Antifa.
In this misty world view, “justice, equity, and inclusion” are bad words. Justice, “the quality of being just: righteousness, moral rightness,” according to the dictionary. How does the world have to be turned on its head for “justice” to be a bad thing?
Do I want my children to know the history of racism in this country? Damn straight. I hope and pray they are part of a better future. Why would I want them to learn less, not more? I hope they don’t wait till 65 to learn. If schools can’t teach the truth, what’s the point?
Does that mean that young people begin life as “oppressors and victims?” No, it means that armed with morality that we all have a part in passing to them, with full knowledge of what came before, they make this world better. God bless them in that.
I come to a place similar to my thoughts on the prairie. There is nothing I can do about the past. I wish we’d done better, including myself. And I’m hopeful for the future.
We get to this time of year, and light becomes a precious commodity. Our planet tilts and the southern hemisphere gets all the fun of grilling out and laying on the beach. To paraphrase the Alan Jackson, Jimmy Buffet song, “It’s Summer Somewhere.”
Farmers start the fall work in reasonably long days. We watch our daylight slip away till much of the work is done in the dark. There was a time nature called all the shots, and the farming day was bound by the number of hours of sun. Now we have lights on our combines and tractors.
If you drive around on fall nights, you notice these small “cities” across the countryside. Bin setups, where the crop is delivered to dry and store can shimmer on the horizon as much as a small town. A lot of wattage goes into that display, especially as farms get bigger and the yield from thousands of acres funnel there.
Our setup is modest in comparison: a drying bin and three storage bins that were shiny new when I was young. I spend a lot of time there each fall. I have memories of working with my father, with heavy coats on November nights when we could see our breath. Those memories are treasured now. I wouldn’t have guessed that in the moment. I was miserable then.
I had an electrician friend add some lights to brighten new bin stairs that were added as safer-than-the-old-bin-ladder. Additional lights are also a safety enhancement. I work up and down and around a lot of moving things that could cause injury if the wrong part of me got in the wrong part of them. Seeing things helps avoid unpleasant surprises.
Lights have gotten better on the equipment. Our combine and newer tractors have bright white LED lights, much better than the lights that I remember my dad picking ear corn with on the old 560. Guessing those lights went out 15 or 20 feet. Now the area lit is larger besides being brighter.
With all artificial light, there is field of illumination that has a boundary. Beyond that is the dark and unseen. What is unseen is unknown. Every once in a while, a fellow can creep themselves out late at night, after long hours in a cab. There’s a reason I don’t watch horror movies. My imagination can gin up a scary possibility in those rows in the dark over there without the aid of a script writer.
We take walking into a room and flipping on a light switch for granted. None of us remember a day you couldn’t unless there was some sort of outage. A few generations back did know that, and what an incredible change. I read once how many minutes and hours someone had to labor before electricity to pay for lamp oil or candle to light one room for one hour. Now we leave lights on all over the house for pennies.
Mostly, we don’t notice the battle being waged against dark by car lights, streetlamps, and light fixtures. I can drive through town on a winter night and think nothing of every house glowing from within. People are doing dishes, kids doing homework, someone watching TV.
It’s different when I drive into town at 4:30 in the morning for my Adoration shift at church. Then, a very small number of houses have a light on, usually one room. My imagination wants to fill in the blanks: Up early for work? Someone not feeling well? Crying baby?
I am by no means a fan of the shortening days. I get that this happens every year, but I still want to say to the southern hemisphere, “I want my sun back!” I’ll grant that there are some benefits to a short day. One is that there’s not a lot of time between sunrises and sunsets. It’s easy to be outside for both.
Both have been regularly spectacular this year. A sun low on the horizon with a dimpling of clouds can create an amazing montage of colors. Sometimes it’s like a watercolorist just spilled everything. Around then, I will be flipping on combine lights or running around to flip switches on the bins. But the warmth and glow of a sunset can steel one for working out in the cold hours ahead.
I opened with light as a precious commodity. It also has been the most common metaphor for good as long as people have been writing things down. We all want to be that candle lighting the dark. Or LED light in more contemporary terms.
It takes no creative writing to see a need for light in today’s world. There seems no limit to negative thoughts, harsh language, and snarky criticism. Social media has been getting blame for that lately. It certainly has empowered people to mock and belittle those they disagree with. Much of it coming from the most comfortable, well-off people who have ever lived.
Being light might mean withholding that mean thought that strikes you as you sit at your computer. Maybe let a line go by in a conversation that rankles you. Maybe turn up your light, say something positive, compliment someone, comfort another.
There is a now 25-year-old song that is a favorite. Written by Chris Rice, “Go Light Your World” has been sung by many Christian singers. LISTEN>>>
Here is the chorus:
Carry your candle, run to the darkness,
Seek out the hopeless, confused and torn,
Hold out your candle for all to see it.
Take your candle, and go light your world,
Take your candle, and go light your world.
(Thirty years ago, middle kid was born. I wrote this “letter” to Abby for the Sleepy Eye Herald Dispatch. She just spent her birthday weekend at a wedding celebration on the island of Mallorca, Spain before returning to her job in Guatemala City. I wished her a happy birthday on my phone from the combine cab. I wouldn’t have predicted those things in 1991.)
Pam and Randy Krzmarzick of Sleepy Eye are proud to announce the birth of their daughter, Abigail Ruff Krzmarzick. She was born October 10 at 12:51 p.m. Abigail weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces and was 20 inches long.
Welcome to our family.
Just days ago, I saw you for the first time when the doctor lifted you from the blood and fluid of your mother’s womb in the air of our world. You were a sight: filmy white, blotched with red and pink, hair matted, and a grimace on your face that belied some disapproval at the goings on.
But in that slippery ooze, you were beautiful. Your mother and I will never forget that moment of exhaustion, intensity, and warmth, as our world expanded to draw you in.
Before then, you’d only been present in the bulges and shoves and general mayhem you created in your mom’s body. In the moment of your spinning off from her, as we beheld you, we greeted you with tears. They were for you, for each other, for creation.
Know one thing: that at your birth, we wanted and anticipated and loved you with the trembling core of our beings. It was one perfect gift you will receive from imperfect parents. Know that there was love and carry that with you in times when love is scarce.
Your mother and I are two separate people, struggling to be whole and complete in ourselves. In marriage, we become two abreast. There is, though, one time we become one. It is in the co-creation of life. You are of us in a way you will never appreciate, just as I can’t of my parents.
There is an instinct in us that desires a child to carry on when we’ve passed, just as a tree creates seeds. Maybe its the hope you will carry on our work.
Yet, you are not us at all. You are wondrously unique. You are the only one who will view the world through those eyes and the only one who can do the things you will be called to.
You begin blessed with one essential quality. It is curiosity. God gives each baby a deep well of curiosity; for your survival you need to soak in all that is around you. As I write, you are two weeks old. Already, your dark, piquant eyes dart back and forth searching the source of a light or movement.
I enjoyed watching the curiosity in your older sister. It was nearly insatiable at times, as her perceptions exploded. At first, she trusted taste and touch. Gradually the other senses followed as she drank in stimuli thirstily. And with each new leaf or song or flavor she discovered, I could touch or hear or taste as if it were new for me. I look forward to that with you.
Hang on to that curiosity as long and hard as you can. This earth and its inhabitants are an endlessly fascinating feast if you remain curious and care enough. You will never lack for tonic if you treat each day, each place, and each person as sustenance for your curiosity.
Maybe you’ll have the wherewithal to travel and see this planet and life’s astounding variations. Maybe not. About all I can promise are trips to the Black Hills, the North Shore, and maybe a minor league game in Iowa.
But if you don’t ever actually go many miles, never mind. If you are curious, there are books to take you places. There are people with amazing stories. And there is a world to see in whatever field or woods you walk in.
I’m not sure why, but we seem to lose that as we age. Perhaps it begins when school makes learning a chore. Perhaps we get lazy.
There are things that want to take the life out of us. Beware of these. I sound melodramatic, but I think they exist. Media can do that, filling our head with floss, pushing out room for our thoughts. Charismatic and tempting personalities can do that, telling us how to think and be. They might be the popular kid in school, or later, the political leader we fall behind.
There are other things that can suck the life out of you. Ironically, many start as harmless and good: a cup of wine, a kiss, clothes, a game. Almost any pursuit can consume us and crowd out our self. The life you’ve been given is too precious.
Remember, Abigail, no matter what befalls you, no matter what affliction, there is that deep inside you that is more than your clothes, your job, or your reputation.
That calls to mind another matter. Too soon, you will discover meanness. In your lifetime, that will range from petty selfish acts to horrific deeds. You will even find it in yourself.
I wish I could explain that to you, but I can’t. I’ve yet to figure out if these are aberrations in a good creation. Or whether kindness and love are the unlikely acts in a mean-spirited world. Either way, it is there. It is in all of us, in our humanness. You will know meanness when you give or take it. It will taste bitter.
When I was little, I was told I had a Guardian Angel. This special presence was always near me, protecting me from bad and guiding me toward good. We don’t teach Guardian Angels anymore. But Abigail, when you’ve been hurt or are tempted to hurt another, still yourself. In the quiet, listen for the good. I don’t know if it is an angel whispering to you, but if you sincerely listen, you will hear. Your tiny flame of good can never be extinguished, even in a deluge.
There are traits I’ve come to value in my 35 years that I think would bear you well on your journey. I can share them with you, although I know you will have to learn whatever you become on your own.
Don’t grow fearful of passion. When you are young, you will cry loudly, laugh wildly, and hug eagerly. But like curiosity, the capacity for passion wants to erode. Hang to it. Love God and others mightily, feel pain and let tears loose. Feel joy, let your heart leap.
God does not promise a steady and happy life of pastels. Instead, he offers deep sorrowful blues, giddy yellows, pain in crimsons, and days of vibrant green. Open your eyes to each. But then move on. Life is change. The glow of one color never lingers, nor can we.
Humility is valuable. Take pride in your accomplishments, but don’t become heady. Recognize God gave you the tools you use, and many people have honed them along the way. Give them gratitude and a share of whatever honors you achieve.
Develop a sense of responsibility. It is a burden, but we can’t know satisfaction without seeing the results of what we do plainly. When you speak, know who it affects. When you throw something down, know where it’s going to end up. When you use something up, know how it will be replaced. When you take, know where it came from. When you give, know where it is going.
Never venture out without your sense of humor firmly in grasp. It is an invaluable shield. There is in all of us magnificent potential. In the gap between that and the smallness of our deeds is our humanity. We have that in common, and is at once frustrating, quirky, and endearing. Laugh easily. Enjoy the journey.
In closing Abigail, welcome to life. May you know many seasons. I look forward to sharing some of them with you. God bless you,
Your father.
