Hard to believe the funeral was a week ago. I miss you, dad.
Nygaard, Vernon age 83. Preceded in death by beloved wife, Eileen. Passed away peacefully on their 60th wedding anniversary Sept. 15, 2009. He will be greatly missed by children, Karen (Dale) Portz, Cheryl Dockter, LaVern (Chelsea) Nygaard, Danny (Narissa) Nygaard, Julie (Ron) Jaeger, and Terry (Jeane) Nygaard; grandchildren, Jennifer Lundborg, Dawn Dockter, Cindy Mohs, Diane, Lisa, Jessica, Rose, Joshua and Julia Nygaard, Shelly Muri, Kelly Walker, Nick Vernon Nygaard; great-grandchildren, Janessa, Faith, Ariel, Gracie, Allison, Brooke, Gregory, Derek, Rachel, Destiny, Kelsie and Candice; and brother, Robert (Marilyn) Nygaard. "Love you Dad" "Love you back" Interment Hillside Cemetery. Funeral service Friday, 9/18/09 at 11 AM with visitation Thursday (TODAY) 5-8 PM and 1 hour prior to service, all at: Washburn-McReavy Hillside Chapel 612-781-1999 2610 19th Ave. N.E., Mpls
The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Friday, July 25, 2008, and sent via FutureMe.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dear FutureMe,
Happy 41st Birthday. You are now a tenth of the way to 50. Are you still working at the same job? Are you taking enough time to enjoy life and your family? Your wife is pregnant as I write this. How did things work out? Are you enjoying life with two kids now?
I can tell you that a year ago (As I write this) that you were finding a happy balance between work and the things that you are passionate about - your family, music and fishing. But of course work always encroaches on that, doesn't it? I hope that you have found a way to spend even more time doing the things that you really care about instead of the things that you need to do to survive.
But alas, we are not living in vacuums, are we? There are dark clouds on the economy and high energy costs. A gallon of gas today costs $3.69 but it has been over $4.00 as recently as a few weeks ago. Housing markets are in a free fall and a lot of people are out on the street. There is a lot of uncertainty right now due to the presidential election.
Speaking of the election, remember that I said neither candidate was going to be able to fix what is wrong with America. If I was right the previous president is still being demonized for our problems and the new one is also in the hot seat. The very notion of one man being able to screw up or save the country is demonstrative of American ignorance and our inability to take responsibility for the consequences of our own appetites.
Does that sound about right?
Anyway, I hope that things have improved by the time that you read this. Try to remember yourself and what you were like a year ago. You were stuck at work on your birthday, wanting nothing more than to go home to your family, grill some steaks and boil some corn on the cob.
ATTENTION: It's never too early to start going through your five year old's pockets before throwing his clothes in the laundry!
My solution was to run the clothes through the wash again a couple times, and in the mean time scrape out what I could from the dryer, and then run a couple of wet towels that I don't care about through on high heat. That seems to have cleared up the worst of the crayon residue from the dryer.
I try not to use the names of my family here in case you didn't notice. If you're someone I know go ahead and email me and I'll tell you what her name is.
We have reached that critical mass point in the summer where fellow bloggers are apologizing for not posting more often due to busyness or 'unblogworthy' content. Surmounted by work, too busy with play, 57 channels (& nothing on), etc.
I'm guilty of all of those things but won't apologize here. Instead I will try to distract you with photos from my little excursion to Coon Lake with the boy a couple of weeks (already) ago.
The shakedown went well. The motor ran, the depth finder worked, the boat didn't leak, and everyone made it back to shore safely. Sunfish were caught and the fishing bug is now coursing through the boy's veins.
Of course so rarely are things perfect. The lake itself was a haven for jet skiers, tubers and drunken party bargers. These guys actually were some of the tame ones... I just took their photo because I thought their pontooon modification was impressive. In the second photo they are very close to a fishing boat though in all fairness I don't know who approached who.
Ultimately the boy needed to be dragged kicking and screaming off the lake, which secretly pleased me to no end. On the way home we stopped for a dilly bar, which seemed to go a good ways toward smoothing things over. As a man, I have the inexplicable need to take photos of my vehicle and my rig. I believe it is the Y-chromosome equivalent to females needing to take pictures of the food whenever there is a party.
My thirties were a roller coaster ride, a real screamer at times. It will be interesting to see what my fourties are like. I'm still two years younger than my dad was when I was born.
Today is my 39th Birthday. I hope that you have been keeping up the good work. By the time you get this I will be 40, I guess. What an age! You are finally old enough that you could just keel over dead one day and nobody would be shocked. Anyway, make the most of your special day. Because they are numbered.
You and your wife celebrated your 5th wedding anniversary a couple of days ago. She has been approved for citizenship and is waiting to take her oath.
Your son is 4 years old. He is starting preschool this fall. It has been taking forever to toilet train him but at long last there is light at the end of the tunnel. He is very intelligent and constantly challenges you by saying the opposite of what you are trying to teach him (E.g., "I want to smoke cigarettes!" "Makeup is for boys.") and watching you for your response. He is also obsessed with his civil liberties and continually asks to go to the park ("Go parking"), the mall, and any other store that has ever handed out a free balloon.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. You are currently memorizing this scripture:
Romans 12:1-2 1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship.
2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will.
On July 4 during the day I did a little yard work, which included hosing off the cobwebs & dust from around our entry way and the patio area out back. I rinsed everything down to ground level and then used the hose to wash it all away.
Well apparently this activity rubbed somebody the wrong way:
I have never been afraid of the local ants found in Minnesota, but I am not ashamed to admit that bugs in general creep me out, and bugs around my home mortify me. If you listen to the audio closely you can hear my Darth Vader-like breathing. Not so much like an ominous tough guy, more like Woody Allen, having a panic attack.
Needless to say, shortly after the video was shot I went inside and got my WMD and nuked those suckers. I beat my fist on my chest in a territorial display and bellowed, "This is MY House! MY House!"
I don't know what the ants thought of it, but my neighbors got the idea.
One of the things that always bothered me about Darth Vader was that clearly the guy was intubated, yet he was able to speak clearly. Based on what was shown at the end of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader was apparently the recipient of a tracheotomy, since obviously no tubes were running into his mouth. Still the guy could not only talk, but enunciate like nobody's business.
I get it that the deep voice was an amplified projection with special effects to sound scary, OK? What I mean is that the amplified projection should have sounded like a scary amplified person who was trying to talk with a hole in his larynx. But I guess that wouldn't have sounded so scary. Weird that a civilization capable of greater than light speed travel and genetic cloning would have to rely on bionics to put people back together.
That night at the local fireworks display retribution was exacted upon me and my family. Later the boy and I slept out in the tent in the back yard as an intermediate step in the slow transition to a lifetime of camping. We lay together, safe inside the netting and fell asleep as father and son, looking at the stars and dreaming of galaxies far far away.
My sister is selling me my dad's old Lund S-16 fishing boat
My lawn came up approx. 33% dandelions this year
Oh yeah, and there is this matter of the wife's tight-fitting clothes and her inexplicable craving for bizarre foods including pickles (Honestly thought that one was a myth)... Yes, we are pregnant again with our second child. We are at 14 weeks as of today. We kept the first trimester mum due to a blood clot that we could see in the early ultrasounds. With a lot of prayer and taking it easy, as of last week the clot is gone and everything looks good for a late November (Thanksgiving) baby.
We are going to an all-inclusive place in Cancun for all of next week to lay in the sun and do... NOTHING!
Am I boring you? For those of you looking for better content I suggest you look no further:
Today I paid a visit to my son's classroom, where they are preparing for the big "Kinderconcert" field trip tomorrow at Orchestra hall. I brought in the 12-string and gave a small presentation to a captive audience of 4 and 5-year-olds.
I played "Twinkle Twinkle" on the low strings, then on the high. And then on both finishing with a flourish (basically just an open E chord but it seemed to impress them). Then we all sang together while I played.
We talked about how different instruments work together to make music sound better and I answered questions like if it's harder to play 12 strings, what the tuning pegs do, etc.
I told them that music is for everyone, and that anybody can learn to play an instrument - It just takes practice.
At the end they all clapped and practiced the two new words they learned this week - "Bravo!" , "Encore!" You can laugh at me if you want but that is the only time I have heard those words spoken aloud while I had a guitar strapped to me.
My son capped it all off with "Thanks for coming! See you tomorrow!"
There's dull ring or buzz somewhere behind my right eye that has been droning for the last week or so, with occasional frantic screeches like a giant fish is stripping line off of a fishing reel in my mind. The drag is set too tight friends, and the line is unbreakable. The gears are starting to smoke.
I have been stressed out at work, which I avoid writing about so as not to get dooced. Suffice it to say that There is a lot going on and I am over extended. I find myself working until 6:30 at night, going home and logging back on at 10 to write embarrassing (Lack of) progress reports.
The second two panes of this cartoon pretty much says it all.
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
You and I, we attend yet another one of these weddings. A sunny day, an overjoyed bride, a Groom standing an inch taller than normal with his chest out. You and I were these people not so long ago. Whispering girls, mischievous boys, proud parents and murmuring extended family. Clergy speaks, musicians strum, and all attention focuses on two, becoming one.
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic
The ceremony is beautiful. Perfect, just like ours was. At the reception we sit together like visiting royalty, guests in a foreign court. Strangers who share our table quickly become like amnesiatic old friends. As the meals are cleared away the music begins.
And when that fog horn blows I will be coming home
And when that fog horn blows I want to hear it
I don't have to fear it
We come together as this song plays. Our bodies fit together perfectly, and we stare unashamed into each other's eyes as we move. There is so much love in your eyes. Do you know how completely you have me? Our unborn child floats inside of you as we sway. The last time we danced to this song was at someone else's reception - That time you were carrying our first. The love was the same. The coupling of our bodies was the same. This dance is a continuation, part of a much larger dance that we started back when we were the bride and groom.
I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
Then magnificently we will float into the mystic
I look deeper into your eyes. Yes, you do know how completely you have me. I see that love returned. Awash in a sea of humanity we cling to each other, knowing that even after the music stops the dance will continue.
Tons going on in terms of my non-blog life. Overwhelmed by work, family health concerns, Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, so on and so forth. Patiently waiting to get the data cable for my phone so I can start pulling photos off of it. I got the thing over six months ago and promptly filled up the memory. Haven't taken a picture with it in months.
Going Ice fishing tomorrow. Don't expect to catch much but plan on having a blast in the warm 36-degree weather. Not taking the house, fishing old school in the open air.
Stopped by a local sporting good mart over my lunch hour and hit the clearance racks. I picked up a nice pair of convertible pants for $15 and an ice fishing rod & reel combo for $11. Score!
In an egregious breach of protocol, I am going to blog about something work-related, although this could actually happen to anyone, anytime.
While waiting on hold for the customer support of a soon-to-be-former vendor, I was subjected to an endless loop of "Touch of Grey" by the Grateful Dead. The song never started and never ended. It was ENDLESS.
The worst part was that I was subjected to multiple transfers in the hunt for the elusive "Right guy" to talk to, and Jerry Garcia was still waiting for me, like he had never stopped singing, because in reality he hadn't.
Perhaps they were overconfident in their ability to get a rep assigned to me in four minutes or less. If so, they failed miserably. I suspect that it was all part of a master plan to break my will, which if so it was orchestrated with astonishing effectiveness. Eventually I was babbling incoherently, waving a lighter over my head and begging them to play Free Bird or Wayward Son. My brain was short-circuited. I cannot remember what I called them about or if they even helped me.
...Is the day that you receive your annual Secret Santa assignment. As my fingers went through the hat, they passed over several slips of paper and ultimately betrayed me by yielding the name of that colleague that I dread the most. And now I need to decide what to get this sucker. Of all people to draw, this is the one person that I cannot get away with buying a Barnes & Noble card for.
My limit is 20 bucks. Do I go with an extravagant cheap gift, or do I go with a cheap nice gift? It's a tough call.
If you ever find yourself in a sales meeting and you unwittingly refer to a marketing plan that your client is seriously considering as being "slimy" (Ex., sending a mass email to a list of purchased addresses belonging to people who did not opt in to be spammed by a third party):
Do yourself a favor and let somebody else talk for a while. Once your ears stop burning, get back on the horse. If you happen to hear their marketing director say something to the effect that the company president is getting 20 - 30 penis enlargement emails a day (ergo, certainly their product would get past the average spam filter), in the driest and most professional tone possible ask if there is any chance that he opted in to receive those emails.
Depending on the client's sense of humor, this will either redeem you or else it will just shovel more dirt on your grave. Either way you've already screwed up anyway, so why not take a chance? Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
Photos from last week's field trip to the pumpkin patch.
I don't have a lot to say about it, so I will get out of the way and let the pictures tell the story. One thing though, back in my day school buses did not have security cameras or 'body fluid cleanup kits.'
Yesterday was picture day at school. We won't get the proofs back from the 'real' photographer for a little while yet, but these are some shots I got at home before chauffeuring our young professor off to school.
Next week his class goes on a field trip to visit a pumpkin patch. We're pretty stoked about it in my household, as the wife and I will be accompanying as chaperons.
Yesterday was the wife's "American" birthday, as this was the day that she stood with 1,179 other people from 86 different countries and took the oath and became a United States citizen. Most of the people who stumble across this web journal do not know much about my beautiful wife; this is by design as I avoid putting too much information out on the web about my family. But today I will take exception, as I feel the need to tell the world just how very proud I am of her.
She was born in the Philippines, on the largest southern island. Her parents are down to earth hard working people, who have gone to great lengths to provide good opportunities for their children - My father in law even spent over ten years working in Saudi Arabia when local job conditions were so poor that he would not have been able to support his family. I don't think that my wife has ever forgotten her father's sacrifices, because by his actions he opened her eyes to life's possibilities, if one is willing to step outside of their comfort zone and leave home.
She finished high school at 16 and enrolled at a local college, which she completed in four years with a degree in computer science. At age 20 she found herself in the same depressed local economy that had pushed her father out of the country. Acting on her mother's advice she relocated to Manila, with the plan to live there until she either found a job or she ran out of money. She went through a season of living out of her suitcase, moving from relatives house to friends house and in and out of boarding houses. Each day was spent walking the streets of Makati, knocking down the doors of every business, looking for someone who would hire her. She was rejected too many times to count and did not acclimate to Manila well at first - On one occasion she was even accosted by a street thug, who ripped a gold chain right off of her neck as she was riding in an open air jeepney.
Twice a week she would call home crying, begging her mother to let her come home. Time after time her mother would reply that God is faithful, and that he would provide for her. Finally a company expressed interest in her and hired her. Not long after she was recruited for a position in Singapore, where she spent almost a year before transferring back to Manila.
One day she received a call from an American recruiter, who had a copy of her resume from her Makati days. It seemed a rather large company in the U.S. had a problem with several of their computer systems and there was a shortage of American programmers fluent in the original system language. In September of 1997 my future wife set foot in Minnesota. She has only been able to get back to see her parents one time, and has not been back to the Philippines since Christmastime of 1999. She misses her parents a lot and still talks to them at least twice a week. Her parent's faith and sacrifice has paid off, as her sister is also here in the U.S., living in Los Angeles.
In December of 2000 we met and fell in love, marrying in 2002. Our son was born in 2003. In the time since we have been together I have been at her side as she went through processing for both her green card and naturalization. It boggles my mind the sheer amounts of paperwork, the money spent, the hoops jumped through and the lines waited in, just to obtain something I got for free just because of an indiscretion by my parents.
So baby, congratulations on this payoff after all your hard work - Enjoy your day in the sun, because you have without a doubt EARNED this!
Unlike last year this year we went to the Minnesota State Fair. The wife won free tickets to see Prairie Home Companion, performed live in the grandstand this past Friday night. It was a great show, with a lot of really good music (Including a guest performance by Patty Griffin) and of course all of the extras that come with the MSF - Overindulgence of food, a fireworks display, the odor of the beer garden, etc.
One of the more amusing portions was the disbelief the wife experienced when she found out that we had to pay to get into the fair in order to redeem and enjoy our grandstand tickets. I forget sometimes that she's not from around here. Yesterday while we were driving I noted a pedestrian and commented, "That guy looks just like Willie Nelson." She looked at me blankly and asked, "Willie WHO?"
"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke, "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate, So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
On Saturday 08/11/2007 I went on a road trip to Northern MN to flyfish for trout. This is what I saw.
Friday night to Saturday morning it stormed. I drove north through the aftermath with lightning crackling through the clouds above me as I drove. The river was going to be muddy and I knew it. But there was nothing else to be done. My fishing day was my fishing day, and I had to take it come rain or shine.
I had several potential entry points circled on my map, and as I prowled the back country roads I happened across a whitetail family set up near the road. They gave me all the time in the world but by the time I had the presence of mind to dig out the camera and snap a photo, they were all but gone.
After exploring several of the tributaries to the Nemadji River, I finally settled on an entrance point on the river proper, where Highway 23 passes over it. There was a nice parking area that was empty, except for a fellow who was scouting for grouse hunting spots.
I wasn't much in the mood for company. It is hard enough to find a free day to depressurize once a quarter. Added to that I recently lost a cousin from complications involving a gall bladder removal. She was 43, died three days after my 39th birthday. She still is 43, and always going to be 43 from here on. I had been been easing into the mindset where I realistically know I could go at anytime, but now the 'easing' phase is officially over.
The river was muddy as I suspected. I spent a long time along the banks, watching for activity. It looked pretty dead. Given the lack of surface activity I started out nymphing, using a black wooly bugger with a strike indicator. After only a few casts I had two separate hits on my strike indicator. I quickly switched over to a #12 wolf adams and promptly hooked this little baby through the nose.
I worked the river for a few hours and that chubby little shiner was the only luck I had. I practiced my casting. I listened to the world around me, paying no mind to the occasional bridge noise in the distance.
There was no sense to be made from my cousin's death. I hadn't seen her since my mother's funeral, had scarcely even spoken to her then as there were just too many people to talk to. I had no idea that she was even having the surgery. I was not a factor in her life, nor she in mine really. And that is what the sadness is about, the guilt. The feeling that yes, we played together as kids and that somehow that childhood friendship should have carried over into adulthood. Up to now I had been able to live with the idea that there was time to make that connection, that it was ok to put it off for now. Except that now there isn't any more time.
I finally crawled up a muddy bank and set back to my truck for some lunch. There was no real trail to speak of so I bushwhacked through the forest, keeping the the river in earshot. I have humped through some tough brush in my day, and this was some of it. It was definitely not a friendly environment for a chubby guy lugging a flyrod.
After I ate I broke out the camera and explored for some good shots. Several attempts netted me some local insect life. Insects live hard and die fast. They don't have complex emotions like guilt and angst. They just get on about their business and make way for the next generation. The local plant life echoed that sentiment, as the air hung thick and sweet with the smell of pollen and nectar. Every plant and tree was in the midst of a giant bender, drunk to the gills on the rainwater from the previous night. The cicadas trilled from the treetops, like an alarm to let us know that September is coming. And when it does the nights will turn cold, and no insect plant or tree will wonder why nobody told them that it was coming.
I didn't have much heart to try the river again in the afternoon. I packed up the truck and made my way a few more miles up 23 to a scenic overlook. I have passed it a few times and never taken a picture there. Since I had the tripod with me I did a panoramic. After that I turned to the south and made my way back to my family like a homesick puppy.
... From my usual smart-ass commentary, in lieu of the 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis last night. It may sound like a cliche, but my thoughts and prayers are with the survivors and the families of the victims of yesterday's tragedy. I was on southbound 35W taking the Stinson exit at exactly 6:00 PM yesterday. If for whatever reason I had been heading into downtown, I would have been right on the bridge when it went down.
Back in my 20's I used to fish from the bank of the Mississippi, in the shadow of that bridge. I used to relish the contrast between the busy hum of the cars passing overhead with the slow pace of catfishing. It's hard to imagine such a large structure, whose presence I have taken for granted my entire life as simply not being there anymore.
It will be more than a year, possibly several years, before things get back to 'normal' here. I don't know about anybody else but I will think differently each time I cross the river from now on.
Pictures (All 3 are Copyright of the Star Tribune):
I received an email yesterday. Nothing notable about that, you might say. I get about 200 emails a day, offering to help solve my credit problems, to cure my hideously shameful diseases, to rid me of my erectile dysfunction and/or hard-earned cash (No pun intended). So in the course of a day it is not really notable to say that I received an email from somebody.
Except this email came from me.
Waaaa?
I did a double take and then vaguely recalled that last year I visited a web site called "Future Me" (http://www.futureme.org) - It offers a free service where you can fill out a form and set a date for a message to be sent to you. So last year on my birthday I sent this message to myself, one year into the future:
Dear FutureMe,
Today is my 38th birthday. When you get this I will be 39. I hope that things are going OK. You fought with your wife last night and did not make up with her before you dropped her off at work. Your son is 3 years old. You gave him a bath last night and showed him how to brush his teeth. When he went to bed you read him a Thomas the tank engine book, some of the lines you speak through an empty paper towel tube to simulate a bullhorn.
I hope that you are having a good day. Make peace with your wife. Appreciate your son. Life is going by fast, don't keep your head is in the clouds and miss it.
If I could send a message back to 2006, it would be this:
Happy birthday, previous me.
Last night your wife and son took you to dinner where you consumed part of a massive ribeye steak (You are eating the rest for lunch today). Later, your wife and son fell asleep on the couch with you while you watched the Tour de France. After helping them to bed and taking out the garbage, you walked around on your lawn in your bare feet and looked at the stars. It was better than you could have imagined. Now here are the results of some sporting events that I would like you to bet a little money on...
Here are some work doodles that I have done in weekly staff meetings over the years. They would probably mean more to the people who were trapped in those meetings with me than they would to you.
I was annoyed by a colleague's self-esteem issues when I drew this. Look at the date. It's hard to remember what life was like five months before the towers fell.
Another time I was dying inside because I was given more projects than I could handle.
Former colleagues, also overworked. One internalizing his rage, the other on the verge of tears.
The wife and I were at a colleague's wedding at the Lake Como Band shell.
I didn't bring my digital camera but I did bring my mental camera, and 'snapped' this mental image of the boat rental area. I can't draw as well as I can remember, but this sketch does serve for me as a reminder of what I experienced.
NOT PICTURED: The heat of the sun on my navy blue suit (What was I thinking?), The smell of the algae coming off the lake, the feel of wife's fingers in the back of my hair as she patiently watched me knock out the outlines (I shaded this sometime later), a kid catching a 'hammer handle' northern pike off of another dock (a little to the left of the area I chose to sketch).
A took these photos from the truck when I drove around the front of the house. I just rolled down the passenger window and snapped off a couple of shots.
Here are a couple of closeups (Be sure to click on them to see full size):
From what I read, gestion takes about four weeks. Given that the eggs have been there for a week now and supposing a week or so before they leave the nest, I won't be able to use my front door for the next month, and really shouldn't be mowing my front lawn, either.
I think I'm going to be really popular with the neighbors this summer.
In a speech on September 12 in Germany The pope enraged Muslims by quoting 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Since then:
On Sunday 09/17/2006 an Italian nun and her bodyguard were murdered in a children's hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia - The nun was shot three times in the back.
An al Qaeda group in Egypt called for the German-born pope, who is 79, to be punished by "strict Islamic Shariah law" for insulting their religion.
An al Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq has vowed war on "worshippers of the cross."
Seven Catholic churches in the Palestinian territories were vandalized this past weekend.
I have had very limited exposure to muslims but the ones that I have met have identified themselves as peaceful and have indicated to me that the violent 'militant' muslims that I see on TV are not the true followers of Allah. It leaves me in a bit of a conundrum as far as who to believe, as I get conflicting accounts of what is actually written in the Qur'an. It seems that the verses which permit violence against unbelievers are preceded by the qualifier that the violence is permissable if it is done in response to an oppressor. It does not seem to go into any great detail about what constitutes oppression worthy of violent reprisal.
These same muslims that I have talked to are also very quick to point out the ruthlessness of the Christian church (Specifically the Catholics) throughout history from the crusades up until now. As an in-law to the Filipino community I have heard many tales of abuse and exploitations of the Filipino people at the hands of the Catholic church. Each story has left me shaking my head and contemplating Mark 8:36 and thinking to myself that even under the authority of the church, these clergy who terrorized the Filipino people could not have been true Christians.
Perhaps then too not all who claim to be muslims or do violence in the name of Allah are truly muslims.
Oh by the way:
"Benedict's main point - and few have noted this - is that the West, unless it recovers a vision of God, cannot engage in a fruitful dialogue with the other great cultures of the world, which have a basic religious conviction about reality. Among these great cultures, of course, is Islam. His entire talk was focused on this point."
"Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit."
This quote led me to think of our society's opulence, how we have become perfectionists who dig through the fruit bins looking for the unblemished specimens while spotted fruit gets moved to the side and ultimately is thrown out. All this goes on in our nation on a daily basis while a part of the larger world starves. To meet our demand and to get our dollars the food growers have responded by increasing the use of pesticides, preservatives and artificial fertilizers (Insert Joni Mitchell lyrics here).
I'm part of that system and most likely you are too. I only bring this up because I have been wracking my brain around finding my own way out of the system, to get my family to the point where we can choose what level we will participate in the economy. We are doing quite well for ourselves but I continue to have the uncomfortable awareness that if prices were to skyrocket without a signifigant change in our income or God forbid there was a downturn in our income due to layoff or illness, we would fold up. Not right away, not even in six months (at current market rates), but savings can only last for a finite period and even that is uncertain if you introduce a scenario where the dollar plummets in value.
The gold standard is worthless if nobody is interested in buying any gold. What carries intrinsic value that would survive a market crash? Corn on the stalk, potatoes in the ground and animals in the field.
There are plenty of blogs out there with a lot of people trying to find their own paths away from dependence on the market based economy. This one, my blog, isn't really one of them. It's pretty much an over glorified cat blog. But nevertheless I will continue to document this attempt of mine to shift my paradigm (In between posting pictures of flowers).
inconsistent, obscure and hebephrenic. That's my promise to you.
PS - That's a really nice service that some poor soul is doing, over at that Thoreau blog. You should really go check it out. I wish that blogging existed back in the days of the founding fathers up through civil war time. I bet Franklin would have cranked out 3-5 posts a day.
While waiting for the coals last night I walked around my house and this is what I saw. Click on photos to enlarge (Open in new windows)
Still have a few minutes to kill.
Snow on the mountain is taking nicely.
Bleeding heart, offering up some late-season blooms.
The planter has grown a beard.
I never knew... That plants can smile.
Meanwhile, in the garage... My collection of retired ice fishing utilities. I used an old tobaggan as a wall hanging and attached the various items that I have collected over the years, including a swedish spoon (That actually was what I used for drilling holes for my first two winters), an old Jon-E handwarmer with vintage fuel can, various jigsticks and an old single-mantle lantern (needs a new generator and pump seal)
My Bike. An old Trek Elance 400 that just turned 20 this year.
The child's bike. Garage sale special, 2 whopping dollars. SCORE!
The wife's bike. Even cheaper: Free from a friend, including the brain bucket.
Space.com put out an article about dark matter this week in which astronomers admit that what we can see with our own eyes makes up only a small portion of the universe.
My favorite part of the article:
A preposterous proposition
The normal matter in the cosmos - atoms that make up stars, planets, air and life - accounts for only a small fraction of what must exist, based on the fact that without an additional source of gravity, galaxies would fly apart and galaxy clusters could not hold together as they do. Nobody knows where all that gravity comes from, so scientists say there must be some invisible stuff out there, which they call dark matter. Its presence is indirectly supported by many observations. Given what's known, this is the makeup of the universe:
* 5 percent normal matter * 25 percent dark matter * 70 percent dark energy
So in a nutshell, 95% of the universe is an invisible, unknowable force that keeps the other 5% of the universe (That's us and the billions of other galaxies) from falling apart.
"..He squealed in at 4lbs 6.7oz with a whopping height of 17 1/4 inches. His Apgar Scores were 9/9 and he has been able to breathe on his own without any assistance. He was transferred from the NICU to the Continuing Care Nursery in just 3 days. We just need him to stay awake long enough to eat so he can gain weight."
Note to all Twin Cities motorists who travel 694: Watch your speed, because the 5-0 are using lasers.
This morning: 78 in a 60, first ticket in nearly 7 years. Unexpected expense, conflict within the household and now my budget for the fall trip is otherwise spoken for, as in there isn't going to be one for me this year.
My first reactions to this my "Oh Crap" moment were guilt and shame, followed up with an anger chaser. Yes, I have been told that we are running out of oil, just as I have been told that the hydrocarbon emissions are wreaking serious havoc on our atmosphere - It's one thing to know these things and quite another to know these things, if you follow. The problem is that these impending crises are treated more as a footnote rather than as a main subject, because the notion of radically changing our materialistic American lifestyle is not a popular topic in most circles (Why, now that's Commie-talk!).
To hear Bush tell us that we are addicted to oil and then not offer any leadership (Much less a tangible plan) for solving the problem is not for our own benefit. It is positioning for himself to be able to say "I told you so" later without having to deal with the problem now. He's protecting his legacy instead of us.
In my adulthood I have journeyed across the American political spectrums, and my passions have ranged from a "Just leave me alone" brand of ignorance to a "Somebody (other than me) should do something" type of caring to "A pox on both your houses" attitude of political withdrawl.
If you think about politics in America long enough you're bound to have an "Oh Crap" moment there too. It's all about popularity. Not a lot of Americans are going to vote for someone who tells them that they need to stop driving, to stop buying junk from overseas and to begin preparing to live a lot more localized sustainable existence. To survive in American politics you need to be a good whistler, because there are a lot of graveyards out there. Or, to paraphrase Richard Dreyfuss from the movie "Jaws," "We are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites us on the ass."
All this talk brings to mind 1 Corinthians 2: "your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God."
I don't know what type of insight I will be able to offer on the subjects of Peak oil and the inevitable decline in American lifestyle that will result from it. Right now I am calmly trying to dispel the knee-jerk reaction of thinking that the sky is going to fall tomorrow, so that when I do write about it I won't sound like a raving lunatic.
For me the most illustrative example I can take from my childhood is when I would find myself on a roller coaster, right before hitting the peak on that first big hill. The point where I would come to my senses and realize that I was moments away from taking a seriously scary-ass plunge down the other side of the hill.
It is a moment of clarity, where you realize that you are totally dependant on a whole slew of people that you don't know - The engineer who designed the coaster, the greasemonkey who takes care of it, the administrator in charge of paying the greasemonkey, et al - The point is, you got yourself into this mess and now you are going to have to ride it out and pray that everybody else has done their jobs.
"America is addicted to oil" -George W. Bush
Who, me?
Pretty much everything I consume is procured by oil, and a startling amount of the crap I buy is made from the stuff. And such is the case with pretty much everyone I know personally. Most people who care to think about such things agree that oil is a finite resource. But if it's going to run out someday, how much do we have left and why isn't that information being talked about or made readily available?
The answer could lay in the notion that the earth, if farmed in a pre-industrial (Read: non-mechanized) capacity, can yield enough crops to feed about a billion people. With modern agribusiness, using mechanization and chemicals, we are straining to feed 6 billion people now, with the population growth showing no signs of slowing. Without trying to sound like a black helicopter lunatic from the fringe, I would submit to the four people who read this blog that there is the makings of a global crisis - If not within my own lifetime at least within my son's. Not talking about a global crisis that could wipe out 5 billion people is probably only partially a lunatic fringe conspiracy. I would say moreover it's not talked about because such an event is unspeakable.
Now my thoughts turn to home, where my heart is. My house is a suburban McMansion (It is quite modest by suburban McMansion standards, but nevertheless a palace compared to a homestead in rural Kentucky). It is heated with gas, depends on electricity for cooking & food storage and is serviced by city water & sewer. What this translates to (On the other side of the hill) is a dwelling that is isolated by great distance from my place of work, completely dependant on the grid. There are no alternatives in terms of heat, water, or waste removal. The real kick in the nuts is that my neighborhood is built on an old sod farm. The builders put about two inches of topsoil down on top of a bed of sand and laid sod. So in effect it is still a sod farm, one with houses. One that is costly in terms of the amount of water needed to keep the grass alive due to the poor water retention of the soil. I only bring this up because as attractive the thought of subsistence farming on my own land in order to augment my food supply, the simple fact is that as it is right now my land could not grow much besides a bumper crop of tumbleweed if it came right down to it.
Oh Crap.
I'll be posting more on this vein in the months to come. I feel as though I have been awakened, to the sound of something rattling around downstairs. I cannot in good conscience go back to sleep without investigating the sound that has brought me out of my dreaming. I sense that it is most likely that I will never go back to sleep again.
I visited my mother's grave last night for the first time since winter. The summer drought had yellowed the new sod. I weeded the crabgrass and the creeping charlie away from the headstone and considered how pleased she would be that I was spending my visit gardening, even in this limited form.
My mother was a simple person. She didn't have much to say about politics, war, crime & punishment, or the multitude of social issues that we face in the dawn of the 21st century. But weeding crabgrass was something that she could really get behind.
I wanted to talk to her but I admit that my own lack of understanding in the way of how this world and the next interact with eachother left me feeling unsure of myself. I began speaking as though I were leaving a message on an answering machine belonging to someone I did not know.
"Just thought I'd stop by," I started, testing the water. It seemed no more ackward than talking to her when she had been alive and unconscious, so I continued. "I know that you're not here, but on the off-chance that God lets you listen in, I thought-"
My disclaimer was stopped cold when by chance I glanced up at the nearby cross. It is actually a bell tower, about a three-story high structure. Perched on the head of the cross was a huge crow, looking down at me. He was holding his wings away from his body in order to regulate his body temperature in the heat of the summer evening. It gave the appearance that he was cupping his wings to his ears in order to hear me better.
I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again and swallowed. The whole scene left me speechless.
After a momentary staredown another crow flew by. My would-be eavesdropper hopped off into the air and flew away with his mate, leaving me at the foot of the cross, to write this down.
It is one thing to read words on a page and know that 2700 years ago a man suffered scorn, ridicule and imprisonment, all at the hands of those he was sent to save, simply for delivering a message. It is quite another to hear his voice brought back from the dead, his anguished and tormented sobs filling the ears of an opulent 21st century audience who could do nothing but squirm uneasily in their seats as the prophet's grieved heart was layed bare before them.
It is one thing to read words on a page and know that God is a jealous God, who will repay the unfaithful with perfect and undiluted justice. It is quite another to hear that righteous anger manifested into an audible sound, even if the delivery method is a mere human voice and only a shadow of the wrathful voice to come.
The Toyota caught a pretty good sized rock across the windshield yesterday - It's in the shop getting fixed today.
It's pretty unnerving when a big truck kicks up a birds egg-sized rock, and you watch it take a long and lazy arc directly toward your face in slow motion.
I'm not ashamed to admit that my hands went up and I ducked a little. Whether or not I screamed like a woman is none of your business.
More tooth shenanigans today. I went in expecting to get fitted for another crown. Instead the dentist old me that there wasn't enough left of the tooth to mount to. Because I need crowns on the two neighbor teeth anyway, she reccomended to pull the tooth and install a bridge.
It's kind of fun sitting in front of the TV with wikipedia and IMDB open. For example how many people know that actor Todd Duffy , who played Brian, Jennifer Aniston's annoying co-worker in Office Space Also did the voice for Scooter Mcnutty on Barney & friends.
The bleeding has mostly stopped but the pain and discomfort are increasing. I'm a little pissed at myself because I wanted to at least make it to 40 with all of my teeth. I'll be 38 ath the end of next month. I didn't expect to celebrate my birthday by incurring large dental bills.
"Don't worry about your life - Everything is going to work out fine."
"Take good care of my grandson."
"The food here is great."
"See you soon."
She looked young and thin, like she did in her wedding pictures. All the age lines were gone from her face, except for her laugh lines, which were profoundly deeper.
When she moved she didn't walk. She ran, like the wind.
Sorry, but people are really getting on my nerves with all of the protesting and complaining about the Da Vinci code. I really wish they would stop worrying about the insult to their 'religious' sensibilities and instead consider a biblical approach in their response.
The Da Vinci code is not a threat, it is an opportunity. If you take the time to understand the main points of the book and learn the refutations, you can not only easily expose the ficticious claims in the book, but more importantly use the book as an opportunity to share your faith (1 Peter 3:15).
If the Da Vinci code causes 1 million lukewarm Christians to fall away from the faith but gains the Lord even one hot one, God will consider that a bargain. (Revelation 3:15-16)
Who's Faith will be shaken by the Da Vinci code? People who profess to be Christians but have not taken God's message to heart. The bible says that only a fool's faith can be 'shaken':
Matthew 7:24-27 "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.
But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."
Who will be turned off from Christianity because of the Da Vinci code? People who do not want to consider Christ to begin with:
John 10:25-30: Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me,
but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand.
I and the Father are one."
The Author of the universe cannot be thwarted by an author of lies.
Psalm 33:10-11: The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.
Job 5:12-13: He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success.
He catches the wise in their craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are swept away.
So don't worry about the Da Vinci Code. Instead consider why there is a market for it, and that God allowed for it to be written, for all things, even acts of rebellion, can NEVER decrease but only increase His Glory. Consider this and look for opportunities to join God in his work. (John 5:19)
I guess I am a king now. I had a crown put in this morning, after limping around on a temporary molar for the past month. I'm still not ready to resume eating taffy or anything; something feels a little weird about the crown. It's as if it's a little too high in one spot. It seems to clear OK if my jaw is lined up straight but if I close my mouth with my jaw skruntched over to the left it bottoms out before the rest of my teeth come together.
That's hardly the end of my teeth problems. I'll have so many crowns by the time the dentist is done with me that they will have to name me emperor.
There is a busy road near my house that cuts through a wetland, and at 7 in the morning it is congested with me and all of my neighbors from the surrounding developments as we race from our homes to our workplaces. The posted speed is 50, which means that everyone goes about 65.
This morning I was in the left lane when the car in front of me came to an abrupt halt. I had to stand on my brakes to avoid hitting him - I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach as I heard the screeching brakes behind me and I waited for the impact. It never came, because thankfully the drivers behind me were alert. The car in front of me slowly started rolling forward, and I saw that he had come to a stop on top of a group of ducklings. The mother hopped up on the median and turned back to look at her brood. It was too dangerous for me to even think about staying stopped in the road, or getting out to check for survivors. I too rolled forward, over the crumpled bodies of her young.
It doesn't take a lot to change your entire perspective for the day. As I continued on to the babysitter I looked over my shoulder at my own 'duckling,' in his carseat, so helpless and at the mercy of his parents. I voiced a prayer of thanks that we were spared from an accident.
That hen led her ducklings into a slaughter because she could not understand the danger that she was walking them into. Thankfully for me there is a higher wisdom to lean on in my own life, and the undertakings that come with it. I just need to remind myself daily to lean on that wisdom, rather than my own understandings. I prayed for myself and my wife for more wisdom & foresight, so that our son might never have to bear the consequences of a lapse in our judgement in such a terrible fashion as those ducklings had.
It seems to be a little perverse to suggest that the deaths of those baby mallards achieved some sort of meaning because some fat white suburbanite who played an active role in their demise was reminded to put his trust in God. But then again, are there many things more perverse than a meaningless death?
My 2 1/2 year old placed his first telephone call today.
Mid-morning he broke away from the baby sitter long enough to get a hold of her telephone and succcesfully manipulate the redial and (As luck would have it) placed a call to his mother's cell phone. As I understand it the call went something like this:
Wife: "Hello?" Child: "Hello?" Child: "Hi, mommy!" Wife: "Hi, child! How are you?" Child: "I good anyou?" Wife: "I'm good too, thank you very much!" Child: "youwelcome!"
The conversation went on to include recitation of name, singing of "Row, row, your boat" and other assorted automated exchanges that we practice.
I don't know when I started using the telephone but I'm pretty sure it was sometime after I turned three.
By the way this is my first post using our new laptop. Now we are mobile!
"Maligayang Bati Sa Iyong Kaarawan" (Happy Birthday) to Gonzalo ("Papa") Olojan Sr., who is 78 years young today. Actually in his Cebuano dialect it would be "Maayong pagsaulog sa adlaw nga natawhan."
Papa was born in 1928 on the Philipine island of Leyte. He was twelve years old when the Japanese invaded his country. Like so many of his generation, he witnessed firsthand the brutality that was inflicted on his fellow countrymen during the war. He witnessed some of the battles between Japanese and American forces on and around Leyte during the liberation.
As he grew into a man he became an accomplished pastor in the PI (Philipine Islands) and in his prime had a very successful radio broadcast that went out each day over the lunch hour to reach workers who hungered for spiritual food.
In 1991 he came to Minnesota along with his wife Anita ("Mama") and helped to found the Filipino-American Christian Church. To this day he serves there as pastor emetrius.
Papa & Mama have earned their affectionate titles by acting as surrogate parents for so many of the Filipino transplants in the greater Minnesota community. Indeed, it was Papa who walked my beautiful wife down the aisle when her parents were unable to make it to the U.S. to attend our american wedding. Papa and Mama both have taken it upon themselves to act as my son's maternal grandparents in the absence of my wife's parents, earning themselves the additional titles of "Lolo" and "Lola" respectively.
Papa is an accomplished musician, talented in the guitar, Bandurria, Laud, piano, trumpet and the accordian. There isn't an instrument that the man couldn't learn how to play.
Papa has touched the hearts of countless people with his gentle demeanor forged with a firm and convicted faith in the Lord, and he never tires of spreading the Gospel or doing the Lord's work.
So here is my birthday wishes to Papa Olojan, may the Lord bless you with many more years!
The other night I dreamed that I was sentenced to die by execution. I was sitting in the most bizarre prison cell, bizarre in the sense that there were no walls or doors, just four posts and a ceiling. It reminded me of pallet racking in a warehouse.
As my sentence was read to me (I missed the part about what crime I had committed), I learned that I was to be put to death by injection of a drug that would sit in my body dormant until I fell asleep, at which point it would activate and I would die peacefully.
I walked out of my cell and was greeted by a doctor who stuck a syringe in my neck and injected the drug. I was released from prison to enjoy my last day on planet earth.
I went to my job, where oddly enough I was still employed despite my stint in prison. I talked to my clients and attempted to schedule meetings, conference calls and launch dates. It was all pointless because I was going to be dead tomorrow. There was nothing I could do for them so I left work.
Next I found myself in a church meeting, where we were discussing budget items, missions funding and the building program. Again I found there to be little I could do, because in a few hours I was going to be dead.
I went home to my family, kissed and hugged both my wife and child. I felt a dread, as I realized that I should be doing something for my son, writing him a letter or making a video, so that he would have something to remember me by, something to know me by when he was older.
That evening I cooked my last meal - hamburgers on the grill. The air was moist and warm on my face - It was summer, and it had just rained. I closed my eyes and I could hear the sizzle of the meat, the droning of crickets, some kids playing ball down the block.
I found myself walking, down a sidewalk with tall brick buildings rising up on either side of me. To my left, I noticed a narrow opening, through which I could see a lush green courtyard. I entered the courtyard and took delight in the majestically perfect grass, the vivid flowers and the well-manicured trees. Suddenly the entire space was filled with a bright light as the sun broke through the clouds.
I continued to admire the beauty of the plants and the trees, now bathed in the golden light of the setting sun. I turned toward the sun and could see a brilliant rainbow, crossing over the sun like an inquisitive eyebrow.
I stood there in that lush green courtyard for the longest time, marveling at the work of God's hand. And I did not fear the coming night.
(This is an expanded version of the Eulogy that I delivered a week ago today.)
The Original North Dakota farm girl You can take the girl off the farm, but you cannot take the farm out of the girl.
Eileen was probably the original North Dakota farm girl. Born in 1928, she was a child of the depression and knew what it meant to live simply and be content with what she had. She completed an eighth grade education and then left school work on the family farm full time. Because of this upbringing she always carried herself with an honest and down-to-earth demeanor, forged with a hard work ethic. She loved plants and growing things. Even after she moved to the city she maintained a large vegetable garden and planted flowers everywhere she could.
She was a WIFE This North Dakota farm girl first met her husband-to-be in a field behind an M&H gas station, just after he had finished working on a tractor. Covered head to toe in grease Vernon hardly looked like the man of her dreams. They met again in Breckenridge. Eileen had caught a ride with her sister and watched a movie. She was killing time in the "Beer Blue Garden" waiting for her ride home when in walked that same brash little grease monkey. He made a beeline to her booth and tried to sit across from her. She put her foot up and blocked his advance. Always a practical woman, she only let him sit down next to her after she saw another fellow who she wanted to talk to even less start to make eyes at her. Their first real date came the following Saturday, when Vernon took Eileen to a dime store, bought her a rod & reel and took her fishing. Being ever the romantic sort he is, dad had also invited along his Uncle Henry. It must have been quite an outing, because three months later they were married.
Mom always loved being married to dad, and no piece of jewelry that she owned made her prouder than her wedding band. Last year at the nursing home she lost her wedding band and was very upset about it. This past Christmas my dad gave her a new one while she was in the hospital. Her trembling hands couldn't open the package and dad had to help her. As he guided the ring on to her finger he asked her if she would marry him again, "because the first time was so much fun." Even though she could not speak, the wonderful thing about true love is that in such times words are not needed. She knodded and accepted his proposal without a word. That ring became her one remaining peacock feather, which she strutted proudly for anyone who came through the doors of her room.
The three stones on the ring symbolize past, present and future.
She was a MOTHER Like most North Dakota farm girls who lived through the depression, it's no real secret that my mother was a little bit of a packrat. Unused sheet sets from the 70's in her bedroom, shopping bags full of magazines from the 80's under the dining room table and cans of festal pumpkin pie filling dating back to the Eisenhower administration in the basement - This woman had it all. Yet for all of the stuff that she accumulated in her house, never once was there any doubt that to her the important things in life were not things. Her real treasure was her children. Time after time she would tell me, "I just love it when I have all six of my kids together!" This woman may have stockpiled Tupperware in her basement, but she surely stockpiled love in her heart. We had years and years of joyful family gatherings. If you examine the family pictures, you will see that Eileen loved a good laugh. Her smiles were the largest and her laughs were the loudest when all of us were together.
Part of her North Dakota farm girl wisdom was that not everyone that you love gets to grow old and sometimes you lose people before you are ready. In 1965 our house in Fridley was devastated by a tornado. It happened 3 years before I was born and still the stories from that event are so powerful that when I was younger and I heard them I could see the scenes so vividly that I actually thought that somehow I had been there. One particular story that stands out is that for a short period of time Cheryl was lost to us - She had been visiting a friend and somehow ended up at a church where my parents eventually found her. Every time my mother would tell that story you could see her emotions seeping out around the edges, and it was as if she had lost and then found her little girl all over again. When I first started reading the bible and read the story of the prodigal son, the father's reaction of joy and humility made perfect sense to me, because I had already seen it in practice.
If there was any wisdom, any knowledge that I could presume to speak to you on my mother's behalf, it would be this: Tell each other that you love each other now. Don't wait another day to tell someone how you feel about them. Tomorrow might not ever come, and "Someday" is not a day of the week. We are all like morning dew drops, that are burned away by the sun. Don't cheat the people you love out of your tender feelings by burying them behind a gruff exterior. The opportunity may never come again. Nor should you squander it on pride or grudges that cause division among you. Set those things aside and focus on the things in life that really matter.
(There were several readings offered by my brothers and sisters that I won't post here out of respect for their privacy.)
She was a GRANDMOTHER If us kids are mom's crown, then her grandchildren and great-grandchildren are her crown jewels. These are the children that she was able to spoil without worrying about having to change them or put them to bed, although many times she did. She loved to watch the little ones grow and develop.
(There were several readings offered by the granddaughters that I won't post here out of respect for their privacy.)
I would like to conclude this eulogy by saying that in addition to all else, during her lifetime Eileen's North Dakota farm girl wisdom also afforded her a faith in God. She confessed with her mouth that "Jesus is Lord," and believed in her heart that God raised him from the dead, and as such was saved. She trusted in him and was never put to shame, for "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
Eileen is no longer a North Dakota farm girl, because she was only passing through this world. She is now in her permanent home, in Heaven. Revelation chapter 21 describes Heaven as being a new city, made from pure gold. Something inside me thinks that my mother passed by those streets of gold to instead walk in a beautiful garden with the Lord.
Because you can take the girl off the farm, but you cannot take the farm out of the girl.
A warm thanks to everyone who reached out to our family during the visitation and funeral last week.
This week we find ourselves trying to get back to "Normal" -- Whatever that means.
I for one have lost a wise and trusted advisor and in that much things will never be the same again.
It was overwhelming to see how many lives my mother has touched. I am grateful to all of you for making a difference in Eileen's life as well as my own.
For nations vague as weed, For nomads among stones, Small-statured cross-faced tribes And cobble-close families In mill-towns on dark mornings Life is slow dying.
So are their seperate ways Of building, benediction, Measuring love and money Ways of slow dying. The day spent hunting pig Or holding a garden-party,
Hours giving evidence Or birth, advance On death equally slowly. And saying so to some Means nothing; others it leaves Nothing to be said.
I visited Mom last night. The breathing tube is back in her mouth, not a tracheostomy like I was originally told. She was pretty alert but obviously couldn't talk. That's OK because I talked for both of us. There were some things that I needed to tell her, the sort of things that I would kick myself over forever if tomorrow came and she were gone. You'd be surprised how much can be communicated through eye contact and a squeeze of the hand. Even though she is frail now, the bond between mother and child is strong. I think that's probably one of the greatest gifts that having a child of my own has given me. Watching my son and my wife together has given me better perspective on the relationship with my own mother. Comfort does not come from spoken words. It comes from the other hand squeezing back. It comes from the touch of a hand on a troubled brow. It comes from the other's eyes looking back and wordlessly saying, "Yes, after all these years you and I are still in this thing together."
I told her how much I admired her strength and how I regretted not telling her more often about what a good job she did of raising me and my five siblings.
I told her about my earliest memories, of spending afternoons out in the boat watching her and dad fish when I was not much more than a baby, sitting in the bottom of the boat wrapped up in indian blankets with my books and my toy cars.
I told her what happy memories those were and how I remember the loving look on her face as she would tend to me. I told her what a blessing it was to have known for my entire life that I am loved, and I thanked her for giving that love to me.
I told her that her love lives on in how I am raising my own child because I learned from the best, and that if I do half as good a job as she did my son will turn out just fine.
Before I left I prayed with her as she held my hand and listened. I thanked God that no matter what His will is in the matter of my mother's health that a day will come when we will all be reunited and will be together forever in His grace. She knodded and squeezed my hand to voice her affirmations.
It felt good to tell her some of those things that only words can express. But it felt better knowing that the things that words can never express are right there in the open, and that in that sense at least there is nothing left unsaid between us, nothing to regret later.
Well it looks like the predicted winter weather is about as serious and memorable as a Viking superbowl run. There's about an inch of crust on the ground here. It'll be a bear to drive on in the morning but not even worth shoveling. It will be gone by Saturday.
It's true that I love the snow and the cold weather even more so than the average Minnesotan. This never fails to mystify my Filipino friends and relatives, who left their island paradise to come here and brave the Minnesota winters for the purpose of sharing in this great prosperity that we Americans take for granted. Wearing your clothes in layers, warming up your car in the morning, keeping a survival kit in your trunk, all these things are alien concepts to my compatriots. Winter to them seems to be something to be endured, rather than enjoyed.
But not me. I have always loved winter, always embraced the cold. The fact of the matter is that in the winter of 1994 I actually donated plasma to raise up the $50 I needed to purchase a snowshoe kit. I was terribly broke in those days and I was desperate to get my hands on a pair of snowshoes. Every other day for a few weeks I would go to the plasma center on the East bank of the U of M campus, Near the Arbys and the Oriental garden resteraunt, and wait with the drunks and the other poor students to sell my plasma.
How it works is that they run a needle into a big vein on your arm and they hook you up to a machine. The machine takes your blood, seperates the blood cells from the plasma, sticks the cells into some solution and pumps it back into your arm. It hurts like a bitch when they reverse that flow, let me tell you. My original plan was to earn enough money to buy a set of snowshoes and fish flasher. To this day I have still to realize the dream of winter lake trout fishing & camping in the BWCA. I was really hot for the idea at the time but my enthusiasm for this money making scheme waned after an incident where they couldn't hit my vein straight on with the needle but instead nicked it and I ended up with a large & nasty-looking splotch of blood under my skin from my bicep t about midway down my forearm. I had enough bread to buy the "Build your own" snowshoe kit so I stopped my visits to the plasma clinic and tabled the idea of getting the fish flasher.
It takes several cycles to get the plasma out of you. The blood comes out, the cells and the saline go back in. Repeat. I would guess that you are on the table for about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. Your options are pretty much to read, strike up a conversation with the transient on the table next to you, or watch the movies that they so graciously provide on televisions suspended from the ceiling.
The second to last time I was in there (The last time they got a good harvest from me) They showed "The Bodyguard." I remember that I was reading Love in the time of Cholera and did not pay attention to the video at all, yet somehow the movie must have permeated my brain, because that night when I slept I dreamt that Whitney Houston and I were working together as prison guards. She was guarding the chicks, I was guarding the dudes. (It must have been some sort of Co-ed prison) While I was watching my group out in the yard one of them shivved me. Whitney stayed with me until the ambulance arrived and we fell in love as a result of this simple act of devotion. We went on to get married, buy a house, raise kids, etc. It was pretty messed up. It was one of those dreams where it seems like a really long time has passed, and when you finally wake up you are disoriented because only a night has gone by. The dream has never recurred, and Whitney has never crossed over into my dreams again since. I was never much of a Whitney Houston fan to begin with so why I picked her for the dream never really made sense to me, but I will tell you this: Even though we were only together for a few hours, we loved a lifetime's worth. Dude! Isn't that a quote from the Terminator?
That winter I ended up spending a weekend at my sister's cabin instead of going to the BWCA. Although I did not winter camp or fish for lake trout I did have the chance to put my snowshoes to work. I remember resting by the warmth of the woodstove and following to the Olympics at Lillehammer. It was a good dry run for the winter trip to Eagle Mountain that I took in 2000.
I wish for one more warm day so that I can get a coat of varnish on those snowshoes. I plan on getting some miles out of them again this year. It would be a shame to let them go unused, seeing how I paid for them with blood money.
It sounds like we have a little winter weather headed our way. I took the precaution tonight to get the sandbags into the back of the truck and move it away from the garage wall so that we can all get in easy tomorrow. Space is such a premium in the garage that I usually park it up against the wall, so that we have more room to get in & out of the small car. But tomorrow we will take the truck, just to be safe. It's not that I think that there will be enough snow that we will be at risk of being stuck. Nope, I pretty much just want to surround my family with as much metal as possible when the weather is crappy and we need to drive somewhere. All my other winter stuff is at the ready, too. Coat & gloves, snow shovel, extra boots in the truck, etc. Inside our shelves are full and the fridge is stocked. This isn't preparation due to predicted weather but rather because Sundays are grocery day and we just stocked up for the week. My assessment of my family is that we are hunkered down and ready for whatever nature decides to throw at us.
While I was cooking dinner tonight I monitored a documentary on PBS about WW2 Conscientius Objectors. While I don't have a specific opinion to weigh in on that topic it did get me to thinking about the peculiar window in US history that my life has passed through. Both my Father and my Grandfather were drafted to fight in the world wars. My two older brothers served in the military but were young enough that they just missed Viet Nam. Had I chosen to enlist I would have ended up in the first Gulf war. But I didn't. Our country has not faced a serious threat since the second world war and I never saw the need to volunteer unless the country was threatened.
But as I get older I am finding that the perils that our country faces in modern times are not like those of 60 years ago. We seem to be imploding from within - We're drunk on the oil and other goods that we import. We are gobbling up our resources and outsourcing our jobs. We have restructured our families into dual income entities, yet are mystified as to why the traditional family structure is failing. As a country (Not me personally) we silently endorse the genocide of unborn children as a means to keep the population in check. Yet at the same time we wonder why there are children out there who have so little regard for human life that they are killing themselves and each other.
Before I go to bed at night I like to watch my son sleep. I take a few minutes out of my night and stand over his bed and I study his face, listen to his breathing, and tuck his blanket. I think about what kind of a world I am leaving him and I have to honestly say that I am not comfortable with the thought. There is still a lot of beauty and majesty in it but there is also a lot of ugliness and danger in it as well. I think about how I have never had to go to war, but someday he might, because somehow I failed to act in the here and now. Most nights I pray silently over him, not just for him and what type of man he might become, but also for me and his mother. I pray for what type of parents we will be and for the foundation we will give him to build his life on.
It's like getting ready for a storm that you don't know when it will hit or how bad it will be.
Words mean little in the north country. When hunting grouse, an unnecessary word can cost you a shot. It was Sunday, almost noon, almost the end of our weekend excursion. We advanced up a little road with caution, careful to make as little noise as possible. For a brief moment in time we had been able to tune out the outside world. We had replaced the mundane daily tasks of our lives with the excitement of keeping a canoe upright and the serenity of gazing at a distant shoreline. We had challenged our senses to identify shapes in the underbrush and to feel a tap on the line. We had experienced the adrenal rush of flushed birds and the tranquil peace of laying on our backs and gazing at the night sky. We had slept on the frosty ground, drank hot black coffee from tin cups, cooked meat over an open fire, used our compasses in real life situations and howled at the moon. None of these things necessarily in that order, of course. But now it was Sunday, and each man was starting to feel the outside world tugging him back. Each of us had lives that awaited our return: Household chores, Monday morning blues and joyful reunions with wives and children.
Q: So what of this fatal moment in a trip, when our inner mountain men must relinquish their hold on us?
A: We faced the moment as neither a mountain man nor a civilized man but rather as some sort of hybrid.
Such were my thoughts as I made my way up that twisting, claustrophobic little road with my two best friends flanking me. We encountered a set of gateposts and stopped to consult our maps. We advanced into unposted private land. Ahead was a clearing and some blue. The road emptied out onto a undeveloped lot that according to our map was the only access point to a small lake. Respectfully we lowered our guns and made our way to the shoreline. We did this not as hunters but rather as pilgrims, for in front of us was a vision, of Heaven meeting the earth.
A sheltered little bay reflected the sky and the fall colors. The campsite behind me had probably been there for a thousand years, with different men calling it home. And they would have been crazy not to. The blustery wind that had harassed us on Fourmile lake was reduced to a shocked gasp, as though we had stumbled across one of the wood's secrets. The wind weaved through the pines and the stubborn Birches like a busybody at a party, shushing us to secrecy. I closed my eyes and felt the clean air on my face and inhaled the scent of the woods. They smelled sweeter here than anyplace else I had been all weekend. As I entranced myself with the tranquilizing colors of the lake I felt my worries and troubes slide off to one side like butter in a hot skillet. Unencumbered, I reveled in the moment. My inner mountain man had been turned loose for a little longer.
We had stumbled across a site that was the quintessential wilderness to us, a place where earth and sky meet water, where a man and a campfire make a welcome part of an elemental foursome. I turned away with a certain degree of melancholy, because allthough I had felt the exhiliration of discovering this beautiful and unique listening point I also felt a certain amount of guilt, knowing that I had trespassed in order to make that discovery. Our only judge and jury that day were the trees, and they were not returning a verdict to us. Left to interpret my own case I would like to think that the end justified the means, as long as I don't repeat the crime. But I let myself off with a warning. Even though I know that this place exists I do not feel as though I can go back, and that is perhaps the most bitter punishment of all.
As we made our way back to the truck we maintained our silence. We weren't hunting now and could have spoken at any moment. But each step away from that stunning vista was another step closer to our exile from paradise - back to civilization and our 'normal' lives. In an hour we would be eating our last lunch as we broke camp. In two we would be creeping along the edge of Superior, returning to our normal lives like a slumbering child returns from his dreams.
Summer is wizzing by at breakneck speed. I have not gotten out fishing again and August is halfway over. I spent part of yesterday afternoon visiting with mom at the hospital. There are rumors that she may have recovered to the point where she can be placed in a nursing home. It's hard to imagine that as an improvement on anyone's circumstances but in her case it is. The isolation and the amount of time she is spending alone is making her fuzzy around the edges, in a mental sense. I helped to sharpen her up by quizzing her on her sister's family. Who married who, who had what kids, which ones went to jail for writing bad checks, etc.
Well, I didn't ask about that last part, she just offered it up. The message is loud and clear to me that every day we have this woman around is a gift. She is not going to be able to answer these questions later, they need to be asked now, today. I have always been a bit of a genealogy buff, but this latest onset has come with a greater sense of urgency. The clock is ticking. And really there is no better time than when she is laid up with nothing to do. For a couple hours yesterday my mother had some purpose and was able to feel useful, which is something that she has not been able to do for quite some time.
I didn't get all the answers I wanted. There was a lot of grey area, but then again many of the facts I can get from my sisters. The point was to hear it from the horse's mouth. It is sad that the American cultural norm is to stick our elderly into storage, with little or no real mental stimulation. The mind dies off first, and the body lingers on like an unwelcome guest. I married into a culture that reveres their elderly and looks to them for wisdom and guidance. I get so caught up in my day to day life that more often than not I find myself more an American than the 'Filipino with a skin condition' that I boast of being. When I think of how much time I have let slip by, how many unanswered questions there are that I would like to ask my parents, I feel ashamed.
I thanked her for sharing and I promised to visit her again soon.
I remember a time in my life when July was the funnest month of the year. This month has been anything but. My mom is still laid up in the hospital. At work I have several projects coming due at the same time. At home I have doors that won't latch and a steady stream of water coming out of the bottom of my furnace due to some central-air problem. And last friday the fuel pump on my truck went out, preventing me from taking a personal day on saturday to go fishing. It almost sounds like a country song of some kind. If my dog up and died on me I would be all set.
Then I watched a PBS documentary on Beslan this evening. There are many words that can describe the horror and the anguish that those families experienced last September, but I will not go into them here because I feel that by and large they have already been spoken and really it is not my place to weigh in when the people themselves did so very well. As a parent I was more focused on the faces, the voices and even the physical environment of the town of Beslan itself. I saw hard-working people, thin but not malnourished, living in a concrete and all-right angles sort of working class town. No sign of the flabby opulence that we Americans enshroud ourselves with.
If the 9/11 attacks could be summarized as an attack upon America's way of life, then Beslan could be summarized as an attack on the Russian people themselves. The men, women and children who were brutally murdered, the families which were shattered, all of these people were the salt of the earth, as far away from the cause of the Chechnyan conflict as you could ever hope to get. And my heart went out to them, because they were me, their children the same as my own child, just as innocent, just as precious, their lives just as valuable.
In short my viewing experience led to a paradigm shift for me, in terms of my perspective: My mom is getting first-rate health care. I have a secure job at a company with more work than it can handle. I own a home that can be cooled on my whim. In my household we not only own two vehicles so that we are never really stranded if one breaks down, but we also own them free and clear.
I don't use drugs anymore. I watch documentaries. There are more similarities between the two than I would care to admit. We could agrue back and forth regarding self-induced enlightenment and it wouldn't change the fact that I spent a good portion of this evening on my butt in the house, instead of outside enjoying the glorius summer evening with my family. That's a choice that I made and the more that I think about it the more it bugs me that I didn't even really think about it before I made it. I just went with the flow, which in turn washed me up on the couch.
The child is now at the age where he is starting to store long-term memories - More impressions and feelings at this point of course, but then again these earliest impressions are the foundations for how we develop into thinking and feeling people. It seems readily apparent to me that I would much rather have his mental imagery of me to be that of a gentle giant, looking down at him from a sunny blue sky, framed by large cumulus clouds. Not a distracted fixture in the living room, entranced by the incessant drone of the history channel or the like.
I'm probably being harder on myself than I need to be, but I am having a moment of clarity that I would like to carry over into the choices that I make tomorrow and beyond. I want to remember this feeling and carry it into my decision making process, and I resolve to get my body into motion
A rare weekend post. This afternoon I showed up early at church for P&W rehearsal. Actually I was right on the money at 3:00 but I forgot to take 'Filipino time' into account and went off to kill a half hour before my bandmates arrived.
I ended up at an estate sale up the street from the church, where I had been lured in by the sight of a 14' alumacraft fishing boat on a trailer. As it turns out that was about the most alluring thing to be found. There were a few power tools but they were borderline antique and genuinely frightening in the condition of their cords - mummified in electrician's tape, no original plugs.
All of the furniture and gadgetry was well-worn and not of any real value. That is to say there were no real treasures to be found there. The purpose of the sale was just the transfer of junk from one person to the next, the distillation of a lifetime's accumulation of crap. Whoever owned all of this stuff was either dead or as good as gone. Either way their stuff was on the block and it was runing out the door in 1 and 5 dollar increments.
I went out back and made my way to the tool shed. There was a nice lawn boy mower in there but there was no price on it. On my way back I looked the yard over - Overgrown and disrepair. Everything pointed to grandma in the nursing home or grandpa buried about three weeks ago. I'll never know the story behind all of that junk because I left without asking.
On my way down the driveway I saw the last thing which really drove it all home: A row of four suitcases, standing at meek attention, waiting for new owners. Whoever lived in this house was long gone, and wherever they went they didn't need their luggage. Death is that big trip we all have booked; and when we go we will all be travelling light.
I went back to the church and jammed with my friends. As we played my mind moved away from morbid thoughts as the music moved through us. Later I went outside and basked in the warmth of the sun. I closed my eyes and listened to the drone of insects and inhaled the sweet aroma of purple coneflowers. Life may be a finite thing, but it is nothing short of glorius.
A bad work environment is like a captivity narrative, where the workplace is represented by the prison and the boss by the tyrannical warden. Except in this prison there are no bars on the windows and the cells have no doors. What keeps us inside? Our own motives - We need the money to pay for all of our stuff, we need the experience, we need to advance our career, etc. Two things to note here - We keep ourselves locked up, and everyone's motives are a little different than that of their colleagues.
My world war 2 generation parents taught me that you get yourself a job, you stick with it for 30 or 40 years and then you retire. The ongoing trend in today's society is to bounce from job to job, looking for that greener pasture. While it does make sense to me that one should transfer to a nicer prison whenever a cell becomes available, it seems to me that a large portion of the restlessness and unhappiness of my generation can be attributed to the fact that no matter what prison we serve our time in, we drag those bars along with us. The intensification of materialism has made it difficult to find jobs that compensate enough to pay for all of the stuff that we want.
I'm not harping against materialism, because I like stuff as much as anyone, and I'm always interested in accumulating more. But the next time that you find yourself complaining about your job, ask yourself this:
Does the problem really lie with your job, or does it lie with the things that keep you at your job?
The child and I played last night, one of our favorite games is for me to cover up with a blanket and to crawl around in the living room on all fours while he jumps on top of me. I feign injury and begin to crawl on my belly, still under the blanket. At this point he sits on the blanket and gets towed around, giggling his head off.
He's big enough now that I can let him ride on my shoulders without worrying about him falling off - A healthy respect for gravity is a good indicator for maturity.
I called home shortly before lunchtime and it sounds like the child is well on the mend. His rash (Reacted to antibiotics) is clearing, he is in good spirits and does not have a fever. This is all a very positive change from Monday, when he looked like a pissed off 102 degree strawberry.
Anyway I wanted to get some of this down because I have been failing to chronicle the child's existence and here he is over two years old. I'll never know what I was like as a two-year old, and I will certainly never know what it was like for my dad to be a 37-year old. The files are burned, the tapes are erased, the neighbors moved out with no forwarding address.
Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? All good questions. I may never know all the answers but I intend to kill some trees in the attempt.
I have been trying to define my current emotion and I cannot do it. Concerned for my mother? Yes, even worried. But at her age and at this point in her life I know that her recovery depends on both her will and God's will, far more than the army of nurses and Doctors that are tending to her. Does that comfort me, or put me at ease? Not really. Firstly I don't know about mom. I get the feeling that she has about had it and is ready for the next step. I suspect that she felt like her number was up back in '89 when she beat breast cancer. 'Beat.' Ask anybody who has survived breast cancer (Specifically via mastectomy) and you'll know that you don't really 'beat' breast cancer. Even if they get all the cancer, once those lymph nodes are gone your life changes forever. Mom has had a good life and has been pretty much able to do whatever she wanted for most of it. But now with thetracheostomy it is like the curtain has been pulled back and everyone can see the remainder of her life laid out for her. Assisted living at best, quite possibly a nursing home. But that's assuming that she makes it through the pneumonia. But that's up to God. And mom.
Mom came out of surgery OK yesterday. She now has a tube that goes directly into her windpipe through the front of her throat. What I didn't understand before was due to ignorance and lack of observation. The woman's mouth was open for 10 straight days with a friggin tube going down into her windpipe - Some pretty uncomfortable stuff. When I saw her after the surgery I could see inside her mouth. The whole thing looked like one big wound. One of her teeth broke in the ordeal so there was talk of bringing in an oral surgeon to make sure that she doesn't have any infected teeth. Anyway she is resting today, still heavily sedated.
On top of all that I replaced the water pump on my truck yesterday. GM made it look deceptively easy - Just remove the cowl and the fan and you're home free -- Except that they made the hoses a real bitch by sticking them real close together. Plus the manifolds are obscured by the mounting brackets for the alternator and the air conditioner. I had to clean them off using a mirror. The whole job was so messy that I couldn't really tell if my work was leaky or if I was simply dripping some of the antifreeze that got everywhere while I was doing the job. This is pretty much why I never go into details when the wife asks me how my day went.
Speaking of the wife, she has a huge project launching at work and will be working late tonight, which means that the child and I will be bachelors.
I skipped sit ups again last night. We got a DSL at home and I shunned physical activity for pimping out my information superhighway ride. I got to bed around the same time as normal, and inside sources say that I tossed and turned a lot.
The child is sick. Ear infections, both ears. He's on antibiotics and not a happy camper. He has been on oral antibiotics, which haven't been helping. He was at the pediatrician today - he got a shot and a prescription for some ear drops. We are going back again tomorrow.
It's a beautiful day so I'm leaving work shortly to enjoy the sunshine on my drive home. When I get there I will have a sick boy on my hands but at least after he goes to sleep I will have lightning speed internet access. Have a great weekend.
I noticed an improvement last night. I still had to walk when my heart reached trip hammer status, but what I noticed was that the acceleration from resting to trip hammer was more gradual. My legs are still sensitive to the trauma when I run, so I am still using the fast/slow cycle that I described a couple of days ago. That seems to have paid off as well, as overall my legs feel pretty decent today.
I was lazy last night, didn't do my sit ups. Tonight I will run again.
I have been studying up on the wear of my shoes and see that I am an underpronator.
According to what I have read, how your feet feel and how you walk on them has a lot to do with how the rest of you feels. I am going to set up a meeting with a podiatrist and have my feet looked at.
Things are still coming slowly. I have slow down to walk during my runs and my shins are sore the next day. I have reverted back to a strategy that got me through 7th grade cross Country- I pick a landmark and run until I reach it. Then I pick out another landmark and continue walking until I reach it and then start running again and repeat the cycle. It's probably not a pretty sight but what it does allow me to do is keep moving and keep my heart rate up there without bursting the sucker out of my chest. Also it allows me to exceed my comfort level with my legs slowly instead of one big cataclysmic sprint which ends in me vowing to never try this again.
Until I get into better shape I'll just have to stick with it and do what I can.
I have taken to checking my pulse in the morning at work. I didn't run last night but will tonight. Also now that I don't spend the next day feeling like I was kicked in the ribs, I am also going to increase my situp count.
I am not going to weigh in on the whole Schiavo deal because most people already have their opinion on the whole thing. One fat white guy's opinion isn't going to make much of a difference. But there is one thing that sticks in my craw and that is the notion that death by dehydration and starvation could possibly be considered a "calm, peaceful and gentle death." Life means different things to different people. Whether or not you view life as a gift from God has a lot to do with how willing you are to throw it away. Don't hold your breath waiting for the Pope's feeding tube to be removed any time soon.
Tonight I learned that one of my former Cub Foods colleagues committed suicide back in February. He was 41 years old, a husband, a father of two, with both parents still alive. I hadn't seen or heard from him in years and obviously have no idea what could have been so wrong that he would have killed himself. And it's not something that I want to understand. Life is just too good right now to even imagine wanting to end it prematurely.
As I spent my spare moments this past winter poking at my flabby white belly, the realization slowly dawned on me that I am carrying around my waist roughly the same weight and bulk as my two year old son. I set two goals for myself and they are simple ones: Fit into my 2002 clothing by spring and fit into my 2000 clothing by fall. I have actually been employing my methods for a few weeks already- I completely stopped drinking pop and started carrying around a bottle of water wherever I go. For treats I will drink green tea or coffee. Also I have seriously cut back on sweets. I have cut back my starch intake (No easy task when you are married to a filipina who serves rice with everything, and most importantly I started excercising. I do situps at night before bed and tonight for the first time in ages I went jogging. As I anticipated, it was quite an unpleasant experience. I irritated portions of my lungs that I forgot that I even had. My legs don't feel that bad all things considered. But then again this first time out I only went .5 miles and had to stop three times. For those of you who are fit & trim and just don't get it, try strapping a 40 pound bag of salt pellets around your waist and then running around the block.
Well I am off to bed now, there's still one more workday yet this week. I imagine by the time I wake up all the joints in my legs will feel like they are constructed of broken glass.
I'm glad that I'm writing like this but man, I gotta tell you that there is a lot in my memory banks and I just don't know how to write it down into any context. I am a cornucopia of stories that contain no ascertainable point. Neither concrete starting points nor tangible endings. It isn't really that I don't have anything to write about. It's just that I struggle with finding a centralized point. Kind of like a truck with a bad drag link, wobbling down the road.
Perhaps a nihilist would jump in here and offer this diatribe up as proof that life is full of pointless moments, grouped together into larger, equally pointless coexistences. I am not a member of that camp, although in the past I have warmed myself by their fire from time to time. Most days (and today is no exception) I feel that there is great signifigance not only to to our lives but even to every little mundane moment that the things are made from. It's on days like today that I look at the apparent pointlessness of a nondescript moment in time, any given moment in my day, and say, "OK, so the significance of this moment is not readily apparent, but I trust that it will be revealed to me in time."
I think that most people can agree that this is one of the rewards that we anticipate upon reaching Heaven. We of course dread the moment when our sins are revealed and we are held accountable, but we are also dying of curiosity to see the final numbers on how much time we spent sleeping or waiting for the bus, how many hot dogs we ate, the actual mileage between each and every oil change and how many times we swallowed our gum vs. folding it neatly into the wrapper & throwing it away.
We wonder about things like these because life is cumulative. One of the hardest things in life is when we outlive our ability to maintain our own residence. When you have to get rid of your possessions in order to fit into a nursing home you are getting rid of more than just things. You are getting rid of the physical components of your collective history here on earth. Or perhaps in more direct terms you are destroying the evidence that you were ever here. We are more than happy to replace or upgrade our stuff- Cars, houses, golf clubs, etc., but nobody really wants to take a loss. That's pretty much why nobody wants to buy what nursing homes and planned retirement communities are selling. It's like conceding to our eventual defeat.
This of course is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the Christian faith. I cannot honestly say that I have truly denied myself, not even just a little. I will close this rant today by declaring my intention to confront my own obsession with my belongings by by getting rid of something(s) that I have been hoarding for no good reason. I may not need to find significance in my life by understanding every single moment of it, but I have at least learned enough from the example of my parents to know that the sum total of my life's meaning cannot be defined by how much crap I have in my basement.
One thing about trying to write every single day is that it's sometimes difficult to find a "Jumping in" point. This differs from college days, because now so much of life is routine. Because I am sitting here with a finite number of lunch minutes remaining and I don't have the slightest idea what to write about, I will chronicle my daily routine.
5AM the alarm goes off. Re-set to 5:45, go back to sleep. 5:45, hit the snooze button. 5:56, the bedroom lights go on. Spend the next hour preparing lunches and grooming. Out the door by 7. Remember clothes, go back in the house and get dressed. Out the door by 7:12. Drop the wife off downtown and take the child to Mama & Papa Olojans. Drop him off there, outwardly happy that he is in good hands and quite content, secretly sad that when I go he doesn't share my anguish or engage in any fussing. (That's right, he's well-behaved and it bothers me) Scamper into work around 8:15 or so. Meetings, QA on my projects, assign new tasks to staff members.
Lunch. Coffee or Tea at a local shop and a sandwich from home. Sometimes when I am in the middle of a big project I will take lunch at my desk, hunkered down like I'm in my own private bunker, waiting out a shelling raid. I am trying to make a point of getting out of the office over my lunch hour these days. It's a good time to detach from work and engage in some writing. Like this journal, for example. I can't break free from ink and paper, thus this web log is a transcribed version of my treeware journal.
Afternoons are spent either in meetings or else reviewing staff assignments and/or creating more. When I say that my time is "Spent" in a meeting I mean that it is spent like a roll of quarters in an arcade: Time has passed and I've come away with nothing to show for it. Dilbert says that a meeting is when a group of people that you believe are intelligent and well-meaning get together to prove you wrong.
Come 5PM I desperately try to cram one more hour of work into thirty minutes. 5:30 or so I leave the office and cross town to pick up the wife. Together we go and reunite with our son. We go home and it is playtime, some dinner, a few books or a bath and it's off to bed for the child. An hour or two later and it's the same for us.
I could probably squeeze more time out of the day if I slept less or I did not enjoy the company of my family. But as it stands I need my sleep and I love my family. With that in mind I guess it shouldn't bother me if my entries are a little boring.
I must go now and consider the best possible method to become independently wealthy.
Winter and Spring are playing chicken with each other. A warm day, followed by some snow, washed down with some rain. Repeat cycle. February is like a bipolar illusionist, messing with our collective minds. All you can do is wait him out. The good news is that we are over halfway to March, so it's all downhill from here.
Last Saturday we took care of our taxes; and by "We" and "take care of our taxes" I mean that I pushed the child around Southdale mall while the wife sat with our accountant. Lest you think that I was the one to get off easy I would mention that the child was in a foul mood; We were in a condition that I will from here on refer to as 'Shark mode' - Stop moving and you die.
I stopped by the Mac store. Every time I'm in that place it's the same thing- I am a leper PC user browsing in their midst. Before I can look around I have to scan the crowd and see if Lileks or any of my clients from Magnetic Poetry are there. I browse with the trepidation of that moment when one of the folks from Magpo appears out of nowhere, pointing at me and shrieking a la "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Lileks doesn't know me so I wouldn't expect him to recognize me. Still if he pointed at me and shrieked I wouldn't be suprised. I reek of PC's.
It's not my fault that I am enamored with the photo Ipod. But for the money I might as well save for this pocket PC. Star Trek never anticipated that the communicator and the tricorder might get morphed into one device. Why do you think that Geordi had one? He needed something to carry around all his his George Clinton tunes.
45 degrees in the shade. It wouldn't suprise me if some misled crocuses pop out, foolishly expecting the sun to stick around for a while. It will, at least through sunday. that's when old man winter is supposed to crack the whip and send us back into winter weather.
In the past two weeks the wife and I have been engaging in a new morning behavior: Intentional oversleeping. It is almost like an adult onset game of don't-touch-the-floor. It usually works something like this. Between 4:30 and 4:50 or so the child lets out wail because he has kicked off his covers and become cold. I get up and cover him, quietly coax him back to sleep, which he readily does. At 5:00 my alarm goes off for the first time. Now up to a couple of days ago I was simply engaging in 9 minute bouts of sleep between snooze button stabs. Lately I have just been resetting the alrm for 5:45 which is when I will be getting up anyway. I am not fooling anyone, least of all me.
The wife's alarm doesn't go off until 5:30, and she isn't fooling anyone either. She doesn't get up until 6:00. Lately I have been figuring that if you cannot beat them that you should join them, so I haven't been getting up until 6:00 either. Amazingly I am consistently only 15-20 minutes late to work every day. I would be in business if I could get up at 5:30 every day. If I were in business for myself maybe I would want to.
Bathtime last night. I have grown accustomed to hearing a lot of strange sounds come out of the bathroom over the past two years. At first it did not sound odd at all to hear the wife say, "And I'll Huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!" (Although as a side note here, I was brought up as a "Blow your house IN" person myself) What was strange was the noise to follow, made by the child: "A-ffffffffffpht." then a brief moment of stunned silence, followed by a peal of delighted laughter from the wife.
We hadn't taught him that. He picked it up from a Barney video.
You have to understand that up to now working with the child has been much like training a parrot. He has learned thus far by imitating us and performing his tricks on cue. Pandora's box has been opened, and we are no longer the sole sources for information for the lad. Of course this has been true for some time but now there is no more denying it. The proof is right in front of us. A-ffffffffffpht.
It is a milestone event to witness a man's first steps in understanding his world by feeding on the information around him rather than having it spoon-fed by caregivers. It's also a sobering experience to get it driven home that yes, this little lump that you are trying to mold into a man is watching everything that you watch and listening to everything that you listen to. And without a doubt he is watching everything that you do and listening to everything that you say. These things you know at some level even before your first child is born, based on the advice given to you by friends and relatives. But when the little one comes, he seems so oblivious and it's not so hard to trick yourself into thinking that it's OK to watch a cop show or a war movie while the kid drinks a bottle in your lap and dozes off before bed.
I would like to think that we have been pretty good about keeping him away from the "bad" influences of media. But self-deception is just a straw house that doesn't stand up to a good gust of scrutiny. One "A-ffffffffffpht" was all it took.
Not a lot to write about today because the trivial things are too trivial and the deep things are too deep. Why is it that we can be lulled by notions like, "Yes, he has leukemia but it's only a mild form." That's about as comforting as knowing that people will be shooting at you, but they will only be using .22's. Sooner or later the stuff is going to kill you.
Doctors take their time scheduling you or calling you back, the unspoken rule being that a crisis on our part does not constitute a crisis on their part. I know how it is. Anyone who works with people knows that you need a certain degree of insulation in order not to be consumed by other people's problems. I just wish that the doctors and the people who run nursing homes weren't so damned bulletproof.
It's still hard for me to imagine the day when I need to hang it all up. When that time comes I just hope I still have the good sense to go out like an Eskimo and just wander off on to the ice pack.
Talk between the siblings continues of what to do with Mom and Dad. Dad really cannot be alone right now and those of us who can be with him cannot meet the challenge on a long-term basis. Mom has problems too big for any of us to handle. My sisters are jumping through all the hoops and making all the calls to help them. It's looking very unlikely that they will keep the house much longer.
It cannot be an easy thing to work your whole life, to save for your retirement and collect so many possessions just to find out that however much you saved wasn't nearly enough and oh by the way, you have to get rid of all your stuff because there's no room for it where you're going.
Dan Nygaard was the only one of my grandparents fortunate enough to avoid a nursing home. I wonder what my parents thought, what kind of anguish they felt when they watched their parents be slowly stripped of their pride, their independence and all of their worldly possessions. Were their eyes opened to what lay ahead for them? Do they deep down in their hearts know the dilemma that us kids are facing?
I suppose that they never thought old age would be like this. That money that they were saving was not put into the bank with hospital bills in mind but rather to enjoy on whatever they wanted.
We were born into this world naked and penniless, and we depart from it the same. The state certainly sees to that.
I spent Saturday with Dad, passing some time together written off as visiting when both of us knew well enough why I was really there- I was a watchdog to make sure that he took his medications, help with insulin injections and make sure that he didn't take any tumbles. Oh yes, and other duties as assigned, which essentially means reaching those places that he couldn't. I think that the rigors of fatherhood helped me in terms of dealing with this new and developing role; Dad on the other hand is not comfortable with it. It's not an easy thing to wipe your own ass for almost 80 years and then have to let someone else do it.
The good news is that our prayers (and the prednesone) seem to be working. His feet were still shuffling when he walked but he was able to get himself up unassisted twice while I was there. We passed the time looking at my grandmother's old scrap books. That woman was good about getting her pictures into pages and even better about labeling them so that 80 years later I would know who was who. One of the nice things was that I was able to ask Dad who some of the cousins are and what some of the stories behind the photos were. Dad's idea of being helpful is to get your hands onto some tools and build or fix something. But if sharing information about our family was something that he could do for me, he was glad to do it.
Thus the day went by, learning of cousins not so much distant by blood but rather distant by space and indifference. A generation or two ago the term "Family" extended out to the uncles, aunts and cousins. We would have spent holidays and family reunions together and everyone would know each other. But today people are traveling in tighter and tighter orbits, spinning through our lives too rapidly to really get close to anyone besides our parents, siblings, spouses and children.
I don't know that it's a trend that can be reversed without radical changes to our lifestyles and mindsets. I don't know if modern man wants to change. It's too fun earning money, staying inside our houses and watching the world go by through the internet and our home theater systems.
I wonder if this discourse will effect any permanent change upon me, if a brief flicker of recognition is enough to begin a permanent change in me- To begin opening up more to my family, to begin engraining into my son a sense of his heritage and where he came from and perhaps most importantly, to SLOW DOWN and appreciate all that I already have. On a cold Saturday in January 2005 maybe I have started a warming trend within myself that will melt away some of the discontent and restlessness from my life.
Nygaard, Vernon age 83. Preceded in death by beloved wife, Eileen. Passed away peacefully on their 60th wedding anniversary Sept. 15, 2009. He will be greatly missed by children, Karen (Dale) Portz, Cheryl Dockter, LaVern (Chelsea) Nygaard, Danny (Narissa) Nygaard, Julie (Ron) Jaeger, and Terry (Jeane) Nygaard; grandchildren, Jennifer Lundborg, Dawn Dockter, Cindy Mohs, Diane, Lisa, Jessica, Rose, Joshua and Julia Nygaard, Shelly Muri, Kelly Walker, Nick Vernon Nygaard; great-grandchildren, Janessa, Faith, Ariel, Gracie, Allison, Brooke, Gregory, Derek, Rachel, Destiny, Kelsie and Candice; and brother, Robert (Marilyn) Nygaard. "Love you Dad" "Love you back" Interment Hillside Cemetery. Funeral service Friday, 9/18/09 at 11 AM with visitation Thursday (TODAY) 5-8 PM and 1 hour prior to service, all at: Washburn-McReavy Hillside Chapel 612-781-1999 2610 19th Ave. N.E., Mpls
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