My Name

Its kind of funny. I don't mean to be paranoid, but the problem with all this Internet shit is that there is just not any privacy. What anyone is doing on Facebook is beyond me. It is just too risky. I don't need people knowing any more about me than I want them to and frankly, I really don't want certain people reading this blog to know it is me.

So, I don't use my real name. I used my real name in my very first post to my blog. And, in the past when you searched google for me using my name, way down the line you would get a link to my first thread for this blog. It would come up on the 10th page or so. Well, lately it comes up on the first page, which means a whole bunch of people searching for me found me and I don't know who you are. So, I edited out my name on my first post.

What can I say, I'm paranoid.

Darkness, Poetry and Marbles

The darkness is moving in all around us. I awake in the dark and turn lights on as I move from room to room and ready myself for a day of work under the bank of fluorescent lights hovering over cubes within the suspended ceilings in the capital-city downtown office building. I can see the sunshine in my daily walks through the skyway system, and upon leaving work to pick my son up from his day in school. From there it is a rush against the turning of the Earth as the sun settles in the sky while we hurry home to throw a football in the yard, shoot basketballs in the neighbor’s driveway, or toss a baseball back and forth. By the time we are called in for dinner, the darkness has almost enveloped us for the night and our play will be reserved for indoor activities until an early call to peel off and go to bed.

The long days of summer are gone and the garden has been put to rest. The leaves are piled high in the compost heap and the raised beds are all covered in straw. A gopher, some rabbits and many field mice scurry amongst the beds digging holes and piling dirt and causing worry to the gardener that refuses to use poisons or chemicals in his dirt that grows so much food to sustain his family. But the garden paradise he has created that flourishes with lush green growth from May to October has also created a panacea for other critters to call home. The rabbits and the mice he can live with, but this gopher going around digging tunnels and leaving gigantic piles of excavated dirt around his garden is the source of new frustration and worry. Is it time to get a gun?

Fall and winter is the time for reflection and also a time to let the darkness settle in all around us. We can be overwhelmed with thoughts of doomsday, as the Christmas shopping season ramps up and the Salvation Army bell ringers take up positions in the skyways, outside on downtown street corners and at the entrances of big boxes everywhere. We are also given a gift of time as the summer activities end, the harvest is over, and we sit indoors with our families and ourselves driving each other crazy. It is a time to read, play guitar and to write down thoughts. Winter provides opportunity to be poetic and to appreciate our longing for summer, even as the beauty of a winter snowfall covers pine and spruce trees and leaves the bird feeders at the center of the winter ecological backyard community.

And so, my guitar has been liberated from its stand and its strings are tenderly being caressed awake by my fingers several times a week as they mindlessly pick tunes and melodies on it and search for a lost voice put away early last spring. My son plays marbles and listens, sometimes sings along, and sometimes asks me to stop to join in his marble game. From upstairs I hear my wife’s voice say, “that was pretty, whose song was that?” Usually I don’t answer, embarrassed and slightly annoyed that I have to tell her that the origin of the song is unknown and has simply come with the darkness of the season. But, I am thankful for the effortlessness of my fingers as they pluck out melodies and a rhythm while my thumb keeps pace with a steady bass line on the low strings. Somehow my mind has picked out the songs of the darkness for my fingers to translate and the rooms of the house fill with a new lightness.

As I play marbles with my son, my thoughts remain on the guitar and I hear my voice call from within. I want to go back and pick it up and sing songs I’ve learned as my fingers provide the accompaniment. But, that will have to wait as my fingers struggle with a newer skill and get thoroughly trounced by smaller and defter fingers shooting marbles along side of me.

Alone

The older I get, the more solitary I become. I spend more time with my family, but even during this “quality time” I spend many a moment transfixed in my own thoughts. I am often startled back to attention by my wife’s words to my son, “Daddy isn’t listening honey, he’s thinking of something else again.” I’ll quickly try to cover for myself and reach back to the last words I can recall in the discussion, but usually she’s right. So, what am I thinking about and why? Usually, a lot about nothing.

We have been called social animals and it is true, we are. We are defined by our relationships and without them we would not exist. Our thoughts are meaningless without language to guide them and language is the tool that connects us with other humans. But, still, why do I feel so often that I am alone?

I am sitting in a coffee shop and I can feel my heart beating and I am reading of Adam Smith whose heart stopped beating almost a quarter of a millennium ago. As I look around observing everyone walking to and fro, some young, some old, I realize that in another quarter of a millennium all of our hearts will have also stopped beating a long long time ago.

What will that moment be like – when my heart stops beating? Will I know it at the time – that my heart will never make another beat. Will I know my last thought? Will I know when my body will no longer be seeking nourishment or eliminating its last bit of waste.

Of course, my genes will live on in another being whom I am aware of – love deeply – but it cannot be said I know his thoughts, nor will I live on in them. And, yet, I will – in his thoughts, but not my own which will have ceased at some point in the future.

Just as Adam Smith’s thoughts are still alive, my son will keep me alive in his thoughts as he goes through the rest of his life – stuck and immersed inside his own head monitoring his own heart beating. At least that is what I wish, should a catastrophe not fall and my son be taken from me before his time. His thoughts must live beyond my own, for my own sense of worth and being.

I see my father as he is in the last phase of his life. His brain still working, working well, but his thoughts not as cogent as they once were. He is part of me. He raised me. But, he does not have access to my thoughts. Nobody does. We are each alone even as we sit together and speak of baseball games and fishing trips.

My wife is social. She talks. She comes from a family of talkers. I mystify her. She mistakes my quietness for self-assuredness and wisdom. Many people do, but she is my wife. You would think she would know by now. Of course, in many ways she does, but she still thinks I am a thinker. I suppose I am smart. I mean I do think. I think a lot. But, I am not solving quadratic equations in my mind.

I read many other people’s thoughts, too. The ones they put down on paper. Some tell stories and we call them novels. They entertain me, but they also reveal to me the thoughts of the author. Brilliant men and woman, much smarter than I, thinking about what to put down on a paper for me to pick up to read, many of who’s hearts stopped beating a long time ago.

Other authors provide me with a different perspective on many problems in the world worth contemplating. Often when I decide to speak, I have this information readily at hand. People take this for me being smart – knowledgeable. Sometimes, when I contradict someone, they take me for a pompous fool. Indignant, they would say to themselves, if I could read their thoughts.

But, most of the time I cannot, because usually they don’t write them down. They walk away without saying anything and we both leave with only our own thoughts as we wonder what the other might be thinking. Judging each other as we rerun the conversation in our minds and continue it forward all inside our own minds, because our hearts are still beating and we can for as long as we can continue to nourish our bodies, breathing the air and taking in all of the creation.

We each may wonder about our souls, but our bodies and our brains are confined to this earth and one day our bodies will stop working and our thoughts will cease. Then we might find out about our souls, perhaps.

In some ways I am sure I am much larger than what is confined inside my body. What is it my dreams stand for otherwise? I am a part of the ecosystem that has its own metabolism and thoughts. Or is this just a delusion I use to deal with the loneliness of my existence and the knowledge that some day my thoughts will cease.

For that matter, is this why I write down my thoughts? Can I not bear the thought of the conversation ending? Do I delude myself into thinking that by having my thoughts written down others will keep them alive? Of course, this is a worthy goal. Who would not want to be part of the great conversations that live on with Aristotle, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and others? But, even if we can get our thoughts down for the next generations to read this will not keep our own brains alive. For what I wrote twenty years ago does not keep the twenty year old young man alive. Some day my thoughts will cease and my heart will stop beating. I am confined inside this body. We can share thoughts in conversation as long as I am still alive. But, some day this possibility will end.

And when it ends, it will end as lonely as it was when it all began, but much more abruptly. I was not aware of my first thought, but I will be aware of my last even as I am incapable of remembering it. My last thought will not be in conversation with another. It will be alone and I will not be able to share it just as I have not really been able to share with you what it is like to sit here alone and listen to my own heart beat. But, you know that anyway. Perhaps we don’t need to share that. We are each alone even if we are social. We will always be alone in our thoughts.

Memory of a Fishing Trip

It was spring and the sun was coming up earlier and earlier. Daylight Savings time came later in the year back then and it seemed as it was light by the time I made my first delivery. I usually awoke about 4:30 am and left to the central garage with my two older brothers to stuff ads into the papers before beginning my route. We opened the garage door, grabbed our Schwinn Stingrays, affixed the delivery bag to our handlebars and drove in a line two blocks to the High Schooler's (Gerard) garage who was in charge of our area.

I did Saratoga Lane, and Trenton Avenue. My older brothers did the four streets in the line – Union, Vermont, Washington and Xerxes. We would ride up the driveway of each house, run the paper to the front or side door, then run back to our bikes and ride it to the next delivery. If we were quick we could be back by 5:30 am and during the spring it was already light out. On this particular morning, we had a quick bite to eat and then got ready to drive our bikes to a little pond, about 5 miles away, where we had been killing the bullheads for the past few weeks.

I went to sleep every night seeing bobbers in my head disappearing below the surface. We came home with stringers of 1 to 2 lb bullheads. We had a 2 x 6 board set up with a large nail poking through. We would slam the bullheads down, one at a time, onto the board so the nail stuck through the head. Then we’d make an incision behind the head and skin the bullheads with a plier. Then we would walk into the kitchen, while our parents were still asleep in the bed (perhaps my father was recently awakened and sitting at the kitchen table reading one of our extra papers), mix a bowl of flour, salt and pepper and in another bowl crack a few eggs. The frying pan with vegetable was heating up and each skinned bullhead would get dipped in egg, flour mixture, and then fried several minutes on all sides till the bullhead meat was white and flaky.

These delicious breakfasts were almost as good as catching the bullheads, despite having to remove the meat from a large skeletal framework. I was strapping my rod and real to my Stingray. The rod ran from the back frame for my banana seat and through my hotrod handlebars at the front of my bike. We looked like three knights on horses with our Jousts protruding outward as we road down a back country road to the small pond near a park reserve.

I fell behind as I became distracted by a muskrat type animal on the side of the road, as I watched him scurrying through the grass. I looked up and noticed my brothers a quarter mile or more ahead of me. I rose to a standing position and began to pump my legs to catch up. No sooner than reaching a standing position, my rod somehow came loose in back falling to hit the pavement. As it bounced up, the front came loose from between the handlebars and the tip somehow became tangled in my front spokes. With a loud snap my fishing rod was sliced in two and the morning fishing trip was over.

I stopped my bike and looked at the disaster before I began to sob uncontrollably. My brothers were disappearing out of sight as I turned my bike back around and walked it home as I held my fishing rod in my hands. I was nine years old.

The Lump

Doctor says its nothing.

Carry on.

DDT and Twiddling

The age of the fossil fuels brought out a host of new products and pollutants previously unseen before. As chemists manipulated the molecular structures of oil, new products have been introduced to the market with claimed attributes making our lives simpler, and easier according to the sellers of the products. However, usually over time we discover some externality associated with the product causing an environmental hazard leading to disease and/or destruction of the biosphere we depend on for survival.

One of the first products introduced was DDT as a pesticide and herbicide for agricultural products as well for control of Mosquitoes to combat malaria around the world. DDT was used extensively in rural communities in the 1940's and 1950's while my father was a growing up. My father was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease when he was 30 years old in 1970. As a young man he used to work for farmers and applied DDT in the fields without any protection getting covered from head to toe in the DDT dust. He is going to be 67 in December. He is a shell of the man I knew growing up. At 6'4" and 220 lbs, coming off of life on the farm, he was big, strong and skilled in a number of tasks such as carpentry, auto mechanics, fishing, hunting, plumbing, electricity, etc. Even when he was first diagnosed with the disease that would eventually cripple him, his medication slowed and controlled his digression enough that I still remember a man as a child who was infinitely stronger and capable as the adult man I grew up to be. The community my father grew up in is riddled with cancer and he has lost many friends to a variety of diseases. His younger brother died at the young age of 55 from a brain tumor.

My father was no sissy and I am sure he came off of the farms without the slightest fears of pesticides and herbicides such as DDT. I can imagine he moved into the suburbs around Minneapolis as a young man and brought home pesticides from the hardware store in town and applied it to his garden and lawn by the handful. I was born in 1964 and I would not doubt he would come in from outside and take me crying from my mother's hands in his huge DDT dust covered hands, and slowly rock me and comfort me to sleep. DDT was not banned until 1972.

I've been playing with my balls my whole life. The human body is mostly smooth and hard and the testicles encased in the elastic scrotum provide an interesting exploratory landscape for the fingers to investigate under the covers and away from the sight of everyone. I have observed my son sitting naked on the couch while discovering this pleasure himself and from my childhood I remember my father napping on the couch with his large hands tucked neatly into his pants. Obviously, this is an inherited trait or perhaps universal amongst all males. We are socially conditioned to play with our balls in the privacy of our homes away from the prying eyes of our neighbors. If not for this conditioning, I am sure men would be walking around with their hands stuffed neatly into our pants all day long as we twiddled to our heart's content. After 43 years of playing with my balls I mostly do it subconsciously now as I put myself to sleep. My hands pull and play with my scrotum and softly manipulate each testicle, one at a time, not to derive any sort of pleasure, but rather to just comfort myself. One week ago, when I first noticed the lump on my right testicle, I thought I should just ignore it. Immediately, I did think of testicular cancer and Lance Armstrong and all that, but I also thought even if it was cancer I should be able to heal myself with positive thoughts, a good diet and a healthy lifestyle.

I am not worried about universal health care. In many ways I distrust everything about the modern health industry. Everything is presented to us with scientific certainty derived from statistical analysis. I have had enough post-secondary education to understand that nothing is certain about statistics and what is certain one day from one specific study will be announced later as false due to a new study with slightly different parameters producing different results. So, my natural inclination is to push everything modern and scientific aside and try and live naturally and healthy through diet, exercise and as much distance from the modern world as one raised in it can muster in a week. I didn't want to believe I had cancer and I had told myself, that even if I do have it, I would not undergo putting radiation and chemical poisons in my body to counteract the growing cancer.

On Sunday I read of a recent scientific study showing a correlation between breast cancer and DDT exposure. I suddenly began to think of the possibility that no matter how healthy I lived the seeds of cancer may have been sown in my body as an infant. I thought of my son and my desire to see him grow up and my father crying at the realization that he can no longer play with his grandchildren in a meaningful way like he dreamed of as a young and healthy adult. I called my doctor yesterday and made an appointment by phone for tomorrow at 1:00 pm. I stayed up all night rehearsing what I will say to him.

"Doctor Clavine, I play with my balls a lot and recently I notice a lump on my right testicle. I'd like for you to play with them awhile and see what you think - if it is cancer."

Depending on what he thinks, I will take it from there. I suppose I can stand the thought of putting myself to sleep each night while playing with one less testicle if it came to that. I'll have to think about the chemotherapy and I am sure I will be given plenty of statistics to help me reach a decision.

What is it about me?

Midway through my senior year track season, we had a meet against a couple of teams in our conference. Neither team had any good distance runners. I was scheduled to run the two-mile, a leg of the 4 x 800, and then the mile. It was my standard workload during my senior year and it usually left me with 3 blue ribbons. My coach called ma aside before the race. He told me he wanted to see me go out hard the first mile and then coast through the second mile. My teammates were accustomed to seeing me in the lead during these conference races and most invitationals. They were not aware of the instructions from my coach. When I went through the first mile at 4:31, they all started getting excited. I was still holding my pace as I came around the straight away on my 5th lap. My teammates were in a line forming a gauntlet and began chanting, "Andy!, Andy!, Andy!" I felt a sudden rash of embarrassment and shook my head, hoping my teammates would stop. I came through lap five in 5:37 and could still hear the chants of my teammates as I went around the first turn. I began to slow down on the back stretch and as I came around the far turn I saw my teammates formed in a line and the chanting was still going strong. I slowed to a jog and looked at them and told them to knocked it off. When I went went trough lap six the timers called out, " 7:06, 7:07, 7:08". My teammates dispersed and I began picking up my pace again midway down the backstretch when I could see they no longer formed their gauntlet and the chanting had died down, when the the gun went off as I went into my final lap, I could hear "8:29, 8:30, 8:31." My final lap was fast, but I didn't kick and I finished my race in 9:35 with my final mile slower than 5:00 minutes.

I don't know why, but I've never liked bringing attention to myself. I have always been competitive, but I'm always embarrassed by seeking approval from others. So, when I later went on to play in bands, my least favorite part was trying to sell the bands I was in. I could not stand telling people to pay attention to us, because we were good. I just wanted to play and let people form their own opinions as I had fun playing my guitar and singing my songs.

I think I feel the same about writing. It is not that I am humble or modest. I can actually come across as quite arrogant and I don't tolerate mediocrity very well. But, what I most hate are the self-promoters. I have always been sickened by the salesperson mentality and thats what you see in blogs the most. Especially, as time goes on and more and more people join the information age and chime in on any number of subjects while attracting donations and sponsors to their site. Its this that makes me queasy. Obviously, I am not in the market or doing this to attract visitors to my site. But, whenever anything is done these days it is impossible to judge the worth of how we spend our time without considering costs and potential revenues. Worth for anything that we do with our time is judged almost strictly in monetary terms even when we pursue our hobbies and interests, because "time is money" as they say.

That's why I haven't posted in over a month and explains my previous post. Let's see if this post gathers any momentum.

Verse to a melody in my head, while walking to work

I want to let go
But I’m scared
Don’t mind slippin’ away
But, to nowhere?

If I lose myself
I’ll lose my mind
Let go of my past
What will I find?

Change…
Change…
Change…

What's the point?

I've talked about goals in a previous thread. I have had more jobs than I can count and someday I will list than all in a future thread. I've had many dreams and desires that I have pursued at various times and this question - What is the Point - usually ends up being the end of the pursuit. Yesterday I had that thought as I contemplated a new post for this blog.

It comes without warning usually and is usually accompanied by a wave of sadness. I am not prone to what our society refers to as depression. I don't believe in taking medication for chemical imbalances in the brain. For a number of reasons I don't find the rationale that depression is caused by some dysfunction of our brains convincing. I actually like getting sad. It makes me feel alive. It starts my brain searching and questioning. When I am sad, I blame it on my surroundings and I seek to change what I am doing. This is what leads me to asking the question that can never be answered - What is the point? The answer I come up with is always liberating - there is no point.

More Irony

I walked through a downtown park on the way to the Mississippi River to lay down for an lunch-time nap in the near the waters flowing from Lake Itasca through the Gulf of Mexico. On my way I was accosted by another homeless person (like any modern metropolis, St Paul is filled with homeless individuals whom the city is currently considering options to make invisible for the upcoming 2008 Republican Convention). He was holding a package of cards with hand drawn art upon them. An Eagle was depicted with the saying "Proud to be an American." written above it.

"Sir, Sir, Sir - Would you like to purchase a drawing? A card?, " he said as I strained my eyes to read the printing he held out to me.

"Sorry," I said, "No, thanks," as I walked on by and he moved on to the next lunch taker walking through the park.

I usually do purchase and hand out what is in my wallet to those who ask of me. Today, I walked by though as I was offended by the card. If he had drawn an Eagle casting a glance downward and written simply "Shame" above it, I would have reached for my wallet.

So, What's the deal with Peaches?

It started as a joke. My friend decided he was going to annoy me and started calling me Peaches. This was a long time ago when we were goofing around in our twenties. It didn’t really take hold. It was a balancing act. My friend was persistent and he knew how to push my buttons. If I protested too loudly, the nickname was going to stick like bugs to sap. My girlfriend at the time loved it, so she picked it up. I just kind of ignored it and rolled my eyes ever so slightly when I heard it, as if to suggest I was surrounded by children.

Overtime, my friend was really the only one who kept calling me Peaches. He’s a very good friend and we have spent a lot of time around each other so I just let him call me that and explained to others that my friend was a juvenile and I was unsure why I put up with him.

One day I bought a CD by Nina Simone and listened to a song called four women. It is a great song telling the story of four black women in America. The last woman is pissed and in the last line of the last stanza Nina screams “THEY CALL ME PEACHES!!!!” I played it for my friend and from then on I embraced the nickname. Today, all my cronies (best friends in the world) call me Peaches.

I first started using it online while playing an internet game called RealmWars. It was hosted by a guy named Bit who site was called PlanetBang. I was there too much playing an addictive game and avoiding life’s responsibilities. It was fun though and very interesting watching this online community come together and evolve. I was one of the older players and, at first, Peaches took a lot of crap. But, people soon learned that Peaches was a good ally and could whip ass on you in the game. Peaches took his share of ass-whooping, too. When I was asked about my name (at first, people always assumed I was a chick, and thought it was cool I was playing this war game), I’d started explaining about the 6’3” tattooed 350lb Hell’s Angel Member everyone called “Tiny.” That’s who Peaches was. It was a little exaggeration, but it fit for Realm Wars.

Eventually, I had to stop playing this game or be locked into the virtual world without friends and family forever. So, I unhooked the internet from my house and stopped playing. Then, I began posting on a political blog called Talkleft.com as Peaches and a new personality was born. Peaches is basically me. Most of his ideas are my own. However, Peaches goes off half-cocked a lot, although he attempts to be fair. For the most part, Peaches is a lot smarter than I. I mean, he surprises me. He is all over the place at Talkleft and sometimes I find his ideas difficult to pin down. Sometimes he sounds like a conservative and sometimes a liberal, but he insists on identifying only as a liberal. Well, again, this sounds like me. But, I tell you, in all honesty, Peaches is a hell of a lot smarter than I am.

The Goal - what is it?

It was in summer basketball camp that the high school coach told us that none of us would ever be playing NBA basketball. I was defiant. I could not even start for my junior high team, but I was convinced through hard work I could be a professional basketball player. My more immediate goal was to play for the High School Varsity team – the Osseo Orioles. I attended every home game as a youngster. I would cheer on the Orange and black team and knew all the starting players. It seemed an honor to be able to wear those flashy warm-ups and all I desired was to one day be able to play on that team.

I shot baskets over and over again in our driveway and developed a potent outside shot. But, I was small and not very strong. I had not grown since I was in the fourth grade and by my ninth grade year I was an undersized and skinny guard. Going into to my sophomore year, it seemed like I would probably get cut once tryouts for the basketball team commenced. Suddenly, I began to grow but not upward. My feet and hands grew. I was 5’7” with a size 13 basketball shoe and I could not run down the court without falling down. I think I made the team, strictly because the coaches knew my father (he was 6’4”) and the looked at my feet and knew I had to grow into them eventually. My junior year I was 5’10” and going into my senior year I was 6’3” although still skinny weighing barely 135 lbs. I made the team and I could shoot and handle the ball decently. I was wearing the uniform, but I stopped having fun. Suddenly basketball was not very fun.

I started running distances my senior year. In my phy. ed. class my junior year, I ran a 4:57 mile in high-top basket ball shoes. I was skinny and all legs. I could run forever without tiring. My phy ed teacher was also the Cross-country coach. He told me if I trained all summer I would be the State Champion in the fall. I didn’t train over the summer, but since I was assured of a place on the roster for the varsity basketball team in the winter, I decided I might as well go out for the cross-country team as well and I had a blast. I wasn’t the state champ but I was all state, all conference, all regional and our team went to the state meet. I ran a 4:20 mile and a 9:26 2-mile in the spring and suddenly I my goal went from the NBA to the Olympics.

I ran cross-country in college and track, but I never really trained during the summers. I slowly put on weight and eventually my frame filled out with muscle that was not conducive to being carried over long distances. Besides, I started playing the guitar and decided I was going to be a rock star. Then, I was going to be a politician, then get my PhD.

Goals? What is the goal in life? One of the things I realized about sports and competition is that there is no ultimate goal. We strive to be a champion and, in the majority of cases, most of us will never get there. But, even the champions have to defend their title and eventually will be dethroned. So, we end all competitive pursuits with failure. That is our last memory. And, I knew I wanted more in life than failure. But, what is success?

Is there a goal in life? Raise a family, is that it? I really don’t know what it is. It might be to live the good life, but to live the good life we first have to decide what the good life is. I suppose that is the spot I am at right now. I am trying to define what the good life is, so I can make a goal worth striving for. In the meantime, it is just one day at a time, or on a more cynical note - as Celine says - Death on the Installment Plan.

The drive with my Grandma

“You wouldn’t even believe it, Andy. The wind, it was blowing. Where there were fences was a mound of dirt and the pigs and cows would walk right over the fences. People were starving in the cities. We had food. We always had food. But, Dad worked so hard. He would have to go to the county and pick up feed for the cows. Just a little handful a day – enough to keep them alive, and then in the winter he had to repay them for the feed by working all day putting gravel down on the roads. He found a trucker to take the horses to a field near Granite Falls, because they had some rain, see? And, then we heard that one of the horses had sleeping sickness. So, they sent him home and he died. Dad worked so hard.

He had two brothers in California, Uncle Ervin and Uncle Elmore, who owned lumber yards and they wanted him to move there because they knew he was getting old. So he decided to go and Martin and I were just married and Grandpa wanted to go with him. So, we all went, but the work for the lumber yards was even harder. They drove trucks and they didn’t know where they were going. Sometimes they had to go to LA and deliver to the Negroes there. They worked all day. Dad wanted to go back and Martin wanted to farm. So, we moved back and bought the grocery store and Dad retired soon after.

It was hard during the depression, you would never believe it – how it was. But, we had so many pets and we were happy. The cats would line up on that board every morning and wait with their mouths open for Dad to squirt the milk into their mouths right from the cows. I had to help Dad with the chores too, cause I was the oldest, so I was the hired hand. I did the man’s work. I drove since I was twelve to deliver Dad his lunch every day in the field or wherever he was. And we had a garden, Mom kept a big garden. We’d can tomatoes. And an Apple Orchard in the back, a couple cherry trees. Oh, we had fun. WE were never hungry, Mom only had to buy sugar and flour, otherwise we had everything. One Christmas all we got was we each got a new outfit for our dolls – that was it. We didn’t have money, but we were happy.

Oh, I’ve been talking your ear off.”

“No, Grandma. Tell me more.”

And she did. Farming is a hard life, there is no doubt. No one should ever think it isn’t. But, once my grandpa and great-grandpa left for California – left their homesteads – they spent the rest of their days pining over the old days on the farm.

Berries and breakfast

Every morning I pick a few raspberries for my morning breakfast out of two bushes I planted last year. I planted 5 more red raspberry and 5 black raspberry bushes this year which should start producing well next year. I also have a fairly large strawberry patch and I plan on making space in the garden for a row of blueberry bushes also. I purchase frozen berries for my breakfast all year round. I would love to produce enough berries in my garden during the summer berry season to supply my berry fix for the entire year.

Here is my mornign breakfast.

handful of frozen organic blueberries
handful of frozen Org raspberries
handful of frozen Org strawberries
one banana sliced
2 heaping teaspoons of Wheat germ
2 heaping teaspoons of ground flax seed
1 teaspoon of bee pollen
covered with 1/2 to 1 cup of Muesli (Bobs Red Mill usually)
pour plain Organic vanilla Yogurt over and mix all ingerdients in large ceral bowl

Add a little soy milk and let sit while I drink cup of coffee and read paper, then shit(this high grain breakfast keeps me very regular), shave and shower (Usually about 45 minutes to an hour). Mix again and eat.

This is a filling and very nutritiousway to start the day providing an energy boost for almost the entire work day. I usually drink tea at work, have a light sandwich at lunch and come home to a large salad (out of the garden fro 6-8 months a year) and hearty dinner.

My goal is to be self-sufficient on the berries within a year or two.

Music

There was a time I wanted to be a rock star. I played in a band for a few years in the late 1980’s and early nineties. It started in Fargo North Dakota while I was in College. We had a little following there. One of the bands I helped found went on to some small national fame after I stopped playing with them and moved to Mpls when I graduated – Hammerhead.

Those were some great times in my life. I loved creating music and when you are in your twenties with a lot of time on your hands, you can really blossom under a heavy dose of delusion and obsession. My memory holds some notions that we actually were the greatest rock-n-roll band for those fleeting moments in a basement of a small home overlooking the wheat and sugar beet fields of the Red River Valley.

I started a couple of bands when I moved to Minneapolis, and although I became more technically proficient on the guitar, the inspiration for creating music was gone. Slowly, as I have grown older, music has become more and more trivial to me.

I still love to hear a good song and I pick up my guitar once in a blue moon to strum a couple of chords. I even have some recording software and I have put some songs together with all the parts. I am very thankful for those delusional and obsessive days of my youth, because although genius is no longer within my grasp on the guitar or in writing songs, playing music is a lot like riding a bike in that you never forget the mechanics of it. I can pick up the guitar and play a song that I have formed in my head, even if my guitar has laid untouched for a month or more.

But, music is too technical and the obsession is long gone. First I discarded all my albums (<500)i>

Maybe it is just that I am getting older, I don’t know. But, there is something that is lost when everything is just available to you. We get bogged down in choice until we become paralyzed. I long for the days when all I had to decide was whether I should listen to Exile on Main Street one more time or the Kinks Arthur.

I remember the excitement I felt when I began listening to music from Jamaica and then Africa. I also used to love to hear what they were doing in Seattle or Athens. Now, that music really is global there is no connection of music to a place. It is all just digitalized notes downloaded into cyberspace. But the music I loved grew out of the South in some dire conditions for downtrodden people. It was fused with the land these cultures identified with. And out of that land, music was formed that traveled full circle around the world. Blues, Jazz, Country Western, Rock, Soul, R&B, etc, all came from a place and wherever it landed it took on the forms and cultures of the place it arrived at. Music now never arrives at a place and it doesn’t sound like music anymore to my ears. I’d rather listen to songbirds in my garden and the winds whipping through the trees – even the hum of the freeway in the distance and airplanes overhead – than the music that comes to us from cyberspace.

Why I am a Luddite?

I promised to answer this question in a post last month. Well, Wendell Berry offers a pretty good explanation.

I rely on technology to navigate in this world. I am fully indoctrinated into American culture with a Masters degree in Economics. I can find my way around the computer quite well without being information systems technician. I know just enough to stay employed in this pecuniary economy.

It is my belief that most of the people I encounter everyday are not happy in their roles each one plays in this same economy. We each feel something is missing or we should be doing something else. Out connection to each other via electronic media, cell phones and text messaging leaves all of us feeling incomplete. I believe the primary component missing in our lives is a connection to place and community - culture. Contrary to the diversity specialists and multi-cultural advocates, culture is not tied to self-esteem or an individual's identity. Culture is attached to place and when we can buy culture through the mail and identify with images we see on television or on our computer, we lose a connection to our community and history. This loss is much greater than most people realize, for without this history we cannot function as citizens. We are no longer responsible for a place and neighborhood, but are rather concerned only with ourselves and our families. To be successful is to be mobile and if the community surrounds us is in danger of collapse, the successful ones will move their families to a new community. This lack of responsibility to a place is what is driving America to forget its glorious past and focus instead on its perilous future and each of our escapes.

All of this is driven by our new technologies and the only way to salvage our past is to begin taking care of a piece of land, however small at the expense of a pension, insurance, mobility, pecuniary gain. All wealth derives from material resources. The pecuniary wealth holders among the professional classes hold on the wealth is precarious at best as our collapsing housing market currently foreshadows. Buying and holding property cannot bring a return on an investment that is subject to exponential laws, unless it becomes speculative. However, these returns do not increase the real value of the land. Only stewardship and community building can raise the real return on the land.

The real return comes with a sense of place that is received from becoming part of a social network that depends on this place for its survival. We no longer have many places left in the US that are locally dependent as we rely more and more upon foreign imports of inferior products. These products are not inferior because they are produced by an inferior foreign people, but rather because they are not produced with care. They are produced with only one goal in mind -- profit. A local producer cares about what happens to the products he or she sells within the community because these products reflect on his or her reputation in the community. Multi-national global corporations have no such cares, outside of how they effect their bottm-lines. All this brings me back to the only permanent solution to the disease that infects our global culture, for lack of a better term describing our current condition.

We must place an emphasis on community and our local environments over technological advancements. Any technology that breaks apart a local community or harms a local habitat, should be restricted if not banned. Without such restrictions, we will continue down the path of individual pursuits of financial rewards at the expense of everything that is necessary for the pursuit of human freedoms and dignity in each of our lives.

The Hayloft

My father-in-law asked me to meet him after work at a horse farm to help unload two wagons of hay. I arrived at a small farm and was met by a distinguished older lady who showed me to the stables to change from my office clothes to my work clothes. My father-in-law showed up 20 minutes later with a wagon of hay which we promptly unloaded.

The woman’s daughter arrived while we were unloading the hay and was the owner/operator of the small horse stable. She was about 35 years old, had long dark hair, and was attractive with a nice figure. I am a married man and I have been out of the game of playing the field for several years. Still, it is nice to look at women from time to time and wonder about alternative lives imagining different scenarios for partnership. These thoughts have never gone beyond my imagination since I’ve been married and I don’t suspect they ever will.

We finished unloading the hay from the wagon, tossing it on the ground in front of the stable. My father-in-law drove away to pick up the other wagon and would be gone for an hour. Lisa, the daughter, gave me instructions on where to stack the hay in the stable. I worked on stacking the hay in one spot as she loaded up a small trailer attached to an all-terrain vehicle with bales to stack in another stable a short distance away. I finished stacking all the bales I could fit in the stable she showed me and went to lend her a hand.

I could handle loading, throwing and stacking the bales easier than Lisa. As I was helping Lisa made comments to her mom. “Oh, look at how he can lift them so easily up high.” And “He is soooo tall and strong.” I kept working, feeling proud and manly, and made quick work of stacking the bales in both spots.

It was an innocent line. I don’t think anything was meant from it, other than the practical aspect of showing me the next area to stack bales in. “Why don’t we go up in the hayloft?” Well, I’ve never been invited up into the hayloft by an attractive woman and as I followed her up the stairs, with my eye staring at those long legs tucked into tight jeans, my mind raced from one fantasy to the next as I considered the possibilities of what could happen in a hayloft.

Nothing happened in the hayloft and I kept my composure as we reached the top and she explained to me where we would stack the bales from the next wagon. When my father-in-law finally arrived, I worked up a sweat high in the loft with Lisa watching and commenting about how hot it was and what a good thing it is to have a man’s help around.

I left when we finished and said goodbye. When I came home, I had a beer to quench my thirst. I laid down to bed and my head was stilled filled with thoughts of pretty women and haylofts. I was unable to relieve myself of those thoughts and fantasies until I awoke in the morning and took a shower. Thank God, we have imaginations because they are wonderful. I’ll take it over a porn-site any day.

Notes to myself

I have attempted several times to keep a running journal since my teen years. Most have been abandoned after a month or two of daily writing. I’ve written songs, poems, and stories that have never been published and probably shouldn’t ever be. I have had thoughts that being a journalist or writer might be my dream occupation. However, I lack the discipline to write down my thoughts and ideas regularly.

Blogspot used to be banned at my place of employment. I now am able to access it. So, I thought I would attempt to write my thoughts down once again. Right now, I am comforted to know I have had minimal visitors here. I am keeping an open diary because I’d like to develop a discipline for writing and hone some skills that might be advantageous in the future, if I can ever break away from the necessity for a full-time job moving someone else’s pyramid stones around.

That is the purpose of this blog, in case you were wondering. It is not meant to entertain you, if you have stumbled across it. Sorry. I am simply making notes to myself.

The Thread

I am reading two books right now. One Dharma by Joseph Goldstein and The Revolt of the Elites by Chritopher Lasch.

I started this blog upon stumbling upon a friends blog called Pirsig Affliction. Its a long story, but I have come to be a fan of Matt's writing there on Philosophy and I missed not reading him for a couple of years after I stopped being subscribed to the MOQ.ORG mailing list. Anyway, he had a lot of posts and archives to go through, so I began printing off his threads at work and reading him at home as I became reacquainted with Richard Rorty and pragmatist philosopy. I don't know much about Philosophy but everything I have read from Matt seems to make a lot of sense to someone like myself with a bent toward the practical.

Well, funny thing is, no sooner than I finish catching up with Matt's thoughts, I begin the introduction to these two books which are completely dissimilar as far as topics. Let me quote from each beginning with One Dharma first.

A new mantra began emerging in my practice, and it was a very truthful response that had been plaguing me: "Who knows?" ..."Don't know mind," a phrase often used by Zen master Seung Sahn, enabled me to embrace a variety of perspectives, seeing the different views and methods as skillful means for liberation, rather than as the statements of absolute truths I was taking them to be. ..."Skillful means"is a phrase often found in Buddhist literature referring to the particular methods and practices used to help people free themselves from the bonds of ignorance. As skillful means we employ whatever is useful, whatever is truly helpful.

And from Revolt of the Elites:

The quest for certainty, which became an obsessive theme in modern thought when Descartes tried to ground philosophyin indubitable ppropositions, was misguided to begin with. As John Dewey pointed out, it distracted attention from the real business of philosophy, the attempt to arrive at "concrete judgments ...about ends and means in the regulation of practical behavior." In their pursuit of the absolute and immutable, philosophers took a disparaging view of the time-bound and contingent. In the world view of Western Phiosphy, knowing came to be split off from doing, theory from practice, the mind from body. ...The trouble in academia...derives not from the absence of secure foundations but the belief (shared it must be repeated by both parties of the debate) that in their absence the only possible outcome is a skepticism so deep that it becomes indistinguishable from nihilism. That this is not, in fact, the only possible outcome would have been abundantly clear to Dewey, and the revival of pragmatism as an object of historical and philosophical study--one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal picture--holds out some hope of a way out of the academic impasse.

I have always found that there is a thread weaving from the works of authors I read that resides somewhere in the pages - a truth revealed but remaining still unattainable. From Kundert to Goldstein to Lasch the thread remains as resolute as ever even as the subjects vary disparately.

Making Hay

My wife called me at work yesterday. My father-in-law needed help putting up the hay. My voice betrayed my disappointment. I had some work to do in the garden I was planning for the evening. Everything was planted in my raised beds, but I was hoeing up the rows and planting in clover between the beds. I am a perfectionist in my garden, and I strive to make it look as pleasing as it is productive. Fresh Dutch White clover in the rows between the beds, not only adds nitrogen in the soil, but also adds more greenery and is a soft footing to tread upon.

But, I only tend a garden. My father-in-law is a farmer and when the hay has to be put up, he transforms from a good-natured and laid-back farmer into a crazed and hyper man transfixed upon finishing a job before the rain inevitably moves in to spoil the cut. So, when my father-in-law calls, I do my best to help. My garden can wait – the hay cannot.

I got off of work at 4:30 pm and drove out of downtown St. Paul. It is about an hours drive to Marine on St. Croix, where my in-laws have 240 acres of beautiful real estate that they use to grow alfalfa to sell to area horse and dairy farms. It was 92 degree out when I hopped in my car and I was not looking forward to the back-breaking work in the heat until sundown on the second longest day of the year (about 10:00 pm in these Northern latitudes). I turned on the radio and heard the weather report. A massive storm was moving in from St. Cloud and would be in the Twin Cities sometime this evening. The closer I got to Marine, the darker the clouds became looming on the horizon.

After stopping for gas and an ice cream cone (it was hot and I was hungry), I arrived at the farm about 6:00 pm (traffic was heavy). My father-in-law was on the tractor with my five-year-old son sitting proudly on the fender next to him. He was expectantly and noticeably in a panic as I stepped out of the car and he pulled up and asked me if I needed to change. I was still in my work clothes and I guiltily nodded yes. He said, “We’ll go rake a couple of rows and meet you at the wagons on the alfalfa field across the road.” I said, “Okay,” and waved hello to my son as he returned a big grin.

I put on my jeans, sun hat, t-shirt, boots and gloves and then walked to the wagons. I watched as they finished raking and then left to the building to unhook the rake before coming back to switch tractors to the one with the baler. My father-in-laws hurried panic gave me concern for my son’s safety, since usually he was very cautious and attending with him while doing work on the farm. With the dark clouds rolling in, I could see my father-in-law had greater concerns at the moment. However, my son was soaking and basking in his grandpas focused work on the tractor and was attending his every move on the tractor. I could see from his inspired face that he was deeply involved in a learning moment, so I said nothing.

They stopped and got off the tractor and my son ran to me and told me we had to stack the bales in the wagon before it rained. He hopped on the wagon and I guided my father-in-law back to the hitch and then hooked the wagon to the baler and then hopped in back with my son. I don’t look forward to the heavy work of stacking square bales on a wagon as they are thrown back from the baler and breathing in mouthfuls of hay dust. But as we drove away to the field and I looked across the farm at the beautiful fields surrounded by stands of hardwoods and pine with the dark clouds looming on the horizon and lightening stretching across the sky, I could not help but notice the beauty and feel the calm in the wake of my father-in-laws hurried work in front of us. My occasional glimpse of my father-in-laws eyes revealed that he also noticed this and, really, this is what kept him farming at his 70 years of age. He had put up four wagons himself, before I arrived. There was still a calmness in his eyes behind his exhaustion from the hurried work.

We circled the field and the bales flew back. I stacked them as my son heaved against the large bales to little effect. But, he nimbly moved around me and out of the way of flying bales as we bounced along through the field. My father-in-law had the tractor in a higher gear than he normally bales in, due to the limited time-frame we were working in. As the wagon filled, the sky grew darker and lightening strikes became closer with the thunder heard over the hum of the tractor. I adjusted to the rhythm of the baler and my son grew more excited as we climbed higher and higher upon the stacked rows of bales below us. There were five rows circling the field when we began that we had to put up and this would approximately fill the wagon with 150 bales. I could feel the first drops of rain as we rounded the last turn in the field and the sky grew almost as dark as night.

A couple claps of thunder and I noticed the concern in my father-in-laws eyes. My wife came running out warning of a tornado in a neighboring county and my father-in-law said my son should probably get off the wagon for the last go around. The disappointment in his eyes was noticeable, but he climbed down and ran to my wife’s arms and buried his face in her hips as he began to cry uncontrollably. We circled round and finished the last row and then I unhooked the wagon as my son came up with tears in his eyes. My father-in-law called him to the tractor and told him to get on quick before the rain comes. His sadness soon dissipated to pride once again as they drove away to the building and I started up the other tractor and backed it up to the filled wagon.

I made the short drive to the building and backed it in with my son, my wife and father-in-law watching. The rain came down hard just as I got off of the tractor and we stood in the doorway of the building together, covered in hay dust, and watched it coming down. It ended up being a shorter evening than I expected, but I was exhausted and exhilarated standing with my family and taking in the rain and work we had just completed. My father-in-law limped on his bad knee and laughed as my wife chided him over his putting up four wagons by himself earlier in the day. “What is a farmer to do,” he asked? Then he put his arm around my son and patted him on the head. “Right, Ian," he said, as a grin came across my son’s face that lit up all the rest of our faces. We laughed and waited for the rain to subside before running to the farmhouse to eat warmed-up pork chops and muskmelon, chased down with spritzers and beer. It was a grand way to spend an evening after work.