Archive for the ‘Harry’s Diary’ Category

That guy in my Mom’s care facility

Monday, March 25th, 2013

For the past year there has been a harmless old guy with a yen to dance with the ladies at my Mother’s care facility. At the few occasions I’ve been with my Mother at a musical preformance he always seeks out a couple women to dance with some of whom rebuff his advances. He always has a gentle not quite vacant smile spread from ear to ear.

I’ve also gotten to know a woman whose children were in my Morgan Park Geography classes back in 1986. It was only last week that I put the two of them together as they stood in the hallway near my Mother’s room. The woman gently discouraged him from pursing one of his occasional dance partners a lady who appears to be my age and suffering from early onset Alzheimers.

The wife told me she blamed Vietnam for his state. He’d been in the 101st Airborne during the Tet Offensive when I was a Junior in high school. She blamed PSTD for his condition and Agent Orange which was slathered on US soldiers and Vietnamese alike. Today’s Vietnamese blame its lingering effects for high rates of infant birth defects.

We talked about the Veteran’s Administration which she felt gave her husband short shrift and when I mentioned that today’s Iraq and Afghanistan vets might face similar indifference in the future (as the war is forgotten and we come to resent its ongoing costs) she pointed out that at least today’s veterans have been welcomed home as heroes. That’s true, I guess, but somehow I still find it small comfort.

Hell’s Kitchen

Friday, March 1st, 2013

I just got back from an overnight flight from Duluth. I was pleased to see my home intact as we drove up 21st and pleased to see my troublesome elephant still holding a Confederate flag albeit a badly sun-faded one.

I’m not sure most folks would consider the Twin Cities all the great an alternative at the end of February let alone for a single evening but we wanted a break in our routine. It didn’t hurt that neither Grandma or Papa had a smidgen of sleep the night before with our delightful little grandsons joining us in bed just after midnight. They wiggle a lot. (more…)

Burning my house down

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

Some kids have been talking about burning my house down. So says Robin Washington of the DNT. He got a call from someone in the know who said a lot of children on the school buses are angered by my snow sculpture. Unlike the Republican who jumped to the conclusion, quite rightly, that my pachyderm was meant to twit the right these kids see the old confederate flag and think I’m cheering on the Dixiecrats who still can’t get over the Civil War.

Robin and I had a long cordial talk. He thought that there were a lot of folks in Duluth who wouldn’t get my point, a point which he surmised right away. Well, I did make a snow sculpture four years ago of Obama’s campaign logo. I made a snow sculpture of Obama himself pondering a globe. I’ve spent six years writing spiteful posts about the Grand Old Party. Heck the year this blog started I made a snow sculpture of Old Abe as he sits under the shelter of the Lincoln Memorial. (more…)

When the grandkids stay for President’s Day

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

From my daughter’s Facebook page:

The deleterious inspiration of today’s GOP

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

I remember reading a review of Farlie’s book, Bite the Hand that Feeds You,” because it was such a great title. In 1980 he wrote this about the new conservative drift of the GOP under Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority:

“The America which Europe fears is the America of the Reaganites. The America once of the Scopes trial; the America of prohibition; the America of ignorant isolationism. The America then of ‘‘better dead than red’’; the America of McCarthyism; the America of the last fundamentalists of the 1950s. The America now of the new evangelicals; the America of the Moral Majority; the America of a now ignorant interventionism; the America which can see homosexuals as a conspiracy; feminists as a conspiracy; perhaps even women as a conspiracy.

The America of fear. For it is in fear that the ungoverned and the unfree are doomed to live. And there was this America in control at Detroit. It is time that we reminded ourselves, and said aloud and more often, that it is from these people that nastiness comes. It is time that we pointed out to the neo-conservatives that democracy has never been subverted from the left but always from the right.

No democracy has fallen to communism, without an army; many democracies have fallen to fascism, from within. The Reaganites on the floor were exactly those who in Germany gave the Nazis their main strength and who in France collaborated with them and sustained Vichy. If the neo-conservatives cannot sniff danger, surely the rest of us can be alert.”

The GOP that is currently attempting to take down war hero and Republican dove Chuck Hagel is simply an amped up version of the party Farlie described thirty years ago. It is the deleterious inspiration for my latest snow sculpture which I should be able to finish tomorrow.

It’s not done but I can show you the little modeling clay model I perched on top of the Rebel flag to guide my sculpting.

I can’t guarantee it will even make it through the night since I’ve just given my detractors a head’s up. The sun will decompose it in a few days although it should be cold enough to remain through the weekend. I can imagine an ignorant Republican knocking it down as an insult to the Party. It is. I can also imagine an ignorant person knocking it down because they are too dimwitted not to realize it in no way exalts the Confederate battle flag.

A dozen cute titles have occured to me. The GOP whistles Dixie is one. That’s ironic because one of the last wonderful anecdotes about Abe Lincoln is telling a jubilant crowd that he instructed a band to play Dixie at War’s end. I could also call it the Ascension of John Wilkes Booth – Republican martyr.

This year I have sculpted my two most meaningful sculptures. The Angel was deeply felt and this one reflects the frustration of my adult life. Forty frustrated years of working towards and pining for a rational Republican Party.

Nighty night continued

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

No sooner had I finished episode six and gotten the message that two more hours of House had done by partner in than my little bugger approached the door of my office with his big Mater the tow truck pillow in one hand. I crawled in bed with him – his lower bunk bed not mine until a minute passed and he told me he needed a drink of water. Water became a potty break became a little request that I sit in the chair beside him and NOT in his bed and then a minute before slumber took over.

I’m not much like the character that Spacey portrays. He broke the teacher’s union president by taunting him into punching out the Congressmen which is, evidently, a federal offense. The Screen writer decided that the provocation would not win the union rep any sympathy. I thought it would have had it been skillfully described to a public curious why he would punch the lights out of the Congressman. Oh well, I wasn’t the screen writer.

Kevin Spacey’s character is described by his cold blooded wife. He offered her power and adventure not children. He wouldn’t have gotten my kick out of babysitting two grandson’s solo.

I haven’t posted much for the past few days. I’ve taken in lots of interesting things and I’ve been doing some mental coalating and a page of notes for blog posts staring me in the face. I won’t post them but here are some examples:

A. Shakespeare’s plays, not the highest rated of their time, survived only because he and his partners were shrewed businessmen. I wonder how America would have progressed had they not been there for Abraham Lincoln to memorize.

B.That reminded me of something I had read thirty years ago in a Isaac Asimov history of Greece. I recall Asimov saying that a Roman General recovered Arisototle’s books after they had been hidden underground. Turns out that’s not quite what happened. We may owe their recovery to a book collector:

To protect the books from theft, Neleus’s heirs concealed them in a vault, where they were damaged somewhat by dampness, moths and worms. In this hiding place they were discovered about 100 BCE by Apellicon, a rich book lover, and brought to Athens. They were later taken to Rome after the capture of Athens by Sulla in 86 BCE. In Rome they soon attracted the attention of scholars, and the new edition of them gave fresh impetus to the study of Aristotle and of philosophy in general.

The Arabs probably had an equal hand in saving Aristotle so that St. Thomas Aquinas, among others, could us them to undergird Catholic theology.

A book lover in the 1500′s was the principal hero in the book Swerve when he got hold of another ancient book on the stoics.

I also recalled reading a tidbit from twenty years ago about a massive wave of destruction for ancient Chinese texts some 2000 plus years ago.

Over the years I’ve read a half dozen books on similar episodes of censorship. The Black Sea dwells on the reshuffling of the many ethnic populations around the Coast of the Black Sea.

There is much more but this is already far too much.

Today I decided to build my third snow sculpture of the year. I made great progress probably because it relates to something that has been a burr under my saddle for almost as long as I’ve kept track of the books I’ve read – the take over of the Republican Party by the ghost of John Wilkes Booth. Pisses me off. It was accomplished by the kind of guys like the one Kevin Spacey is portraying so brilliantly. People interested in power over truth.

I flatter myself when I muse that this has been the biggest obstacle to my progress in the world of politics. This and my stubborn refusal to become a DFLer when I wanted to run for local office back in 1976. Lincoln did read widely. His Republican successors include far too many who have not followed his example.

Biding my time till nighty night

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

I’m solo with my grandson’s tonight. Little one is a bugger to put to sleep. It’s ten past nine and I’ve read him and his older brother two Vegietale books and played a Toy Story and Thomas the Tank engine CD and now finally a Raffi sleepy time music CD. I’ve poured a glass of wine and am waiting until I might be free of “Papa?” interruptions. Raffi used to work wonders.

The wine will go with episode 5 of House of Cards and maybe 6. I’ve been texting back and forth with Claudia getting advice on how to win the battle of the zzzz’s. We both want to watch Kevin Spacey together 2,000 miles apart.

I did manage to complete reading my first first book for 2013. I added it to my list while Thomas the Tank Engine was chugging along.

From SOTU to Netflix

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

I watched the President’s State of the Union speech tonight while messaging (with my fancy new phone) to my sweetie whose visiting family in Florida. It was as good for the nation as Marco Rubio’s rebuttal was for the GOP’s shrinking, elderly white base. Actually Obama’s was better because he didn’t get a dry throat and have to reach below the camera for bottled water midway through.

We continued messaging as we started the third and fourth episodes in Netflix’s homage to the Brit production “House of Cards.” Its a great series that almost makes politics look serious. Its probably just the ominous background music.

Its two past Midnight. Time to see if I can get another good night’s sleep.

In a new Galaxy

Sunday, January 27th, 2013

I’m getting the hang of my new Samsung Galaxy 3 phone.

I might get to like this.

My wife’s fellow book club members recommended the BBC series “The Hour.” We started watching it livestreamed from Amazon.com. It’s very good and worth every bit of two bucks per hour episode. Its about a television news hour in 1950′s England.

Just thought my 8 loyal readers ought to know.

I typed this up last night. I couldn’t post it by way of my phone. It turned out my wifi connection had gone bad. I still can’t figure out how to capitalize the first word in a sentence. I corrected that mistake now.

Reading vs. fund raising

Saturday, January 26th, 2013

I’m in the midst of a fascinating chapter in the book “Black Sea” which is explaining much to me about the sorry history of Poland-Lithuania.

I’m so pleased that I’m not in Congress and expected by my party handlers to spend five hours on the phone each day selling my soul to rich people begging them for 2014′s political donations.

Because I get to read I get to grow my brain instead of see it atrophy like the brains of Congressmen.

The author writes of one of his historical characters Adam Mickiewicz perhaps the most loved Polish poet:

“He never saw either Warsaw or Krakow, the two capital citys of historic Poland. It is as if Shakespeare had never visited Poland.”

He goes on to say that the poet spent long hours visiting at the home of an admitted spy for Poland’s occupier, Russia: “It was still and age in which a fine fellow was a fine fellow, and his politics came second.”

God forbid that any of our Congressmen would do the same. It would cut into their time at the phone bank or intellectual growth. Since they have no idea what’s going on in the world thank goodness the Party gives them talking points so that their ignorance doesn’t become too apparent when voters ask them questions.

Two workers on staff in my Mom’s wing

Friday, January 25th, 2013

I went to sing to my Mother this morning. I took a bunch of new songs including one I just found that she used to sing to me.

Playmate. These are the words:

Say, say, oh playmate,
Come out and play with me
And bring your dollies three
Climb up my apple tree

Shout down my rain barrel
Slide down my cellar door
And we’ll be jolly friends
Forever more more more more more

Say, say, oh playmate
I cannot play with you
My dolly’s got the flu
Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo

Ain’t got no rain barrel
Ain’t got no cellar door
But we’ll be jolly friends
Forever more

I had a jolly time too. But when I left the staffer who had to prepare Mother to go to lunch looked especially haggard. I asked her why and she explained that there were now only two people working on my Mother’s ward of broken down seniors. I asked her how many there had been and she said three and occasionally four. Budget cuts.

Republicans! Remember with all your life is sacred rhetoric that if its so sacred you ought to be prepared to treat it that way with higher taxes. Democrats! Remember soon we baby boomers will swell senior care facilities and drain every last dollar from the next generation if you are too giving.

Watching Minnesota’s odd but reasonalbe Governor Dayton I’m reassured that some Democrats are picking up on the value of balance. He just cut funding for the wildly superfluous extension of the Northstar Train to Duluth.

Sorry Ken B. but good luck on your competitive dancing.

My life as an anvil salesman – Pt 2

Friday, January 18th, 2013

I’ve always liked the politicians I call boring old white guys when I thought they were sensible and honest politicians. They didn’t have to be anvil salesmen just decent. Jerry Ford, Dwight Eisenhower even Herbert Hoover the man who was so unlucky as to get elected in 1928, and even Barack Obama (who’s half white).

I think FDR was one of the most important presidents but I’ve always found his mercurial properties a bit off putting. Lyndon Johnson was just important but for crying out loud he was one hell of an SOB. Even Teddy Roosevelt was too flamboyant for my taste.

Lincoln, of course, is my all time favorite president but his times prevented him from being merely a boring old white guy. He wanted to be sensible, tried desperately to be sensible but as Bobby Dylan said, The times was a changing and he never got the chance to be boring and sensible. All he got was sensible and his sensible was one hell of a big anvil – tear the country apart to keep it together and end slavery – if need be.

Ah but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve liked the same sort of politicians on the local level – boring old white guys. I tried very hard to be one. But there is one thing that grates on me about too many boring old white guys. They have a terrible penchant for needing to fit in. What bother’s me about this is that fitting in often requires turning one’s back on the truth or if not turning one’s back to it ignoring it. I can’t do that easily.

Given the chance to avoid an argument I’ll not slap people with the opinions I have that I know will offend them. About half of the American public is a little bent out of shape over the subject of abortion for instance. Anyone who has read my blog knows this. Anyone who read my old Reader columns knows this. All one has to do is go to the right hand column of this blog and click the abortion link and every post of mine on the subject will present themselves. Still, if I suspect someone is opposed to all abortions I have no desire to tell them I think they are wrong. Its only when they make their opinions public that I’m likely to disagree with them.

When the Red Plan first emerged, even before it had a color I was suspicious about it but I had stepped off the School Board a few years earlier and felt no compulsion to stick my nose into the planning. The most I’d done was to call my old friend Tim Grover, who was back on the Board, when I read the remarkable claim that the District was thinking about implementing a major construction program without putting it up for a vote. He told me that the District thought the law would permit them to do this. I was unconvinced that this could be true but that’s all I did about the question for the next three or four months.

By this time I had also retired from my four year stint as a columnist for the Reader Weekly but my old publisher gave me a call one day and asked me to write about this school building plan. I tried to demure but he laid a guilt trip on me. Harry, he told me, you served on the School Board. You have some knowledge about this important subject. You have no right to keep your thoughts private. You owe it to the public to let them know what you think.

I haven’t put this in quotes because I don’t know the exact words of our conversation but this essentially how it transpired that I wrote my first opinion piece on the Red Plan. One thing led to another and I was eventually one of the leading voices demanding a vote on the plan. That meant three years of fight and, once the fight was lost. three years of interminable “I told you so” from me mostly in the blog but also with a few letters to the editor.

I know that I’m unpopular with a lot of people in Duluth. That’s not very helpful for someone with political ambitions. Until the Red Plan folks might distrust me because I was a Republican because in the old days a lot of liberals tended to think Republicans were what they’ve become today – self righteous, paranoid, fiscal bomb throwers. That wasn’t true. Sure the George Wallace types had migrated into the Party but it was still the party of Eisenhower, Jerry Ford and even a pretty moderate Ronald Reagan who had signed pro abortion legislation, raised taxes and mostly played the skeptic where liberal pronouncements were concerned.

While I was fighting the Red Plan most of my detractors didn’t get in my face but I did get a few glimpses of what I stirred up by fighting both the Chamber of Commerce and Big Labor. Big Deal was one of best portholes to the musk oxen I was challenging. He had been in the legislature (I’d helped him put up lawnsigns) He’d helped me in return in some of my legislative races. He is a member of my church. He was a fiscal (or so I thought) conservative. He once started an anti tax organization in Duluth. He’d been a heavyweight in the Chamber of Commerce.

We have always gotten along well. During the Red Plan Fight, however, I caught two unplanned glimpses of what I faced in the larger community from Big D.

On the first occasion I happened to be following D down to our church’s basement after the service. D didn’t know I was behind him and began speaking rather vociferously about how folks didn’t realize how important the Red Plan was because they were in a delusional sticker shock about its cost, one he obviously thought was merited. He’d never told me this to my face and I held back so that he would not realize I’d over heard him saying that my anti-Red Plan point of view was stupid.

Disagreeing with me was one thing. Holding me in contempt was quite another and I found out just how far down I’d sunk in his opinion the following year with the Red Plan still a hot topic in town. I had to call D up for some reason, church, politics, I can’t recall at the moment although its quite likely I was looking for donations to a fund some anti-Red Plan activity.

He was on the phone with someone else when he picked up my call and told me he had to put me on hold to continue his previous conversation. Remember call waiting? I’m glad its a thing of the past. Almost immediately he was back on the phone to me and explained that he’d just gotten a call from some “asshole” he had to deal with. When I began speaking he suddenly realized his other party had hung up and hurriedly attempted to explain away his comment. I played along as though I had no idea he was referring to me. Anvils and assholes. As Meredith Wilson knew they had a lot in common.

My life as an anvil salesman – Pt 1

Friday, January 18th, 2013

Yup. Another post beginning Pt. 1. If you are one of my long time readers the “eight loyal readers” you understand that I’ve got a piece of sand under my shell and I’ve got so much I want to write that I can’t possibly get everything off my chest and do the proof reading justice. Oh Well!

The allusion is yet another metaphor this time to the wonderful Meredith Wilson musical, Music Man. If you’ve seen it you will recall that the play’s biggest party pooper was the guy who ratted out the hero who conned a little Iowa town into believing he could teach their children how to play band instruments with the “think system.” No messing around with learning how to read music kids could just think what they needed to play and they’d be playing Sousa in no time. And this was extraordinarily helpful to the “music man” since he happened to sell musical instruments and band uniforms. He was, of course, a fraud but a very charming one. In the musical he sells a little Iowa town on forming a band which will net him a big payday and he will skip town just after the sale is completed and before he has to make the think system work. Everyone falls in love with him and with a couple of twists and turns it has a happy ending no thanks to the anvil salesman.

That anvil salesman is me. In the musical he’s the bitter fellow who sells anvils. Every town needs an anvil because in those horse and buggy days everyone needs a blacksmith. But what a lousy product to pitch. And the worst of it is that wherever he sells his heavy, ungainly anvils he’s right behind the music man who has left disgruntled customers behind to sour their disposition by the time he has to follow up to sell them an anvil.

In this metaphor I’m the guy who has to sell anvils and I’m following the music man, Keith Red Plan Dixon. The guy who was going to make our schools so beautiful that just like in the Music Man when the children in their shiny new band uniforms began showing how they had learned to play using the think system all the parents were to stand up and say “that’s my boy.” Pride would convince them they had made a swell deal and the Music Man could lead them through the town playing Seventy-six Trombones.

Its not easy being an anvil salesman but not impossible. As I lay wide awake thinking tonight at 2AM it occurred to me that Lincoln and Jesus were two very successful anvil salesmen. Those revelations I’ll hold under my hat for later chapters, parts, of this series.

I’m on vacation. I’ve enjoyed rather a lot of vacations in recent years. I’m now retired and living happily on my wife’s retirement income. God knows I’ve contributed little to our finances over the year. I was always too busy selling anvils, or politics in my case, and usually making a hash of it.
This jaunt will end shortly and I’ll return to a frozen landscape that global warming has done little to improve. Little precipitation, a shrinking Lake Superior, a frozen ground with little snow cover that will not soak up any spring rains or snow melt allowing all the moisture to stay out of the ground and keeping it too dry for the sake of agriculture or our forests. OMG. Global Warming is yet another anvil.

On the bright side its given me 80 degree days here in southern Florida and I got to show my grandsons alligators in the Everglades yesterday. Then we stopped and ate alligator and frog legs at a rustic little diner outside the National Park. Not all of Florida is paved over even though it looks like it from the air. A few folks are trying to keep the river of grass from drying up even though the damned boa constrictors are eating everything with four legs up or even two. I think there was story circulating on the news when we arrived about a mother who found a six-footer wrapped around her sleeping baby’s arm.

I can’t complain. When I got into Everglades I was told that by attaining the age of early retirement, 62, I could for the expenditure of a measly ten bucks by a lifetime pass to all our nation’s national parks. Barring accident, knock on wood, I’ll be carrying my new plastic card with me on many future trips.

The Anvil Salesman metaphor came to me a few weeks ago as I pondered whether it was worth it to annoy my dear wife and run for the School Board again. I’ve got little happiness to sell other than the sorry truth that we’re screwed in Duluth. How the hell is someone supposed to win an election with that message? And yet the anvil salesman, had he known it, did have something on his side. The truth. He just didn’t have very nice wrapping paper. That’s what I’ve got to work on.

Long after I got through thinking about Lincoln and Jesus I started mulling over some details of my own life that on first thought any sensible salesman or politician would leave untold. They are anvils of a sort embarrassing stuff, I guess, except that at age 62 and with my frame of mind I mostly find them interesting. Maybe I could sell my anvils based on prurience with a dash of prudence thrown in.

As I was mulling things over it occurred to me that I must have gotten to know a little about at least 50,000 people in my life. That’s a huge number and perhaps all that I ever know about most of them was their name (at one point) and where I was when I met them. There were 454 graduates in my high school class of 1969 and I once prided myself on knowing at least a hair about all of them. That’s almost one half of one percent of that staggering number of 50,000. I also count fictional characters in that number and actors, and celebrities, and historical characters and when you throw them all into the mix 50,000 may be waaay too conservative a figure.

There were even more kids in my high school I new kids older than me and younger. Even my own classmates varied over time. A few kids never graduated. Some new kids showed up halfway through my high school years like Bill. Tough thing getting uprooted in your high school years. I particularly remember Bill because a couple years after high school I met his Mother at the college health center. I had to tell her I’d been exposed to a venereal disease, (I didn’t know which one). I knew the Doctor was Bill’s Mother and I hoped she didn’t know who I was although with my last name she might very well have. My father was the president of the teacher’s union at the college and I was occasionally getting in the student newspaper as a Student Senator. I had also been one of the kids who was nice to her son when he moved to town in the middle of high school. I can’t recall if I had to drop my pants and let her give me a shot in the tush but its quite likely.

My Dad had told me that he had to get a shot (to travel to Europe) and had been given the choice of taking one big one in the butt or two, one in each arm. He chose the two shots. Had I been a little more assertive I might have asked for such an option but I wasn’t feeling all that superior having confessed the consequences of my guilty pleasure. And it was a guilty pleasure; one I told my wife about before marrying her so that she could back out of a wedding if she felt I was not worthy of her. I’m still debating whether I should explain just how heavy an anvil that story is. I suspect I will. Its not so heavy for me at my age and because I really won’t care if the anvil salesman approach costs me getting elected to the School Board again. Our schools are so efffed up I’m not even sure a little truth telling will get us out of Dr. Dixon’s hole.

Amblyopia

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

My Dad had a favorite term: “self fulfilling prophecies.” He warned me against them so often I took the idea to heart. They can be powerful. Shamans used them in tribal societies to put curses on folks who got so caught up in the curse that they conveniently got sick and/or died.

My Dad unwittingly handed one to me when I was in junior high that I made particular use of. When I was struggling with long division (I had a hell of a time keeping place holders straight when I subtracted remainders) he told me that “Welty’s aren’t good at math.” That was good enough for me in succeeding math and algebra classes.

I’ve more recently (starting about twenty years ago) gotten very interested in the notion of the “plasticity” of the brain or in the words of the previous post: “teaching old dogs new tricks.”

So this post from Andy Sullivan caught my cell phone learning attention this morning. Read it and c how the xperts got it wrong.

“Amblyopia is a visual disorder in which the two eyes don’t properly align; sometimes it’s called “lazy eye.” The standard medical advice is to treat your child early, by getting them to wear an eye patch over the good eye (in order to strengthen the weak one). If you don’t treat the problem early, you can just forget about ever fixing it.”

Old dog, new trick

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

My thirteen loyal readers are still sticking to Lincolndemocrat even though they are tested every time I pause to live my life rather than blog too slavishly. Its only been a couple days but (aw dammit cat. Yeah, go ahead and sit on my lap……no no don’t brush your head against my hannnnnnnsdsds. And leave the yellow marker alone!)

As I was saying. Its only been a couple days but I haven’t felt compelled to share any thoughts with the blogosphere. I have been busy. I decided to join the seeming new majority of folks who look at their laps while driving and get a real, honest to john super duper cell phone. I also thought about giving this post the title “celling out.” The next post will explain the more hopeful title I’ve given this one.

Up until now I had what I asked for – a cell phone for dummies. Its only made calls and allowed for text messages. I had it three years before I even used the texting function. It was so cumbersome I hated to text. When i finally joined in my son criticized me for sounding like a teenage girl to wit: “Going 2 store c u l8er.” He even sent it to friends to make fun of me. No apolpogies from me. It saved about five minutes in locating the right letters on the keypad. It also gave me an appreciation for the flexibility of language.

I’m not for (4) doing things the old way for tradition’s sake. I just hate to spend time learning new tricks when I’m perfectly satisfied with the old tricks. I got my first computer in 1984 because I hated the time I wasted correcting all my mistakes on a manual typewriter.

The issue for me now is that suddenly my daughter puts loads of instant pictures of my grandsons on her facebook page and I don’t see them unless my wife shows me on her phone. I’ve had to bite two bullets. Facepage and a fancy Samsung Galaxy 3 cell phone. I also learned how to use my wife’s kindle on a recent trip to Chicago to post on lincoln democrat. Pretty soon I should be able to do it on the cell phone too (although I can do it faster on my laptop).

So I’m now a cell out. Please don’t expect to see my driving by ant time soon, however, with my eyes glued to my lap. I’d make an exception where such behavior is concerned and let the NRA perform drive-by’s on such folk. I just hope Google hurries up with its computer driven cars.

And a few drivebys

Friday, January 4th, 2013

To continue the last post’s ruminations I’ll mention that my yard gets noticed regularly each winter that I can put a snow sculpture together. Sometimes the vagaries of weather only leave me with a couple days of snow art. This year, for the first time in a few years, I’ve lucked into a sculpture that has lasted two weeks because of short cold days.

More than any other sculpture I felt compelled to make this one because of current events. Last year was so warm I was never able to freeze water in the ice bucket candle holders I bought. That was no problem this year and I’ve been able to set them out below my snow sculpture.

Twenty years ago a traffic engineer told me that over 20,000 cars were driving up and down my Avenue each day. Today I’d guess twice that many pairs of eyes go past. This means a lot more folks see my sculptures than read my scribblings. This year’s sculpture has touched a cord with people as never before.

Last night as I lit the 10 candles for the ice luminaries a school bus paused below us with the change of lights. Suddenly windows flew down and ten year old were giving me thumbs up and telling my work was awesome. It made me feel glad even though I’m several days past shedding tears. These stories, like my sculptures, have a short life span.

A couple days ago I read that a survey of reporters listed Sandy Hook as the top story of 2012. We all have a habit of ranking recent events all out of proportion to their real significance. In years to come Sandy Hook will fade in our memories and be eclipsed by Obama’s reelection following a two-year campaign. At least it will hold its primacy in the history books. Still, I’ll remember my latest sculpture with far more fondness than the much larger one I made of Obama two years ago. The heart has its own ranking system.

13 loyal readers

Friday, January 4th, 2013

I used to routinely say that I appreciated my 8 loyal readers. For reasons I can not explain there has been a small uptick in readers. I mentioned in December that it looked like I would end up with more readers in the last month of 2012 than any month of the year including the first two when I was busy telegraphiging my imminent candidacy for Congress. The numbers in January and February no doubt included a small hive of politicial junkies eager to find out what kind of mayhem I could bring to a race that was wide open with nine months to go.

The numbers dropped off as I got wrapped up in other misadventures and eventually stopped all talk of throwing my hat in the ring. There is a new normal however, I think I will have to start referring to my 13 loyal readers. Even with a miserable 2 posts in the first four days of 2013 I’m on a trajectory to improve even on the December 2012 numbers. I’ve got new readers in Japan apparently. It can’t be my snow sculptures. Mine pale compared to Sapporo’s.

I have hinted at a new Quixotic adventure – running for the Duluth School Board. That may have a few partisans of the Red Plan nervously reading. Maybe the uptick is simply a reflection of there being more people on the Internet with too much time on their hands.

This post will include a little catch up on the last couple days of personal reflection. I’m only doing it because my visit to my Mother was cut short this morning as staff in her wing of the Alzheimer’s unit rushed toward me with their face masks to hustle me out because of an outbreak of influenza. As I exited they assured me my Mother was OK. This was ironic on a couple scores.

Claudia and I were out running new year’s errands yesterday when I pointed out a huge sign offering flu shots. We both got shot up. The pharmacist said, “Hi Harry” when I showed up. I didn’t know him from Adam but my local infamy frequently proceeds me. The shots won’t offer me protection for a few days so its just as well I was hustled out. That’s irony one. Irony two. My Mother’s condidtion is such that all of her children agreed many years ago to give her caregivers a DNR. This means, that in the event of her illness there is a Do Not Resuscitate order. She can be given palliative medicine to keep her comfortable but not to revive her should she begin to fail rapidly. The irony here is that a month ago I was informed that one of the staff members routinely gave her a flu shot along with other people in her wing. This went beyond the palliative medicine regime and when asked before hand if she should be given a shot I said “no.”

When the staff discovered its mistake and admitted it to me I shrugged it off. It was an accident and well intentioned. My family discussed DNR’s with my Mother a decade or more ago when the mental difficulties were beginning to emerge and she was fully supportive of a DNR when she was capable of such personal planning. She (the woman of ten years ago) would be bothered to see herself today. Her condition eventually led to a falling out between family members which has not yet been healed.

I got an unexpected letter from a sibling who visited Mom for the first time in three years since I transferred Mom to Duluth. It was a short but generous letter that suggested that there might be hope for the rift’s repair.

I wrote back and mentioned how when I was in grade school fifty years ago Mom had confided to me her own anguish that her Mother was undergoing mental senescence. From that day on Mom worried that she might follow suit. Her fears came to pass after a generation of improved medicine and healthcare guaranteed that her enduring heart would would keep her alive for many years of incomprehension. She would not have wished this, but as I wrote to my sibling, she does not suffer and can no longer be troubled by the fate that has befallen her.

There is yet another irony in this. I now visit Mom far more often once every four or five days. When I began my visits she was in the Twin Cities and I had to complete a five hour round-trip drive for every hour and a half visit. For that first year I could talk to her. It was mostly by monologuing. Then I got a wonderful and unexpected gift. My beautiful daughter, who was herself studying vocal performance, gave me four hour-long voice lessons for Christmas. The teacher lived not far from my Mother’s new residence and after the small embarrassment of taking each lesson I discovered I could sing to my Mother when my monologue fell silent. Mom could sing with me such songs as: “I’ve been working on the Rail Road,” “Mairzy Doats” and the favorite of all old folks homes, “You are my Sunshine.”

I got my first set of lyrics from a pianist who played for nursing home patients (I can’t read music but I have a good head for familiar old melodies) and I’ve been adding more lyrics for the past four years. I’ve probably ammased close to 2,000 of them by now and I keep adding to them. I sing all sorts of songs to Mom and it doesn’t matter to either of us whether she knew or even liked them. I belt out songs sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford (Sixteen Tons) Jim Croce (Leroy Brown) as well as her Father’s favorite Civil War anthems. Sometimes I preform for her whole wing and its a lovely uncomplaining audience that almost makes me forget my vocal limitations.

In short my Mother’s malady has become an unexpected blessing at least for me. It helped me discover how much I like singing which, come to think of it, isn’t all that surprising for a fellow who loves the sound of his own pontification.

This is not a new subject for me. I wrote about it once early in my Mother’s institutionalization as a columnist for a local tabloid in town. I’ve even posted about my singing before.

Back when I wrote for the Reader Weekly I had a potential of 10,000 eyes but I probably had the same eight regular readers I still have even with a billion potential eyes on the Internet. To all eight, er thirteen, of you I say: Thank’s for stopping by.

My branch of the Avengers strikes…

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

…at our church’s “trunk or treat.” I’m under the red, white and blue hat in the foreground.

Oh, the tall one’s my main squeeze Grandma America.

I missed Clinton’s first visit to Duluth…

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

…trying to find him in my camera’s viewfinder.

I missed him today because I had to let the exterminators in to kill off the swarm of dung flies JB Marvin left behind.

The Courts….Simonson and the DFL’s only hope

Friday, September 14th, 2012

I was helping my Church’s mens’ group over at the Seafarer’s Center scraping and painting windows when I unwittingly splashed my head with white paint. I had to suffer the indignity of having the staff wash my head in a sink. On my way to the clean up I saw my old friend Mike Jaros in the hallway and we exchanged pleasantries.

Once I was dripping with water instead of latex we chatted a bit. We both agreed that unless candidate Simonson can get his name on the ballot west Duluth would get its first Republican legislator since Mike defeated Dwight Swanstrom in 1972 (or thereabouts).

I think there is precedent for this. In 1990 one of my heroes Arne Carlson became the GOP nominee for Governor after the disgraced nominee of the religious right, Jon Grunseth, was discovered to have chased his daughter’s girlfriend around his pool trying to rip her swimsuit top off.

Before the Courts or the Secretary of State intervened folks like me were busy trying to distribute stickers with Carlson’s name on it so mispelled write-in votes wouldn’t be thrown out. I asked Mike if he recalled whether Carlson’s name was printed on the ballot or whether the stickers had been used. Mike thought Arne got on the ballot.

Those rascally activist judges can’t be trusted. One of them just threw out Governor Walker’s law outlawing collective bargaining for Wisconsin’s state employees. Maybe Simonson and the DFL will get lucky and land such a judge.