ANOTHER SUMMER FADING

                                               

So it’s the dog days of summer once more.  Late August in Crosslake Minnesota for me was always symbolic of a month that wasn’t really summer and wasn’t quite fall. It’s a month when the reality of our fast disappearing summer season comes back to us with earlier sunsets, gardens empting out, and Lilly pads choking out the shallows of the lake. Our bright star on those August days can still be very warm but its jacket time in the evenings and foggy mornings leave the grass damp and your shoes dripping with dew.

There are other subtle signals that we all experience in late August in our everyday lives’. For the young people it’s a signal that school will soon be back in session. For us old people, it’s the end of a summer that went so fast we scarce remember most of it. One more August used up and just history in our dwindling supply-- ouch. The county fairgrounds are quiet again and the farmers are oiling up the combines. For the creatures of the forest, the weather signals to them, that a time is coming soon to start changing colors, find a winter den and grow new coats.

When you live on a lake, fall becomes even more obvious. The beaches that were full of bathers in June are now barely being used. After Labor Day the docks and lifts start coming into shore and boats and toys get put away. It’s quiet again, no wave runners or speedboats, just a few fishermen trying their luck. For many the fall colors are worth seeking out, while hiking on a warm Indian summer day. As for me, my favorite color of the year, has always been green. My favorite precipitation is soft rain, not snow and my favorite temperature is something you don’t need a jacket for. Ann Murray sang in her song the snowbird, “So little snowbird take me with you when you go. To that land of gentle breezes where the peaceful waters flow.”

It’s no secret that we live for our summers in Crosslake. That what is just a sleepy little hamlet in the troughs of winter now comes alive with the receding ice. That somewhere in the hearts of all of the residents lays the hope for another summer on the chain. Cabins-- and what is way beyond being called a cabin-- come alive once more. The cobwebs are knocked down, the dust is swept away. Reed’s and Ace Hardware’s parking lots are filled again and the supper clubs rock the night away. Car doors slam and familiar faces walk across the lawn for a hug. You have to wait your turn at the gas station and the churches fill back up on Sunday morning.

Back to Ann and the Snowbird. Beneath this snowy mantle cold and clean, the unborn grass lies waiting for its coat to turn to green. The snowbird sings the song he always sings and speaks to me of flowers that will bloom again in spring. That’s where my hopes lie. That as soon as my winter hiatus is over I will turn my anxious face into the northern lights and come home to where my real roots are. I will sit on my deck and wait for the cries of the loons, not the Snowbirds. They are signaling another season in paradise where dreams are made into reality.

THE TRUTH ABOUT DRUGS

                                                

Some of the people in this country are supportive of our president’s wishes to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico. It is their hope that it will keep undesirables out of this country and that includes drugs. America’s problem with drugs is rooted in one thing that is already in this country and we seem not to be able to do anything about it. We the people want drugs and we use them with reckless abandon. We buy and sell them. We manufacture them too. We sanctimoniously blame our drug problems on outside sources yet the root of the problem is right here in this country because it’s us who demand them and us who purchase them. You want to solve the drug problem? Quit making them and quit buying them.

We have tried incarcerating drug dealers and even gone into their own countries and destroyed their crops. It didn’t work. The wall won’t stop the drug trade. They’ll go under it, or over it, or around it and they have said so. They increasingly have used our own American citizens to deliver their product, over our border. Yet, we have made very little progress in getting our own people not to use them. We just blame someone else for our problem, because that’s all that is left when you are powerless to control your own people. Yes, we can control the pills manufactured here but even that is a political football. You see the drug lobby has deep pockets and congress has a thirsty appetite for campaign money. You see in order for change to happen, you have to want it bad enough. This country likes to talk the talk-- but not walk the walk. I predict that things will not get better until there is a change in attitude and the way we do business. Alas, I don’t see that happening.

I have often wondered what this world would look like if long ago we had been more proactive and instead of spending a trillion dollars on the so-called war on drugs; by fielding an army to fight it and filling our prisons with drug related criminals; we had instead used that money to heal the sick minds of the addicted and educated our vulnerable youth to what could happen to them if they chose that path in life. What does it say about a society, when millions of people need to be in some kind of drug-induced stupor, just to cope with life, as they know it? My granddaughter and her husband just came back from a vacation to California and I asked them if they had gone to a beach. He told me they did but they had to leave because the stench from people smoking pot was so strong you couldn’t avoid it. Think about the natural beauty of an ocean front beach relegated to a drug den.

We have regretfully phased out the practices that used to teach us right from wrong, not only in our family upbringing but also in society itself. We no longer have rights and wrongs in our society but instead we have some all-encompassing feel good philosophy with no rules and regulations and some ill served guidelines that say you can choose to be different if you want too and we will change the way we do business to accommodate you. The last thing we would want to do is hurt anyone’s feelings. Then we look around and say there has to be a better way—and you know what? There once was. Over the years we just abandoned it.

THIS IS THE WAY TO LIVE

                                               

Sometimes you feel like a nut and sometimes you don’t but through it all the goofiness that results makes for good conversation.

I had a conversation the other day with a dear old friend and let me preface this by saying it wasn’t my friend Pat. I don’t want, or need any problems there. Anyways this lady and I talked about the usual things like kids, family and dogs. Now this dear old lady lives a rather secluded life style so there is not much sense in talking current events because even though her television is on most of the time, it’s froze on the “Hallmark Channel.” I asked her if she had heard about the Duck Boat tragedy down in Branson and she said “no. Tell me about it.” After I had explained what happened she said, “Oh my goodness. How sad.” My husband had a duck boat but luckily it only held two people.

So I switched to some other current events that she knew nothing about and finally, being factitious and not knowing where to go with the conversation, on a whim I asked her if she had heard about Pearl Harbor. “Oh my goodness” she exclaimed, “Did they do that again?” “No,” I said. “Just kidding.”  “I thought we took their guns away after the war,” she said. “We did,” I replied. “But they all joined the N.R. A. so we had to give them back.” “Who’s the N.R.A.” she asked. “Nobody you would know I said.” “What’s on Hallmark tonight,” I asked? You gotta love her.

So the before mentioned Pat, my constant companion and I, are having an afternoon conversation the other day when we get off on the subject of Narcolepsy. Now she’s a nurse so she knows a lot of stuff that I don’t know about medical problems so it’s hard to B.S. her, but she says she thinks I may have the sleeping disease because from time to time I tend to close my eyes, either to meditate or check my eyelids for cracks. She thinks this is weird, so hence, the Narcolepsy diagnoses. I have to be careful now with how I explain this, or no more baked goodies for me but I have this friend who is a retired doctor, so one day I asked him about it and he said. “Do you do this around other people too, or just around her, because if it’s just around her, its not narcolepsy.” And now I’m in trouble. But what can I do, I got a column to get out. I could go steal her newspaper next week but she has too many friends in the area who would talk with her so that’s probably not a good idea and I would rather have her upset with me then the F.B.I. If you see me wearing an ankle bracelet you will know what happened. By the way, to all of my church friends, who may or may not have witnessed me nodding off in church, it could be narcolepsy—maybe-- so a little sympathy please.

And now the humble pie. My companion-- as much as I joke about her-- has given me a new lease on life. There are so many trips and ventures I would have never undertaken without her being with me. Life was once good and then it became a struggle but now it is good again so I tip my hat my friend, to what you have done for me and become to me.  But having said that its been a long time since I had a rhubarb pie. Sorry Pat the devil made me say that last sentence.

COLLEGE DEBT

                                                            COLLEGE DEBT

A lot has been said about the debt that graduates today have accumulated in college. Some of them are now graduating, six figures in debt and that’s not a good way to go out into the working world. When I think about it, I have often wondered if there shouldn’t be a course taught in high school, for graduating seniors, explaining what borrowing money can do to you and how it can be a run away freight train with accumulating debt and this can happen very quickly.

I think we have all been on a vacation and used a credit card to conveniently pay for things, then received the bill when we got back home and were astonished at how much money we had spent and now we had to pay for it. It can get away from you in a hurry and it can be that way, borrowing money for college too.

I have two granddaughters who both graduated from college a few years ago. Both of them are great girls who I am proud of. One of them worked hard, both at school and after school, trying to keep her debt to a minimum. She came out of school with only a small amount of debt. Her and her husband now have a home of their own and a baby and are doing quite well. The other girl, a victim of circumstances borrowed way too much money and now she too is married but any hope of buying a house and having a family, is hindered by student loans she has to pay back. Her monthly loan payments are equal to the mortgage payments they could be paying on a home. I know it is a contentious issue with her.

There was a time when parents started saving accounts for their kid’s education but that seems to be less of a habit, now that government loans are available, so the money goes elsewhere. To add to that there was a time when colleges didn’t charge the prices they now charge for a four-year degree. There was a time when fiscal responsibility was taught at home and so was foresight. Kids fought hard for scholarships and any way they could to pay for their education, because there was no easy money available. I remember my son-in-law pursuing his engineering degree in the daytime at the U and driving a courier van at night to pay his bills. Landscapers, resorts and golf courses could depend on college kids to work for them in the summer and there were more applicants then there were jobs. Now it’s just the opposite and business are struggling to find workers.

So now the cry goes out for loan forgiveness and free college education for everyone. It’s become a campaign issue and all of it in a country that is wallowing in debt of its own accord, with poor spending and borrowing habits. A county that has, for far to long, thought it could spend its way out of poverty but that’s a story for another day. Education is essential to the well being of this country. But so is responsibility. A few years back I had the good fortune to go to Key West Florida for a couple of days. Rooms were over four hundred dollars a night for lodging and not high-end lodging at that. The town was filled with students-- spring breakers-- who seemed to have lots of money and I know this-- they didn’t all have rich parents.