LABOR DAY

Labor Day is a federal holiday dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers. After all, the economy is the driving force that makes this nation tick, and the workers are the driving force that makes the economy tick. I grew up in a blue-collar family, the son of a railroader and a union man, who had a special place in his heart for people who worked hard to make this country great. That work ethic was so inbred in our family that even today, at a time when I should be taking it easy, I find it hard not to do something constructive with my time. Am I still just trying to make a buck? When I look at the hours I work, and the money I make, there are a lot of people in China who wouldn’t work for wages like that.

I know, I’m getting all sanctimonious here, blowing my horn, but as I look around me I see a lot of seniors, just like me, who grew up the same way. Yes, some of them still have to work to put bread on the table, but so many of them need a purpose in their lives, and for that reason they still work as much as they are able. Have you ever worked hard all day, and when you finally crawl into bed at night, you have that special kind of tiredness. You know—the kind where your muscles ache, and maybe some ibuprofen is in order to ward off the pain. But, at the same time, there is this feeling of accomplishment and you can’t wait to give it another go the next day.

I believe our country has turned its back on the workers, and there is a whole new attitude about working and workers. Almost every parent I talk to has one goal and one goal only for their kids. Get a degree and get rich fast—the American dream. No one wants their kids to be carpenters, electricians or farmers anymore. It’s almost like those jobs are beneath them. No one gets a Bachelor of Arts degree in farming, or a Master’s degree in railroading. I have three grandchildren with college degrees and none of them are working in their field. They are thousands of dollars in debt with student loans and will spend until middle age trying to catch up—if they can get a job.

I’m not trying to minimize professional people. We need leaders, too, but let’s give some credit to the men and women who fix their cars for them, build their houses, keep the lights on and the water flowing. Yes, the people who put meat and potatoes on the table, and haul those products around this great country of ours. When I was on the fire department, one of my pet peeves was the newspaper and television people giving praise to the chiefs, for a great stop or a life saved. I was a chief for a while and I used to tell them, “Look at those people in the yellow helmets with the dirty faces. Those are the ones who made it happen. Go tell them.” I know, back when I was a yellow helmet, I always slept a little better.

I have a granddaughter studying to be a doctor, and I hope she makes it, but if one of my grandkids does nothing more than drive a UPS truck, I, for one, will be just as proud of them. Let’s honor all of the workers who built this country into what it is today. Happy Labor Day, and oh yes, incidentally, it’s the end of summer.

WRITING 101

                                                            

One of the things my old age often brings out in me is regrets. One of my bigger regrets is why I didn’t start writing, more seriously, sooner in my life. But with that being said, I now know that most writers are the sum of their life experiences so you need to live the story, before you can tell the story. Writing, like most things in life, needs material to work with to create stories. Of all of the institutes of learning we may be privileged to join and learn at, there is one learning entity that has no minimum age to join and really has no graduation. Were all members whether we like it or not. It’s called life itself. It has an unlimited supply of teachers, bringing you a new chapter of life’s curriculum, every day of your life. How well you remember what you have learned, will be the secret to your success.

So I ask you. “How do you write about love if you’ve never known love. Never experienced love. Never loved and won or lost? How do you write about grief, sadness and bitter disappointment, unless you’ve experienced that dark side of life?” As a writer your imagination may become the ways to the means but it will only work for you when you yourself can fill in the blanks that will be there in your imagination. You might write a lot of stories but they will be short on substance.

To write is to create. Just as a sculpture shapes a statue-- as a painter turns tubes of color into a replica of a scene their eyes have seen—as musicians blend lyrics and melody together to bring us some melodious message that melt our hearts and lighten are spirits. Writers, in turn, take their imaginations and tell a story using the characters and places their minds have created. It may take them hours to write one paragraph that could be written in a minute by someone with no imagination. The characters themselves have no life, no substance at all, until the writer fleshes them out and gives them personalities and identities and makes them as real as life itself. But at the same time, I as a writer must be careful and allow your imagination to work too. The Laura I created in my story and picture in my mind may well be something totally different, when seen in your mind and that’s okay. It helps you personalize the story. It’s not important how Laura looks but it is more important how Laura thinks, feels and acts. For deep within each of us-- real or otherwise, that’s where the real you lie’s.

Edward Albbe said” The act of writing is an act of optimism. You wouldn’t’ take the trouble to do it if you didn’t think it mattered.” Like dairy cows that need to be milked everyday, good writers need to write every day. Detail, detail, detail, always in writing. It’s the difference between a pencil drawing and an oil painting. Good writers are good readers because that’s how you learn. You try to emulate the great ones. Isaac Asimov said, “If the doctor told him he had only six minutes to live he wouldn’t brood. He would just type a little faster.” As for me, you are the judge of what I write-- not I. But getting back to my age I saw this Quote and have no idea where it came from but it speaks volumes to me. “I am as old as my accomplishments and as young as the things I still want to do.”

TEARS FOR A FALLEN OFFICER

                                             

Yesterday I shed a few tears during the funeral of the Mendota Heights Police officer killed in the line of duty. Beyond all of the pageantry of the ceremony I was moved by the overwhelming response of the people who most likely never knew this officer. They lined the route to the cemetery for miles, holding signs and flags. They saluted, they made the sign of the cross or simply dabbed at their eyes as the entourage wound its way to the officer’s final resting place. Those who will carry on where he left off preceded his casket.  And oh yes-- people in public safety know how to honor their dead. What is it that brings us together in time like this? What makes those same people who would most likely pay scarce attention to any police officer on an everyday basis, now honor him?

It is often uttered at funerals and weddings “that the only time we get together anymore is at weddings and funerals.” I have heard it said many times and have said it myself. I seems to me to be an excusable way to say, “I’m sorry I ignored you all of these months or years. “ I have in the last few years lost many friends and loved ones. Always after the final goodbyes-- and it takes a few weeks-- you slowly realize the finality of death. It can come in the form of grief or guilt depending on the strength of your conscience and your place in the life of the deceased.

Sometime in the next few days that Officers widow and children will have to pick up the pieces and go on with their lives. The last friend will leave, the door will close, and they will be alone with their thoughts and memories. We have all been there at one time or another. It’s brutal. Its one thing to cry in the arms of your friends and family. It’s another thing to cry in the dark by yourself. Grief comes on you like a high fever that gradually subsides, a fraction of a degree at a time. Sometimes it flares back up and the process starts all of over again but with each recurrence you build some resistance and the episodes get milder and milder. Sometimes it can leave you emotionally crippled and you have to learn how to live life all over again.

Most us will never have a send off like Officer Patrick received. We will be remembered more for how we lived then for how we died. No white horse with an empty saddle. No caisson to pull our casket past throngs of people. So much of our eulogy will depend on how we lived out our lives, the people we loved and touched and the impressions we made on them. No matter the send off however death is the great equalizer and we are all reduced to our own common soul, left to fend for itself in the great hereafter. It’s not a good time to try and make amends for either the deceased or the survivors.

I have never put a lot of stock in autobiographies. We all like to toot our own horns. But when others who were imprested with the way you lived and loved, tell your story—well my friends that is meaningful. I see so many lives that are lived in obscurity and its sad. We all have so much to give. The great poet William Butler Yeats said and I quote. “Think where mans glory most begins and ends and say, my glory was I had such friends.”

FEELING FULFILLED

                                               

I love nature. Sometimes when things seem darkest I go and walk in the woods. There is always something happening there if you just take the time to absorb the happenings. And if it’s not happening right now, then just sit down and wait for it because it will come along. This isn’t something new for me; I have always felt this way. When I was a young man and moved to the cities for work I would go to a nature area close by where I lived in the suburbs, just to get away from the clutter of a bustling society I was forced to work in. The woods for me was a place to think and contemplate. Sometimes to pray and meditate when I needed outside help. I always went home, somewhat reluctantly, to face my responsibilities, but almost always feeling better even though somewhat unfulfilled. As the years went by I knew that someday, somehow, I needed to return to a place where nature was always close at hand and I did. I have never regretted it but that’s just me isn’t it?

With the deaths of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams, Whitney Houston, one wonders what brought them to that place in their lives, where the worlds pressures pushed down on them so much, that they had to escape, not to nature or religion but to a drug filled environment where one never gets fulfilled and then ultimately to the greatest escape of all, their untimely deaths. It seems so drastic, so unexplainable, that the very thing that took them to the top appears to be their undoing and for some reason they just couldn’t turn their back on it and walk away to a more peaceful place and I know, its not as simple as that even as I write about it.

I think we are all driven to some extent to be successful in life but there are those who say enough! And stop--- and there are those who just keep turning over shovel after shovel full of life, looking for fame and fortune and if they do find it, or some measure of it, it’s never enough, nor will it ever be and all too often they turn out doing just what has happened, to the people I mentioned above. As a writer I have often wondered what would become of me if someday, someplace, I would get vaulted to a higher level then where I have been and how would I react to it. Right now I would say not well. For you see life here in Crosslake, amongst the people I have been blessed to know and call my friends is very fulfilling to me.

The army used to have a recruiting slogan “Be all you can be.” I always felt that slogan should have said, “Be all you want to be.” I sometimes think that seemingly successful people who take their own lives from drugs and depression are all to often people who don’t want to be where they are but have no idea how to go back to wherever it is they do want to be, so they escape the only way they know how. That the demands of the public and their fans trumps their own desires and they are slaves onto themselves. I once had a boss who in her own right was a very good, loving person but when she was at work she turned into something not so nice. She was driven to be at the top and someday with her drive and talents I know she will be there but I am here to tell you-- she will not be happy and I feel bad for her.

ALLI

                                                           

Have you ever had one of those moments in your life when you don’t know whether to laugh or cry? Yesterday was one of those bittersweet moments for me. We went to the cities to witness my granddaughters wedding to her high school sweetheart. The newest member of our family-- Alli’s husband is my kind of guy. He’s filled with patience and humbleness beyond his years. Whenever you give away a daughter, you want to feel that she is going to be loved and respected for the rest of her life and I so got that feeling last night. Yes, Nick finally got his princess

You see Alli was always so loved by her Grandma and me, as all of our grandchildren are, but there is something in Alli that just set her apart. Oh, she’s always had that little bit of a temper and some fire in her belly but for me it was not a bad thing, just unbridled passion for whatever she believes in. Unlike many of us who go where our eyes take us, Alli, seemed to follow her heart. She was that little girl that was always bringing home birds and animals to nurse them from their injuries. Her bedroom was filled to overflowing with stuffed animals and mementoes from wherever she had been in life. She attracted friends like a bee to honey and was always faithful to them. Yes, Alli was just so loving and she still is now and has always shown it.

Then came Nick into her life. Nick was so shy; sometimes you didn’t know he was there, when he was. But you didn’t have to look far for him if you wanted him-- you just looked for Alli. It was more then love for Nick it was infatuation too. For over a year after their engagement we would get almost daily reminders on face book from her of when that magical day was coming. Pictures of the two of them together in almost every possible place, always smiling, always clinging to each other.

Then the big day was upon us. It was an outdoor wedding in what could have been the Garden of Eden, it was that beautiful. I could only think when I saw it yes-- this was Alli. Not some stuffy church full of statues but a stage built right here under the heavens with just the beauty of nature to accent it all. The minister at the wedding said, “Girls start planning their wedding when they are three or four years old” and I believe that to be true. Yes guys truth be told, were just the last piece of the puzzle.

Then it was time and as she came down the aisle, she was so beautiful, so radiant and Nick’s wet eyes shined in the late day sun and it was if he couldn’t take his eyes off from her. As my faithful companion and I were escorted down the aisle by Alli’s brother, there was small table set up next to the altar and there almost at center stage was a picture of grandma taken on her wedding day, just as I remembered her so long ago. My heart stuck in my throat. It was Alli’s tribute to her and she wanted all of us to see the woman she will never forget. I only hope for Nick and Alli that they have what we had for so many years. So in the end my son gave away his only daughter, but there is an old saying that “Your son will grow up and take a wife but your daughters your little girl for the rest of your life.” For grandma she had her moment in the sun she so richly deserved.

THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE

As human beings, we take comfort in certain things in life. Right now, as I write this essay, under my desk and lying on my feet, is a white Lab dog. I can feel her body heat radiating through my socks, and sense her warm breath on my pant leg.  Right now though, I’m feeling a subliminal message from my furry friend that goes beyond those physical signs, and that’s what I’m feeling the most. That message being, “I want to be close to you. You think it’s just you that feels me on your feet, but this goes both ways, buddy. I feel you, too, and I know that’s what you’re writing about now, so this quiet reassurance goes both ways.”

So often in life just a wink, a touch on the shoulder, or a smile from across the room can say, “I care.” We live in a tech rich world now—where for most people, there is no good reason to not stay in touch with friends and family. I, personally, have been blessed with so many things in my life—but the sum total of my friends and family goes way beyond all the earthly riches I have accumulated. No matter how badly I feel, no matter how lonely I get, a hug from a friend can make it all go away. If you’re willing to take me in your arms, then I’m willing to take you into my heart. It’s just that simple. We need to remember-- with friends and family-- comes commitment.

When I was a small boy, from time to time, I used to stay with my grandparents in a very small town up north that seemed, at least to me, to be on the very edge of civilization. Each day, grandpa would walk about a mile down a dusty dirt road to the little post office lobby.  He would insert a small silver key in that tiny glass door and extract a fistful of letters. I often wondered how an old retired man, like he was, could get so many letters. This was way before the junk mail world we live in now. He would go back home, and open each letter, and his face would just light up. They were letters from his friends. To grandpa, there were no strangers in his life; just friends he hadn’t met yet. Then, after reading each letter, he would sit down with his old Smith Corona typewriter, and with two fingers, he would peck out his reply. Think about all the effort he made to reach his friends. Most days now, when our friends reach out to us, we only have to click on “reply” and say what’s on our mind. My grandpa was my hero in life. He never gave me anything tangible, or otherwise, but he showed me every day of his life, how to live my life and how to treat people.

A while back, I weathered a storm in my life when I lost my soul mate, and I leaned on so many people. They leaned back, propped me up, and took me into their hearts. The road through that storm became less bumpy each day, and the clouds that had been so black, and filled with cold rain, dried up and the winds calmed. Slowly, my dear friends and family, with smiles on their faces, watched me go my way again. We still touch fingertips from time to time—like little booster shots that say, as the pup lying on my feet says, “I’m still here, and if you need me, just ask.” That’s what life is really about my friends. You might be the guy on the playground with the most marbles in your bag, but if you have no one to shoot mibs with, it’s just another heavy bag of marbles to carry around.