DREAM

So you get down to the last couple decades of life and you’re still thinking about that perfect place to live out the rest of your life. For many of us seniors that would be a place where we would find lots of peace and quiet, far from the clutter and din of this madding world. I have always dreamed of a cabin, on a cliff, on the north shore of Lake Superior, with lots of windows looking out over that beautiful body of water. A seasonal home it would be, so there would be a plan in place that would get you to some place warmer for the brutal winters, where you could sit in the sun and dream about your happy return come summer, to your rustic home by the lake. The trouble back then was, it was only just my dream. But then she passed and I started thinking about the limitations old age has saddled me with and I realized that although my mind and spirit are still willing for this kind of adventure, physically surviving by myself up there in Gods country, at least for me now, has some serious doubt’s.

As a kid it was always “pipe dreams” my mother called them when I told her what I envisioned for my future. In her mind, those dreams were something that never would happen and she was convinced that I was moored in this, “Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” mentality, which just translated to--it will never happen. But oh’ so many years later, here I am still dreaming about it and yes many of my dreams in life have come to fruition because I never gave up on them. I firmly believe if you want something bad enough you have a good chance of getting it-- within reason. Not that I’m going up to the north shore to look for lots this summer because I’m enough of a realist to know that the days of taking my chainsaw and hacking a trail out of the woods and building another home in some Northern Minnesota Shangri-La are behind me and I also know the means of paying someone else to do it is slightly beyond my pay scale.

Right now I live on a nice lake and I go south for the winter and for many people, including most of my friends and family, they say, isn’t that enough? Without seeming ungrateful I can only say that my dreams changed because they weren’t always just my dreams, because I shared my world with another. Now that I don’t anymore my dreams seem to play out most often at living in unspoiled places.  Dreaming is cheap and easy and inactivity makes me restless, so I dream on. So what is so spoiled about where I am? It’s spoiled in my mind because it’s so easily accessible. I want quiet and privacy. Not listening to wave runners buzzing around the lake like angry mosquitoes and hearing my neighbor’s conversations. Maybe there was a time when that was all right and what we both wanted and we is the magic word but as I said it is no longer we-- it’s now just me.

I see my life as a book and for a guy who has wrote many books there comes a time when you have to write the last few chapters. They don’t have to necessary be brief or hold a spectacular ending but they need to insinuate someplace that the story is drawing to a close. What is a close? It’s when there are no more stories to tell that are relevant. You don’t have to kill off the characters, you can have them riding off into the sunset. But in the very least of it, you aren’t going to talk about it anymore.

MY FRIEND JIM

MY FRIEND JIM

When I was a young boy, and in my early teens, my parents wouldn’t let me have a dog. So I did the next best thing and I adopted someone else’s dog. The dogs name was Jim and his owner paid no attention to him, so I took over the job. Jim was an outside dog who was street smart so he had the run of the neighborhood and when he wanted company he always looked me up. When I got up in the morning for my paper route, there he would be in the yard waiting for me and when my dad came home at night he would quietly disappear, knowing he wasn’t welcome, although that changed, the longer he hung around.

None of my brothers or sisters ever paid much attention to Jim. I guess I was the dog lover in the family. Jim was a mutt and something of a cross between a German Sheppard and a Husky. He was stout and strong and even on the coldest winter nights he would curl up in a ball under our back-steps outside and sleep sometimes. I put some straw under there for him and as long as I wasn’t feeding him food from the house or letting him in the house, Dad dropped his opposition to him. I never fed him much but he stayed in good shape so his owner must have been putting food out for him, The man just didn’t seem to care where he was or maybe because he saw me with his dog so much, he was just happy someone else was paying attention to him.

I had a morning paper route so every morning at six I had to get up and go seven blocks uptown to the paper office and get my papers and then deliver them. It took me about an hour and a half and Jim always went with me. Many of my customers had dogs too, so Jim would help himself to their dog’s food while he was there, if it was outside. If their dog bothered me, Jim took them to task and he was a formidable fighter. In the winter when my hands got cold Jim would always let me warm them up in his fur and his tail was always wagging when he saw me.

Jim was well known around the neighborhood-- in fact around the town. I eventually switched to an evening paper route so I would go to the paper office after school and Jim was always there waiting for me. Fran, the man who ran the office, said he appeared every day about a half hour before I did and would lie on the sidewalk and wait for me. Jim seemed to know what time it was, but he didn’t know what day it was, so on Sundays he went up to the office too but seeing no one there he would go back home. He had to cross a busy highway to get there, but he always watched for traffic. Then I got a job and had to quit delivering papers and Jim would wander over to see me if I was outside, but he seemed to come less and less because I was never home.

Then one night while we were eating supper we heard a gunshot and went outside to investigate. There was Jim, lying on the sidewalk dead. There was a new cop on the police force and seeing Jim loose, he thought he was a stray so he shot him. While I knelt crying over Jim, my Dad lashed out at that cop and he was lucky to not been arrested for what he said to him. But I remember one sentence to this day, that dad told that cop, “You just killed the best friend that boy ever had.”

ELECTIONS

                                                         

As the elections are coming upon us, I am appalled by the anger and rancor we are witnessing, not only among the candidates but also amongst the voters. You won’t find me endorsing any candidate for any office and for a couple of good reasons. Probably the best reason is, “Who am I to tell you how to vote.” When I was working my boss called me in the office one day and told me that he didn’t appreciate the political sign that was in my front yard and I should take it down right now. Being a little stubborn, I left it up for a couple of days after that. Then he called me again and told me once more, in no uncertain terms, take it down or find another job. I had a wife and three kids to think about so I reluctantly took it down but I never forgot about that day. My rights as a citizen had been infringed on.

I have family members that are not on the same wavelength as me when it comes to politics. But it will never be an issue with me, because I won’t let it be an issue. My family is too important to me to let that happen. I do think I have an advantage over them, being as old as I am, and having the wisdom I have gained over the years to know what can happen to the best of people, in situations like this.

A while back when congressman Steve Scalise was shot down on a softball field we all saw how political rancor can get out of control. That person had more then one congressman on his list to be shot. I remember the assassinations that took place with President Kennedy and his Brother Robert. The attempt to kill Ronald Regan and the murder of Dr King. There are a lot of mentally deranged people out there capable of this kind of violence and the crass rhetoric of today’s elections only fans the fire.

Political campaigns have become brutal with attacks on peoples records, families and characters. Its not always that truthful and above board to start with and the end result is someone, who apparently can’t win on their own merits and ideas, is trying to make themselves look good, by making someone else look bad. That’s a behavior you had to go back to grade school to find, until lately.

Campaign reform needs to be initiated and soon. Its time to put the gloves back on and clean politics up and while they are at it, it’s time to get the lobbyists out of the campaigns. Ask the politicians, when they are politicking, where they are getting their money from? Then ask them what they will be expected to do for those people if they win and don’t take “nothing” for an answer. We all know better then that.

Were allowing our whole political process to be turned into a war of words and accusations that can ruin people lives forever, all in an effort to win the seats in congress that are supposed to be filled by people, we want to make rules for all of us to live by.  

GREATFUL

                                                           

For my younger readers you are going to say, “Oh here we go again” I wanted to share this anyway. The year was 1946 and with World War II over and all of the soldiers coming home, jobs were hard to find in small town Minnesota. Factories that had been running full steam for years on military contracts, were now laying people off all over the United States, including my father and this only exasperbated his problems. My father was no exception to the troubles that came from this and with a wife, two young boys, a baby and no place to live, he found an old farmstead where we could all live. It came complete with several head of cattle and the rent for the place was the milk they produced and dad and his brother-in-law were the one’s who had to milk them. My father had never lived on a farm before

Did I say we had no electricity and the house was all one big room and my mother hung blankets on ropes that ran from corner to corner to divide the house up. She got her water from a pitcher pump by an old wash board sink and the ice man came several days a week to put ice in the icebox. We had kerosene lanterns for lights and those two men milked all of those cattle by hand twice a day.  Then they dumped the milk into cream cans that were cooled by an artesian well that ran through the property. The house was heated with an old wood stove. You get the picture.

Why am I telling you this? Just to say how grateful I am for all that I have and the reality of that is brought home to me each time I think back to those days. I’m not only grateful for what I have now but I am grateful too for having a memory that provides me that glimpse into a world that I still remember seventy some years later and for having hard working parents that were absolute survivors, who never gave up and fought back.

Both of my parents had known a far better life then this before the war, so living like they were,  it had to have been very hard on them. I was a five year old so hardships to me were probably not that apparent. At least by the standards of that time and place. When my dad died almost fifty years later he still wasn’t a rich man by any means. He had lost his beloved wife some twenty years before that to cancer. But even in the grips of his grief and loneliness, he carried on with life; grateful for the large family he had by then, who rallied around him in those later years. He was poor in riches but rich in spirit.

I have always thought that those hard lessons of living with that kind of adversity become teaching moments if we let them. They are so much more poignant then reading about them or hearing 2^ndhand about someone else’s struggles in life. Yes, you had to be there to get the full effect. I think of all the times my father could have turned to some under handed way to make a buck but he never did. He told me later in life that, “When you raise your son, you raise your sons, son too.” Those weren’t just words with him, that was his mantra and his constitution and he lived it to the fullest and even though three generations have passed since then, those words still live on with me and in my family. 

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD

                                    

I have always been intrigued with this place we call our earth. You see there is no other place like it known to man and believe me they have been looking. You think about all of the balances and safe guards this planet came with, that make living here possible and it is mind-boggling. The ozone layer that protects us from the suns ultraviolet rays that would cook us otherwise. The magnetic field that originates in the earth’s core that shields us from deadly space radiation. How the earth is tipped on its axis that gives us the seasons of the year and how it rotates to give us the hours of the day. How it moves in perfect cinch with the sun and the moon just far enough away to keep us from roasting and yet close enough to keep from freezing. How the plants and trees absorb the poison gases we give off and give us back life sustaining oxygen and to think it’s gone on for millions of years.

Then came man and in his infinite wisdom, he was able to find heavy metals and fossil fuels and start an industrial revolution by inventing electrical power and gasoline powered engines. Smelting ores into different metals and inventing plastics from petroleum and glass from sand. There was refrigeration to cool our homes and preserve our food and natural gas to heat our homes. Often with some side effects for this planet we didn’t fully understand and probably don’t understand yet. We invented miracle drugs to cure illnesses and chemicals to control everything from weeds to insects and yet we still didn’t understand what it was doing to our earth and probably don’t fully understand it today either but we use them anyway.

Then we blew a hole in the ozone layer with chlorofluocarbons and had to find a repair for it and it looks like we might have. But then came more problems with no easy fixes like that. Wells are pumping poisoned drinking water from chemicals and drugs we excreted and rivers, fed by runoff that flows into the gulf have created a gulf dead zone hundreds of square miles where nothing lives. Smog and air quality problems are sickening many and changing, weather patterns. There are fixes for much of this but they run up against the greed that exists from those who benefit from selling those products that are causing all of the problems. They hire legions of lawyers and buy off politicians while admitting no fault, even in the face of over mounting evidence. They know they are wrong, they just don’t care and they are going to milk this cow for all its worth and in the meantime the beat goes on.

The earth is becoming a ticking clock and we can stop and rewind it or let it run down. To those younger people who will inherit this mess, the day will come when you will curse the generations who lied and cheated and looked the other way, all in an effort to make a buck with no self-guilt for ruining this earth for the ages, when there were answers for all of those problems if you only looked for them-- there was no money in those answers however for the guilty people who were involved in the sickening of the earth so they rejected them. Someday when man is gone the earth will again heal itself and soon there will be no trace left of the people who inherited this great blue planet and elected to destroy it, instead of taking care of it. No one wants to write like this but the truth needs to be told.

JIM

MY FRIEND JIM

When I was a young boy, and in my early teens, my parents wouldn’t let me have a dog. So I did the next best thing and I adopted someone else’s dog. The dogs name was Jim and his owner paid no attention to him, so I took over the job. Jim was an outside dog who was street smart so he had the run of the neighborhood and when he wanted company he always looked me up. When I got up in the morning for my paper route, there he would be in the yard waiting for me and when my dad came home at night he would quietly disappear, knowing he wasn’t welcome, although that changed, the longer he hung around.

None of my brothers or sisters ever paid much attention to Jim. I guess I was the dog lover in the family. Jim was a mutt and something of a cross between a German Sheppard and a Husky. He was stout and strong and even on the coldest winter nights he would curl up in a ball under our back-steps outside and sleep sometimes. I put some straw under there for him and as long as I wasn’t feeding him food from the house or letting him in the house, Dad dropped his opposition to him. I never fed him much but he stayed in good shape so his owner must have been putting food out for him, The man just didn’t seem to care where he was or maybe because he saw me with his dog so much, he was just happy someone else was paying attention to him.

I had a morning paper route so every morning at six I had to get up and go seven blocks uptown to the paper office and get my papers and then deliver them. It took me about an hour and a half and Jim always went with me. Many of my customers had dogs too, so Jim would help himself to their dog’s food while he was there, if it was outside. If their dog bothered me, Jim took them to task and he was a formidable fighter. In the winter when my hands got cold Jim would always let me warm them up in his fur and his tail was always wagging when he saw me.

Jim was well known around the neighborhood-- in fact around the town. I eventually switched to an evening paper route so I would go to the paper office after school and Jim was always there waiting for me. Fran, the man who ran the office, said he appeared every day about a half hour before I did and would lie on the sidewalk and wait for me. Jim seemed to know what time it was, but he didn’t know what day it was, so on Sundays he went up to the office too but seeing no one there he would go back home. He had to cross a busy highway to get there, but he always watched for traffic. Then I got a job and had to quit delivering papers and Jim would wander over to see me if I was outside, but he seemed to come less and less because I was never home.

Then one night while we were eating supper we heard a gunshot and went outside to investigate. There was Jim, lying on the sidewalk dead. There was a new cop on the police force and seeing Jim loose, he thought he was a stray so he shot him. While I knelt crying over Jim, my Dad lashed out at that cop and he was lucky to not been arrested for what he said to him. But I remember one sentence to this day, that dad told that cop, “You just killed the best friend that boy ever had.”

A BOOK

                                                          

Tonight I am finishing up my thirteenth book. Oh, it won’t be out for a while. The story may be complete but now comes all of the finishing touches. Hopefully while Pat and I are in Arizona there will be time for that. This is something fulfilling and yet sad for me to write-- “The end,”-- to this story. Sad because you see, it might just be the end of my stories. Somehow those creative juices I have enjoyed over the years are drying up and there are just no more stories to write. Only time will tell.

I’d like to think that this was one of my better books. After all time has taught me a lot of lessons about writing and story telling and hopefully I’ve been paying attention. There is something so unique about writing a story. To create all of those characters, name them, bring them to life and flesh them out and make them as real as life itself. As for the story itself, well there are very few stories left to tell that haven’t been told, over and over again. I guess the only difference comes in the signature of the author and how the story is told.

I remember as a young boy reading Hemmingway’s “Old Man and the Sea. I am going to read it again this winter, some sixty years later and this time I probably won’t be as intrigued with the story as I was back then because I know how it ends. No, this time my interest will be with the author and the way he wrote. There is a way to tell a story and there is a way to help you live the story through that writing and old Ernest Hemmingway was one of those, who had you squirming in your chair when he told you that story of Santiago and that big fish.

There is just so much you can do about shaping the world around you in real life. Not that that should stop any of us from trying to make this a better world for all of us. But a fiction author has the ways and means of making life right again, at least in the context of his/her story. Yes, its limited to what is between the covers of that book but sometimes, from that story comes the inspiration to make the story come to life in the real world. We are all dreamers of sorts but some people let those dreams die and some people live their dreams out and miracles happen and it’s all because of something they once dreamed up, believed in and became a doer. You see just dreaming of it isn’t enough. At some point you need to be a doer too. They go hand in hand.

Trying to succeed in life has always been a struggle and not just for writers. It is for any job. No matter the vocation, someone is always doing you one better but that is good for you if your paying attention because it keeps you trying harder if you take the challenge. Then again, maybe you’re right where you want to be in life anyway and you don’t want for anything more and if your happy, isn’t that what life is all about? But back to the book, for every once in a while someone comes along with a story or book that is so unique, so different. Not just a new spin on an old story but truly a new story, no one has ever heard before and I’m hoping this story of mine will be like that. Or at the very least--- I hope you will think so. 

TRUST

                                                          

Sometimes I like to kid my significant other and consequently the level of trust she has for me has taken a toll. Maybe it’s the consequences I deserve for not always being genuine but yet, I have too much fun with it to abandon it. I know that she knows that it’s all in fun and I mean no harm.

There is however, a much more critical matter and a serious lack of trust in our society today that is no laughing matter and it is hurting our relationships with each other and in the case of our government, with other countries. Without trust you have nothing. Trust is most often lost when you don’t keep your word.  As when we asked Russia for proof that they aren’t breaking treaties, when we know they are, and they know that we know they are, and they still say they aren’t-- well where do you go from there? England doesn’t trust the European union and vice versa; we don’t trust China and right back at us. Our leaders say one thing to the voters and do another and then they say “just trust me on this.” We should say, “Fool me once shame on me. Fool me twice shame on you.”

As a member of the Catholic faith my trust in the very church I profess to believe in has been shaken by the allegations that young people were abused and cover-ups existed. A breach of trust that is very egregious. I think we all knew priests were human and those things could take place but to have their bosses cover it up?  Most of it happened seventy years ago so that part of it may have been largely stopped but the cover-ups are still coming out and so much hurt could have been prevented by being transparent a long time ago. Think also of the tobacco companies and their lies and cover-ups about their products.

There was a time when you trusted your scout leader, your neighbor guy, your teachers and your Sunday school teacher to mentor you, not harm you. There was no need back then to have another person shadowing them all day just to verify that they did nothing wrong. As a young man in my teens, I used to hitchhike to the river to go swimming with my buddy and we never thought once that anyone would harm us. There was a golf course right across the road from the river and strangers were more then happy to give us a ride and they never thought that we would harm them either. But now day’s little kids are made to feel like a fox pup coming out of the den for the first time, knowing there is danger around every corner.

There are a lot of people that can’t be trusted in our society and by all means be cautious and especially with your kids but when you have to draw lines in the sand involving innocent people, you change society in ways that tear us apart. Until the day comes around again, when you can seal a deal with a smile and a handshake, we will live and work in a world that doesn’t see anybody as truthful and honest and when we get down to that point, a whole lot of other things like integrity, honesty, respect and truthfulness will be just outmoded words without meaning. Then well meaning people who are still trying to live by those rules, become liars, cheaters and untrustworthy, guilty by association along with those who ruined it for everyone.

CONFESSIONS OF A WIMP

                                                

A few years ago, when I started going to Arizona for the winter, one of my friends, asked me why and when I told him to be warm, he called me a wimp. This man had a job inside of a warm building his entire career but he still seemed serious with his banter so I did get a little defensive. I didn’t argue the point with him however, because he was a friend who didn’t know my past. If I had used some kind of a rebuttal that day, I would have said something like this.

As a child growing up my brothers and I slept in an unheated bedroom. For all practical purposes it was the attic. My dad burned wood and the fire went out at night but even if it had been kept going all night, our upstairs bedroom had one small register in the floor, where heat could theoretically leak through to our room. Needless to say it didn’t. Three of us boys slept in one bed in that room, not because we wanted too, but to keep warm. When we went outside, we wore homemade knitted caps and mittens. Shoes, inside of uninsulated six buckle rubber overshoes.

Several years later, when I was in my late twenties. I went to work for a large municipal park maintenance department for 13 years. In the winter 10 of us flooded and maintained 56 skating rinks. The colder the weather, the more you worked because that’s when you made the best ice. That went on for the better part of three months. You drew tanker loads of water from hydrants and then you went to the rinks and sprayed it on the ice. Some of the men rode in tractors with no heaters to speak of, fitted with rotary brooms to sweep the ice first. In the hockey rinks-- 14 of them—after they were swept all the shavings would be piled up against the boards when they were done, so you had to shovel them out before flooding. It was like shoveling a four hundred foot long sidewalk, a foot deep with snow, 14 times a day.

I also had at that time, joined the paid on call fire department. Our fire trucks had two men in the cab and the rest of us rode outside, in the elements, on a kick board across the back of the truck, while hanging onto a chrome bar. We had long rubber coats, thigh high rubber boots and metal helmets with thin earmuffs inside. If you think twenty below is cold, try it on the back of a truck going fifty miles an hour. Both flooding rinks and fighting fires requires you to work with water. Your mitts were wet with in a half hour of going to work, or at a fire. Spend an hour on a thirty-six foot ladder with water spray falling on you at a fire and everything ice coated, while it is far below zero and you will also know then what cold really is.

There is a word called acclimated and its often used to describe getting used to the ascending heights when mountain climbing but it also applies to getting used to working in the cold and you do. My story isn’t unique and I am sure there are many examples of people who lived and worked like this and still do. Construction workers, high line workers and people who have fought wars in such extreme temperatures. I’m no stronger and braver then any other person who does what we did back then.  But I choose to go where its warmer now and I know in my heart I have nothing to prove to anybody, when it comes to tolerating the cold. The wimp.

UNCLE PETE''S FARM

                                                

Not so long ago and not so far away, I remember the world of my parents. It was a far quieter world then we now live in and a more people friendly place. It was a world of quiet times by myself, roaming the woods and streams around the small town I grew up in. No portable phones and no televisions. Just a boy left alone with his imagination because that was really all I had for entertainment and to be truthful, it was all I really needed. No walkmans or I Pads or I Pods. The music that was in my head was sufficient. My dog was my confident and constant companion.

But, I wasn’t anti social. On Sunday afternoons my family usually gathered out at the farm. Everybody brought a dish to pass around and us cousins played softball in the pasture with cow pies for bases and hide & seek in the haymows and outbuildings. All of the old folks gathered in the house, men in the parlor and women in the kitchen and although I wasn’t privy to their conversations, because children knew their place back then, it wasn’t ever-contentious issues and laughter seemed to abound the most. They were family and that was the most important thing to them and that was why they gathered and enjoyed those times.

Then my world got all busy. My cousins drifted away, as did I, and the family gatherings at my uncle’s farm ceased. I grew up and went out to face a world I wasn’t prepared to face, in places where I was never comfortable. It was all asphalt and traffic and people rushing everywhere. The quietness of the rivers, woods and that farm were replaced with noisy televisions and people never happy, always looking for that elusive step up in life. Somehow yet, I adapted and became one of them, but I never accepted it. Fortunately I did live to retire back up north and found a little corner of the world, where sunshine and nature combined to feed my restless mind.

I’m an old man now and although I still remember that better world I originally came from, society and all of us have largely moved on. The quiet woods I came back to enjoy are criss-crossed with 4 wheeler trails and snowmobile paths and the trash they left behind. Helicopters and small planes fly nosily overhead while wave runners and speedboats race around our lake.  The sleepy town I live near in the summer, sometimes resembles what I left behind in the big city. Life has moved on and largely without me.

I drive by uncle Pete’s farm as I make my way over to my hometown, a couple of times a year to see my siblings that still live there. I can still hear the laughter from the kids playing; I can still taste and smell the hot dishes and the food we enjoyed together as family. I remember my diminutive ever-busy aunt Chris who looked so much like Mother Theresa always smiling in her apron. My uncle Pete in his overalls telling his kids playtime was over for now, because there were chores to do. Work or not, I have always envied those who farm.

. 

HEALTH CARE

                                                          

I have written before about health care and now I write again. I hear the phrase health care reform and somehow it makes me think that somehow, some place people are working to reform the way health care works, when in essence all they are doing is some unethical shell game of who is going to pay for it. Nothing is changing with the drug companies or the hospital networks prices. They just want some outside entity to subsidize the price so people can afford it. This does nothing to lower the price of health care. News flash! Tax money is our money.

The drug companies offer the billions they are paying for researching new drugs as the reasons for the high costs but what good does your new drugs and new therapies do when no one but the rich can afford them. It’s as if you are taunting ordinary people with your magic pills and saying, “Want some? You’ll have to pay for it.” Try to make sense of what that smiling little crook from Epipen had to say to congress a year ago when they were so concerned and brought him in for questioning. Yet today the price for that device, that costs little to produce, and has been around for a long time, is still through the roof. Thanks Congress for nothing. Whose side are you on?

Health care has the potential and already has; bankrupted companies and people that can’t afford to pay the premiums. It’s in every political debate. Other countries have made great strides in this but somehow this country doesn’t know how. Swallow your ego Washington and look around you, across the borders where quality health care exists. The answers are there if you want to pay attention to what you see and not the advice you hear and get, from big pharma.

My son is a retired cop, way to young for Medicare, who has to pay for his own health care for him and his wife. He works part time as a security guard in a hospital. The wages are not good, the health care benefits are. So in essence he works for health care. It used to be you worked for wages and health care was a benefit but for him at least, it’s the primary reason he has to work. There will never be a perfect health care system because of our two political ideologies that both have their own stubborn ideas on what health care should look like. One side wants free health care for everyone. They say elect me and I will straighten this whole mess out. They never say how and they never say where the money is going to come from. Then we have the other side that leans heavily toward capitalism. A free market they call it. That might work if you had capitalism that wasn’t run amok with greed. Their greedy plan omits way to many people.

Government of the people, by the people and for the people does not exist in this country. It exists only in textbooks and old cliques that date back to when our government was formed. . We have government by the lobbyists and for the lobbyists and they are the ones who rule our form of government and they will never quit until they have squeezed every last penny out of the people, as wrong as that is-- Washington should be charged with aiding and abetting.

A BETTER TOMMOROW

                                               

I write often about the past and maybe its because my memories seem much more pleasant to me then the reality of things today. Then too, maybe its because I know nothing of what tomorrow might bring, because I’m really not that involved in it anymore. But I do know where I have been and what I did and maybe in reality this is just a bunch of musings of an old man, hopelessly lost in the thoughts of yesterday. I used to live in the moment of each new day. As the New Christie Minstrels sang back in the early sixties. “A million tomorrows can all pass away, Ere I forget all the joy that is mine today.” That was my mantra back then. At that time I had no past, I wanted to recollect. Each day was a new adventure and I lived them as if there were no tomorrows that mattered. I guess I secretly knew someday the credits would roll, the curtain would fall and although for some of us there could be a short encore, basically the show was drawing to an end so make the most of it.

Well actually, not a million tomorrows, but a lot of them have passed away and my whole outlook on life has changed. Oh yes, I still cling to the past but only for my own comfort and entertainment. You see this world no longer belongs to my generation or little does the present generation even care what our dreams were, or what our accomplishments have gained for today’s society. For the most part we have now been relegated to the dark ages, even though our blood still flows and our neurons still flash, albeit much slower and dimmer. It’s time to forget the resume building and build character instead. There is a new sheriff in town and we need to sit quietly and listen.

We had our chance didn’t we? But even the person who invented the wheel-- and yes, that was before me-- never dreamed that someday it would be replaced by a driverless car that would take to the air, needing not asphalt or semaphores to get to its destination. That cancer would go the way of the mumps and we would wear our phones on our wrists like Dick Tracy, and not all of that is here yet-- but it will be.

For without change there is no need for tomorrows. Dreams and aspirations become just that: hopes of achievements that were never brought to fruition. Society is constantly being built and rebuilt on the building blocks of human minds, whose ideals belong to those who dare to dream bigger and better. These are not self-deluding fantasies; these are a blue print for tomorrow, for a bigger, kinder and better world for those we dared to pass the torch to.

It’s not any of this change that I lament today as I write this. In fact I embrace it. What makes me blue is just all of the players who were part of that cast that I lived, played and worked with— that for the most part no longer exist in the flesh. Only in the dark recesses of my mind. “Old Blue Eyes” sang, “Regrets I had a few, but then again, to few to mention. I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption.”And now just like Frankie I’m stating my case without exemption, and saying to those who are succeeding my generation and me. You do it your way and I’ll just sit quietly and watch. 

AGREAT EXAMPLE

                                                

I while back I listened to some of the eulogies that were given for our 41^stpresident, George Herbert Walker Bush. One of things that moves me, when I’m listening to the accounts of the lives of those who have served all of us with such distinction, is it’s not always what they accomplished but how they lived their lives. This was a good and humble man who never became tainted by the politics of Washington even though he often had to try and play by their rules, simply because he was our President.

Alan Simpson, a friend, and a former Senator, read a quote that some of those who were in attendance should take to heart as they go about their business in the capital. His quote simply said that, “Hatred is one of the few things that will eventually corrode the vessel it is carried in.” Many of those in politics have gone away from just disagreeing with their opponents, they in turn, have turned to hating them and they are not shy about expressing it. 

Many of those in attendance at the Cathedral and many of us watching it could feel we were standing in the shadow of greatness at that funeral that day. Not greatness so much for what he had accomplished but greatness for the way he lived his life. We will all be judged someday, if not by a greater power, at least by our peers. How nice it will be to have someone eulogize us and say, not what a great person we were but what a nice and kinder person we were. Our accomplishment will always be over shadowed at some point in life but how people will remembered us, as a kinder gentler person; will live on as long as their memories do. 

I watched the demeanor of our current President as he sat stoic and expressionless throughout the ceremonies. His arms often folded across his chest in a defiant pose. I thought what is it like to go through life seemingly angry at everybody and everything? What is it like to have to go to a social event like this and know that the people who are sitting next to you in that row, are the same people you have been chastising for the last two years? What is it like for the people of this country to know that the person, we trust to run our country and keep it safe, seemingly can’t get along with anybody? This isn’t about the mans policies; this is about him. I know there are some out there who disagree with me but for the most part they too like the bully pulpit way of doing business. The flow of people in and out of this administration is unprecedented. He can’t even get along with his own appointees.

We are at a crossroads in this country. We went from one of the most respected nations on the face of the earth after World war II, to a country that right now has few friends in this world. There is no going it alone in this world anymore. We live in a global economy. We need them to buy our products, as much as we need some of their products. For all that to happen we need cooperation and cooperation is a side product of friendships and alliances that build trust. Without trust you have nothing.

HEALTH CARE

I have written before about health care and now I write again. I hear the phrase health care reform and somehow it makes me think that somehow, some place people are working to reform the way health care works, when in essence all they are doing is some unethical shell game of who is going to pay for it. Nothing is changing with the drug companies or the hospital networks prices. They just want some outside entity to subsidize the price so people can afford it. This does nothing to lower the price of health care. News flash! Tax money is our money. The drug companies offer the billions they are paying for researching new drugs as the reasons for the high costs but what good does your new drugs and new therapies do when no one but the rich can afford them. It’s as if you are taunting ordinary people with your magic pills and saying, “Want some? You’ll have to pay for it.”

Try to make sense of what that smiling little crook from Epipen had to say to congress a year ago when they were so concerned and brought him in for questioning. Yet today the price for that device, that costs little to produce, and has been around for a long time, is still through the roof. Thanks Congress for nothing. Whose side are you on? Health care has the potential and already has; bankrupted companies and people that can’t afford to pay the premiums. It’s in every political debate. Other countries have made great strides in this but somehow this country doesn’t know how. Swallow your ego Washington and look around you, across the borders where quality health care exists. The answers are there if you want to pay attention to what you see and not the advice you hear and get, from big pharma.

 My son is a retired cop, way to young for Medicare, who has to pay for his own health care for him and his wife. He works part time as a security guard in a hospital. The wages are not good, the health care benefits are. So in essence he works for health care. It used to be you worked for wages and health care was a benefit but for him at least, it’s the primary reason he has to work.

There will never be a perfect health care system because of our two political ideologies that both have their own stubborn ideas on what health care should look like. One side wants free health care for everyone. They say elect me and I will straighten this whole mess out. They never say how and they never say where the money is going to come from. Then we have the other side that leans heavily toward capitalism. A free market they call it. That might work if you had capitalism that wasn’t run amok with greed. Their greedy plan omits way to many people. Government of the people, by the people and for the people does not exist in this country. It exists only in textbooks and old cliques that date back to when our government was formed. . We have government by the lobbyists and for the lobbyists and they are the ones who rule our form of government and they will never quit until they have squeezed every last penny out of the people, as wrong as that is-- Washington should be charged with aiding and abetting.

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

I wanted to talk a little bit about faith and before you roll your eyes or quit reading I would like to say, not any faith in particular, as I’m not a man of the cloth and not that qualified to speak about it. But what I want to talk about is the reason or reasons it is becoming more and more unpopular in society. It seems fitting that I am writing about this at Christmas time because there is a definite tie in with some religions this time of the year. Christmas and Hanukah both being celebrated. It is my belief that if most people don’t practice their parents faith, or any other they have been introduced too, they pretty well wash the faith part of life, out of their lives and their children’s lives’ and for most of them that’s forever. The exceptions would be spouses or friends who won’t give it up and ask you to participate. Peer pressure you might say. I could say I saw this coming a long time ago because at a young age I saw families worshiping together frequently and then later in life I noticed a lot of them dropping the kids off at church or Sunday school and picking them up afterwards and I often wondered why at some point the kids wouldn’t think, “They want me to go but they don’t?” Do as I say, not as I do, doesn’t work very well in the long run. So what do people gain by practicing some faith? Morality, virtue, love and respect for your fellow man come to mind. Look around you and see what the lack of this is doing to society. I don’t mean to imply that good people can’t live and prosper in this country without faith in some personal deity. I don’t mean to say that religious people can’t do bad things-- they can and they do everyday. Foxes in sheep’s clothing they are. But no one hates them more then the religious people, for they aren’t just sinners they are hypocrites. But the trend in this country seems to be less and less of the virtues that define us as good people and most of us need all the help we can get with that. Most religions help us keep our minds and noses clean by rules and a clearer definition of the laws of good conduct. They spell it out for us and praise us when we succeed and shame us when we don’t. A working conscience can be a good and helpful thing. Church and worship has never been a mandatory thing, at least in our society’s rules and that’s good because if you are going to win rewards for participating, it has to come from your heart. I still hear references to God and Jesus and prayers being offered for people at tragic, events. Not sure always if the sincerity is there but who am I to judge. I guess what it does say is that people are still turning that way for help in times of need and that’s what it’s there for is it not? I just think it would be nice if the beliefs this country was founded on were still front and center with people and not seemingly relegated to the back burner to be used only when things go bad. After all, even your parents when you were growing up, liked a little thanksgiving from you from time to time and not always just petitions for more things. Or is it just karma that’s important now days?

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Charlotte Anselmo wrote a New Years prayer I have read over and over so many times and I want to quote the very last part of it for all of you. She said, “The New Year lies before you like a spotless track of snow. Be careful how you tread on it for every mark will show.” To those of us who grew up in the northern states and lived in the country, you know just what I am talking about when you get up in the morning after a fresh snowfall and you look around at that soft white blanket that has covered every existing imperfection and suddenly you see the world in a whole new light. I know, and you know that when the clock rings twelve on this New Years Eve, we can’t shed the baggage that follows us from the years gone by. That the only thing that has really changed is the date. That our bills, our problems and even our sins will not be erased, without some outside action on our part. But for so many of us it can be a call to action and a new beginning, if we want it to be, even if it’s actually not a reprieve. Instead it’s a benchmark if you will, a line in the sand and a new beginning for the calendar year ahead. It’s somewhat synonymous with that new snowfall that just last night covered up all that ugly dirt and imperfections. They’re gone from the eye but yet still there underneath that snowy white mantel but at least for now you don’t have to deal with them. You can focus on something new. How would I want the world to look if I had any say in the design? Well for one, I would like us all to be stripped of the greed that permeates our society. It seems so foolish that in a world, with enough room for everyone and enough food to feed everyone that this greed even exists. Number two I would make every effort to preserve this planet for the ages. There are those who find this kind of thinking, getting in the way of their efforts to make money. They don’t care about tomorrow and they don’t care who they harm. It’s like standing on a tree branch and sawing it off close to the tree. In the end we’ll all fall, rich or poor, including the person with the saw. We build up great societies and then we destroy them in wars. Then we wait a few years and we repeat the cycle. There is in my church a song we sing that say’s, “Let there be peace on earth and let it began with me.” Speaking only about our own country and speaking for myself we seem to be fighting and killing all over the globe with no positive results. At least as it applies to peace. It’s like war is big business and that is part of the price of doing business. If we want peace in this world we need to practice what we preach--but that’s right were not preaching it. Were not even talking about it. With that attitude how can it possibly begin with us? Life on this earth is precious for all of us. But one would think, at least for us human beings that we would try and refine the product even more. We have done that with almost every tangible thing we have ever made. Try to make it bigger and better over time but for some reason we can’t do it with our attitudes toward each other. Maybe this New Years Day would be a good time to start. Yes, let it begin with me.

CHRISTMAS LETTER

We spend our whole lives making comparisons. Was that the best job I ever had? The best vacation I ever took? The best dinner I ever ate, or the best Christmas ever? As long as we have a memory we will continue to draw an analogy between the past and the present. As an old man my memories are full of moms and dads, uncles, aunts, grandparents, a spouse, kids and friends who once sat around my Christmas tree but now are gone. All of them special in there own way. But today as I contemplate all of this, and as fond as those memories are, I realize the only Christmas that is important to me this year, is the one coming up and the only way to reap the benefits is to get involved. If there is one thing the holidays seem to bring out in people. It is, we quit thinking about ourselves and think of others and how we can brighten their Christmas holiday. I once knew of an old man who had lost his spouse and that first Christmas without her, he told his family that he would not be available for Christmas Eve. He would see them the next day. He was not a rich man but that Christmas Eve, without telling anyone else; he went to his bank and withdrew 500 dollars in 10-dollar bills. Then alone, he went to the local homeless shelter or mission that night and handed each person a bill and wished him or her a Merry Christmas. He didn’t tell them not to spend it on alcohol or other bad things. He simply said “Merry Christmas.” The next day at Christmas dinner when his family asked where he was last night. He smiled and simply said, “It was the best Christmas Eve ever.” I think of all of the lonely people who have nothing but their memories to cling to at Christmas and it makes me sad. It’s this sad part of the holidays, that some are able to push to the back of their minds but not me. In a way, I envy those who can. At the start of this I talked about making comparisons. How about the difference between giving and receiving? How do we become humble in our giving and yet grateful in receiving? You don’t have to be old to experience this. I remember a Christmas when one of my kids gave me a plaster cast of their little hand they had made in school. As I opened the gift I asked my wife out loud, what is this? Before she could answer I saw my child’s face go from glee to sadness. They had made something especially for me for Christmas and all I could say was-- what is this? I tried to make light of it but the damage was done. Oh how I wish I had that plaster cast today to sit on my desk. To see that little handprint, that is today, fifty some years old and wrinkled with age. Pat and I, after six years together, will be spending our first Christmas Day alone together and away from our families. It will be different for both of us but yet we take solace in the fact that we have each other and at least speaking for me, I can’t ask for any more than that. We have no plans for elaborate gifts for each other. Our companionship and our love for each other is our gift. At our age, giving can be as simple as a hug and a smile. It speaks volumes and you can’t buy it on line.

HIATUS

By the time you read this, Pat and I will be back in Arizona for the winter. There was a time when I never thought I would ever be a snowbird and the word still kind of sticks in my craw. Yes, I was the consummate Minnesota man who would walk around all winter in my Sorrel boots and Carharts. Icy snot cycles would be hanging from my mustache and beard. My breath forming clouds of steam as I pushed my snow blower, through raging blizzards shouting at the top of my lungs, “Is that all you got? Bring it on Mother Nature you wimp. My dog Molly would be sitting on the porch cheering me on but saying to herself; “I ain’t going out there. I’ll pee right here thank you.” I always had a spear house that I drug out onto the lake in the winter when the ice formed. Back then, my little stove would take the chill off in the fish house and my dog would help me scan the depths for those allusive “Northern’s” and wag his tail when he spotted one. Then successful, I would fire up the snowmobile and head home with my kill. Those fish, fresh out of that cold water never tasted better. I loved to cross country ski and snowshoe. I would watch the ice races on the lake when they plowed the track. I would ride to Crosby on my snowmobile, have a little toddy-- just a wee one—and then head home, warm inside and out. Then Mother Nature took over in a different direction. Lungs that saw to much abuse in my Fire Fighting days rebelled and now I have coughing fits when they suck in cold air. I go nowhere without my inhalers and you don’t have to say it-- I’ll say it for you--. I’m not the man I used to be. Fingers and toes that never got cold now get cold in bed. I live by myself and cold winter nights are lonely winter nights and there is way too much darkness. I need to exercise daily for my breathing and I need someplace warm to do it and I’m not cut out to be a mall walker. Pat takes over the cooking when we are in Arizona so at least for part of the year I eat food that is really good for me. She cleans our house and washes my clothes and laughs at my silly jokes-----well smiles at my silly jokes---sometimes. We go exploring in the desert and have made so many new friends and we also have reconnected with old friends, who too escape the cold down there. Yes, we are happy when we get down to Arizona but when April rolls around and we find our way back up north we are happier yet, because we are back in the land we both love so much and call our home. There will be a few snow banks left when we return but within weeks the rhubarb will be up, the lakes will turn back to water again and like a metamorphous the earth will shed its icy cocoon and spring will be in the air. Baby animals and birds everywhere, green grass and buds on the trees and new stories to tell at coffee. So it’s a hiatus for us from winter yes-- but my ‘Meandering Mind’ will find something to write about and if it sucks you can tell me in April. By the way, my spear house is now my garden shed. I don’t have a garden—just the tools.

DEER HUNTING

So today is the opening of deer hunting and as I sit by my desk, I hear the gunshots out in the woods across the road and wonder if the boys got one. I hunted for over fifty years but health issues and a lack of the killing attitude that it takes to shoot a deer have left me in the house now. But there is something bigger for me this year that makes me sad. Although I didn’t hunt we were still all together for the weekend. I hunted vicariously through all of them. I helped them put up their stands and we shared a lot of good meals and time together. Next year my plan is to head south before the hunting season, so this was probably my last deer-hunting season. I think back to the years we hunted together and the love and comradely we enjoyed. The year my son and I were the only two hunting and we had spent many hours the day before placing our stands in the perfect place, planning the hunt and filing our packs with snacks, outfitted better then the U.S. army. We both got our deer before 7.30 that next morning and spent the rest of the weekend not knowing what to do with ourselves, so we watched football games. It was almost sad. I think too of the year my son, as a young man, shot a deer at dusk, wounding it and then instead of waiting for the rest of the party to help him, took off on his own and tried tracking it in the dark, until his flashlight wore out and he was hopelessly lost. He stumbled out of the woods late in the evening soaking wet and cold, just minutes before I was going to call his mother back in the cities and also call the police for help. I had no idea what I was going to tell her. I hunted years ago when it was ten below and when it was so warm, if I’d had orange underwear I would have been sitting in it. I hunted in a blizzard once when you couldn’t see three feet in front of you. I have shot deer at a hundred yards and some from a few feet away. I once was in my brother’s field of fire and he didn’t know it and I heard the bullet go by me, inches from my head. Then on that last year that I hunted, on the last day of hunting and not having any luck, a nice doe walked right up to my stand. I watched her looking at me seemingly surprised that I was there and not knowing which way to run. I stood up and yelled at her. “Get out of here.” I knew that day, my hunting days were over. Deer hunting has been a tradition in many families over the years. The woods way up north are dotted with old rotted stands and even some abandoned shacks that have given way to more modern conveniences For me it wasn’t just about deer but about time alone to examine your conscience. Time to come to grips with how much your loved ones meant to you and to be one with God and nature. I have given my rifles and guns to my grandsons. I hope that my example helped them to be good hunters and if not-- well that’s okay too. It’s not for everybody. I’m not a gun advocate but I believe hunting has a way of making families bond together and be responsible gun owners and users. It’s not the guns that cause trouble in this country it’s the people who have them, who have no business having them, and a sick country that makes it far too easy for them to do so.

REQUIEM FOR A SUNSHINE BOY

When we started our coffee group, called the “Sunshine Boys,” over fifteen years ago there was a core group of men who numbered around ten. There was another group of ten or so who came by now and then, so all in all it was a lively group but a respectable group. I was one of the younger ones. As the years have gone by, old age, disease and accidents has taken its toll and now there are very few of us left. Saturday we buried old Charlie and so the ranks thinned again. So many times we have celebrated the lives of our friends on days like this, but to be truthful there’s not many of us left to celebrate. Far more of us are below the earth then above it. From the start we controlled the rancor at our meetings. We kept contentious issues at bay and just enjoyed the fellowship that old friends find comforting. We rallied around the sick, told old stories over and over again, and poked good-natured fun at each other, but in the end we always left each other on a good note. We were as different as snowflakes but we always put the common good of the group ahead of any bias we had in life and we called it respect. Charlie was one of us. Charlie died from dementia and although I didn’t make the effort to go see him after he went into a facility, I know I should have. It didn’t matter if he knew me or not. I knew him and that was the most important thing. The people who have meant the most to me in life have always been the congenial and kind people like Charlie and not the brash and tough ones. I’ve mellowed in my old age. I didn’t always feel like this. But as I reflect on the times of when I was angry and unsettled in life, one thing stands out. That indifference to others views, that I had back then, never ended well. It never brought about compromise or cooperation. It only brought about more conflict. But to have that compromising attitude which is the only mindset to have to do business correctly, you have to be humble and I wasn’t always. Our society has all too often turned to anger and grandstanding lately to get their point across. I see it far to often in the people I talk to and I talk to a lot of people. You find yourself choosing your words so carefully, fully cognizant that one misspoke word or phrase will turn the whole conversation bad and forgiveness doesn’t come easy sometimes. This boiling bitterness lies just under the skin of a lot of people and can erupt in a hurry and if you’re not careful it can draw you in like quicksand and the more things get heated, the deeper and deeper you get into it. My mom used to say, “The things that are best said are sometimes left unsaid. That if you know you’re right you don’t have to prove it to anybody.” Maybe not the best mantra for a writer but good advice, never the less. “Be right in your mind not theirs,” She said. I have even known people who threatened physical violence to those who stand up to them. They usually end up void of friends and muttering to themselves. Charlie was a good man who left you with a smile. He was a Christian man and lived that kind of life to prove it. He will be missed but the bigger thing we should all take from this is a firm resolves for all of us, to be more like Charlie.