Maybe true?????

Lloyd and I would occasionally exchange overnight stays. There were four children in my family and six in his. We were country school classmates and our farms were three and half miles apart. It was always a treat to stay overnight with Lloyd with five siblings there was always something brewing. Lloyd's father, Arnt, had emigrated from Norway. I can still see Arnt leaning into a milk cow and hear the milk squirting into the pail as he carried on a conversation with himself in Norwegian.
Lloyd likes to tell the story of staying at my house one night. We walked home from school together. Gathered around the dinner table my father said, "You boys were late coming home from school tonight." I supposedly replied, "Ya, we had to stay after school for something we didn't do!" "What was that?" my father asked. "We didn't do our arithmetic" I said. Lloyd claims it's a true story but I have no recollection of it and it seems out of character for me. :)

Sneaky!

We never heard her come in. Our little country school had three windows each on the west and the east. The road ran east west on the south side of the school so the driveway was out of sight. We never knew how long Miss VanMaanen had been listening in the entry before she knocked on the door. As County Superintendent of Schools for Brookings County, SD, it was her job to supervise the teachers in the rural county schools. She must have coasted into the school yard in her old car, carefully closed the car door and entered the porch very quietly. No doubt she thought that that was the best way to find out how our teacher was doing. I always found it a bit unnerving and I would think that the teacher must have felt that way, too.

It was 1943...

School was a one room building with a enclosed unheated, porch for boots and coats. On the coldest days the porch was so cold that our sandwiches would freeze by noon. There was no basement so the little building perched on a stone foundation. It was 1943 and I was in first grade. Some animal had dug under the foundation so Marvin Jepson, who was in eighth grade, set an animal trap (#1 Victor) in the hole. When we arrived at school the next day we found a very angry skunk in the trap. Marvin's farm was about a quarter of a mile away so he ran home for his .22 rifle. Shooting the skunk did not improve the situation noticeably though, our teacher, Ruth Quail, did dismiss school for three days to allow the smell to subside.

"I wouldn't change a thing........"

I've often wished I would have bought some art. Lisa and I were in Peru together about seven years ago. We spent some time in the old Inca capital, Cuzco, before visiting Machu Picchu. In Cuzco there were many young artists peddling their art on the street, both drawings and paintings. They weren't asking very much for them, just a few pesos. I regret not buying a large number of them. If I had it to do over I'd buy many of the drawings/paintings. Why? Primarily to support the artists and could probably have found some use for them. It wouldn't have cost me much but it would have been a boost to them.
I did buy a few finger puppets from a woman who had knit them. I wish I'd have bought her whole basket full of them for her asking price...no bargaining her down.
Some people claim to have no regrets about decisions they have made as they move into or through old age. I'm not one of them. There are many things I'd do differently. This reminds me that there is a vast difference between having "one year of experience twenty times" and "having twenty years of experience."

And the winner of the greased pig contest is......

Saturday was the annual fund raiser for the Sinai, SD, fire department. The weather was of my dreams, 80 degrees, full sun and a light breeze. There was no tractor pull this year. Many antique tractors were on display with a variety of competitions; backing a two wheel trailer and a four wheel trailer, pulling a log through a series of traffic cones, a race that involved hand cranking the tractor, rolling a barrel with the front wheels of a tractor and a slow race to see which tractor could go the slowest. All of these activities took second place to the greased pig competition.
There were three classes of competitors; children, women and men. The ground in the pen was soaked with water until the mud was ankle deep. The children's competition was unisex and uniage. The youngest were a couple of boys I'd guess to to be about four or five. They were competing against some girls who must have been at least in their teens. A pig was smeared with lard and turned loose in the pen. The object was to pick up the pig and put it in a tub in the center of the ring. That quickly became second place for some of boys to the joy of belly flopping in the mud. It was a tie between two boys, one holding the front legs and the other the back.
In the women's contest the pig was larger. When one woman successfully tackled the pig she ended up sitting with the pig in her lap. After much effort she finally rose from the mud and deposited the pig in the tub while the other women watched.
For the men the unwritten rules were very different. As soon as a man would get a grip on the pig someone would tackle him. There was no polite standing back to give him a chance as the women did. They seemed to have as much fun wallowing in the mud as did the little boys.
It could go with out saying, there were no members of People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals present.

More pics..that's Gov. Quinn speaking.

Mai-Evy, 7 weeks and first picket duty

Failure to communicate!

Sunday Joanne said, "If we have some time Tuesday perhaps we should pretend we're tourists and do something fun in Chicago." Monday I replied, I'm very quick on the uptake, "If we're going to be tourists my choices would be either Millennium Park or the Art Museum. So we agreed to take the METRA train downtown early today, Tuesday. The train stops only a few blocks from Mark's house where we are staying.
We arrived downtown, walked from Union Station to the Park and discovered that Joanne planned to go to the art museum and I to Millennium Park. We both assumed that the other had the same plan as did we. So we compromised; Joanne went to the museum and I to the park.
Assumptions change; hearing someone talking to him/herself on the street I used to assume mental illness but now I assume cell phone. Yet...how different is that?

Three generations on the picket line!

For six years the workers at Chicago's Congress Hotel, on Michigan Ave., have been on strike. This afternoon, in recognition of that anniversary, there was a large rally in front of the hotel. Though he was in town Pres. Obama did not attend though he had picketed while he was campaigning for the presidency. However, IL. Governor Patrick Quinn was present and gave a rousing speech. There were a number of Aldermen and others who spoke.
The Negstads were represented by three generations. Lars is a research analyst for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees #1 (U.N.I.T.E.H.E.R.E.), Chicago. We brought Mai-Evy to her first demonstration. She was a big hit in her U.N.I.T.E.H.E.R.E. bib thought she didn't much like the noise.
I was moved by speakers who described the differences between working in a unionized hotel and one that was not. Lars was instrumental in the passage of a state law giving Chicago hotel maids two fifteen minute breaks per day.
I wonder what the dynamics are for people who blithely cross the picket and sit by the restaurant window at dinner gazing out at the picketers. Is it a "I've got mine" mind set? Is it a "workers don't deserve more" frame of mind?
I'm proud that Lars has chosen to dedicate his life to worker justice. Oh, yes, when you stay at a hotel/motel don't forget to tip the maid. A couple of dollars won't hurt you but can make a world of difference to a poor woman trying to make ends meet.

Mai-Evy and more........

WOW has she grown in the 5 weeks since we last saw her, Mai-Evy our grandaughter that is. I'll post pics when I get home. What a lucky little girl she is. I wish every child would have her level of care!

"I should have been born retired!"

Frank is my age and he retired a few months after I did. We were having dinner together this spring and I asked about his experience of retirement. He replied, "I should have been born retired!" I know what he means. I'm fond of saying, "Retirement is grand!"
My friend Paul said, "There are three phases of retirement; go go, slow go and no go." I'm in the go go phase. Tomorrow we're headed off to see Mai-Evy, and her parents, for a couple of days. Mai-Evy is now 9lbs 13 oz and 23.5 inches, almost the size Lars was when he was born. She's in the 94% in height for her age. Surprise, surprise. I'll post new pics when I return.

Golfer missing......

Five of us having a standing golf date Thursday mornings. At age 70 I'm the youngest of the group. The oldest, age 86, is the best golfer of us but he was missing yesterday. He had to stay home because they were getting new carpeting and it was his job to move the furniture.

Traveling....

"We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial..." So writes Alain De Botton in his neat little book, The Art of Travel, Pantheon Books, 2002.
So why do we (I) travel and how? Rick Steeves says we should travel as extroverts so we connect with people. That makes some sense to me but as an introvert that takes a lot of energy and sometimes I think I observe things that extroverts miss. Much of my need to travel is the need to experience that which is different. I gather that this does not hold for everyone as I observe many travelers gravitating to that which is most similar to home. In my introverted fashion I often take delight in being where I do not know the language. Yet I know that I miss much when I cannot converse with the locals. I am not one who must see every important site in an area, often taking much more delight in simply being in the places of everyday life.

Recipe, "You take a bull a week..."

It turned out to be as much a social call as a tractor deal. Herman was selling an IHC H, that I thought I needed. Freeman, SD, is such a nice easy trip from Sinai. Go west 5 miles to Highway 81, turn south and follow 81 for 75 miles and you find Freeman. Herman said to drive to the cell phone tower and you will find him...and the tractor and there they were.
I backed my trailer in the ditch, loaded the tractor, chained it down and Herman said, "Get in the car." First up was a tour of Freeman a heavily Mennonite town. We saw the museum, largest one in SD and about to expand by a third, the arboretum, the Mennonite Christian Academy and then stopped at the grocery store. Herman bought cheese, bologna, crackers and pop. He bought a second bologna to send home with me. Back at his shop we turned a five gallon bucket upside down, pulled up two chairs and had our lunch.
Herman said that the bologna could only be found in Freeman and Germany. He once asked the old German butcher for the recipe, a deeply guarded secret. The old butcher said, "Vell, you take a bull a week...."
I told Herman that I'd accompanied my friend Rollie to Freeman a few years ago to pick up a tractor. We didn't figure out that he'd bought it from Herman until he asked me what I did. Then he said, "I sold him that tractor." I've used Herman as a sermon illustration. When he heard that Rollie was a seminary professor and I a pastor he said, "Of course I tithe (give 10% of my money to the church) but I also tithe my time. I give at least a day a week helping someone who needs it." I liked the "of course I tithe" and also the tithing time.
Tractors are secondary to the people I meet.

Good book!

Joanne's nephew, Isaac, gave her a copy of INFIDEL by Ayaan Hirsi Ali for Christmas. After Joanne had read it she suggested I read it too. It is the auto biography of the Somali woman who fled Somalia, took refuge in the Netherlands, eventually was elected to to parliament and now lives in the U.S.
I found it fascinating and hard to put down. It helped my understand how the nation of Somalia unwound. Seeing western democracies through her eyes is revealing.

Cultivating corn.

It is a slow process to cultivate corn with a two row cultivator. Almost no one cultivates corn any more much less with a two row cultivator. The first time over is even slower so that one does not cover the small corn plants. I did two acres per hour Monday and remembered long hot days trying to stay awake in much larger fields. My mind can't comprehend the technology that allows cultivating by GPS.