If at first you don't succeed, maybe you'll get the prize on second try!

A true story about not giving up.

"It's the birthday of Canadian children's writer L.M. Montgomery, (books by this author) born Lucy Maud Montgomery in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, in 1874. Her mother died when she was a toddler, and her father sent her to live with her mother's parents. There were no other children around, just Lucy and her grandparents, and she spent a lot of time reading and writing poems. She left home for a few years to teach, but when her grandfather died, she came home to live with her grandmother, and she stayed with her for the next 13 years. And during that time, she wrote her first novel, about an orphan girl with bright red hair who gets sent to live with a couple from Prince Edward Island who were hoping for a boy instead. It got rejected over and over, so she put the manuscript away in a hatbox and turned to other things. But eventually, she got it back out, read it, decided it wasn't that bad after all, and sent it out again. This time it got accepted, and in 1908, Anne of Green Gables was published and became a classic children's book."

from today's Writer's Almanac.

     College took me two tries and as I've written previously that turned out much to my benefit. High school in no way prepared me for college. After five unsuccessful quarters at South Dakota State College I transferred to Augustana College. While, that semester at Augie was academically satisfactory, I still had no vocational direction. That's when I enlisted in the Marines.
     With one successful semester at Augustana re-enrolling after my discharge was easy. In the summer of my second year there I met Joanne, and the rest is history. How different my life would have been had succeeded in my first college attempt. Much of life can only be understood in the rear view mirror!   Perhaps I should write a litany thanking God for failure. 😀

Takk for alt,

Al

Mystery

"It's the birthday of the writer who said: "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." That's C.S. Lewis, (books by this author) born in Belfast (1898), the author of the seven-volume children's series The Chronicles of Narnia, which begins with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the story of four children sent away from London because of wartime air raids. He also said, "Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

Besides fairy tales and children's classics, he wrote theological books, including The Screwtape Letters (1942), a novel in which a demon writes to his nephew; and The Great Divorce (1945), where residents of hell take a bus ride to heaven, and Mere Christianity (1952), based on talks he gave on the BBC during World War II.

C.S. Lewis said, "Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."  Today's Writer's Almanac

     Isn't that a sweet quote from Lewis?  "...letters too large for us to see...." So much of what is outside of what I expect passes me by.  Will I ever learn to be open to what is in front of me?  "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." 😊

On a much lighter note: the American Kennel club has come up with a much better way of comparing a dog's life to that of a human. One issue is the relative length of life for dogs depending on their size. Using the formula below Trygve, the wonder dog, appears to be 64 in human terms. This makes sense of my observation. He hunts as hard as ever but not as long and needs more time to recuperate. I don't hunt as hard........

• 15 human years equals the first year of a medium-sized dog’s life.
• Year two for a dog equals about nine years for a human.
• And after that, each human year would be approximately five years for a dog.

Takk for alt,

Al

Snow "fall"?

  There are those who have tired of my posting on Facebook "Snow sure is pretty from the 15th floor." Now, why would anyone tire of hearing that? So I wondered as I sat at breakfast and saw snow going horizontally past my window.  When, as a child, I saw New England pictures of snow piled on fence posts I thought to my self "naw, snow always comes sideways" because that was my experience of prairie snow.  Snow going horizontally past my window is something to which I can relate.
   The recent storm left something like 9" of snow but is accurate to say snow "fall"? Well, I suppose it has to land someplace. There's a saying among farmers contemplating spraying their fields on a windy day "it has to land someplace." This would also be true of the snow streaking past my window, "it has to land some place." thus, I suppose it is snow "fall" even though that seems a misnomer to me. And, yes, blowing, falling, blowing and falling, or having fallen, it is pretty from the 15th floor...so there!

   HAPPY THANKSGIVING to you all. It was another fine family gathering, which Joanne would have loved. Not only was it Thanksgiving but also Charlie's birthday and she loved both Thanksgiving and birthdays...both fit in with her love of live and abundant gratitude. The hardest part for me was coming home alone but that's life in the land of grief.

Takk for alt,

Al

See, it is pretty!

The elephant in the room!

"What we did Friday night, if you want to know 

"Friday was a dark day though we didn’t talk about it because we had dinner with two young newlyweds and a friend who recently lost her husband, so we kept it light....

"It was a happy dinner party. The young wife is French and we got talking about American colloquialisms and she was fascinated by “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” and “easy as pie” for which she offered “mettre les doigts dans le nez,” (sticking fingers up the nose), meaning: no big deal, nothing to brag about."  Garrison Keillor

    Keillor mentions in another paragraph he'd recently at lunch with the friend who died. "It was a happy dinner party."  No need to be tiresome and acknowledge the pain or the grief of the widow...let's just be happy and gay and never mind about the widow, recently thrust into the land of grief.
   How often is the bereaved, the new, or long term, denizen of the land of grief, ignored with her/his grief over the departed the "elephant hiding in the room?' "We kept it light..." How was the widow feeling as she left? Did she want her beloved mentioned, her beloved who had presided at the wedding of the young couple? Who get's to decide that it should be kept light?  Would the widow be spoil sport if she brought up the death of her husband?

   Such are my thoughts as I read this article from Keillor.

Takk for alt,

Al

Roots

    Thursday we'll gather for Thanksgiving at my son's place in S. Minneapolis. Thanksgiving falls on November 28, this year, and that will be the 90th anniversary of my parent's wedding. They were married in 1929 at my mother's parent's house on Carter Ave., in the St. Anthony Park area of St. Paul. Mother's father presided at the wedding, on a bitterly cold day.
    Their wedding was a month after the huge stock market crash and my father lost a significant sum when the banks closed. He'd been fairly affluent for a South Dakota farmer. He purchased his first car in 1914, an Overland, later 1919(?)  a Buick touring car and then a 1928 Model A, Ford. This was the car they took on a two month honeymoon to Washington, D.C. and on down the coast to South Carolina. In Chicago they stayed at the Palmer House. In spite of his loss he did not scrimp on the honeymoon. With the depression settling in, the mid-west drought years, and four children born in the thirties this would be my parents last trip for many years.
    Ironically the house of my grandparents on Carter Ave, which.was purchased by my aunt and uncle, was only a block from Joanne's parent's home on Como Ave. That's how my cousin Louise and Joanne were childhood friends.

    Here's wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving and of course we can never be too thankful. Much of what I'm thankful for is the blessings of good parents and family.


Takk for alt,

Al

Perhaps I'm guilty?

     Many times I've told the story of 92 year old Erma asking me ho old did I feel 'inside?'  After I replied 19, I asked her and she said "Perhaps 21." In the Science and Health section of Sunday's Minneapolis Tribune appeared an article, You're only as old as you feel. "Feel younger than your age? Your brain my be healthier and you may be more resilient than same-age peers."
     "When scientists ask, 'How old do you feel most of the time?' the answer tends to reflect the state of people's physical and mental health...."
      "Scientists are finding that people who feel younger than their chronological age are typically healthier and more psychologically resilient than those who feel older. They perform better on memory tasks and are at lower risk of cognitive decline."
     The article, by Emily Laber-Warren, reprinted from the New York Times, goes on to say cause and effect is unclear;
     While I've felt younger than my chronological age for many years, the article raised a concern. It made me wonder if my pride in feeling younger than my years is a subtle form of ageism?  How much of my self-perception is a prejudice against elder-hood?  The initial satisfaction in reading about the benefits of a self perception of "youngness" gradually turned to the discomfort of seeing my bias of ageism.
     So it goes in the land of endless self-discovery.

Takk for alt,

Al

"A Dr. Spock for death"

   Now there's a headline that caught my eye, "A Dr. Spock for death, 'A Beginners Guide to the End' helps people prepare for a life stage that many wold prefer to deny."  Star Tribune, Sunday, November 24, 2019, p. E10. Shoshana Berger and BJ Miller are co-authors of A Beginners Guide...
Shoshana "My sister and I ended up literally sitting down at a computer in the room where my father lay cold and Googling, 'What do you do when someone dies?' That encapsulates how little preparation we have, and how little we know about this experience...." "Q. Why is our culture so hellbent of avoiding death?" BJ "Death is scary. We're wired to run away from it, so there's no shame in that. But you can tell America is a young culture by the way it handles  aging and dying--that it's something you fight, not come to terms with...." "Q. How and when should people start preparing for death?"  Shoshana "Creating a When I Die file. You can put all your stuff in a shoebox, or a file, or a cloud drive that's going to make it so much easier for the people you love to deal with it when they lose you. Because they are going to be in the thick of grief themselves and then to have to call Verizon and sit on a phone tree for an hour is just adding insult to injury.
    "So having all your passwords in one place, your advanced directives, your will and trust, and then some softer things that you can add, like writing a letter to the people you love.
    "This is not a book for old people. This is a book for everyone. It always feels too early until it's too late."

    So, we all have our will and trust, right? Advance directives are properly prepared? Passwords and information clearly organized?  Well, what ARE we  waiting for?

Takk for alt,

Al