#131 – Dick Bernard: Merry Christmas

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UPDATE Dec. 18, 2009: We now know much more than we did three days ago. Were this a place with a union (it isn’t) I would without hesitation advise a grievance on wrongful termination. Most likely, though, our friend would never grieve: her gender, race and culture would cause her to not fight the issues.
OK. So, I don’t know all the facts. I don’t even know the story, first hand.
Whatever.
Within the last few hours my spouse, Cathy, said “guess what”. She’d just learned that her friend – let’s call her Annette – had just lost her job at a bank.
She’s been fired.
Cathy has known Annette for many years. They met when they were working part-time second jobs at the warehouse for a major national retail chain. They were the ones who first looked at and dealt with the stuff customers would soon be buying as, say, Christmas presents. Quite often it was high-end stuff. They’d make sure that what had been ordered was actually in the shipping crate and undamaged, that sort of thing. Very low wages, but it took the edge off too little income from their day jobs.
They became, and remain, very good friends.
Annette was an immigrant from an English-speaking Caribbean island, one of those desirable high-end tourist destinations. She’s black, with a still interesting accent. Oh yes, a U.S. citizen for many years. I’d guess she’s somewhere in her 50s, now. All the time I’ve known her she’s been single, divorced, with one son who often has tested her abundant sense of humor and optimism but who now seems, more or less anyway, to have weathered the storms of growing up. He lives out east somewhere, a father, divorced.
She has a particular talent, Annette does. She had an unusual ability to count, and account for, money. She did this for a long while for a big corporation downtown, barely reaching $10 an hour. The particular demands of her job didn’t allow her to continue at it. Her department was moved to a suburb, and she had no way of getting there because she didn’t have reliable transportation, and the new location wasn’t on a bus line. So she had to look for something else.
She found a position in a branch of a major bank – one of those you’ve heard about in the TARP conversations. She was good there, too. It was in a rough neighborhood. Been there several years now. She didn’t have a car, thus needed to take a bus to work. Once she was hit by a car in the crosswalk heading to the bus stop. Required after hour meetings were a problem for her. If they weren’t over by a certain time, she’d miss her bus, and have to wait for the next one. But she couldn’t leave the meetings.
As I said, her bank branch was in a rough neighborhood; the bus stop wasn’t a particularly safe place to wait. Her colleagues, including the one who called the meetings, could jump in their cars and go home. “See you tomorrow”. She had to wait.
After the bank received its TARP funds, last year, the bank cut employees hours, and only recently were the hours brought back to what they had been before the banking crisis last year. Of course, cutting back hours doesn’t mean cutting back on work – it means more work in the same hours for those remaining on the job.
As I said, Annette was talented at counting money. She has a wonderful sense of humor, and my knowledge of her was sufficient so that I know she’d be a great person to meet at the teller window – her job.
But something happened recently. I’m not sure what.
Maybe it was a new manager with different expectations. Whatever the case, Annette has just been fired. Something was mentioned about forgetting a procedure when dealing with counting out a large amount of money for a customer in $20 bills – there were no larger denomination bills available; or maybe the break room was messy and somebody blamed Annette for that. I doubt the issue is missing funds. When you’re a subordinate, you’re an easy target.
Long and short, while we’re out frantically trying to finish “Christmas shopping”, our friend is out of a job, back in her tiny apartment. Meanwhile, on my suggestion, we’ll be getting a new TV this week. The old one is a 15 year old 27″ that works just fine, and I suggested a few days ago, before I knew of the firing, that we give it to Annette. Cathy said “no”, Annette’s apartment is too tiny to accomodate it and the piece of furniture that goes with it.
It’s easy to say, about the Annette’s of our world, “tough bounce”.
Nowhere near as easy when you know the person as we have, for years.
As individuals, we can’t rescue Annette and all the Annette’s out there. It’s societies job, but “society” – the greater community in which we all live – doesn’t seem terribly interested in her sad story either. Evil Taxes, you know.
What to do?
The big bankers with Annette’s former bank will get big bonuses this Christmas. The government bailout was very helpful. Thank you very much. Some might take some time on her home island in the Caribbean.
Merry Christmas…and Happy New Year.

#129 – Dick Bernard: The Shack

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Last summer a good friend, one of those friends I have never been privileged to meet in person, asked if I had read the novel, “The Shack”, and heightened my interest to the extent I purchased a copy. As so often happens with me, I got to page 34, found the book was interesting, but got distracted, put it down and went on to other things.
A few days ago, my friend wrote an e-note “I’ve wondered if you had the time this summer to read The Shack and what you thought of it.”
I’ve now completed the book. I highly recommend it.
It is a book that encourages, indeed demands, personal reflection and introspection. I won’t give this book away: I expect to return to it from time to time. This book stays in the family.
The Shack is framed in western Christianity, but speaks to anyone willing to look inward at their own ways of being. Indeed, a willingness to look inward would seem to be an implicit need to derive any meaning from The Shack.
(The friend who called The Shack to my attention has major and, in my view, very legitimate issues with western Christianity, and perhaps of traditional organized religion generally, but nonetheless is a person of great Spirit, in the most positive sense. My entire frame of reference is within one segment of western Christianity, but I found the book filled with insights. My pastor will get a copy of The Shack from me, for Christmas. I’ll be in Church Sunday morning, as usual, and next week, and the week after. But even if I hadn’t darkened a church door in years, and despised organized religion, I think I’d find this book to be of great value.)
The Shack has been around since 2007. The jacket says “This book became #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List on a two-hundred-dollar marketing budget and because of passionate readers who wanted to pass it along to their friends.” My edition says “Over five million copies in print.”
Check the website; if you’re out Christmas shopping, near a bookstore, stop in, take a look, and consider giving yourself this gift.
And prepare to look inward, into yourself.

#123 – Dick Bernard: the "Day Maker"

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Today at my Church, the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Fr. Tim Power chose to frame his sermon around a story told by a guy I’d never heard of: a famed hair stylist and entrepreneur named David Wagner.
Fr. Tim told us that Wagner once recalled a phone call from one of his clients. She wasn’t on his schedule, but wondered if there was a possibility he could fit her in as she had an important and special evening ahead.
Wagner made an opening for her, she came in, and he did his usual great job, and was also his usual friendly self, chatting, and joking with his client in the chair.
She left, looking, sounding great, and Wagner went on to his next client.
Some weeks later, he received a letter from the woman. She recalled the day in his salon chair, and that she had come in to get her hair styled before her planned suicide (her special evening) that night.
The time in Wagners salon had been so uplifting for her, she said, that she changed her mind about the suicide, and called for help that evening.
She was writing from the psychiatric care facility, and she was feeling much better. She thanked Wagner for saving her life; something he didn’t know he was doing at the time.
Fr. Power went on to tie his story into his message of the day, basically to be someone’s “Day Maker”, than to do the opposite, the “Make my day” philosophy.
His story caused me to think back 26 years, to a very low time in my life.
I hadn’t been thinking of “ending it all”, not at all, but I was dragging pretty low.
One afternoon I picked up a phone message from a friend of mine, Vince. I hadn’t talked to him for a long while, and I had no idea what he wanted, but I called him back.
“Just wanted to say hello”, he said. And we chatted for a short while about nothing in particular.
Of all the phone calls or visits I’ve ever received, Vince’s is by far the most memorable. And I don’t think he knew I was dragging bottom; his call had nothing connected to do with that at all. He “just wanted to say hello”.
I can’t call Vince and thank him for that long ago message, since he passed on quite a number of years ago.
But Fr. Tim’s message today is a reminder that this season, with all its hubbub and promise, can be a very depressing time for many people, including those who seem unlikely to succumb to depressing thoughts and feelings.
Maybe a good gift these coming days, and long past Christmas, is to work on being a “day maker” for someone out in the world.
The message is to myself, too.
Thanks, Tim.
(You can easily find references to David Wagner Daymaker on the web. Look him up.)

#120 – Dick Bernard: Raining Apples

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Monday and Tuesday I took a trip out to ND to give my Uncle a little help at the farm near Berlin; the place where Mom grew up ‘way back when’. The hardest part of the work is the drive back and forth, though there was some heavy lifting that needs two people. This time the objective was to begin emptying a couple of grain bins.
Once the augur is in place, and hooked up to the power take off of the tractor, the project basically takes care of itself…until the end when some unlucky person has to shovel the last remnants. I was spared that task this trip. Some day I won’t be….
The augur augured, Uncle Vince supervised from the cab of the tractor, and I had some time to wander around the now people-less farmstead. One of the apple trees in the front yard showed evidence of some windfalls, and it was an invitation to a quick lunch. I knew from past experience that these are GOOD eating and pie apples, though the remnants I found this year were on the small side.
The apple trees are now large, and there were still a lot of apples up there in the ‘heavens’ of the top branches. Vince and Edith knew they were there, but too high to harvest by the usual means.
Then came Tuesday.
Tuesday was a windy day – not an unusual occurrence in ND: 15-30 mph they were saying.
There were sufficient windfalls so I decided to make myself useful and pick them up off the ground.
The wind blew, and one dropped to the ground here, another there, sometimes several at once. I’d clean up a piece of ground, and a half dozen apples would be there in no time.
I found the task changing from ordinary work to fun. For a time, there, I felt like a kid, hoping that one of those free-fall apples would ‘bop me on the noggin’, but none did. By the time I finished, I had nearly a bushel of those windfalls gathered in one place, and then in a tub.
While I didn’t grow up on the farm, I visited there a lot when a kid and adult. So it was possible to connect the dots between the very hard manual work of the old farm days, and the occasional simple fun that visited those scattered patches of humanity in the simpler times of America years ago.
Like raining apples.
Apples Nov 10 09003
Happy Thanksgiving.

#111 – Loren Halvorson: From Hidden Roots: The Genesis of Social Regeneration

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UPDATE February 18, 2010: R.I.P. Loren Halverson. Loren passed away February 15, 2010 at 82. Obituary and funeral arrangements.
Moderator:  This is a first for this blog – a book, online.  163 pages, eight chapters.  Do take a stroll through the chapters, in two parts, at the following web addresses:  #mce_temp_url# and #mce_temp_url#.  The book appears here with author Loren Halvorsons permission.  It is Lorens gift to humanity.  I ask that you consider sharing this book with others who you feel may value reading it.
I’ve known and respected Loren for the past eleven years.  I met him during a powerful three and one half day workshop* which I found very meaningful and life altering, and he, a fellow participant and senior to me, was one of many participants who inspired me to grow beyond my own status quo.
Out of the blue last Sunday came an e-mail from Loren.  I asked, and he gave, permission for me to pass along the contents of the e-mail.
“[Y]our note…came at a strange, or rather special moment in my life when I am undergoing radiation treatment for prostrate cancer that has been under control for ten years but now is spreading rapidly.  Ruth and I have decided to transform whatever time we have left from dread to delight by inviting long time friends and family to “third cups of tea”.  Already it has been a magnificent experience suggesting that life lurks in death, something I had formulated academically but not understood existentially until now.
I am also using this time to deposit courses I taught at Luther Seminary for thirty-two years in places where it might take root and produce fruits beyond anything I might have imagined.  Your note reminded that you might be just such a depository!  fortunately modern tools make this possible. A friend at the seminary (one of several Roman Catholic faculty we now have) has put things on line for me.  One is a course I taught the last ten years on base communities which arose not only out of my own field of ethics and society but out of years of living in an intentional community, the ARC.  [That material is at the referenced websites above.]”
Loren references “the ARC”.  ARC (Action, Reflection, Celebration) Retreat Center is  a wonderful place north of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul #mce_temp_url#.  The dream of Ruth and Loren, ARC opened its doors in 1978.  I was privileged to participate in a retreat there in 2005.
As I write, I remember the summer of 1998 when Loren and I were in the workshop together.  During that year, Mitch Albom’s book “Tuesday’s with Morrie” was a run-away best seller.  I purchased the book as a gift for our instructor, and she deeply appreciated the gift.
It occurs to me that at the time I met Loren, he had not yet begun his walk with cancer; now, 11 years later, he is offering to others the same gift Morrie Schwartz offered to Mitch Albom.
I also remember a particular place that captured me at Loren and Ruth’s ARC Retreat Center in May, 2005.  It was a simple bridge across a creek, and it was for me a metaphor for life itself.
I’ll think of that bridge as Loren takes what he feels is his final walk through life.  He’s given a great gift, and he wants to share it with you, and you to share it with others.
Thanks, Loren.  And Peace.

The Bridge at ARC Retreat Center, May 21, 2005

The Bridge at ARC Retreat Center, May 21, 2005


Another view....

Another view....

#92 – Peter Barus: "Out of the loop"

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From Moderator: Peter Barus is a great friend, going back a half dozen years or so.  When first I knew him, he was an out-east big city guy, a computer specialist, an excellent trainer and all around good guy.  Two or three years ago or so he and his spouse moved into the very rural northeast U.S., to a farm, and here begins his story….
I have been out of the loop for a couple of weeks or more.
And it strikes me now that this is more than burnout or just an upsurge in activity around here  I’ve really had a change in lifestyle.
I used to be plugged in all the time, writing back to everybody, reading everything that came in within minutes or hours of arrival.
What’s happened?  For one thing, I moved to a farm without electricity, with wood heat, and spent two years living as if I hadn’t.  This year, instead of paying over a thousand dollars for enough wood to stay alive til spring, I decided to go get it myself.  after all, this is a 186-acre forest.
There was a big ice storm last winter that knocked the tops out of about a quarter of the big trees at the edges of the fields and along the roadsides.  The plan was to clean up the mess where its close to home, like the cluster of maples that fell on the old tent platform just up the hill beyond the garden; then go out along the roadsides where the Town crew left major trees for us, before the less scrupulous among our neighbros scarfed it up.  And we had some big chunks out of the logging operation from last winter that a neighbor kindly hauled out of the swamp and left me several truckloads in the front yard.
Lots of people around here rent a splitter and spend about two weeks making their winter pile.  I like splitting by hand.  But first I had to go cut up the trunks and load them in the truck and bring them home.  Then I set up a big stump about waist-high and got out the old maul.  This is like the child of an ax and a sledge hammer.
I got to where I’ve been able to stack about five cords so far; seven is comfortable; a dozen would be nice, cause we can just carry it over into next year.
But it hurts!  My hands are all gnarly and knotted and other words that sound like “nnggg!”  All my joints ache.  I’m not complaining!  I’m strong as an ox now, at age 61.  But how many more seasons can I keep this up?
I think the secret is pacing.  A few strokes a day, rather than a crash-and-burn, all-out, heroic effort.
In between all this, clean the chimneys with the long handled brushes, finish re-shingling the roof, host a family reunion, etc.
We live in the previous centruy, or the one before that, now.  sleep when it gets dark, and up with the first hint of a sunrise.  Life here is a direct struggle with nature, and nature is changing fast too.  Weather like nobody’s seen before, changes in soil, habitats, flora and fauna.
Well, as I say, a change in lifestyle.  By the time I get to the Town Library and hook up to the local wi-fi, I ain’t got much to say, somehow.
But keep ’em coming.  I’ll get to it.
Love,
Peter

#83 – Dick Bernard: "I loved her first…."

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At my age, it’s a given that I’ve been to many weddings over the years.  Yesterdays was a bit more special than most, even though I had no direct involvement with it, other than attending and participating as a guest (the bride-to-be was my wife’s niece).
Sometime after the wedding and the dinner, somebody mentioned the song they knew had been selected for the Father-Bride dance.  It was, they said, a tear-jerker.  I wasn’t aware of it, and waited for the appropriate moment, when Jeff and Megan took the dance floor by themselves, and the song began.  I got it…what they meant by “tear-jerker”… especially in context with a Dad who clearly loved his daughter, and a daughter who clearly loved her Dad.
This morning I went to YouTube to see if I could find the exact same song I heard last night, and I think I did.  Here’s the link: #mce_temp_url#.
The song was wonderful, and a ‘tear-jerker’ for some, listening, as it was for me. Sadly, as you’ll note if you read the sidebar as you listen to the song on YouTube, some folks can’t leave well enough alone, and apparently choose to argue about, and probably ridicule, feelings like this song so clearly expresses.  It takes all kinds….
Truth be told, I don’t do weddings really well: I’m not much of a glad-hander or small-talk person.  It’s just me.
But there could be much worse ways to start the travel that is marriage than a tear-jerker like “I loved her first”.  And I am very glad I was there to experience the moment.
Best wishes to yesterday’s loving couple, and best wishes to all who either are venturing into marriage, or are somewhere on the not always simple journey that can be marriage.

Jeff and Megan Sep 12 09001Jeff and daughter Megan September 12, 2009

#80 – Dick Bernard: Eugenie Fellows, Au revoir to a classy lady

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At 6:09 p.m. September 9 came a brief e-mail: “My mother slipped away this morning, after a rally the last couple of days.  I was with her and she was not in pain, so it was not as difficult as it might have been.  She hated hospitals and did not want any more procedures.”  
Eugenie Fellows, who I got to know as Gene, passed away a few days after a bad fall at her home in rural FL.  She was a young-at-heart woman, born December 20, 1913; closing in on her 96th birthday.  Until her fall, she was an active lady.  She would respond to virtually every e-mail I sent, usually with a terse “interesting”, sometimes with a paragraph or sometimes more if the topic brought back some memory or other.  It could be said that she and I “talked” almost every day.
Her daughter, Joy Lominska, who sent me the e-mail with the sad news last evening, described her Mom well.  
Here’s a photo I took of Gene (as she called herself to me), in her yard in Florida, in January, 2003.  She was, then, a mere 89.
Eugenie Fellows January 2003001
I got to know Gene in some circuitous unremembered way in about 1995.  At the time I was editor of a small newsletter for people of French-Canadian descent, and somehow or other Eugenie found out about the newsletter, and me, and she sent an inquiry, which I later posted in the newsletter.  That began our long friendship, which began when she was a young 82!
Except for the single in-person visit in 2003, we communicated by e-mail and, sometimes, letter.  I hope her daughter takes a photo of her old computer for me.  It was a cantankerous old buzzard which she insisted on keeping.  Sometimes, she said, a paperclip worked wonders getting it running again.  She wasn’t able to read this blog: her machine had decided it had no time for the internet or attachments.  Computers can be that way.  On occasion, “interesting” would arrive here as “omyrtrdyomh”.   No matter.  Type and send….
Ironically, the last piece of mail she received from me was a recent printout of all the blog pieces I had done about Health Care reform.  She would have received it near the time she fell.
She never tired of telling about her life, especially specific memorable events.  
Her mother, Mena Hoiland, was Norwegian-American, her Dad, Emile Leriger de la Plante, was French-Canadian.  They married in Crookston MN, and during her growing up years lived in many places.  They were lifelong Socialists, as was she, and they were proud of socialism.  If they were like she was, they weren’t pushy about their political beliefs; neither were they ashamed of them.  
She never tired of mentioning marching with her parents in the parade celebrating the ratification of Women’s Suffrage in 1920.  At the time they lived in Milwaukee. She was six.  Somewhere in those years a house guest was Eugene V. Debs.
She enrolled at the University of Washington at age 16, but the Great Depression came along at the same time and interfered with her plans.  She returned to university when her daughter began school, earning a degree in Social Work and later a Masters Degree in urban planning, both at Ohio State.  She worked as a planner for many years.
Her beloved husband, Erwin, preceded her in death by about eight years.  One of their children preceded them in death.  Along with his professional work, Erwin was an author of commentaries on the human condition, and he was a good one.  She loaned me a book he had written.  (I returned it!)
Gene mentioned often her long-time activity as a member of the League of Women Voters, and she was also a long-time member of Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).  A dominant memory when I visited her rural home was seeing bookshelves jam-packed with books.  She never stopped learning.   We walked the property and she pointed out this and that.  I sampled the fruit on the tree behind her in the photo: it looked benign, but it would give serious competition to a very tart lemon.   I’m guessing she was a bit amused at her visitors discovery.
Occasionally people come into to our lives who enrich us by their presence, even if at a distance.
Eugenie Hoiland LaPlante Fellows was such a person.
Au revoir, my friend.

#50 – Mary Ellen Mueller: Back to the future with Technology.

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Moderators note: Mary Ellen apparently had e-mail long before I knew what it was.  She defines for me the best among the many ‘progressives’ I know: “with it”, but carrying many bedrock ‘conservative’ values as well!  Thanks, Mary Ellen!
Mary Ellen: I was amused to see my ancient email address mentioned in [your] P&J#2028A [an e-mail network on Peace and Justice issues: “P&Jer’s Grace Kelly and Mary Ellen Mueller were busy photo and video documenting the [Al Franken] event [July 1]…. Mary Ellen has easily the oldest existing e-mail address that I know of: it consists of 9 numbers #####.####@ compuserve.com I seem to remember her telling me once that she and her husband never got around to joining the 21st century and giving themselves a name. Who said Progressives were “progressive”?!”]

Here’s the story:
There are many progressive values. We were progressive enough to have one of the first email addresses in the 1980s. There are other factors involved here.
We are fans of historical technologies, with several examples to show the evolution of mimeographs, typewriters, and various computer systems (from the Zenith Z-100 dual floppy computer my husband built from a kit in 1983 – running C/PM and Z-DOS 1.0, to a 286 running DOS 5.x, and a 1996 laptop running Win95.) We volunteer at the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, and Newspaper Museum at the Minnesota State Fair.
Last year I brought our Win95 laptop with dialup modem to show my 7th graders. It was older than them, and they couldn’t imagine computers without Twitter, FaceBook, or wireless Internet access. (Volunteers at historic house museums report that rotary dial phones confuse children.)
We use the best of the technologies when appropriate, both historical and current. I also have a solar radio, windup lanterns, and a solar oven used every sunny day. We also have Windows XP computers.
If we changed our email address, I would lose a lot of people. People claim they can’t keep track of my house address because I move so often. My last move was 27 years ago. Given that, how many would keep track of my new email address? The nine digits remind them I am contrary.
Avoiding aggravation is the main factor. Dealing with ISPs is such a nuisance, so “if it still works fairly well, don’t change it.” The thought of converting my existing system makes me want to scream and run out the door. I don’t like the idea of computer systems being obsolete so quickly, so I wait to see what new features I will actually use. I’m tired of being a guinea pig, so I wait to see when new features work correctly and reliably. That way I keep things out of the landfill, and more hair on my head. I also avoid being a “fool and her money are soon parted.”
I value my time, and try to spend it wisely. Computers can eat up huge amounts of my time. So I limit myself to a certain amount of Internet time each day, just to keep my life balanced.
My husband and I decided to have one person use the Internet at a time, for the same reason we have one car. We have to talk to each other more often, and coordinate our time and schedules. It sounds unnecessary and odd, given the technology advances, but it improves our lives.
Retired telegraphers are amazing. They will always have the latest technology. Telegraphs were the cutting edge in communication technology at one time, and telegraphers know how quickly it all changes. So they keep current with their profession’s innovations. I bet the telegraphers use Twitter!
Moderators PS:  July 4, we breakfasted with my cousin who has long association with the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting  http://www.pavekmuseum.org/; and The Bakken Museum of Electicity http://www.thebakken.org/, both in the St. Louis Park MN area.  If Mary Ellen hasn’t been there (I’d bet “yes”), she’ll be there soon.
 
 

#44 – Dick Bernard: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans"

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The week just past was  a planned one.
Tuesday afternoon, I was to attend the dedication of a new building and a Peace Pole at St. Paul’s Monastery in suburban Maplewood MN.  The event promised to give inspiration. http://www.stpaulsmonastery.org/
Wednesday through Friday was to be a trip to North Dakota to visit my Uncle and Aunt in the small town of LaMoure.  My cousin, Mary, watching over her niece, Gwen, who was seriously ill in a Minneapolis hospital, planned to go along if Gwen’s medical condition seemed to be relatively stable. 
Saturday’s schedule included a three hour meeting in the morning; and an invitation to a combination wedding/birthday dinner celebration at the home of a friend in our city. 
That was how the week ahead looked one week ago today.
Monday my good friend, Lynn, an officer on LST 172 in the Pacific in WWII, called and asked if I would represent he and his wife at a funeral in a rural Minnesota town about three hours away.  A friend of his, Melvin, aged 85, an enlisted man on that same LST so many years ago, had died tragically in a farm accident the previous week, and Lynn and Donna could not make the long trip.  It appeared that I could make the funeral and not miss the dedication on Tuesday. I agreed to go.
Tuesday came and went, a sad, tiring, yet very inspiring day.  The funeral was held in a packed church; at the cemetery an American Legion Color Guard, Taps; then lunch, back on the road and on-time to the dedication, which was even more inspiring than I had anticipated.  In both events, one sad, one happy, one saw the best of what our society has to offer, people gathering together in community, in peace.
At the end of Tuesday I called my cousin to see if she was on for North Dakota, and she was.  Gwen, while very sick, had had a good day on Tuesday, and things appeared reasonably stable.
We made the 300 mile trip west on Wednesday, went out to the ancestral family farm with our Uncle and Aunt, did some maintenance chores there, came back to town for hamburgers, and I turned in early, exhausted. 
Thursday was more visiting and a little more work.  In the afternoon we came back to Vince and Edith’s apartment, and saw two notes taped to their door, both with my name on the outside.  The first was a message for me to call my wife; the second was more explicit, an e-mail with the stark announcement that Gwen, 36, mother of two youngsters, had died earlier in the day.  It is at such moments that it is important to have people around, and the four of us, at that moment, happened to have each other, outside an apartment door in LaMoure, North Dakota.
We rested for a bit, and came back to the apartment to have supper, and all of us were invited to join a birthday party there, put together by the family of an 89-year old lady who’s also a resident in the apartment community.  The festivities helped take minds off back home.  The three F’s: Food, Fun, Family are simple necessities of life: things we all deserve, but not all have.
Mary and I completed our visit and returned home on Friday.  Tentative plans she had to visit some other relatives enroute back were put on hold.
Today, I went to the meeting, which went well.  Later my wife and I attended the family celebration of a wedding and two birthdays.  It was a festive, happy event.
Tuesday we go to Gwen’s funeral in a nearby town, a week after the earlier funeral.  There will be differences and similarities between the two leave-takings from life, but basically they will be very similar: acknowledging and remembering the contributions Melvin, and now Gwen, each made to their families and their communities.
A few miles from Tuesday’s funeral, at St. Paul’s monastery, a new Peace Pole*, with the words “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in twelve languages, will bear silent witness to the best that resides in humanity.  St. Paul’s is a Benedictine institution; the Benedictines emphasize hospitality.  (My Uncle and Aunt in LaMoure are fortunate to reside in a Benedictine residence.)        
John Lennon sings his composition”Beautiful Boy” at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrfi8-9JVtE.  This song was composed about 1980 in honor of his son, and includes the oft-quoted words in the title of this essay.
At the Tuesday dedication at the Monastery, a musician closed the program with another John Lennon song, “Imagine”, written in 1971.  It, too, seems appropriate on this day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okd3hLlvvLw

Peace Pole St Paul's Monastery Maplewood MN

Peace Pole St Paul's Monastery Maplewood MN


* For information about Peace Poles visit http://www.peacesites.org/sites/poles.  For information about becoming a Peace Site visit http://www.peacesites.org .