(Judy, Ray, Me)
Old friends, old friends
…
Can you imagine us years from today
…
How terribly strange to be 70 [80] [90]
…
Old friends, memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears
…
Old friends.
I’m an introvert…often thought of as avoiding or being less connected to people than the average human being. Not true. Introverts simply aren’t fond of groups, gatherings, crowds, masses. We are happiest with one, or two, or possibly three, friends at a time.
Without ever slighting the importance of family as being at the heart of who we are, I want to honor friends as making up a great part of everything we become.
This post was intended for few summer photos of Minnesota friends. With this blog as journal, I feel compelled to document everything energy allows in word and picture. And as I scrolled through photos, it came to me once again, how absolutely vital to our lives, friends are or can be. Sometimes family provides all of the human and world experiences we desire. But, for many of us, friends enhance and expand our whole, hopefully long, lives. For brother Robert and me, the latter is, or often appears to be, true.
About Robert and me and our friends. Personal friends, buddies. The ones whom you admire and with whom you share secrets and agonize over when all goes south; the ones who have fleshed out whole areas of your life. You know, they’ve known you since … always, it feels like—and still care about and are a little bit interested in what you think and actually have fun with you. A select few of those friends were right there with us up north this summer.
Making getting older and older both more doable and even adding a bit of joy to the process.
The following photos are from a gathering at Robert and Marsha’s, celebrating friend Barb’s 80th birthday. They have all known each other for varying lengths of time, but here’s an important point for right now. Robert and Marsha are really (they say) moving this year to warmer climes, forever abandoning Minnesota and winter. The friends who follow represent some of why that is such a hard decision. They include friends from 50 years ago and from 15 years ago. You really can’t replace 50 years of friendship easily and you certainly can’t replace moving into a new place and finding out, with great relief, your one close neighbor loathes the same political fraudsters you do. It’s had to replace that kind of human security.
And sharing my summer’s Minnesota adventure, friends from early school days (also known as a very long time ago).
Here’s where I want to further explain what I mean about family being our heart and soul (if we’re lucky) and friends being some of that and part of everything else about our lives.
Among my friends are those who have literally and figuratively shared my chilly Minnesota childhood and those who have traveled the world with me, broadening everything about my lived experience. They have kept me connected to childhood days of sharing secrets, big and small, and playing in the snow, and to stumbling on Greenlandic rocks, and to talking ageing bodies, books, and (being tutored in) music over coffee, via zoom and messenger and email. I simply cannot imagine my life without every single one of my friends, some passed these last years, most in the very present majority.
Just a photo or two from my slightly abbreviated summer trip, originally intended to include additional oldfriends, but for now more than perfectly represented by Judy and Ray, especially Judy whom I’m pretty sure has been a friend from as early as the 4th grade. After spending my first three years of school at a tiny country school called Haupt, upon its closure I was transferred to a big city school (Northome, population at the time, 300+), and Judy was there then or soon thereafter. And a year or so later, Ray appeared in our 6th grade year in the nearby village of Mizpah (part of a cohort of evil boys pushing the girls down in the snow…as I remember it). Now that is a while ago. Let’s say a minimum of 75 years ago. That’s not so easy to replace even if one has moved as often or lived as faraway from home (Minnesota) as I have.
Talk about expanding the breadth and length of one’s life. Breadth in the sense, for me, of a grounding in the green and blue of northern forest and lake, living much of my life in the high desert of New Mexico, and visiting streets of Cape Town and steppes of Mongolia. One obviously doesn’t need to travel far geographically to find significant markers; for me though, with my first book love being an old geography text of my mom’s, distance counts. Which brings me back to where it all began…and where it will end with my ashes, the Northwoods.
Length. That’s even more important to me right now. How to note, satisfactorily to myself, that I’ve lived a long and interesting life. Go back to the beginning…and only then check in with this abominably sunny New Mexican day in my present state of old ladyhood. In the beginning…there was mom and dad on the tiny farm at the end of a gravel lane in Koochiching County, Minnesota. And that geography book. And some dogs and a friend named Susie and a brother named Robert and school and schoolfriends, one of whom was named Judy.
See how this family and friend thing works.
So, forgive me if I’m being a bit sentimental. If not at this age, when?
Old friends, memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears
(Thanks Paul Simon.)
Summertime. Family. We gather. Here and there, now and then. Our positions defined in the usual way. Moms and dads. Kids and grandkids. Uncles and Aunts. Siblings. We like and love each other, mostly all at the same time and all of the time, with only the rare flash of irritation or misunderstanding (my sons will claim the latter is mostly on my part…nah…).
This summer’s week of most togetherness came in late July, with me already up north with bro Robert and sister-in-law Marsha, and sons Scott and Steven, and grandson Steven, joining us. In spite of Robert and Marsha’s lingering colds and my bronchial attack, we managed many good times. My greatest pleasure was in watching the family dudes hanging out in endless desultory talk talk talk mixed with plentiful teasing, hard labor over the grill, and a once-in-awhile much argued over TV show.
Here’s my brief record of 2026 togetherness.
The dudes of serious thoughts and opinions.
Important picture in the middle. First cinnamon rolls we’ve seen that looked like my mom’s. Missing the sour cream in tha glaze though. What to do… Still good.
Plans represent possibilities, right? As in Plan A/B/C. And, if I may advise, from what seems like a hundred years of both successful and thwarted plans, you need at least three backup plans for a satisfactory outcome.
I had big (stupid, but initially beautiful) summer plans for a two-month Minnesota road trip with benefits (as in many days and nights with various family and friends). First mapped like this:
Before getting even halfway through Big Stupid Plan A, I developed a horrendous case of bronchitis entailing emergency rooms and the inability to breathe, never a good look for holidaying. Even before that awkward situation had resolved, the available vehicle became unavailable, further diminishing the odds of heading out ‘on the road’ again. Imagine if I hadn’t made such ‘big, stupid’ elaborate plans ahead of time, there would have been nothing left.
Plan B to the rescue! Son Scott, also in Minnesota, only for a week (his Plan A), but being somewhat footloose and fancy free—as in retired—arranged to stay on, providing nursing and chauffeuring services for his kindly old mother.
And so…a slightly altered but generally enjoyable Minnesota time was had by all. Which means you will be treated to an even greater number of tree, old house, family, and friend pictures then originally intended!
You’ll be proud of my determination, one could almost say stubbornness, to hear that there is a Plan C. Which is to return September 2027 with a goodly supply of anti-biotics and my own car, to complete unfinished elements of Big Stupid Plan A/2026.
***
If I appear obsessed with time in the Northwoods it’s not actually so stupid if my age (very old) and the likelihood of having many more opportunities to enjoy such times are considered. So, 2027 may not be doable…but then again it may.
So, here’s to Big Stupid Plans…long may we have them.
I’m sitting at my own desk in my own pleasant study in my own ever-sunny Albuquerque, preparing to tell you a few small Northwoods stories before returning to Decades and World stories projects.
Since returning home, I’ve been to the grocers for milk-coffee and bread and butter supplies, to the gym where I only took 10 extra minutes to walk my regular three miles and to make yet more plodding headway on The Magic Mountain, and to my very own wonderfully comfortable giant bed for a few sleeps. Home is a fine place indeed. Made even better by a big-stupid-plan to leave it now and then.
This summer vacation my friend Celia came to visit my Minnesota visit. We played: talking arguing teasing touristing eating. What a nice time it was. Here’s an album to prove it.
Above three photos: Naniboujou Lodge & Restaurant north of Grand Marais, MN
Sven & Ole’s Pizza is a most popular Grand Marais landmark…and since my dad’s name was Sven I find the pizza delicious.
Lake Superior island from the walls encircling the trading village reconstruction at Grand Portage.
There is an old hymn/country song called “This Old House” by Stuart Hamblen? A few lines may jog old-old people’s memories. “Ain’t gonna need this house no longer/Ain’t gonna need this house no more/Ain’t got time to fix the shingles/Ain’t got time to fix the floor…” As I prepared to make a post that’s mostly an album of photos of my old home, it started running through my head.
Yes, I know, another post or two or three this trip of photos of ‘the old place’ is repeating myself for the umpteenth time…but hey, this blog is basically the photo journal of a little old lady—and we elders are granted dispensation by the sages to repeat and repeat and repeat.
Another summer, another Minnesota visit, one of these days to be my last. I am only moderately sentimental about old home, old family, old friends—me and us back then—until one of those moments hit when I desperately want it all back, just exactly like it was!
I make constant references to the Aristotle (?) quote, “Give me a child until [s]he is seven and I will show you the [wo]man.” And I think about it often when I’m up here in home-territory. I feel such a perfect example of that seven-year-old; the one who loved books, and pencils and crayons and mom and dad and brother and our dogs and the ever-changing weather and bread and butter. According to my mom I was that person from age two at least: the paper and crayons part, the frost on the windows part, the bread and butter part. I was a stubborn solitary child with stringy hair who didn’t like food very much. And I think I always loved trees, didn’t need to know much about what kind, just loved green and safety and shade perhaps.
So anyway, I’m still exactly like all that; at least it seems that way to me.
This summer my Northwoods time is a little longer than usual. And my sons and grandson will be here for a week so we’ll go up home, up to visit the ‘old place’ a few times…more photos of a peaceful disintegration of a good home and many many trees to follow.
“This old house was home and comfort/As we fought the storms of life/This old house once rang with laughter/This old house heard many shouts…” Well, maybe I’m more sentimental than I admit…. But just in case I was falling too far into maudlin-land, I took along a road trip companion and listened to “With god on our side” to take me back to American reality.
Growing up, we didn’t refer to the tree-filled acres around our house as the forest. We called it the woods. So even though forests blanket other places and regions, to me it always sounds presumptuous to label our miles of northern Minnesota trees so grandly.
Anyway, I’m home in the Northwoods as I write and cannot decide whether ‘home in Minnesota’ blog posts should be considered part of the Decades series I claim to be writing or it’s just its own sentimental meandering. I decided.
Travel
Arrived on the 1st of July in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. My little ‘old’ brother’s birthday. The travel was smooth, in fact faultless; it felt so silly to have been dreading it. What was I imaging? ICE flooding the airports? People with babies and bundles fleeing north on the Duluth flight? Planes shabby and creaky staffed by cranky MAGAs, the pilots untrained but oh so white. Not really…but under the menacing sleaze at the top, it really is where a world of billionaires and the not-overly-intelligent power-mad leads us.
Happily, not yet though. Everything about my Delta airlines flight on July 1, 2026 was flawless, as good as it gets in terms of service and operation and, amazingly enough, friendliness. Most of my current insecurities about travel have been directed at a newly perceived level of incompetence. Not sure why. Traveling last fall was fine; I didn’t babble, drool, get lost, wet my pants, or forget my name—not that those are bad things in one’s 80s exactly, nevertheless I did not wish to experience them. Somehow, between then and now, great insecurities and a narrowing comfort zone have developed; perhaps I just needed to get out more! And there I was. So, because it all was going so splendidly, my confidence had returned by the time I reached Minneapolis to the point where I had a beer (and excellent deep-fried green bean snack!) at the airport and almost dreamed of further travel. Not Mongolia…but at least New York.
Up North
But so far there is little lore-of-the-north to report. It’s warm and mostly sunny, if nowhere near the intensity of either heat or light in New Mexico. There was a rainstorm yesterday of better than average wild wetness, even some trees on the ground this morning.
I open my bedroom window wide at night to summer cool and damp but, and this is big but, with no mosquitos buzzing the screen. Northern Minnesota. NO Mosquitos. If anything could convince me the planet is screwed, irrevocably damaged, dying even, it is No Mosquitos in Minnesota.
Moving right along. Tomorrow the 4th of July, year 250 of the United States of America story. And our president is a greedy pig. Who’s rapidly destroying the evidence that we were growing into a mature, frequently honest, often well-intentioned, country. Not there yet, but trying our damnedest some days.
Oh well, it will be great fun in the morning trying to piece together the gossip surrounding Taylor’s wedding. Yes, that wedding. The only cheery celebration in town.
Marsha and Robert had lots of company today. Good friends, dropping by to wish Robert well on his 83rd birthday. Baby brother with an 83rd birthday! Marsha puts out nice silverware and pretty dishes and three kinds of cake and ice cream and several choices of tea. It’s hard work being a nice person in a small town in Minnesota-Nice country. Makes me proud of family and place…and a little glad I don’t live here.
We walked on a nearby path along the Mississippi the morning after I arrived. There’s still water here not so very far from the headwaters of the great river. And even though another dry year is underway, it looks so lushly green. Leaf green. Summer tree green. Minnesota green. It makes me happy to be here. Happy 250th to one and to all … and to all … a new president.
Oh yeah…happy birthday bro!
My Decades series is obviously going to skip around. I intended this next post to be about Sweden and my mom’s Swedish heritage. Instead a visit from the Amazing Leila takes over on behalf of the present.
LEILA RIGHT NOW
Did I mention I have a great-granddaughter? Oh yeah, I did. But now she’s four months old and has been on her first trip. To Albuquerque. To introduce her pretty self to the New Mexican side of the Salfity/Magalong/Klotzback/Neset family.
What an impressive girl she already is…to which her adoring masses will attest!
Leila reads a lot; sometimes though you know how it is… you pick a book that puts you right to sleep.
Everybody gets baby-playing turn, cousin Sara (to be known as Rachi, not sure why?) first. Then Old Grandpa (called Lolo, the Filipino name for grandpa! to differentiate from the other grandfather.) and Mom take annoyed baby for a walk. A short walk, she was not impressed with the New Mexican sun, even though quite hidden.
Mom Teresa and Leila joined by Rachi, Cha Cha (Patricia) and Lola (Grandma) Sandra.
And then there’s Aunty and Uncle Steve and Michele. Then Leila ‘said’ No More Pictures. Well, just one.
We talked her into one four-generation posing. Then she absolutely conveyed the sentiment of being so very done with looking sweet and beautiful for the pleasure of the hoi polloi.
And then I sat on the patio and considered Aristotle!
***
LEILA THEN
“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man [woman]” said Aristotle. If I manage to live seven more years I can know something of Leila, the teenager, adult, elder. My mom lived to be 93 years old; in seven years, I’ll be 94. It’s possible.
I have watched the entire Up series, described below, two and one-half times. Based on that and on my own life, Aristotle’s statement is so true. I’ve mentioned from time to time, how closely my life adheres to it and how much I see my seven-year-old sons in the sixties-plus men of today.
Please, if you watch TV at all, put the Up series on you list for the near future. Be sure and see it all before the final episode comes out this year. It will be available on some mix of Prime, Britbox, and YouTube.
“The Up series of documentary films follows the lives of ten boys and four girls in England, beginning in 1964, when they were seven years old. The first film was titled Seven Up!, with later films adjusting the number in the title to match the age of the subjects at the time of filming. The documentary has had nine episodes—one every seven years—with a tenth and final instalment due in 2026, spanning a total of 63 years. The series has been produced by Granada Television for ITV, which has broadcast all of them except 42 Up (1998), which was broadcast on BBC One. Individual films and the series as a whole have received numerous accolades. (Wikkipedia, also source of Aristotle quote)
Another day in the Land of Enchantment
Just a few days ago I was writing about the Norway and the Nesets of olden times…and then some of the descendants appeared on my doorstep! Anne Hilde Neset, her daughter Mathilde, and husband Rob stopped for a few days while touring the west. It was wonderful on many levels. They are all great fun and interesting in terms of their personal and professional lives. Easy to be around, talking, laughing, eating. And in the most appealing careers and times in their lives: Anne Hilde and Rob in their art administration, visual arts, writing, and music lives, and Mathilde as a curious high school senior, reading and exploring. I loved it, except for the fact they weren’t here long enough for me to ask my thousand questions about arts and books and politics in Norway and the UK (Rob’s home base). I’ve been fascinated by the inhabitants and cultures of distant lands since childhood so having my very own people from far places this week (Europe), as well as the following week (Asia), is pretty much as good as it gets for me. And then there’s the relief we elders feel when bright and active people under the age of 75 are willing to spend time with us!
Anne Hilde and Rob were in the US to pick up daughter Mathilde after her year as a high school exchange student in Flagstaff so I was privileged to meet the youngest generation of Nesets, Mathilde Olivia Neset Young, which was a bit special also since my mom’s name was Ovidia Mathilda Floren Neset. I could speak glowingly about Mathilde for some time, but suffice it to say, if she is representative of her generation the planet may continue to exist in some bearable state.
This Decades project I’ve launched will hopefully last for some time, but will never be on a predictable schedule it’s clear. However, since there’s no parent, teacher, boss, publisher, or imaginary AI friend to tell me what and when, I’m free to lollygag around any minute, action, or memory I choose as long as it relates to the life of the world and/or me in the decade(s) under consideration.
In the case of this Neset cousin visit, I want to return to Grandpa Neset for a minute. He was something of a family black sheep in Norway it seems, and certainly not a financial go getter in the US, but this big old tough and gruff lumberjack, crippled in his 60s, a drinker, probably not an ideal husband or father, was brave enough to set off by himself for a completely unknown world. That’s something too. The fact that he would have likely gone on to lead a more stable life had he stayed home is kind of beside the point. Or not, because in that case I wouldn’t have been me, right? Not this me. And Torgus’ great- and great-great-grandnieces wouldn’t have visited me this week. Thanks Grandpa. Even though you left no fortune, I’m most happy to be me with fine family from the ‘old country’ to visit with now and again.
Nesets, then and now. Torgus, above center. My dad, Sven, left. By the time the above picture was taken they had been in the US at least 15 years. They owned a rough log house by a small lake and the men all worked in the last of the north woods lumber camps. It was in Koochiching County, Minnesota, a place one historian described as the most difficult country left on the northern frontier because of its inaccessibility, mostly just forest, rivers/creeks, and bogland on the Canadian border. Below, Togus’ granddaughter, Marjorie, and great/great-great grandnieces Anne Hilde and Mathilde…a few years later.
Asborg and Torgus looking a bit more respectable in their old age.
Once in a while, I feel in need of a political diatribe.
First thing up in the morning, I prod my ancient limbs into movement, check with my brain to ensure I’m body, mind, and world-aware, and make my way to heat the milk for coffee, drink a pill down, and settle on the couch with my device—the whole world to be surveyed from the palm of my hand. How strange it all is….
I approach the day with The Guardian, the only legacy news source I still almost-wholly trust. My response to a scroll-with-stops is different each morning. Sometimes big sorrow and anger about the situation for defenseless human beings in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, West Africa, Central America, and on and on. There’s danger everywhere but only mass murder some places. So far. Sometimes, I’m bitterly amused by the mindlessness of nearly all political utterances to the point of uneasy laughter…I scroll on for a meaningful paragraph or two. Sometimes, I’m so bored with it all, I put down my device and do something useful like scrubbing the toilet or beating the dog. That’s a joke, okay! Usually, I just read on aimlessly, have another coffee, fume yell laugh, and get dressed for another day in my pleasant-enough life. Where useful actions are committed: reading writing thinking making-lists cleaning treadmilling doctor’s friend-coffee.
Once in awhile though, I must yell longer. And I’m doing it here—to post on my blog—which I will then print for posterity. Maybe a record for great-granddaughter Leila to read if words are still used. So, she’ll know that I cared. Did I do anything much about anything? Well no. But I did care. Yes, I did.
What triggered this morning’s fierceness, was reading about yet another Israeli bloodying of Lebanon, which triggered a memory from 2009, of entering Lebanon, headed for Beirut in a long-distance taxi. How beautiful the countryside. How I kept saying to myself, ‘I am in Lebanon. Me…from Northome, Minnesota…in Lebanon, Middle East, World. It seems a fine and peaceful place as we roll along toward the city of Beirut and the art festival I’m to attend.
Amman, Jordan had been a fascinating experience in a city of white structures and friendly people. In Palestine, the Jewish-Zionist settlers were stomping around with their kids and guns and “good intentions” as usual. On a ride to Ramallah (with a stop at Yasser Arafat’s tomb), I actually saw a settler compound on the hillside (think mean-Mexicans or rampaging-Canadians simply invading the US and setting up gated communities on our hillsides). In Syria, Bashar al-Assad hadn’t begun chemical weapons attacks against his people yet, although his autocratic and ruthless rule was in full swing. Nevertheless, at least the outward appearance of peace and plenty was all around on the drive from Amman through Syria with a Damascus stopover. And then the excitement of entering Lebanon and soon Beirut, formerly known as the Paris of the Middle East, a label already faded by then.
That was seventeen years ago. This morning everything’s worse in every way, except for an apparent end to the civil war in Syria—with no firm knowledge of how that will play out in the long run. Only now it’s even bloodier. Lebanon is being destroyed by Israel but also by the utter loathsomeness of the “leaders” within, all lusting for power it seems. Palestinian Gaza is sort of an Israeli abattoir. The settlers are having success after success in their brutal colonization of Palestinian land. And Hamas is as vicious as ever. What an effing mess.
I scroll on, particularly pissed off about how the world’s boys and their dangerous toys are destroying the lands I have found so beautiful and bountiful and beguiling (a landscape full of b-words) to pass through or visit over the years; I pause for a headline, an article, a statement about the next political or environmental catastrophe. Nothing makes me feel better. In fact, as I read, every political inanity uttered regarding harm to the natural or peopled world further infuriates me. But, it hardly matters what they, our political “leaders” think or say anyway, does it? There’s been this tune stuck in my head all morning…something about ‘pawns in their game’…! What? Whose game? Would that be the arms manufacturers; money-changers of Wall Street; newly powerful tech coterie; remaining oil and gas barons; dealers in cobalt, lithium, and other rare earth minerals—the autocrats, the billionaires/trillionaires, the 1%? Well yes Virginia, it would. They have purchased all of the politicians, all of the bosses, all of the voices, all of the pawns they need. We, in turn—their pawns. It has always been thus. We ‘huddled masses’ pay taxes and fight wars and worry about money and cook spaghetti and watch Netflix. We are the serfs, sort of yearning to be free.The lowest level of the pawn hierarchy.
“But he can’t be blamed/He’s only a pawn in their game.”
***
It’s afternoon now. I’m not even mad anymore. It’s too exhausting. And not a single thing I’ve said hasn’t been said so much better before. Even on Facebook (speaking of greed) … so many quotes about greed and power uttered by the major philosophers and thinkers and poets of the world since the beginning of recorded time. But they don’t leave a running refrain in my head that lasts all day.
“But when the shadowy sun sets on the one/That fired the gun/He’ll see by his grave/On the stone that remains/Carved next to his name/His epitaph plain/Only a pawn in their game” (Bob Dylan: “Only a Pawn in Their Game”)