First of all, very bloody big damn old first-of-all, it is September 16th, the second day of New Mexicans celebrating the advent of autumn: temperatures below 90, clouds, rain, hope that the blazing droughts of the future are not already here to stay. Honestly, I’d like to dance naked in the rain, drink champagne, march in protest against the bad guys of the world, have a job/a lover/bake cakes/write books…but then in rising slowly from my chair, it comes back to me. I am 87 years-old and none of the above will happen…and if they even approached I’d likely have a heart attack and not be around for another full-length rainy day, much less cake and sex anyway.
Moving On: Getting to the next post in the Decades series that I supposedly am writing is proving nearly impossible…blogging-bloc, occasional depression or aches&pains or just general world-weariness? Who can say? Me? Friends? Books? Counselor/Death Doula (yeah really, but I’m not dying soon…as far as I know…it’s a story to tell later). In fact, writing anything at all that makes sense hasn’t been happening.
What to do? This blog, Time and Place is my primary ‘big’ journal right now. In addition, I do utilize pens and actual paper for other jottings. But right here is where the important almost-professionally-written account of my and the world’s day are to be told. Where I can feel like a writer. Please god-of-writers let me feel like a writer. (I googled that but no appropriate god showed up. Some places said Hermes [communication] but that’s too handbaggy so—I move on.)
Here is today’s plan to defeat blog-bloc. I write stuff and then I post it by the end of the day. Whatever is written, I post.
Instead of starting from scratch, I’ll include what has been drafted for Decades sporadically over these last many weeks. It is/was intended to be an essay about my Swedish ancestry. The intention was to launch Decades with background about my Scandinavian ancestry before focusing on Minnesota life. I got through introing Norway, before my summer time up north—which ended over a month ago. Stabs have been stabbed, but not penetrated far enough to release any good solid writerly impulses. That’s over. The rain on my roof is fertilizing my brain as I type. Here goes more ‘moving on.’ And another ‘please.’ Let me get Sweden over with… One eighth of my DNA. Why a whole essay, or more? Well, it’s Grandma Magnhild’s story which becomes my mom Ovidia’s story which becomes my story. Perhaps the percentages get smaller with each generation, but there are always a few beliefs, customs, traits to get passed down. First though, it’s location, location, location for all of the grandparents.
Dad’s grandparents/parents (Neset): all Setesdal Valley, southern tip of Norway (to best of my knowledge).
Dad: born in Setesdal Valley, Norway; emigrated to northern Minnesota as a 7-year-old child.
Mom’s grandparents/parents: paternal side (Floren): Trondheim area, Norway. Maternal side (Strom): Harjedalen, Jamtland County, Sweden.
Both the Florens and the Stroms emigrated to South Dakota in the late 1800s (again…to best of my knowledge). Grandma Magnhild was a child when her father Per Strom and his family left for America.
Mom: born in South Dakota. Mom’s family on both sides established themselves in eastern South Dakota upon their arrival or soon after.
***
Geography is one of my ongoing interests, so let me share a mind’s eye view of all of the places mentioned above, an overview for contrast and comparison since I’ve written a great deal about them before.
The photos above were taken traveling down the Setesdal Valley on train one very rainy day. What you’re seeing is all of the grand scenery and some of the bright gold buildings I’ve mentioned below. These are some of my absolutely favorite landscapes.
Norway’s Setesdal Valley is at the heart of my whole story, given its status as the birthplace of Grandma and Grandpa Neset and their son, Sven (Svein?). It’s in the south and center of the country (see map). Many stories and photos have been posted on this blog describing what is, as you already know, a magnificent spot of earth. Yes, Norway is one big scenic photo op: grand mountains; the distinct greens of forest and field; blue rivers, lakes, fjords and/or the ocean at nearly every turn. The buildings are usually of a deep gold, rust or maroon; dark green or gray; even black. The animals are all fat and glossy. There must be exceptions to all of the above but they are hard to find. The cities, of which there are few, are attractive and well maintained, but often plainer in architecture and trimmings than many European cities. The buildings are often of those same gorgeous colors I’ve mentioned in the countryside however. Again… areas with ramshackle housing, and poorly maintained infrastructure are bound to exist. It’s just that I’ve been around the country quite a lot and have never seen any so I cannot swear to it. I will only make one small joke about picture-perfect Norway, on a subject I seem compelled to mention oftener than necessary. Considering the popularity of Nordic Noir literature, TV, and film, we really could expect more bloodied bodies as we pass through the landscape. Jo Nesbo, popular Norwegian writer of northern mystery (sometimes adapted to film/television) has tried to rectify that lacking, but everything he does veers so far from ‘perfect Norway,’ imagery, it comes off as equally false; in fact, I’ve yet to witness a murder or drug deal going down anywhere in Norway. Okay okay I know it’s a genre, requiring a certain amount of gore, but much Scandinavian Noir has a distinct travel lit/doc component of a realistic bent, with a believable mixture of the good and bad of life. I reject Nesbo because his violence has an American bang-bang, tough guy slant to it (the murders not nearly as innovative as Henning Mankell’s for example). Oh yeah, there’s also the fact that Scandinavia has a far lower murder rate than the U.S. So Nesbo’s transfer of our gun-loving, he-man culture to the Oslo environs is false in this instance also. There. I’ve been wanting to say all of that about Nesbo for a long time.
Not through with beautiful Norway quite yet because my mom’s paternal family, the Florens, originated from the area around Trondheim. The city is farther north, on the coast, and from what I’ve seen is yet more scenic grandeur. One begins to long for a few miles of East Texas and a broken-down gas station or two just to break the gorgeous monotony (Just kidding). I’ve been to Trondheim twice, but very briefly both times, so I will only say that the Nidaros Cathedral is grand big European city-feeling, and the city of around 200,000 seems prosperous and livable (but I’ve never read a murder mystery written about creative serial killers in Trondheim so maybe not so interesting?).
Now for Sweden. I’ve been in and about Stockholm a few times, flying into, passing through, attending a dance festival, and to Ystad because it’s the site of my favorite Swedish Noir murder mysteries of all, Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series.
And, finally we get to the place at the heart of this ramble. I traveled to Funasdalen, Harjedalen Municipality, Jamtland County, Sweden to visit my fourth cousins, grandma Magnhild’s people. Where the scenery changes dramatically. I took a train from Trondheim to Roros on the Norwegian Swedish border…yes, traveling through more of the grand geographic spectacle that is Norway. But from Roros to Funasdalen is 76 km partially consisting of rolling, more-open land, partly taiga (mostly coniferous)-appearing forest. It’s pretty without being grand. And that description might fit much of Sweden, not unlike northern Minnesota: fairly flat with, in northern areas, the deciduous taiga forest of pine and spruce and then, even further north, arctic tundra.
However, Funasdalen and Tannas, 18km away and Magnhild’s actual home, is on the edge of impressive skiing mountains, not at all a typical scene in Sweden. In fact, this area is important, winter and summer for hiking, fishing, and connections with the Sami culture nearby. According to the cousins, reindeer drives come near here, and I was fortunate to see some of the great creatures here and there along the roadsides, even what appeared to be an albino baby.
I began this essay thinking that if I talked about the geography of my ancestry it would explain certain traits and beliefs and perhaps how they vary between locations. The more I wrote, the less that seemed to be the case, other than in the historical sense. Here’s my excuse for including it: 1) Remember this blog is also my ‘whole life’ (as opposed to daily) journal; 2) I may want to read about visiting ancestral lands someday when my mind has pretty much sloughed off the reality of actually ‘being there,’ here…or anywhere, for that matter; and 3) The geography of the two countries has had an important influence on their worlds and political history, so maybe it’s pertinent after all.
More geography. More Norway and Sweden. Norway touching nothing but Sweden on one side and the wide wild Atlantic on the other. Sweden bordering Norway, Denmark and Finland directly just across narrow bodies of water from Germany, Poland, and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Consequently, Norway was the ‘edge of the world’ while Sweden has always played an active role in Europe. As to the lay of the land(s), Norway’s terrain is almost entirely mountainous, and indented by deep fjords all the way up its full-length coastline, while Sweden is for the most part flat and forested. What follows is an aside, probably of interest only to cultural historians. And me.
While perusing my bookshelves as well as on-line sources (but never AI, I promise) for the perfect paragraph to share about the origins of the Norwegians and Swedes, I found information, new to me, that might be of interest to you. It is an interesting article from what appears to be a genuine organization with research and writing carried out by knowledgeable humans. The Conversation (The Conversation is “a nonprofit, independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of researchers and scientists for the public good.”)—I believe in their authenticity based on checking with other known reliable sources.
Paraphrasing: During the last ice age (33,000 to 20,000 years ago) hunter gatherers in southwest Europe were isolated from groups further east. As the ice retreated, it appears that both sets of these early modern humans moved into northern lands. And here’s what’s weird. Based on extensive research, it seems hunter-gatherers from the Norwegian Atlantic Coast are more genetically similar to populations east of the Baltic Sea, while hunter-gatherers from what is Sweden today are genetically similar to populations from central and western Europe. A sort of west to east and vice versa . This could be explained by an initial push north from Germany and Denmark and then an additional migration from the northeast when northern Finland and the Norwegian coast also became ice-free.
The study goes on to say that the DNA of present-day Scandinavians are quite dissimilar to that of those early hunter-gatherers because of successive waves of migrants from various locations in Europe. (Site: https://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-sheds-light-on-the-mysterious-origins-of-the-first-scandinavians-89703) So maybe not so pertinent to my DNA, but fascinating anyway.
Since this is a rambling personal sort of essay I am going to add a somewhat connected note. I have claimed for years to believe I was best fitted to have studied cultural/human geography in college; my excitement over discovering the study reference listed above proves that (only to me…but still…). I couldn’t help myself; I did a search to find human geography programs at colleges and universities in the U.S., and then broadened it to check out English language programs in the subject anywhere. There are quite a number it turns out; when I did a similar search years ago, I remember there being only a few.
Therefore, I’ve added a degree in Human Geography to my to-do-before-I-die list, or the Before Death Bucket List (BDBL). Silly? Of course. But also, rather fun (and yes, a bit melancholic). The good news is I found an enticing textbook for one of the programs that I do believe I’ll order. Advice to old people is that we keep learning, problem-solving, challenging our dying brains so they last long enough. So, friends…if we are to maintain our super-ager(!) status, go back to college (figuratively) and never never succumb to AI slop in any form.
Now, I must do what editing I can, find some photos, and post this disjointed ramble. One more Swedish essay and then we move on to Koochiching County, Minnesota. Now are you excited?
It is overcast this morning. 8am and I’m happily ensconced on my patio with journals, pens, coffee, temp hasn’t reached 80 yet.
There’s only one mosquito tormenting me, even for New Mexico (glorious leader say ‘New America’) that’s sparse; speaking of climate change though, while a mosquito-less world might not seem so bad, the disappearance of songbirds is mourned by everyone. You do know the corporate geniuses developing, manufacturing, and selling us various brands of bug-be-gone are among the songbird disappearers also. That’s okay, isn’t it? I have aps on my trusty devices that reproduce bird song just fine even in the dark of night, even in an arctic January. And no poop on the car. I do love progress.
It is Labor Day 2026. Ho ho ho…whoops, wrong holiday. Not the big important shopping extravaganza to come—although Halloween and Christmas things are occupying a shelf, even an aisle, here and there in the stores already. Go Capitalism!
As you know, I am not good at holidays. Yesterday I moped. No combing of hair, making of bed. Just alternating between couch and bed (so why make it?) with book and TV. I finished Middlemarch (I’ll explain later) and made it through season 5 or 6 of Call the Midwife. I managed to fill an interminably long Sunday and feel all the while like I wasn’t wasting time. In the case of Middlemarch, it is part of one of my Big Projects and it is truly excellent and also…a touch ponderous. Sorry to those endless lit classes I took whenever near a campus…obviously not enough focus on young/old white English speakers. And Call the Midwife; honestly, I could provide birthing services to an entire Nebraska covered wagon community or a 30-story NYC tenement building. Although I’m glad we’ve moved past those days because giving birth looks to have been extremely messy. When my children were born, we were past homesteading days on the prairie (barely) and Air Force hospitals moved in the opposite direction from messy: no family (certainly not men relatives, like husbands) members nearby, and mother-to-be were at least partially knocked out, so who knew the process was less than pristine. Well anyway, I made it through what was one of those hide-under-the-bed kind of days. Stories are always the answer. Books, television, audio, or even storytelling humans, on stage or drinking coffee with you.
Tomorrow, I return to real life: gym, helping friends…oh yeah, and showering, brushing teeth, dressing in out-of-the-house clothes, perhaps even watering the plants. Most importantly though, I must return to my Decades project which I began back in May/June and dropped while in Minnesota. It’s the one among my ‘plethora of projects’ (similar to saying ‘flock of birds’) where I write some posts about each decade of my life, including what was going on globally in relation to the actual experiences of my own life. The intent is to utilize notes, letters, documents, and books from those times to touch on my times.
I began with writing about my Norwegian family history, including the arrival of grandparents in the US. Even though I wasn’t born until the fourth decade of the twentieth century, the environment and family into which I was born were being formed and/or explored much earlier.
Although, I am only one-eighth Swede, I will pick this project back up with a post about what I know of that part of my heritage—giving me a chance to talk about traveling to and in Sweden.
Back to ‘work’ then, starting tomorrow on a proper Decades post.
Meanwhile…happy holidays and a photo or so from last week.
Son Steven (of the bad manners) who is my plant doctor and quite good at it, but doesn’t reflect well on my parenting.
It’s a cool cloudy morning! Makes me feel like writing instead of despairing of the heat and the sun.
A good morning to declare my two biggest accomplishments in life: 1) My parenting wasn’t so slaphappy as to prevent my sons from becoming worthwhile human beings. It’s best not to brag since I suppose they could still end up in the penitentiary but, since they are neither corporate nor political, they’ll probably just keep on being decent men.
See how relatively unscathed they seem.
And that other big accomplishment: 2) I really did visit much of the world. And perhaps extolling the virtues of travel is okay…if I acknowledge it’s partially a series of sad tales.
I have been blogging about my travels for sixteen years and even wrote a travel memoir (Window Seat: The Story of a Traveling Life). But, the unfortunate truth is that the security of and conditions for the planet and for humanity have only worsened. Every day news from the world’s ‘newspapers’/reliable media sites is full of double-dealing and disasters (affecting the natural and/or human environment). So, to return to a spot on the globe in which I found pleasure and discovered new history, art, and food, and which is now suffering displacement, starvation, and bombs, feels like ‘disaster tourism’, even if the visit is virtual. Still, revisiting offers me a regretful kind of joy in remembering and a chance to add to warnings about the damage we do over and over and over to our world.
Today, I’m going back to 2011 and a Balkan journey that included Moldova and Odessa, Ukraine. At the time, neither place was threatened, in a state of disruption, or at war. I’ve been thinking about that visit to Odessa off and on for years now, attempting to track the pathways of war in Ukraine, with a silly little personal hope that at least the friendly, lively, and beautiful Odessa which I found so fascinating wasn’t obliterated. Odessa was a notable spot on that Balkan journey then and it remains so now. Not only because of the bus ride across a corner of Ukraine to reach the historic port of Odessa, but because of a book I will mention again and again, The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky (more about that later in this post). And now there’s also the heartbreaking David and Goliath/Ukraine and Russia story to ponder.
Which brings me to my annoyingly constant plug for a bit of wandering around the world. Do It. Go There. To places of peace and lingering beauty. To places in danger of losing whatever they now have. Because the political world changes in a minute and now the natural world is not so far behind.
Anyway, here’s what I wrote in Window Seat about that carelessly innocent visit to Odessa in 2011. I use the word ‘carelessly’ because of assumption that what I’m experiencing at any given moment in time will somehow always be there much as it was. That I could return for a tasty bowl of borscht at that same restaurant or visit that same monument. Instead, in this greedy, power-mad world of ours, we can take bets on how greatly that very place will soon be altered. Not for the better most likely.
But then…it was like this: Odessa, Ukraine, is technically not part of the Balkans but, by my logic, was close enough to drop by. I stayed near a square where a larger-than-life Duc de Richelieu, who once had ruled Odessa, took center stage, surrounded by the awe-inspiring buildings of the old, beautiful Europe we revere—the creamy yellows, mint greens, and rosy reds glowing in the morning sun. For the next two days, I walked. I went down the Potemkin Steps and then up through a huge park that led me to the beach, where, among the froth of condoms and potato chip wrappers, I stuck my toes in the Black Sea. It was a friendly, sitting-about, reading, card-playing, family-game kind of beach. The seafront stretched from the Potemkin Steps to the working port. In the other direction was a long cobblestone tourist street with all the requisite chic shops and cafés, leading to a grand fountain, where marriages were being celebrated with fine Ukrainian and Turkic traditions, complete with snow-white puppies and doves, falcons, and swords. I had a perfect meal in Odessa: beet-red borscht glowing in a bowl in the sun by the sea, with rough brown bread to be spread from the pot of pork fat retaining tiny slivers of yesterday’s roast and with a healthy shot of vodka decorated with a slim green scallion—quite yummy to lick. It was sunny then, but I know I would love Odessa in the rain and snow as well. It has the sense of layers and layers of cultures mixing in battle and in bed, leading to the element all great cities have: a bit of each of us in their DNA. Pushkin called Odessa the city where “the air is filled with all Europe.” I imagine myself. … I’m young, a writer, living in a warm attic with my lover, the poet. We eat endless loaves of brown bread slathered with that salty fat and downed with the vodka we keep chilled on the fire escape. It snows and snows. The heat’s turned off. We stare out to sea, talking about our novels and poems, and we get chilly and damp as we dream. Then we get pneumonia and die. But back in my real travel world—my endless quest for directions sometimes sparks conversations, and the best one in Odessa was with a young man, surely his grandmother’s favorite—polite, curious, charming—who wanted to know how I could be traveling by myself. “How old are you? How come you are by yourself? Aren’t you tired? My grandmother cannot travel, because her pension is too small. Where will you go next?” Young men must favor their grandmothers—they’re always the ones who want to talk to me about their lives
Odessa was unusually appealing to me for reasons uncertain. It had a romantic air about it (imagined or otherwise), it was imminently walkable, and my mind’s eye could see layer upon layer of history all around me. There’s always just the right book for every stop on any journey. In this case, a Russian/Ukrainian story, my major literary discovery of the past year: The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky in six volumes (the first three recently translated by Douglas Smith and the last three by previous translators in the ’60s). Volume 4, Years of Hope, could, as one reviewer states, be titled Years of Odessa, where nearly the entire book is set. If only I’d known about this beautiful and astoundingly evocative book before my small journey there. In Years of Hope, it is 1920; Russia is in the middle of a revolution and civil war; and, while Ukraine generally considers itself a sovereign nation, Russia, or the Soviet Union, considers some or most of the country as Russian. Odessa, at the time, is a half-destroyed city without food—or hope, for that matter. But Paustovsky manages to convey not only the cold and hunger but also the sea, nature, architecture, and a cast of war-worn characters never to be forgotten. Anyone interested in Russian and Ukrainian history and the ties therein, or in one of the most perfect masterworks of memoir, history, and literature ever written must read The Story of a Life, which is “a grand, novelistic memoir of a life spent on the ravaged frontier of Russian history. … Paustovsky imbued Soviet literature with tender curiosity about ordinary people and loving care for the natural world. He captured all the beauty, turbulence and injustice of his youth, and the strange blend of horrific violence and intoxicating hope that arrived with the revolution,” according to a Washington Post review. Paustovsky’s grand tableau is as important to me as any book I’ve ever read, ranking right up there with Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
Looking back to that 2011 trip and Ukraine’s recent history, at least from the Orange Revolution of 2004/05 to today, I regret not spending more time traveling in and reading about Ukraine, but wanderers almost never get time-in-place just right. And besides there are always bombs to change things.
But back then I could eat, drink and be merry….
Enjoy these photos from back then (best photos are in the blog, address below)and should you wish to see and read just a little more on my blog post about the visit: Go to mneset.me and
Messages of praise and affection for Tasia have been many, on Facebook and elsewhere. Well-deserved, professionally and personally from 91 years of a well-lived life.
I’ve been an acquaintance of Tasia’s since sometime in the 70s and a friend for a number of years, especially during her time as a board member of VSA North Fourth Art Center. But it wasn’t until the last three or four years that it feels right to talk about Tasia, my buddy.
Tasia and I decided to write our first books during our super-ager (a rather new designation for people over 80) years. I’d been journaling and collecting scraps of info and pictures from scattered locations for some time; Tasia, on the other hand, seems to have been doing the same, though in a much more focused and serious world, including documents, legislation, letters, news releases/articles…the stuff of history. So, there we were a while ago, sitting on my couch with two friends, putting the possibilities out there. And we did it…and encouraged each other in the doing. Easier for me, a travel memoir; much more exacting for Tasia, an important work of New Mexico and women’s movement history. The Change Makers: How New Mexico Became the Land of Women’s Equality was published just weeks before Tasia’s death in late July of this year.
I am calling us book buddies because no small part of my deep sadness is that I imagined us with the occasional coffee or limoncello in hand over the next years sharing ‘author’s’ observations, perhaps laughing at a silly comment or glowing from a compliment. Maybe we’d regret starting our writing-book adventures so late in life, perhaps we’d think it was just right.
About the indomitable Tasia. I suppose everyone who knew her well or even a little over the years knows about this Tasia. I did not until this closer friendship. And remember these are just my observations.
First. She never stopped working, professionally and/or personally. Ever it seems. Mostly these last years on the book, down to the last pre-publishing details, but also on her work with the legislature, her forays with Robert out to any number of New Mexico’s cultural, social, and political events, and not least, enjoying family and friend interactions of every sort. It is almost certainly rude of me to say this, but it came very close to being annoying! Here I am, three or four years younger, and spacing my ‘work’, outings, and hanging with friends and family all out over days and weeks. One thing a day.… While every time I talked to Tasia, it seemed she had several of the above going on almost simultaneously. I know that she did space herself a bit more in the last year or months, but it always seemed like so much to be doing. Like truly personifying what whoever invented the title ‘super ager’ must have meant.
And secondly, I think this loosely qualifies under the indomitable label; maybe it’s a separate category: Tasia’s fairness in discussing anyone and everyone. At least in my experience of her. In any of our discussions or chats, I never heard Tasia engage in hurtful gossip, rumors, or trash talk. Yes, honestly. Not even a little.
Not that she was given to saccharin allusions or politically-fakish complements, it’s just that she always seemed so fair in her references to one and all. I do like to think, had we had time to drink more limoncello together, she would have dropped a gossipy tidbit into the conversation now and then.
I miss Tasia a lot. We only saw or communicated with each other occasionally so the hole her passing leaves in my life isn’t that of a daily or even weekly big talk or news exchange; it’s just that I thought many more kindly-little-old-ladies or sharp-as-a-tack book authors’ discussions lay in our futures. But, I am so grateful for the time as writing buddies we had.
The phrase ‘growing old together’ is usually taken to mean with one’s partner. Well, I’ve taken it to mean my elder friends (you must be over 80 to qualify…and you know who you are). I do not want any of you to go away before I do. Tasia escaped first, but wow, what a full life she had. A lesson to those of us who will shortly follow…let us not waste last hours, months, years.
A highlight of any northern summer is time with cousin Terri and family who live about as far north as one can get without crossing over into Canada (if only…) Terri lives just outside of Roseau in Red River Valley (of the North) prairie country, few miles south of the border. (And may we all say ‘keep up the good work Mark Carney’…you know, it’s one thing to say those of us who are paying attention support the Canadian leader over our own utterly corrupt foolish failed head of state…but quite another when we normies also support every other world leader [only a few exceptions like Putin] over our slimy guy in DC). Sorry, sometimes a tiny rant dropped in the middle of a sensible post about family and travel, is necessary.
Cousin Terri. One of my favorite people of all. I kinda count on seeing her every year even though that hasn’t always been possible and I know will be less doable in the future. I write about every visit with glowing words so I won’t add to them now…except to say that Terri represents one of only a few extended family connections remaining, which the older I get the more important that becomes; my South Dakota cousins and Norwegian cousins have been and continue to be of enormous importance, both because they’re lovely people, and because they keep my world from a further narrowing of experience and memories. That’s the thing though isn’t it? As we age and our peers among both family and friends pass on, soon it becomes lonely. No one else alive in the world today was, like Terri’s mom, Audrey, next door from the day I was born and lived in my world until just last Christmas…and now Terri represents her in my life. Of course, there’s also the fact that Terri and her family are a pleasure to be around … and she and husband Brian prepare walleye that is near the top (maybe at the top) of all of the very best of the whole world’s foods.
Should I apologize for being so glowingly sentimental about almost all things Minnesota? I guess I won’t; it’s what one gets to do when we’re this bloody old, wax endlessly maudlin (and perhaps just a bit boring?). Early this month, Scott (who stayed on in Minnesota to hang with his uncle Robert) and I drove up to Terri’s for an overnighter. It’s about a four-hour drive but no place is too far to travel for the company of Terri and Brian…and did I mention…Walleye. We went by way of Bemidji for a minute with Paul and Babe and then a woodsy farm and prairie drive on up. Terri and Brian have just moved into their recently-built, and wholly designed by them, new home. It is centered in a small forest, bright and open while at the same time managing to offer coziness while viewing autumn rains or winter blizzards. The grounds won’t be completed until late fall, but a wrap-around porch, everyone’s ideal-home dream, is ready for talking, dozing, reading, and admiring the ‘changing of the leaves’ from the greens of summer to the last gasp of October red and gold.
I’ve written about Brian’s grandfather, Arthur Link, before. He was governor of North Dakota from 1973 to 1981, and I mention him again because his deep concern for the environment was unusual for his time. There’s a fine documentary about him, “When the Landscape is Quiet Again,” available on YouTube. Also, Governor Link was a like-minded, and equally honest and progressive contemporary of George McGovern’s, my forever political hero and whose campaign I am proud to say I worked on in 1972. My first serious political activity. Here are the words (or at least many of them) from Governor Link’s speech that forms the basis for the documentary.
When The Landscape Is Quiet Again (reprinted from “The Prairie Blog”)
We do not want to halt progress.
We do not plan to be selfish and say “North Dakota will not share its energy resources.”
No . . . we simply want to insure the most efficient and environmentally sound method of utilizing our precious coal and water resources for the benefit of the broadest number of people possible.
And when we are through with that, and the landscape is quiet again,
When the draglines, the blasting rigs, the power shovels and the huge gondolas cease to rip and roar
And when the last bulldozer has pushed the last spoil pile into place
And the last patch of barren earth has been seeded to grass or grain
Let those who follow and repopulate the land be able to say
“Our grandparents did their job well. This land is as good as, and, in some cases, better than, before.”
Only if they can say this will we be worthy of the rich heritage of our land and its resources.
Finally, here’s a picture of Terri’s mom, my cousin, Audrey, who died December 26th 2025. She had been dealing with memory issues for a long time and her death was not unexpected. As I’ve stated many times, Audrey was my idol; to me she was always beautiful and wise and funny from my earliest memories up to last year when I visited her one last time. Her death was the end of our family story out on the tiny farm on the very edge of Koochiching County, Minnesota. My brother and I are the last survivors, but Audrey was the last to share our stories of that place and time.
I had a somewhat strange reaction to her death. Of course, there was the sadness and the sense of loneliness that accompanies such exits these days. But, for whatever reason, I experienced a lot of almost-intense anger when Terri called to tell me. I tried to write about my sense of both loss and anger but I really couldn’t nor can I now. Except to say that, while in many ways Audrey had a good life with a loving husband, great kids and grandkids, and close friends, she also had more than her share of tribulations, especially in the beginning with alcoholic parents who offered a chaotic and probably somewhat dangerous home life and who did nothing to give her a sense of her own strengths and rights and opportunities. To a lesser, but important degree, some of my anger was directed at the strictures of life as woman back then; raised in an environment of catering to a husband’s way of life, however benevolent the husband. Ranch life with little money or cooking for a small crew in a remote Alaska gold mine, both difficult and the Alaska remoteness a great hardship for someone as outgoing as Audrey. On the other hand, she had a whole realm of good times too, especially some years as a staff member at the Northome nursing home. While it wasn’t perfect, Audrey absolutely loved going to work and, finally, having her own paycheck. And having family and friends close by.
On the way home from Roseau, Scott and I stopped on the shores of Red Lake, home to the federally recognized Red Lake Band of Chippewa, unique as the only fully “closed reservation” in the United States of America. “The tribe claims the land by right of conquest and aboriginal title; they were not reassigned to it by the United States government. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa refused to join with six other bands in organizing as the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe in the mid-1930s; at the time, its people wanted to preserve their traditional system of hereditary chiefs, rather than forming an electoral government. As of 2011, the Ojibwe language is the official language of Red Lake.” (Wikipedia)
Minnesota 2026. The End.
I keep revisiting this post and debating why I’m writing it. This morning, reading a new story in Le Monde about the horrendous flooding in Nepal, I imagined so vividly sitting halfway up mountainside drinking tea, looking down at the small houses and cultivated fields spreading below, peaceful and productive. My tea-drinking taking place in a little row of three or four ramshackle structures serving instant coffee with condensed milk, tea or soft drinks and bread; a small quiet group of trekkers sat a few tables over with drinks and brown rolls. The mountain loomed high overhead, a few houses and huts, a goat or dog visible here and there. My mountain did not have the height for steep rock and glacier but others all around did. And I see and hear in my mind’s eyes and ears the roar and crashing and shaking that must have accompanied the breaking mountain, the loosened glacier, forced-on river, lake, earth, small buildings, farmers, cows, trees…
Am I commenting on the horror of the landslides and floods in Nepal and Tibet and noting here the pitiful U.S. aid response (half a million dollars I read, approximately what Trump and sons bilk the taxpayers of one way or the other in five minutes on any given day) or celebrating the extent of my travels in this post? Celebrate seems like the wrong word to use in these paragraphs about so much death and sadness. A silly party word. But I mean it to express this: Without a whole lot of reading or traveling, how one can feel much of anything about what happens to the planet and its people outside of our own little patch. I also believe that if one is a fair and caring human being in whatever space we occupy that is enough to make each of us worthy of comfort and safety, and that we fortunate readers and travelers owe it to the world to care bigger … and not be the greedy pigs running so much of the planet’s business. So there…. I’m glad to have been out and about enough to feel some feelings when shit happens in other places.
***
To Nepal (and Tibet). Where landslides and floods are scourging the earth. The Guardian and others sources have astounding show&tells on the actions and extent of the devastation, likely caused by a huge chunk of mountain and/or glacier breaking loose in the grand mountain ranges of the Himalayas. Rock, ice, mud, water, and debris pour over fields, homes, trekker camps, villages, with full-throated death roars. The video I’ve watched literally causes me to gasp.
Here’s me sharing (bragging?). I was not far away from that area in 2017. Staying in Kathmandu and being driven out into the mountains and valleys nearby. What I’m saying is this: I was there. Nearby. But who cares anyway!
I care. Curiosity about what I might find to care about is why I wandered out to all of those places, all of those countries. That may not give me greater insight than people who have read as many books but gone to fewer world places and come to know them in depth, whether as explorer, or return visitor. Well maybe it does give me just the smallest amount of greater attachment to the whole damn planet. Maybe not.
Seventy some years ago, my science teacher, Mr. Matta, at Northome High School said I should be a journalist. And yes, I should have done. They’re the people I admire most. Always have since Eric Sevareid was at the CBS News that was … and am admiring to this day Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now. Journalists are the only people who, if they are fortunate enough to work for national or international publications, actually take a good hard look at that ‘whole damn planet’ I will keep mentioning. People who vacation at resorts or on their yachts, I won’t bother to call travelers. Diplomats, soldiers, sex tourists may go far but all are limited in their own, mostly nefarious ways, by their ‘assignments’ to particular spots on earth.
Back to Nepal and why I’m even posting about this when the Guardian, Le Monde, Aljazeera, and others tell the story so well. It’s not really helping Nepal and Tibet is it? But having been there gives me a sense of caring that has a personal component, compelling me to ramble on. The stories jar me with memories of real people I met, sights I saw, awe I experienced when flying by Everest or eating lunch next to a table of trekkers, those crazily brave and adventuresome souls who do stuff I wish to have been brave enough to do myself.
It is my strong belief that however we come to know the world: books, or travel of the curious nature, or maybe lectures, classes, documentaries … that knowledge should be how we earn the right to vote! Oh, come on, you say. You don’t really need to know about the world to vote on a new community center, for example. Hmmm…maybe if you knew something about the whole wide world, you’d want to be sure that people of all beliefs and colors and places of origin, and ways of being, were welcome in that center. Just saying….
When I was in my awestruck seeing-Everest moment, I was hardly thinking about the voting booth. But it is possible I care just the tiniest of bit more about the planet because I was there and can attest to the grandeur and beauty that very-real global warming is and will keep destroying. It confirms my responsibility to help elect people to public office who give a damn about something other than money and power. People who care about the natural world and the humans who depend on it.
Anyway, every now and then, I’m quite proud of my global meanderings, haphazard as they sometimes were. I know the way I did it is not necessarily for real adventurers, or even the more serious of purpose. But it satisfied what in Window Seat I declare to have been the reason behind my obsession: “I want to see for myself / Those faraway places I’ve been readin’ about / In a book that I took from the shelf”.
I’ve never had the desire or energy to get into book promotion, but I really do think you should read Window Seat. It is about the world. (So okay, maybe a little too much about me and my family, but you can pass quickly over those parts and focus on what I saw out there on my global forays.) Here’s the only excerpt from Window Seat about Nepal. I’d apologize for the brevity but, in my defense, I was writing about 114 countries and some involved extensive visiting!
EXCERPT FROM WINDOW SEAT: Nepal was next—Kathmandu, to be exact, and Everest. I flew back to Yangon and on to Kathmandu the long way, through Bangkok overnight. A friendly, smiling passport control official joked with me as he checked me in at the Bangkok airport—when was the last time someone joked with you in a security or passport line? Bangkok even has a special line for monks, the disabled, and people over seventy! And who knew I’d ever get to Nepal? My life astounds me sometimes. Now all I had to do was scale Everest! Or at least fly by. Kathmandu appeared to be a dusty mess, with the streets torn up and full of the most maddening traffic I’d seen so far in my travels (outside of Port-au-Prince). I saw a big part of the Himalayan range flying in, and while I didn’t know which of the mountains was Everest, how awe-inspiring it all was. My new home was the Apsara Boutique Hotel, which was modestly priced, with great service. I loved it. I had spinach soup and fried mushrooms for dinner, accompanied by a Nepalese wine made from grapes grown in the world’s highest vineyards. Most people staying there were trekkers, which gave me elbow-rubbing, eavesdropping time with explorers, who are always among my heroes; it was nice to feel included but not to have to climb high mountains to do so. The people at the next table sprinkled “Uff da” into their conversation, so there was no doubt as to their country of origin—at least not to another Norwegian. I was the hotel manager’s pet guest, and he became my fixer, host, and buddy.
It was soon time for the long-anticipated flight around Everest. I was at the airport at five o’clock in the morning and off at six thirty for the hour’s ride out and back, past the Himalayas. I experienced teary-eyed moments of pure awe while gazing at those mountains. The earth is grand and glorious—and we humans are not, mucking about with our trash and digging, piercing, and exploding tools. Contemplating the garbage left behind on Everest by the climbers is to reach a last exasperated straw in thinking we can ever change our attitudes about who owns geography—and what the geography of Earth represents compared to our puny, careless presence on the planet.
QUOTE FROM JOHN MCPHEE: When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the sea floor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.
For a slightly more in-depth look at Nepal please go to my blog Time and Place at mneset.me and google https://mneset.me/2017/11/13/kathmandu-baby-kathmandu/
https://mneset.me/2017/11/16/hanging-around-in-kathmandu/
https://mneset.me/2017/11/17/and-then-i-had-another-excellent-idea/
Sorry for twice/thrice said things. Having some passion-filled moments!
It appears the changing of plans midway through Minnesota confused me. It takes less and less to do that. So even though I call this post the end, that is a lie. I will return in a day or so with two of the absolutely favorite parts of the journey. Cousin Terri in Roseau and a logging camp in Grand Rapids.
Scott and I were tired by the time we reached Duluth, 70 or 80 miles from Grand Rapids and flights to our homes. So tired. But we tried our damnedest to tourist just a little. I am posting these final photos just because Duluth is an interesting small city, kind of a poor man’s San Francisco. Less wild and glamourous history BUT also minus the evil tech sh*t. I’d like to return…less jaded, ready to celebrate Lake Superior.
Until Next Time Then…
Up the shore in Two Harbors. I think.
I was a sentence or two into yet one more sentimental note about my ‘glorious’ Minnesota childhood. A perfectly fine childhood in a better than average place…but it is possible I get a bit carried away with it all when the place I’m in is faraway New Mexico and my distance from childhood is about a hundred years. Well, not quite 100, but closer than seems possible!
Last photo album of the Old Place and farewell shot from a last night on the shores of Lake Superior.
The gravel road leading the 1 1/2 miles from US Highway 71 out to my place.
This summer in Minnesota is already distanced from me in ways I don’t like. In miles and climate and that feeling of homeness (whatever that means). But however long I live in New Mexico, whenever and wherever I’m out in the world, I will never miss it in quite that same childish/childlike (?) way as Koochiching County, Minnesota and our own spot in the northwoods.
This time I visited the ‘old place,’ my childhood home a few times and have already posted more than a few 2026 photos … looking much like 2025 (and further back) pictures, except to my eyes! Well, that’s not exactly true, I have a hard time telling the difference as well. But my heart knows, I say to myself. It’s true though, the last visits out home on any trip north is ever more fraught… ‘will it be my last? Nah, of course I’ll be back. For sure? Well, perhaps not for absolute sure. Then, let’s stay another moment so I can be sure to have imprinted the image for a future mind’s eye moment. Done and done and done, taking photos all the while.
Here then. The first post from the final two visits out to ‘the old place’ (or ‘out home’, interchangeable expressions) from August 2026. There are too many for even a single post intended to be viewed mostly by me in a future blog book. I am choice-averse when it comes to photos…as everyone who’s ever viewed a Time and Place post will have noticed long ago.
I thought about topical groupings like trees, big views, broken house but have just decided to mosey along in real time through each visit.
And below: the interior of the home in which I grew up. Humble (but ever so fine in spirit) from the beginning. I always enjoy my visits, never finding them depressing, as the house and I (almost exactly the same age) exit the planet creakily, but somewhat interesting in our gradual demise, together.
(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.)
