Me. Versailles. 2010. When I started thinking about writing a travel/memoir book.
Here I am. Me. Now. The new-old me. A slow starter! Yesterday was my final day on anyone’s payroll. Ever. In any case, I understand people over 80 are not in big demand in the world of work. Although…my first job with the City of Albuquerque was a contract to do something with the newly purchased KiMo Theater AND to manage the public toilets on Civic Plaza. Surely, I’m still qualified for the latter.
Anyway, here I am, for now unemployed. What to do. Blog more, obviously. Sharing my insights concerning pesky aging annoyances, as well as tips for Apocalypse preparation (#1: Stock up on those little jars of Armour Dried Beef—didn’t your mother make what in the army was called SOS I understand—pieces of the beef stirred into a white sauce and ladled onto toast)—I loved it—but there won’t be any milk or flour or butter or bread. However, the dried beef will last until Jeff and Elon can get us to the moon.
To launch my new life, I’m making an announcement:
I wrote a book. As some of you know, I’ve actually been working on this book off and on for years. It’s finally finished and at the publishers. The book is called Window Seat: The Story of a Traveling Life. It is part travel narrative/part memoir, and all about journeying, family, and with some dance thrown in.
One of my travel bookshelves today.
Now, imagine Window Seat in their midst.
I’m self-publishing with Archway Publishing, a wing of Simon and Schuster. Don’t know if this was a good decision, but it’s hard to know where to go when one wants an absolutely professional job done, even though you know you haven’t written a best-seller! Hopefully it will be the best-looking travel memoir EVER. My artist friend, Pat, is helping me design a cover which will distract potential buyers from dwelling on the fact there’s little exotic food, absolutely no prayer, and the sex is pretty early on and doesn’t deserve an R rating.
With Window Seat, I’ve told my story as a woman living through over 80 plus decades when our place in society saw some pretty amazing changes for the better. Changes that helped make it possible to get to all the places I went and see the things I saw, and speak to the humans I met there. Window Seat has been such a satisfactory project over the years, especially being that the important pursuits in my life have been travel and dance, often with family (and friends) as an integral component.
My editors asked me who I was writing the book for. I said: my family, people who like to travel, perhaps contemporary dance lovers, but definitely women. The truth: I really wrote it for me. I briefly studied a therapeutic field called narrative therapy as a social work student. It involves “story” in different ways, but the bottom line I took from it is that every single one of us has a story, and to think of our lives as stories is fulfilling and healthy—and, for the lucky among us, fun—on any number of levels.
Selfishly, I wanted to tell my story because, first of all, it’s full of modest, but almost always pleasurable adventures, and I think some people will enjoy reading about them almost as much as I enjoyed having and writing about them. After all, why should so many memoirs be about resolving horrendous issues, and why should so much travel literature be by men?
Every book needs a theme—for my life and for Window Seat, the theme comes from an old WWII song: Far Away Places. I must get permission to include the entire song as an opening to the book but here are the first two verses (eight lines are permissible to copy): Please, please, google this song by Vera Lynn, Bing Crosby, or Willie Nelson and Sheryl Crow. You won’t really understand unless you do.
Far away places with strange-soundin’ names
Far away over the sea
Those far away places with the strange-soundin names
Are callin’, callin’ me
Goin’ to China or maybe Siam
I want to see for myself
Those far away places I’ve been readin’ about
In a book that I took from a shelf
In case you can see titles, the closest shelves hold my mostly Nordic Noir/British detective volumes…honestly the majority of my library consists of travel and history. Honest!
Other lines that appeal to me particularly include “getting restless whenever I hear the whistle of a train” (actually the sight of big buses, trains, boats, ships, and planes has the same effect).
I’ve been thinking about the acknowledgements page, most especially who I’m going to dedicate the book to…. How’s this: to a mom and dad who let me roam about the nearby woods from the time I was a toddler; to friends and family—all explorers in their own ways; and, perhaps especially, to all those books on so many shelves that have made me want to go to every single place in the Whole Wide World.
I guess my favorite line from Far Away Places is “They call me a dreamer, well maybe I am/ but I want to see for myself.”
(“Far Away Places” is an American popular song. It was written by Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer and published in 1948.)
This is the next to the last post of this life passage. I’ve been writing my life from the perspective of being an active learning, traveling, working person for as long as I can remember. There are way too many journals, quite a lengthy blogging history, and even a book (soon) to prove it. Okay, that’s very much done—the working part at least, with “active” a bit wobbly in implementation.
Since my blog is also a sort of journal for me, I feel okay about being a bit silly from time to time–probably this post qualifies for that label so enjoy it before I get into those tall weeds of old-age and the apocalypse in the next blog series.
Lucky Me really is about my good fortune to hang out with such a choice coterie of family and friends. I use the word ‘coterie’ advisedly since it indicates a group of like-minded people, but I can honestly say there’s not a Maga-leaner among them. (If there are they have very effectively hidden it—I’m thinking Kim Philby-level secrecy)
Going back to Christmas 2023 and ending today—here’s my in-betweenish life. Lots of photos, not so many words. I’m saving them for later when I dig into those aforementioned serious subjects like old-old age (which actually one must laugh at or go mad), and politics (over which one stays mad…really really mad…in both senses of the word)
My special Christmas sweatshirt
I included some photos of last Christmas in a post written on my winter visit to Robert and Marsha’s in Sierra Vista, AZ. I didn’t write after our last-minute trip to Naco, Sonoro, Mexico—so pretty pictures of a small and pleasant Mexican village are included…my second international visit for the year of 2023 (the first through a bit of Canada to Minnesota’s Northwest Angle).
The post is organized thusly: First people and the international travel…ending with a dog album as all stories should. The people story goes like this. I spent Christmas with my goofy brother (who is proof it’s possible to be goofy and old at the same time). Since I like words so much I decided to check out the dictionary meaning of goofy which means “mildly ludicrous” … which means “amusing or laughable through obvious absurdity, incongruity, exaggeration, or eccentricity.” I will stand by a statement that all of the above (at least the ‘mildly’ version) applies to my bro.
Not the best photo of Buddy (he’s the dog), but having featured him in multiple past blogs this must suffice. Robert, on the other hand, is damn near smiling…unusual to say the least.
Then there’s his lovely wife, Marsha, best sister-in-law ever. Also on that goofy spectrum, but in different ways. For example…dogs. Who gets up in the morning and prepares three meals for the day ahead for…The Dog. Nice meals…meat (and not just any old processed meat), vegetables, maybe a touch of dairy. Attractively arranged. Refrigerated to remain fresh all day. Seriously!
Now, Marsha is a good people hostess as well, but…do I, her kindly old and fragile sister-in-law get the three-meal-a-day prepared in advance treatment. The answer would be No.
Marsha starts grinning, one might say, goofily, at the glass-half-empty level.
We spent Christmas as one should. Talking, napping, watching TV, and eating often. The visit to Naco and other scenic places…and the area around Sierra Vista is quite lovely, not dissimilar from Albuquerque territory but perhaps just a little more dramatic. And we do not have a dirigible spy overhead. But I already talked about Christmas.
Naco
Since January 2024 was the last month of North Fourth, the organization, occupying North Fourth, the building, I had a small party at my house with a few of my favorite co-workers from the past few years. It was a little nostalgic, but pleasantly so.
And THEN Scott arrived for a month. Considering the Philippines is something like halfway around the world, one doesn’t come for a long weekend. We hung out around here mostly, with one side trip to AZ to visit Uncle Robert… Cooked, read, watched tv, talked a lot…was lovely. My sons and granddaughters, with a side of Robert and Marsha entailing a mini-road trip. Scott’s in California now…preparing to board his flight for the long ride “home.” Although the PI hasn’t actually become home, it’s a good adventure for the most part. A whole blog post about that coming up before too long. Meanwhile here’s time with my aging “kids.”
Back home in Albuquerque, we did more of the same. Enjoying each other in a most laid-back fashion. The nieces came over for dinner…and Scott, always appreciative of fine art got a present.
I’ve saved the best part until last. Granddaughter Patricia and her wonder dog, Luna, lived with me last fall. You’ve already seen a whole post of Luna photos, but there can never be too many dog pictures I’ve discovered from Facebook.
Luna always makes sure Sandy is enjoying her snack.
In conclusion…life is generally good, at least good-enough, even on the bad days. I get how fortunate I and my family, friends, and many of us are. We live in a world here in the U.S. where the death and destruction remains on a personal scale, brough to us primarily by gun-nuts/lovers/owners/obsessives, etc. instead of marauding gangs known as militias, terrorists (domestic and otherwise), and armies. However, we all know that the latter condition is just around a nearby corner, nearer every day Trump and his cult members maintain and increase power.
Damn. this was going to be a perky post all the way through. Puppy dogs and pretty towns and happy families. So how to end appropriately since I introduced guns and the cult into the mix?
One day, I baked such a nice cake.
One day, I tripped on trailing bag straps on a cracked sidewalk.
Broke only a finger and dented my brow. But at least I wasn’t shot.
Happy 2024.
This was my nice life as 2023 sunsetted, and 2024 introduced itself. The post will cover the last days of North Fourth Art Center, my work home for the last 22 years. A following post will catch up with family and the personal side of my life as 2024 unfolds.
Installation by David Estes
NORTH FOURTH ART CENTER
North Fourth Art Gallery and Gallery X: Let me just begin by reiterating how I declared myself chief curator for this past year. And how Susanna had as much to do with it as I did, and how Tim played an important role as well. And let me say again, it is the most unadulterated pleasure I’ve had in my work life for quite some time.
Through the Mind’s Eye over Time. September/October, 2023
Sara & Evey. Photo by Susanna Kearny
Through the Mind’s Eye over Time was comprised of Sara Lee D’Alessandro’s sculpture and Evey Jones’ prints. They filled both galleries with work both substantial and yet full of light and movement. Large and/or monotone works of art can overwhelm with their presence, but Sara and Evey’s work invites you up close and personal somehow. Maybe it’s the brightly-delicate color and touch-me curves of Sara’s and the subtle play of the intricate black presences and the spaces in-between in Evey’s. I’m sure my words aren’t quite right—but they make some sort of sense to me. It was a beautiful show.
Top: Evey with her work. (photo by Susanna Kearney). Second photo a close-up of her piece, “Shadows of the dance at kassel” Center: Sara setting up the gallery, no small task but good helpers. Photo of second piece taken in Cuba NM at Sara’s studio. Bottom: Both pieces at Sara’s studio
***
A Brush with Time: Art’s Ever-Changing Story. November/December 2023
Our last ever North Fourth Art Center grand gallery event was an exhibit filling the galleries and the halls. It was titled A Brush with Time: Art’s Ever-Changing Story and featured Patrick Carr, Sterling Van Deren Coke, Vasili Katakis, Jonathan Loth and Joe Forrest Sacket in the front galleries and hallway. Beginning in the N4th Gallery with contemporary works created, for the most part, with traditional materials of paint and metal; following ‘time’ down the hallway through photography, and ending in Gallery X, with AI generated, computer-realized pieces.
Joe Forrest Sackett
Patrick Carr
Vasili Katakis
Sterling Van Deren Coke
Jonathan Loth
Pat Carr
Joe Sackett
The art crowd
Deck the Walls filled the rest of the building, both classrooms and hallways. Works of every medium. The name is a nod to both the time of year and to our desire to celebrate the building, in which we have been at home through so very many art-filled classes, programs, exhibits and special events. We wanted to show off a bit!
The exhibit was a spectacular blend of every medium, style, and perspective imaginable from artists who rarely exhibit to those well-known in the area and beyond.
Tasia and Robert. Art-full dining
Laurie and Michael Naranjo
Bob Robie & his alcohol ink paintings
The Staff
***
The years of North Fourth Art Center, the organization, occupying North Fourth Art Center, the building, ended in January, 2024. While staff, artists, and many community members are sad to see the end of our particular brand of community service and programs, the good news is there are even better things to come. Announcements will be forthcoming through various media in the not too distant future.
Free-range Art
My first home. Before the log and plaster addition, before fruit trees and spruce trees and willow trees grew into place. Before gardens.
Then it lived as a home for a very long time. But eventually after 80 or so years and many many summers and winters and Christmases, it nearly died. But with living trees growing through the walls and roof, it surely would not ever die until the last vestiges of the happy house returned to the soil.
Here’s the thing. For some time now, I’ve been tired of or depressed by holidays. How to explain since even growing up in a family with limited funds, holidays were special. Fourth of July trips to Lake Bemidji to picnic with Paul Bunyan or up to the Red Lake Indian Reservation to watch the dancing. Easter, with possibly a new dress for church and a big dinner with neighbors or family. Thanksgiving ditto (except for the new dress).
And Christmas. I loved Christmas. I’ve described our Christmases often so will simply say: large green balsam tree, elegantly decorated—I say elegantly because we didn’t have an overload of glittery things and my mother was not a fan of tinsel. When I was very young we had real candles: fat stubby white candles in ancient tin candle holders that were lit—with actual tiny flames to flicker magically and enhance ever so delicately the scent of balsam sap and needles. Christmas eve afternoon decorating the tree, mom’s starting the lefse to be devoured later as we open presents, and preparing the ham/pineapple/sweet potato/sausage/brown sugar stacks that have become our traditional Christmas eve supper. We read the Christmas story (Luke 2: 1-20), open presents, gaze happily at our glorious tree.
I have no photos from my revered childhood Christmases so here are a few of my kids at theirs. Scott,the small boy, all three of us some years later, and finally Steven in a fashionable new outfit I picked up for him at a meeting in Montreal just before the holidays. He hated it.
There were the years when my kids were young and I tried to replicate my childhood version of Christmas—never completely successfully. There were more presents and, for a time, a husband to assemble and help cook…but it would never feel quite the same.
Then there were grandchildren, when I spent alternating years with my sons’ families: so many presents, so much food. Happy times and not dependent on my holiday chops. That was an improvement since my zest for jingling bells had been waning.
It wasn’t easy finding old photos of grandchildren with a Christmas tree somewhere in the background on a hard drive with hundreds of disorganized photo files. (It’s one I carry with me in case I feel the need to create a post wherever I am. I managed with everyone except Patricia so she and sister Sara are featured at a restaurant where the three of us convened for a holiday supper (and shopping perhaps).
Teresa and Steven, Grand Rapids, Minnesota, early 90s.
Lace (Teresa) and me at a fancy San Francisco hotel for our first high tea. Year ?
Sara. Probably Albuquerque. Happy.
Sara and Patricia. Definitely Albuquerque. Patricia old enough for a wine.
***
The Christmases with mom in the nursing home were, in some ways, the best of my “late” middle-age. Quiet, nothing exciting in the way of gifts or food, but we read and talked and ate our few favorite things like stuffing and sweet potatoes. Photos in boxes back in Albuquerque.
Now. Actually, my overall melancholy, bordering sometimes on depression, concerning the holidays is not only the rejection of the ever-increasing hype that capitalism requires to keep over-spending at a fever pitch; it is the sense I can never meet my own expectations of what each holiday, especially Christmas, should be. Of all the holidays, it is only Christmas, in my mind, that that calls for a bit of quiet, at least a few minutes of contemplation, an undefined specialness. Not because it has a religious veneer overlaying its commercial importance, but because it’s family-oriented. It will never be the same though, will it? Because for me an authentic Christmas can only take place in Minnesota with lefse and a fat green balsam from our very own woods…and Mom and Dad and Robert. Spoken like an ancient, I know. But it is how I increasingly feel.
I tried to recreate that scene for a while but I couldn’t. Which makes me sad every single year. But then I read and write, sometimes hanging out on the fringes of family activity because I choose to be moody and lonesome for Christmases Past. But not always. This Christmas has been just fine. Phone calls from sons and grandchildren; scrumptious ham dinner with Robert and Marsha; a good book (Derek Miller’s Radio Life full of post-apocalyptic adventures—upliftingin its own strange way); drives through grand high desert scenery of border country; perhaps a new-tradition of holiday movies begun with RRR, a Bollywood creation of dance, death, and handsome heros, solidifying my long-held conviction that people of East Indian origins and/or citizenship are going to rule the world sometime soon. And here I am, old, but alive.
I had intended to post more photos of this Christmas, but came upon a file from my last Christmas in Minnesota, about 2009. Usually I visit in summer or fall but would actually rather do winter to escape from the same old sunny chill of New Mexico day after day. Unfortunately, these days, my wimpy brother and sister-in-law spend their winters in warmer climes so I have nowhere to stay for any length of time.
Here, back in the day, are Robert and Marsha; Marsha’s mom, Lydia; old family friends and SNOW…glorious snow.
A cloudy snow-filled visit out to the ‘old place’ so long abandoned but still treasured. It was nice to visit in the winter when its at its loneliest.
Lydia, with a typical Christmas “tree” for adults a little tired of the flim-flam of it all.
Cousin Audrey and Otis.
Barb and Helen. Our friends for our whole lives.
And a Merry Holiday and Sane New Year to each and every one.
Could 2024 surprise us and turn out to be less frightening than we anticipate? Unlikely, but I do so want to write a happy and hopeful post, a letter to family and friends that encourages us to keep trying in our own small ways to be decent human beings—to live by the golden rule of ‘doing onto others as we have them do unto us.’ But I just cannot let go of my constant sense of unease (dread) without a few lines of song that pretty much say it all.
You see, the only music that’s ever spoken to my heart and soul was the folk protest songs of the 60s and 70s. So, when I want a song lyric/poem to express my everyday state of being, I search through my old favorites. As we draw closer and closer to a new and supremely frightening year…I hear Buffalo Springfield: “…Children, what’s that sound?/Everybody look, what’s going down?” Yes, indeed, “there’s something happening here…but what it is ain’t exactly clear.”
Or maybe it’s too clear—and has nothing to do with the golden rule. “There’s a man with a gun over there/Telling me I got to beware…”
It is Christmas though. You know, that season of peace and love. Therefore, my holiday goal is to post about the things in my life that make it all worth getting up in the morning and, with multiple coffees, fighting off the weighty blanket of doom. I’m searching, in other words, for a few days of thinking peace and love thoughts. No, sorry, there’s no peace to be had in the entire world, so it’s gotta be love. An album of photos then…people I love and/or like a lot/or admire and respect—often one and the same.
Family first on the list. Those people we love, almost always like, and feel closely connected to by blood, relationships and, if neither of those, then by bonds of experience and/or togetherness that go deep and profound. And friends, near and far, bound by a variety of times, and places. There do remain in my world a few groups or individuals I trust and admire. Prime among them: Journalists. Without whom we wouldn’t have a clue as to what’s really going on anywhere in the world, including the U.S. (As you history buffs or keen-eyed political junkies may have noticed there is an enormous gulf between our “leaders” and truth—applicable to all times and places and parties). Occasionally a politician slips through the greed-and-power net and, if I can think of any, this post will acknowledge them.
I will add, here or in Part 2 or 3 of this ramble, one single addition to my respected-people list besides journalists: artists—dancing, singing, painting, writing. In a world less focused on gold, greed, and guns, the good guys, journalists and artists, would have the space and power to save us from our worst selves…alas, that is never to be. “Paranoia strikes deep/Into your life it will creep/It starts when you’re always afraid/Step out of line, the men come and take you away…We better stop/Hey, what’s that sound?/Everybody look, what’s going down?”
Okay, for the rest of this post, it’s all peace and love, I promise. Politics and mean people Be Gone.
Right now, December 23, as I start writing, I am at Robert and Marsha’s in Sierra Vista, Arizona. And would you believe it actually rained, as in hours of water falling from the sky, with thunder and lighting to boot. Maybe that’s what got rain-starved me writing this morning. As discussed in previous posts, R&M, in their ongoing quest for their own personal Garden of Eden or perhaps (more recently) Fountain of Youth, have lately landed in southern Arizona. Actually, all they want is good winter weather and Florida got too expensive and politically crazy. Their search is fun for the family as we get to travel to new places to visit, be made comfortable, fed the excellent midwestern kind of meals we all favor, and roam around the countryside a bit.
The area around Sierra Vista is picturesque in that high-desert, mountains-near-and-far way of New Mexico and Arizona. The sun’s a little too plentiful for my taste but otherwise it’s most pleasant. We took a drive yesterday to break the pleasurable monotony of desultory low-key conversation, lots of snacks, and reading time—with the occasional evening murder mystery of which we are all overly fond. Our lives are too short now to argue, which Robert and I managed to do a fair amount of in the past, and we mostly don’t care if we’re eating enough vegetable, so togetherness is completely without drama—just the way I increasingly like my life.
Here we are—the family elders. Pre-Christmas eve and day. 2023.
Marsha…with her most mischievous holiday smile.
Me and the baby bro.
We took a drive down to Naco, Arizona on the border with Naco, Mexico. It looks to have been a place chockful of eccentric buildings and a lively life at some point. Sad in its almost total abandonment.
Robert sees things. Then we drive home.
This blog post will expand into an end of the years series of happy photos to make up for the opening paragraphs of doom and gloom. Although I’m sure I won’t be ableto resist a bit more of that. Almost Christmas Eve now. Be as merry as possible. And don’t forget happyish.
Mizpah Elementary School. Granduating Class. 1951. And there I am. Between Carol and Larry. We were the tallest kids in the class all the way through school so consistently in the back row. Probably why none of the three of us achieved great fame and fortune. And over to the left, Pat. Whom, just last week, I just met for lunch in International Falls and spent a pleasant afternoon reminescing on why, when and where all the good stuff happened (and to our relief it somewhat continues to happen). Pat and her husband Gene were teachers, and are the parents of three successful grown children. And in front Ray, who looks a bit of a wise guy there, I think. I remember he was smart, but not sure about smart-alecky. Maybe?
And below my friend Judy. Since Ray and Judy are now married and I just stayed at their home in Blackduck, more about them under Judy’s picture.
Judy and brother Marly (who’s also on the photo above, far left in back row). Probably the cutest guy in our class all the way through school. Judy is a couple of years younger and this picture was probably taken in around 1948 or 1949.
Judy and Ray got together many years ago after becoming widow and widower and reconnecting at a school reunion. Judy, the successful entreprenauer and Ray, the retired schoolteacher. Between them they have children and quite a few pieces of land and houses, apparently throughout Minnesota. Which was extremely handy for me since one of them is in the town where I was born, Blackduck, and I stayed there off and on for a couple of weeks.
I’m including some photos here because Judy is most original and innovative with furniture, art, and objects purchased, found, and ordered/traded/inherited which makes the home extremely cozy and fun to explore.
Another Blackduck story. My folks last living friend Helen (she was much younger) died this year, a few months past her 100th birthday. Barb, her daughter who lived with and took care of her for much of her life, now lives in Blackduck in a retirement home. Robert has a few other friends connected with family but Barb is my last source of memories of all those visits and homemade doughnuts and coffee and (as I always mention) the women in the kitchen preparing those big “lunches” that accompanied all visits, the men out in the yard or on the couch depending on the season telling tall tales…shooting the bull…how come it’s not called gossiping when men do it?
Barb invited a few of us to a small little memorial as Helen’s ashes were buried.
So here it is. The town where I was born. On a cold April afternoon. A very long time ago. Blackduck is just barely hanging on, like most small towns. There’s a grocery, gas station complex. Another gas station. A fabric shop. A dentist. A nursing home, senior residence. Graveyard.
Blackduck is on US Highway 71…I grew up at the end of a gravel road one mile north of 71 between Blackduck and Northome. One time I drove all of it from mid-Minnesota on down to Louisiana…because I could. Since I grew up on it and all of our trips to town (one town or the other…International Falls, Mizpah, Northome, Funkley, Blackduck and Bemidji) took place on it, I feel sentimentally connected.
Minnesota me is coming to the surface. Any moment I’ll break out in a “Yeah, ya betcha” or “Sure, I’ll borrow you my car.” It’s cloudy a lot and chilly and most of the leaves are gone. Life in the north was a bit hectic at first, visit with Robert and Marsha, over to my friend’s house in Blackduck (about 60 miles from Grand Rapids), back to Grand Rapids, back to Blackduck. Carrying stuff up and down steps…it seems everyone has many steps up to their front doors here. Wonder why? Snow piled up in the winter I guess.
First an album of September leaves.
About that book…
I’ve been making excellent writing progress, in fact have a decent draft with nearly everything in final form…well except for the introduction, a last chapter, the epilogue, and a few bookish inserts here and there. And narrowing the number of pics scattered throughout down from 70+ to 30 or 40. And getting a few permissions for the use of a song and two poems. It’s very long. But, hey, I’m very old and I’ve traveled a lot. And there’s a big long dancing chapter (making up for the lack of sex, violence, celebrities, and failure to use AI).
I do have a publisher, generally self-publishing, but as a trade publication so it’ll be available all the ways books are available. It’s a British firm that specializes in travel guides and literature. It’ll be more expensive than I would have liked, but obviously if I had ever thought money would be connected to the project I would have worked faster!
Friends and family and the ‘old place’ coming up in next posts..for now a Minnesota road pic and food. I actually think driving on two-lane highways through prairie or forest is what calms me! And roast beef.
I find the effect that being ‘home’ in Minnesota has on me interesting and a little odd. Calming. It is calming. Not just the driving…the people. The woods. The food. From long chats with old school friends, to driving miles and miles between the small towns of the north—not much traffic, eyes peeled for the suicidal deer so plentiful in the endless woods, these weeks just being with my brother and sister-in-law—we’re so good together now that we’re old and realize our time together is finite so there’s no time for criticsm of annoyance or anything really but appreciation and kindness.
Supper at Rob and Marsha’s. I fully intend to try being a vegetarian again. But not until I leave R & M’s.
Robert pickling northern pike.
Well, I seem to be a bit short of international travel for 2023. Usually the South Dakota/North Dakota/Minnesota road trip wouldn’t count but fortunately for me, cousins Terri and Brian have a fishing cabin up in the Angle. That would be the Northwest Angle, a funny little piece of Minnesota sticking up into Canada. It is a pene-exclave, meaning “a part of the territory of one country that can be conveniently approached—in particular, by wheeled traffic—only through the territory of another country” for those of you who have always wanted to know.
It is beautiful. Both the place and the cabin. Terri and Brian have designed and furnished a remarkably spacious and lovely home for the whole family, whenever possible, to stay all at once. Terri has managed something not easy, to furnish the whole thing thematically: fishing downstairs; bears upstairs that doesn’t ever become too cute, or too cluttered. It’s perfect with some really great art pieces.
And we even went walleye fishing. Well I napped and took pictures and Terri and Brian caught fish—beautiful beautiful walleye, which Brian fried that very evening. They honestly are the finest of all of the world’s fish…just ask anyone who cabins up in the Angle to spend the year fishing: summer in the boat—winter in the heated fish house, probably with a tv and maybe pantry and bar?
First the show-offs, then the rest of the fishing story. A perfect day.
Terri’s woods
My immediate family is small, even when cousins are included—but many of my first and some of my second cousins and their children feel very immediate to me. I visit every year or two and they grow older, bigger, wiser, with new additions every now and then—Robert and I are the last Nesets in this U.S. branch so guess the name goes away here soon. Fortunately the Nesets in Norway are getting better and braver, and expanding all of the time so perhaps there’s still time for us to take over the world.
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Sioux Falls is almost always the first stop on the family tour where I visit cousin Vivian the family elder. Vivian is Mom’s sister Mabel’s only daughter and last living child. She lives in a pleasant senior residence with her cat, TV, candy and ice cream aplenty, and quite a bit of company. She’s alternately happy, sad, cranky, funny, remembers everything that ever happened in her life, and does not let any of us forget it.
Vivian and her favorite young cousin and favorite even-younger sister-in-law Marty. (We are your favorites, right?)
Since I no longer can hang out with Vivi in the little house on Van Eps and eat her dumpling soup, I fortunately have another kind cousin Marty to stay with out in Brandon, a Sioux Falls suburb. I love staying there, like a big girl’s pajama party. Lots of good snacks, ample time for political rants, and just good old girls’ talk (as in good-old, not good old-girl—well yeah, that too).
Checking in with Marty’s kids and grandchildren which is always fun.
Marty and her kids, Crystal and Keith
Top: Keith and Barb. Middle: Their son Richard and his dad. Bottom: Daughter Katie and family pup, Angel.
And two of my favorite guys, Vivian’s youngest but not-young son, Ron, and his great kid, Jaron. Great guys, dad a little weird in a kind of wonderful way; son his grandma’s great companion almost every evening.
Jaron and Grandma…and the handsome old guy at the bottom is Ron
Minnesota (and North Dakota)
It always feels so good to cross the border into Minnesota. Where more cousins and friends and trees and dogs and Robert and Marsha live (sometimes).
First a stop with Linda, my cousin Audrey’s oldest daughter who lives and works in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Hadn’t seen Linda in a long time so a lunch stop and catch-up was perfect.
Linda
Then up to Roseau, Minnesota where Terri, Audrey’s other daughter lives with husband Brian, the country’s best walleye cook lives. And Audrey, the cousin I worshipped as a kid and still love hanging out with. Terri’s daughter Niki brings the kids over so I can mark their growth and wonderfulness…she really does have amazing kids. More about the Terri visit next post. It involved a foray across an international border which deserves its own story.
Meanwhile, here’s the Terri-family up there in the Red River Valley of Minnesota.
Terri and Audrey
Audrey and I had such a lovely visit this year. Audrey has lots of stories to tell too…sometimes they’re a little abbreviated or not quite in order but her ‘Audrey’ personality is just fine. Happy to talk about the old days with some laughs, maybe a bit of sarcasm, but somewhat content with the here and now too.
I really love seeing Niki’s kids. I don’t know them that well but they’re always friendly and lively and smart and fun. (Landon, Clara, Noah, and last but certainly not least, Grace). Hey, thanks for coming over to make my visit special, guys.
Brian, the champion walleye cook (more about him next post), and Niki, who’s back at work as a coordinator/director of programs for young people in Roseau. And of course, the ever-photogenic Grace. And Reba, the pooch, Terri’s best friend and guardian
I kind of like to think of them as my girls, at least a little bit.
I just drove 2,000 miles, mostly on two-lane roads, small towns far apart, little traffic and few rescuers if things fell apart car-wise or otherwise. No problem. Then. Almost immediately after I pulled into in bro Robert’s driveway in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, Ghost’s battery ‘gave up the ghost’ so to speak. Died dead away. If it weren’t for a world full of homeless people including millions of refugees, war, famine, glaciers melting, and the Cult of Trump, I might believe in a benevolent god—protecting little old ladies from car problems when they have ventured out on the open road. So, the good brother, he who can fix nearly everything, has tinkered a bit with under-the-hood stuff, replaced the battery…the journey will continue.
Crossing Red River from North Dakota into Minnesota, lots of traffic and kind of lost so missed any Minnesota welcome sign that may have been there. That was sad since I’m somewhat obsessive about knowing when I’ve crossed state (or country) borders.
Dinner on the road. All the major food groups.
I’ve covered the Albuquerque to Sioux Falls miles, there to Roseau Minnesota miles, and on down to Blackduck where the car was unpacked, a few essentials made it into the frig, took that first shower in yet another bathroom (given that there are no two showers exactly alike in the entire world, first showers in new places always make me anxious). All of my book editing materials are nicely organized on the dining room table—that held an elegant brocade-ish runner and even more elegant antique cut-glass bowl until I so rudely disturbed some of the room’s prettiness.
Now I’m in Grand Rapids for a few days at Robert and Marsha’s before the serious book-work begins. But more about that later. First some road photos. Family and Minnesota pics, comments, and wise sayings to follow in the next days.
THE GREAT PLAINS
