Wednesday, March 31st, 2004

"The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others."
So said that gifted artist – perhaps among the five most gifted in the history of humankind – and lonely man, Vincent Von Gogh, born on the 30th day of March (yesterday) in 1853, gone from the middle world in his thirties. Some say his life was a desperate search for love with few bright days – he condemned himself for whatever dark reason to being less than the "artist" be wanted to be because he could not find love.

'Tis not my problem, kola – if my little battle with this insidious invader, pancreatic cancer, which most lately has brought back a most curiously yellow condition, I have learned that nothing is so worthy of all one's energy and effort than accepting oneself and loving each other.

'Twas a long day's journey on Monday, day before yesterday (seems like more than a week) – from the comfort of my son's and Bobbi's home in Madison and the purring laziness of Mortimer and Oliver – to my appointment at the Midwestern Regional Medical Center, the Cancer Treatment Center and Dr. Robert Levin, chief oncologist, who continues to try to help me wrest weeks and months of useful passage here in the middle world. Aye, but what a glorious Sunday 'twas, what a grand and beautiful day! We arrived here by 10:00 A.M. for the preliminary stuff done before every session with the good Doc Levin – lots of blood drawn for tests from the arm, electrocardiogram, interviews with nutritionists and nurses about general health and welfare during the past week. I was eager to get on with things – for the afternoon wore on, and I wanted to join my lovin' spouse in that bastion of civility and the good life, the fabulous Hawthorne Suites across town

I new got there, for I was still more than the weest yellow-bellied – jaundiced from plugged bile ducts – with belly distended, general weakness, shortness of breath, and etc., etc., etc. Instead I was admitted here to the hospital facility to be treated – after a CAT Scan to determine just how plugged those vital little ducts of the bile were – and possible determine what the hell to do about it, anyway. One thing is certain – they're plugged enough so that body fluids isn't passing through – hence the distention of stomach that hasn't seen that much solid food. Next on the agenda was assignment to a room – a double, but I've had it to meself – right next to the nurse's station, so I get lots of attention. Since the gastroenterologist her at Zion is out of town, my crack team of caregivers had to wait to contact the group that sleeved the steel stents in my ducts up in Milwaukee last month. In the afternoon yesterday, about twenty-four hours after our arrival, I found myself on an operating table to have a hose stuck into the side of my belly to drain the fluid – I had sent my wife off at an office supply because I've not been about to connect to the Internet from this room – still can't, but I'm hoping to find a work around later this morning – so she was the weest surprised to see me return with a tube hanging out my side draining liquid – since then, 'tis drained gallons, and except for a sore side where the tube was inserted with a little help from a local anesthetic, I'm feeling quite a bit less full – on my other side, the antibiotics continue to pump, so getting up to go the bathroom is the weest bit of a challenge – grab the fluid bag, unhook the machine from the wall --- and get around the corner – asap. Now, in the thirty-sixth hour of all of this here at this fine facility, I'm feeling alive once more.

Aye, in fact, 'tis indeed the greatest days to be alive, aside from a few cramps caused, I'm told, by my stomach trying to readjust after its distention. Tomorrow, my lovin' spouse will join me in the back of an ambulance to take me up to Milwaukee where Dr. Olson will have a look at the situation and try to open the ducts from above – the old rotor-rooter routine – or from below – don't know yet how that works. One of the problems of staying alive so far beyond expectations is that I've effectively outlived the usefulness of the stents – and steel stents supposedly cannot be replaced. The other possibility is that the insidious invader has been more aggressive, getting inside the stents.

But all of that is this afternoon – and this is a morning's tale of the last day of March. I'm up and at 'em in the smallest hour of this morn trying to get connected over a phone line to the Internet – can't be done long enough to do anything – might as well string cans with strings to all of you I would greet this morning. Has to do with the load on the old phone system – not much oommmpf left when the signal goes out from one of these room – good enough for voice, but not for transmission of data. I haven't been able to send birthday greetings for the 30th of March to my darlin' niece Jessica Bleth, daughter of my lovin' spouse's sister Janet. Jessie turned four and twenty today – the age me own darling' daughter Gretchen will be a week or so. The two of them, along with my son, Albert, and his older cousin, Jay (Jessie's brother) spend a good deal of time together when they were youngsters – I have hours of wonderful (well, 'tis to us, of course) video of the four of them in constant action. Jessie graduates with a four-year degree in nursing from the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks this spring, so she's entering the great world beyond gloriously beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota, where 'tis gonna be a truly great one to be alive. With all apologies to the great physicians out there – nurses are the heart and soul of medicine that works – have been since Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale. Jessie, my dear, you're going to be a great one. I hope for you as you begin your twenty-fifth year joy on this, your 24th birthday, laughter, love and happiness as you pursue the greatest of professions in the footsteps of your ever-carin' mom. You're beauty and brains – but even more important, you have that carin' way of the kind I mean when I talk about "looking out for each other" and "watching out for your neighbor." Happy birthday, Jessie!

I also failed to note one of the greatest March 28 nights ever, the day forty-six years past that my big brother Jim married Lucille Bickel out in New Salem, some nineteen miles south of the heart of the heart of the universe in our home township, Hannover, in Oliver County. Jim, who will turn sixty-eight this next Sunday, was on his way to Korea back in 1956 when he and Lucille decided to hitch up as a team. 'Twasn't easy, because it was during Lent, and there weren't marriages during Lent because you couldn't rent a hall for the mandatory dance. But people who knew people – and a premium for the rental of the memorial hall, I suspect, prevailed, and there was a wedding in New Salem – not in the Missouri-Synod Lutheran in Hannover or New Salem which in 1956 certainly had a corner on the one true way to heaven – but in a more flexible (and friendly) church named the big church, both because of its size and number of congregates. I was sixteen that day – and I did indeed get at least a taste of redeye, that area drink made up of grain alcohol cut with burnt sugar. My father, who was not a drinker, had more than one – after all, I think he bought some of it to hand out, along with the obligatory keg of beer to get people going. There was a dinner – and then plenty of food for a huge lunch after the dance. Finally, we started for home – Dad, Mom, sisters Faye & Linda and I – with my brother's 48 Ford V8 flathead, bought from a Barchenger from Hannover. Jim and Lucille were given the family Chevy to have a brief honeymoon. Well, kola, 'twas a long, long nineteen miles. My father drove about three miles an hour, just off the ditch on the right side of the road. He wouldn't her of allowing me drive – or, God forbid! – my mother. Women didn't drive back from wedding dances. I had had my license for three years and knew the road by heart, because I had traveled it back and forth daily as a freshman attending New Salem High, home of the Holsteins (I transferred to Center, just six miles from Hannover, in my sophomore year. But my father would hear none of any of this. He was going to drive. I think we got home in time to milk the cows in the morning – barely. And I do know that it was a long, long time before I saw Dad take another alcoholic drink. And I do remember that my mother spoke up a bit on that long trip home. Something about it being longer than the 28th of March in 1942 when there was this great blizzard and my father had to hire men to shovel the car to New Salem so that Mom could catch a train to Bismarck to give birth to me in a hospital – Dad even had to put the men up in a New Salem motel that night.

March will leave North Dakota and April begin this weekend with just maybe a flake or two of snow during the some welcome rain. Don't need a whole lot more rain in North Dakota – flood up in Grafton. But 'tis spring – time to flood the world with good cheer, good will, and love. Take care of yourselves, kola – and do look out for each other.

Ev Albers

Monday, March 29th, 2004

Words for Today
"I keep my nose out of their business and mind my own - unless they need something."
So said my dear friend, Dorothy Goth Kubik, whose life will be celebrated this morning over in Dickinson on the edge of the badlands in beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota where 'twill be the grandest of days, for eighty-four-year-old Dorothy is free at last. I'll miss her down-home philosophy and sheer exuberance - I've missed it for years as she sunk deeper into a world we know as little about as death, the great mystery - the lonely world of the sufferer of Alzheimer's. Here's what my nephew, son of my lovin' spouse Leslie's sister, Janet, will say this morning on my behalf. It falls far short of what I remember of this extraordinary woman's giving nature:

Gramma Dorfy's Free at Last,

Her Spirit Will Live Forever

​This is a day to rejoice, for, indeed, free at last is the most loving and unselfish of mothers, grandmothers, wives - and a mother-in-law who proved wrong every joke ever made about the mother of our spouses. The breath left Dorothy Goth Kubik's body and a spirit imprisoned and bruised by the ravages of Alzheimer's this past week, and she passed peacefully into a place where she's certainly to be welcomed warmly by her husband Alfons, son Joe, mother and father and all those whose lives she touched so deeply and went beyond this world before her.

Her spirit will never die - her twinkling smiling eyes and lilting laughter that so delighted her children and grandchildren lives on in two great-grandchildren Tyler and Anna Louise and their children's children on into centuries to come. Gramma Dorfy, as so many of her grandchildren so lovingly called her as they were served up with another treat and encouraged to rattle those pots and pans in the bottom drawer of the stove from whence came thousands of meals. I didn't met this woman until 1975 - she was the youngest of fifty-six-year olds imaginable. She and her Alfons went for supper and dancing every Saturday night at the Eagles - followed by hamburgers and home around 1:30 in the morning. They danced every dance. A modest woman of great intelligence, a book reader, the nineteen-year-old miller's daughter, Dorothy, was teaching in a country school and boarding at the home of Alfons' parents up in Dunn County. Alfons' youngest brother Tony was keeping the fire going in the coal stove in the school - until one day older brother, Alfons, handsome, unmarried, and waiting for the perfect wife at age thirty-two, looked Dorothy over more than a few times and decided that he should really be handling the business of keeping the fire going. He started one - and won Dorothy's heart and loyalty; they married in 1939, began farming, moved to Dickinson with three children and one on the way - my dear spouse Leslie -- in the mid-1940s so those children who were the center of their lives could get the best possible education, There were two more children - six in all - all sent to college from Alfons' frugal farming and Dorothy's never-ending sacrifices. Then came the grandchildren - every one special, each lavished with love and praise by grandpa and gramma - fourteen in all. Every year, the latest photograph of each grandchild replaced last year's in a special frame. Gramma Dorfy was never bashful about talking about the accomplishments of her grandkids - I've watched in amazement as she began conversations with total strangers in a restaurant while on a trip and having them nod in astonishment as she spoke about her grandchildren.

In my sixty-two years, I have never met a more unselfish, completely giving woman than Dorothy Kubik. She changed my life, lifted my spirits, and welcomed me as son. We talked often of this and that - always, of course, about those grandkids - but also of books and ideas and those things that mattered most, after all was said and done. For Dorothy, it was giving - always giving. She brought Alfons back to life - literally - with a squeeze of his hand when he suffered a stroke the doctors said was the end. She rehabilitated him by playing cards every day - and Alfons returned for many a good year of enjoying her company and those precious grandchildren before his spirit - as hers would later - was submerged by that insidious Alzheimers. For years, Dorothy would go each day to the same nursing home where her spirit was released last week where she would sit by his side for almost ten years - knitting and talking. No wife in the history of humankind was more fiercely loyal than Dorothy.

Was she human? Of course - delightfully so. 'Tis no secret that she knew how to cuss, that she was the family enforcer and knew how to let her children know when they weren't exactly acting the way a Kubik kid ought. Among my favorite stories of Kubik family lore was the time those kids were left alone. There was a bit of madness - pillow fights that had feathers flying everywhere. The kids thought they had cleaned everything in a frantic effort to put things in order before the return of Dorothy and Alfons. Upon entering the living room, Dorothy looked immediately to the light fixture and plucked a single feather from the edge - she didn't have to say a word - her kids knew that she knew all.

But she never interfered with their lives - among her favorite sayings was, "I keep my nose out their business and mind my own." If they ever needed anything, however, they knew where to go, and she was ready to help them in anyway she could. She minded her own business until they needed help.

Gramma Dorfy will never leave us - especially those grandkids. Imagine her laughing and cooking while those kids tear around those entries to the kitchen from the living room, opening the bottom drawer of that kitchen stove and welcoming them to bang around her pots and pans, nodding in agreement as Alfons from the couch would say "Such a good boy, such a good girl." So what if a turkey is so overcooked that it collapses when it's finally taken out of the oven? Who cares if there's fifty turkey breasts in the freezer just in case?

We celebrate a spirit of the kind only the luckiest have ever called mom, gramma --or mother-in-law - and honor her by giving each other a small bit of what she gave everyday. Free at last, Gramma Dorfy - but you'll never leave us. The best of what we are is -- in no small part -- because of you.

That you would want me and Leslie to be about the business of staying alive and would understand why we can't be there to honor you is yet another indication of your giving spirit. Thank you to nephew, Jay Bleth, for offering my inadequate praise of your extraordinary life.

A better person because I knew you,
Son-in-Law Everett Albers
Husband of Dorothy's Daughter Leslie
Father of grandkids Albert and Gretchen

And I'm a far better person for knowing all of you, my dear kola. My life is sustained and continues almost entirely because of the love of friendship of family and folk of your extraordinary ilk - I do hope that you are taking the best possible care of yourselves - I know you are, because you're about the business of looking out for your neighbors. Be well - may it be as gorgeously beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful wherever you are as 'tis in Madison, Wisconsin this morn - from whence my lovin' spouse will sally us forth down to the Cancer Treatment Center of America and yet another shot at continued hope.

I would leave thee this morn with a bit of wisdom from that great voice for justice and peace, Holly Near - a song a friend reminded me of this weekend - it addresses the kind of world Dorothy believed in, for she was fiercely Democratic and unabashedly - and quite vocally - against war and violence caused by a group of old men sitting around and sending young women and men off to be killed. Her father came to this country to avoid the wars of Europe from Prussia. All five of his sons, Dorothy's brothers, served with great bravery in World War II - all five at the same time. Like John Kerry, none of them had much good to say about war - they weren't the kind of fellows to flash their Silver Stars. Only one sister and a brother still travel here in the middle world of that remarkable family of the Prussian miller and his Irish-Canadian-American wife, Bertha, who lived to be ninety-nine. I think Dorothy would say a loud "Amen" to Holly Near's song, "1000 Grandmothers"

Send in a thousand grandmothers
They will surely volunteer
With their ancient wisdom flowing
They will lend a loving ear
First they'll form a loving circle
Around the wounded wing
Then contain the brutal beasts of war
Sweet freedom songs they'll sing
A lullaby much stronger
Than bombs and threats to kill
A force unlike we've ever known
Will break the murderer's will
To the prisons we'll invite them
The most violent men will weep
When a thousand women hold them strong
And pray their souls to keep
Let them rock the few who steal the most
And rule with youthful charm
So they'll see the damage that they do
And will fall into grandma's arms
Two thousand loving arms
If you think these women are too soft
To face the world at hand
Then you've never known the power of love
And you fail to understand
An old woman holds a powerful force
When she no longer needs to please
She can cut your shallow lie to bits
And bring you to your knees
We best get down on our knees
And pray for a thousand grandmothers
Will you please come volunteer
No longer tucked deep out of sight
Will you bring your power here
Will you bring your power here

Available on Holly's CD Edge
© 1999 Hereford Music (ASCAP)
all rights reserved

That's what we need, kola - an uprising of the grandmothers of the world

Ev Albers

Sunday, March 28th, 2004

Words of Today
"I'm just tickled plum silly to be here, as pleased as punch."
Aye, what a beautiful day 'tis here in Madison with my son, Albert, his lovin' spouse, Bobbi, and my spouse here in Madison, Wisconsin – how I wish darlin' daughter Gretchen were here, but we just talked at length on the phone. Kola, I'm the luckiest of men who have ever lived with those lovin' kids and long-suffering spouse. 'Tis sunny, reasonably warm, and I'm feeling particularly fit, all things considered. I've already had a piece of great birthday cake – chocolate on cherries in a marvelous variation of a Black Forest done by my dear daughter-in-law Bobbi. A lazy morning – deliciously so. Even the powers that be – those who must be obeyed, Mortimer and Oliver the cats, who are in fighting trim these days – they sit around and supervise cooking and all else that passes beneath their purview. A bit of egg, the weest little bit of sausage, a little caramel roll – aye, a grand breakfast that, for me, rivals the kind of pig-out the Irish expect every day – and tourists are served as a matter of course. After watching the Irish eat back in the fall of 2000 on a trip to visit our darlin' daughter at Galway, I'm still wondering how they managed to eat more than that morning meal. One of those meals are probably sustaining me more than three and one-half years later.

Most remarkable happening this day – resting up after the long trip from a very fruitful and stimulating meeting of the North Dakota Humanities Council in Grand Forks to this bastion of a bit more laid-back attitude ('tis the cats, methinks) – the oldest of those who rule this roost, Mortimer, curled on my lap in genuine affection – usually he scorns me. He's giving me special treatment today, as are my dearest son and daughter-in-law and my spouse, for I've made to age sixty-two – at least a year beyond the time that I'm supposed to be ambulatory and reasonably alive here in this middle world. That's why I've quoted – more of less – the ever-enthusiastic Hubert Humphrey on this fine day – who wouldn't be "tickled plum silly" and "pleased as punch." So I'm gonna play this day for all it's worth – rather shamelessly, I fear – ain't gonna move unless I feel like, gonna drift off to a nap whenever I wish, read if I feel like it – what I won't do is indulge in any corn on the cob or spicy wurst as I did a week or so ago to great discomfort. But you can bet that I'm gonna have another wee slice of that wondrous Bobbi Hermanson-Albers-concocted cake, scratch Morty between the ears, write my daughter e-mail, and let my family here know how much I love them.

'Tis almost inconceivable that my dear children – Gretchen and Albert – are so absolutely sweet and dear – and how easy it has become for all of us to express how much we love each other. I truly don't deserve it, I know – for there's so much more I could have done for them – and learning how to accept such unconditional love has been one of the great lessons of this past year. Family becomes all-important – along with friends, and then meaningful work.

Would that we could all be with my spouse's family as they prepare to say good-bye to Leslie's Mom, Dorothy, tomorrow in Dickinson – and how wonderfully loving they have all been about insisting that I – and my sustaining force, Leslie – keep the appointment at the Cancer Treatment Center of America tomorrow at Zion – and her brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, have all let me know. Gonna stay alive to return with our entire family to Dickinson later this year for a visit – and Leslie did have a chance to say good-bye about a week before her Mom finally succumbed to years of the ravages of that savage insidious invader, Alzheimer's. Tomorrow, I'll post a modest tribute that my nephew Jay Bleth will read for me and my family at that funeral tomorrow morning.

Among the treats I'm indulging in today is reading a reprint of the magnificent Wendell Berry's 1983 A Place on Earth -- some of the earliest stories of those fabled folk of Berry's town that is more real, peopled by more intensely alive folk – than a real place – Port William. Aye, what a treat it is. He "tickles me plum silly." And I'm "as pleased as punch" (not really sure what that means) with your incredible love, friendship, and support, my dear kola. I hope that this day is as beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful wherever you are as 'tis here – and I know it must be in glorious Dakota this fine day. Do take care of yourselves – and do look out for each other – if you treat others as you do me, kola, there may never be strife and war again in the history of humankind.

Ev Albers

Friday, March 26th, 2004

Words for Today
"The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise."

​So said Robert Frost, American poet born on this day in 1874, a major poetic voice by the turn of the twentieth century, he lived on to 1963. I was reminded of his hard-won wisdom this glorious beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota as I was privileged to once again watch the people charged with public humanities in North Dakota in action -- those volunteers who serve on the North Dakota Humanities Council which I have tried to serve for more than thirty years. We had tough decisions – a stiff competition for the five fellowships we award each year for research leading to public presentation; there were nineteen excellent applicants. There were requests for more double would we could judiciously award to public projects asking for matching support – from the Dakota Datebook which runs several times a day on North Dakota Public Radio with three-minute features about people and events from our past to ambitious seminars on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. One of the things that makes my life so precious is coming together with these friends – and there have been nearly two hundred who have served on the governing board of the nonprofit humanities council over the last thirty years. They make our periodic meetings the greatest of days to be alive: I salute them all. All come to subscribe to Frost's philosophy – let us disagree – with civility and good humor, grace and an earnest search for compromise. They have been the very best of kola – that special friend we all treasure, and they continue to teach me the nature of grace, for they have supported me personally far in excess of anything I deserve. Most important is their unyielding commitment to the mission of bringing the humanities to as many North Dakotans as possible and their allegiance to the notion that the humanities belong to all citizens in a social compact, not just a privileged few. Thank you, dear kola, thank you.

Aye, 'tis a grand day – a day to be reminded just how fortunate I am, how much I owe to so many. We North Dakotans are generally folks of considerable independence, people that prize their individuality. In a Frostian sense, we are highly civilized – 'tis Frost who said, "A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity." No few of those who most enjoy the programs the Humanities Council supports are eccentric – almost crazy in the sanest way – and civil and polite to a fault.

If you want a flavor of North Dakota heritage and culture, I urge you to visit the the online scripts and the sound files -- check it out here. You'll find everything from the origin of lutefisk – considered by the crazier of Dakotans a delicacy (under March 17) to the stories of such the Strasburg Superstar Mylo Hatzenbuhler, the creation of professional musician Clyde Bauman and biographies of native sons and daughters of the ilk of Louis L'Amour and Lawrence Welk. There have been, in the short three months of programs, offered excellent glimpses into the great civilization that thrived here in Dakota long before Lewis and Clark arrived at the center of that great social compact, the Indian village tribes of the Upper Missouri, including the Mandan – for example, the feature on the difficulty of getting the Mandan chief Sheheke home from Washington, D.C. – he went back with Lewis and Clark to visit the nation's capital with wife. 'Tis a grand achievement for a very modest budget – here's a sample from the one on Mylo Hatzenbuhler:

Ladies and Gentlemen... Mylo Hatzenbuhler!
Yesterday was the 10-year anniversary of the debut of “I’m Big-Time Now!” a CD by Mylo Hatzenbuhler – who is known to his followers as the “Strasburg Superstar.”

Mylo is a “fourth-generation fictional farm-boy who lives with his fictional wife and family on a farm – as he puts it, “eight miles east of Strasburg and a half.” Mylo and his wife, Emma, are the creations of Clyde Bauman, a professional musician and entertainer from Bismarck.

Mylo Hatzenbuhler was born on a hot day in August to Alma and Reinie Hatzenbuhler, the second of five children. He says that he grew up just a normal, humble farm kid until that fateful day: “The news came over the school loudspeaker,” Mylo says, “that Elvis Parsley had died. I was only 15 at the time, but I remember like it was yesterday; I turned to my 5th-grade teacher and said, ‘The world needs me.’”

Since that day, Mylo has, as he puts it, “gone on to extinguish myself in the musical world.” He has successfully juggled farming, his rock star career and his marriage to Emma Schwartzenbauer-Hatzenbuhler. So far, the couple has appeared in 17 states and performs throughout the year, except during calving season, when the cows need Emma’s womanly touch.

Mylo says they are both 100% German from Russia. In Mylo’s own words, he says, “In the spring of 1910, my great-grandparents came to this country on a boat, went to the Statue of Liberty and got made natural, then got on another boat and sailed up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, where they bought a covered wagon and went north with the other Germans in the group. They went as far as they could,” Mylo continues, “and when the weather turned that fall, that’s where they stopped and stayed. They turned the wagon upside-down and heaped dirt up around it for insulation (because fiberglass doesn't grow in North Dakota), cut a hole in the floor for the stovepipe, and that was their home their first winter in North Dakota.”

Mylo met Emma at a concert he was giving in Hot Springs, South Dakota.

It was love at first sight, and, as Mylo puts it, “I knew she was the one for me. Now we've been married for twenty years – ten for me, ten for her.”

Of Hatzenbuhler’s daughter, Mylo says, “We named her Beulah, because I gave a concert in Beulah the night she was born. It was good timing, because the night before, I was in Zap.”

Mylo has a very busy schedule, saying, “I'm so busy that wherever I go, someone wants me somewhere else.” At his last event, he said, “The promoters must be anxious to see how I did, because they said they can’t wait for me to get done.”

Now, in celebration of Mylo’s debut 10 years ago, here’s another selection from his CD.

For Mylo’s upcoming performances, go to www.farmboy.com.

There's a marvelous unpretentiousness about Dakotans – our greatest strength, methinks. 'Tis also the finest of places to come visit – I urge you all to get here as soon as possible. In fact, there's been a bit of pause in the enormous pressure of those seeking Frostian civilization storming our borders – so if you're just the weest bit crazy, consider making your visit sooner instead of later.

Do hope you are taking the best possible care of yourselves – and looking out for your neighbors, especially the eccentrics among us.

Ev Albers

Thursday, March 25th, 2004

Words for Today
"Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies."
'Tis a gloriously sunny morning with just the weest bit of fog and haze this morning in Grand Forks on the Minnesota border up in northern beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota. Temperatures soared to seventy above in Bismarck as my lovin' spouse drove us here to hear the great North Dakota writer Louise Erdrich last night at the 35th Annual Writers' Conference last night - we here for the spring meeting of the great folks I work for, the North Dakota Humanities Council. 'Twas a busy morning yesterday, and I was bereft of my connection to the Internet at home - the Monet folks who offered wireless Internet in Bismarck, Grand Forks, Fargo, Sioux Falls, SD, and Eau Claire, WI went broke - how dare they! So I was not able to write in my journal yesterday - or didn't find the time. Then, early this morning, I found that the server in my office had been attacked by unknown invaders - so it automatically shuts down service.

As I write this morning on Thursday, March 25, 2004, one of my dearest friends, my lovin' spouse's mother Dorothy Kubik, lies dying in earnest in a Dickinson nursing home - she has lived with only a hook-up to oxygen since last Saturday - and dear sister-in-law Janet says that she is comfortable enough - she doesn't seem to suffering. Would that we could be there - even though Dorothy hasn't been with us for a good long while - she's been in the last states of Alzheimer's, and 'tis now at the point where she does not swallow food and will forget breath.

Her day of peace - should it come today or tomorrow -- is, in many ways, a day of happiness, a day of release from imprisonment within herself - and I imagine that all those loved ones who went before well may be helping her right now as she begins the final hours of her passage here in the middle world - including her beloved Alfons, for whom she cared for during his own long years with Alzheimer's. Our words for today belong to Erich Fromm, born in 1900 a couple of days ago, on March 23 - he lived on to 1980. Dorothy lived, breathed, and enjoyed each day for its simple joys each day of her eighty-four years , even those she spent not remembering exactly who she was - she embraced life and its smallest gifts with a sheer joy and an unselfish urge to share whatever she had. In fact, I'll always remember Dorothy as the most giving, unselfish person I've ever met. She raised six children - clothing her three girls from her sewing machine - canning, freezing, and cooking up a storm. Her pride in the accomplishments of her children and grandchildren was immense - and always offered with wonderment that all turned out so well.

'Twill be two years past this April that her youngest son, brother Joe, left us at such a tender age - I don't think that she ever knew he left this middle world - his indomitable spirit awaits hers - what a marvelous surprise! So, although my heart is heavy - for I love Dorothy deeply, as I do her children, especially my loving spouse, 'twill also be lightened knowing that she will be free at last.

'Tis a good day to enjoy the fresh air, my kola - 'tis spring - and 'tis time to embrace life even as we recognize our mortality. Do take care of yourselves - and look out for each other, dear kola - as Dorothy Goth Kubik did just as long as she was able.

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2004

Words for Today
"Give me liberty or give me death."
Twas in quite a different context that Patrick Henry delivered his famous oration back on this very day in 1775. He wanted to overthrow the British. All day this gloriously beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful one in Dakota I've been begging for liberty from a general funkiness - nausea, chills, and unseemly malaise for such a fine spring day - brought on by myself, methinks, because in mistaken belief that the general absence of major revolt from my digestive tract I could tackle a bit of sausage and corn on the cob. My lovin' spouse was gone, you see - visiting her dying mother over in Dickinson, where she, one of the great souls who have ever passed through this middle world - wrestles with the last stages of Alzheimer's - no longer able to eat. In a "What the hell moment" of temporary insanity, I downed a German wurst followed by a couple of ears of corn, which I lavishly buttered. 'Twas almost as though I was saying, well, you old battered pancreas with the collapsed bile ducts, see what you can do with this!"

Plenty - They said they would show me, and they did - most restless night I've had in a good long while - and one of a good while, as well. Mein Gott, I found myself dividing into different beings and coming back together again badly - and the there was this machinery at hand to help the process along. All the while, however, I carried this discomfort - coming close to pain - at the enter of my being - until I would awake and spend minutes reorienting to a glorious Dakota night and managing to allow escape of that which bloated and, probably, precluded my reintegration. I've decided, kola, to make the best of my mistake - all but the part of with dealing with the fact that he would never have happened had my lovin' spouse been there - she would have found a way to talk me out of it, even though I would have probably been less than kind for here kindness. The best is to lock myself here in my office until the thunder and lightning of what the sausage and corn created along with my gasps for twelve hours passes - I'll listen for a new melody, that's what I'll do.

Today, getting some things accomplished at my desk, I await satori, that moment when the omnipresence of my body and my consciousness of it allows me a hum a song in total immersion, entertain a phantom of delight in a daydream, or take a quick nap without insistent badgering spiritual creditors. In the meantime, no more sausage or corn on the cob for the weest.

No jewel of profundity lurks the consumption of sausage and corn on the cob - I know that now.

Ev Albers

Monday, March 22nd, 2004

"Words for Today
"The Lord has just blessed him. I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him. I think Bush is going to win in a walk."
So said millionaire televangelist Pat Robertson on the 700 Club of the Christian Broadcasting Network recently - along with his conviction that President George W. Bush would be reelected to the presidency in a walk. Worth some 140 million dollars, the man who turns seventy-four this very day owns the Ice Capades, diamond mines, and has money in banks everywhere. Yet he's on television daily begging for money from widows on fixed income and those who cannot afford health insurance. Old Pat doesn't miss a bet - he's in on all the latest crazes with another money-making scam, ready to tap the true believers for every cent they have. The man has no conscience, as far as I can tell - and he's aligned himself with the Republican Party whom he continues to influence far beyond anything that is either seemly - that may, indeed, be unconstitutional. He's absolutely shameless, and age has brought him more craftiness in his effort to recreate our social compact in his image. There's still many a North Dakotan who sends along $417 a month as members of the 700 Club Founder's Club. Membership in the 700 club continues at $20/month - but you can be sure that you'll get a reminder if the check doesn't arrive on time. Pat will happily sell you his age-defying protein pancake, he'll give you complete information about preventing Alzheimer's, and he'll help you get out of debt (a plan that includes giving to the 700 Club).

Pat Robertson has never recanted a single one of his outrageous statements on everything from feminism to the role of Christianity in the founding of this country. Millions believe this consummate liar when he looks into the camera and says, " The founding document of the United States of America acknowledges the Lordship of Jesus Christ because we are a Christian nation." Nothing could be less true - the founding generation had the deepest of distrust of Christianity and consciously built a wall between church and state. At Pat's elaborate web site, you'll find answers to questions where he exposes himself as a bigot beyond redemption -- go here, if you have the stomach for it. For example, Pat's staff puts up the question from a listener

Here's a sample from the 700 Club Web Site
A LISTENER ASKED, About five years ago, I came out to the rest of the world as a lesbian. I am in a committed relationship with another woman. I don't understand why you say that homosexuality is wrong. Isn't my happiness the most important thing? Isn't that what God wants? I think that is what matters, not telling people what is right and wrong.

PAT ROBERTSON'S ANSWER:

I didn't write the Bible. I really didn't. The Bible was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by wonderful men like the Apostle Paul, like Moses, people like that, very highly respected people, and right down the line, they said that homosexuality is an abomination to God. The Apostle Paul said that nobody who is a homosexual is going to get into heaven. That doesn't mean you have a tendency. It didn't say nobody with homosexual tendencies is going to miss getting into heaven.

People who are practicing homosexuals or lesbians, this is an unnatural relationship. There is no way in a "committed lesbian relationship" that you are going to conceive a baby. If two lesbians conceive a baby without the help of something else, I will admit on this program that I am wrong. But they haven't done it so far; nor have two homosexuals. It is unnatural.

Now, you say 'Doesn't God want me to be happy?' Well, this may be happiness for you now, but what is going to happen is when you die, you are going to hell (see 1 Corinthians 6:9-10). I don't want to overstate it, but that is what the Bible says: You shall not enter the kingdom of heaven, you shall not go to spend an eternity with God, and you will spend an eternity away from Him. God loves you, but He says that you cannot do something He says is an abomination and is wrong. It is just that simple. He made sex to be enjoyed, but he made it in the confines of marriage between heterosexual people, partially for the propagation of the race and the nurture and the admonition of the young. That's what it is there for.

God is not there to make us happy. Sure it is a misconception. God is there to show us what is right. What He says to do will make us happy. If we follow His principles about finance, about sex, about marriage, about love, about commitment, about all the other good things that He says, if we keep His commandments, we will be happy. It will bring us happiness. But happiness is never going to come if we do something that is sinful because He will not give you the witness of the Holy Spirit in your heart that you are doing something right. You won't have it. You won't know the overwhelming joy. The Apostle Peter talked about 'joy unspeakable and full of glory' (1 Peter 1:8). That comes about through fulfilling the plan of God and having the power of the Holy Spirit moving in your life and knowing when you die that you are going to heaven.
End excerpt from 700 Club Web Site

On this day in history, back in 1972, remarkably enough, the Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment by a vote of 84-4. The vote would have banned all discrimination against women. The bill was not ratified - in the decades following, folks of the ilk of Pat Robertson launched an all-out campaign against the very notion that women and men should be treated exactly the same in this country. There were fear mongers circulating warnings that women would be drafted and raped in war, that the amendment would destroy families. After all, hadn't St. Paul himself pointed that women were to be subject to the will and power of their husbands? The very notion was unChristian. Said our friend, the master of hype, the fear-mongering war hawk Pat Robertson,

Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

Perhaps the easiest way to minimize the influence of such self-righteous, self-serving opportunists who latch on to people's thirst for spiritual values is to simply allow the ilk of Pat Robertson to say as much as possible as often as possible - for much of what he offers is so outrageous that not even the true believer can swallow some of it.

"The mission of the Christian Coalition is simple," says Pat Robertson. It is "to mobilize Christians -- one precinct at a time, one community at a time -- until once again we are the head and not the tail, and at the top rather than the bottom of our political system." Robertson predicts that "the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful political force in America by the end of this decade." And, "We have enough votes to run this country...and when the people say, 'We've had enough,' we're going to take over!"

It is interesting, that termites don't build things, and the great builders of our nation almost to a man have been Christians, because Christians have the desire to build something. He is motivated by love of man and God, so he builds. The people who have come into (our) institutions (today) are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians, whether it is universities, governments, our own traditions, that we have. .  .  . The termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly fumigation.

[on teaching children planned parenthood] It is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism-everything that the Bible condemns.

[on the role of people who may hold beliefs other than Christianity of Judaism in government] If anybody understood what Hindus really believe, there would be no doubt that they have no business administering government policies in a country that favors freedom and equality. . . . Can you imagine having the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as defense minister, or Mahatma Gandhi as minister of health, education, and welfare? The Hindu and Buddhist idea of karma and the Muslim idea of kismet, or fate condemn the poor and the disabled to their suffering. . . . It's the will of Allah. These beliefs are nothing but abject fatalism, and they would devastate the social gains this nation has made if they were ever put into practice.

​Pat Robertson remains a major force in our society - and is taken quite seriously by the current administration. I feel deeply sad for the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Dakotans who turn into that broadcast of hate and intolerance under the guise of Christian love. Pat's not alone in preying upon the most lonely and vulnerable among Americans - it's done by a host of ministers and priests every single day throughout the country. 'Tis far too beautiful a day to give Pat much more than our disdain - and our thanks to whatever gods and goddesses may be that his fervent prayers that millions die so Americans can be safe go unanswered. I don't mean to wish less than the best for all fellow travelers here in the middle world, but I do hope another year will bring Pat Robertson to some sort of realization that his legacy will be one of encouraging folks to miss a meal or two in order to support his hatred. I trust that you, my kola, are taking care of yourselves - if you're sending Pat Robertson money, reconsider - and reconsider all those who demand that you kill folks for their own good and hate those who disagree with you.

Ev Albers

Sunday, March 21st, 2004

Words for Today
"There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself."
So said today's birthday boy, Johannes Sebastian Bach, born on this day in 1685 in Germany. Better known and respected as a musician (organ and harpsichord) in his time, not too many people really liked him or his music while he made his passage here in the middle world. The parishioners of the church where he played organ complained rather mightily that they had problems singing the hymns because Bach was always playing variations on the melody - just couldn't leave well enough alone. These were tough Lutherans, of course - Bach traced his ancestry back to his great-grandfather Viet Bach who was a Lutheran miller. Viet played his cittern while the mill was grinding away. Bach was always fuguing around - no one could compose a better fugue than a Bach. He was also, apparently, a good father and husband - he fathered twenty, ten of whom lived to become adults. Some might say that bringing twenty people into the world you couldn't feed was less than responsible - but this was the early eighteenth century. He left his wife Anna Magdalena when he completed his passage in the middle world on July 28, 1750. She was given a pauper's funeral when she died in 1760. It was would take decades - more than fifty years -- for his music to take off - by then, none of his family realized any money from his remarkable achievements.

Back in the early 1970s, Switched-on Bach, the composer played on the synthesizers, were all the rage - the music is still around, and 'tis grand, kola, 'tis grand - fact is, there's a Switched-on Bach 2000 that's incredible in surround sound. Bach would have loved it, methinks. If you don't dig "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," you have a hole in your soul, kola - 'tis tantamount to not liking "God Bless America," recorded on this day by Kate Smith in 1939. Today is also New Year's Day in Persian culture - celebrated in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. And 'tis the birthday of my lovin' spouse Leslie's and my friend Ginny, aka Virginia Tisdale Adamski Miller, who now hails from the St. Paul area over in Minnesota. Longtime friend of Leslie, Ginny has become mine as well - few days past that she doesn't send along a bit of cheer to help me on my passage through the less-than-great days. Here's a big gulp of grape juice in honor of your birthday, Ginny. Live as long as you wish, may you find joy and laughter this day - all the days of your life - and may you continue to rant at political chicanery and social injustice wherever your find it. Here' a poem from Rumi, the great Persian poet of the early fourteenth century, in your honor - and in celebration of Persian New Year's:

Where Everything is Music

Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into the place
Where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world's harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out,
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

The signing art is sea foam.
The grace movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor,

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwllk long the beach, wanting!

They derive
From a slow and powerful root
That we can't see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest
and let the spirits fly in and out.

Fact is, not having the instruments at hand cannot stop the music, and there's a bit of Bach in all of us - just a matter of pressing the right keys at the right time. 'Twill go round and round in our head of if we're not actually humming a few bars and strumming something - but I'm all for joining the choir and doing something like Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Mind's Desiring" together with fellow travelers in the middle worlds - hell, do it if even they aren't all Lutherans.

What a grand afternoon yesterday after at Moorhead - not too many fold showed up for the first annual Book Fair - think we sold a total of four books - but I met good friends and visited - good kola Jane Ahlin dropped over - she and her lovin' spouse Tom had just returned from Ellendale down the South Dakota border, north of Aberdeen, to celebrate Jane's parents sixtieth wedding anniversary - her father and mother are both eighty-four and in pretty reasonable fettle. Jane writes a delightful column for the Fargo Forum and teaches English over at Moorhead - she and her physician husband live over in Fargo. A half-hour visiting with Jane Ahlin can uplift a fellow for hours - she has the most infectious laugh and among the most insightful conclusions about the outrageous self-serving nature of politicians she less than admires --- and, a truly wicked but most instructive . In both speech and the written word, Jane often soars to the best of satire, which leaves the reader squirming the outrageousness of what humans are doing to other humans in apparent good conscious.

Just before we we leaving, friend Maureen Kelly Jonason, wife of my old friend Marty Jonason from over in Dickinson, teacher at Concordia College, and recent Ph.D. from the University of North Dakota came by to say hello -- Maureen worked at West Acres a few years back, and she coordinated a pretty successful residency of the Great Plains Chautauqua Society there. She's currently helping Dawn Morgan of the Spirit Room in Fargo in mounting another tribute to OMF Thomas Matthew McGrath on May 1 of this year -- working toward ongoing recognition of Dakota's greatest gift to the millennia. Hope I'll be in find enough fettle to help Dawn and Maureen out a bit with such a grand endeavor. Earlier in the afternoon yesterday, a handsome fellow came up to introduced himself to me - mein Gott! 'twas Gary Ganser, my first college roommate. 'Twas back in the fall of 1960 that we found ourselves together in the corner room on the first floor of East Hall on the campus of the University of North Dakota. He hailed from Bismarck. Our room - a tiny cubbyhole, was next to the stairs, the phone booth, and across from what everyone referred to the "crapper" in some sort of Australian affection. The room was a hell-hole - drunken students crashing through our front door with toilet seats over their head in the middle of the night, screaming calls from the telephone booth, and constant traffic - one could hear every conversation in that three-story warehouse of freshmen male bodies assigned small areas behind card-board thin walls and doors. We were several blocks east of the library and classrooms - past the stadium and the open areas before the Student Union. No one was sure what went on behind the walls of the stadium towers, the ends where there were a few rooms - they were turned over to the hockey players, Canadians, mostly, we didn't follow the same rules everyone else did. They were special - as much, perhaps, because of their lifestyle, for they had learned the ways of the professional athlete at tender ages when they played junior hockey. They were also special because they were integral to UND's claim to national fame as a first-rank collegiate hockey team. But I digress.

Gary and I enjoyed each other - in spite of our quirks - Gary, I remember, had something like forty pairs of shoes, which consumed a good deal of space in his part of our small area - and I was truly grateful that Gary had wheels, so I got home once in a while. We both found a way out of East Hall - I remember I had to go all the way to President Starcher to convince him that the place was not conducive to any sort of mental balance - after spending a half-hour trying to get me to stay and try to change things, I left. Gary told me yesterday that he left for the ATO fraternity - where conditions made those of East Hall seem like a fully staffed four-star hotel. I went to the Gamma Delta House, an old fraternity bought by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, where I met the Reverend Elmer Yohr and spent a long semester playing bridge at every possible moment. But Gary and I remembered some of those great characters we met - a young African American Kossuth Thomas of Mississippi, who would play and sing Fats Domino in the basement of East Hall for us - Kossuth left the middle world at a very early age. He and his Jamaican roommate, a huge man with that peculiarly cultivated English accent of the Caribbean - they open more windows on the rest of the world and into the rich heritage of folks neither Gary nor I had ever met or thought much about - in some ways, meeting Gary and those few sane folk at East Hall who were sober or sane enough to talk with was among the most valuable parts of my first year of college.

As I told my friend and mentor Jerry Tweton yesterday - Jerry's responsible for the series The Way It Was: The North Dakota Frontier Experience, the six books based on Dakotans' stories gathered in the 1930s among the area's first settlers. He graciously allowed me to have a role in the press we established, The Grass Roots Press - and next week, the series will be completed with the publication of The Townspeople -- we were in Fargo to talk about the book and the series. Both of us were initiated into the world of serious history - Jerry kept with it, I flirted with medicine and gradually drifted to literature - we both took our first class in history from the late, great Robert Wilkins. Jerry's a bit more than decade older than I - but Professor Wilkins hadn't changed in those ten years. On the first day of class, Wilkins connected each young North Dakotan to place - he had researched the newspapers of our hometowns and counties and told us a bit of what happened of significance to the place we grew up. He encouraged us to do the same - as often as we could - and began introducing us to research on the very first day of class. Wilkins know most everything about history, it seems to me from the perspective of some forty-four years later - and he fully expected his students to learn everything he knew and more. I'll never forget the first test he hand back - 'twas the lowest grade I had every received in my life, a 67 - barely a C. I was absolutely despondent. Dr. Wilkins came around the room, leaned over my desk with his hand on my shoulder, and said in something of a cultivated English accent, "Mr. Albers, Mr. Albers, take heart! That's the highest grade I've given on this test in three years!" In some ways, my A- in Robert Wilkins' history class is the greatest achievement of my academic career. Ah, what memories are evoked by seeing old friends - thank you, Gary, for stopping by - I hope to see you soon. Who knows how many layers of fogs hiding the moments we experienced forty-some years past. Heady times - most of which I missed - too much bridge (haven't played seriously since), too many repetitions of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nacht Musik" playing while hand after hand of bridge was dissected - I wish that Gary and I had spent some more time, that I would have sought out and learned more from Kossuth Thomas, and that I would have spent a few more hours with Robert Wilkins - although later, after I became the servant of the North Dakota Humanities Council in the early 1970s - I was privileged to get to know both Robert and his wife Wynona in our work in public humanities in the state. Here's a big swig of Strawberry Breeze in their memory.

I've lolly-gagged this morning - arose early, meandered around the Internet, and began my journal - then succumbed to a great weariness which took me back to bed for a few hours - rest from a wondrously beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful day yesterday, rest to enjoy that which remains in this grand one in Dakota. My lovin' spouse and I did return from Fargo in time to drop in at Meriwether's to wish our friends Lillian and Jim congratulations on their love and their joining their forces in quest of life worth living - 'twas most uplifting to see two so radiantly happy.

'Tis a day to be grateful to be alive - I'm sustained with a couple of great Leslie apple crepes and an egg, a Prosure, and enough of the pills to be able to sit and read and then work a bit without constant interruption on this quiet spring afternoon here on Arthur Drive. Maybe I'll even find out what March Madness and the Final Four is all about this year - tomorrow, more comprehensive blood tests - hoping for levels high enough to have me in the greatest shape for another go-around at Zion's Cancer Treatment Center of America a week from Monday. Hoping for weeks sans chills, too much fatigue, or plugged bile duct stents - 'tis spring, and there's work to be one. For one thing, someone has to watch those migratory ducks and geese head north. Be well, my dear kola, all you who make may life worth living - and take care of yourselves - hope 'tis a bright and sunny wherever you are as 'tis here - hope your day is fantastic, Ginny Tisdale --

Ev Albers

Saturday, March 20th, 2004

Words for Today
"Deep within us - no matter who we are - there lives a feeling of wanting to be lovable, of wanting to be the kind of persons that others like to be with. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving."
The words belong to Fred Rogers, born on this day in 1928 - he completed his passage about three weeks shy of his seventy-five birthday a year ago February 27, in 2003. My friend in Seattle, sent me a copy of The World According to Mr. Rogers: Important Things to Remember a few months back - 'tis a treasure of observations about those things that really make a difference in our passage here in the middle world. Rogers' birthday falls on the vernal equinox, the first day of spring, which came to Arthur Drive this morning at eleven minutes before 1:00 A.M. (CST). Almost always, spring comes on March 20.

Whether or not 'this Spring in the sense of much warmer weather and trees budding and the world beginning anew is not always true - we've had some mighty blizzards on March 20 in beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota, where 'twill continue to be windy and cool - with temperatures rising above freezing - for the coming week. But 'tis the vernal equinox - day when the Great Sphinx of Egypt looks directly at the rising sun, day when nights and days are equal, day when the sun beats down directly on the equator. On this day, dear friends Lillian Crook and Jim Fuglie, who have found spring in their love for each other, are marrying at the Knife River Indian Villages upriver the weest from Bismarck --the villages are just up the Knife River from its confluence with the Missouri, the place where Lewis and Clark wintered in 1804-1805. Later this year, Lillian and Jim will celebrate with friends their union at a summer solstice event out in the gorgeous Dakota badlands both love so much. Lillian is the librarian at Dickinson State University and a member of the North Dakota Humanities Council. Jim is retiring young from an advertising firm - after a career of newspaper reporting, working for the Democratic Party, and directing the business of attracting tourists to the state as the director of tourism for the state of North Dakota. Lillian and Jim found each other a bit later in life - and 'tis wondrous to behold how much their union gives them happiness and allows them to share even more of themselves and their happiness with the rest of the world. I'm reminded of a song I wrote for my lovin' spouse back when we met some thirty years past:

This song has waited for ten thousand years and maybe more,
Wandering in the winter moonlight,
wandering in the cold starlight
Waiting for the time and place
The moment when I'd see your face
And love would come for us again
Spring would come for us again
And I would sing this song of love again for you
I would sing for you.

My spouse and I salute you this grand day, Lillian and Jim - and Lillian's delightful twin teenagers, Rachel and Chelsea. Live long and happily, find the perfect place to settle down in western North Dakota. May your days be filled with laughter and love, music and harmony.

Last night while checking the news (actually, I was interested in the basketball scores), I happened about CNN News' Wolf Blitzer (love that name) interviewing mogul Donald Trump. Asked about his philosophy of life, Trump replied with something like, "Life is time you spend waiting to die. The key to happiness is enjoying life every minute. If you don't enjoy what you're doing or don't enjoy your work, all the money in the world is meaningless. Enjoy." While it may indeed be a bit easier to enjoy life with a few million dollars in the bank, it doesn't always happen that way. Today is the birthday (1823) of the man who made a good piece of change by writing about the American West. Called the "dime millionaire," Ned Buntline "discovered" Buffalo Bill Cody (and gave him the nickname "Buffalo Bill," although Cody denied it) and wrote a dime novel about him in his unwavering quest to make as much money as possible - his goal in life. The book by the Easterner Buntline, born in Connecticut and working out of New York at the time he went to San Francisco on a trip, was called The Scout of the Plains. Following its publication and terrific sales, Bunline turned it into a play in 1872, which he produced in Chicago - he even convinced Cody to act in it. Buffalo Bill was a bad actor, but his presence and name brought in hordes of people, and both made a good deal of money. Many of Cody's exploits in the book were made up out of whole cloth - but the public didn't mind Bunline's exaggerations. He and Buffalo Bill parted ways, but the fame created by Bunline made it possible for Cody to mount his successful Wild West Shows. The writer of some 400 novels and countless short stores died at age sixty-three in Connecticut. A shameless womanizer (he married seven times) who nearly died by hanging when the angry townspeople of a place where he killed the jealous husband of a woman he tried to seduce, Bunline was saved by friends who cut him down from an awning in the town square before he strangled to death and got him out of town in 1846. There's no evidence that Bunline reformed. Nor was he ever happy with what he wrote. He said, "I found that to make a living I must write 'trash' for the masses, for he who endeavors to write for the critical few, and do his genius justice, will go hungry if he has no other means of support." All things considered, Buntline was probably less than a happy fellow - in spite of his fame and success at making money. The Donald Trump would conclude that he pretty much wasted his life.

What Ned Buntline didn't have was any kind of committed relationship with a good woman - almost always a condition that leaves a man less than happy. Lillian and Jim are happy in no small part because they like dancing in the kitchen - a rubric used by Therese Yeaton, who sent along the Mr. Rogers' book, used for his favorite music that she passed along to the webboard where my kola come to share music and ideas. Jim says the best dancing in the kitchen music is Dakota's own Chuck Suchy's "Dancin' in the Kitchen" from the Mandan farmer's album, Different Line of Time. Lillian lists the Suchy album as one of her top five favorite CDs as well. Now that's harmony, kola.

Don't think that my lovin' spouse and I will get back from Fargo in time to wander on down to Meriwether's, a restaurant down on the Missouri a mile or so from here. Lillian and Jim will be gathered with friends to listen to Chuck's son Ben Suchy perform - but we'll be there in spirit. We're going to Fargo, two hundred miles down the Interstate to the east, to join my friend Jerry Tweton to read a few selections from our completed The Way It Was series - the sixth and final volume is coming out next week. The books are collections of the stories of the original homesteaders to North Dakota who were interviewed as part of a grand federal project in the 1930s - 5,000 homesteaders who came as early as the 1870s were interviewed in North Dakota. We plan to box the six books and market them as a set as well as individual titles - The Sod-Busters, Norwegian Homesteads, The Cowboys & Ranchers, German from Russia Settlers, Native People and the new book, The Townspeople. 'Tis grand to see a project through to completion, something I was not sure I would live to see last year on the vernal equinox. 'Tis the love and friendship of friends and family that are more responsible than anything else for my being here, and I'm mightily grateful, kola. I leave the last word today to Fred Rogers: "If you could only sense how important your are to the lives of those you meet: how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person." Here's hoping you can leave the best of yourselves with every person you meet today, kola - that's the best way to take care of yourselves - looking out for each other.

Ev Albers

Friday, March 19th, 2004

Words for Today
"The station house was no unfit object in such a scene, roofless and chair less, filthy and squalid, with a smoky fire in one corner and a table in the center of an impure floor, the walls open to every wind, and the interior full of dust. Of the employees, all loitered and sauntered about as cretins with the exception of the cripple who lay dying on the ground."
​Sir Richard Francis Burton, one of the true geniuses among all of those who have passed through this middle world, was born on this day in 1821. In the passage above, he described one of the station house's of the Pony Express during his travel in the American West. The England-born Burton traveled the world, wrote scores of books and translated some of the best of the literature of the Arab and Indian cultures into English, and enjoyed his life immensely, a passage that ended at age sixty-nine. Burton could speak some forty languages like a native. Expelled from Oxford University in 1821 for a minor offense, he went to India as an army officer and then on to the Middle East where he could assume the identity of a Muslim. He went to the source of the Nile in Africa. 'Twas Burton who gave us translations of The Thousand and One Nights and from the classic Hindu erotic classic, The Kama Sutra. A genius. What Burton left in terms of translations and delightfully descriptive travel books (which emphasize the spiritual journey more than the geographical exploration) is huge. It could be even more, but his wife Isabel, who burned all of his diaries and manuscripts as soon as he took his last breath and wrote an expurgated version of his colorful life which depicted him as a good Catholic, wonderful husband, and misunderstood adventurer and traveler. A sampling of Burton's wry observations about himself belie his wife's attempt to make him otherwise. Burton's philosophy was to listen to his instincts at all times. In The Kasidah, Burton writes:

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none
  but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes
  and keeps his self-made laws.

All other Life is living Death, a world where
  none but Phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling
  of the camel bell.

Happy Birthday, Sir Richard - wherever you are. Your books continue to delight tens of thousands around the world. 'Tis a gloriously beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota, where there will be the weest bit of March wind whilst the temperatures soar to the fifties - heat wave! The bit of snowing clinging to the ground in shaded areas - like our yard here on Arthur Avenue in Bismarck - will not be able to withstand the onslaught of spring, which is just around the corner. This is the day, of course, that the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano in California. 'Tis rather grand to be able to depend on such things as the return of swallows and comets - eclipses from time to time - 'twas on this day in 721 B.C.E. that the first lunar eclipse was recorded in Babylon. And this is the first anniversary of the beginning of the short shooting war with Iraq - President Bush will be talking to the nation later this morning about why we invaded and what will happen after the occupation - and doubtlessly address the nation's conflict with international terrorism. 'Tis curious: Sir Richard Francis Burton wrote at considerable length about the Muslim assassins, a word of Arabic origin that the western world didn't know about until Burton told him - as he introduced them to other aspects of cultures other than our own. One of Burton's biographers, Edward Rice, author of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, wrote of Burton's description of one sect of Muslims:

The Isma'ilis had once been known as the Assassins, for they had developed special techniques for eliminating religious and political enemies, but assassination had probably not been practiced for several centuries.

A key tool in the growth of Isma'ilianism was the use of devotees, the fida'is, whose role it was to propagandize and convert and also to murder opponents as a final act of dedication. .  .  .   Many legends developed about their skill and secretiveness in attaining their goals, one being that they were given the best of all material lives, with fine foods and their pick of nubile young women, and were drugged on hashish - Indian hemp or cannabis. The Syrian Arabic term for these fida'is was hashshashin, hashish takers, and it was not long before the Crusaders, who faced them in the Levant, had turned the word into 'assassins', now common in many languages.

​Says a modern commentator on Rice's biography, "One of the failings of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton is that Rice flips back and forth between current events (in the 19th century) and historical events without trying to put the information into a chronological context. So, it looks like the term 'assassin' was used during the Crusades and also in the 19th century to refer to modern Isma'ilis. There's a fascinating study of this group. It's entirely possible that the mythic Isma'ilis and their reputation for murder and mayhem were made up by those feared those they did not know much about - in much the same manner that some of us Americans at the turn of the twenty-first century have created an inhuman group of fanatics who kill mindlessly - Al Qaida. That both Isma'ilis and Al Qaida were (and are, in the case of the latter) responsible for murder and mayhem is true; whether either were motivated by drugs and the promise of sexual bliss is quite another. It's a mysterious tradition - with origin in the religious wars we know as the Crusades, perhaps beyond. But a contemporary scholar of comparative literature wrote in a review of the 1994 book The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma'ilis by Farhad Daftary, "The Assassin Legends represents the latest contribution to a more critical and contrapuntal scholarship on the Isma'ilis. It stands comfortably on the shelf as a generally persuasive critical foray into the history of East-West relations by its interrogation of a discourse of ignorance and fascination, awe and ideological enmity, through which a multi-culture made up of Muslims, Jews, and Christians imagined Isma'ilism." In short, we have a good way to go if we really wish to understand each other - especially those bent on our destruction. The obverse is true, of course - Al Qaida has no interest whatsoever in seeing Americans as anything but imperialistic, materialistic godless subhumans.

This is not a new story or recent development, of course - 'tis as old as the rise of consciousness and the earliest human experiences in thinking of themselves as separate from, different than, and superior to other groups of humans. We don't have many Sir Richard Francis Burtons bent on understanding other cultures - and willing to invest time and energy (and have the genius to be able to do so to good effect) in learning the language and experiencing firsthand those cultures so different from our own. 'Tis a pity.

But this is a glorious day, a great one to be alive. I must be about the business of doing what I can to help those public humanities organizations I serve help Dakotans better understand other minds in other times in places other than our own - be well, kola - take care of yourselves, and if you want to see for yourselves how one who traveled here in the middle world we share spent a lifetime learning about others, have a look at Sir Richard Francis Burton.

Ev Albers