Thursday, February 20th, 2003

​Yet another unseasonably warm day in beauuuuutiful Dakota – temperature in back of our house, 35 degrees, in front 'tis 32 – above zero, Fahrenheit, this 20th day of February 2003. But the weather we need and want in this glorious place for the third week in February will be back this weekend, with temperatures in the brisker single digits, down below in the evenings. Clears the air, cleanses the atmosphere, kills all of those germs. The state of the great state of North Dakota is less than great – we have some of the same old problems – most of them have never gone away. Here we have – in general -- the hardest damned working folks you'll find anywhere – and that's saying some, because there's no shortage of shirkers and lazy bums around, and you really notice them in North Dakota. They are the folks who work two and three jobs without benefits – among some 650,000 or so souls, about the same number that were left after the exodus during the Great Depression. In other words, there are families here in Bismarck on the eastern bank of the Missouri where a wife and her husband both work two jobs and still cannot afford health insurance. We're in crunch time, here in a place where the legislature gathers but every other year – because there's not enough money to continue the social services and educational funding in place. Higher education is going to take a hit – higher tuition will be the result. Social services, especially helping the elderly and subsidizing nursing homes, will take a hit. Since we don't spend money we don't have as a state government, we're in a bit of a mess, looking for ways to continue to function without raising taxes – with the exception of perhaps another $1.00 on a pack of cigarettes, and tapping some of the one-time funds we have, like the tobacco settlement fund.

The legislature will be in Bismarck, the capital city, for another month of so – wrestling with the oldest question – how do we manage with so few people scattered over so large an area, how do we stabilize an economy based on agriculture and the vagaries of a world market, how in the hell can we make life just the weest bit more stable and as minimally comparatively comfortable in terms of being able to earn a bit more than just enough to get by after working 80 or 100 hours a week?

No small part of our problem, methinks, is bred in the bone – we are a society of immigrants who valued work for the sake of work – never mind how mind-numbing, debilitating, or mindless that work might be. It's as though we volunteered to be chained in perpetuity in a chain gang, breaking rock. There were plenty of folk back home in Oliver County when I was growing up who moved rock for the sake of doing some work. For all of our seeming unpretentiousness and egalitarianism here in Dakota, the home of the great socialist experiment of the early twentieth century in middle America, we are indeed a society of class. We have put at the top those who have more money than their neighbors – no little of it wealth built upon timely purchase of neighbor's lands during hard times -–and those at the top spend long hours working, even though they don't have to. The professional community is somewhat outside of the essential society based on wealth derived from land. In the middle of the work society are those who do physical labor – or, more likely know, labor as clerks or support personnel in the medical community or as toilers in telecommunications or other such work. At the bottom, in this society which values the materialistic and so clings to the notion that hard work will bring about heaven on earth, are the teachers, the professors, the dreamers, the poets and writers, the clergy, and most anyone who questions whether working at two jobs for little more than minimum wage – howbeit in the most glorious of places to live – is fair or just. Here 'tis, 2003 – and the North Dakota State Legislature has a proposal to raise the minimum salary for a teacher – over the next two years – from $20,000 to $22,500. That's at least a start – although it comes at the expense of a guaranteed salary increase for all teachers of $1,500 – but it still speaks loudly and clearly of our values and priorities. We would ask those who teach our children to find a way to pay much higher tuition and to take out student loans in order to begin teaching in their home state for a salary so low that they will have to live as second-class citizens and/or work at other jobs to survive.

Still, the sentiment in Dakota is one of "We're happy to have jobs." I'm reminded of a great poem by OMF (Our Mutual Friend) Thomas Matthew McGrath – "More Paycuts and Unemployment"

The Norwegian nightingale
Which Garrison Keillor
Heard singing:
"I t'ink so.
I t'ink so . . . probably . . . "
Now sings;
"I now know fuckin well!"
Singing among the elders and the starving masses near
                   Lake Wobegon.

May it be otherwise for you, dear kola – wherever you are. May you have time to read, listen to music, and to recite poetry – without wasting a half-second of guilt because you aren't working. McGrath often said some variation of "Work is either play . . . or slavery." May all of your work be play --

Ev Albers

Wednesday, February 19th, 2003

​Back home after my journey to Zion, I'm back home in beauuuuuuutiful Dakota, my kola. What a grand day today - every molecule in the air is perfectly aligned to bring good cheer and optimism to anyone who steps forth. I was so happy to get back that I celebrated by lying abed for several hours this morning - and have since found renewed energy to take on a few little nagging problems - troubleshooting a network problem at the office (turns out to be a faulty hub - bad equipment), tricking my computer into thinking that I've reinstalled some software and get back to work. "Back in the Saddle Again." Love that song-

Back in the saddle again,
Out where a friend is a friend
Where the longhorn cattle feed
On the lowly jimpson weed
I'm back in the saddle again

Ridin' the range once more
Tottin' my old forty four
Where you sleep out every night
Where the only law is right
I'm back in the saddle again.

Whoopee-ti-yi-yo, Rock-in' to and fro
Back in the saddle again
Whoopee-ti-yi-yay, I go my way
Back in the saddle again

Back in the saddle again,
Out where a friend is a friend
Where the longhorn cattle feed
On the lowly jimpson weed
I'm back in the saddle again

Ridin' the range once more
Tottin' my old forty four
Where you sleep out every night
Where the only law is right
I'm back in the saddle again.

Whoopee-ti-yi-yo, Rock-in' to and fro
Back in the saddle again
Whoopee-ti-yi-yay, I go my way,
Back in the saddle again

Don't have a 44, friends - but I've picked up my $2,900 worth of Neupogen - the stuff to build back the white blood cells. My pharmacist says 'tis the most costly prescription she's filled in a while -- $290 for a 480 mg shot. When I was traveling from Zion, Illinois, to O'Hare with a group of other folks and family of folks being treated at the Midwestern Regional Center there, a fellow from Orlando, Florida, told me that 'twas nothing - he was sent home with a syringe a month ago and told to take special care of it - "It retails for $7,000," the nurse told him.

Staying alive - and coming back to life, in a sense - by building back the natural defenses, after treatment that gives the invader a little one-two punch and lets the rest of one's body know that the blow has been delivered - well, 'tain't cheap. There are some natural substances out there to help - echinacea, for example, which American Indians know about for a long time - the plant known by many different names, including the purple cornflower and the red sunflower. This is one proven to help stabilize the white cells during treatment cycles - but I was told to make sure to get the tincture - to do the liquid form.

There's a big question behind all of this, kola - one easily ignored in the exuberance of being alive and reasonably well - and that is, of course, how much should one person be permitted to spend to stay alive? It certainly will be the big question of this century, methinks. And there will be many variations, including such as, should expensive health treatment be available to those who contribute to their unhealthy state?

Don't know about you, but I'm feeling much more strongly than I have ever before that accessibility to health care that depends upon one's economic status or "class" exposes us as less-than-egalitarian - at very best, for it says, "I am more worthy to continue to live because I happen to have more money than you do." There's nothing new, of course, in equating human worth to the amount of the world's resources one can use in comparison to those less fortunate.

Perhaps it's a bit of guilt that those of us being treated so well at Zion share that centers so much of our talk on getting on with our jobs, of doing something productive . . . it well may be the most critical in staying alive. To give up is to give in to that which will come soon enough, as OMF (Our Mutual Friend) Thomas Matthew McGrath writes in "People Are So Busy: Or: That's Life!"

The dying man
Lifts his head
Someone wants
To borrow his bed.

Well, they can't have mine yet, kola. Though I don't intend to get too comfortable too long there - we have work to do, you and I . . . taking care of each other, for one thing.

Ev Albers

Tuesday, February 18th, 2003

Tuesday, February 18, 2003 – back home day to glorious Dakota after treatment today at that center of hope, Zion, Illinois, home of the Midwestern Regional Treatment Center, one of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. I'll be home on the eastern bank of the Missouri within twenty-four hours.

You may recall that, for whatever perverse reason (blame it on the chemo, perhaps), I posted an awful riddle poem by Sir Francis Saltus Saltus on Sunday morn in the wee hours past midnight. I've received a couple of responses from truly long-suffering folk – one from Jeanne Jones Manzer of South Dakota, who offered a pretty good guess. Wrote Jeanne,

"I'm not sure what the riddle is for yesterday's poem . . . if we're to figure out the poem's title or what reference is being made. I spent some time with my Merriam Webster to define such terms as:
feculent - fecal; foul with impurities
bowers - shelter
sullied - soiled or tarnished; defiled
lithe - easily bent or flexed
fresco - painting moist, lime plaster with water based pigments
All of which leads me to imagine that the poem's narrator has found himself on the floor of an outhouse or bathroom, with walls & floor spewed with either vomit or diarrhea which is drawing flies (or bumblebees, if we're to look for something black & yellow). What's the riddle?"

I had written on Sunday,
it's a riddle - there's going to be a very special prize going out to anyone who will say in all honesty or baldy lie and say that they recognize the poem and the answer - a lesser prize for those who look it up with some sort of search engine. Here's the poem - what is it?

Then all thy feculent majesty recalls
The nauseous mustiness of forsaken bowers,
The leprous nudity of deserted halls --
The positive nastiness of sullied flowers.
And I mark the colours, yellow and black,
That fresco thy lithe, dictatorial thighs.
I dream and wonder on my drunken back
How God could possibly have created flies!

The answer came from my good friend and Humanities Council member Pat Wilson, eastern Montana rancher who teachs literature and humanities at Williston State College. Pat wrote last night, "I didn't go to a search engine, but I must admit I fudged a little. I recalled reading that poem before, and headed back to the book (X.J. Kennedy's Introduction to Poetry) where the title index jogged my memory. It's a
spider
. Saltus is often used as THE example of bad poetry, but my personal favorite was penned by the great Victorian critic Sir Edmund Gosse (although he said his maid did it!):
O Moon, when I gaze on thy beautiful face,
Careering along through the boundaries of space
The thought has often come into my mind
If I ever shall see thy glorious behind.
Of course, this is so bad it's good--which makes me suspect Gosse knew what he was doing.
I'm delighted to hear of your progress. It sounds like you're driving the monster back into the loch."

Both Jeanne and Pat deserve a special prize, methinks – I'll send along a copy of the one of the top ten projects ever funded by the North Dakota Humanities Council, the documentary about Thomas Matthew McGrath by Media Mike Hazard, The Movie at the End of the World, with additional footage of Tom reading his poetry in the Heritage Center in the late 1980s just before the state's Centennial observation.

I also heard from a reader who gently took me to task for the entry of February 8, "Del Shannon, Kate Chopin, and John Adams on War," and the reference from the Shannon web site claiming that his suicide could have been caused by his use of Prozac – said the careful reader, "Prozac doesn't kill people; depression kills people. Fifteen days on Prozac is not enough to reach the therapeutic levels needed to retard suicidal tendencies. Also, it doesn't work for everyone. Prozac has kept me alive for the last ten years, so I don't like anyone to dis it!"

'Tis easier to dis Saltus Saltus – there's more information about him in the book Very Bad Poetry by Kathryn and Ross Petras I cited Sunday last. Here's their introduction of the man who died the year North Dakota became a state, 1889:
​
Begin Petras Quote
FRANCIS SALTUS SALTUS
(1849-1889)
American poet Francis Saltus Saltus considered himself a member of the decadent school of literature. He loved modern women who smoked cigarettes, and he pored through the Bible in search of pornographic sections and idolized the French writes Baudelaire, Gerard de Nerval, and the Marquis de Sade.
Like his heroes, Saltus was fascinated by the morbid, the depraved, and the abnormal. Unlike them he wrote with a boyish exuberance—especially heavy on the exclamation points—and this tendency adds a novel twist to his theoretically dark poetic subjects.
By the time Saltus died at age thirty-nine, he had written over five thousand poems, mot of them a unique blend of lurid subject matter, florid imagery, unbridled enthusiasm, and surprise endings—a fascinating collection of decadence lite."
End Petras' Quote

There's nothing decadent about the works of today's birthday boy, Wallace Stegner, born on this day in 1909 (he died in 1993, not from any disease but from injuries suffered in an automobile accident). Stegner is arguably the greatest writer of western America in the twentieth century. For a real treat, read my friend Tom Isern's column Plain Folk on "The Stegner Homestead".

Among the living, we remember the birthday of Jack Palance today – he turns eighty-four. He's my nominee for one of the greatest good bad guys who ever made a movie. His career, which began in the 1950s, was revived in the year of North Dakota statehood with his role in Batman, and in 1991 he received an Academy Award for his role in City Slicker -- and of course, he played the villain in Shane -- and so many, many more. There's about 100 movies with Jack Palance available in VHS or DVD – I hope to live on into semi-dotage to watch them all – some of them for the first time. With the help and prayers of all of you, my kola; the hope afforded by places like the Midwestern Regional Medical Center at Zion; the strength one derives from living in glorious Dakota, with one wherever one maybe – I'll see a few. Be well, kola, take care of yourselves, watch out for each other, and take time to read the weest bit of Wallace Stegner – you'll be glad you did.
​
Ev Albers

Monday, February 17th, 2003

Today is the last birthday Mary Margaret Truman, only child of Harry S. and Bess, will celebrate in her 70s - next year, she'll be the big 80. You can read a bit about her through the late 1990s by clicking here. I posted an old song about Mary Margaret back on October 1, 2002 - you can have another look by selecting that date above. It's the one sung to the tune of "The Missouri Waltz" --
Mary Margaret Truman
Was the daughter of the Prez
She lived in the White House
With her ugly mother Bess . . .

Speaking of waltzes, it's also the birthdate (1864) of the Australian poet A.B. Paterson, aka. The Banjo. The song, of course, is in 4/4 time, not 3/4. Here's the popular version:

Waltzing Matildaafter Banjo PatersonPaterson himself said that he wrote the words of 'Waltzing Matilda' to fit a tune played to him by Miss Christina Macpherson at Dagworth homestead, near Winton, Queensland, in 1895. Mr Sydney May in his book, The Story of Waltzing Matilda, makes out a very good case for this tune having been 'Bonny Wood of Craigielea', perhaps imperfectly memorized.

The Marie Cowan version ... preserves a strong resemblance to 'Craigielea', but does not adhere strictly to Paterson's text.
Manifold, J.S. The Penguin Australian Song Book
Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books, 1964, p.175

Arrangement by Philip Heggie (heggie@rmit.edu.au) 

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a coolibah-tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled,
"Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
Waltzing Matilda,
Waltzing Matilda,
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?"
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled,
"Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?"
Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong:
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee.
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker-bag,
"You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.
Waltzing Matilda,
Waltzing Matilda,
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me."
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker-bag,
"You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me."
Up rode a squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred;
Down came the troopers, one, two, three:
"Who's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker-bag?
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!
Waltzing Matilda,
Waltzing Matilda,
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.
Who's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker-bag?
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!"
Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong;
"You'll never catch me alive!" said he;
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!
Waltzing Matilda,
Waltzing Matilda,
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!"
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!"

'Tisn't snowing in Australia, of course - 'tis summer time. But, unlike seasonably summery glorious Dakota, where I get to return tomorrow eve, the east coast has all the snow Dakota is supposed to have by reputation. Lots of the folks here at Zion come from Philly, suburbs of Washington, D.C., Connecticut - we all are trying to help them figure out how to get back home safely, but the folks here at Zion do a pretty damned fine job of that. No matter what the weather, you are never going to be snowed here with anything but the closest thing to the truth about cancer treatments of all kinds that are available. For example, there are weekly sessions by the naturopaths talking about the alternatives. Someone recently brought up Essiac, the secret Ojibwe formula developed by Rene Caisse. There's simply been no real scientific tests that demonstrate any results, and those who were treated at the clinic were given chemo as well. In general, we get an unvarnished assessment of alternative remedies - recent studies have demonstrated, for example, that the laetrile (supposed magical substance derived from apricot kernels) sold in the United States is nothing more than sawdust, sold for outrageous prices? Folks bring into these informative sessions vitamin packages they pay up to $300 a month for - and they get an assessment - "Most of it won't hurt you, a couple may interfere with chemo and other treatment we are recommending." It's always done with enormous respect for the patient's genuine quest for health. They don't waltz you around the block with nonsense at this place.

One could buy the more-than-a-dozen murder mysteries by Mary Margaret Truman Daniels in print (she has them done in every prominent place in Washington - and they keep getting reprinted and reprinted and reprinted) for the cost of vitamins for a week that probably aren't doing a damn thing for one. What one gets at Zion and a Cancer Treatment Center of America is hope without delusion - attention to all the best of holistic remedies, especially nutrition, without hokum. And the patient is always in control - when I told my nutritionist and naturopath that I couldn't quite do thirty-five pills a day, they gave me priority choices - and always say that eating the right stuff is always better than pills. Most interesting stuff - for example, the Finns had it right with their saunas and jumping into snowbanks - highly recommended milder versions are offered here at Zion - taking a hot bath and then lying down with a cold towel around one's chest - to build the immune system. The key to wise choices is, of course, to be beware of secret ingredients and recipes - if the concocters aren't willing to open their research for development, they are probably after your money instead of offering any real hope. They are the scum of the earth, the lowest of vermin. Curiously, there are those in the established medical community who consider the Cancer Treatment Centers of America less than completely ethical and legitimate. I, as a reasonably intelligent and passionately interested observer or what goes on in places like Mayo, Bismarck, and Zion, Illinois, can only offer which approach has brought me reasonable hope, which places I have been treated with dignity and respect. Always, in both of Bismarck's medical facilities - the first referral, of course, is always to Mayo at Rochester - and many of the physicians in Bismarck have spent time in Mayo. For invaders like pancreatic cancer, however, Mayo offers a single answer - the whipple, surgery, if that works - if it doesn't, wait until it gets bad enough to warrant chemo to alleviate the pain, not to do any more. One will never hear a single word about Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Mayo, unless from another patient or from someone else who was sent home from the place and went in search of waiting for Mistress Death - in spite of the fact that what has proven to be effective treatment for pancreatic cancer in terms of keeping it at bay for a considerable time - for more than two decades!

Well, kola, if you happen to find yourself on this national holiday holed up in your home back east where the winters are so much tougher than in Dakota, you may want to delve into one of Margaret Truman's mysteries, if you happen to have one lying around - or if you can find your way to a library, if it happens to be open. You might sing a chorus or two of "Waltzing Matilda" in 4/4 time - or simply do your favorite quiet thing - including, perhaps, taking a hot bath and running outside into the snow, jumping into a bank, with the weest bit of clothing you dare wear - but it won't work in Dakota, where 'tis too unseasonably warm. Be well, take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Haven't had any guesses, by the by, on the answer to bad poet Francis Saltus Saltus' riddle (see yesterday's journal entry).

​Ev Albers

Sunday, February 16th, 2003

February 16, 2003 - forty-four years since Fidel Castro became prime minister in Cuba. He was thirty-one or thirty-two (born in 1927 or 1928). At first touted and supported by the United States, by 1961 the U.S. had changed its mind so much about Castro that the government secretly supported the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The great Latin singer, Gloria Estefan, was born in Havana about a year and one-half before Castro was sworn in, and she moved with her family to Miami when she was two. Gloria studied psychology and worked as an interpreter - and eventually took to music full-time with her husband Emilio Estefan and their Miami Sound Machine. I'm giving a listen to Gloria's album mi tierra in the wee hours of this fine Sunday morning in Zion, Illinois, where I've awaken feeling pretty damned perky, even though this place is not beauuutiful Dakota, nor could it ever hope to be. In mi tierra (My Homeland, the chorus translates (according to the handy-dandy CD insert):

Your homeland hurts you
Your homeland strikes your soul when
you're gone
Your homeland pushes you forth from its roots
Your homeland sighs when you're not there.

The land where you were born, you can
never forget
Because it holds your roots and everything
you've left behind.

Back in 1990, while on tour in New York state, the Estefan's bus was struck from behind, breaking Gloria's back - which was taken care of with surgery. Awarded $5 million in a suit for lost earnings, Gloria and her husband bought Miami's famed art deco Cardozo Hotel from Chris Blackwell for $5 million in 1991. Reminds me of one of the great attempts at rhyming from one of my favorite books, Very Bad Poetry by Kathryn and Ross Petras

In a Book-store
by Francis Saltus Saltus

Sad, on Broadway next afternoon,
I strolled in listless manner,
Humming her most detested tune,
And smoking an Havana.

I don't have any idea who Francis Saltus Saltus was, or what Broadway's "most detested tune" could be, but I do love rhyming "manner" with "Havana." Here's another bit of Saltus Saltus for an otherwise perfectly fine Sunday morn - it's a riddle - there's going to be a very special prize going out to anyone who will say in all honesty or baldy lie and say that they recognize the poem and the answer - a lesser prize for those who look it up with some sort of search engine. Here's the poem - what is it?

Then all thy feculent majesty recalls
The nauseous mustiness of forsaken bowers,
The leprous nudity of deserted halls --
The positive nastiness of sullied flowers.
And I mark the colours, yellow and black,
That fresco thy lithe, dictatorial thighs.
I dream and wonder on my drunken back
How God could possibly have created flies!

Methinks there is something less than sanity in the verse of Saltus Saltus - certainly, he's less than plain-speaking atimes - but I only know the two verses, and I just found them. He flourished in the 1890s. He also wrote Dolce Far Niente with the immortal lines:
Her laugh is like sunshine, full of glee,
And her sweet breath smells like fresh-made tea.

The question, of course, is whether the girl with breath "like fresh-made tea" might also have "dictatorial thighs." These are the sorts of mind-boggling thoughts that come on an early Sunday morn, a day when I'll be getting seven or eight hours of infusion - I suspect the thoughts may abetted by the Beta-Wave Berry Blend Juice Cocktail, a blend of carrot, apple, cherry & three berry juices I'm drinking this early A.M. to wash down the Krispy Kreme donut - my daughter-in-law Bobbi Hermanson-Albers went to the grocery store last night and stocked my refrigerator with these interesting items. 'Tis my first experience with a Krispy Kreme - I know about them, of course - there are people who drive from Bismarck to Fargo (200 miles) to wait in line to pick up dozens of these delightfully decadent donuts. I'm hoping that the nutritionists and naturopaths here at the Midwest Center in Zion might tell me that Krispy Kremes are perfect for increasing the immune system after chemo - I fear I may be disappointed. I've already been advised to get an alternative -- tincture of echinacea - and to take 60 drops five times a day. But that comes in a week or so - after the chemo has done its work on the invader. By then, I'll be in glorious Bismarck - 200 miles away from the great temptation of Krispy Kremes.

Hope this Sunday morn finds you well and happy, kola - with or without a Krispy Kreme or dose of tincture of echinacea. Take care of yourselves and look out for each other.
​
Ev Albers

Saturday, February 15th, 2003

​Long day's journey on Valentine's Day, yesterday - one that I napped for the weest at least every other hour. 'Tis 6:00 A.M. on the 15th February, 2003, another day, and I'm here in Zion, Illinois - something of the Branson for evangelical Christianity. It is also the home of the Midwest Regional Medical Center, one of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. This is a place where folks expect good news, and they often get it. Yesterday, on the afternoon of the first day of my second visit, while waiting to see the chief oncologist, Dorothy (who has pancreatic cancer as do I) and her husband come out of his office laughing and singing. My wife and I met her and her husband and family when we were here in January, a month ago. They are so happy this time because her tumor has shrunk some 70 percent. Blood chemistry indicates that my invader is certainly checked - perhaps smaller - after my first five-day go-around here at the Midwest Center. It's a pretty damned comfortable place. If you fall asleep while you're waiting, you are gently aroused when necessary. From arrival at O'Hare Airport where I was met by a green-jacketed limo driver with my name on a card (he apologized profusely for being a little late - he had been across town at Midway) and being driven to your motel and the Center in leather-seated comfort in a vehicle with room for a small pony to having the limo driver waiting for you after four-hour treatment past normal hours (at 9:15) to take one to the motel, the entire staff goes out of its way to make one feel like visiting royalty. Once my caregivers determined I was indeed ready for treatment - I saw six different professionals, had blood tests, an ekg, and extensive visits about how things went for me in the month since the last treatment - I went to the out-patient area - a little private cubicle with a television, phone with a line to hook up my computer, and that necessary facility just around the corner.

One eats well at the Center - I got there in time for lunch, a delicious pasta dish seasoned with Italian spices (rosemary, fennel, other stuff), asparagus, a chicken breast (it wasn't Leslie's Ginger Chicken, but it was pretty damned good). All I had to do for dinner, since I didn't get to start the first four-hour treatment until after 5:00 P.M., was to call room service - they brought me up carved turkey with cranberry sauce, lima beans with bacon and red onions, and rice pilaf.

After the treatment, I went downstairs - the limo driver (the drivers absolutely refuse tips) was waiting. I was taken to LaVilla - where I have a most comfortable room with a kitchenette for $44 and change - I suspect that these motels in Zion are owned by folks who operate in the Midwest Center spirit - a comparable room in Rochester, Minnesota, home of the famed Mayo Clinic, would cost $80 or $90. In the Mayo Clinic, a cup of coffee costs a couple of bucks - here at the Midwest Center, there's free coffee, tea, juices of every description - and snacks whenever you want them.

Yesterday I met a fellow in his early 70s who has been coming back to Zion since 1995 - he said he was near death back then. He had been given six months to live - colon cancer, and when physicians back home operated, they discovered that it had spread to the liver. He came to Zion over the objection of his two children who are medical doctors - a third child, a chiropractor, told him that he had heard about a holistic treatment center at Zion. Now, all three children praise the facility, because the guy feels fine - and the cancer has been in remission for more than six years after six months of treatment here.

There's nothing experimental about the treatment I'm receiving - it's a protocol that's been around for more than twenty years, and it's worked on the majority of pancreatic cancer patients treated in terms of significantly reducing or checking the spread of tumors on the pancreas.

In short, 'tis a place of hope - and it's not a bad morning here, with the wind blowing off Lake Michigan - the weest cold, but the limo is warm - it will be here in an hour to pick up me for the Saturday morning treatment. And by Tuesday afternoon, back to glorious Dakota to work and live with hope (reinforced with the best that has worked for folks in my condition) that I'll be around to enjoy my family and friends for much more than weeks to come --

Actually, 'tis a cloudy and could-be-if-one-let-it dreary day - but I prefer not to let it be that. I'll not be seduced into despondency by the whacky news that folks around the country have bought all of the duct tape that there's to be had - and that they are taping up their houses with plastic in hopes of insulating themselves from biological attack. Too much. I'll not entertain glumness because my country seems hell-bent on going to war with Iraq whether the rest of the world supports us or not.

I'm going to look forward to a delightful afternoon with my son and his wife - and talk about their future.

But there's always time for a bad poem - here's one for today:
Lines Written for a Friend on the Death of His
Brother, Caused by a Railway Train Running over
Him Whilst He Was in a State of Inebriation
by James Henry Powell (ca 1850)

How oft alas my brother have I warned thee to beware
The horrid spells of guilt which led the drunkards' life to care;
But no! you heeded not the warning words I spoke with pain,
Your wretched soul that once was pure was bound as in a chain;
At length, one cold October, when the night was late and dark,
The awful doom came on which sank thy life's unsteady barque;
Thy mangled corpse upon the rails in frightful shape was found,
The ponderous train had killed thee as its heavy wheels went round.

And time for some great music - I'm gonna give a listen to a weest bit of Eva Cassidy whilst I do my morning ablutions - be well, dear kola, and take care of yourselves and of each other. May the "barque" of your life be steady, the day full of delightful surprises, one when you don't give another thought to trying to find duct tape. I'm looking forward to a great lunch - chunky potato & ham soup, open-face hot roast beef sandwich with broccoli and whipped potatoes are on the menu for sure.

Ev Albers

Friday, February 14th, 2003

Today is Valentine's Day, of course. And, of course, 'tis a glorious day in beauuuutiful Dakota from whence I'll wing my way to Zion, Illinois, and the Cancer Treatment Center of America there for five days of getting shot up for four or eight hours a day through a port in my chest with stuff to either shrink the invader of my pancreas or keep it from going elsewhere for the weest while. All things considered, I rather stay here in Bismarck on the east bank of the Missouri, but I'm betting that going to Zion for five days is going to get me many more days here down the road. My loving spouse has provided me with a check list of stuff I have to make sure I have - and stuff to remember to ask. I'm going to have to get to the Bismarck airport early - security's pretty tight here - and I have such things as those steel stents in me keeping my bile ducts open. I have a little card signed by the doctor who put them in - and I'll have to take off my shoes because of the weest bit of steel in them. Then one has to start up the laptop, take the batteries out of the portable keyboard, and get wanded several times - I'll be lucky to be standing their in my long johns - and I don't bare beyond those long johns in any public place, no sirreeeeeee!

I've packed some great music for the trip - including Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Vespers (All-Night Vigil)" sung by the Robert Shaw Singers, given to me by ND Humanities Council member Robert Groves of Fargo - 'tis the voices of heaven, kola - a "Mass for Unaccompanied Voices" - sung in Russian. Truly, it brings a peace that passeth all understanding. I also have Eva Cassidy's "Songbird" and a few other CDs to listen to while the stuff pumps in me. But mostly I've packed the love and good wishes of my spouse, family and friends - and packed tax preparation software so I can help my son Albert & his spouse Bobbi with their taxes when they come down to visit me tomorrow - they live up in Madison, Wisconsin. I have my phone cards so I can report what's happening - and I have a book or two.

Today I offer you a couple of poems about the kind of folk we would all do well to emulate, methinks. The first is by a Welsh clergyman who died in 2000 after a long and productive life of some seventy and seven years. Many consider him a greater poet than his fellow countryman Dylan Thomas. He certainly could be the weest bit caustic - like OMF (Our Mutual Friend) Thomas Matthew McGrath, he sometimes took his fellow humans to task. For example, he he wrote that he hated the Welsh "for your irreverence, your scorn even/of the refinements of art and the mysteries of the church." He accused them of committing their own cultural suicide, as "an impotent people/sick with inbreeding/worrying the carcass of an old song." The Welsh loved him, of course. Here's his poem, "Farm Wife," offered as a Valentine to to all the women who are Lake Woebegonian "strong" ala Garrison Keillor:

Here is the clean apron, good for fire
Or lamp to embroider, as we talk slowly
In the long kitchen, while the white dough
Turns to pastry in the great oven.
Sweetly and surely as hay making
In a June meadow, hers are the hands,
Humble with milking, but still now
In her wide lap as though they heard
A quiet music, hers being the voice
That coaxes time back to the shadows
In the room's corners. O, hers is all
This strong body, the safe island
Where men may come, sons and lovers,
Daring the cold seas of her eyes.

The second valentine is poem by Marge Piercy. Piercy has a great poem about folks we all love to be around - well, perhaps I overstate - "I love to be around" folks like these, and the people I love are like these folks - folks like you, kola:

To be of use
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallow
and swim off with sure strokes almot out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were mde to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to crry
and a person for work that is real.

Well, kola - 'tis time to get stuff together for the trek. I leave you today with another compelling selection from that great slim volume, Very Bad Poetry edited by Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras. 'Tis a great lesson in this curious poem about cutting cabbage - methinks that 'tis "work makes life sweet" - Arbeit macht das Leben süss. And it raises the big humanities question: "What do you do when there's no cabbage to cut if you're a cabbage cutter?"

​I Saw Her in Cabbage Time
A Dutch Melody
by Slocum Slugs, Esq., 1857
I saw her first in Cabbage time,
     She was a-cutting kraut--
She'd stop the cutter, now and then,
     To turn the head about;
And as she'd salt it in a tub
     And stamp it down awhile,
Upon her fresh and rosy lip
     Reposed a witching smile.

I saw her next in Winter time,
     And still she gaily smiled;
For there upon the cooking-stove
     Her grub was being boiled;
Around the huge and greasy pot,
     The steam came pouring out;
And from the smell I knew that she
     Was cooking "speck" and kraut.

When next I saw her, in the Spring,
     She smiled not as before;
A heavy weight was on her heart --
     The kruat was "all no more!"
The pot she used to cook it in
     Was eaten up with rust;
The cutter hung upon the wall
     'Mid spider webs and dust.

Be well, kola. Keep your kraut pot clean, take care of yourselves, and look out for each other. You might want to check to see how your neighbor's cabbage cutter is hanging --
Ev Albers

P.S. Happy Valentine's Day

Thursday, February 13th, 2003

​Another gorgeous day in Dakota ahead . . . and work to be done. Been thinking about Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons," that big hit of 1956:

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
Picked up a shovel and I walked to the mine
I hauled Sixteen Tons of number 9 coal
And the straw-boss said, "Well, bless my soul"

(Chorus:)
You haul Sixteen Tons, whadaya get?
Another older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Repeat Chorus

Born one morning it was drizzle and rain
Fightin' and Trouble are my middle name
I was raised in a canebrake by an old mama lion
And no high-toned woman make me walk the line
Repeat Chorus

See me comin' better step aside
A lot of men didn't and a lot of men died
I got one fist of iron and the other of steel
And if the right one don't get ya, the left one will
Repeat Chorus

Born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
Picked up a shovel and I walked to the mine
I hauled Sixteen Tons of number 9 coal
And the straw-boss said, "Well, bless my soul"
Repeat Chorus

Down-home Tennessee Ernie Ford - what a guy, born on this day in 1919. He lived to be seventy-two and then some. He didn't write the song that made him famous - Merle Travis did.

I have to get those sixteen tons loaded at work. Of course, I don't have fists of iron or steel, so I have to stay out of trouble. Moreover, like most men, I'm totally dependent upon women - although I like that part of the sentiment of Travis' song bemoaning the existence of high-tone women making guys walk the line. Give me a down-home gal, please.

Some folks are out today sealing up their houses with plastic and duct tape to protect themselves from a terrorist attack. Curious - reminds me of 1956 when Tennessee Ernie Ford made it big time with "Sixteen Tons" - all of those bomb shelters. Even in Bismarck, I hear there's been a mini-run of duct tape. I must hie me to the office, kola - I don't have time today to shop for duct tape. I hope your day is busy with work you really want to do as you take care of yourselves and of each other.
​
Ev Albers

Wednesday, February 12th, 2003

​Twelfth day of February in fabulous Dakota, where there's the weest bit more of darkness in the winter than there is in our sister states to the south - but we're Emersonian in our outlook: "When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." And, of course, the stars always seem closer when one can see one's breath while looking at them - which one can do this hour past midnight in beauuuuuutiful Bismarck on the east bank of that stretch of regulated-but-not-dammed Missouri. Around the country today, folks are gathering in response to something poet Sam Hamill of Copper Canyon Press started. Sam published the poetry of Dakota's gift to the Millennia to come, Thomas Matthew McGrath - and he's a fine poet himself. He had been invited to a White House poetry event hosted by the First Lady, Laura Bush, that was to have happened today at 1:00 P.M., "Poetry and the American Voice" - it was called off when the poets started writing and talking about why they didn't think war with Iraq was a particularly good idea. On January 28, Sam sent out an open letter to poets of the world. Here's Sam's letter:

Begin Hamill Letter
Dear Friends and Fellow Poets:
When I picked up my mail and saw the letter marked "The White House," I felt no joy. Rather I was overcome by a kind of nausea as I read the card enclosed:
Laura Bush requests the pleasure of your company
at a reception and White House Symposium
on "Poetry and the American Voice"
on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 at one o'clock
Only the day before I had read a lengthy report on George Bush's proposed "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq, calling for saturation bombing that would be like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, killing countless innocent civilians. Nor has Bush ruled out the use of nuclear weapons.
I believe the only legitimate response to such a morally bankrupt and unconscionable idea is to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam.
I am asking every poet to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend his or her name to our petition against this war, and to make February 12 a day of Poetry Against the War. We will compile an anthology of protest to be presented to the White House on that afternoon.
Please submit your name and a poem or statement of conscience to the Poets Against the War Web site.
There is little time to organize and compile. I urge you to pass along this letter to any poets you know. Please join me in making February 12 a day when the White House can truly hear the voices of American poets.
-- Sam Hamill, Founding Editor and Co-founder of Copper Canyon Press

End Hamill Letter

Poetry expressing disappointment with the imminence of war will be read today around the country and the world, including readings of some of the more than 5,000 poems Hamill has received in the last two weeks, in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. Here's Sam's poem "State of the Union, 2003"
​
I have not been to Jerusalem,
but Shirley talks about the bombs.
I have no god, but have seen the children praying
for it to stop. They pray to different gods.
The news is all old news again, repeated
like a bad habit, cheap tobacco, the social lie.

The children have seen so much death
that death means nothing to them now.
They wait in line for bread.
They wait in line for water.
Their eyes are black moons reflecting emptiness.
We've seen them a thousand times.

Soon, the President will speak.
He will have something to say about bombs
and freedom and our way of life.
I will turn the tv off. I always do.
Because I can't bear to look
at the monuments in his eyes.

Dakota men and women are on the move – Guardsmen mobilized, reservists called up – and Dakota folk, who are, generally, patriotic folk – and most supportive of President Bush, whom they voted for in the last election by a considerable majority – no few Dakota folk have problems with the war with Iraq that seems right around the corner. There are some cynics who say that the war can only be even better for the North Dakota economy – even now, with only the strikes in Venezuela and the threat of war -- the rising price of oil has brought some more much-needed revenue into the state coffers. But many more North Dakotans dread the possibility of war in the Middle East – 'tis the wrong kind of darkness, the kind that comes with clouds so heavy and prevailing that one doubts the stars will shine again.

In the wake of the world run amuck once more, 'tis the small things in life and in each precious day that keeps one going. Yesterday, for example, was one of great personal triumph – I had come to my office early on Monday morning to be greeted with disturbing messages from my main computer – and eventually I discovered that the motherboard had fried – fan went out in the heat sink over the processor – so I had no access to tens of thousands of files on five or six hard drives. I cursed the weest, kola – took some emergency measures to get out the work I had to by hooking up the drives to another computer. Then, late yesterday afternoon, I replaced motherboard and processor and I'm back in the saddle again with the familiar files at my fingertips. Oh, joy! Ecstasy! But, wait, there's more to the glorious 11th February, 2003.

I came home to a gourmet dinner concocted by my loving spouse, Leslie – who reads everything she can about what guys with pancreatic cancer should be eating. She presented me with a stir-fry chicken and rice dish – brown rice, fresh snow peas, Brussels sprouts, fresh baby carrots, a few walnuts – stirred up with chicken breast chunks marinated in Smucker's apricot preserves and seasoned with 100 percent organic ginger – and gently cooked in olive oil. Now there's creativity – Leslie combed the literature we got at the Cancer Treatment Center of America at Zion and the great stuff nutritionists have been sending me – most recently ten suggestions on food and activity from a young woman in California who is the daughter of a good friend of a good high school friend – and put damned near everything that supposed to be especially good for me into one dish that tasted absolutely delicious. I had it with an O'Doul's and orange slices.

Today, February 12, Honest Abe's Birthday (1809), I prepare for a second round of staying-alive chemo treatment beginning Friday – if blood tests today indicate that my white count is high enough and other indicators show sufficient recovery from the round a month ago. I'm thinking that Leslie's Ginger Chicken Stir Fry has put me over the top --

Take care of each other and of yourselves today, kola. Read a poem aloud (better yet, memorize one and recite to your family and friend), say a prayer or send your best energy outward for peace, and be of good cheer. I'm thinking about you with great affection and deep gratitude for your friendship.

Ev Albers

Tuesday, February 11th, 2003

​Zounds, kola, 'tis already nearly twenty above zero at 7:00 A.M. this fine 11th day of February 2003 here in Bismarck on the banks of Missouri, just downstream the weest from historic Fort Mandan where a boy was born on this day in 1805. His very presence on the trip from the confluence of the Missouri and Knife Rivers – carried on the back of his teenage mother Sacagawea to the Pacific Ocean and maybe part of the way back (although he may have toddled a bit on the return) – signaled peaceful intent to the Indians the Corps of Discover met. Moreover, he was apparently a delight to have around – the men liked him, and Clark liked him a lot – hence his nickname, according to most sources – Pomp or Pompy because he was a "dancing little boy." Clark was ever-inventive in his spelling, so he name the landmark outcropping on Yellowstone River where he carved his name on the return trip Pompey's Pillar – not in honor of the Roman emperor but to honor Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Sacagawea's son. Pomp's father, Touissant, was the oldest member of the Expedition – he was in his forties when he showed up at the Fort during the winter of 1804-1805 with his pregnant young Shoshone wife in tow (he also had another wife, but she didn't go along on the trip). Rather feckless, something of a coward, and less than enthusiastic about work, Charbonneau's greatest contribution was that he was married to young woman who had been captured by the Hidatsa hosts of the Corps when she was a child, a young woman who might recognize landmarks when the Corps reached Shoshone country and who could talk with the Shoshone – she could then tell Charbonneau what they said in Hidatsa, and Charbonneau could tell the captains. Getting along and communicating with the Shoshone was critical to the success of the Expedition: the Corps needed the Shoshone horses to get over the mountains.

The baby born this day was eventually educated in St. Louis by William Clark. He studied abroad – and became something of a tour guide of the great American West for visiting European royalty and other wealthy folk. He lived long and prospered for the most part – as did his father – in paid service to newcomers to the West. His mother almost certainly died when he was going on eight-years-old – at Fort Manual in what is now South Dakota in December 1812. Her son died in 1866 on his way to the Montana gold fields – he had traveled the world, including a trip to Africa and another to Germany where he hunted in the famed Black Forest with nobility.

Jean Baptiste's birth was attended by Meriwether Lewis – who gave Sacagawea crushed rattles of a rattlesnake in a bit of water at the advice of one of the French traders. Lewis wrote that it seemed to work – Sacagawea was having a most difficult time delivering her first child and gave birth ten minutes after she took the rattles: "Whether the medicine was truly the cause or not I shall not determine . . . perhaps this remedy may be worthy of future experiments, but I must confess that I want faith as to its efficacy." Lewis was always skeptical of Indian remedies – but he placed no small faith in the medicine given him by the leading American physician, Benjamin Rush. Sacagawea was lucky – she could have been given one of Rush's famous "Thunderbolts," so named by the Corps because of their efficacy in purging the system. Lewis carried fifty dozen of the pills on the journey, and he still had some at the Pacific to give out to the men for most any complaint.

Little Pomp caused quite a stir when he was fifteen-months-old on the return journey – he almot died in May 1806 of high fever and swelling Lewis feared would become a boil – he was treated with cream of tartar and flowers of sulfur with little success – fresh poultices of onion seemed to relieve the swelling, and Lewis claims that he cured him only after giving the child a "Clyster" (enema). Doctors today conclude that Pomp probably lived in spite of the treatment – something that was true for most of what was done for illness at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was probably the heat of the poultice, not the onions, that kept the infection under control. The Corps was mighty happy that the "dancing little boy" survived.

It's a wonder anyone survived the best that medicine offered in the early 1800s – lots of bleeding and purging – and doses of mercury, of course, for venereal disease. In fact, the eminent Dr. Rush damned near killed himself once when he bled and purged himself so much that he became too weak to walk. There was but one great breakthrough at the time – smallpox vaccine. Following the onslaught of traders and trappers after the return of the Corps, smallpox ravaged the village Indians of the Upper Missouri once more, just as it had before Lewis and Clark arrived. The near annihilation of the Mandan in the 1830s could have been prevented, but no one gave much thought to preventive medicine in the heyday of mining the American West of fur.

I was thinking this morning as I lay abed burning perfectly good semi-conscious hours – were Lewis & Clark to time travel forward a couple of hundred years, what would most astonish them about how we live out here? Most everything would be cultural shock – from the dammed Missouri to the idea of getting from Bismarck to Astoria, Oregon, in a couple of hours by jet. But they would probably be both amazed and amused by our preoccupation with medical treatment and technology – in some ways, we are involved in the same sort of thing Lewis was doing for the toddler Pomp – he gave him an enema and hoped for the best. At the turn of the twenty-first century, one of the great hopes held out for folks with pancreatic cancer includes taking hundreds of pills and getting coffee enemas, java up the keester. Perhaps, kola, some of us are still living and greeting the sunrise in spite of the best medicine has to offer – there's a good deal of evidence over the last couple of hundred years to suggest that the spirit is at least as efficacious as any concoction of rattlesnake rattles or Rush's Thunderbolts.

I trust you are in good spirits this fine day, kola – a good one to take care of yourselves and of each other – best done by doing something for the spirit as well as taking that multi-vitamin.

Ev Albers