Sunday, June 15th, 2003

​Home at last, home to the house within shouting distance of the Missouri River in east Bismarck in glorious Dakota, where 'tis absolutely gorgeous this night of clouds over a full moon, cool temperature, great midnight - my bed awaits after a full day and evening of good visits with Leslie's brother Don Kubik and his partner Joy Meyers, with our daughter Gretchen in Glenwood, and on to a detour to Lake Melissa for dinner and talk with Jerry & Jean Waldera, Jim Lund and his spouse Shirley, and old friend of Jerry from Geneseo, eighty-seven-year-old Art Jenson and his son and daughter-in-law. We dined fine, kola - pot roast, roasted potatoes and carrots, and gravy ala Jean Waldera, and a great rhubarb pie ala Jim Lund, who does the best, most tender, delicious pie crust I've ever tasted, and that's going some, because I am a connoisseur of pie.

The biggest treat of the late afternoon and night - spoiled only by a Twins loss to the Arizona Diamonds in spite of my wearing both hat and t-shirt, was Jerry Waldera's story of teaming up to almost win the state crow killing contest back when he was a young teenager with the much older Art Jensen, who came to Jerry's hometown in Geneseo as the Soo Line depot agent. The contest was on a point system -- 5 points for a mature crow, 3 points for a young bird, and 1 point for a crow egg. Jerry shimmied up many a tree - he claims he bears the marks to this day - to gather eggs, that he and Art keep in gallon coffee cans. The heads of the crows they shot were laid in beer bottle cartons and salted down, but they became mightily noxious and odiferous during the course of the contest. The final tally had to be verified at the county seat - so Jerry and Art drove over and found the man in charge - who took one look at the enormous collection, had but a whiff of the stacked cartons and dozens of coffee cans and said, "Ah, you didn't happen to keep count, did you?"

"Of course," replied Jerry - who gave the man the exact count and amount. Turned out that Jerry's honesty cost them the contest, for they were outdone by someone who had easy pickings on the Missouri River by a mere 35 points or so. So instead of the shotgun, they won the rod and reel, which Jerry insisted Art take, because they used his car for their forays. They did do a bit of double-dipping - living as close as they did to Minnesota, they both did in crows in the neighboring state and collected a handsome bounty for crows' feet in Minnesota for all the birds they did in - in both states.

'Twas a great joy to meet a man of Art Jenson's (or is it Jensen?) vigor and love of life at his tender age - he and his sister, in her mid-90s, are the last of eight children. He can still snap out a telegram in Morse Code - of course, he still has his instrument. He and son and daughter-in-law returned from their fishing with a couple of Northerns, which Art deftly filleted - boneless! I've tried that many, many times, without success - my fillets always had some bones.

Methinks yesterday's good fellowship easily added a month or two to my passage here in the middle world - now, I must be to bed to get back to work tomorrow - life is good, my bed awaits, and I'm home from exile from beauuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota. Good day to you kola, Happy Father's Day to all you fathers and godfathers - a special father's day wish to the godfather of our children, Warren Henke - no child has ever been lavished with more love, good advice, and real help when they were in need than Leslie and my children Albert and Gretchen have enjoyed from Warren. No man has been more blessed than I have with the love and kindness of his children, and no man has more to be proud of than I do - I am most well-pleased in my son Albert and his wife Bobbi, the Hermanson-Albers, and my daughter Gretchen. They both tickle me plumb silly - to borrow a phrase from Humbert Humphrey. Today, I watched my daughter Gretchen in action at the Glenwood Café where she works. Monday I got to have lunch with Albert and Bobbi.

A midnight toast of grape juice to Warren, to Lake Melissa friends Jerry & Jean and their friends and ours, Jim and Shirley Lund from a neighboring lake, and to Art Jenson - live long and prosper, Art - and be well kola - take care of yourselves so you are in the best of shape to look out for each other. A special thanks and toast to my friends in Lincoln, Nebraska, especially staff members of the Nebraska Humanities Council, who are helping my darling daughter find a clean, well-lighted place to light in Lincoln when she begins graduate school at the University of Nebraska this fall.

Ev Albers

Saturday, June 14th, 2003

Today, among the best of writers in the English language, certainly among the very best of essayists of the twentieth century, completed his passage in the middle world - Gilbert Keith Chesterton died on this day in 1936 at the age of but sixty-two and a couple of weeks. The American Chesterton Society, dedicated to the propagation of Chesterton's wisdom and perpetuation of his great wit is headquartered near where I am spending the night in St. Paul, Minnesota - well, Roseville, to be exact - at the nine-star facility kept up by Leslie's brother Don and his partner Joy Meyers. Joy just orchestrated the addition of a magnificent sun room overlooking a fantastic backyard, thus raising the rating of what was already a gorgeous home. Coming into town last night on our return from Zion, Illinois, where I finished a go-around of treatment at the Midwestern Regional Medical Center, one the great bastions of hope, the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, we heard the last part of a another glorious victory by the Twins, who won over the Arizona Diamondbacks in a game won by Santiago and saved by Eddie Gordado, whose name I've sometimes misspelled Gordano - and to rest in this fine facility before heading on west to see daughter Gretchen and later good friends the Walderas and the Lunds of Detroit Lakes area - the finest of Saturdays, culminating in crossing the border into beauuuuuuutiful North Dakota sometime later tonight. I'm in the finest of fettle, so far - about ready to have the weest slice of one of Joy's cake and another swig from a big jug of grape juice - what could be better than this?

But I digressed a bit - you can read all about the remarkable G.K. Chesterton at the American Chesterton's fine site, dedicated to "Common Sense for the World's Uncommon Nonsense." The site includes many of Chesterton's greatest, pithiest quotes, excerpts from his works, complete essays, poems, and essays about him, including the whimsical "Who is this guy and why haven't I heard of him?" by the Society's president, Dale Ahlquist, who writes

Begin Ahlquist Quote 
This absent-minded, overgrown elf of a man, who laughed at his own jokes and amused children at birthday parties by catching buns in his mouth, this was the man who wrote a book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S. Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India. This was a man who, when commissioned to write a book on St. Thomas Aquinas, had his secretary check out a stack of books on St. Thomas from the library, opened the top book on the stack, thumbed through it, closed it, and proceeded to dictate a book on St. Thomas. Not just any book. The renowned Thomistic scholar, Ettienne Gilson, had this to say about it: 
"I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a 'clever' book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas. . . cannot fail to perceive that the so-called 'wit' of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which we had tried to demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being witty. That is all they can see of him."
Chesterton debated many of the celebrated intellectuals of his time: George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow. According to contemporary accounts, Chesterton usually emerged as the winner of these contests, however, the world has immortalized his opponents and forgotten Chesterton, and now we hear only one side of the argument, and we are enduring the legacies of socialism, relativism, materialism, and skepticism. Ironically, all of his opponents regarded Chesterton with the greatest affection. And George Bernard Shaw said: "The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton."
His writing has been praised by Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Karel Capek, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Claudel, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Sigrid Undset, Ronald Knox, Kingsley Amis, W.H. Auden, Anthony Burgess, E.F. Schumacher, Neil Gaiman, and Orson Welles. To name a few.
T.S. Eliot said that Chesterton "deserves a permanent claim on our loyalty."

End Ahlquist

What Chesterton had to say about families, consumerism, nature, the proper role of government, and a host of other subjects directly address our world in 2003 - I commend him to you. If you wish a real treat this fine day, start with Sex and Property, available at the American Chesterton Society's site. Chesterton's wit was always intentional - unlike the great bloopers sent along to Joy Meyers by the Mother Superior of the Mother of Good Counsel of the Felician Franciscan Sisters - Mary Beth Bloomer - under the general rubric, "Thank God for Church Ladies with Typewriters" - they are real gems:

These sentences allegedly appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services.

1. Bertha Belch, a missionary from Africa, will be speaking tonight at Calvary Methodist. Come hear Bertha Belch all the way from Africa.

2. Announcement in a church bulletin for a national PRAYER & FASTING Conference: "The cost for attending the Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals."

3. The sermon this morning: "Jesus Walks on the Water." The sermon tonight: "Searching for Jesus." 

4. Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8PM in the recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King. 

5. "Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don't forget your husbands. 

6. The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict. 

7. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say "Hell" to someone who doesn't care much about you. 

8. Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help. 

9. Miss Charlene Mason sang "I will not pass this way again," giving obvious pleasure to the congregation. 

10. For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs. 

11. Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get. 

12. Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack's sermons. 

13. The Rector will preach his farewell message after which the choir will sing: "Break Forth Into Joy." 

14. Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24th in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days. 

15. A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow. 

16. At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be "What Is Hell?" Come early and listen to our choir practice. 

17. Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones. 

18. Scouts are saving aluminium cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children. 

19. Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered. 

20. Attend and you will hear an excellent speaker and heave a healthy lunch. 

21. The church will host an evening of fine dining, super, entertainment and gracious hostility. 

22. Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow. 

23. The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon. 

24. This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn sing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin. 

25. Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.S. is done. 

26. The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday. 

27. Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door. 

28. The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy. 

29. Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance. 

30. The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new tithing campaign slogan last Sunday: "I Upped My Pledge -- Up Yours." 

Well, kola, rosy-fingered dawn has come and gone here in Roseville, which is pretty close to beauuuuuuuuuuuutiful North Dakota, and where 'tis a fine day indeed. Back to delightful conversation with our gracious hosts - Joy & Don - and soon on the road heading west and home, happy to be alive. Here's a toast to our hosts, to Sister Mary Beth and whimsical ways, and to G.K. Chesterton - go read him if you haven't. 

  
You might start with his collection Orthodoxy -- timeless essays on religion and spirituality. You'll find many a gem to help you take care of your mental welfare - a necessity if you are going to be about the business of looking out for each other, our main reason for being here in the middle world.

Ev Albers

Friday, June 13th, 2003

​'Tis an international day of rejoicing and thanksgiving, especially for anyone who loves poetry, particularly for those who read poetry in English. Back in June 1865 (which was on a Tuesday, not a Friday) William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin - although that was not the place in Ireland dearest to him. Born neath a half-waned moon in ongoing troubled times for the Irish, Yeats went on to right most of the poems I've memorized - I both took a three-hour course in William Butler Yeats in graduate school and taught a class devoted exclusively to Yeats at Dickinson State. Very few days pass that a line or two of Yeats doesn't come to mind - for example, the short poem, "A Deep-sworn Vow" (1919)

Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.

The face Willie saw in this magnificent trinity of moments when we humans travel beyond the bounds of ho-hum, unconscious-in-check wakefulness was Maud Gonne's - the insistently unrequited love of his life. Maud was a revolutionary actress, a "Pioneer of Ireland," and, simply, someone Yeats was obsessed with all of his life (although he also found Maud's daughter Isuelt very attractive as well in later life). I don't know what the woman he finally married really thought about all of this - George (that was her name) Hyde-Lees, who mothered his two children, Anne and Michael.

Yeats made so secret of his passion for Maude Gonne, but his poems about her changed over the years - my very favorite is "No Second Troy" from the collection "Responsibilities and Other Poems":

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

No small part of Yeats' greatest as a poet are the Maude Gonne poems - in this one he compares her to Helen of Troy who brought on the Trojan War with her great beauty. For her part, Maude said that she was only doing her duty to the world and generations in refusing to reciprocate Yeat's love: "If I had returned those feeling , the world would have been deprived of his beautiful poetry." Late in his life, Yeats, who was always taken with the possibility of the miraculous - as he was interested in the occult - went off to Scandinavia to get an infusion of essence of goat glands - something offered as the Viagra of his day - whether or not it had anything more than a placebo effect, I don't know - but in his late 70s, Yeats would leave the house announcing that "The eagle will fly tonight."

Yeats died in exile in January 1939 in France - in 1948 his body (no is quite sure that the bones that were brought back were his) was brought back to Sligo Bay in a ceremony celebrated by the entire world. He was reburied in Drumcliff churchyard, beneath "Bare Ben Bulben's Head" as he requested. One of the great days of my life is the one a couple of years ago when I went with my wife, Leslie, and daughter, Gretchen to Sligo and to a visit to Yeats' grave - where I read a poem. That night, we slept in a bed and breakfast with a window to Ben Bulben and Lake Sligo - ah, but 'twas grand, kola, 'twas grand. Among the great web sites devoted to Yeats - and you can find all of his poetry on line - is one hosted by Yeats Sociey Sligo, where I spent far too few hours. I would linger here in the middle world long enough to return.

'Tis a cloudy day here in Zion, my last for about a month - and I've taken the four-hour shot of mitomycin and await the FUDR - so far, so good. I had an extensive echo cardiogram (I think it's called) of my heart yesterday, and was proclaimed fit to continue to get poison to kill the invader - and then I had the stents in my bile ducts flushed - they needed it, so perhaps I won't have so much of the rather disgusting feedback from that area - but I have this ulcer that's popped up again, so - the weest Prevacid daily. I don't remember awakening from the procedure, getting dressed, and getting back to the hotel room - and my spouse says that I was something less than my sweet usual self - weird dreams, considerable cramps and discomfort, and, for the first time since I turned yellow last September, the weest bit of acid indigestion. But after an evening when I apparently disturbed our domestic tranquility with more than a bit of complaining and ranting, I awoke in fair fettle on what is a cloudy day - nonetheless, a great day to be alive, and beauuuuuuuutiful, I'm sure, in Dakota, if no where else. And, YES!, the old t-shirt paid off, for the Twins won, big time, kola, big time -- catcher A.J. Pierzynski hit a grand slam in the first inning. I toast A.J., and I toast you this fine day, wherever you are, kola - and trust you are taking care of yourselves so you can be in the best of shape to look out for each other. And I toast William Butler Yeats - those of you who have stopped by my meanderings know of my total prejudice for Thomas Matthew McGrath as the best poet of the English language in the twentieth century - but I'll give 19-20th century Willie Yeats a very close second. Like McGrath, Yeats had little use for critics - I suppose, in a sense, little use for that which has been my life's passion, the humanities, the business of seeking and understanding the best ever wrought, thought, or written in the hope of being more nearly completely human - and finding a way to share those insights with my fellow humans. Although I'm guilty as charged in his poem in many ways, I love Yeats' "The Scholars"

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;
Wear out the carpet with their shoes
Earning respect; have no strange friend;
If they have sinned nobody knows.
Lord, what would they say
Should their Catullus walk that way?

Here's to William Butler Yeats - your words will live forever!

Ev Albers

Thursday, June 12th, 2003

This is quite a day in the history of culture as it found its way to the Garden of the Universe, Hannover Township, Oliver County in beauuuuuuuuutiful Dakota - 'twas June 12, 1947 - I was in my fifth year and about ten weeks into my journey here in the middle world, listening to the radio in the late afternoon - and he hit the airways for the first time - the hero of a program I would rarely miss through its radio broadcast which went on every weekend until 1955 - Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, created by the same folks who brought us the Lone Ranger. Preston was a red-coated Canadian Mounty. His lead dog and best friend was Yukon King - and together, they wrought many a rescue and miraculous turnabout - try this one, a fifteen-minute episode from the short-runned television series (1955-1958) that followed the end of the radio series - one that addressed many of the issues that would be considered only decades later:

"Red and his half-breed sidekick, Chico, steal the dog Blackie, sole companion of the hulking Grizzly Martin. a mentally challenged loner. The thieves tell Grizzly that Preston has taken his dog, directing him to Preston's home, in the hopes that the maddened half-wit giant will eliminate the Mounty. King's defensive loyalty to the sergeant, and Grizzly's love for dogs, eventually make the two men allies in tracking the evil-doers, and in seeking the return of Grizzly's missing pet."

I just read the other day that most of the Preston's episodes are in the public domain - might be a great treat to get a hold of them and give another listen - 'twill bring back many memories, methinks. No matter how you slice it, of course, the programs were often less than politically correct by our standards - after all, one of the villains was a "half-breed," and Grizzly was obviously "mentally challenged." Still and all, I really like Preston, mostly because he was always looking out for the underdog and those others ignored --

I'm in the infusion unit at the Midwestern Regional Medical Center at Zion, Illinois - one of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, and one place where no one who comes, including those of us who have been ignored and told to go home and die by many huge medical institutions - in my case, the Mayo Clinic. This morning I'm continuing standard treatment - the old FUDR chemo in the midst of about four hours of other stuff - and will get my ticker checked out with ultrasound to make sure that it hasn't weakened - seems to be a little glitch in the electrocardiogram - if my heart's all right, I'll get the steel stents in my bile ducts flushed and then have the long shot of both FUDR and mitomycin tomorrow before my spouse and I wend our way home. So, in the hope that the trip to the unconscious and the flush is on, I haven't eaten or drunk anything since early yesterday - and people are drinking coffee all around me. This deprivation, along with the cloudy day, and the prospect of a long trip in a body infused with the bad stuff is enough to ruin a perfectly beauuuuuutiful day, but it ain't gonna - I prefer not to allow such small stuff to steal a moment from a great day to be alive.

Besides, the boys won last night - Twins won! And whatever happens with the tests today, I have a feeling I'm going to be around to celebrate many more of their victories and no few of my own in my ongoing quest to make the most of the worst days. Hope you are taking care of yourselves and looking out for each other, kola --

Ev Albers

Wednesday, June 11th, 2003

Wee hours of Wednesday morning, June 11, 2003 - hours before dawn at Illinois State Beach Resort outside on the banks of a cool Lake Michigan - cool, but still shirt-sleeve weather. I'm down in the lobby, allowing my spouse the weest bit of rest without the tapping of my fingers on a keyboard - besides, I can listen to the Buena Vista Social Club, an absolutely marvelous collection of Cuban songs, some composed most recently by some of the oldest musicians in Cuba - including "De Camino a La Vereda" written and sung by Ibrahim Ferrer, who was born in at a social club dance in Cuba back in 1927 - the song was composed in the 1950s, back when I was youngster in the Garden of the Universe in Hannover Township, Oliver County, in beauuuuuutiful Dakota. "De Camino a La Vereda" is all about "not straying from the path" - a long song of advice to husbands not to fool around and to wives not to gossip about their husbands -

But look my friend, you've left poor Geraldina
for a bit of fun with Dororea.
Don't talk about your husband you gabbling woman,
Everything is a like a fairy-tale to you
Because your time of reckoning is yet to come.

It's pretty hard not to get up and start dancing to this stuff - although the night clerk already thinks I'm the weest bit "nutz." In addition to this album, a gift from a kola in Florida, I have some uplifting anthems by South Dakota native Betty Buckley send by one of her fellow Dakotans from down yonder - that, and Naomi Shihab Nye's 1994 collection of poetry, Red Suitcase which I picked up on a foray to a big Borders book store yesterday with my spouse after treatment - along with a gift for Leslie, my spouse, who is interested in all things political with a passion that passeth by leagues my own nodding acquaintance with the way 'tis among the movers and shakers of America - Leslie got a copy of Hillary Rodman Clinton's biography. As even the least attentive to talk radio and television knows, Hillary really gives it to Billy in the shorts for his lying ways - she may have forgiven him, but she certainly hasn't forgotten - but then, of course, the price of fame and political glory - and enormous book sales - is foregoing almost all privacy. In the great collection Buena Vista Social Club there's a single cut sung by a woman - a Bolero entitled "Veinte Anos" --

. . . .
Si las cosas que uno quieree
Se pudieran alcanzar
Tu me quisseras lo mismo
Que viente anos atras

[sorry, can't find the right marks to put above the "n" in anos and the "a" in atras - forgot to load the character map in my laptop] -

If only we could make
Our dreams come true
If only you would love me
As you did twenty years ago
. . . .

After our trip to bookstores, including the remainder headquarters of northern Illinois, a store devoted to all of those hardcovers that aren't selling where I picked up great biographies of Machiavelli and Mother Jones - I retired to bed about 5:00 P.M. - hence my early morning meanderings here in the lobby and dawn watch - twelve hours later, 'tis too cloudy for rosy-fingered to peek through. I awoke with the words of the first verse of John running through my head this morning - "In the beginning was the word, and the word was made light." Then, in a moment of Jungian synchronicity and great serendipity, I opened Nye's Red Suitcase to "Words When We Need Them"

Before this early moment,
another, ripe with rain,
the scent of its own full shape.

Each day the rooster
we have never seen
raises the first greeting
and darkness which holds us
in its loose pocket all night
sets us down.

Now we walk,
waking up rooms,
switching on lights.
Into the breath,
wordless but ripe
with all possible words,
messages not yet gathered
or sent.

Morning looms,
more friend than
the best friend.

We could still say.

And here's among Namoi Shihab Nye's finest, methinks - I may have invoked this one before, but 'tis so appropriate for the troubled times we find ourselves - Nye heads "Those Whom We Do Not Know" with a quote from Pablo Neruda, so beloved by OMF (Our Mutual Friend), Thomas Matthew McGrath - Dakota's gift to the Millennia - Neruda, as quoted by Nye, said, "To fee the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we don not know . . . is something still greater and more beautiful. . .

1.

Because our country has entered
into war, we can have
no pleasant pauses anymore--

instead, the nervous turning
one side to another,
each corner crowded by the far
but utterly particular
voices of the dead,

of trees, fish, children,
calling, calling,
wearing the colorful plastic shoes
so beloved in the Middle East,
bleeding from the skull,
the sweet hollow along the neck.

I forget why. It's been changed.
For whatever it was
we will crush the vendor
who stacked sesame rings
on a tray
inside the steady gaze
of stones.
He will lose his balance
after years of perfect balance.

Catch him! Inside every sleep
he keeps falling.

2.

I support all people on earth
who have bodies like and unlike my body,
skins and moles and old scars,
secret and public hair,
crooked toes. I support
those who have done nothing large,
sifter of lentils, sifter of wisdoms,
speak. If we have killed no one
in the name of anything bad or good,
may light feed our leafiest veins.

I support clothes in the wash-kettle,
a woman stirring and stirring
with stick, paddle, soaking out grime,
simple clothes the size of bodies
pinned to the sky.

3.

What we learned left us.
None of it held.

Now the words ignite.
Slogans knot around necks
till faces bulge.

Windows of sand, doorways,
sense of shifting
each time you blink-
that dune? Used to be
a house. And the desert
soaking up echoes--

those whom we did not know
think they know us now.

Curious, kola - we come into this world totally dependent upon others for our very existence - and absolute egotists, screaming "Me, me, me!" before we can talk. As we approach senescence, we circle back to that same self-centeredness, unless we're very fortunate to be self-sufficient up until the end. Our ability to love and to be more concerned about others than ourselves decreases, it would seem, in direct proportion to our dependence on others for our basic needs. It gives a new twist to my old saw, "take care of yourselves kola" - unless you do, you won't be able to help others sojourners here in the middle world - and that, after all, is why you and I are here. To return the love of those who love us, yes - and to reach out to all those we do not know, less we find out who they are only after we have killed them in war.

No sun here thus far, but a great day to be alive, nonetheless - what could be better than fine music and the extraordinary verse of Naomi Shihab Nye in the wee hours of a fine June day? (Well, I could have awaken to a Twins victory, but it was not to be - shut out by the Colorado Rockies in the opening of their home stand - and I even wore a clean Twins t-shirt to bed - should have taken my friend Jim Lund's advice and worn it in all its unwashed glory - there's always tonight.)

Ev Albers

Tuesday, June 10th, 2003

Rosy-fingered dawn hides blushingly pink behind puffy white clouds this beauutiful (as opposed to the Dakota beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful) day on the shores of Lake Michigan in Zion, Illinois, home of the Midwestern Regional Medical Treatment Center - city of high hopes and longer life through chemistry, but also through some old-fashioned positive thinking, will to live, and an incredible support system where we patients refer each other and try to look out for each other. I dine this morning in the presence of extraordinary beauty - two toddlers, a girl and a boy, with their parents, folks young enough to be my children. The cap would indicate that the young man in his thirties is receiving treatment here at Zion - and he's obviously enjoying every moment of life with his wife and children. In all ways, kola, there is more hope, faith, and, yes, love, among those who journey here than among any group of folks I've ever congregated with. 'Tis the kind of place where you get a literal thumbs-up the morning you're able to enjoy the breakfast bagel and cream cheese without nausea (I'm doing it), where there's always another chance, and where every day is greeted as a miracle - which 'tis, kola, 'tis - whether one has been diagnosed as very mortal or not, dying from an insidious invader or simply fading away in the course of one's passage through this middle world.

It's so much more than the chemistry, the chemo shot into one's body in what is a brutal frontal attack, the most one's body can take - it's the dozen and one other therapies, the can't-be-faked general good will and concern of the entire staff at this place that keeps so many of us alive many miraculous days beyond what we were given any hope of seeing before we found our way to Zion. Yesterday, for example, one of the staff masseuses came by and gave me a half-hour the most extraordinarily soothing manipulation - 'twas most relaxing, and, curiously, at the same time, energizing of experiences - I haven't felt quite as fine with my spine in line for some time - perhaps when I was twelve or so and taken for relief to Dr. Heupel of Hebron.

Long evening for my spouse and me - and for our daughter, Gretchen - who turned twenty-two in April. Gretchen had driven the 470+ miles from here current hang-out in Glenwood, Minnesota, to Lincoln, Nebraska, on Sunday in search of an apartment to call home when she takes up graduate study in public history at the University of Nebraska in August - she saw dozens of most unclean, dingy and dark dwellings in neighborhoods that would have long since been torn down in more progressive cities - so she was mightily discouraged as she lingered longer than she might had she found a suitable place yesterday. She and Leslie, my wife, were in near constant telephone communication - from our hotel phone to Gretchen's cell - last evening as she traveled through rain and hail and the threat of imminent tornadoes from Lincoln north to Sioux Falls, South Dakota - she finally arrived back at Glenwood sometime early this morning around 2:00 A.M. 'Twas worse than waiting up for her the night she went to the prom with the guy who thought he was the reincarnation of a junior Civil War officer - he came dressed in an authentic uniform, including a saber at his side.

What makes days miraculous, of course, is the kind of love between parents and children that provide the most rewarding moments of life - life worth living is being blessed with concern about someone other than ourselves.

On this day, June 10, in 1988, Dakota's second most famous son (Lawrence Welk is first, of course), Louis L'Amour died after an eighty-year-plus sojourn in the middle world. L'Amour, the son of a large-animal veterinarian, spent his childhood in Jamestown, North Dakota - one hundred miles west of Bismarck on the Missouri, one hundred miles east of Fargo on the Red River of the North. L'Amour once said, "One never realizes how much and how little one knows until one starts talking." He should have emphasized the latter, and extended his observation to writing as well as speaking. You can find all you want to know and more at the official Louis L'Amour site. L'Amour, second, perhaps, only to Zane Gray in fame as a writer of westerns, was honored with Dakota's highest award, the Rough Rider Award, in 1972, an honor not given the state's greatest gift to the millennia, Thomas Matthew McGrath - but that's another story which I've addressed at greater polemic length in this forum before. 'Tis time today, this miraculous day, kola, to hie me to the clinic of hope for a second treatment - take care of yourselves and of each other, my friends. . . .
​
Ev Albers

Monday, June 9th, 2003

​What a glorious morning here on the shores of a placid, softly undulating Lake Michigan outside of that bastion of hope for guys like me, the Cancer Treatment Center of America in Zion, Illinois. 'Tis 5:30 A.M., and Homeric rosy-fingered dawn lies purple and pink beneath the horizon, the flowers potted on the steps of the entrance to the Illinois Beach Resort Hotel turn almost perceptibly toward the sun, and the sea gulls toil mightily in the windless air above the lake - 'tis grand, friends, 'tis grand. And 'tis a great day to be alive. The only thing that might make it even more beauuuutiful would have been a Twins victory last night, but, alas, 'twas not to be - although they did very well indeed on their trip to the West Coast, and they ran up eleven hits in their loss to San Diego last evening. But other than this momentary glitch in the Twins winning ways, and the fact that folks running this place are the weest laid back and late in getting the coffee and juice out in the morning, all goes well. Besides, a five-day stay here costs less than one night at the fabulous Hay-Adams in our nation's capital, and there's a coffee maker in the room, and the coffee downstairs is free - it doesn't cost $8.00.

On this day in 1870, Charles Dickens, the great English novelist and storyteller, completed his passage here in the middle world at the age of fifty-eight - what Dickens wrought in a couple of decades, most folks couldn't bring to pass in five or six. 'Twas on this day in 1924, fifty-nine years past, that Jelly Roll Morton recorded his famous "Jelly Roll Blues," and that reminds me that it's time for a jelly-filled donut - a Bismarck, if there's one to be had downstairs at the morning coffee bar - then off to the Center to get my port tapped, give blood, get weighed and surveyed, and then another shot to keep the invader at bay the weest bit longer, for I want many more of these glorious days, kola. More on this day later this afternoon - check back if you're of a mind to, and, in the meantime, take care of yourselves and look out for each other.

Ev Albers
June 9, 2003

Sunday, June 8th, 2003

Tis a great day to be alive - and not too bad a one to travel, I'm hoping these wee hours of Sunday morn, June 8, 2003. Today is the birthday, the seventy-eighth, of Barbara Bush, mother and wife of presidents. I toast that long-suffering woman who has kept her humor through it all with my cranberry-grape juice and pop a gourmet jelly bean in her honor this morn before I pack up my belongings here at the fabulous Hay-Adams, across Lafayette Park from the White House in our nation's capital, and get ready to fly to Madison, Wisconsin, to join my spouse and son and his spouse in the weest bit of lunch this noon.

My magic Twins t-shirt did it again yesterday - the boys won out in San Diego again, this time quite decisively, 6-2. I'm in a bit of a bind, for that shirt needs a good scrubbing, and the Twins play very early this evening. Less I offend some of my fellow passengers on the plane with the worn-for-four-nights odor of the shirt, I dare not wear it - at least not until I get to our room at Zion, Illinois, tonight. If it comes to the Twins playing without my wearing the shirt, I'll have to concentrate mightily, indeed, without that magical talisman.

'Tis with no small trepidation that look toward resumption of chemo treatment tomorrow morn - it has been a glorious three weeks of feeling in very fine fettle, including enjoying a great lunch during the day-long rain yesterday with my dear friend Carrol Peterson and his spouse Lois. The Petersons met my Dakota buddy Dave Solheim and me at the Market Inn, my favorite Washington restaurant - it was closed - I had never tried to lunch there on Saturday - doesn't open until 4:30 P.M. So we hopped into the Peterson's car and went in search of alternatives - wound up at a little restaurant on the Tidal Basin next to the presidential yacht, the Sequoya. Both Carrol and Dave are old Chautauqua veterans - Dave, who will soon take office as the Chair of the North Dakota Humanities Council, rousted about in the earliest years of Chautauqua, and Carrol incarnated the ilk of Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, and Jack London for the Great Plains Chautauqua Society. Carrol recently retired from Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, to follow his charming wife, Lois, to northern Maryland where she works as an archivist at a college. They drove down yesterday for lunch - an extraordinary treat. It was as though I had seen Carrol but weeks ago instead of years -- ah, but 'tis the grandest of happy times to be reunited with old friends, and there's no finer kola than Carrol. We share a common background - raised on labor-intensive farms on the Great Plains, we struggle with our Lutheran heritage into our sixties and continue our search for meaning and sense in a world that often seems as though 'tis amuck. A gentle soul blessed with good humor and an enormous capacity to feel deeply the plight of his fellow humans, Carrol is among the chosen of whatever goddesses or gods there be - I wouldn't mind being much more like him.

On this day in 632, the prophet Mohammed died and rode his white horse, Al-Borak, to heaven. Others who completed their passage in the middle world on this day is, indeed, Thomas Paine - whose ideas live on in such reincarnations as kola Carrol Peterson's first-person characterization of the man who combated tyranny - as Peterson reminded me in an email note last evening, 'twas Paine who said, "Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet, we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Born in 1737, Paine lived on seventy-two years - often, less than comfortably. Often, he was in a state less than good humor. But, in spite of all of his problems, no human wrote more passionately in support of human dignity and freedom of conscience that Tom Paine.

Our final cranberry-grape juice salute this morning is to Tom and to Carrol - to Tom who said and to Carrol who lived the basic commitment to making each day as bright as possible with our deeds: "The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection." Take care of yourselves, kola - and look out for each other - and don't forget, we are all in this together - as Tom Paine said, "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

Ev Albers

Saturday, June 7th, 2003

Cool morning here in the nation's capital, where North Dakota Council Chair Dave Solheim and I have been helping plan to save future generations from the poverty of ignorance of their cultural heritage through the humanities. Meeting with representatives from about nine other states and territories, we explored possibilities offered by the prospect of a bit of new money for the National Endowment for the Humanities with the Bush-backed national initiative, "We the People," a concerted national effort to address cultural amnesia, including inviting the rest of the country to North Dakota to hear about the great civilization that hosted Lewis and Clark during the winter of 1805-1806 at Fort Mandan, or perhaps take a look at the place from whence George Armstrong Custer rode to his demise at the Little Big Horn - or some of the other places of enormous consequence in our collective heritage as a nation.

I await, this morning, my copy of the Washington Post and the weest bit of bagels and lox to munch on while I read - details of the Twins victory last evening, for the boys won once more late last night as I lay sleeping in my Twins T-shirt out the West Coast, at San Diego. I'm already sleepy his morning after the Cipro and the food 'tis been one grand feast since Thursday night - last night, friend Dave Solheim found a fine seafood place where we indulged in crab-filled ravioli, and this noon I'll have to go to the Market Inn, where I hope to meet my old friend Carrol Peterson and his wife, Lois - Dave will meet us there after a morning at the museums - unless the weather turns really nasty and the rain come in torrents. Dave and I had an hour or so laughter and song last night at a performance of the Capitol Steps, the most outrageous and delicious of political satire in song - once the former Congressional staffers help forth in Georgetown at a Dinner theatre, but now they are in the Ronald Reagan International Building right downtown on Pennsylvania Avenue. You can read all about the group by going . to their web site. Evidence of increased security is the most noticeable difference in Washington since I was last here in September 11, 2001-from having to be belted in one's seat a half hour before landing at Reagan National to showing photo ids and passing metal detectors to enter almost any public building, some set sensitive enough that the metal stents in my bile ducts set them off. The security folk and friendly and helpful, however. There are other changes. On the Metro, I notice many more homeless and eccentric folks, including no few who walk the streets and ride the Metro sans any footwear - barefoot, rain or shine. But, all things considered, a pleasant, safe place to be, D.C. this 7th day of June 2003. Yes, there's the weest wetness - but the Weather Channel reports that there's rain in beauuuuuuuuutiful Dakota, which I miss mightily, today as well. I just spoke with my spouse, who drove from Bismarck to Madison, Wisconsin in a single shot - making the 700 plus miles in a single day. I do hope such doesn't become standard procedure when I'm in the passenger seat. I go to Madison tomorrow - and then on to Zion, Illinois, for one more round of treatment - so I must be about the business of living it up for the rest of today - early morning flight. I hope you are well and taking care of yourselves and looking out for each other, wherever you are this glorious day.

Ev Albers