Tuesday, March 16th, 2004

Words for Today

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries."
The words come from the president of the United States, James Madison, who followed his fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, into the president's house in Washington city in 1809. Born on this day in 1751, he lived past his eighty-fifth birthday in 1836. When he took office, he was described by Washington Irving of Rip VanWinkle fame as "but a withered little apple-John." Whatever his appearance, he had a huge impact on the future of our social compact – after all, he's known as the Father of the U.S. Constitution – the basic agreement that hold this country together. To suggest, as so many are doing currently, that he and his fellow founders had no problem with mixing Christianity and government is an instance of total rewriting of the historical record. Madison was very direct: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. . . . During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”

On this very day in 1190 that the Crusaders began killing all Jews in York, England: they were massacred. On this very day in 1968, U.S. Troops in Vietnam destroyed a village – almost entirely women and children. We remember it as the My-Lai Massacre. Just six years ago, trials began in Rwanda – a half-million were killed in 1994 – more than 125,000 suspects were involved.

But today, in 2004, millions of Americans – nay, tens upon tens of millions – believe that Christianity has a central role in government, including prayers by ministers and priests at official government functions – and most folks seem to have no problem with Christianity being in the schools, including prayers and weekly meetings. In yesterday's Bismarck Tribune, a man whom I admire a great deal, a retired physician, wrote the following letter to the editor:
Is is OK to talk about religion and politics in the same breath? I say a resounding "yes."

We are doing a grave disservice to our community life as well as to our spiritual life by trying to separate the two.

In the Bismarck-Mandan area are perhaps a hundred small church discussion groups. Most are called "Bible classes." True, the name implies the study of scripture, but parishioners' community life and church tradition necessarily occupy much of that precious hour.

However, in almost all groups, when something controversial is broached involving government, some ardent member will blurt, "We are not supposed to mix religion with politics."

The subject is then changed, and an opportunity to get some sort of amateur, although valid, view on our troubled world is lost.

The discussion returns to personal salvation, or the geography and history of ancient Israel, or different translations of a Bible verse – all good in themselves but somewhat sterile in following the way pointed to us by scripture and by our traditions.

Considering the biblically inspired Declaration of Independence and subsequent documents, who can say that rationally mixing religion and politics stays from the dictates of the Constitution, or that the mixture of God and State hurts our attempts to advance the Kingdom?

Huh? The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution inspired by the Bible? Worst of all is the good doctor's assumption that we are all about the business of advancing a Christian Kingdom. Now, I know that I approach testing the patience of some of my kola – but this sort of attitude, "What's the big deal!" – betrays a total disregard of our history and the reasons why those who put together our social compact were so concerned about keeping religion out of civic life in a diverse society. Once more, I reminded of a meeting of a Lutheran Church meeting of the "Ladies' Aid" group in a small town in western North Dakota – recorded by an NPR reporter back in the 1970s – the discussion centered on the Middle East – and the comments about how the Jews were justifiably killed in World War II and didn't deserve a homeland, Israel – after all, they killed Jesus and said, "Let his blood be on us and our children."

Yesterday, all the news stations carried President Nixon's preoccupation and worry about John Kerry's role as a Vietnam war protestor back in 1971 – the war hero who expressed grave concern about the way in which U.S. troops were encouraged to see the Vietnamese as something other than human. Certainly, the atrocities of My-Lai were an anomaly – and most American soldiers did not engage in such inhumanity. And, certainly, from all evidence, there is very little by way of treating Iraqis inhumanly going on in our occupation following the short shooting war (short, but enormously expensive). The War with Iraq was "inexpensive" in terms of all Coalition forces killed and wounded – 554 Americans have been killed, 3,190 wounded – and of these, as many have suffered death or wounds since the end of the war as they did during the short engagement. One can find online the names and photographs of all those killed – and they are properly honored by their fellow citizens. But why is it that we never hear about the number of Iraqis killed and wounded during and following the end of the war? An independent group of United States and United Kingdom researchers involved in the Iraq Body Count say that a minimum of 8,235 and a maximum of 10,079 civilians died since the beginning of the war -- as of Saturday 7th February 2004. During the invasion of Baghdad about a year ago, a minimum of 3,000 Iraqis died – one American solider lost his life. We simply ignore the loss of life and enormous suffering of the Iraqis people because of our invasion. There are those who argue that Saddam killed many more in a shorter time – some even suggests that we have saved a net number of Iraqis. One can find some information from CBC – the Canadian Broadcasting Company – that reinforces the information gathered by the Iraq Body Count and lists the following casualties for the Iraqis military during the war:
Military Deaths: 4,895 to 6,370
Taken prisoner: 7,300 (as of April 15, 2003)
Iraqis wounded: 5,103

But at least 8,235 civilians died. If there were 5,000 instead of 500-some military deaths of Americans, this country would be in rebellion – not unlike the anti-war rallies in the last years of the Vietnam War. There can be little doubt that we Americans, in general, value the lives of our own much more than those whom we killed. Period.

Born on this day in Strasburg, North Dakota - hometown of Lawrence Welk - expatriate from beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota Robyn Neal languishes down in Jacksonville, Florida with her daughter, Alyssa. A former student at Dickinson State some thirty years or so past, Robbie Neal wrote me an email urging me to follow the sentiment of Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" shortly after I heard about the insidious invader - our mutual friend Jean Waldera has written a note to students we had known back at Dickinson. Robbie has been sending music and encouragement my way for more than a year - happy birthday, kola! May you not suffer too much in that inclement weather in Jacksonville where it probably will only reach 79 degrees today - hell, we're gonna get to 35 degrees here in beauuuuuuuuuuuutiful Bismarck!

And today is also the birthday of one of the most long-suffering – and suffer she did – women forced into a public role in the history of humankind – Pat Nixon, born on this day in 1912. She died on June 22, 1993 -- ten months before her husband, President Richard Nixon – and said shortly before the end of her passage here in the middle world, "I love my husband," she said, "I believe in him, and I am proud of his accomplishments." But she also said, while they were in the White House, "I'll have to have a room of my own. Nobody could sleep with Dick. He wakes up during the night, switches on the lights, speaks into his tape recorder." Here's to you, Pat – I hope you're getting some rest, wherever you are.

Ah, kola, 'tis a beauuuuuuuuuuuuutiful day here in Dakota – a truly beautiful day. And 'tis a great, great day to be alive – I'm feeling in particularly fine fettle, all things considered. All the blood counts that are supposed to up are – and those indicators of problems I had hoped would go down, have – so no extra trip to the Cancer Treatment of America necessary, at this point. I'm nearly a shadow, but I'm still here – and taking nourishment other than just Prosure, Ensure – including the weest bit of watermelon and strawberries -- and half a piece of sour-cream raisin pie yesterday noon! I have the other half left – waiting for me at the office. A few days ago, I questioned whether or not I would ever get warm and feeling like eating again – oh, me of little faith.

'Twas on this day in 1955 that the Ballad of Davy Crockett begin its five-week stint as number one on the pop charts – the whole business, including the television show with Fess Parker, was so popular and wide-spread that I remember some kid out in Hannover Township in Oliver County had a Davy Crockett lunch box – much to the envy of the rest of us still carrying the old black models – or even the old lard pails. All-American, alright – within two stanzas of the long, long ballad, Crockett is both fearless killer of "Injuns" and their protector and friend:

Fought single-handed through the Injun War
till the Creeks was whipped an' peace was in store
An' while he was handlin' this risky chore
made hisself a legend for evermore
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!

He give his word an' he give his hand
that his Injun friends could keep their land
An' the rest of his life he took the stand
that justice was due every redskin band
Davy, Davy Crockett, holdin' his promise dear!

Most curious – for the Creeks were forced to leave as a result of Davy whuppin' 'em – and then forced to vacate the only home they knew a few years later. 'Tis also the day, this 16 March, that Peter, Paul, and Mary first sang "Puff, the Magic Dragon" – a song many radio stations refused to air back in 1963 because they thought it was probably about smoking marijuana --

Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff
And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff, oh

Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.
Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.

Together they would travel on boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail
Noble kings and princes would bow whene'er they came
Pirate ships would lower their flags when Puff roared out his name, oh

CHORUS

A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys
Painted wings and giants's rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave
So, Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave, oh

CHORUS

Marijuana? Don't think so. 'Tis one of the oldest of stories in the world – "mythical animals" and heroes – yea, even gods – created in the imagination -- who exist only as long as we believe they do. And here's the key to understanding the Deist position – the attitude toward religion held by the founding generations – children of the Enlightenment, they believed that humans, not an interfering God directing human affairs like someone of the ilk of Zeus, were in charge of their own destiny. And they considered any attempt to foist one's "created" friends, gods, and other projections on others was anathema – each could have her/his Puff – that was his/her business. But demanding that all others in a social compact accept Puff as real was the beginning of the end of a rational pluralistic society.

May you frolic as you wish in the land of Honalee as wish – and feel free to share your Puff with all those who want – but don't be tempted to expect those who don't want to have anything to do with your Puff to agree with you. We leave the last word to James Madison – the Father of the U.S. Constitution, who said, " Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." We seem bent upon substituting faith for knowledge -- and taking as Gospel the strident voices who insist that either we either become a Christian – or at least Judeo-Christian – nation, or perish. The opposite is true. My good friend, Carrol Peterson, sent along the text of a bumper sticker he saw the other day -- The Christian Right is Neither." Be well, kola -- take care of yourselves, and do look out for each other -- that's the most important work we have to do here in the middle world.

Ev Albers

Monday, March 15th, 2004

Words for Today

"No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody."
So said Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, born on this day in 1767. Not a man to mince words, he believed that that violence was the only way to peace - for a while. He's the first president to be elected by a direct appeal to the people. His first great victory was absolutely destroying the Creek Indians in the southeast - they were aligned with the British in the War of 1812. He won the Battle of New Orleans - after the war was over - but news traveled slowly. By 1828, he was ready to run for president. Today, many bemoan the "nastiness" of political campaigns. Bush and Kerry haven't even come close to the slander and vituperation of the race between Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Jackson won - and Thomas Jefferson's worst fear was realized. During the campaign, Jackson and his wife Rachel were accused of being adulterers because they had married before she divorced her first husband - Rachel and Andrew quickly remarried, but it was too late. The damage was done, even though the couple had been married for decades. Nonetheless, Jackson won - quite handily. Rachel got here wish - she didn't have to serve as first lady in the president's house; she died at their home in Hermitage in Tennessee three days before Christmas in 1828 - before Jackson took office. Jackson had carved on her grave, "A being so gentle and yet so virtuous, slander might would, but could not dishonor." Jackson would have say something like "Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there," many times throughout his long life - he died at home at age seventy-eight in 1845.

Jackson was the first president who grew up poor - in poverty, as as matter of fact. Re-elected in 1932, he presided over one of the sorriest episodes in American history, the removal of the Cherokee to Arkansas. Later, they would be forced to the arid west - the infamous Trail of Tears. Always in ill-health, Jackson left office in 1937 an invalid, and he stayed on in this middle world for eight years at his home, the Hermitage in Tennessee - a man who was not well at all.

'Twas also on this Ides of March that Columbus returned from sailing the ocean blue - he came back to Spain in 1493, along with slaves - Columbus did not exactly consider the "Indians" human beings. Both considered themselves men of honor - in Jackson's case, honor was as important to him as his wife Rachel's Presbyterianism was to her. Jackson's notion of honor including allegiance to a code that all white males were equal - and that slavery was endorsed by Christianity itself - the proper order of things. Further, Jackson did not believe in the courts taking care of civil disputes - he said that his mother told him that he should never "indict" anyone for "assault and battery or sue him for slander." The answer was physical reprisal. A most curious movie was made in 1953 of the big scandal of 1828 -- The President's Lady starring Charlton Heston and Rita Hayworth as Jackson and Rachel - steamy divorce and all. Hard to imagine Rita Hayworth as a fervent Presbyterian. Heston said at the time that, of all the roles he had played, he most admired Andrew Jackson. It figures.

The Ides of March are famous only because of the Shakespearean warning to Julius Caesar - "Beware the Ides of March." There's nothing ominous about the day - has to do with the Roman calendar and the day between full and new moon - although that wasn't working because of a bit of difference in Roman times, either - the "Ides" fell on the 15th only in the months of March, July, October, and May. But you really don't need to know that on this glorious day in March - a most gorgeous, beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful morning here - rosy-fingered dawn was incredible. I arose early - along with my long-suffering spouse - to go to the local television station to do a short promo for my book, The Saga of Seaman, which is being featured on the Lewis and Clark Book Club here in Bismarck. I'm feeling fairly chipper, kola - have to go give four or five vials of blood in a bit to determine whether or not the stents in my bile ducts need a bit of roto-rootering - and then back to work here at this desk I love so. So here's a toast of juice to some other folk born on this day - Harry James, the bandleader born in 1916 (died 1983); Jimmy Swaggart (1935, still alive), the double first-cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis who fell from grace after a successful career as a televangelist - caught with prostitutes; and Barry Bonds, the most incredibly gifted baseball player I've ever seen (1946) - whose remarkable career may be tainted with his possible use of steroids. Swaggart is back after the day back on February 21, 1988 that he confessed on the air that he had committed a sin and would be leaving the ministry. Curiously, Swaggart apparently didn't really avail himself of the essential services the prostitutes he hired provided. He can play gospel music - he's sold some 15 million recordings around the world. Like Oral Roberts and Billy Graham, he has a son, Donnie Swaggart, who is carrying on his tradition - in ministry, that is. They have missions in South Africa and Australia, and you can even listen to his weekly broadcast online.

Folks are still sending Jimmy money - and buying his books and CDs. There's no limit to what folks of faith will forgive.

But to work - pondering how easily a man of the ilk of Andrew Jackson could walk into our time and say, "Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms." More Americans than those who send money Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, and God's men of their ilk would agree wholeheartedly.

Be well kola - take care of yourselves - and look out for each other - and if you fell wronged, don't go searching for your shotgun - trying talking first. It works surprisingly well, sometimes.

Ev Albers

Sunday, March 14th, 2004

Words for Today
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

​The words are Albert Einstein's – born on this day back in 1879, lived past his seventy-sixth birthday in 1955. Albert would be mightily disappointed with us, nearly fifty years after his death. We don't seem to have learned diddly about the futility of war, the inhumanity of religion run rampant, or the simple fact that we're here to take pleasure in learning and in giving to each other. Shame on us.

Aye, but, kola 'tis still a beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful day here in Dakota – we had just a whisper from an Alberta Clipper that came through last night – mostly wind. I was abed – in fact, I took the day off – especially my body – and lay abed for some thirty-six hours, without the energy to even open my computer and attempt to write the weest – but I dreamt. I've not been able to eat much of anything – so I've been living on Prosure and Ensure. I'm sure that I wouldn't be able to down even a single bit of steak – but I've been dreaming about a thick, sizzling steak for days. I suppose I'm protein-craved – and I'll have to find a way to take care of this with help from my doctors if I'm to survive – but I doubt if it will be steak – yet I dream. For some reason, I'm reminded of a short story by Jack London, "A Piece of Steak." Tom King is a prize fighter whose family is literally starving – but he has to eat in order to have enough stamina to fight so he can provide for them. The grocer will not advance him any more money because he thinks that Tom will lose – as his wife reports, "As how 'e was thinkin' Sandel ud do ye to-night, an' as how yer score was comfortable big as it was." So Tom, must fight without – the Australian is beyond his prime fighting in second-rate clubs for small purses – it's winner take all – except for three pounds, which the promoter already advanced him. As he walks the two miles to the fight, Tom ruminates about his life – how a man only has so many fights in him, how low he has come after so many glorious victories. He knows he's a has-been, but he must fight in order to try to provide for his family. After a hard, long fight, Tom almost beats his young opponent – but he simply runs out of energy – all because he didn't get his piece of steak.

I could have as much steak as I want – and there's the equivalent of steak in the protein drinks I down – 'tis processing them that's the problem, and I'll find out tomorrow whether blood tests indicate that the stents keeping my bile ducts open need attention once more. In the meantime, I'm awake this early, early Sunday A.M. – and a great day 'tis to be alive. Unlike London's Tom King, who is left with little hope of fighting on, I have every hope that there's many more days of being alive – and alert enough to do something that justifies my continued passage here in the middle world.

I've been ruminating this morning about something Einstein said that strikes me as imply and profoundly true: "Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries -- not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized." In so many ways, we have moved in the other direction – in an Einsteinian sense, we have become more uncivilized in the past few decades as we have retrenched into a kind of nationalistic isolation and self-righteousness. 'Twas Einstein who also pithily observed, "Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race." We live in dangerous times – in our country, a year after we invaded Iraq and deposed a horrible dictator, Saddam Hussein – at a horrendous cost in terms of an ever-rising and yet-to-be-known commitment of limited resources – billions upon billions upon billions – we generally seem to agree that the individual freedom we have sacrificed with the passage of the "Patriot Act" is justified.

Around the world this fine day, there's many more plates without a piece of steak than there are those with even the smallest sliver. Most disturbingly dangerous of all, those without become increasingly more fanatical in their naked hatred of the rich and privileged – those they consider something other than human – hence, terrorism. Instead of trying to learn what is at the heart of the vast differences that we have cultivated to divide us, we seem to have become addicted to politics, to something of a circus which confuses rather than clarifies and thrives on appealing to the worst of all of us instead of the best – said Einstein, "Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions." Around the world, strong, conservative leaders – and nationalistic patriots to boot – have won the political game – Vladimir Putin, the former KBG head of the Soviet Union, will be overwhelmingly re-elected as President of Russia this very day, for example.

But 'tis a day, dear kola, for me, to enjoy being awake, to enjoy a marvelously beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota. March is a time here of incredible shifts in the weather – 'twas on this day back in 1888 – actually, it began on March 13 – that one of the greatest blizzards of all time hit – and not just Dakota. Out in the badlands, Theodore Roosevelt's cattle herd was destroyed – as were many others in western Dakota and eastern Montana. Temperatures have also soared to the sizzling in March in Dakota – it keeps us on our toes. One of the things I'm gonna shoot for is bit of simplification in my unnecessarily complicated life. As Einstein advised, "Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for every one, best both for the body and the mind." For, he concluded, "Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous." Come to think on it, I haven't had the need for a barber for a long time – but my hair ain't long – I have some, it just doesn't grow.

Genug -- enough for this glorious day. Not an hour goes by – even when I'm abed for more than a day – awake or sleeping – that I'm not aware of how my very existence and continued passage here in the middle world depends upon the love and friendship that streams my way from you, dear kola – thank you – you're much more critical to life worth living than a piece of steak.

Ev Albers

Friday, March 12th, 2004

You Taught Me
All those years, alone,
Married to the intense uninteresting life . . .
And, until you came, Tomasito,
I didn't even know my name.
The words are those of OMF (our mutual friend, Thomas Matthew McGrath), whose son Tomasito came late in his life - even later than my son, Albert, in whom I am most well-pleased came to my lovin' spouse and me on this day in 1977 - one of the three most memorable days in my life - the others are the day Leslie Rae Kubik married me on September 19, 1975 and that glorious day my darlin' daughter, Gretchen Alene Albers was born on April 9, 1980.

What indescribable joy this fellow, Albert Otto Hermanson-Albers has brought us! I remember him as an incredibly intelligent, lovin' little boy - here he is coming around the bend of the road leading to his grandpa Albert and grandma Hulda's place in Hannover Township, Oliver County. I love this photograph - he follows his shadow around the bend, ready for the world, ready for anything. I'm reminded of another McGrath poem whenever I look at this photograph --

My little son comes running with open arms!
Sometimes I can't bear it,
Father,
Did I, too,
Open your heart almost to breaking?
. . . .

Albert was ready to go at a very early age -- long before he could walk, he bounced around in a device called a Johnny Jump-Up - it was supposed to be hung in doorway - but our Albie went so berserk that I finally put a screw in the ceiling in the middle of the living room and hung it there - he would swing back and forth in nearly a six-foot diameter. Albert never went to bed and fell asleep - he had too much to do, too many interesting things to observe and learn. We gave up early - I would sometimes get him to sleep by walking around the house with him on my back, singing nonsense songs to him. Sometimes we resorted to loading him into his car seat and driving around town until he fell asleep. Most often, we simply allowed him to run until he finally curled on the floor and went to sleep. When he was less than a year old, he was dressed in his first pair of bib overalls - Oshkosh Bigosh, of course. Here's the delightful young fellow with a much younger and hairier dad - back in 1978. From the time he started talking - long before his first birthday - Albie would do nursery rhymes - and very quickly, whole books (like Dr. Seuss) that he memorized after being read them night after night - he never tired of being read to - but that was never a prelude to sleep. Albie was too interested in the words, too stimulated.

Ah, what fun, what happiness those years - and all the days since he was born - our Albert gave . . . and keeps on giving. You can tell how proud we were.

One of the best things we ever bought were annual passes to the Bismarck Zoo when our children were young. He loved to sit and watch the animals - and to ride the train. He and his mother spend many a summer afternoon at the zoo - and, I confess, I would sometimes play hooky from work to get away with them for an hour or so. By the time he started the first grade, Albert could read - I taught him with a series of words on individual pieces of paper - Albert would sit for an hour or more rearranging and choosing them and reading them - delighted when he came up sentences that we nonsense. We're totally biased, of course - but Albert was the most winsome six-year-old I've ever met.

By then, our sometimes stubborn boy had become quite the social fellow (we won't talk about the long battle of toilet training - except to say that no amount of bribing or coaxing - or hours sitting with him on the stool - could persuade him to not keep his treasure with him - until the day he decided to do otherwise. Ah, a handsome fellow -- -- here he is on his eighteenth birthday. Albert decided the course of his life - and followed his interests with total immersion, a remarkable focus. One day he came to me and said, "Dad, I need a bass guitar!" I said, "Can you play bass?" He took my old acoustical guitar that I plucked very badly and started doing riffs on the bottom four strings. I told him that we would buy him one if he learned to read at least the bass cleft in musical scores - about two weeks later, he brought me music and demonstrated his ability - he became the bass player for the jazz bands in both junior and senior high school. I told him that he should really learn the upright bass - an idea he poo-poohed for a while - until he decided that it was a good idea. Eventually, we invested in an instrument for him - and he went on to college in music - after playing in the Bismarck-Mandan symphony as a high school student. He eventually played for several years in the Fargo Symphony Orchestra - and played well. A self-taught computer guru - he decided one summer that he required a computer, and he started writing games when was about twelve - Albert used his knowledge to earn a degree in musical composition - and now works for a company in Madison, Wisconsin, that writes and maintains software for the state's health care system. This past week, he had to suit up a couple of times, because the Governor came to call. Among Albert's greatest friends is his cat, Morty --he so loved his cat that he and his spouse, the lovely Bobbi Hermanson-Albers, found a "brother," Oliver for their Morty - who has grown up now - he rules their household. The wisest decision my son made was to marry Bobbi - they became the Hermanson-Albers of Madison. They are busy, happy - and the most loving of children - and we'll get to visit them on my sixty-second birthday, the 28th of this month. May you take the best possible care of each other, my children - and may your days be filled with the laughter, music, and joy you gave us. How often I think of your childhood and the time you spent with us late at night as I try to go to sleep - and in my waking dream, I'm carrying you around on my back, singing such as "Georgie, Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry."

My son's latest preoccupation is a web site devoted to "new" music. Some of those contribute are indeed real folk from around the world who send him their music, composed and produced "in their bedrooms," but others are his own - including those he assigns another composer and country. Says Albert in his welcome,

Welcome to BedroomBrain Records, an independent record label devoted to releasing the work of underground artists using their home studios to create remarkably original music.

Here at BedroomBrain we specialize in Electronica, Turntablism, Post-Rock, Dream-Pop, Free Improvisation, and everything in between. We are especially interested in artists who are so unique and imaginative that they defy classification, or at least incorporate elements of greatly diverse influences into their work.

​In fact, Albert used a photograph of his father as a cover for the group he created, GeräuschSchaft. Happy birthday, my dear son, happy birthday. Take care of yourself - and of your lovin' spouse, Bobbi. Your mother and I can never thank you enough for your gifts to us and your sister - and to all those whose lives you touch. May you live in harmony. And you, my kola - take care of yourselves - and of each other - the most important mission we have during our passage here in the middle world.

Ev Albers

Thursday, March 11th, 2004

"Certain people in the United States are driving nails into this structure of our relationship, then cutting off the heads. So the Soviets must use their teeth to pull them out." -
I do not pretend to understand what Mikhail S. Gorbachev meant by the extraordinary metaphor above. Today in 1985, he ascended to power in the Soviet Union. Son of a peasant farmer, Gorbachev was a disciple of Yuri Andropov, the head of the Secret Police who came to power when Leonid Brezhnev died in 1984. Andropov died in 1984 - and many thought that Gorbachev would take his place. But he was in his early 50s - too young, thought some. Instead, the Soviets turned to Konstantin Chemenko, someone most of us don't remember at all. He died in 1985, and Gorbachev became the new leader. Between 1985 and 1991, Gorbachev led his country through reforms both at home and abroad that were so fast and furious that by 1991 the Soviet Union began to dismantle in earnest - with his resignation that year, the U.S.S.R. ceased to exist.

Gorbachev is still very much alive. He's the president of the Gorbachev Foundation, a think tank called the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies. Tributes from all over the world have been sent last year and this - he turned seventy-one on March 2, 2004. 

Wrote George Herbert Walker Bush last year on the occasion of Gorby's seventieth birthday, in part,

History will be very generous and kind to you, honoring you for all you did to make our world a more peaceful world for your grandkids and ours. With Glasnost and Perestroika your farsighted vision paved the way for arms reductions, for ending the Cold War, and for bringing to your country a democracy and a market economy that will serve Russia well for years to come. Without your leadership these significant changes that resulted in far better relations between our two countries might not have happened at all.

Gorbachev's wife of fifty-three years, Raisa, died in 1999 of a rare form of leukemia - diagnosed only a few months before, she succumbed in September, with her husband at her side. She was a sociology professor, and the first modern "First Lady" of the Soviet Union - she wore designer clothes and shopped with a credit card, for example. Said her husband, "We were bound first of all by our marriage, but also by our common views on life. We both preached the principle of equality. We shared our common cares and helped each other always and in everything." Not everyone liked the woman whom Gorbachev met in a ballroom dancing class in college - in fact, Gorbachev once admitted that even his mother didn't like her. After a failed coup in 1991, before Gorbachev resigned and after she was held captive for a time, she suffered either a stroke or nervous breakdown, and she was out of the public eye until Gorby's unsuccessful attempt at the presidency of Russia in 1996.

Featured on the cover of the June 6, 1988 of Time Magazine, Raisa was committed to reaching out to people beyond the insular social compact of the Soviet Union - and to tending to the earth in such a way that it would be a fine place for her children's children to pass through the middle world. She once said, "The maltreatment of the natural world and its impoverishment leads to the impoverishment of the human soul. It is related to the outburst of violence in human society. To save the natural world today means to save what is human in humanity." She also said, most poignantly, given her valiant struggle with a devastating disease, "Youth is, after all, just a moment, but it is the moment, the spark that you always carry in your heart." She was less a committed socialist than her husband - who once observed, "Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind." I suspect he still strongly believes that there are as many ills in rampant capitalism as there are in socialism. His country today is in chaos - and no few in the former soviet states long for the good old days. Almost overnight, Soviet society changed into a place where everyone looks out for Number One, where things get done by thugs - like Capone's Chicago, only worse. Yet, through all of this, there prevails a sense of hope for the future - and a degree of joy in the presence. Gorbachev was with his wife when she died in a German hospital back in 1999, where she was receiving very aggressive chemo treatment for her insidious invader.

My own battle with the Big C currently has me bereft of a great deal of energy - I'm sleeping twelve hours a day of late - more, some days - and this is the tenth day after my last chemo treatment - and I received transfusion of a couple of units of blood almost two days ago. Not much pain - but blood counts are down - so I muddle along. 'Tis too grand and beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota to dwell on the downside of life - 'tis sunny and there's heavy thawing after an Alberta Clipper yesterday that closed shopping malls and stranded motorists ---his a day after 57 degree weather on Tuesday. We have a saying in North Dakota - if you don't like the weather, stay around a day; it will change. It has - and this, the 101st anniversary of one of the most famous Dakotans of all time, Lawrence Welk, is great day indeed. Lawrence Welk, affectionately known as Larry to his closest friends down in Strasburg, where he grew up on a farm to hardy German-Russian parents, rose from nothing to emperor of a great fortune before his death at age 89 in 1992. The Lawrence Welk Show is still televised weekly on North Dakota Public Television - much to the delight of the state's citizens as well as many viewers from Canada. His "Musical Family" still performs - at permanent theater in Branson, Missouri, and elsewhere throughout the nation. There are Lawrence Welk resorts at Branson, San Diego, California, and Palm Springs, California. Often considered something of a hick with the thick accent and bobbing head, Welk, who didn't speak English until he was about twenty-one, was a shrewd businessman who put together vast real-estate holdings and the royalty rights to 20,000 songs, including the entire collection of Jerome Kern's work. Among the greatest stars of Welk's "Family" is Myron Floren, the accordionist who grew up on a farm in South Dakota to Norwegian-American parents. Born in 1919, Floren was self-taught - he convinced his father to buy him a $10 accordion from Sears and Roebuck when he was a child. He started playing professionally when he was eight - and didn't look back. For many years, he was the star attraction at the Hostfest in Minot, North Dakota - one of the great annual events in the state. Of late, he's been battling health problems - and he hasn't been able to travel much. He fights his own insidious invader, colon cancer - discovered in 1998 during successful treatment for a stroke.

I wrote a year ago (see 03/11/04) about Lawrence Welk and his hometown of Strasburg - which he helped in many ways of the years. He's not buried there - his grave is in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City in sunny California. Association with him and his show continues to contribute to the enormous good fortune of his former band members and his family, who are wealthy, indeed - as will the Welks for decades and generations to come. A man of deep personal faith (one shared by his greatest star, Myron Floren) in Christianity, Lawrence Welk believed that God would take care of his every need - as long as he took care of business. Disarmingly simple in his approach to entertaining people, Welk once said, "If they can't hum it after we play it, it's not for us." Nor did he have much time for nonsense lyrics. One day one of his musicians brought him Roger Miller's "You Can't Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd" for review. Welk looked at the lyrics and read aloud, "You Can'tah Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herdah" - several times. "What does that mean?" he asked. "It doesn't make any sense - it's not going on our show."

Well, dear kola - 'tis high time to try to get the weest bit of productive work done this bright and sunny day - busy times - a wonderful day to prove Roger Miller wrong and go out and live the sentiment of Roger Miller's great song --

You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
But you can be happy if you've a mind to

You can't take a shower in a parakeet cage
You can't take a shower in a parakeet cage
You can't take a shower in a parakeet cage
But you can be happy if you've a mind to

All you gotta do, is put your mind to it
Knuckle down, buckle down, do it, do it, do it

Well you can't go swimmin' in a baseball pool
You can't go swimmin' in a baseball pool
You can't go swimmin' in a baseball pool
But you can be happy if you've a mind to

You can't change film with a kid on your back (chain-swim)
You can't change film with a kid on your back
You can't change film with a kid on your back
But you can be happy if you've a mind to

You can't drive around with a tiger in your car
You can't drive around with a tiger in your car
You can't drive around with a tiger in your car
But you can be happy if you've a mind to

All you gotta do, is put your mind to it
Knuckle down, buckle down, do it, do it, do it

Well you can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
But you can be happy if you've a mind to

You can't go fishin' in a watermelon patch
You can't go fishin' in a watermelon patch
You can't go fishin' in a watermelon patch
But you can be happy if you've a mind to

You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd...

You can be happy if you've a mind to - take care of yourselves, kola - hope I haven't infected you with a bad earworm - and do look out for each other. Looking to your neighbor's needs is the best way to happiness, methinks . . .

Ev Albers

Wednesday, March 10th, 2004

​“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” --

So said the Catholic priest and psychologist Henri Nouwen, author of such marvelous books as Wounded Healer. You can read a great review of his latest biographer, Michael Ford's book. Nouwen truly felt others' pain – and reached out to help others out of his terrible loneliness and self-imposed denial of physical intimacy. He grew up in Holland during World War II – and he saw Jewish friends disappear. From the time he was eight years old, he practiced at being a priest. He called some 1,500 people close friends, but he longed for a simple hug. He came to understand and come to terms with his latent homosexuality late in his life, after teaching divinity at Yale and Harvard and being a missionary to Boliva and Peru – and serving as the pastor for L'Arche Daybreak in Canada, a community of mentally and physically handicapped people. While at Harvard, he was especially hard on Catholic students who were gay – he told them they were living an evil life. There's absolutely no evidence that he was ever anything but the committed, celibate priest – and although he was tempted to go public with his self-knowledge of his sexual orientation late in life – he had become friends with many gays – his friends advised him against it because it would wipe out his credibility with his Catholic readers. But before his death in 1996, the celebrated priest did become much more vocal in his belief that gays had a "unique vocation in the Christian community." There's a web site with daily excerpts from Noewen's work. For example, there's this great entry for yesterday, from his Bread for the Journey published in 1997:

We spend an enormous amount of energy making up our minds about other people. Not a day goes by without somebody doing or saying something that evokes in us the need to form an opinion about him or her. We hear a lot, see a lot, and know a lot. The feeling that we have to sort it all out in our minds and make judgments about it can be quite oppressive.

The desert fathers said that judging others is a heavy burden, while being judged by others is a light one. Once we can let go of our need to judge others, we will experience an immense inner freedom. Once we are free from judging, we will be also free for mercy. Let's remember Jesus' words: "Do not judge, and you will not be judged" (Matthew 7:1).

'Tis something most of the Christian Right finds totally foreign to their way of life – they act as though they were born to judge others – with the preconceived notion that they will find all who do not agree with them less than what a Christian should be. They would have little use for one of the most remarkable priests to ever serve the Mother Church. What a pity!

Aye, but 'tis a glorious day here in beauuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota here on Arthur Drive, but a brisk walk away from one of the last almost-natural stretches of the Missouri River. And 'twas it ever grand yesterday, kola – temperatures in the 50s in the late afternoon – and I was infused with a couple of units of blood – instantaneous improvement in energy with a boost to the hemoglobin and red blood cells. Sure, I'm the weest bit yellow with a little jaundice – indicating that perhaps the sleeved steel stent in my bile ducts are getting a little clogged – but I'm still ready to get up and at 'em. I know how lucky I am – I've outlived all expectations, and I'm still able to get to work and make a bit of a contribution to bringing the very best of the humanities to all of the folk in North Dakota – 'tis my passion, next to my family and friends – one thing I've learned since I became aware of the insidious invader a year ago last September – the greatest gift in this middle world are family and friends. There's my lovin' spouse and children, my mother and siblings, and my incredibly generous in-laws, including my sister-in-law Delores Huss of a Denver suburb -–spouse of my friend, the long-suffering Wayne Huss and grandmother of my spouse's grand-nephew Tyler – who is a real pip. Delores turned fifty-nine yesterday – her younger sisters have been sending her Happy 60th Birthday cards for years. Delores takes in all in good humor with enormous grace. Happy fifty-ninth birthday, Delores – may you live as long as wish in health and happiness.

Been thinking this A.M. of an old friend by way of books) – Alexis de Tocqueville, the young Frenchman who came here in the 1830s to study our prison system and traveled throughout the country – then returned home and wrote perhaps the most insightful set of essays about who we American are and what we do what we do -- Democracy in America. Incredibly, after all the changes our social compact has seen, most of what he said remains accurate. Tocqueville was convinced that, while religion could keep capitalism – look-out-for-number-one – in line – otherwise we would simply walk over each other in our effort to make money. Having said that, Tocqueville said we were prone to go overboard. Here's Chapter 12 of section II of Book Two of Democracy in American (remember when it was written):

Chapter XII
WHY SOME AMERICANS MANIFEST A SORT OF FANATICAL SPIRITUALISM
Although the desire of acquiring the good things of this world is the prevailing passion of the American people, certain momentary outbreaks occur when their souls seem suddenly to burst the bonds of matter by which they are restrained and to soar impetuously towards heaven. In all the states of the Union, but especially in the half-peopled country of the Far West, itinerant preachers may be met with who hawk about the word of God from place to place. Whole families, old men, women, and children, cross rough passes and untrodden wilds, coming from a great distance, to join a camp-meeting, where, in listening to these discourses, they totally forget for several days and nights the cares of business and even the most urgent wants of the body.

Here and there in the midst of American society you meet with men full of a fanatical and almost wild spiritualism, which hardly exists in Europe. From time to time strange sects arise which en- deavor to strike out extraordinary paths to eternal happiness. Religious insanity is very common in the United States.

Nor ought these facts to surprise us. It was not man who implanted in himself the taste for what is infinite and the love of what is immortal; these lofty instincts are not the offspring of his capricious will; their steadfast foundation is fixed in human nature, and they exist in spite of his efforts. He may cross and distort them; destroy them he cannot.

The soul has wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains are taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amid the enjoyments of sense. If ever the faculties of the great majority of mankind were exclusively bent upon the pursuit of material objects, it might be anticipated that an amazing reaction would take place in the souls of some men. They would drift at large in the world of spirits, for fear of remaining shackled by the close bondage of the body.

It is not, then, wonderful if in the midst of a community whose thoughts tend earthward a small number of individuals are to be found who turn their looks to heaven. I should be surprised if mysticism did not soon make some advance among a people solely engaged in promoting their own worldly welfare. It is said that the deserts of the Thebaid were peopled by the persecutions of the emperors and the massacres of the Circus; I should rather say that it was by the luxuries of Rome and the Epicurean philosophy of Greece. If their social condition, their present circumstances, and their laws did not confine the minds of the Americans so closely to the pursuit of worldly welfare, it is probable that they would display more reserve and more experience whenever their attention is turned to things immaterial, and that they would check themselves without difficulty. But they feel imprisoned within bounds, which they will apparently never be allowed to pass. As soon as they have passed these bounds, their minds do not know where to fix themselves and they often rush unrestrained beyond the range of common sense.

​I leave it to your judgment – are "rushing unrestrained beyond the range of common sense" with our national embrace of The Passion of the Christ and our animosity to gay marriages? In our fervent insistence – with the help of our national leaders – that our cause of one a Christian, saved society against godless Islam?

'Tis far too nice a day for me to rant more on this subject – for today. 'Twill be the weest bit windy – and not quite as a hot as yesterday. Feeling pretty damned perky – time to clean up as best I can and hie me to the office. Amazing what a couple of units of blood will do to make one feel better. Do take care of yourselves, kola – and do look out for each other.

Ev Albers

Tuesday, March 9th, 2004

“If there is sin against life, it consists in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.” --
'Twas Albert Camus, the great French philosopher, who said so, and I think he was absolutely right. As the hour creeps toward rosy-fingered dawn and a bright and sunny morning here in beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutful Dakota where the temperature will sizzle by late afternoon – a sweltering 50 degrees is in the works – I'm contemplating the ill the whole notion that humans are born in sin and condemned to eternal damnation unless they accept the son of God as their personal savior. Such nonsense – along with the absolute requirement that one has to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost – has caused more pain and grief among God-fearing Christians who lose a child than any other. The Roman Catholic Church does not officially subscribe to St.Augustine's notion of limbo -- that place where unbaptized infants go, according to him – because God would not allow an innocent infant to go to hell through no fault of her/his own – so the unbaptized infant gets "natural" but not "supernatural" happiness for eternity. Other theologians suggest that that such infants have a crack at heaven because of "universal salvific will" – God finds a way to bend the rules under special circumstances.

The whole notion of original sin is much more difficult for the reasonable person to accept – here 'tis in a nutshell: Adam took the apple from Eve and sinned; we are descended from Adam; we're sinners from the time of our birth. Of course, 'tis the business of organized religion to keep us ever-aware of our sins – and our probable eternal suffering in hell – 'tis the fear of that consequence that consumes the lives of no few in our social compact, including our political leaders. Just yesterday, I heard Secretary of State Colin Powell tell an interviewer that we are a nation committed to the principle of the Bible – and that we can only succeed with God on our side. There are communities in this society where the belief in the imminence of the Rapture -- followed by seven years of tribulation and then the Second Coming – the belief that the trumpet blows, and all Christians are whisked away to heaven – leaving the rest of the world to utter misery. It's right around the corner, according to these folks – so it's now or never for all of us going merrily along our way without being born again. Those of the ilk of Pat Robertson, founder of the 700 Club and unashamed advocate of mixing religion and politics, look forward to yet another Great Awakening in our society ('twas Robertson who said that God told him Bush would be reelected president of the United States). We've survived a couple of big ones – including the revivals of the nineteenth century that emphasized being publicly born-again, ala a Billy Graham altar call. Fundamental evangelical churches (that is, those whose mission is to convert folks to their fold) have indeed thrived in the last decade or so, even in Dakota, where religion was pretty mainstream until very recently. Now huge temples have been built – houses of fundamental worship that seat up to 1,500. And sinners are flocking to them by the thousands.

The origin of the word sin lies in the concept of disobedience – not following God's rules to the letter. For all of Christianity, the greatest sins are sexual. Consider, for example, the extremes to which the church has attacked masturbation – summarizes A.G. Grayling in his essay "Sin" in Meditations for the Humanist:

In its efforts to control a life-threatening practice whose effects are a degenerative progression from weakness and nervous exhaustion through blindness to madness and eath, the medical profession once prescribed chloral hydrate, potassium bromide and opium for onset cases, and for more serious cases digitalis, strychnine ('which may be safer when mixed with small doses of arsenic,' said one helpful practitioner) and orally adminstered hydrochloric acid. If this did not work, the next resort was the applications of leeches to the thighs, blistering or scalding of the peritoneum or genitals, and application of electric currents to these organs.When all else failed, surgical intervention in the form of infibulation of the prepuce, circumcision, castrationor clitoridectomy was indicated. To ensure that the practice in question would begin at all, parents were advised to stitch the sleeves of the children's nightgowns to the bedcovers, or tie their ankles to opposite sides of the crib, or make them wear a thick towel or nappy.

The official position of the Roman Catholic Church remains the same – it's in the Catechism. Masturbation, homosexual activity, use of condoms -- all are morally wrong because they circumvent the possibility of procreation. There are no exceptions. Sin from the absolutist Christian point of view – and even more in Islam – is toeing the line -- submission. The fundamentalists demand that we kow-tow – said Gilbert K. Chesterton, "Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty." Make no mistake – the fundamental Christian Right is dominated by intellectual bullies. They are responsible, in no small part for that which cannot be forgiven: as free-thinking Emma Goldman said, "The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought." "Sin," said Andre Gide, "is whatever obscures the soul." Or scabs it – and no one scab a soul like the ministers and priests of organized religion.

In his refreshingly illuminating book on the problems of leading a moral life despite the never-ending quest of organized religion to demand conformity to a code so contrary to the best of what we humans have thought, former Bishop of Edinburgh in Godless Morality: Keeping Religion Out of Ethics explains why St. Paul's admonishments about same-sex congress should be considered with a more jaundiced eye:

They [Paul's assignment of women to a role of submission to their husband and second-class status] were a photograph of the customs of his day, but we persuaded ourselves that they were no long normative for our time. The same has to be said of the few things that Paul said about same-sex relations in the Letter to the Romans in chapter one. 'They have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and have offered reverence and worship to created things instead of to the Creator. Blessed is he for ever, Amen. As a result God has given them up to shameful passions. Among them women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and men too, giving up natural relations with women, burn for lust for one another; males behave indecently with males, and are paid in their own persons the fitting wage of such perversion.' We can try to torture a liberal interpretation out that text by claiming that Paul did not understand same-sex relations in the way we do now do, so his strictures, which seem to be based on fear of idol worship of some sort, cannot apply to our time. The really honest way for us to deal with the question is to ask: even if Paul would have opposed what we mean by same-sex relations, why should his opposition be normative for us today? In other parts of Pauline theology we make choices. We might find his metaphors for explaining the power of Christ's death suggestive, and his doctrine of God's justifying grace liberating; we are no longer likely to make much of his expectation of the imminent return of Jesus, and some of us find his certainty that all rulers get their authority from God dangerous as well as unconvincing. Sensibly, we make choices here, we take what what still has authority for us, because of its self-evidencing power, and reject the rest. In fact, we no longer treat an injunction from scripture as having moral authority over us simply because it is in scripture. It has to have moral force independent of its scriptural context. We judge scripture by our own best moral standards, not the other way around. We now do this in most areas except the area of sexual behavior. We must find the honesty and courage to apply this criterion of authenticity to the tangled area of human sexuality.

One of the fascinating things about the campaign for equal human rights for gay and lesbian people is that most of the energy for it, and most of the progress it has achieved, has been in society at large, rather than within the Christian Church. This should not surprise us, because the impetus for social reform usually happens in this way, with the Church right at the back of the procession. It is significant that, the day after the vote in the House of Commons to lower the age of consent for gay sex to 16, the Guardian newspaper wrote that homosexuality had just curled up and died as a political issue in Britain. The piece ended with these words: 'This topic has expired. You might as well try to repeal legislation on child chimney sweeps.' That is certainly true as far as the political order goes. In the Christian Church it will take a bit longer. That is why some of us are still trying to push the Trojan Horse through the gates.

I'm not as optimistic as Brother Holloway – for in our social compact in the United States, we are in grave danger of allowing the Christian Right to lead our government at the expense of personal freedom. Blind obedience to the letter of scripture in the arbitrarily limited form we have in the contemporary Christian Bible is expected. Ah, kola – these are trying times – but I must be about the business of staying alive – I await arrangements for a transfusion to get a bit more energy – I have work to do. So do we all, dear kola – the most important of which is taking good enough care of ourselves so we can look out for each other with love and tolerance. Tell you this – ain't gonna be done if you begin the day all worried about your original sin -- 'twill scab your souls, kola.

Ev Albers

Monday, March 8th, 2004

Words for Today--
"To capture the fish is not all of the fishing."--
That's what Zane Grey said. He was right. In fact, I firmly believe that the days and hours one spends fishing don't count toward our allotted time here in the middle world – some say, fishing even gives one an extra hour of life for every hour spent fishing. I was thinking of fishing today because it's my nephew James John Albert Albers' thirty-ninth birthday.

Little Jim – we've always called him little Jim to distinguish him from his dad and my brother, Big Jim – Little Jim and his lovely wife Trish have three daughters — Victoria, the oldest, is everything a fishing and hunting father could possibly dream of in a companion. I'm not sure, but I think that Little Jim got his first fishing outfit when he was six months old – his father lives to hunt and fish. From the time she was a little girl, Victoria was Little and Big Jim's constant companion on their fishing expeditions – later their hunting forays. Big Jim is retired, so he gets to fish a good deal more than his son – but if 'tis summer, Victoria will always be with him. It's difficult for me to comprehend that little Jim, my godson, is thirty-nine – he was but an infant when I stayed with Big Brother Jim and his ever-lovin' spouse Lucille out in Barstow, California, back in '65. Then they moved back to North Dakota – and we all watched Little Jim grow up. What a holy terror that mild-mannered fellow of today was! When he was about four, he was casting – we all ducked! When he was in his early teens, I still tried carrying a shot gun and hunting – kola, I'm not a hunter. I recall one day we were walking some trees hunting pheasants – Little Jim downed two birds before I got the gun to my shoulder. We agreed that hunting was not for me – I daydreamed too much. Now, fishing is another matter – the right kind of fishing is made for daydreaming, although there are times when it's taken most seriously – as in tournament fishing. Little Jim and I partnered a few times in the big one in North Dakota – I fear I was something of a jinx, but he took it all in good humor. We never did win anything – but, then, I don't think big Jim and our mutual friend Larry Borneman did either – but Big Jim and Little Jim together did rather well on occasion.

​I only went deer hunting once – 'tis not for me. But I love venison – and I always happily took the deer sausage and butterfly steaks my nephew and brother provided. Victoria, Little Jim's oldest, is the embodiment of the Greek goddess Diana – she loves to hunt and to fish – and to spend time in the great Dakota outdoors. Perhaps one of the reasons my nephew smiles all the time is that he lives with four females – his wife and three daughters. It is, after all International Women's Day, first celebrated in 1945. Little Jim's younger girls Alyssa and Kayla are still baking cookies – but I'll warrant they'll be out dipping a line before long – if not toting a gun. I always hear a word of good cheer from my nephew Jim – what a grand fellow he is. Perhaps he was born a couple of hundred years too late – he would have been great on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Here's a huge toast of Welch's Strawberry Breeze to you, James John Albert Albers (named for his father and both grandfathers). Live long and prosper – and thanks for all of those times you put up with your incompetent Uncle Everett.

Received a great little ditty from my friend from over in Connecticut, Ellen Zvingilas. She still awaits Connecticut's harbinger of spring, the peep frogs singing in the swamp. All she got this morning was the squawk of a wild turkey – weather has been the weest bit more inclement in Connecticut than in beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota, where 'tis an especially gorgeous day: temperatures in the 40s, bright sunning, slow thawing. Ellen and I were classmates back at Dickinson State when it was a college, not a university, back in the 1960s. She also sent along a great little piece by Calvin Trillin from The Nation:

George W. Bush Speaks Out on Gay Marriage

He backs an amendment defining the vow
Of marriage as being a guy and his frau,
Lest civilization sink into a slough-
Which he says could happen. It isn't clear how.

Though he can't explain it, he needn't expand.
We saw this with Poppy. We know what's at hand:
The Jesus battalions demanded this stand.
The yelp of the lap dog is heard in the land.

Right on, brother Calvin. What's to be said? There's no one with a real shot at being president of the United States who is willing to stand in favor of gays to enjoy the same rights and privileges of other Americans – but 'tis too fine a day to wax despondent over our kow-towing to the religious right. Next thing you know, Mel Gibson will be spending some of the $200 plus million he's already garnered from Passion of the Christ to drum up support for the Bush-backed amendment to the U.S. Constitution limiting marriage to a woman and a man. Best I take another sip of the strawberry shake my lovin' spouse brought me and get on with the rest of this glorious day.

Ev Albers

Sunday, March 7th, 2004

Words for Today--
" Ah, great it is to believe the dream
as we stand in youth by the starry stream;
but a greater thing is to fight life through
and say at the end, the dream is true!"-
So penned Edwin Markham, the American poet who completed his passage in the middle world on this day in 1940, about six weeks short of his eighty-eighth birthday. Markham's most famous, of course, for his rather heavy-handed moralistic poem "The Man with the Hoe," after French painter Millet's work of the bestial man with the short hoe. Here's but a snippet:

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.
. . . .
I've always wondered on the damned hoe in the picture - it's so short! We didn't have hoes like that out in Hannover Township in Oliver County - in the heart of the heart of the universe. Unless one's grandpa or dad cut one down so that we could start hoeing before we had reached the height to stand up and use a woman/man's size hoe. Short hoes make for a most miserable life - is it more effective to bend over and hoe - does one get more power - and is one more accurate? I don't think so - but perhaps. Or perhaps it was simply a matter of habit - a very bad one. Until about 1960 - even and later in places like Hannover Township - there was plenty of mind-numbing physical labor without a damned short-handled hoe. Sufficient unto the day - until most recently except for the most privileged in the middle world, is the unnecessary work or hard physical labor with little reward.

A kola or two has asked me why a refer to being alive as a passage in the middle world - it comes, of course, from OMF (our mutual friend), Thomas Matthew McGrath - 'tis the only "world" we can know with any certainty exists. Is there a world beyond this one? Perhaps -- or perhaps another "dimension." A heaven or hell? Doubt it, but perhaps. Or perhaps part of ourselves participates in something like an Emersonian oversoul - that we are part of all humans who have ever traveled briefly here in the middle world. 'Tis a metaphor that does not invite extension - in the way in which I use the term, there is no upper or lower world - or even a world before and after. In some ways, it's a means of emphasizing life as opposed to death in anticipation of happy-ever-aftering or frying in hell.

'Tis (what else would one expect?) a beauuuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota - temperatures in the mid-forties, bright sunshine, only the weest bit of breeze. Spring is coming - coming soon. How well I remember the final thaws-in-earnest back on our farmstead in Hannover Township - it came much later than March 7 - but 'twas glorious, especially after a year of heavy snowfall, those years that the snow piled to the top of the house and was so deep that we tunneled between house and barn. Usually, it came suddenly - and there was water everywhere - in Dakota, one day is the last day of winter - the next spring - instantaneous. We would put the wheels back on the car, fill the radiator, and drive to town - not on the road, because that would be under water next to our house - but over the prairie to the south of our house. As a youngster, I would get gloriously wet - really wet. One day there would be several feet of snow, the next only patches - and crocuses would bloom, and there would be robin nests next to the water-filled ditches, and geese would be flying south - aye, but 'twas grand, 'twas grand.

Of course, spring brought its share of hard physical labor --there were those huge piles of cow manure outside the door of the barn - thrown there during the winter when it was too nasty to haul it away with the wheeled manure spreader - actually, too dangerous for the horses as well. 'Twas not that much better in the spring, because the water logged manure was heavier - and considerably stinkier - but it had to get on the field before plowing and planting. Then there was hauling out the silage that was finally thawing from the walls of the silo - and dropping to center - sometimes thirty or forty feet, because during hard winters the outside perimeter of the silage would freeze solid as much as four feet inward. 'Twas dangerous business going into that silo in the spring. But there were many aspects of spring in Hannover Township that made life a good deal easier - for my mother, the thaw-in-earnest meant that she didn't have to hang out the clothes and let them freeze then bring them in and thaw - they could dry without freezing.

'Tis thawing today, kola - no much snow this winter, so there's not much to melt. But 'tis a great day to be alive - and a great Sunday to contemplate how to recapture just a bit of the dreams of spring and potential I had as a kid back in Hannover Township. I hope you're taking care of yourselves kola - that you have a spring in your step this glorious day - and that you're thinking about your fellow passengers here in the middle world a way to put one in theirs --

Ev Albers

Saturday, March 6th, 2004

Words for Today--
" Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you."-
The words are those of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, born on this day in 1806. We know her best as the poet who gave us the marvelous Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her eventual husband, the poet Robert Browning, sent her a telegram in 1845 out of the blue professing his love of her verse - and of her. They started a correspondence - and the rest is the stuff of romantic lore. The notion of "translations from the Portuguese" is a ruse adopted by Elizabeth because of the frankness and forthrightness of her profession of love in the sonnets.

Aye, and 'tis a gloriously beauuuuuuuuuuuuutiful day here in Dakota this early morning - the full moon descends over the Missouri in the slightly frosty weest bit of fog - 'twas a wondrous site when I opened the front door to pick up the paper and look to the west. Across the river lies Mandan, Bismarck's sister city, named, of course, for the Indian people who, along with the Hidatsa, hosted Lewis and Clark during the winter of 1804-05 - and welcomed them back from the Pacific in 1806 when Elizabeth Barrett Browning was six months old. Yesterday, there was a huge stink in Mandan's City Hall - no, not corruption or misconduct of elected officials - they have severe sewer problems over there. Historically, what did stink to high heaven (love that cliché) was the decision of the Supreme Court on this day in 1857 - the infamous Dred Scott Decision that a slave remained a slave even if taken to a free state. Took a good long while for African Americans to be recognized as complete human beings anywhere in the United States - even after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

This is also the anniversary of the last day at the Alamo in Texas - Santa Ana and his army of 3,000 finally did in the 159 defenders of the fort after thirteen days on March 6, 1836. Today, the Mexican President Vicente Fox awakes in home of U.S. President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas - sated with a dinner last night of bass - a fish caught by the President himself in the stocked pond on the ranch - and including a grits souffle, green chiles and cheese - and apple cake topped with ice cream carrying Bush's name. President Fox and his wife may be more something other than sated after such a mixture - the meal also included crab cakes. But all seems well between Fox and Bush - after less than great relations for the last couple of years. It seems like only yesterday that Mexico refused to back the United Nations in the Bush administration's appeal for support in the invasion of Iraq. Curiously, President Fox acknowledges (hard not to) the presence of thousands of illegal Mexican immigrant in the United States - and he demands better treatment for his citizens! Fox is still not satisfied with the United States position on execution of Mexican nationals convicted by our courts - especially those in Texas. 'Twas the fact that the state of Texas went ahead and executed a Mexican national who had been convicted of killing police officer back in August 2002 that led to Fox's deciding not to come to Crawford for dinner. But he's there now - and all's well. The cynical would say that President Bush is motivated by political reasons - he wants the Hispanic vote next November. Nonetheless, 'tis grand to see civility in our relation with our southern neighbor.

Rosy-fingered dawn has come and gone this morning - and 'tis a good day to be alive - sated with a bit of Malt O Meal, feeling as good as I have in a while. May be time for a bit of my sister-in-law Janet's two-tone dessert later today. And perhaps time on this fine Saturday to do a bit of reading - the greatest of pleasures: Elizabeth Barrett Browning was right about that. Take care, dear kola - and do take care of yourselves and look out for your fellow travelers here in the middle world.

Ev Albers