Monday, January 27th, 2003

​Today is the 247th anniversary of the birth of Mozart, the genius born January 27, 1756. He lived half a lifetime by our standards - dead at age thirty-five on December 5, 1791. Few folks know that Mozart was also a poet, capable of stuff almost as bad as what I've allowed other humans to suffer to on occasion (not quite). In fact, he wrote a delightful little verse to his mommy in January 1778 - but more of that, including the poem, in the weest bit.

Yes, indeed, 'tis a glorious day in Dakota - temperature this 5:00 A.M. sixteen degrees above zero in front of our house and nearly twenty above in the back (gauges are in the house, next to the doors, with probes to the outside). It's always warmer in the back of the house than in the front, which faces west toward the Missouri River, less than a mile away, I think - but on the other side of the bluffs. I think perhaps the back is warmer because more of the heat from the house escapes that door. It may be just a bit cooler in Bismarck fifty yards away from my house, but not much.

But we were observing Mozart's birthday. I once worked in a bowling emporium in Dickinson, North Dakota. My boss loved Mozart. He said he once dated - dated once - the most beautiful woman he had ever seen his life. He told her of his passion for Mozart, and she said, "Oh, I just love him, too. I got to see him at one of his concerts in Denver, you know!" I listened to Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" at least three times a week during my freshman year at the University of North Dakota in 1960-61. I needed all of the harmony and order I could find - it's not the kind of music that is going to stir your passions - on the contrary, it helps quell the more despondent, methinks. Mozart wrote "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" the year his pet starling (wild bird) died, 1787. He was living in Vienna. Sixteen-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven came to take lessons from the twenty-one-year-old Mozart - it only lasted two weeks. I was reminded of my "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" habit when I was at the Cancer Treatment Center of America facility in Zion earlier this month - a lot of Mozart is played at the facility, including as background for peaceful, soothing landscapes broadcast on an in-house channel, offered as training for "imaging therapy" - the day-dreaming of one's most pleasant past experience. Not much Beethoven is played - can't remember hearing any.

Many Americans first came to know Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by way of the 1984 film, Amadeus, which won eight Academy Awards - it is a great motion picture in spite of all those awards - and the many departures from what nitpicking critics know to be Mozart's "true" story. and his nieces & nephews, April 19, 2002

Be well, kola - and take care of yourselves and of each other.
Ev Albers

Sunday, January 26th, 2003

It was on a January 26th 219 years ago that Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter from France to his daughter, Sarah Bache. Franklin, an old guy in 1784, offered a delightful rationale for the young United States adopting the turkey instead of the eagle as its official bird. Here's what he said:

Begin Franklin quote
Others object to the bald eagle as looking too much like a dindon, or turkey. For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk; and, when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this injustice he is never in good case; but, like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little kingbird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the kingbirds from our country; though exactly fit for that order of knights, which the French call Chevaliers d'Industrie.

I am, on this account, not displeased that the figure is not known as a bald eagle, but looks more like a turkey. For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours; the first of the species seen in Europe, being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and served up at the wedding table of Charles the Ninth. He is, besides, (though a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that,) a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards, who should presume to invade his farmyard with a red coat on.
End Franklin Quote

There much more in this note of great humor from a father to his daughter – mostly Franklinian discourse on the silliness of badges and emblems of nobility in Europe. You can read the entire letter online here. Imagine, kola, the rather "silly" turkey depicted in all his glory (perhaps in attempted flight) on the tails of fighter plans or the sides of combat tanks! This alone might be reason enough to think carefully before charging into war. Think of it: instead of "Screaming Eagles" there would be military units named the "Gobbling Turkeys." Turkeys are rather down-to-earth birds – and vegetarians to boot. Folks in western Dakota, where 'tis indeed a glorious day with a potential high of ten above, might not like this part of what the turkey suggests about a society that would adopt it as its emblem – they would prefer a bird that doesn't turn down a piece of red meat. Even worse, there's all those turkey burgers and sausages out there – 'tis enough to drive a cowman crazy. True, there's no turkey talking in the soaring imagery of eagles in everything from pop hymns to martial music, but only, perhaps, because we have not given the bird the respect that Franklin says he deserves.

Of course, he was talking about the rather lean wild turkey – not the dumbed-down butterballs from turkey farms that wouldn't last long even in the rather unseasonably balmy ten above today (well, all right, it is 18 below now, but the temperature is going to soar like a turkey) in Dakota if they had to get out and fend for themselves.

About 100 years ago, the British author Gilbert Keith Chesterton wrote, " A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished."

Ah, sweet mystery of life! Oh, yes – I do know that it's Super Bowl Sunday and that there are many, many more weighty matters than talking about turkeys on this fine January day. Maybe if Tampa Bay wins the Super Bowl the owner will consider changing the name and mascot to the Tampa Bay Turkeys. Now wouldn't that be grand?

Take care of yourselves and each other kola –

Ev Albers

Saturday, January 25th, 2003

What a fine day in Dakota! Lots of inquiries to North Dakota media, I would imagine, from folks in Florida eager to get away from it all and enjoy our weather. I awoke puzzled over a strange dream: I was driving over a wee patch of ice, crested a hill, and rolled over several times. Eventually, I found myself standing beside the totally demolished vehicle with the steering wheel in my hands - I didn't have a scratch on me. Well! As Martin Luther was wont to say, "Was bedeuten dieser?" ("What does this mean?") I have no idea whatsoever. I'm still thinking about it here this Saturday morning in my messy office - while I should be about the business of the greater good of the public humanities. In fact, I thought about this great office here in Bismarck while in the Cancer Treatment Center of America's hospital in Zion, Illinois, last week. I wrote some rather bad poetry with a great title: "On the Serendipitously Fortunate Consequence of Not Cleaning the Office in the New Year":

Welcome, Mistress Death!
Please excuse the mess -
I wasn't expecting you
Quite yet, so I'm not
Ready to be taken on
That journey of no return.

Make yourself comfortable -
Just move that pile of papers
On that chair and have a seat.
There's coffee - it was
Made yesterday morning,
But it's hot - real coffee.

I didn't expect you so soon.
Of course, I knew you were
Coming to pick me up -
Never doubted
Whether you'd come,
But I didn't know when.

I know you have a schedule,
So I'll not try to keep you waiting -
Unless, of course, you would
Like to stop back next time around
And be on your way to collect
Those folks sitting and waiting.

Don't know exactly
When you'll be back?
That's fine with me, ma'am.
And no, I don't mind
If it takes a while -
I have plenty here to do.

Yes, I agree -
I need to get this mess
Cleaned up so I'm
Ready when you return.
Yes, I know you'll be back,
So I'll be ready next time around.

Sorry if I wasted your time -
Of course, you can
Come back another time.
Can't say I'll be waiting
But I'll try to be ready
The next time you come around.

Of late, I've been having an email conversation with my old friend Ray Wheeler at Dickinson State College about the whole notion of assigning gender in literary characterizations of death. Ray reminded me a couple of months ago of what well may be the best piece of short fiction ever written on the topic, "Appointment at Samarra," written in 1933 by W. Somerset Maugham: (it's also here at this site with more about Ray in the entry for October 3, 2002 - back when I didn't have too much faith that I would be here feeling as well as I do nearly four months later):

Begin Maugham Quote
Death speaks:
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
End Maugham Quote

We don't know for certain if the jostling Death is a woman (although the servant does mistake death for a woman and says, "She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. . . ."), a man disguised as a woman, or of no gender. We do know that Maugham himself was the weest bit ambiguous about his own sexuality - later in life, he wrote, "Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it."

Maugham was born on this day in 1874, January 25, in Paris to English parents. He grew up speaking only French. Both his parents died when he was eleven, and he was brought back to England by an uncle to be educated. The boy had problems - he stammered, for one thing. He went to study philosophy and literature at Heidelberg, Germany, and then came back to England to qualify to become a medical surgeon. He practiced in the slums of East London for a while and began to write.

Never considered among the great English authors by critics or by professors of literature, people loved his work, and more of his writing has found its way into film than perhaps any other author of the twentieth century. He traveled the world and lived in many different places before his death in 1965 in Nice.

Maugham once observed, "When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long."

I must be to work, friends. I don't have time to clean my office today - it's going to take a long time, methinks. I'll get the weest bit of a start at it - between doing other things.

Be well, kola, take care of yourselves and of each other.

Ev Albers

Friday, January 24th, 2003

Flash! Heat wave returns to beauuuuutiful Dakota! Here in the early morning hours, just past 4:00 A.M., it's climbing to 10 degrees above, on the way to the 20s later today. Not too unnaturally warm - there's no return-of-the-box-elder-bug alert, but warm enough. I'm thinking of going to work without my long johns today.

As far as I know, Oral Roberts, who turns eighty-five today, is still doing well back at his home in Palm Springs - he was hospitalized last week with some fluid in his lungs. We've all heard of Oral Roberts - there's his great legacy, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Son Richard Roberts has taken on most of the responsibility for Oral's ministry. I'll never forget his announcement back in January 1987 that God had told him in March 1986 that he had to raise $8 million dollars or die. He said he had indeed raised $3.5 million, but he needed another $4.5 by the end of March 1987 or he would be leaving this world. In April, he announced that the money was in hand. It was all going to go for scholarships for medical students at Oral Roberts University.

Coming up on forty years ago, back in Oliver County, when television first came to Hannover Township, we sometimes went to my Grandma Henke's to watch Oral Roberts in action. Later on, Oral came to Bismarck, if I remember right. I confess, some of us were less than respectful of Oral's healing powers and of his method - you'll remember, he grabbed the sufferer's head between his hands --it looked as though he was going to twist the head off - and shouted "Heal, and make whole!" I think I did it to my poor sister Faye (she's some seventeen months younger than I) on several occasions. I probably also "healed" calves in the barn from time to time.

There have been many skeptics of Oral over the years - back in 1979, a former employee, Jerry Sholes wrote Give Me that Prime- time Religion, an expose of Oral's use of some of the money he raised. Here's what one reviewer wrote of Sholes book:

Begin Evangelist R.L. Sumner's review
Here is a portrait of the real Oral Roberts, the man not too many of his admirers know. He dresses in Brioni suits that cost $500 to $1000; walks in $100 shoes; lives in a $250,000 house in Tulsa and has a million dollar home in Palm Springs; wears diamond rings and solid gold bracelets employees "airbrush" out of his publicity photos; drives $25,000 automobiles which are replaced every 6 months; flies around the country in a $2 million fanjet falcon; has membership, as does his son Richard, in "the most prestigious and elite country club in Tulsa," the Southern Hills (the membership fee alone was $18,000 for each, with $130 monthly dues) and in "the ultra-posh Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California" (both father and son joined when memberships were $20,000 each--they are now $25,000); and plays games of financial hanky-panky that have made him and his family members independently wealthy (millionaires) for life. (When his daughter and son-in-law were killed, they left a $10 million estate!)
End Evangelist R.L. Sumner's review

That was a quarter-century ago - those folks with money to invest (and Oral had the weest) made a nice piece of change since 1979. God often talked directly with Oral - who can forget (that is, if you were of a bent to pay attention to such stuff) September 1980 when Oral was having all of those problems getting his City of Faith to rise - the money wasn't coming in fast enough. Then God spoke to Oral and gave him a vision: "'I felt an overwhelming holy presence all around me. When I opened my eyes, there He stood ... some 900 feet tall, looking at me ... He stood a full 300 feet taller than the 600-foot-tall City of Faith. There I was face to face with Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. I have only seen Jesus once before, but here I was face to face with the King of kings. He reached down, put his Hands under the City of Faith, lifted it, and said to me, "See how easy it is for Me to lift it!'" Oral even had 900 mm plastic replicas of his vision made, so his followers could get some small sense of his experience. I don't know if they had a magnet so they would stick on the dashboard of a car.

So, Happy Birthday, Oral Roberts. What a career - beginning with radio broadcasts in 1949, travel around the world, being courted by Billy Graham himself, and all those honors. So what if your City of Faith Medical Center closed down in 1989 before you could distribute any of the $8 million you raised for scholarships for students to learn your version of holistic medicine? So what - the 900-foot Jesus wasn't erected? There is the Prayer Tower, after all.

Between you and me kola, I'm not sure that Oral has all that much to celebrate today, unless he's been doing a whole lot for other folk that he hasn't told us about - but that's not his style. Take care of yourselves and each other, kola - you don't have to go raise money to talk about it, just do it.

Ev Albers

Thursday, January 23rd, 2003

​Indeed, just the weest on the cool side, but marvelously brisk this absolutely beauuuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota on the banks of the Missouri. If this keeps up, folks won't have to worry for a while about their ice houses sinking – 'tis but 10 degrees below zero or so, though – nothing to test the mettle of a North Dakotan – this is more than 50 degrees warmer than the record low, and there's no wind.

The lowest temperature recorded in the United States was, in fact, on this day in 1971 – Prospect Creek in Alaska, where it was minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Now that, kola, is the weest bit more than cool.

On another glorious day back a few years, Rose Marie Henke Fiechtner was born on a January 23rd. Rose Marie is among our dearest friends – she and husband Warren are the godparents of our son. Albert – they adopted our daughter, Gretchen, as a goddaughter as well. No one will ever know how much Rose Marie Henke, who retired early from teaching a few years back, has done for every human she has ever met. Dear Rose Marie, may you live well and prosper for decades to come, sustained by that love you extend to all the lives you touch. The coldest day is warm when you are around.

I don't know what the temperature was in Geneva, New York, on this day, January 23rd, in 1849 – but it was, indeed a day to remember, for Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from Lake Geneva Medical School – the first woman physician of the modern era. Born in England on February 3, 1821, she came with her family to the United States in 1832. After graduation, She returned to England and Europe for more study or a time and returned to the United States to do good work in the slums of New York City. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell lived a long and productive life greeting each day as a challenge and opportunity to serve. Before her death on May 31, 1910, she wrote several books and many pamphlets, keep up a lively correspondence with friends around the world, and continued to do great work in public health.

Oh, yes, one other thing – not only was Elizabeth Blackwell the first woman to graduate from medical school – she graduated first in her class. Even so, she got little respect – in fact, folks were horrified back in the 1850s when they learned that Dr. Blackwell was setting up shop – the idea of a woman practicing medicine just didn't work for many people. Curiously, even Lady Noel Byron – the sometimes spouse of Lord Byron, whose birthday we celebrated yesterday – urged her friend Elizabeth Blackwell to take a secondary role as a woman physician. Elizabeth would have none of it. She wrote a letter to Lady Byron in 1851 chiding her friend for the "fatal error" of judging humans by "sex rather than character." Blackwell had a lifelong friendship with Florence Nightingale begun long before Nightingale became famous for her work in the Crimean War. Lady Byron was a mathematician and scientist – dubbed by her husband for a short time, Lord Byron, as the "princess of Parallelograms" – but that's another story. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was not about ready to get to the back of anyone's bus. She once said, "If society will not admit of woman's free development, then society must be remodeled." Her contribution was that she not only said we must change, she did something to bring it about.

We're still remodeling, of course. It would be another 121 years after Elizabeth's graduation before the feminist movement began to take on – on this day in 1970, members of Dolle Mina, an organization of women in the Netherlands, burned bras in Amsterdam. That's thirty-three years past --

Time to get ready for another glorious day – to accomplish, perhaps, a small bit of what Elizabeth did every day. Be well, kola, take care of yourselves and of each other – and here's a toast with my morning coffee to Elizabeth and a hello to my niece, Jenny Huss Mix, down in Colorado making rounds as a physician somewhere.

Ev Albers

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2003

​​The famous folk born on January 22nd include Sir Francis Bacon (1561), the English philosopher who had a good deal to say about most things, and Lord George Gordon Byron (1788), the English poet who did not have much good to say about humankind in general – he preferred dogs, especially his faithful Newfoundland, Boatswain. You can read Bacon on a wide range of topics at this fine web site. Both Bacon and Byron were less than enthusiastic about the contribution erotic love makes to human happiness. Bacon said,

Begin Bacon quote
You may observe, that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent) there is not one, that hath been transported to the mad degree of love: which shows that great spirits, and great business, do keep out this weak passion
. . . .
For there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise. Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and not to the party loved; but to the loved most of all, except the love be reciproque. For it is a true rule, that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque, or with an inward and secret contempt. By how much the more, men ought to beware of this passion, which loseth not only other things, but itself!
End Bacon Quote

Byron was indeed one of those "transported by the mad degree of love." He tumbled mightily for his "dearest Teresa," the Countess Guiccioli — eighteen and married — in 1819. Byron's letter of December 3, 1819, written in Venice, must stand as one of the most pathetic among all that has been written by those who have loved and lost:

Begin Byron Quote
You are, and ever will be, my first thought, but at this moment, I am in a state most dreadful, not knowing which way to decide:-- on the one hand, fearing that I should compromise you forever, by my return to Ravenna, and the consequences of such a step, and, on the other, dreading that I shall lose both you and myself, and all that I have ever known or tasted of happiness, by never seeing you more. I pray of you, I implore you to be comforted, and to believe that I cannot cease to love you but with my life. . . .
I go to save you, and leave a country insupportable to me without you. Your letters to F. and myelf do wrong to my motives—but you will yet see your injustice. It is not enough that I must leave you—from motives of which ere long you will be convinced—it is not enough that I must fly from Italy, with a heart deeply wounded, after having passed all my days in solitude since your departure, sick both in body and mind—but I must also have to endure your reproaches without answering them and without deserving them. Farewell!—In that one word is comprised the death of my happiness.
End Byron Quote

Aye, such sadness brings a tear to the eye, even on this most crispy morn in beauuuuuutiful Dakota. Byron, methinks, should have read Sir Francis Bacon the weest bit more carefully.

For those of you interested in great stories of pathetic passion, you might try the book below:

Last Attachment: The Story of Byron and Teresa Guiccioli

Today is also the birth date of August Strindberg (1849, died May 4, 1912), the Swedish playwright and writer who had a great deal to say about love and marriage. Long before Rush Limbaugh, Strindberg was most strident in his hatred of the emancipated woman -- here's a most-delightful, great web site on August. I once trod the stage of Dickinson State in western North Dakota in a production of Strindberg's Comrades -- anything but a cheery piece, I'll tell you. The whole point of that 1905 Strindberg drama is that 'its unnatural and wrong for women to be equal to men – Strindberg was from the old keep-'em-barefoot-and-pregnant school. He's much more complicated than that, of course. He was a tortured soul who sought relief wherever he could, including absinthe, which turned him paranoiac and psychotic – that's when he wrote the novel The Inferno. Eventually Strindberg found an answer in religion – but not before he nearly did himself in many times.

All of this is a long way around saying that Bacon, Byron, and Strindberg were all wrong, methinks – about women and about love. Women – wives and daughters, mothers and friends – are nearly solely responsible for what sanity and happiness exists here in the Middle World. As OMF (Our Mutual Friend) Thomas Matthew McGrath wrote in his "Revisionist Poem":

                     --POPE

The proper study
Of mankind
Is

Women
. . . and men.

Take care, kola – take care of yourselves and of each other. And, you humans of the male gender, think about it, fellows! Where in the hell would we be without the women in our lives?

Ev Albers

Tuesday, January 21st, 2003

​​Forty-three years past, January 21, 1957, a young woman in her mid-20s appeared on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts program singing "Walking After Midnight." She won the contest, and it launched her career - soon her voice was high in the charts - both country-western and pop.

We remember her as Patsy Cline (her real name was Virginia Patterson Hensley, born on September 8, 1932 - she died in a plane crash in March 1963).

The photograph at the right was taken after she became nationally famous after her win on the Godfrey show in 1957. There are many, many great web sites devoted to Patsy Cline. Patsy didn't write this great song - it was the work of Alan Block and Don Hecht. But after she sang it, it became hers - as did nearly every song she sang. Here's the lyrics to this great standard -

I go out walking
After midnight
Out in the moonlight
Just like we used to do
I'm always walking
After midnight
Searching for you

I walk for miles
Along the highways
Well that's just my way
Of saying I love you
I'm always walking
After midnight
Searching for you
(Chorus)
I stopped to see a weeping willow
Crying on his pillow
Maybe he's crying for me
And as the skies turn gloomy
Night winds whisper to me
I'm lonesome as I can be

I go out walking
After midnight
Out in the starlight
Just hoping you may be
Somewhere walking
After midnight
Searching for me

Now, kola, the idea of a "weeping willow crying on his pillow" is ludicrous, of course. Don't know about you - but that doesn't bother me when Patsy sings it. Fact is, not much bothers me when I'm listening to Patsy sing. I'm not, of course, out walking after midnight - although it was a glorious night last evening in Dakota, it was just the weest chilly for a casual stroll. Nor am I searching - for you, kind kola, have been overwhelming me with more love and concern any human could expect. I do think about 1957 - I was a freshman in high school when Patsy broke through that January forty-six years ago. I didn't do any walking after midnight then, either - but "love" was very much on my mind, as it was for all thirteen-year-olds back in the 1950s. What a different time! We didn't have any drug-awareness programs in our school - or sex education, for that matter (of course, most of us grew up on farms and had firsthand knowledge of reproduction among cows, horses, and pigs). We diagrammed sentences for English class, learned the atomic elements, and took our history with heavy doses of hero worship of those who had saved democracy, including our president, Dwight David Eisenhower, whom everyone liked very much. We thought positively - 1957 would be the year Dr. Norman Vincent Peale published the book with perhaps the most "huh?" title of all time: Stay Alive All Your Life - 'twas a bestseller - and certainly, good advice that I am happy to pass along. By the time one got to chapter sixteen of Peale's book, titled the same as the book, one was numb to the simplistic generalities he offered. Tell you this, 'tis not easy, even for a thirteen-year-old in 1957, to "Have faith in the accuracy and dependability of your spiritual instruments." Here's the quote in context:

Begin Peale Quote
Life is filled with uncertainties; fogs of doubt, dismal and shadowy fears sometime obscure the landmarks of our faith. Simply put your trust in God and in the deep instincts of your own nature. Read the Bible, pray, and fill your life with love and goodness. Have faith in the accuracy and dependability of your spiritual instruments. They will guide you through the overcasts of this life to a perfect landing in that beautiful land beyond.
End Peale Quote

Trust your spiritual instruments are tuned this fine day, kola - if not, you may wish to take an astral walk after midnight -

Ev Albers

Monday, January 20th, 2003

Home. 'Tis grand to be in the fresh chilled air of glorious, beauuuuuuuuutiful Dakota on the banks of the Missouri. I have been a sojourn in search of hope - I found it at the Midwestern Regional Health Center at Zion, Illinois, this past week. I shall return there a month hence to continue an effort to keep at bay the insidious invader of my pancreas.

It's been four months since I began this journal online. Back on September 20, 2002, I was not sure that I would be writing on January 20, 2003. Just one month ago, I was sent home from Mayo Clinic with advice to wait for progression. I didn't want to do that - so, with the help of my loving spouse, Leslie and my children; my family; and all of you, my dear kola, I sought alternative to just waiting. I've found it at a place that has treated scores of folks with inoperable pancreatic cancer more advanced than mine for more than twenty years - in fact, the basic treatment I'm getting is more than twenty years old, and it's given many a decade or more of life.

As clean and well-lighted and wondrously life-affirming as the experience of staying for five days as an in-patient at Zion was - and it was, indeed, quite different from any hospital experience I know about - it's great to be home. When I awoke in the middle of the night in a motel in Glenwood, Minnesota (Glenwood is where my darling daughter Gretchen lives), I did find myself looking for the plastic container so I could take it to the bathroom and urinate in it and note the amount for the record. All in all, the Midwestern Regional Health Center is a most hospitable hospital. For example, one is not awaken during the middle of the night by a nurse wanting to take one's "vitals" - unless one is really ill and needs to have it done. In fact, every effort is made to accommodate the patient - and the patient is never asked to accommodate the medical professionals and staff by waiting or being inconvenienced in any way unless it is absolutely necessary.

But I would rather be home. I'm very happy to be here, happy to be alive, and joyous that I have friends like you, dear kola. Each day I become more convinced that I'm here because of your support.

There's been the weest bit of blessing mixed with the curse of this disease. 'Tis, of course, an awareness of one's mortality and the gift each relatively painless, productive day is. Reminds me of the poem "A Promise" by OMF (Our Mutual Friend) Thomas Matthew McGrath -

All my life-noisy!
Walking around the world in my heavy shoes!
Now I grow lighter,
And I begin to see
How, in that farther sunlight,
I shall move faster and faster
Until my shadow runs on alone
Without even an echo.

Be well, kola, friends. Take care of yourselves and of each other.

Ev Albers

Sunday, January 19, 2003

​Today is the birthdate of Janis Joplin, born in 1943, sixty years past. Janis died in 1970, years before her thirtieth birthday. First a singer with Big Brother and The Holding Company ("Piece of My Heart," "How Hard It Is") she formed Kozmic Blues Band, then Full Tilt Boogie Band ("Pearl," "Me and Bobby McGee.") She was at Woodstock, of course. In fact, she was scheduled to be on the cover of Newsweek magazine in 1969, but she was bumped when former President Dwight David Eisenhower died on March 28, the day I turned twenty-seven up in Devils Lake, North Dakota where I was teaching at what was then Lake Region Junior College. What a hell of a winter it was that year up there! I had brought one old clunker of car up from the family farm in the heart of the universe, Oliver County, North Dakota - only to have it completely buried in front of a house I shared with a couple of other college instructors. But I digress. Janis was unhappy with being bumped from the Newsweek cover. As Phil Jones and Rich Deakin write at a great web site devoted to the great British counter-culturalist, Mick Farren she reportedly said:

Begin quote
Another disappointment was in store for her the same year [1969]. The Melody Maker reported it thus: "Janis was to have been on the cover of Newsweek … but General Eisenhower's death had elbowed her out. [She was shown the discarded Newsweek cover and] in quick succession came a display of pleasure at the way the photo came out and anger at the fact it wouldn't be seen. She grasped it in her hands, stared at it for an instant, stamped her tiny foot bullet-like into the floor, and swung a clenched fist skyward. A stream of devastating curses accompanied the action. 'Goddamit, you mother%#$! You #%&$! And swinging round to appeal to the gathering: 'Fourteen heart attacks and he has to die my week. In MY week!'"
End Quote

It is also the birthday of Edgar Allen Poe (1809) who lived thirteen years more than Janis - he lived to be forty. Like Janis, Edgar sought relief from life by taking substances tat eventually killed him - although a contemporary obituary reported that he died of "congestion of the brain." There's speculation that he, in fact, died of rabies.

More than six centuries before Poe was born, the Japanese zen priest and religious leader was born on this date in the year 1200 (he died in 1253). Orphaned when his mother died when he was eight (his father died when he was three), Dogen chose a life of contemplation as a priest when he was thirteen. Dogen continues to be read and studied today. In Shoji, Dogen said, "We can transcend life-death if we study and do what we must in the present moment without pursuing the past or waiting for the future. A relevant passage appears in the sutra: Don't pursue the past: don't wait for the future. . . . Just do today with all your heart what must be done today. Who can know the death of tomorrow?" Go here to read much more by Dogen on time, life, and death.

For me, today is the final treatment of this go-around here at Zion, Illinois, where it's really nippy on the shore of Lake Michigan. I'm bound later today for glorious, beauuuuutiful Dakota - back to the place, where I come from. Do with all your heart what must be done today, kola - especially taking care of yourselves and of each other. I think I'll take care of sleeping while my spouse drives up I-94.

Ev Albers

Saturday, January 18th, 2003

​January 18th - the birthday of Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689, died 1755) who lived and wrote in France. In his most famous work, Spirit of the Laws, he attempted something of a holistic approach to a discussion of law in a social compact - the way in which laws have and have not related to history, climate, culture, political institutions, and mores of nations. Have a look at a small section of this remarkable work see it all by clicking here The following is from Book XIX. Of Laws in Relation to the Principles Which Form the General Spirit, Morals, and Customs of a Nation:

Begin Quote from Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws
5. How far we should be attentive lest the general Spirit of a Nation be changed. Should there happen to be a country whose inhabitants were of a social temper, open-hearted, cheerful, endowed with taste and a facility in communicating their thoughts; who were sprightly and agreeable; sometimes imprudent, often indiscreet; and besides had courage, generosity, frankness, and a certain notion of honour, no one ought to endeavour to restrain their manners by laws, unless he would lay a constraint on their virtues. If in general the character be good, the little foibles that may be found in it are of small importance.

They might lay a restraint upon women, enact laws to reform their manners and to reduce their luxury, but who knows but that by these means they might lose that peculiar taste which would be the source of the wealth of the nation, and that politeness which would render the country frequented by strangers?

It is the business of the legislature to follow the spirit of the nation, when it is not contrary to the principles of government; for we do nothing so well as when we act with freedom, and follow the bent of our natural genius.

If an air of pedantry be given to a nation that is naturally gay, the state will gain no advantage from it, either at home or abroad. Leave it to do frivolous things in the most serious manner, and with gaiety the things most serious.
End Montesquieu Quote

Ah, kola, how I love those pithy bits speaking of what ought to be: "we do nothing so well as when we act with freedom, and follow the bent of natural genius." Methinks that Montesquieu should be required reading for all government officials and a thorough knowledge of his book a condition for running for legislative office. In fact, I suggest that you send a copy to your state legislator and to members of your national congressional delegation. Click below to see just how inexpensive the book is - available in many editions.
  
The Spirit of Laws

Today is also the date that Captain Cook "found" Hawaii and named the islands The Sandwich Islands in 1778. The first visit was great - he happened during a festival honoring the symbolic return of the god Lono, and the Hawaiians thought Cook might be he. But on a return visit in 1779, Captain James Cook was killed in a battle with the natives.

Back in 1803, the enlightened Thomas Jefferson, who did indeed read Montesquieu, asked Congress for $2,500 to explore the recently acquired Louisiana Territory --he wanted to send his protégé Meriwether Lewis out with a small party. They went, of course, and glorious Dakota was never the same. They didn't manage to do it for $2,500 - there was the weest cost overrun - somewhere around $38,722. On this date in 1805, Lewis and Clark were at the confluence of the Knife and Missouri rivers in what would become Dakota. 'Twas the weest cool - but 'tis cool here in Zion, Illinois, as well - and snow flies.

All goes well in this clean, well-lighted room in the Midwestern Regional Medical Center, where the care is as holistic as Montesquieu's treatment of the laws. Soon I'll get my daily four-hour infusion of drugs - I've had my vitamins, made arrangements to get the naturopathic products, and looking forward to leaving here for glorious Dakota tomorrow after a first round of treatments. My spirits soar, kola - in fact, I'm up for a great breakfast, and heretofore, I've not lost my taste for coffee - and they have some deliciously strong mean stuff at this place. I'm going to go get a cup before they hook me up - and come back and think kindly of all of you who send those good vibes and prayers and concern my way - methinks these well may be the most important part of my new-found holistic approach to sticking around to enjoy your friendship. Take care of yourselves and each other

Ev Alber