Remembering Minnie Riperton and the Poetry and John Milton

Saturday, November 8th, 2003

Counting down to take off for Zion this fine, beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota, the 8th November. How I'll miss my bed and comforter, this recliner and the gas fire place, the refrigerator with an ample supply of grape juice and so much more - you know, a bit of two-tone, or cheese cake, and, of course, pie. But my spouse and I wend our way east through some nine hundred miles of deer-running-amuck country - at least here in Dakota, where the season to deal with too many Bambis grown up complete their passage in the middle world and become butterfly breakfast steaks or sausage, cut with the weest bit of pork. Stuff some fourteen months past I would consume with considerable gusto - really can't think much about it, now. But the idea of the breast of a pheasant still appeals mightily, especially if it were fed on a cornfield in Hannover Township, Oliver County, the Garden of the Universe where I grew up, I love wild fowl - but I was such a lousy hunter as young guy that I just gave it up - and the near-combat conditions of deer hunting in some places is not for - or even on a couple of sections of land where I'm alone. I probably would have had one hell of a time surviving in a more elemental society - what do you do with someone of my ilk? He likes to eat well enough, but can't or won't go out and get it. Took me a long time to simply say, in the words of Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" - "I would prefer not to." Bartleby, of course, was being asked to move from his seat of work and partake in life, not go out and hunt. But you get the principle.

Among those who arrived in and left the middle world on this day is Minnie Riperton, Born on this day 1947, she was gone before her thirtieth birthday. She went down fighting, hard - the woman who had a five-octave range and sang with such haunting otherworldliness (listening to a voice like hers is the best evidence I know of more to the human experience than our passage here in the middle world). Among the first women to come out and speak on behalf of greater research into finding a cure and/or more effective treatment for breast cancer, Minnie Riperton turned her terminal disease into an opportunity to help others. But before that, she sang - one of her great albums was Come to My Garden -- the title song was her first in 1969, I think ( find out more at a great web site devoted to her memory. Here's the lyrics for "Come to My Garden":

Come to my garden let the stars fill your eyes
Come to my garden and walk with me
Come to my garden no more dreams filled with cries
Come to my garden please

I'll take your hand and lead you from these bad times
I'll take your breath and give you mine
I'll take your hand and lead you where the truth lies
I'll take you with me now

You know you've lived here all your nights; all your days
You know you've lived here inside my mind
You know you'll stay here for this you've lived all your life
You know you'll stay right here

So here's to Minnie's memory - give her a listen today if you have her - maybe I'll ask my son, Albert Hermanson Albers, if he has the album - he has lots. One of the great side benefits of going to that bastion of hope against all odds, the Midwestern Regional Medical Center, a Cancer Treatment Center of America at Zion, is that we pass through and spend a day in Madison, Wisconsin, with our son and his wife - we claim her as our daughter as well as our own Gretchen - Bobbi Hermanson-Albers. Bet Bobbi likes Minnie - who wouldn't? Well, perhaps those who prefer the sappy voices of the 70s - like Olivia Newton-John - of whom Minnie once said, "Australia's gift to insomniacs. It's nothing but the blonde singing the bland."

The great English poet who completed his passage today in 1674 after nearly sixty-years, John Milton, would have appreciated Minnie's wit, methinks. Milton gave us,

"Come and trip as you go
On the light fantastic toe.

If nothing else, he gave us the saying that we've used to describe everything from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers to a guy like me, who barely shuffles along some days - but I do indeed "trip the light fantastic" in my mind's eye - yet another example of hope over all reason. Of course, a major power walk for me takes me from my chair some thirteen steps to a seven-step stair and another thirteen to my bed - or thirteen to the other seven-stair passage down and another thirteen into the garage and the Subaru Forester, Leslie Rae Kubik Albers, Pilot. There was a time when I served as occasional navigator --I don't remember if I'm still suspended for getting us lost in Chicago or back on probation. 'Twas Milton who penned Paradise Lost most days on my top five of really great books. He also wrote some really fine shorter works, including "On Time." If Minnie Riperton's voice is a hint of paradise (Milton also wrote Paradise Regained -- not as good as the one where we humans lost it), Milton's poem is the greatest affirmation of belief in God and an afterlife in the English language - I can't say that I join in his conviction, but 'tis a grand poem:

Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast intombed,
And last of all thy greedy self consumed,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss,
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood;
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine
About the supreme throne
Of Him, t' whose happy-making sight alone
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall climb
, Then, all this earthly grossness quit,
Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time.

I hope both John Milton and Minnie Riperton are in paradise - maybe sharing the weest bit of grape juice on day that crisp and beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful hours before dawn. Those of us still journeying in the middle world salute you. ( Here's a fine web gateway to more on Milton, 'Twas Milton who said, "They also serve who only stand and wait." I've get to figure out what he was saying - "wait" for what? And why can't I sit in my recliner and wait, especially if I don't know what I'm waiting for? I do understand his observation that "The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

Well, my kola, 'tis about time this fine day to prepare for the journey. My lovin' spouse purchased for me a truly wondrous gift - something that I didn't know was around anymore - flannel-lined jeans. I used to have a pair when I was growing up - and those over long johns were enough to keep warm (well, we also had a primitive version of snow pants) in the buckboard sleigh we rode behind Kate and Ben, the team who got us there. Of course, they cost the weest bit more than they did out in the Hannover Store - maybe they couldn't even by bought there, that emporium that had all things - maybe they had to be ordered from Sears and Roebuck or Montgomery Wards. Here I have, more than fifty years later, pleased as Hubert Humphrey's proverbial punch to have another pair - of course, I never contemplated that I would wear nearly the same waist size I did as an eighth grader - but that's one of the benefits of dealing with the insidious invader - no more diets in my lifetime, methinks!

Can't seem to find Minnie - but I do have some Bonnie Raitt somewhere - Bonnie can't touch Minnie's mastery, but she's pretty good - she celebrates her fifty-fourth birthday today. 'Tis a great day for the weest bit of music. One never knows, but we might be hitting Tower City and that truck stop just off I-94 today just at the right time - and that means sour cream raisin pie, perhaps. Time to rise and power walk to the front door where the morning paper awaits. Trust you are taking good care of yourselves, friends - and that you're taking seriously your job of looking out for each other.

Ev Albers