SmokeSound

We live in two neighborhoods. When first we moved to the Twin Cities, to South Minneapolis, which if it were not for the tangled designations the Mississippi River causes for us, would be Southeast Minneapolis. We found the Coffee Shop and stayed there. We made friends there. Dennis said our names louder even than the espresso machine, so people had to learn them. This morning Mari corrupted an article from the newspaper by putting Dennis onto a perfectly appropriate title:  he just celebrated his fortieth, and he is our community organizer.  Three years ago we moved across the Minnesota River, mostly because we wanted to live under an airport flight path, but we never left the Coffee Shop.  Saturdays, especially, the friends we made meet there, and tell lies about things we have done and said.  It is community.  Our community. Our work there is unfinished. We have to convince Mark that he does not need a motorcycle. Sloan ...

Dick and Lynn Cheney own original Picasso sketches. They don't hang them in their home because they do not want their grandchildren to see sketches of nudes.  Isn't that the same Dick Cheney who seems willing to go to war almost anywhere; who is giving Obama hell for not sending more troops to Afghanistan?  Does he plan to invade the Prado Museum, and the Louvre?  Does he take off his clothes when he showers? I did not read the article, recently, but I saw the subject, having to do with people's incredulity that a well-known Hollywood actress actually walked around nude, at home, before her young children.  She wasn't nude, was she, when she gave birth to them?  Now, I will admit to a certain amount of modesty, myself, but it is not because I think a naked body is sinful, or liable to cause excessive amounts of self-stimulation.  It is because we have a mirror, and I caught sight of myself just a year or two ago, and it was not a pretty si...

I know that Joel puts a paper bag over his head when he goes to the door on Halloween.  He says it scares the kids.  I know that his neighbors have asked him to put the paper bag on his head so that he will not scare the kids.  I did not know that witches have prayed over Halloween candy, putting a curse on it, which will doom all those kids, and Joel, too. Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network posted a blog by Kimberly Daniels, recently, reportedly, which explained how nefarious, how damnably defarious, Halloween candy can be! You see, just opening the door allows the demons to implement the witches curses, or something sugar-coated, like that. Pat Robertson ran for President, you know, but we should all be grateful that he did not succeed because without him, and other concerned Christians like him, our kids might be dragging through life with curses on them.  All of my kids, whose ages now range from thirty to fifty-two, used to love...

Go ahead!  Tell me you think she is as beautiful as John McCain thought she was! Then tell me how intelligent she is, and how much she knows about . . .  oh . . .  government! Then tell me . . .   no, don't bother!

Garrett Hardin said, "You cannot do only one thing." Everything is connected to something, like Pick-up-Sticks. A Pick-up-Stick lying off to the side is a Pick-up-Stick belonging to some other universe.  In our universe, everything touches other things; depends on other things. I am re-arranging the lower garage to make room for the snow blowers.  So far, I have sharpened the mower blades so they will be ready when Spring comes.  I raised the edges of the rubber mats under the cars in the garage, above, so that water will not drip down onto my tools, there where I intend to put them. I knew that the opened bag of lawn fertilizer would petrify over the Winter if I did not spread it, so I spread it. Mari had asked that I put a blind on the outside door on the lower floor, so when I went to Home Depot to get materials to raise the edges of the rubber mats, I had them cut a blind to fit, then I installed it.  I picked up a bucket in which to...

I don't want to get too cheery about a Public Option in health care because every obscenely wealthy insurance company in the whole country knows that a commonly- available Public Option--that is to say, a government- enabled, non-profit plan--is the only way to squeeze their profits.  We can be quite sure, even if we do get a Public Option, that the for-profit insurance companies will maneuver to unload the tough cases onto the public. Even so, the pressure of competition will be there. What is just as intriguing is the maneuvering in Congress. Long ago and far away, almost at the periphery of what I remember, I read novels about medieval court intrigue. The novels were based on real, historical events.  They scared me half to death!  Nothing was as it seemed. Lady Flutterby put poison in her lover's wine.  Bishop Goodface hired mute monks to assassinate Princes, and King Lollipop skewered his wives in bed. I think Washington, D.C., is something l...

Shortly after the waters from the Great Flood receded, in about 1966, my family sold its birthright for a mess of suitcases, and followed me to Tübingen, Germany, where I intended to learn German, and to do graduate research for my dissertation. Among the people we met there was another American, who had found religion and became a Baptist minister, who found religion and became an Episcopal priest, who found religion and became a Catholic priest; a married, with-children, Catholic priest.  His parish was a cranky little congregation in a small town just outside of Tübingen.  Small glory, there! There were almost a dozen such married converts in Germany and the Netherlands.  We returned to Chicago after a year, and we heard that the often-converted American parish priest left town, too, with the Italian student at the University who played the organ in his parish (so to speak).  In the grand scheme of things, the incident left almost no scar. ...

He rang the front doorbell on the east side of our house. He said he represented Superior Automotive Service, and had an offer I could refuse, but shouldn't.  OK, he did not say it quite that way! He complimented me on the Standing General of Xi'an guarding our front door.  I was impressed that he knew, even if our Standing General is cast in concrete, and does not move a muscle at the sight of a burglar. I explained that we already used Superior Automotive, and that I did not think I would purchase their $69.95 plan to provide almost anything we could imagine or ever need for mere hundreds on the thousand.  He was nice about it. Today, our doorbell rang again.  This time it was the door on the lower level of the house on the west side.  It used to be an entry for the renter we have never had, choosing to use the space for African Violets and spare bedrooms and an easy way to get to the lower garage. It was the same nice guy. He was nonplu...

Yesterday it snowed, persistently, futilely.  The ground has not yet frozen, so unless the snow is unrelenting, a pause means the snow will melt. It paused. The snow melted. Today the sun is shining, and the grass is green. There is Minnesota River marshland just down the hill from us, so sometimes the wild turkeys, craving something civilized in their diets, jerky-walk up the hill, disturbing traffic.  Unlike deer and raccoons and skunks, turkeys seem to navigate through traffic without getting hurt.  Maybe it is their slow dithering that gives motorists time to avoid them. It is time to replace the mowing deck with a snow blower. "Are you sure you are through mowing?" the mechanic asked. I said I was sure, not because the grass might not grow again, or because the leaves will not pile up in eddies, but because somebody has to take charge of this season and declare it to be something; not everything.  Not a new season every day!  Snow a...

There is something surreal about Senators and Representatives telling us that they are opposed to a publicly sponsored health care option because, "everyone knows the government does not know how to run a business".  Put aside the fact that the same members of Congress approve of a public military, public schools, public police and fire departments, publicly owned flood insurance plans, public parks, public roads, public airports, public pensions, and publicly paid Senators and Representatives.  Are they suffering from instant memory loss?  Have they forgotten that just a few months ago, they voted to use public funds to try to avoid a full-fledged depression brought on by privately owned investment banks, private commercial bank, private automobile companies, held together by private incompetence, greed, and veniality? Have they forgotten that is is public money, public taxes, that were used to save the arses of private companies, even assuming temporary...

Once upon a long time ago, in Fremont, California, I knew an old Methodist clergyman; full of righteousness; full of stories. He told how he had caught another pastor "stealing his sheep". "Caught him with the wool in his teeth!", he said. The next time you see an article about Pope Benedict XVI, check whether there is a picture, and whether the Holy Father is smiling.  Check whether there is wool in his teeth. The Anglican Church, as you know, was created when Henry VIII decided that he had to change wives.  Henry had a thing about changing wives; sometimes by reducing their height by a head. What had been the Catholic Church in England became the Anglican Church:  The Church of England, without allegiance to the Pope.  Henry thought it was tidier that way; easier. All these centuries, Anglicans have been explaining that it was not just Horny Henry that caused the split.  It was a reformation! You know, big changes:  a married clergy...

It has been an odd pair of days. Yesterday, before six, I hitched up our old utility trailer, loaded a bucketful of electrical tools and gadgets, and drove 150 miles south to our log house, in Iowa. We store the trailer there for the winter, to keep our driveway clear for snowmobile conventions and igloo villages. I knew that there were 15 or 20 wires converging in an electrical box in our two-story outhouse, and it was time to sort them out and finish the wiring. "An outhouse," I thought to myself.  "That's primitive!" "An insulated, electrified, and heated outhouse!" I felt as if I were participating in at least two centuries. With that job done, I tossed a twenty-year-old pile of firewood into the pickup; something to slow the creep of the glacier up the hill and over the house.  We have already had a snowfall, and this is Minnesota, and October. "A wood stove!"  Baseboard heat, and a woodstove. Today I spent all morn...

OK!  I am a liberal.  I admitted it with my latest posting. I think that living in a country with a proliferation of races is a fine thing!  Maybe someday we will be a melting pot but, until then, a good stew is a healthy way toward good health. It is the mistaken belief that we were founded as a nation of good Christian gentlemen from northern Europe that has confounded our thinking about who we are. First, the whole continent was populated with Native Peoples. This was not a nation of trees and grass and yellow corn. Everywhere there were nations of people who had been here for thousands of years.  We had bad eyesight.  We couldn't see that they looked just like human beings; like us. Almost as soon as the Spaniards and the English and other a whole lot of other misguided colonists came here, Africans were brought here, against their will.  Later, Chinese laborers were encouraged to come, to dig caves for wine, and to build railroads....

Soon I shall be seventy-eight, if my luck holds. It seems to me that the biggest changes during my lifetime have had to do with cultural diversity, racial diversity. I have my own measurement of diversity:  restaurants! I cannot recall when first I ate something other than potatoes and gravy, peas, and adventurous jello salad. It is possible that seven or eight decades have dulled what really was the case when I was young, but I do have a distinct impression of meat and potatoes and gravy. Culinary adventure, when I was young, was a Drive-In.  It was rumored, in the State of Washington, that in California people actually put lettuce, and tomatoes, and onions, strange cheeses, and even avacados on their hamburgers. Nobody ate Mexican food, or Thai food, or calamari. In those days, there were no Mexicans, Thais, or squid. Ours was a bit of an outlier family because Dad was a fisherman who brought cod and halibut home from Alaska, but my generation of American...

"Feelings," I told her.   "We talk about our feelings."

After years of walking around Lake Nokomis, here in the Twin Cities, after beginning my walks before dawn, and after another Coffee Shop Regular was mugged in the early-morning-darkness, I decided to walk indoors at the Mall of America, which is a huge place.  Three of the stories at the rectangular Mall are complete, and are about a kilometer (about six-tenths of a mile) long. Five times around, on three floors, is about three miles. Early in the morning, there are only a few walkers, and about as many overnight workers, changing light bulbs, remodeling shops for the next tenants, cleaning floors, and two or three somewhat socially deprived dozers, seemingly dependent on overnight laborers, because the Security People let them sleep on benches, which they would not do if there were not some special reasons. Especially early on, at about six-thirty, it is not uncommon to walk almost a full lap without really meeting anyone. But the climate is controlled, whi...

Consider the state of the Republican Party! Look at Michele Bachmann, for instance, who is one of the rising starts of the Party! She said Barack Obama is a socialist, and accused him and many other members of Congress of having anti-American views. She has urged people to pray to God that Obama's health care reforms fail. Her husband--and it seems to be a marriage made in heaven-- describes Jesus as his Almight Counsellor. Ms. Bachmann pictures herself in Army boots: "I'm a foreign correspondent on enemy lines and I try to let everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington." While a part of big government--she is in Congress!-- she says she is an insurgent in Washington, working behind enemy lines to let people know exactly how big governnent is a threat to all of us. Our Michele--the one with one "l", not the wife of the socialist in the White House--is a part of the "tea...

In the Christian tradition, God was a kind of King; the one with all the power and glory; the owner of the cattle on a thousand hills. In that same tradition, human beings were the children of God, created by him (sic), flawed, rebellious, and possibly redeemable. According to the mythology, as it grew over the centuries, God send his Favored Son to redeem humankind, and lead them home. Evildoers killed the Favored Son, but the spirit of the Son lived on in the community of believers.  So God was a kind of trinity: an all-powerful Father, a Favored Son, and a community of people filled with God's Spirit.  A Holy Trinity. Kingships pretended to be something like that.  The King was the patriarch; a kind of god within his own kingdom.  Centuries later, our political system--our Republic--is a kind of Holy Trinity, too, with Godfathers, Favored Sons, spirit-filled communities.  We, more familiarly, call them the people with money and power, ou...

There is no pragmatically single standard for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize.  There may be a formal one, but history shows a bewildering variety of recipients.  And that is good.  Single- mindedness is a crippling virtue.  Now we get to debate again! We can put aside whatever Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and John Boehner have to say:  they only know how to say they hope we don't get the Olympics, that health care is too expensive, and that Barack Obama has not yet cured cancer, found an alternative to Oxycontin, or caused a smile on Ann Coulter's face. What has Barack Obama done to cause him to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?  Do you recall the Doomsday Clock symbolically used by Atomic Scientists to indicate how close we were to mutually assured destruction by a fusilade of nuclear bombs.  The time it showed for decades was just a few minutes to our last midnight.  If, instead of nuclear destruction--but including that, too-...

John McCain says that Sarah Palin, in spite of all her lack of knowledge, is still a formidable force in the Republican Party. He should know.  He was willing to choose her to be his Vice President, knowing very well that she was incompetent to become President.  She was, however, "a formidable force". She was also attractive, and admired by all those people who knew that she and her husband danced the edge of secession from the same country she decided she wanted to be President of. The source of Palin's appeal still is that she galvanizes all those feelings of anger held by people who don't think too much. Even within the Republican Party, no serious thinking politicians really believe that she is anything but a way to call out the dogs. One could grow old trying to find any positive proposal she has made for the direction of our country.  She just rallies the pack, getting them to bark and bay and snarl and howl. Sarah Palin, only slightly less att...

The Minnesota Twins first played baseball in Minnesota where the Mall of America does business now.  As now, they shared Metropolitan Stadium with the Vikings. It was a miserable place to enjoy Minnesota weather, but after about twenty years of playing inside the Hubert Horatio Humphrey Dome--a big flattened bubble of air in downtown Minneapolis, some people have romanticized how fine it will be to get outside, again, to a new ballpark that is almost ready, a few blocks away.  The new ballpark does not have a dome. All this season, we have heard how fine it will be to get outside and play baseball where baseball is meant to be played:  in the sun, on real grass, where the light rail lines come together, next to the garbage incinerator. Had we been outside this year, our extra regular league game with the Detroit Tigers, which gave the Twins a great come- from-way-back American League Central division title, would have been rained o...

The government provides altogether too many flu shots.  At least half of them are wasted on people who do not believe that things evolve.  The WD-40 flu (I know! I know!  I have a peculiar mind!) flu has evolved from other strains, just as it is necessary each year to get new vaccines to keep up with new variants. Just the process of using lots of antibiotics allows the fundamental process of evolution to produce new strains of bacteria that are selected by the evolutionary process to be unaffected by older antibiotics. All life is constantly producing genetic variations. Bacteria, too.  Most of the time it is not noticed, but when an antibiotic is successful in destroying bacteria, for instance, there will almost certainly be a few bacterial variants that are unaffected by the old antibiotics.  They thrive, and new medicines have to be developed to kill them. The people who blather on about evolution being an illusion--that instead of al...

The top picture to the left is actually a picture of a wall hanging in our home; just part of a printed tapestry; a gift from Michael and Susan, from a photo of Mari taken before we were married. Below it is another picture of a picture; now of part of a poster at the Mall of American, where I usually walk early in the morning, while it is still dark outside.  I have learned not to walk around Lake Nokomis in the dark. I am not sure I should admit this, but I fell in love all over again when I saw the poster, not with the poster, but with . . . ah, you figure it out!  I have admitted my poster infidelity to Mari.  She says it is all right. Walking at the Mall is not all fantasy.  There are moments when the real world intrudes, and makes demands or, at least, suggestions; things like how to deal with domestic violence.  At Marshalls, it can be done by buying a pair of shoes. The Mall of America is built where the old outd...

Gray settles on the land in early morning like despair The sky gives no clue as to where morning is hiding And only habit tells us where east and dawn should come But dawn does not come from the east: it seeps When the path around the Lake comes clear The relief from darkness creeps from everywhere Gray oozes down into the trees, to wait Winter north forces us to talk to each other warmly Leaning on each other verbally, for support, and hope We try to recall how much we like the changing of the seasons But we cannot remember what we wanted that brought us Gray We want, instead, for light, and try not to talk about why People who grew up loving ice and playing hockey, grow old And move to places that do not know Gray, as we do, who Love the changing of the seasons when they are not Gray Sometimes the sun comes bright, harbored by the cold When Gray is hidden in the trees, we talk to each other Again, to recall how we like the changing of the seasons And how nice ar...

In what was either a display of delicate maneuvering, or of delicate courage, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (the largest of the contentious Lutheran synods) decided to allow congregations to hire gay or lesbian clergy if they wanted to.  Only if they wanted to. That courageous act incensed a fair number of Church members. About ten congregations have voted to leave the ELCA. There are certain to be more.  Lutherans hate to agree. It is difficult to understand what the threat is to those congregations, since they are not required to hire gay or lesbian clergy.  Apparently, if some other Lutheran congregation somewhere else does, it might rub off on you, or make your teeth turn yellow, or maybe just cause you to think about it a lot.  Anyway, if you leave the ELCA, you don't have to send them any money, although it is hard to believe that any of the dissidents are putting money first.  They might have to, if the ELCA says the s...

Fixed species.  Dogs are dogs.  Cats are cats. Human beings are human beings; not chimpanzees. I think I learned that in Sunday School. It is not that anybody talked about species in Sunday School:  they talked about God, and how wonderful he wer't.  Nevertheless, I think I learned then that there was something special about being a human being.  We had souls, for instance. Nobody ever saw a soul, and I know that people used to try to calculate just when a soul left a body, and even how much a soul might weigh. Nonsense!  All nonsense!  It was not until Aretha Franklin that I learned that some people have soul, but not souls. I know now that people were just trying to find ways to explain that human beings were absolutely and forever different from all other animals. Fixed species.  Right from the beginning.  And we were special; very special. It is extremely difficult to get rid of the notion of fixed species. One hu...