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Winter and Life Advice


This is not me, although it might have been, once upon a time.
Friends and relatives:  this is where Mari and I lived for ten years recently.  And, for the same reason, that is why I almost thanking God for being back in Tucson, again.  (My hesitation is not about Tucson, but about God.)  But it is brutal here, too.  (You know what happens when global warming kicks in:  it gets colder here and there!)  And it is down to 55 degrees, or so, here in the Land of . . .  in the Land of Jesus-it-is-Cold!

I have found a sweater, made in Norway, which I bought in Evanston, Illinois, while I was attending the University of Chicago; probably about in 1967 or 1968, after having spent a year in Germany, which also made a trip to Norway possible.  If you add a huge rock to the photo, above, as a kind of symbol of what Norway is, you will know what it is like to live in Minnesota when summer ends and Siberia swoops south.

Dan and Ellie live in Minneapolis, now, and they are probably thinking about winter for the first time.  Both are old enough to have thought about it before, having finished medical school--both of them--but neither of them is been old enough yet to know what it means not to have a fine old sweater from Norway, although they may be learning.

I never wanted to live in the Midwest.  I did want to go to the University of Chicago, and I learned what it was to be captured by Influence.  The University of Chicago has influence.  It sometimes bestows that Influence on its Accidental Tourists.  So I lived for years in the Midwest.  Minnesota is a fine place.  It is a civilized place.  lt is--Michele Bachmann notwithstanding--a place where civilized people think responsibly about politics and life together.  But it is, also, a place where winter settles down, as it is doing now.

But that is nostalgia!  I live in Tucson now, and again, for about the fourth or fifth time.  And, even in Tucson, we must occasionally face winter bravely and without complaint.

I cannot do that.

I have not reached that stage.  But when I do--and I am hopeful--I shall report to you what it is like to live like a sturdy citizen who accepts the consequences of our own lust for hydrocarbons, and who, nevertheless, is glad for a sweater that is almost as old as he is.  You should keep in mind, though, that honesty and change come slowly to us ancients.












Get your own sweater.




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