Syttende Mai Sacrifice

I shall tell you how things dribble off into the Sonoran sand: today is Syttende Mai--that is to say, May seventeenth--and Mari is listening to Pavarotti.

On May 17th in 1814, Norwegians gained a Norwegian constitution. The Danes relented, and have still not repented of it, allowing Norway to more-or-less govern themselves, at least until the Swedes took over. That whole, dark period in Norwegian history did not end until the Norwegians discovered oil under the continental shelf, and the Swedes were reduced to selling Volvo to the Chinese, although some historians say independence happened in 1905.

Mari and I--both detritus from Norwegian immigration into the United States--have lived in Norway, and in towns and cities in this country where the air in May still hints of cod fish and goat cheese. At our home in Decorah, Iowa, we almost always celebrated Syttende Mai, sometimes discovering that traveling Norwegians had heard it was so, and showed up at the door. At this moment in Tucson, a Hoosier cabinet at my back harbors Akavit (or aquavit, if you will): "the water of life"; potato liquor. And Mari is listening to Luciano Pavarotti!

I am going to make what is not an ultimate sacrifice. We are today going to help a very talented young man celebrate his commencement from the University of Arizona, and I am going to give him one of the two bottles of Akavit that I own; the lesser full of the two. I will be damned if I will give him the other! Maybe someday, if he finds a job.

Anyway, Pavarotti has stopped singing, and the Ink Spots are singing, "If I Didn't Care". I still care.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog