Listening to my eulogy at the rehearsal for my funeral

 I recently had the experience of attending my funeral, via the imagination of my granddaughters. It was one of those experiences you could not think up or plan. The two masterminds were ages 8 and 6. 

We built a fort in their basement with blankets, cushions, pillows, etc. I was the bad guy they had trapped inside. When the fort collapsed on me, one of them said they needed to have a funeral for me. In enacting the funeral I was transformed from the bad guy to their real grandfather. 

The younger of the two, Ava, went first and said that I was "the kindest and nicest man" she had ever known, and how sorry she was that I was dead. That was very very nice to hear. 

The older, Lillian, began to recite the act of contrition, which she is learning for her first confession next Spring. She missed a few pieces of it, but basically she said something like this, 

"I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things. I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. In his name, my God, have mercy"

I thought it was rather fitting, and I think she changed a word or to so that it would sound like it was coming from me. But it was sweet and true. Her way of voicing the most serious thing could think of at a very serious, though make-believe, event. 

Most of us will attend our own funerals, at least in body. This "rehearsal" was short and to the point and was just about as good as the one that awaits me down the road. I hope they both speak when the time comes. 

When a drug addict steals your F150

 My truck was stolen last month. Once it was recovered by the police, it was obviously the woman, or man, who stole it, had not yet mastered the art of driving an F150. It was Kevin's truck once. 

Our Lord says to pray for your enemies. I do so by keeping a list of those who have been particularly unkind to me and my family in order to pray for them. This person became #8, and was added to my list on September 5, 2022. 

As I looked through the drug-related trash left in my vehicle it was hard not to feel sympathy for the thief. Especially when you know there was a time in your life, so many years ago, when you could have gone down this path. I grew up in an age when the life of the aimless, drifting, drug user was romanticized. 

In a way I will some day understand, I was preserved from going down to such a defeat. So far.

  

I am Covid

 In December 2019 I was teaching a series on suffering in my parish. I attended a performance of Handel's Messiah at St. Olaf's Catholic Church. I went to breakfast a couple of mornings with friends. I did all the usual Christmas stuff. 

Unknown to me, during that month a virus left Wuhan, China and started looking for me. It took 30 months, but he found me. Took me out when I had my guard down. Could have been in the grocery store, or at church, or just bumping into a fellow redneck at the C-store. 

My thanks to all of you who wore masks, got vaccinated, and paid attention to science. My thanks to all who listened to and trusted the CDC. My thanks to all who listened to their doctor and ignored the static. 

You kept this away from me for quite a while. You made it harder to find me. You bought time for the inventors. By the time it caught me, I was so well protected by the inventions of the pharmaceutical industry that I only had one day of mild nausea. So far. Thank you President Trump. Thank you President Biden.  

Too much of an above average thing

 Early this year I determined that I need a break from my heavy biographical and theological readings and just have fun escaping in good stories. I searched online and found that many people put Isaac Asimov at or near the top of lists of the best science fiction writers. 

I decided to read his Foundation series. Then his prelude to Foundation Series. Then his postlude to Foundation Series. Then I Robot. Now I am reading all the preludes to preludes to Foundation and Robots. 

He is a good writer. But this stuff is getting old. I have four books left to read, or is it five? I am bored but will finish them so that I can send them off to goodwill. 

In the 1950s he had an insight to the type of inventions that would come our way by the 1990s. Remarkable.

He had a very bad sense of the value of faith in God. Or I should say the main characters in his books that I have read have this trait. Unremarkable.  

Rod McKuen was the narrator of my college era

On August 6, 1976 I bought a paperback book by RodMcKuen. I still have it. It has been in my garage for years, by the trashcan. I have tried to throw it away but always pull it back. I wrote my name and the date on the inside, as if it were important that both be recorded. I was 19, almost 20. I sacked groceries in a small town in southern Missouri and lived in a trailer. It was the summer before my junior year in college.  

I am probably one of the few people on the planet who can lay claim to having lived a life influenced by the poetry of this man. But there was a brief time when I wanted to be a younger version of him. The contemplative loner, hanging out in a cafe in Paris, composing a letter from a LandRover in Bangkok, walking the beach at sunset in Malibu, meeting a friend for tea in St. John's Wood, writing ballads about sunsets and hitchhiking. 

I look at the lines I underlined and realize I plagiarized so many of them in letters to long forgotten girlfriends, perhaps even to my wife of 43 years. If any of you are reading this I must confess that these lines were not originally from me...

 "I've drawn your face on tablecloths across the country"

"I was drifting while waiting for your eyes to find me"

"I have yet to see a sky or world quite good enough for you"

And this is just a sampling. This book is dog-eared, underlined, highlighted. I sat on a rock by my driveway and re-read all my favorites. Some seem corny and schmaltzy but others still speak to me as they did 50 years ago. 

There truly was a time when my hair was thick and long and my bellbottoms were size 28 or 30, that this book slipped perfectly into my back pocket. If girls were not impressed with my charm, or my grades, or future prospects, there is always Rod. When doing my lonesome walk to class, or through a park, or being pseudo-contemplative, he was there, narrating the scene. Meanwhile, I loped and moped and hoped she would ask the question... "whatcha readin?". 

I read this today, which once spoke to a life I could but imagine, and now have, in a way. 

Freedom

"Free I am. 

I have no bills to pay. 

My debts are squared,

the edges smoothed out perfectly. 

My ducks are in a row

and I can sail. 

There are borders

in this final life

that were not here at nineteen

or at twenty-three." 

(It deteriorates from there but you get the point)

I bought this book at a time when I was human play-dough, being molded by chance and circumstance and places. I'm sure it made its way to the small chapel on campus, an aging tennis court, that park I fled to so often, the trunk of my 1969 Ford Fairlane. So now, almost fifty years later I am drawn back to this little book, at obscure times. I can go years without thinking one thing about this guy, until a trigger reminds me a of a time when he was a much bigger influence on me than he should have been. He was a man who accoumplished some things but not a good man that other men should want to be like.  

Now the jeans are size 34 or so and the bottoms have no bells. I would be embarrassed to have this book in my back pocket so it rests on a shelf in the garage. But still there are lines that gnaw at me as I thumb through the pages once more. I see that I wrote my name in it twice that August 6 of 1976, on different pages. Something was going on that day and I think I know what it was. 

In praise of Little League baseball

 They have no DH. Everyone bats. 

There are things in life that you know instinctively are wrong. The first time you heard of them they turned your stomach. "Mom, why would anyone do that?" "Dad, is this true that some people....?"

You felt the same way when you heard about the DH. It was just out and out wrong. And now, like it so many other things, the side of good has collapsed. There is now no difference between the AL and the NL. What we once knew to be wrong, we now sort of talk ourselves into thinking it is good. 

Stay tuned. There is much much more to come. 

Visions and Dreams and Johanna

 A note to my grandaughter who came to the earth on 3 March 2022. 

I may name my banjo after you, we'll see. I have been trying to contrive a name for it. It has five strings and you are my fifth grandchild. That is a stupid connection but it's all I have. 

Before you were born I was at your house, seeing your brother and checking on your mom. She was a day or two away from going to the hospital for your birth. As I was leaving she pulled me close in a hug and said, "Dad, would you say a prayer for me?". I stood there in the entryway, among a stroller, winter boots, scarfs with the woman I first held as a tiny baby decades ago. 

I don't know exactly what I prayed for that day when I put my arms around your mom. It was a bit about her and a bit about you. But I do know this. All of the deep things I have ever wanted for my daughter were realized in that little hall. My little girl, when deep into womanhood, asked me to pray for her. To that same Lord that she worshipped as a toddler. That is what I wanted when I first held her, when I first whispered the name of our Lord in her tiny ear. That when I was old that she would hold as tightly to Christ at 40 as she did at 4. As I was driving home I had this sense that every dream I ever dreamed and every prayer I ever prayed for her had been answered in that moment.  

On the 5th day of March, when you were two days old I held you for the first time. Like your mother, the first word you heard from my lips was "Jesus". The first time you felt my hand, it was to trace the sign of the cross on your forehead. 

Johanna, your safe arrival on earth was an answer to many prayers. Many more prayers are being lifted up for you now. It is my deep desire that when your mother and father are my age, that they will thank God for the faith they see in you. That does not waver. That does not tremble. 

banjo and golf

 I never was a serious student of golf. I am a very serious student of banjo. But there is something in my head and physiology that links the two. 

During the brief periods I tried to learn golf, I always had a major issue with whiffing, or just as bad, topping the ball. My body held back as though a normal divot would break my wrist, throw out my back, break my arm, or whatever. I still have fun on the golf course and there is nothing like a good foursome and a good cigar. 

How does this relate to banjo? I whiff. Especially with my thumb. I miss the 5th G string, or hit it much too often when the 4th D is the target. The same thing happens, though not as often with all the rest of my fingers at various times. I also have my banjo version of topping, hitting the strings too lightly, not giving a good resounding pluck. Things will be chugging along fine, i'm moving through the tune, and then comes a crucial period in a roll when suddenly the strings go eerily faint. Like I'm suddenly afraid someone will hear me! 

The golf stuff doesn't bother me, for I am not a golfer. The banjo stuff does, as I am banjo player, at least in my eyes and those of my grandkids. 

something about the banjo

 I have been meaning to write something about the banjo. In October of 2020 I faced a long winter and a Covid lockdown. So I wondered, what am I going to have to show for all this time of lockdown? What will I have accomplished, or have to show from all of this?

I decided I would learn to play either the guitar or banjo. I sought the advice of various articles online, as to which was easier to learn. It was a toss-up. Pick one. So I went to Amazon and search for a good beginner banjo. I bought a cheapo for around $200. 

It was a bad banjo, but I didn't know that for a while. It did get me through those first months of deciding whether I wanted to stick with it. Last summer I spent about 6X as much as originally and bought a good one. Deering Blackgrass Special. I like it. I wouldn't say I love it, as it is a demon that has taken over most of my mornings. But I'd rather be with it, than without it, I suppose. 

I am 65 years old. Learning a new skill is difficult but in retirement I need difficult things to do. Things that challenge me both physically and mentally. This is one of the most challenging things I have attempted. It is right up there with passing all three levels of the CFA exams in succession. 

I practice around 2 hours each day, every day that I am in town. That is most days. The only day I take a break is on days when I have a lesson. On those days I just do the one hour lesson. My teacher is a master, and a hard driver. But I need to be driven, so I don't complain, much. 

From the first time I picked up this devil, I have been mesmerized with it. How is it that one can do one thing with the right hand and something completely different with the left? How is this happening? Day to day there is no noticeable progress. But I keep records. Watch that metronome. Write things down. I am playing a few tunes at half the speed a professional would, but a few months ago I played them at a quarter speed. Slow progress, but progress. 

Chords, licks, rolls. Chords, licks, rolls. Memorization. Manipulating my old fingers just right so that I don't buzz the string or deaden an adjacent one. Don't look at the right hand. Going too fast and going too slow. Playing for my favorite audiences of one, my wife, or one of my grandkids. The oldest grandkids, age 5 and 7, think I'm pretty good. If I can keep up with them, where ten years from now they still think I'm good, even if they don't like the music, will be an accomplishment. That's my goal. 

Travels in Covid Year 2 - 2021

For purposes of this list I traveled to a city if I spent the night there. 

Victoria, MN, Brentwood, MO, Minneapolis, MN, Charlotte, NC, Boone, NC, Mount Pleasant, SC, Baltimore, MD, Gettysburg, PA, Scranton, PA, DuBois, PA, Ocean City, MD, Webster Groves, MO, Steubenville, OH, Charlotte, NC, Roan Mountain, TN, Houston, TX, Silvis, IL, Webster Groves, MO, Bolivar, MO, Paris, TX, Eastland, TX, Abilene, TX, Oklahoma City, OK, Olathe, KS

A Winter of Content

 It is a basic human fault to complain about the weather. Most of the time it is too hot, too cold, etc. etc. blah blah blah. 

In Minnesota our Lord bestow a special blessing that I am increasingly thankful for. Very cold days. This morning it was -13 as I ran an errand to a neighboring town. 

On these days human activity slows down. When I had a job, the buses ran a little slower on these days. Fewer people came into the office. The phone rang less. Thus, work I needed to do got done. 

Today, I do not have a job. I use this time to get things done that are both important and unimportant. Get lost in a book. Tighten that screw, splice that wire, dust that difficult spot, file that receipt. Read the Bible. Sit in a Church and adore the Presence. Write a letter to my aunt.  

Solace. Quiet. 

In six months it will be one hundred degrees warmer. There will be more people moving around. There will be requests that I join them in consuming food. Humans will gather in celebration of certain plants, such as the " (insert county name here) (insert vegetable name here) Festival".  Farmers will have their markets. New young drivers will experiment with speed. 

The level of solace and quiet in my life will decrease as the days grow longer. Not for better or worse, just different. 

These days of cold are days I treasure, when I can do simple things like write down these thoughts of gratitude.