Trimming the Load

 I still have papers I wrote for school, one at hand from 45 years ago, a paper from a class in the experimental novel when I was an undergraduate at Black Hills State College in Spearfish, SD.  I loved it there.  I enjoyed my classes.  This one, taught by Tom Herbeck, who I came to know as a brilliant scholar and writer, has stayed with me since that time.  

The paper I wrote, dated May 8, 1981, for Tom's class was about The Stranger, by Albert Camus. It's nothing special, but here it is, near at hand, with Tom's comments pencilled in and a half-sheet of paper attached with a typewritten commentary on my attempt, xxxxed out mistakes and all.  

I'm going to throw it away today.  I valued those exercises, reading carefully for insights and big ideas.  But nothing now will come of these papers.  Once I had an idea that I would publish some of the later ones, not this undergraduate one, but others, later.  I even sent one out, got positive comments back with suggestions for revision, but that's where it stopped.  

From my attic these papers come as the wife and I try to clear that out.  The other at hand is a paper from a seminar on the literature of the African diaspora, a course taught at the University of Kansas by Arthur Drayton, dated October 29, 1992.  That was the fall I spent in Lawrence to qualify as two consecutive terms at KU necessary for completion of my PhD, which never happened.  I couldn't finish.  But the courses were good, and I was hopeful after my job ended when my school, St. Mary of the Plains College in Dodge City, closed that spring.  February 17, 1992, I think, when the announcement came.  

I got other jobs.  I finished a PhD elsewhere, with other good professors.  

Drayton too was positive in his comments.  Maybe that could have been a publishable paper.  It was printed on a dot matrix printer, so by that time I was using a computer.  Maybe a digital version remains somewhere.  

In that paper, I took on a topic that continues to intrigue me when I read, when I write.  It's the pull between the community and the individual, adhering to the group or striking out on your own.  I write here about three books we read that semester:  Arrow of God, by Chinua Achebe, Bridge of Beyond, by Simone Schwartz-Bart, and Praisesong for the Widow, by Paule Marshall.  I have no memory of the second book, and little of the third, but Achebe's work stays with me.  

It was hard work, writing those papers, especially the later one, when I was living in a motel room in Lawrence with my family across the state.  My children were small.  I was away all week, some weekends.  It was hard.  

But I enjoyed that life of study, of books, of sharing ideas, learning, reading.  Tom Herbeck died years ago.  Drayton is probably gone, too, along with many of my other great teachers.  

It's all good.  I can let these papers go, and with that, maybe I can put more in motion, toward the past, toward trash, saved in memory.  

Suddenly, September

Writng the title above caused me to flash back to seeing my older brother for the first time in a college play in Aberdeen, SD.  I don't think I'd ever been to a live play on stage apart from some high school silliness.  It was the Fantasticks, with the song "Try to Remember."  

I'm reminded too because I've been purging stuff that I've hung on to for long enough--time to let it go.  Among that stuff is a small batch of letters from my grandfather, old friends, and other family members, including from brother Joe, who wrote from Wisconsin and Ohio when he was in the theater.  

I also found a copy of a play that I didn't remember I had, one I helped write with him and the members of Dakota Theater Caravan.  I read it last night, maybe for the first time.  I'm not sure it was finished yet when this copy was printed on a dot-matrix printer (remember those?).  Set in the Black Hills, the play centers on controversial plans for mining in this beautiful area.  

Anyway, looking through that material last night made me look back over a long life, professional and otherwise, and people and projects long gone.  I never saw that play performed, though it was, but I could see my mark on it, and that's something.  

Reminders

Sometimes I need to remind myself that writing is a kind of comfort for me, to put down in words some of what is whirling in my head. So here goes. This morning I made a list of some of the things I'd like to do. It doesn't yet include exercise or a meal out with friends, both of which are on the agenda. But it does include nine other things, one of which is "blog." 

 It's been a year since I made an entry here. And a lot has happened since then, though one of the things I keep hoping the wife and I can put together--some travel--continues to be elusive. I did go to San Francisco and hang out with my two brothers out there for a week. That was pretty great, even without going to the many civic offerings of that great city. So that was one trip. And we did have a good year for Poetry on the Road, our poetry project from the South Dakota State Poetry Society (SDSPS), visiting 21 towns across South Dakota to read and host open mic events.  And we're doing it again.  We did spend a couple of days this spring at Oakwood Lakes State Park.  

One constant is the vast array of projects that continue to occupy my time.  I just rented a 62 foot crane and cleaned the wood stove chimney and installed a new cap, earlier renting another crane and replacing the shingles that have blown off in our wicked wind storms.  I bought and sold a pickup.  Almost bought another house.  Bought an old Beetle convertible, perhaps a mistake.  I'm working on a mosaic piece.  I remodeled the upstairs bathroom and leveled the floor.  We stripped the wallpaper off the upstairs hallway, and that remains an unfinished project.  Last summer I completed the restoration of the front porch.  We planted a nice garden again and have enjoyed its harvest of cucumbers, peppers, and especially tomatoes.  

After I finish here with the old blog, I'm going to pay bills, take out the garbage, mow, pay for repairs on the van, and maybe exercise.   But I also need to deal with an accident on Saturday, when a woman driving an SUV backed into the side of my lovely BMW convertible.  I've got to go to the police station, get the report, contact a body shop, and maybe drive the car there to have an estimate done.  I'm hoping they will repair it, not total it out.  We'll see what happens, so stay tuned.  

Summer, 2025

Over the years, the wife and I have typically spent a chunk of the summer traveling to far-off places, one of the options available to teachers who claim the season for renewal and refresh. This summer, however, was a different story, with one thing after another claiming time and energy to such a degree that neither of us left South Dakota at all. Not even Minnesota, only a half an hour awy. It's no tragedy, not spending part of the summer traveling, but there's a different weight to it, a feeling as though we've been pinned down by events and people in need. Being home for the entirety of the summer gave us time to watch a sad destruction unfold next door, as an empty lot next to ours has had its entire stand of trees removed, and it now is a vast expanse of dirt and crushed saplings, all its mature trees, including some century-old cottonwood trees, pushed over and plucked out by workers in heavy machinery that too was parked next door all summer. In the aftermath, we now can see the houses and sheds and hear the children and vehicles of people who live more than a block away, who were once hidden and silenced by the trees and shrubs in the now-empty lot. Our back yard seems smaller now, somehow, though we can see further, hear more. In our country, the sense is that if you own a piece of land, you can do with it as you wish. No notice to us was given of the plans next door. Machines showed up one day and the destruction began. It took weeks. Meanwhile, the deer and rabbits and other wildlife that lived in the small forest, adjacent to our own stand of trees, now have to find a new place to be. So our summer, our staying at home and watching that destruction, has given us a close and visible counterpart to the national destruction of agencies and institutions that have served the American people well. There on the news another agency is gutted, and another tree falls next door. Each day, another attack on the country's systems, another swipe at the lot next door. There will be another summer. Soon, houses will appear in the chopped-up parcel next door, and we'll live on. But it won't be better.

Gathering with Friends to Watch

Sometimes a big spectacle can bring people together in good ways, even if it's just on the TV. You sit around and as the event unfurls, you chat and give it the attention it deserves. Sunday's Super Bowl LIX was an event that lent itself to talk more than attention on the screen. What talk there was about the game moved to prior disasters in the contest, for example the 1985 game between the New England Patriots and the Chicago Bears. The Patriots got off to a 10-O start, but then the Bears ran roughshod over them the rest of the game, including a TD run by the Refrigerator. And more such discussion about clobberings in the big game. So, the Chiefs championship shirts and caps get sent off to faraway places (why Estonia and Latvia?) and confetti rains down on the Eagle victors. Maybe next year the Vikings will pull through. Or the Lions.

Safe at Argonne

Yesterday, for an outing with the wife's father Tom, we headed north from Howard to De Smet, where we cruised around town looking for the familiar places for them, and a first for me. I'd been there before, but never driven through downtown. We cruised by places where Tom's father in law, the wife's grandfather, lived and volunteered, and where his wife grew up. We passed a familiar park, locations where things once were and are no longer. Then we lunched at the Oxbow restaurant, with familiar food, chicken fried steak, roast beef sandwich, Oxbow ruben sandwich. And we learned about who died and who hadn't yet. Then we hit the road again headed for Carthage, with a pause at what used to be Manchester, where a category 4 tornado obliterated the town and made the news nationwide. 6 casualties, 1998. Now only a memorial marker identifies the town. Then on to Carthage, another town slowly marking time as it declines. One memorial there is a sign that identifies the many churches that were there and are no more. Still, the Cabaret, a small-town restaurant with a cosmopolitan name opens some evenings and weekends and features specials for those in town and those in the area who are in the know. Another small restaurant sits across the street. Is it still open? The fields around Carthage are empty after the tractor-trailer rigs left town upon finishing filming "Into the Wild" back in the day. But Lake Carthage still offers some recreation, and a few fishermen brave the ice, not sure how thick it is, but reluctant to drive out to see. From Carthage we turn to gravel to seek out Argonne, still on the map but with no residents, no standing, just a sign telling how the town thrived along a railroad and tipped its hat to World War I vets when it changed its name from St. Mary to Argonne for the soldiers lost there. We drive along a grassy path past a tree with homemade signs marking 3rd Street and Elm Stret. The car bumps along dragging its belly along the ridged trail, grass sweeping the bottom. We look down 3rd Street, but the winter heat wave has turned the frozen trail to mud. Finally, we stop at the one standing structure, the bank vault from a defunct and departed bank building. Its iron door hangs open, offering whatever treasures it now holds to any visitor to Argonne. We stop a moment for photos, and we drive on, searching our memories for who lived where and when, the map of remembrances faulty and faded, the familiar elusive, the past a windy cloud of dust behind us as we continue.

The End of Another Year

I think it's back in 2005 that I started this blog without a clear idea of where it might go. I got a lot of fun out of it at first, had some followers and commenters on it; maybe that was before we all started spending so much time on Facebook, me included. I remember looking at where looks were coming from, some around the world, Europe and Asia and all over the US. I got a kick out of that, knowing that people in other places had an interest in what I was posting. Things petered out. But there's no reason not to write, right? It's been a pretty good year. Taught a class for DSU this fall semester in "AI in Literature and Media." It went pretty well; I got good feedback in person from the people in the class, and who cares about the surveys they took. The wife and I traveled to Finland, Estonia, and Latvia this summer, having a good time once again far from home. Our Estonia time was mostly with a couple of great hosts, Jack and Sirje, who used to live in Madison and are now in Florida. They showed us around that remarkable country and gave us an idea of what the people there had been through. Beautiful places, all three countries, with a bully of a neighbor to their east. I managed to do most of a porch rebuild this summer, though winter came on before I could finish the porch rails. Still, it looks much better. This spring I sold the house I'd worked on for a year and a half. That was cool, a nice profit. I edited another issue of Pasque Petals, the poetry magazine of the South Dakota State Poetry Society, SDSPS, and we poets traveled around the state reading and hosting poetry gatherings. That was especially rewarding. In all, a pretty good year. I hope yours was too, and your next one better.