ANTICIPATING...a Family Fourth of July
Here I sit.....wearing my gardening outfit complete with the Deep Woods Off spray on my neck, throat, arms and where ever I anticipate gnat bites. I am working up the gumption to go outside in the hot sunshine and do a little weeding in spots that need weeding pretty badly. But I have learned to take it a little bit at a time and not try to do 5 hours of garden work at one time. Just a bit of baby step today and clean up around my sunflower plants...and dig some more of that - - - - - -quack grass away from a flower bed border. (I have to tell FarSide that the lupines are making seed pods....you gave me the seeds last year and I am so grateful that they are now huge blooming lupine plants!)
ANTICIPATING: The arrival of Son # 1 whose birthday is coming up just after the 4th of July. We thought he might be born on the national holiday in 1962 but he waited til the 8th of July. He is coming for a 2 days of fun with his two brothers. It is not often our boys can get together nowadays....all 3 of them have families and those children and wives come first. So it is a really special time when all 3 can get together. Youngest Son # 3 is planning on camping overnight in Maplewood Park in a tent..then the rest of us will arrive there about noon on Thursday to have some fun in the sun ... in and on the water of Lake Lida which connects to Maplewood via a smaller lake. Son # 2 will bring his jet ski to the gathering and all the Water Sprites can take turns riding, being pulled behind on skis or a big water sled (my best description of what I have observed). Two daughters in law and 5 grandkids are in on this also. The third daughter in law must stay at home to help with her family's large reunion over the holiday weekend. I think that tomorrow I will spend a lot of time "pupper-sitting" with Jobie, one of the grand-dogs who is a very nervous Dachsund who also loves me and loves to sit on my lap. One of my favorite cartoons which I have on a space in the kitchen is of a Dachsund standing on his hind legs on a chair making a pot of espresso coffee. The caption says "How nervous little dogs prepare for their day". Jobie seems to have drunk a few cups of espresso as each day dawns.
You hear a lot about an "Old Fashioned Fourth of July" at this time of the summer. What were those Old Fashioned Fourths like? I would be interested in hearing from readers how they spend/or spent Fourths of July that seemed to be of the Old Fashioned kind. My recollections are of people staying in their home towns for local celebrations which involved a big picnic in the city park; a big parade down Main Street of a very small town, eating watermelon, ice cream,and drinking soda pop, which were not everyday occurrences back then; and, if the town could afford it....a nice fireworks display after dark. Some of the kids in town would have gotten the illegal fireworks at stands outside of Fargo, ND and there would be plenty of illegal firecrackers blown up on the days leading up to the Fourth. I remember one of my neighbors escaping serious injury when a fairly large firecracker went off in his hand as he cocked his arm to throw it. Some kids even got the colorful fireworks....Roman Candles, Fountains, Pinwheels, and other small rockets that ascended into the summer night and sent showers of colorful sparks in our block. We were so easily awed in those days long gone. My parents were very cautious..my sister and I got some sparklers at the most. We had to go to the neighbor's yard for the real stuff!
My mind also returns to some books I have read in the past few years that described in detail the struggle of the American Colonists to break free from what they considered the terrible tyranny being put on them by the English King George 111 and the English Parliament. The book, 1776, by David McCullough was a true landmark for my reading of the events of that historic year when the American Colonial army nearly lost the war for independence. Two biographies, one of John Adams, and the other titled "Dear Friend" which is truly a double biography of John and Abigail Adams, shows the hardships of those who fought in the struggle to gain American independence. It led me to wonder if those of us in this present time would ever have the guts to do what they did in that time in the middle of the 18th century.
It seems that any Fourth of July celebration ought to include a remembrance of the price paid by our founding citizens to give all the future generations of Americans the liberty that came at such a high price for those who lived through the times of the American Revolution and its aftermath. It is so easy to lose sight of our beginnings as a nation in a modern society that puts a lot of emphasis on "having fun" on the Fourth of July....boating, camping, sunbathing, barbecue-ing...all worthwhile things to do together, but mostly without remembering why we do these things on July 4th each summer.
It is all too easy in the Land of the Free to take our freedom for granted. I like to be home on the night of the Fourth to watch the annual celebration from the Mall in Washington D.C. which is broadcast on PBS. I feel like I have done "something right" on July 4 when I watch, the formal celebration in the nation's capitol.
But in the meanwhile---anticipating....I have some small potatoes to boil for potato salad, a watermelon to chunk up and keep cool and crisp in the refrigerator...and those blasted weeds to deal with before I forget why I am wearing my gardening clothes.
Here is a wish for everyone who reads the blog to have a Glorious Fourth and remember why we celebrate this day!!!
Posted by: ....gsyvrud@aol.com on 7/1/2009 at 2:05 PM | Comments (2) | Permalink
BABES AT THE BEACH.....NO BLANKETS---BUT BINGO!!!!
Yup.... we had our Beach Party today as scheduled and we did NOT play Bingo. I just used that word because I keep thinking of Frankie and Annette's movies which had words like "beach" , "bingo" and "blanket" in one or more movie titles.
We had our party indoors at Audrey's house which is one of the highest points in Eglon Township....a place of big and little hills and many oak trees scattered all over the township. Someone told me that "Eglon" means "oaks".... probably in the Norwegian language since the settlers were of that ethnic persuasion. There were a few of the Daughters of the Pioneers of the township there today.....a member of the Mickelson clan, the Swenson clan, the Olson and Nelson clans...even an Erickson or two... another one who lives on the old Gunderson homestead....all names that resound familiarly in our little township. And there were some "newcomers" as well who enjoyed our rural party as as much as the "old girls" who have lived here for so long.
Actually, I thought of this early in the morning when I was doing some mind- numbing cleaning job in a corner of the basement of my own house.... Factoid: Audrey's house is located on a REAL beach....the farthest beach of old glacial Lake Agassiz. The lake was so huge at first that its first shoreline ran along what is today Highway 32 south from Hiway 10. There is a huge glacial moraine or esker that runs diagonally from just south of Highway 10 along MN 32 all the way down to the Fergus Falls area. And if you think about it....that area is where the hills start and you really rise up out of the Valley. This tidbit of information stored a number of years ago in my brain's flesh-and-blood "computer" popped up this morning when I was getting ready to go to the beach party. That original Agassiz shore line would be almost 2-3 miles east of the town of Hawley on the eastern shore of the glacial lake that laid down the rich black soil in the Red River Valley. So we were really on a beach after all! ( you just cannot see the sand any more.)
The guests showed up in beach and summer-wear. One creative lady brought along a swim suit on a hanger and put it up on Audrey's stone fireplace. I wore yellow shorts, red Crocs, painted my toenails red to match the sandals and also wore my sun hat bought for a cruise of several years ago. Oh I also wore a shirt....MBF's wild tropical shirt I made him buy for another cruise. I brought along my "light box"....the sort that gives off sunlight for wintertime sufferers of S.A. D....the disorder that used to plague me in fall, winter, and spring when I worked every day inside a school room with no outside windows...from late August til the end of May. It took its toll. I used to sit in front of that light box for one- half hour each morning between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. and it really stimulated my pineal gland to produce something really good in my brain. Being retired also means not using the light box any more. It kind of brightened up the kitchen though, and some thought if they stood close to it they would get some vitamin D..... but not true...you need the real sunlight for vitamin D.
We had ladies from the nearby Lee Lake Campground, and one of our friends who has moved from the township to Big Toad Lake.... the rest of the ladies were from the areas that were cut off by the road that was formerly covered with the "new lake". It would have been a chilly windy day to sit on the "beach" on country road 37! Being inside was just right. We all brought our lunches in bags, baskets and other containers and a few of the really Kind Ones brought good stuff to share.....watermelon, a delicious cheescake, and the always necessary "bars" that go so well at every function in our rural area. The coffee pot was full too, so we drained that along with some Boone's Farm bottles and a pitcher of lemonade (made in the shade...but not stirred in with a rusty spade.)
I also got to meet two more Border Collies, the dogs I love so much.....Audrey's daughter has two delightful females who love to chase a frisbee (one of the dogs) and the other who likes to chase her companion...her name is "Fly" and she rounds up her partner like "Fly" of the movie "Babe". I am always eager to get acquainted with Border Collies so that added to the fun for me.
The Beach Party plan hatched by three friends of many years turned out to be total success...even when the beach and the "new lake" had pretty much disappeared. It was a great reason to get together with good friends, both old ones and new ones. BINGO!! It was a lot of fun!
Posted by: gsyvrud@aol.com on 6/29/2009 at 4:43 PM | Comments (2) | Permalink
Foiled By A Water Pump.....
Well, there goes the beach party we had planned. My two friends (Audrey and Bette) and I had been riding together to Silver Sneakers classes at the Detroit Lakes community center for several weeks and we got a little crazy....let our imaginations run wild. We used to do this alot when we first knew each other... but that was more than 40 years ago and we have aged a bit over the years so you would think we could be a little less nutty at our present ages. It has not worked out though. We got nutty again when we decided that we should plan for a beach party on Clay County Road # 37 which has been under water all spring. It has been closed for several months and the people who ordinarily used # 37 for getting to Highway 10 have had to find new routes, which have not been very satisfactory since some of those gravel roads have been very wet and mushy all spring due to high water in other sloughs and lots of rainfall. There have been deep ruts and a few cars mired down completely on the so-called alternative routes.
In the total grip of nuttiness, we thought, why not have a beach party on the gravel slope of one side of the county road? We would bring beach umbrellas, beach chairs, wear swimwear, sandals, sunhats, sunglasses, bring our picnic lunches.....we even talked of launching Bette's canoe for a little ride on the waters of Lake.............( ah, yes, we would also have a "name the new lake" contest) We would take pictures of our beach party....maybe even publicize our fun a little bit. Of course we would have to talk fast to get the invited guests (township ladies of a certain age as we are) to pose in their swim suits or maybe even a bikini or two. Well ....we were going to have a great time and invitations were mailed to township residents who were most affected by the road closing (hand- made and hand-drawn over a real photo of the new "lake" complete with drawn-in palm trees, bathing beauties , a sailboat and a canoe on the "lake" and all kinds of creative things that only Bette can come up with. The plan was so GOOD! The invitations went out early last week. June 29 was the big day..................................
.....Until we discovered last week that a big water pump had been set up on the south side of the County 37 "beach" we planned to inhabit on June 29 for a picnic lunch and a suntanning session. The water level was going down rapidly, to our dismay... even though it would mean that Bette could once again drive on Cty 37. After making all the plans and going totally nutty over them, we were being hornswoggled out of our Beach Blast. We checked on the situation last Thursday and discovered that the road was visible again....the water was being pumped uphill to another pond/slough in the vicinity and once more there were two ponds instead of our new "lake" and the road bed was drying out and it was covered with green (dried ) pond slime. Bette and I looked at it and at each other and decided it was time to call Audrey and tell her that the beach plan had to be abandoned. But Audrey came through as always---we are still having our picnic and can wear our beach clothes and carry our sun umbrellas, hats, sandals, lunches.....we just won't be on the beach on County 37....Audrey's spacious porches and deck will do just fine. She has the greatest view in the entire county!!! She is high on top of a hill that overlooks all of Eglon Township.
So I am still going to wear MBF's Hawaiian style shirt over my yellow shorts; I have my "cruise hat" all ready to slap on my head. My red sandals are in the hallway. I know what kind of sandwiches I am going to make. I may drive in to Tony's to see if the watermelons are ripe and ready. But drat it all-----I won't get to paddle that canoe or wade in to the new lake, thigh-high, as I had planned. Maybe Audrey can turn on a lawn sprinkler and the nuttiest of the old gals we invited can prance through its streams of cold well water. All is not lost....yet.
As Matt Drudge often says on his Drudge Report-------"still developing".
Posted by: gsyvrud@aol.com on 6/28/2009 at 4:59 PM | Comments (2) | Permalink
Living In The Present.....Remembering The Past
There is a fine line these days between the Present and the Past, for me. While I help my cousin keep watch over her mother(my aunt) I am living in the present. But the book I received recently, the history of our ancestors who came from the Numedal Valley of Norway, as a clan of closely- related people----brothers, sisters, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and even grandparents, in some cases...and settled in the southeastern part of what is today Clay County. Usually, the Old Folks stayed at home in Norway while watching their children and grandchildren make the huge step of emigrating to "Amerika" as the economic times in Norway became more and more difficult in the 1860s and on towards the new century.
In the present, I watch over my Aunt who is a desendant of that large clan of immigrants, becoming weaker and weaker every day. She is in the rehab unit at Eventide care center but the day- by- day occurences are up and down...sometimes hopeful and sometimes discouraging. At the end of her 8th decade, it is not an easy time to bounce back from the serious trauma of a bad fall. Her body heals little by little, but her spirit is sometimes flagging, torn between trying to recover and expressing a wish to "go to Heaven". We, who are her family, cannot tell how things will turn out; we can only watch and wait and take one day at a time and prepare ourselves for the end, if that end is imminent. Only God knows our time of home-going.....none of us can say when it will come, with any certainty. We can only watch and wait. And that is what we do day by day.
She, ( and we) come from a line of strong, tough people who were all part of the Rollag-Veggli-Flesberg areas of the Numedal Valley. In the past, I read and re-read my Great-great Grandmother's story and wonder at how she survived all she did when she was still a fairly young woman. Married to a man who turned out to be misled by an unscrupulous land dealer in Norway, he ended up in financial ruin and literally, "lost the farm".....which was his wife's farm, inherited from her own family. In ruin and in despair, he took the coward's way out and took his own life leaving my great- great grandmother with 5 young children ( the oldest son was my great grandfather) and the disgrace of suicide which, in Norway of that time, was the greatest social disgrace anyone could have laid on them. To make things even worse, it was the custom of many to believe that it was the wife's fault when her husband took his life....she had obviously been a "bad wife" to him. My g-g grandmother was in despair herself and the only way to turn was to emigrate to America and try to start life over in the new country. She was fortunate that one of her brothers, a younger one in her family, had already become an American immigrant and had settled in a dugout cave in what is today Parke Township in southeastern Clay County where he lived one winter (1870) and became a trapper, collecting furs of animals to sell. He is a legend in the Clan.....he became the brother who looked after all the others when their own father had died at an early age leaving a widow with 4 children . His name was Tov and he not only struck out as an immigrant in the early part of the 1870's, but brought a much younger half-brother, Tosten, to America also. But when the young brother became ill with the all- too common tuberculosis, Tov put his brother on his back and skiied all the way from SE Clay Country to Breckenridge, MN and put his brother on a train bound for southern Wisconsin where my great-great grandmother had emigrated (Jefferson Prairie, near present day Clinton, WI. ) My great-great grandmother cared for her youngest brother in her home til he succumbed to the disease at a very young age. He was barely 20 years old when he died.
Tov also skiied cross country to Moorhead several times in the bitter winter(s) going to fetch groceries and other supplies. The thought of the physical strenth it took for such a journey is almost unimaginable in the present day we live in. Tov prepared the way for his eldest sister (my great-great grandmother and her 5 children to homestead in the western part of Parke Township.) His other brother also came with his already-growing family and the two siblings...my great-great grandmother and her brother Nels, shared the 160 acre homestead. My great grandfather, Herbran, must have done a man's work at the age of 15 on that new homestead. He had to take the role of the man of the family when his father took his life by suicide. The homestead site is still in our family today, where a descendant of Nels lives with her husband.
The Clan members suffered great losses and many sorrows. One of the families that is part of my relationship, lost 2 children to diseases (probably diptheria or whooping cough within days of each other. Another member of the Clan wrote of the death of his young wife days after the birth of their 5th child who was only 7 days old when the mother died, probably of a blood clot. "Anton" her husband described his wife's death in his own words recorded in my family history book:
"Sorrow and joy go together and it was so for me. On the 13th of February (it was 1904) another son was born to us, and our joy was just as great as it had been with the other children. The outlook was good, for those of us who were near Mama thought that she would be up and around soon.....Then on the evening of February 19th I came in from doing the chores for the day and one of the children said that Mama wanted to talk to me. When I went into her room, she asked me if I would help her sit up a little because she was tired of lying there all the time. I helped her as well as I could into a sitting position. In a short while she was dizzy and wanted to lie down again. I noticed that she grew pale and I grasped her hand and stood up, at the same time calling for Mrs. Krogen who was taking care of her. We did all we could but nothing would help. My beloved left this world, me and my four children, the oldest 5 years old and the youngest only 7 days old. Oh what a blow it was, that she in her best years, just 32 years and a few months old and had so much to live for, should die!.....All was gone."
Anton, the young widower stuggled to raise his family alone with the help of hired girls and neighbors, but ultimately, the baby who had been born just days before "Mama" died, was adopted by a childless couple who raised him to manhood, even though he always knew who his real family was. He took the name of the adoptive parents but was always included in the true family's future gatherings, knowing who his brothers and sisters were. There is a picture taken years later when all the children were grown up (there was a second family of half-siblings when Anton remarried and had more children with his second wife. All of them remained close to each other and to their father and their step-mother who lived to an advanced age. It was a large family of grown- up children on that picture and their step mother, Barbro, was in the center as the honored one on that particular day.
There are so many stories connected to my large and extended "clan". My book of the Past comforts me in the days of the Present, as I keep watch with my cousin and my sister over the last of our mothers' generation.
Posted by: gsyvrud@aol.com on 6/27/2009 at 7:29 PM | Comments (3) | Permalink
MANY THOUGHTS: HOSPITALS AND THE ELDERLY
I have not blogged for a spell.....I have had my mind elsewhere since being at a large hospital system in Fargo many times since June 14th. It has been a difficult time for me and for others in my family. When your elderly, beloved Aunt has taken a bad fall resulting in hospitalization, it has put a crimp in daily life and routine... and made me consider many other serious things about living this life we live. It has been very difficult to see my Aunt so helpless, so weak, so bewildered by what has happened to her that has changed her life so much in such a short time.
One thing I have thought a lot about these past days is about the importance and the high quality of nurses, nurse's assistants and physical therapists. These people are on the front lines of care in a hospital setting, every day, 24 hours a day. They are the absolute front line of care for patients like my Auntie. They truly care for the patients---not just in changing their dressings or giving medications or taking "vitals" on a regular basis. They CARE....they take it personally when a patient is in discomfort or distress and do all that is possible to alleviate any misery. I am so favorably impressed by the wonderful caring nursing staff and other support staff at the hospital where my Aunt is spending her days.
It has been difficult for my sister and me to see our cousin doing what she does for her mom....so lovingly, so unselfishly, so positively,often for a dozen or more hours each day... in spite of many bumps along the way of recovery. When one is elderly.....in their late eighties....recovery is a much different route than when one is still in their middle years or is younger than that. Healing takes place so much more quickly when you are younger. Healing and recovering for an elderly person is a real struggle. The goal is to get our Aunt back to a rehab unit at the Eventide care center where she has lived this past year as an Assisted Living resident. During the past few days that goal looked really far away but suddenly today, it is going to happen! Our amazingly strong and plucky little Aunt is going back to Eventide tomorrow after making some really big strides today. I am so thankful and so amazed at her strength of will even when there has been little physical strength for some days now.
A few other thoughts about hospital care in the present day: not having observed the many changes in hospital care, I was truly amazed to discover a way doctors now function. There are teams of student doctors who consult on cases and they seem to be totally hospital doctors with no connection to a clinicical practice. Perhaps this is in the name of efficiency for other physicians who are also clinicians, but I have seen some dangerous gaps in patient care due to this system. It has seemed that at times there is little coordination between the teams of doctors who visit the hospital patients .....each team gets some new ideas about what should be done and another team thinks differently and wants to try something entirely different. This has seemed to happen on more than one occasion while I have been visiting my Aunt in her situation. I have even felt like she was sort of a "guinea pig patient" for these teams of doctors-in -training. I hope my perception is incorrect because if it is not, I think the quality of the doctor-care is a lot lower than that of the nursing staff and physical therapists, et al. It seems like there is much more consistency among the nursing staff care...yet they are subject to changes in doctor's orders and cannot function without that direction. It has dismayed me on more than one occasion.
Today however, I am much encouraged by the amazing turn-around in my Aunt's condition and am more than overjoyed that she is going to get to return to the rehab unit at the nursing care center in just a few more hours. It has been a longer than expected journey and one that has amazed us in many different ways.
Posted by: gsyvrud@aol.com on 6/25/2009 at 4:23 PM | Comments (2) | Permalink