Dec. 30

Salad

Dec. 30

Main course

The Art of Fielding: A Novel by Chad Harbach

"He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws. You emphasized the obstacles that could prevent him from succeeding. That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph. Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was ti choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn't do this along; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you. A bad coach made everyone suffer in the same way, and so was more like a torturer."

History of the West by Larry Spears

Tom Mix was a v. big cowboy star in the 1930s. He was a real cowboy. I saw him in one movie that must have been a rerun. He wore a hat that was more pointed than Gene Autry's. He was a friend of Wyatt Earp until Earp died. Mix cried. In my time, little girls skipped rope to "Who you gonna marry?...Tom Mix; what you gonna feed him....hot bricks." Tom Mix was killed in an automobile accident when a heavy object in the back seat flew up and broke his neck or maybe crushed his skull. Don't recall. But I still remember that when packing the car. Put the heavy stuff in the trunk. Everybody know to do this, but I remember Tom Mix when I do it. Tom Mix died so that Sharon might live.

communication studies

Dylan Schear in the Aug. 28 Tahoe Daily Tribune:
" Now mind you, I am not one to inhabit the grave. But, as of late it has been more frequent. When I sit by the headstones of the departed and ask a very specific questions of them, I get answers to my questions. I start by treading lightly and asking for a sign that they know I have visited them. As time passes, my questioning will get more intense.

"On this particular day I was off to my mother-in-law's grave with a few stops along the way, one of which was to get gas at Costco. After gassing my car, I noticed a woman who drove by. I peered into the car and I swear she looked like my mother-in-law. I even wondered if it could have been her sister. However, the lady who was driving was very old and I wondered if I imagined the whole thing.

"Off I went until I reached the mortuary and found where she was buried. With flowers in hand, I sat down beside her and told her that I had come to visit. I felt she was talking to me and wanted to hear my husband, Blythe's, voice. So, I did exactly what she wanted. I pulled out my cell phone and called him.

“'Hey, Blythe,” I said. “I'm sitting by your mother at the grave. I'm going to put you on speaker so you can talk to her.'

“'Hello, Mom,” he said. 'Mom, if you know that we are here please give us a sign. Please let us see two green Volkswagen Bugs.'

"Driving home I made a wrong turn at a Honda dealership. There sat the first green Volkswagen. A rarity. On the freeway I saw the other. I believe in signs and Tomokio unmistakably acknowledged me from the other side. Blessings."

Choosing: LaVona's passport photos

The day after

Today, the day after the massacre and bombing in Norway, I wonder why I and other people I know tend to feel less anguished about similarly horrific events in, say, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Mumbai, Pakistan, Darfur, and Mexico. Are Norwegians less the Other than the others? I wonder what my Somali neighbors are talking about this morning.

Jim W. took his own life last week

A puddle of water on the black iron skillet begins to sizzle, then when the pan is lifted off the burner and turned sideways, begins to creep to the center, shrinking as it goes until it sizzles one last time and disappears. Is that what it’s like, he asked?

Fred Scherer and Walter Wiley departed at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 3, 1913 from Manhattan at the corner of Murray Street and Broadway, hoping to make San Francisco in 48 days. To pay for the project, they will sell post cards along the route. Poughkeepsie is their first stop, Schenectady the following night. They hope to average 70 miles a day, arrive in San Francisco on June 20. Whether or not they made it to San Francisco or even Poughkeepsie is not known.

Three girl singers

1. All for You, Diana Krall, vocals and piano; trio of bass, guitar, and percussion (1996)
2. s'Gershwin, Prudence Johnson, vocals; Dan Chouinard, piano (2003)
3. Surrender, Jane Monheit, vocals; orchestra {2007)

Chose these three CD's from the local library yesterday because jazz has been bulked up in recent years by an upsurge of women singers and I haven't paid much attention to them. My taste had been formed by Billy Holiday, Carmen McRae, Abby Lincoln, Ella Fitzgerald, Carol Sloane, Nina Simone, and others of my generation and earlier. The best of the three is the Krall recording, followed by Johnson. Monheit has the chops but this is an overproduced outing.

Finally, I begin The Journalist and the Murderer

"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity,ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns--when the article or book appears--his hard lesson. Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and "the public's right to know"; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living."
The first paragraph of Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer

Being homo on the prairie in the Fifties

When New York legislators passed the gay marriage law tonight, I thought about the early 50's in my western North Dakota high school where the words homo and queer were seldom mentioned. My fellow students and I assumed the drama and English teachers were lesbians because they were single and lived together, but the only joke I heard was that one of them was adviser to the Thespian Society which sounded a lot like lesbian. There was an unspoken acknowledgement that my classmate George had experimented sexually with several other boys but sex, hetero or homo, seemed an open book then. You learned on your own because no one, not even your parents or the parish priests, were interested in discussing the matter. After we graduated, George went to college and found some men who actually preferred the company of other men and a few, especially Korean war veterans, who were loudly hostile about same sex sex. After a veteran told George in front of others that he would kick the shit out of him if he ever touched him, George's sexuality evaporated. From then on, he was to all appearances a nonsexual person. I learned that sexual preference was dictated by someone stronger than yourself, be it that vet or eventually religious authority and or the state.

My son Eric is on a billboard in downtown Minneapolis on Park Ave between 8th and 9th.

"What you see is not true," he said, "and what is true you cannot see, only feel. That is what Romania was before and it still is." He laughed. George enjoys being cryptic. "Reality is a secret here."--William McPherson in his Granta 33 piece In Romania on the first days of collapse of the Romanian communism in December, 1989.

Don't say you weren't warned:

11,013 BC—Creation. God created the world and man (Adam and Eve).

4990 BC—The flood of Noah’s day. All perished in a worldwide flood. Only Noah, his wife, and his 3 sons and their wives survived in the ark (6023 years from creation).

7 BC—The year Jesus Christ was born (11,006 years from creation).

33 AD—The year Jesus Christ was crucified and the church age began (11,045 years from creation; 5023 calendar years from the flood).

1988 AD—This year ended the church age and began the great tribulation period of 23 years (13,000 years from creation).

1994 AD—On September 7th, the first 2300-day period of the great tribulation came to an end and the latter rain began, commencing God’s plan to save a great multitude of people outside of the churches (13,006 years from creation).

2011 AD—On May 21st, Judgment Day will begin and the rapture (the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur at the end of the 23-year great tribulation. On October 21st, the world will be destroyed by fire (7000 years from the flood; 13,023 years from creation).

Murdering the Messenger

The column below by news reporter Larry Spears, captures, I think, what many news reporters know and feel. It appeared in the Lake County CA Record-Bee in 2003:

It would have been confusing in the Record Bee newsroom last week if we hadn't been used to what was going on.
A prominent person in Lake County was arrested on serious charges alleging the hit and run death of a 58-year-old father of five.
Our Sept. 20 story reported the death and included comments of the investigating California Highway Patrol officers.
On Sept. 23, we identified the driver and carried comments from her defense attorney. We would have liked to have balanced it with comments from the prosecutor, but one hadn't been appointed yet. The California Highway Patrol ordered its investigators not to divulge any more information. The driver declined to comment.
We wanted to write a story about who the victim was, but no one in his family had a listed phone number. We tried to reach them with messages relayed through the funeral home and a priest.
Responses by some readers were contradictory. Our story about the driver provoked angry calls from two readers who seemed not to have read the same article. One said we were protecting the driver; the other said we were attacking her.
These two people and one later in the week, appeared to believe that we were the ones making the comments, conducting the investigation, creating this tragedy.
What we were doing was reporting facts in our possession about a widely discussed event. That is our job. There is no way we are not going to report a story of this magnitude. We withheld one person's comment that we considered inappropriate.
It would be ideal to have all the information come out in one day. That rarely happens. A story usually unfolds in steps. A prosecutor soon will be appointed. More facts from the¬ investigation will be published. The defense attorney will present his side. We will report it.
We would like to present an article about the human being who died on that road, letting his story be told as he deserves. Perhaps the family will agree to this.
We hear from time to time how all we reporters write slanted, sensational stories to sell papers. That reasoning works at the same level as saying all lawyers are crooks, teachers can't do anything else, priests are molesters and all people of color steal.
It's complicated. Take a single story. One reader may be offended by graphic content. Another is angered because of loyalty to one side, or to a strongly held conviction or prejudice.
Some connect to a tragedy with communal concern and empathy. Others just like to know what is going on. The interest of others may be morbid or voyeuristic there's no way to screen them out.
People see through different prisms. They find their own meanings and make their own judgments.
I've been in this business more than 40 years for papers big and small. It isn't perfect. We here at the Record Bee agonize over sensitive stories.
I certainly reflect personally on these troubling issues. In 1982, my 18-year-old son was shot to death in San Francisco. A TV station showed his body sprawled in a rainy gutter.
I knew editors at all the major Bay Area papers and told them my wife and I would not comment. A reporter and photographer from one paper showed up on our porch anyway. The reporter told me I would feel better if I talked to her. I told her we would feel better if they got back in their car and left. They did. That paper was out of line.
So I've been on both sides of that sad front door. Even for the most conscientious reporters, it is complicated. Some people, as we did, want to be left alone. Others really want to talk. They want to explain their grief, to tell the community about whom they lost and what that person meant them.
It’s touchy. If someone calls and shouts at us, we understand they are angry, and their often are quite understandable.
Get ready for what is coming. Investigators will file a detailed report that tells why they charged the driver. The prosecutor and defense attorney will present their cases, and they play tough. They are not in the business of making the other side look like angels. We will report everything, both sides, as fairly as possible.
For some people close to the victim and to the driver, this will hurt a lot. I’ve been there.
This is how justice is carried out. This is the system. This is the law.
Apparently no one has devised a better way.

Editor’s Note: Reporter Larry Spears joined the Record-Bee in February. His 45-year journalism career includes reporting posts at the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the Oakland Tribune and the Contra Costa Times.

Found on the shore of Lake George last week

Found on the shore of Lake George last week, originally uploaded by TedSher.

Looking for the rock that looks most like North Dakota

Looking for the rock that looks most like North Dakota, originally uploaded by TedSher.

Looking for the rock that looks most like North Dakota

Looking for the rock that looks most like North Dakota, originally uploaded by TedSher.

In Dickinson ND, the Twins are broadcast on KLTC AM. When I was growing up there, neither that team or that station existed. We had KDIX which broadcast "The Game of Day" featuring a different pair of teams each day. With the radio on the back window of the house, we mimicked the play by plays as they occurred. Each of us had special names, Neal was Chico Carrosquel, Ward was Lou Boudreau, Waller was Warren Spahn, and I was Pee Wee Reese. We followed Jackie Robinson most of all, but none of us adopted his name.

"Dear Ted, My brains seem a bit clearer,so thought I'd get this down for the researchers. Anyway, I'm sure you've read about nanotechnology. But, I haven't read anything about devices to record the technology's sounds? It sure would be great to build a nanodevice to record the sounds, then to amplify, then amplify again to hear them to measure and record any differences with such things as ultraviolet light moving things. Anyways, once that done to take any unusual sounds and make music and devices to play the sounds to see and record any different audience reactions. Even if not many unusual sounds would be neat to listen to such unbelievably small devices,just to be able to do so. What do you think, Ted?"

--Dan Buck, Armor SD, April 2, 2011

April 1, 2011

April 1, 2011, originally uploaded by TedSher.

Lake George, St. Cloud

While reading a 1954 Mentor Classic paperback of Dante's The Inferno, I found this penciled margin note, apparently by a Mrs. Ruth Harris:
"Read all of the Inferno, pick one circle of Hell that has a strong modern parallel & be prepared to talk about that parallel on Tues.
already discussed
Glutton--junky
Great denial--we in extreme situations will go along instead of doing what we should."

Peter Donohue and I were talking in his law office about North Dakota mineral rights when his secretary came in with the phone. "It's for you Ted, a Dr. Duffy." I was surprised because Dr. Duffy, my psychiatrist from 25 years ago, was to my best knowledge dead. "John Duffy?," I said into the phone. "This is a surprise." He said he was checking to see how I was doing. "I'm in my attorney's office. I think you should talk to him, he's Irish Catholic too and knows Latin."
I handed the phone to Peter and saw a widening smile as he talked, but my dream was fading so I couldn't understand what he said.
Before going to bed I had watched Godard's Made in USA (1966). The dream could have been a scene from the movie.

Supper with Dante

It's National Book Week

"priority, which spurred a drive for territorial expansion; supplies of guns and..."
--North Country: The Making of Minnesota by Mary Lethert Wiingerd

(It's National Book Week. The rules are: Grab the closest book to you. Turn to page 56. Copy the 5th sentence into your blog. Don't mention the book. Post these rules as part of your bl...og. )

Had breakfast at Coburn's on Cooper with Arthur, a retired junior high school art teacher and one of my students in my first year teaching at St. Cloud State 45 years ago. He is very excited by new plastic toys he said are inspired by contemporary Japanese animation. He is also distraught about recent attacks on unions, especially in Wisconsin. I had a cheese omlete without potatoes. Arthur had a cheese omlete with potatoes.

While L. met with a client, I drove to Coburn’s for groceries and a breakfast of cheese omelet with hash browns and toast smeared with Smucker’s strawberry and grape jellies. And Tony Judt’s final book, The Memory Chalet. He was dying as he wrote it, knew he wouldn’t live to see it published. It is a lovely set of essays.



The dining area at Coburns is an architect’s afterthought, tucked behind the deli counter. Although sterile and functional, the decor has two interesting features, a series of photos of old St. Cloud and a large artificial bouquet. Among the photos is a scene showing St. Cloud to be a dusty crossroads calling itself the Granite City. It still calls itself that.


The reading room of the Carnegie library represents a more genteel version of the town. It was torn down in the 60’s and replaced with a Perkin’s pancake house boasting the largest American flag around. We have a new library now that is the pride of the city but I miss the old atmosphere where you could expect a hush from the librarian if your conversation rose beyond a whisper.


A man in a nearby booth spoke sharply and loudly into his cell phone, apparently oblivious to others in the small dining room. “It was terrible,” he shouted, “seven and a half hours in the parking lot. SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS! You can’t imagine, never thought it would end.” He paused a few seconds. “Well it’s over and done with.”

"The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone" by John Keats

Fanny Brawne


death mask of John Keats

For Fanny Brawne

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
    
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone,
  
  Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang'rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
  
  Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,

Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
  
  Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!

Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve,
  
  When the dusk holiday—or holinight—

Of fragrant-curtained love begins to weave
  
  The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;

But, as I've read love's missal through today,

He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

Letter to LaVona

"Dear Lavona
"It was so great to meet you yesterday.
"You made my day. I am now comming out of a VERY deap depression:..
"I've been Bi-polar over 30 years. My opinion, this been the worst of them all. (this last month or so.} But I do kno I will make it, (again)
"Thank you so much so much for reaching out to me, when I had such a hard time reaching out (to anyone) there...
"Right now, I am having a hard time wrighting this letter to you. But no matter what I will not quit and go back to sleep. The last month seemed like a year.
"I don't no about you but I do believe in Merricals & I do believe in My Self. (now) I didn't yesterday or the last Month. I do see the light at the end of the tunnel or "Tornatal" I'm in. (Now) - But today is a good day. That is all for now. Please write Back!
________"

It was this deep.

It was this deep., originally uploaded by TedSher.

Big news in my town

Big news in cloudy town, originally uploaded by TedSher.

Everyone who is someone will be there.

Hayden’s trumpet concerto is a warhouse every trumpeter wants to master. Even I in my brief career as a neophyte cornetist gave it a shot (too hard, gave up after two months). But for those can play it, it’s a been there done that task. The piece is a cold fish.
Until this morning. While dogging the oval track at the rec center, I heard a version on radio that sent me into the stratosphere. Sounded like no one I knew in the boys’ club of classical trumpet players. The player, I discovered later on the MPR playlist, is Alison Balsom who, as this picture suggests, isn’t in the boys’ club.

Guideposts

I prayed a lot in those day...prayed that my young wife would survive the cancer, that my tremor would go away,that Sylvia would touch me there, but none of these things happened. I quit praying and shortly after was awarded tenure and a promotion.

Opening of "Painting Before and After Words" at the Mpls Institute of Arts

Opening of "Painting Before and After Words" at the Mpls Institute of Arts, originally uploaded by TedSher.

Paintings of Margaret Wall-Romano

Interview with Paul Desmond, University of North Dakota student union cafeteria, Oct. 13, 1956.

TS: I’d like to welcome you to the University of North Dakota, Mr. Desmond...
PD: Thank you.
TS: How was your trip here? Do you have a band bus?
PD: No no, no bus, station wagon, a Ford. You really don’t need a bus with a quartet because a quartet isn’t a, er a band, I guess you’d say. Station wagon’s are good.
TS: Gets kind of crowded, isn’t it?
PD: Yea, well it would be easier if we left Joe and Norm home, ha ha you know with all their things, but...heck...the bass goes on top and the drums in the back. It works out okay, even if we’re jammed in there.
TS: The bass is on the roof of the car?
PD: Oh yea, it’s okay. It’s in a hard case and tied down pretty well.
TS: Aren’t you afraid someone will steal it when you’re at a diner or something? Seems strange that’s all.
PD: Oh yea?
TS: Well I mean that’s an expensive bass I bet. Wouldn’t take very long to cut it loose, would it?
PD: It’s alright, okay? No one steals bass fiddles between here and Chicago.
TS: Okay.
PD: Have you ever heard us before?
TS: Not live, no. Hard to hear live jazz up here but I have your Basin Street album though. Love it. I mean really. You guys are far out.
PD: Thanks. That one’s the latest, like it alot, specially college kids. Anything you like special?
TS: The Judy Garland song, the one that has bells, clang clang...
PD: Trolley song.
TS: Yea.
PD: Nice to be interviewed by someone who knows what he’s talking about. Doesn’t happen very often, you’d be surprised.
TS: Your jazz is too far out?
PD: Well sometimes we go where angels guide us so to speak. I put my trust in unseen things, things we don’t know what they mean or if they’re crazy or what not. Being out there is sometimes weird. Goddam. Being in your mom’s stomach is the other way around in many ways...leave the form and structure in outerspace. Goddam.
TS: What’s your role?
PD: Getting Dave back on track when he wanders out there.
TS: What’d you do before you joined the quartet?
PD: Starved man.
TS: Yea.
PD: Gotta split. They’re getting ready for the next set. Nice talking to ya young man.

April 19, 1993

April 19, 1993, originally uploaded by TedSher.

Now you take Heathcliff

As the sun is about to rise over the eastern horizon of my neighborhood, Duane locks the backdoor of his house next door and heads for the garage. He's off to early mass at St. John Cantius. It's 5 below so he's wearing his heavy dress coat and scarf. He would never wear a parka to mass because he's of that generation that dresses up for the Lord, even when most others don't.
I don't go to church except for a funeral or a wedding, but Lord thoughts do come to mind from time to time. Not this morning though because as I watch Duane from my kitchen window and after his car leaves the garage, I notice animal tracks on a new layer of snow. When the sun emerges low, I go out and look.

Now you take Heathcliff

Definitely a rabbit.

Now you take Heathcliff

We see them in the summer munching on grass and flowers. The one the live trap captures I take across the river to release. Rabbits can't swim. Some say the eastsiders do the opposite and release them on our side. Still, when your garden is overrun, what are you going to do?
In wintertime, the livetrap is put away and the rabbits are night creatures. I've never seen a rabbit around here during the day in winter but the tracks reveal a busy night.
You can see the raspberry bush on the windmill was a busy place last night, tracks going to and fro.
The other location of rabbit interest was a stuffed animal wintering in our backyard.

Now you take Heathcliff

Now you take Heathcliff.
He or she was in my step daughter's collection of stuffed animals for some 40 years. When Mary grew up and married a Norwegian, she moved to Oslo to begin a new life and learn a new language. Among the childhood possessions she left behind was this stuffed bear whose name Mary forgot. She could afford to ship only a few dolls and directed me to do with the bear whatever I wanted. I put him in the adirondack, named him Heathcliff after an Emily Bronte character, and he hasn't budged since.

Now you take Heathcliff

The tracks indicate at least one rabbit and Heathcliff were in each other's company last night. I would not want to make too much of that, unless you're a child.