Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Wednesday, Sept. 11--

Tonight we watched Men Go to Battle (2015), a movie about two brothers in rural Kentucky during the civil war.  It's in the cinema verite style, which is not everyone's cup of tea--grainy film, jiggling camera, etc.--but we were impressed.

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Tuesday, Sept. 10. 2019--Today LaVona and I will celebrate our 32nd wedding anniversary by going to Hy Vee for coffee and an apple fritter this morning and to The Kernel for barbecued ribs tonight.  We were wed in a courtroom of the Stearns County courthouse in St. Cloud on Sept. 10, 1987. That morning I first walked to campus to teach a class, then walked 10 blocks to the courthouse, picking flowers from private gardens on the way.  I met LaVona at the courthouse, handed her the flowers as her bridal bouquet.  After the brief ceremony, LaVona returned home and I went to my 1'o'clock class where sitting in the front row was LaVona's daughter and my new step-daughter, Melody. 

Sunday, September 8, 2019


Sunday, Sept. 8, 2019--I'm restarting this blog/journal after a four-year pause for no particular reason.  Life has changed/not changed in those four years:
--LaVona now has Alhzeimer's disease, a diagnosis made by a Mayo clinic doctor about two years ago.  He did it after a memory test in in which after a brief conversation he asked her to recall several words he had asked her to remember moments earlier.  She was unable to recall the words. I was there and forgot some of the test words too.  Which left me wondering.
--LaVona and I now watch a movie every night after supper dishes are washed.  We get the movies from the Owatonna Public Library which boasts an admirable collection considered the library's size.  Tonight we will watch Orson Well's "Citizen Kane."
--I go on three-to-four mile walks almost every day while LaVona takes her daily naps.
--We go for coffee at Hy Vee, a grocery/restaurant a mile from our house or downtown at Central Park Coffee or Home Town Bagels.
--Our 2014 Dodge Van has 24,000 miles on it, which means we drive less than 5.000 miles a year.  The farthest I've driven is Edina, about 60 miles away.  Since we moved from St. Cloud to Owatonna six years ago, we've never returned to St. Cloud.
--I post a daily picture of our backyard every day on Facebook every day.
--"The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee is my current read, an unusual choice for me, a lover of fiction.

   This week repairs will continue on the 128-year-old Steele County Courthouse in downtown Owatonna.

Dec. 28, 2007

Dec. 28, 2007
In the waning years of WW II, we were living in Rockville Center, Long Island, I was about 12 and dad was dying of a brain tumor. Mom said NYC was no place for a widow to bring up a child, so she packed us up and we took a train to her childhood home in Detroit Lakes Minnesota. That's where she met and married this widower. He was a clothing salesman and outdoorsman.

Dec. 27, 2007

Dec. 27, 2007
Hamburger at Petes Place

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