Remembering Pearl Harbor

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. The sneak attack was 72 years ago and killed 2400 Americans  in a bombing that sank the battleship Arizona. I was a little over a year old at the time. The news stories today reminded me of my encounter with the father of a sailor who died in the attack.

When I was eleven years old, my family was living in a tiny town in Minnesota called Dovray. My dad was the contractor on a Norwegian Lutheran church being built in that farming community of 100 people. The town was really behind the times in 1950. My younger siblings all went to school in the one-room school house down the hill. (I've often felt envy that they had that experience while I had to make a one-hour long bus ride over to Westbrook for 7th grade.)

There was a general store called Smestad's Mercantile a block away. I was sophisticated enough that I knew how old-fashioned the store was compared to other places we had lived. It was just like the general stores I saw in old cowboy movies. On one side of the store the old man and his wife sold "dry goods" like flannel shirts and four-buckle overshoes. On the other side they sold groceries from a counter just inside the door.

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There were open cardboard boxes of cookies and sheets of saltine crackers standing by the counter. The customer could take a brown paper bag and fill the bag to be weighed and priced. With no air conditioning and sealed packaging, the cookies and crackers were often stale. I don't remember if I was in Smestad's for cookies that day but I remember standing by the counter as he told me that his boy had been at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. 

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He was terribly sad and I was very confused. I'm not at all sure that I responded appropriately. Being a kid, with the off-kilter sense of time kids have, ten years seemed so very long ago that I wondered why he was talking about it.

Now that I am 73, I realize how very recent his loss was and how much he was still hurting from that dreadful day.   

The day JFK was assassinated (11/22/63)

On that fall day of the assassination, it was overcast and windy in Worthington, Minnesota. My oldest child was four and a half. The youngest was four months old. We lived in a trailer court on the edge of town in a two-bedroom mobile home. At 40' by 10', it was really crowded with our family of six, a dog and a cat. I was 23 years old.

The Mickey Mouse Club came on TV every afternoon at 4:00. When I turned on the TV for the kids to watch, there was only "snow". The TV antenna was positioned on a pole standing inside a cement block and braced by the trailer hitch at the front end of the trailer. The wind had spun it around it so it wasn’t picking up a signal from the TV station in Sioux Falls fifty miles away. Since this happened often, I ran outside to turn it so it would pick up the signal. I ran back inside to see if the picture was coming in. It was, but it wasn’t the Mickey Mouse Club. It was Walter Cronkite saying the president would be “lying in state".  I was confused and stunned as the terrible details were slowly revealed over the next hours and into the night. As the reports were repeated over and over, the reality slowly sank in. 

I had the TV on constantly for the next several days watching the continuous coverage in black and white. In the confines of the small mobile home, I was never far from the TV set so I was watching when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald live in front of millions of people.

I remember being very sad and feeling disconnected from the events so far away, and yet transpiring right in front of me on TV.

 

           This was taken in the mobile home the following year. 

If Volvo made computers, just think!

A 72-year-old man from New York is in the home stretch to reach 3 million miles on his '66 Volvo P1800S. He paid $4,150 back in 1966 for the red two-door car. He plans to travel this summer and get the 34,000 additional miles racked up. 

Just think if all manufacturers made such enduring products!

                               (With a nod to Owl Wood!)                 

Meet the Iceman

This is the reconstructed face of the 5,000 year-old Iceman found in the Alps ten years ago. He was only 45 or so when he was murdered, but that was pretty old for his time. He lived a hard life and they tried to depict that in his face. They learned from his DNA that he had brown eyes and brown hair and his general geographic origins.

I don't know why I find this story so fascinating but I have saved every article and documentary on the subject.
Since my ancestors came from Northern Europe, I suppose it's possible that I might be related to him but I doubt it.

Maybe, it's just the pleasure of having a delicious mystery solved. I love how Science always comes up with the answers eventually.

Lily's Den

A lot of people are engaged in the "Lily-watch" as the hibernating bear has her cubs in a hidden den in the northwoods of Minnesota. She already had the first cub but is still in hard labor so another one is on its way. I stopped watching for a while because I couldn't stand to see her suffering. However, there are well over 49,000 other folks logged on currently. I can imagine that after the cubs arrive, the number of viewers will soar.

Sarah Palin tells God what His plan is?

I really admire those folks who manage to post every day. Sometimes I just need to take a break--not only from posting but from everything! I didn't feel too hot on Saturday so I laid around and then yesterday, I was just really lazy. The house is a dreadful mess, but right now, I'm ready to expend my energy on a snarky post!

This morning's Strib had a brief article about an interview with Palin conducted by Steve Schmidt. He was interviewed on 60 Minutes regarding his upcoming book about the 2008 presidential campaign. During his interview, Schmidt recounted asking Palin about her "serenity" in the face of becoming famous world-wide when McCain asked her to join the ticket. She told him, "It's God's plan!".

OK! We all know she is smug and narcissistic (not to mention balmy) but she claims to have a pipeline to God? He actually shares His plans with her while she sits and observes Russia from her house?

I have an old saying on the wall above my computer that reads:

"Do you know how to make God laugh?...Tell Him your plans!"

So while God is laughing at the rest of us, He and Sarah Palin are pals sharing plans. I'm sorry, but this just really riles me up!

Now that I got that off my chest, I gotta go clean my messy house.

Long live the Star Tribune!

I have been reading the Minneapolis Tribune since I was a kid--that's probably 60 years. Admittedly, it was only the Sunday funnies at first but I progressed to the news and editorials over time.

The Star and the Tribune consolidated many years ago and became one newspaper that's delivered statewide and even into Wisconsin. Like most other papers, it has fallen on hard times and struggles to keep publishing. However, they recently emerged from bankruptcy and seem to be doing OK.

I would really suffer the loss if they ceased publication. The morning paper is such an important part of my day. The news that I get from TV and online could not begin to fill the void.

So, again I say, may the Star Tribune live long and prosper!

Celebrating my existance

Sometimes something in your past comes along and startles you into a shocking realization.

Case in point: the Asian Flu epidemic of '57 - '58. It was a really bad one and I got sick in January of 1958. I wasn't the only one--50% of the kids in our local school came down with it. (We didn't have all the health warnings and Purell in those days.)

After I recovered, however, I continued to be sick every morning when I got up. I slowly realized that I was pregnant. A few months later, I had a miscarriage.

In yesterday's newspaper, I read an article about the increased threat the H1N1 virus poses to pregnant women. A high percentage of the fatalities so far have been pregnant women. At the very end of the article, it mentions that in the Asian Flu epidemic, 50% of pregnant women died from the disease.

This means I had a 50/50 chance of dying in 1958! Well, how about that!

It's crazy-making to contemplate that one might not be alive. But, if I weren't, a really great bunch of people wouldn't exist either. So today, I celebrate my four wonderful children, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren! They are my proudest "achievement"!

Here--Hear!

In today's morning newspaper, there is a feature story on football fanatics who are into extreme decorating. This picture was shown on the front page of the Variety Section to illustrate the story.

I have no problem with going overboard for the home team--I'm sure it's loads of fun. However,I have a big problem with misspelled words or incorrect grammar on signs etc. So, when I saw the poster bordering the room with the Vikings fight song (Skol Vikings), the line, "you'll here us yell" leapt right out at me.

How embarrassing for those folks! The error has been publicized and distributed all over the state of Minnesota. They will surely take a lot of ribbing over that.

OK, but it doesn't rank with a legislator publicly yelling "You lie!" at the President.

It doesn't rank with a tennis player yelling obscenities and threats at an official.

And it doesn't rank with an entertainer rushing the winner of an award, grabbing the microphone from her and yelling that someone else should have won.

(And how about all the town hall meetings where elected officials have been verbally assaulted by hordes of yelling protesters and nothing was accomplished?)

Every one of these incidents have been in the news recently. Where has common decency gone? It seems to me that "If you have to yell it, you probably shouldn't say it!"

Gophers are interesting--really!

This is the thirteen-striped gopher that the University of Minnesota athletic teams have been named after for over a hundred years.

When I was a kid, they were so plentiful we saw them everywhere. I remember when we traveled, we would count them by the dozens as they scampered along the roadsides. In parks, they would become little beggars entertaining the picnickers. Now, I haven't seen a striped gopher for years and years.

They were the bane of farmers and road-construction crews because their mounds and holes caused erosion problems. As a result, the state has been offering a bounty for their destruction for the last hundred years. They still aren't endangered and most folks wouldn't care if they were. Recently however, some Minnesota town clerks have rebelled against counting the severed feet to determine how many $2 bounties to pay out. (This begs the question, why not cut off the one tail instead of the four feet?) It's still gross but more practical.

UM-Duluth researchers have been studying the hibernation habits of the gophers. The little animals, only slightly bigger than a chipmunk, have remarkable ability to survive on 2% of their waking oxygen while their heart rate goes from 300 to 3 beats a minute. This research has resulted in a new lifesaving product called Tamiasyn. It will extend the "golden hour" for survival after strokes or blood loss emergencies. In addition, it will extend the viable period for transplanting organs.

(If you're interested in the research project, just google "Matt Andrews hibernation".)

No more schmaltz

OK! Enough of the homespun ancient memories.

I't's time for a good rant. Like last week, when I was at the checkout at a grocery store. The cashier, a woman in her late 60's-early 70's, remarked on the cool weather and then added with a smirk, "So much for Al Gore's global warming!"

DUH! As if a cool week in the middle of one continent for a single June is proof that it doesn't exist! I responded, "The earth's weather cycles are just really screwed up." She scowled at me. I wasn't validating her ignorance.

I watch a lot of documentaries and I believe them when they show how the cold fresh water melting from the polar regions cool and distort the oceanic gulf stream that powers the weather systems worldwide. This cooling also derails the jet stream so transatlantic flights can take much longer, and again, weather patterns get screwed up. Add to that the hole in the Ozone layer, the rapid growth of the Sahara Desert and the ballooning hurricane seasons, and we've got trouble, right here on Planet Earth! Denying it won't get us anywhere.

The last couple of days have been really hot in the middle of my continent. It's supposed to get hotter. So to those who would blame Al Gore (or me) for screwed up weather, let's support those who are trying to do something about it. Seriously, we can't put it off any longer.

Why I won't get the H1N1 flu (maybe)

Good news! A recent news article states that blood tests on older people (over 52) show we have antibodies from previous flu epidemics that protect us from this new virus. Well, Hot Dog!

The first H1N1 flu epidemic in 1918 was called the Spanish Flu. Every flu virus descended from that strain until 1957 when the Asian Flu (H1N2) came along. I caught that version while I was in the early stages of pregnancy and had a miscarriage a few months later. I escaped the Hong Kong Flu (H1N3) in 1968 but was laid out for three days by the Swine Flu in the 70's.

I get a flu shot every winter, take lots of vitamins and supplements and take my prescriptions faithfully. Still, I spent my winter suffering with a persistent bad cold, followed by the flu, in addition to having a massive cold sore (on my nose of all places!) and a stye (for the first time in decades). These are all caused by different viruses so it seemed my immunity was unusually low. I asked my doctor why I was catching everything.

She smiled at me and said, "It's because you're diabetic."

It wasn't until later that I realized she had considerately refrained from saying, "It's because you're getting old."

So even though I'm happy to know that my age will protect me from the new H1N1 flu, all the other viruses are out to get me!

So, anyway...

Last night at a writer's group meeting, the discussion turned to the subject of accents. This was followed by speculation on how Sarah Palin came to have a Minnesota-type accent.

Since I had clipped an article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the subject (sorry, I don't have the date), I wanted to share. Here's a synopsis:

Back in 1935, as part of FDR's New Deal program, 203 Midwestern families bankrupted by the Depression were recruited to settle the Matanuska Valley in Alaska. The majority of them came from Minnesota and Wisconsin. Both states were settled by Norwegian, Swede and German immigrants.

The Minnesota accent is distinguished by long O's and saying 'Ya' instead of 'You' and 'Yah' for 'Yes". This is amply demonstrated in the movie, Fargo.

Now, I was born and raised in Minnesota. My mother was the youngest of a large Norwegian family that homesteaded in Western Minnesota. Mom didn't even speak English when she started school back in 1926. As a result, she, like many other Minnesotans retained Scandanavian inflections in her speech. This slipped right into our English.

We were pretty much unaware of it until the eighties. Until then, Minnesotans thought of themselves as incredibly average, mostly unremarkable folks. But Garrison Keillor noticed that we were sorta distinctive in our way, and he went with it. After that, The Prairie Home Companion radio show and subsequent books by Keillor, in addition to Howard Mohr's How to Talk Minnesotan and A Minnesota Book of Days turned a spotlight on our (dare I say...) uniqueness!

I'm secretly pleased when someone notices my Minnesota accent and I enjoy being a Minnesotan.

As GK always says, "All the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above-average."