This is prom season. For many years now the thing to do is to have a lock-in at the school with games and food all night long. The parents work in shifts to help out. This has proven to be one of the best ways to make sure your children get home safe and sound. Last year my granddaughter Christen had a great time with her pal Will. I like Will. I got to know him when 20 Upsala students and 12 adults went to Europe on an art tour in 2019.
Sixty two years ago, I was getting ready for my Junior Prom. It was also an “all-nighter”, but it included a fast trip to the doctor in Royalton in a 52 Chevy. I had been messing with “No-Doze” and that combined with the Slo Gin caused some sort of attack.
My buddy Bob put the pedal to the metal. I remember my date, Marcia, screaming: “Slow down Bobby, do you want to kill us all?” as we whisked through the narrow Royalton bridge. Doc Watson administered some sort of medicine and sent us on our way. In those days the local doctor had a shingle hanging outside of his house. I am not sure if he even charged us for the service.
When we dropped Marcia and my sister Kathie off at Marcia’s farm house, we “borrowed” some of her Dad’s smoked white fish off of the kitchen table and my buddy Bob and I had breakfast watching the sun come up in the Burtrum Hills.
Five years later I married that farm girl and we had a grand time raising two beautiful children. Those two beautiful children went on to give us five beautiful grandchildren. Two of which will be graduating from high school this spring. Anna Osberg will graduate from Wadena-Deer Creek and Christen Fouquette will graduate from Upsala High School. They both are planning on going on to college. Anna will attend NDSU and Christen will go attend the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In Christen’s case she will be going from a class of 33 to a class of nearly 6,000. My high school class in 1961 also had 33 students.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.” Prince from the 1984 song “Let’s Go Crazy”
Six years ago yesterday, Prince Rogers Nelson died of an accidental fentanyl overdose at his Paisley Park home. He was only 57 years old. His sixth album, Purple Rain was recorded with his backup band the Revolution, and was the soundtrack to his film acting debut of the same name. Purple Rain spent six months atop the Billboard 200. Prince won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score.
Prince sold over 150 millions records worldwide, ranking him among the best-selling music artist of all time. Source: Wikipedia
Prince was a huge fan of The Current. Six years ago on this day The Current played music by Prince most of the day. Now, if you have the MPR Radio app on your smart phone, you can listen to Purple Current.
My daughter Kerry was a huge fan and she wrapped her Colorado Blue Spruce in purple streamers on April 21, 2016.
The St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra is presenting “Revolutionaries” , tomorrow evening at 7:30 in the Ritsche Auditorium at St. Cloud State University. There is a pre-concert discussion at 6:30 with the conductor Hisham Groover. The Young Performer Competition Grand Prize Winner, Thomas Stang will perform. No Proof of vaccination is required. Tickets at the door or at S T Cloud Symphony dot com.
“Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.” Ronald Reagan
In Upsala the Shell gas station is below the hill next to the river. The original building on that site was a blacksmith shop. Perhaps at one time there was even a water wheel to power the many belts and pulleys that hung from the ceiling that operated the various machines. In the fifties, the blacksmith was a jolly Swede, Gust Olafson. In the summer time the huge front door was always open. I can still recall the sounds and smells coming from the shop.
One fine spring day, Gust was busy at the forge and anvil when a crusty old Norwegian bachelor farmer came rushing in, demanding that Gust drop what he was working on and sharpen his plowshares. After many attempts in his loud and demanding voice, the farmer said to Gust: “If you don’t sharpen my shares right now, I will have to take my business to Swanville.” With out even looking up, Gust replied: “Happy yourney”.
Have a wonderful Easter weekend.
“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind and the third is to be kind.” Henry James
Growing up in Upsala I was a “town kid” not a “farm kid”, but I learned the joy of “tilling the soil” through gardening. I got into gardening by helping my bachelor brother-in-law Jackie with his garden.
Jackie and his parents had moved into the original Swedish Mission Church parsonage in Upsala in 1971. It was built in 1892 by members of the church. In the 50s the congregation built a new parsonage east of the original one and they sold the old parsonage to Mary Heisick, my wife Marcia’s grandmother. Her parents Irene and John Rudie inherited the house from Mary Heisick.
Jackie got permission from the church to create a vegetable garden west of the old parsonage. Many years later Jackie was forced to garden with a three wheeler because of bad knees so I offered to help with the tilling only to get yelled at for running over some of the seedlings. The rows that he planted were not straight and I did not know how to distinguish between a weed and a seedling. The next spring I drove stakes in the soil exactly 36” apart and used heavy string to define the rows. I didn’t get yelled at that year.
In 1999 I bought the old parsonage from the estate of my mother-in-law, Irene Rudie, and started to garden in earnest. Most years I had lots of vegetables. Now the garden is taken care of by my daughter. She bought the old parsonage from me a few years ago. We are not likely to get the Yukon Gold potatoes in by Good Friday, as the Farmer’s Almanac suggests, but maybe by May 2nd. There are few joys better than freshly dug Yukon Gold potatoes baked or boiled, with real butter.
Today is the 17th birthday of Allie Sherlock. Allie is a busker in Dublin, Ireland and she has 5.1 million followers on YouTube. This is still one of my favorites. She was only 15 years old when this was recorded. Enjoy.
“Three-fourths of the people that you will meet tomorrow are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.” Dale Carnegie
April Fools’ Day is an annual custom on consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting “April Fools!” at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may be revealed as such the following day. April 1 is not a public holiday in any country except Cypruswhich is a national holiday (though not for April Fools’ Day but instead for a holiday called “Cyprus National Day“), Odessa, Ukraine and the first of April is an official city holiday.[1] The custom of setting aside a day for playing harmless pranks upon one’s neighbor has been relatively common in the world historically. Source: Wikipedia (Note: I send Wikipedia a check every month.)
It was not broadcast on April 1st , but perhaps one of the biggest pranks ever was “The War of the Worlds” . It was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells‘s novel The War of the Worlds (1898). It was performed and broadcast live as a Halloween episode at 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 30, 1938, over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. The episode became famous for causing panic among its listening audience, although the scale of panic is disputed as the program had relatively few listeners.[1]
The show opens with an introductory monologue based on the beginning of the original novel, after which the program takes on the format of an evening of typical radio programming being periodically interrupted by news bulletins. The first few bulletins interrupt a program of live music and are relatively calm reports of unusual explosions on Mars followed by a seemingly unrelated report of an object falling on a farm in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. The crisis escalates dramatically when a correspondent reporting live from Grover’s Mill describes creatures emerging from an alien craft and incinerating police and onlookers with a heat ray until his audio feed abruptly goes dead. This is followed by a rapid series of news updates detailing the beginning of a devastating alien invasion and the military’s futile efforts to stop it. The first portion of the show climaxes with another live report from the rooftop of a Manhattan radio station. The correspondent describes crowds fleeing clouds of poison smoke released by giant Martian “war machines” and “dropping like flies” as the gas inexorably approaches his location. Eventually he coughs and falls silent, and a lone ham radio operator is heard mournfully calling “Is there anyone on the air? Isn’t there… anyone?” with no response. Only then did the program take its first break, over thirty minutes after Welles’s introduction. Source: Wikipedia
My mother-in-law Irene Rudie told me that their next door neighbors came over that night so that they wouldn’t have to die alone.
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes, art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams
It was in 2001 that I first noticed an old man kind of shuffling towards Wimmer Hall where the studio of Minnesota Public Radio is located. His bib overalls were covered with saw dust. I stopped and introduced myself. I asked him what he did and he responded in a gruff voice, “My name is Brother Willie and I work in the woodshop. I make a table and chair set, haven’t you seen them? They are for little ones.” Since I had a six year old granddaughter at the time, I asked him if he would make a set for me. “Oh, I don’t know, there are many orders ahead of yours, I don’t know if I will live long enough to make a set for you.” I responded, “No problem, I will pray for you every day and I am sure that you will live long enough to make them.”
I visited Br. Willie in the woodshop many times. The first time I noticed a small wooden wagon filled with blocks. He made the blocks out of scraps of oak wood. Most likely the oak had been harvested from the Abbey forest. I always left him one of my calling cards and reminded him of my order for the table and chairs. One day the phone rang and it was Brother Willie. My table and chair set was finished. Over the years I took delivery on two children’s table and chair sets plus 8 of the small wagons filled with blocks of many shapes and sizes. Years later Br. Willie had to stop working in the woodshop but he still would make his rounds going thru the garbage searching for aluminum cans. He donated the money from the cans to the poor.
At one time Brother Willie was the Monastery dairy herdsman but he was best known for his role as the self-appointed night watchman on campus. The pub in Sexton Commons is named after him and George Maurer wrote a song named “The Brother Willie Shuffle”.
In 2005. my friend Dave Phipps drew a caricature of Brother Willie Shuffling from which my granddaughters company, Zygoatian LLC, has made a T shirt. The T shirts are available at the St. John’s Abbey Gift Shop in the Great Hall. The Gift Shop is open Monday thru Saturday from 10 until 2 and Sunday from 11:30 until noon. A picture is attached.
“Success has nothing to do with what you gain for yourself. Success is what you do for others.” Brother Willie (William Jerome Borgerding, OSB) 1916-2009
It is still nippy, but we did hit 51 degrees this week. I am sooo happy to see spring is on its way. I miss sitting by my bubbling boulder.
I celebrated my 10th birthday on a ship on the Atlantic ocean on the way home from a stint in the Army. My dad was a Sergeant in the 5th Army stationed in Vienna, Austria. I had quite the summer tan, since the trip took almost two weeks. I remember how embarrassed I was when my mother pulled my pants down to show the tan line to Auntie. My dachshund Mickey came home by air, but the rest of the family had to take the ship. My first glimpse of television came when my sister and I stuck our heads in a bar in Grand Central Station in New York.
When I started fifth grade in Upsala I was getting around on crutches due to a car accident. I was able to go up the old wooden stairs at school alright, but coming down for the very first time, I swung out on my crutches and tumbled down the stairs. It is a wonder that I did not break my neck too. In those days, the basketball heros at Upsala High included Dave Holmen and the Anderson boys.
This year Upsala is not in the hunt, but both the girls and boys teams from Albany are still in the playoffs, heading toward the state tournament. The boys play number 1 Annandale tonight at St Cloud State and the girls play number 1 Providence Academy, at Williams Arena on the campus of the U of M, today at 6pm. Go Huskies.
Bessie, Billie and Nina: Pioneering Women in Jazz will perform tonight at the Stephen B Humphrey Theater at St. John’s University. Tickets are available at www.csbsju.edu/wow
“The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else.. we are the busiest people in the world.” Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)
Next Thursday is Saint Patrick’s Day. The song “Oh Danny Boy” is a very popular Irish song. Malachy McCourt wrote a book titled “Danny Boy. “The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad”.
The tune is known as the “Londonderry Air” and it originated in the northern most county of Ireland. The story goes that sometime in the 1600s, Rory Dall O’Cahan, a blind harpist, left a gig at a castle in the Valley of Roe and having had a little too much to drink, he fell asleep in the ditch alongside the road. He was awakened by the sound of fairies playing the most beautiful tune he had ever heard, on his harp. He returned to the castle and proceeded to play the first rendition of what became known as the “Londonderry Air”.
Around 1850, Miss Jane Ross of Limavady, County Derry, heard a blind fiddler playing the tune and she wrote down the notes and the tune spread all over western world. Some say that Jimmy McCurry was that fiddler. Many tried to come up with words to the tune, including some of the best known poets of the time, but none seemed to work.
Finally in 1913, an Englishman, Fred Weatherly, a teacher and a lawyer who had written nearly 1,500 songs in his life, was sent the tune by a sister-in-law who lived in America. Fred had recently lost his father and his only son. His sorrow is reflected in the words, especially the second verse.
“And if ye come and all the flowers are dying, if I be dead as dead I well may be, ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying and kneel and say an “Ave” there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me, and all my grave the warmer, sweeter be. For you will bend and tell me that you love me, and I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.”
“Good judgment comes from experience and often experience comes from bad judgment.” Rita Mae Brown
In the spring of 2000 I visited MPR’s classical music station, KWRV 91.9, in Sun Valley, Idaho for the first time. When I made my second trip in the fall of 2000, I decided to drive the rental car to Bozeman, Montana and visit my ex-wife’s Uncle Bill and Aunt Maggie. Uncle Bill was Marcia’s mother’s half- brother. They both had the same mother, but different fathers. I had met Aunt Maggie when Marcia and I went to California on our honeymoon in 1965. Aunt Maggie told stories about a Native American ghost that would visit her. He often sat on the end of her bed. She also introduced me to stuffed grape leaves at the shopping mall. Going to visit Aunt Maggie and Uncle Bill became an annual event. Each year I heard more marvelous stories and I learned to love those wonderful people. Knowing that Marcia and I were divorced, Maggie would introduce me as her nephew from Minnesota and add: “I got him in the divorce”.
Uncle Bill passed in 2008. It has been five years since Aunt Maggie passed. She and her husband Bill Heisick both grew up in Bozeman, Montana. Here is just one of the many stories that Maggie told me.
Bill served in the Pacific during World War II. When he came home, he and his mother traveled to LA to visit some friends. One day a fellow named Ivan popped in to see his friend Tommy who happened to be playing bridge with Bill and his mother Mary. Ivan asked “Who owns the car outside with the Montana license plates?”. Uncle Bill spoke up. Ivan told Bill “My girlfriend, Maggie Caven, lives in Bozeman. Please greet Maggie for me when he get back home”.
When Bill got back to Bozeman he phoned Maggie and asked her to go to a movie. Maggie mistook Bill for his older brother Bob who she had once met in high school. She accepted the date and she was very disappointed when she found out that Bob had been killed in the war. Bill had gone to a different school and she did not know him.
She was quite sure that Bill, who was a couple of years younger than she, was not her kind of fellow. Bill was very handsome. In fact he could have doubled for Clark Gable. Maggie was sure that like most handsome men, he would prove to be full of himself. She tried to call it off, but Bill was persistent and they were married in Tucson, Arizona on April 12, 1949. They were a very happy couple. They lived in Van Nuys, CA and retired to a small ranch outside of Bozeman in 1984. She would introduce Bill as “Her SOB, Sweet Old Bill”. I am not sure what happened to Ivan, but he shared too much information and it cost him dearly.
“When one door closes, another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us”. Alexander Graham Bell
I am in the habit of listening to a podcast every morning with my first cup of coffee. The host highlights important birthdays and other anniversaries and ends the broadcast by reading a poem. One day a few years ago, the poem was “Yard Sale”, by George Bilgere, the first line of which is “Someone is selling the Encyclopedia Britannica in all its volumes, which take up a whole card table”.
I wish that I could remember the name of the salesman that came to our basement apartment in Richfield in 1965 and refused to leave until I signed the sales agreement. For only $10 a month, for three years, we could own a 30 volume set of the “Encyclopedia Britannica” and for only $1.50 more each month, we could get a genuine walnut bookcase to hold the set of invaluable information. He guaranteed that our children would be brilliant and success in life would be theirs, if only I would sign the contract. I held out until 11:30 PM. Today the 30 books, in the original bookcase, are in the finished attic room of the 130 year old Parsonage that my daughter owns in Upsala, Minnesota. By the way, both of my children are brilliant and cute too.
The Canadian Brass along with organist Greg Zelek, will be in concert this Saturday evening at 8 in the St. John’s Abbey and University Church. This is your chance to hear the newly renovated organ. Attendees must be masked and vaccinated. Details are at Saint John’s Abbey dot org. Tickets are available at www.csbsju.edu/wow
“No one can excel in everything. The decades demand decisions. Choose wisely. Your choices pinpoint your priorities and determine your destiny. Use it or lose it.” Patricia Souder
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