31 Croft Road

Unwrapping the text, the news oozed about how

you were exhausted, strung tight, wrung out.

They write fighting cancer is fraught with unknowns,

it brings forth fears and debilitating bouts of

fatigue and nauseous quaking, that shucks bodily husks.

Your path centered quietly to go forth another way,

We expected no other, your choice of love and to pray.

You have taken to live, for others openly sans self.

You chose for Rusty and family not to be shelved.

We watched from afar, Auntie Nancy so concerned

and others prayers lifted and hopeful news shared.

Oh, how you touch us, your smile, lights torches

for many who wonder and grasp in the dark.

Yet you show how love trumps and understands,

no matter the morrow it’s today you so mark. .

With your posture of love and resolve, dear Dana, continue to be bold,

your voice lit with purity and the rhythm strong.

Christ came with answers, believers together.

God is the composer and you are the song.

Have you walked into a room where a T.V. is turned on to a sporting event of which you have no premeditated desired outcome? How soon do you choose one player, one team, or one side over the other? For most it is done in the first minute or so. Why does this take place?

It is not unique to anyone person. We all do it, if we have a competitive bone in our body. There are different slants to this topic, so let’s keep it simple.

The Tube is ignited, and there are two teams playing football, European football. Most in the U.S. don’t have a clue about “soccer” as it pertains to the competition of International league play. And forget the individual names. Too many vowels! We sit down, grab the clicker and find that there is nothing of interest and chart back to the original football game. The teams are colored out in shades of light and dark jerseys. (Seems advertisers have placed stickers on arms and legs, but when you put your glasses on these become tattoos.) A few minutes evaporate, and you find yourself slowly pulling for one of the teams.

There is a moment, at the outside two, that you might change your mind. But, however long you watch, and it could be just minutes (if you’re smart) you select “your” team. Now you watch a little more closely if not intently. You are slanted to a team if not entirely backing one. You are invested.

Two tennis players are stroking the green ball back and forth as you plump down on the chesterfield. You are not familiar with either player, just see that they are guys with colored bandannas and backward ball caps or ladies with simple arrays of sorted enticements. Again, you watch a few points played and you settle in on “the one.” He or she becomes your entry to win.

A disheveled (or not) psychologist would quietly point to the fact that you have biases which stimulate your attraction given the state of your cranium at that given time. Logical. Yet there are times you change your “favorite” AFTER the unsolicited pick was selected.

We cannot dismiss bias. It does support the decision. These engineered and locked down likes and dislikes stitched with time and place are sent at warp speed to the decision room to acclimate the brain to allow formulation of a favorite.

Which makes the selection activity itself a positive process (it can go negative very quickly when gloom darkens our choice’s chances.) Sure our senses have some articulation in this process, but even if we dressed the contestants all in white, covered faces with veils, etc, etc, (whatever action to take away physical stimulus) we would choose a side or player.

Where this phenomena becomes intriguing is when we have some knowledge of the opponents. Now other “outside forces” attract us to one of the teams, i.e. statistics…we want one to lose because it helps our team in standings even though we happen to like their opponent more ( reasons aside.)

What matters is not the process or decision but that we DO make the judgment without serious contemplation. And now we DO become involved and DO wish very much that OUR team or player WINS! Our competitive juices are flowing and we are connected. If we didn’t, how bland and unnecessary to watch. An option for sure. If it is European Football, we might decide that they flop too much and click off!

I sat down and spent a few hours writing my first blog post yesterday. When I went to the blog…Gone. Nothing. I tried all afternoon to find “it!” Alas.

So here we go, giving it a go. We will see if it post tomorrow! Cheers

It has been a extreme, hasn’t it?  A winter that our grandparents spoke about or one described by Laura in the Little House on the Prairie books.  Yes, the one that Pa and Laura spent tying straw into large ribbons to feed the wood stove.  The ribbons became like loose pieces of wood.  Imagine sitting there tying those ribbons.  Hours and hours and not being able to fully warm.  The pioneers understood layering.  We had to be reintroduced to the concept by Cabellas, or Red Head, where the clothes cost a bit more.

We have many people now on their third tank of propane, a 500 gallon tank at 80%.  Last summer the family began to stockpile wood.  We were able to get close to six cords put up.  And we are down to our last quarter cord.  But we only used 35% of the first tank.  That said, the radiant wood stove tucked close to a basement corner provided the much needed financial relief while being constantly loaded all winter.  My, the price at one point had risen to $5.00/gallon.  It has dropped since, but where does one find loose change to get that much propane for use?

While many have begun the use of outside wood boilers (one could label them furnaces I reckon,) we were able to keep the house running at about 66 degrees even when the red line of the thermometer streaked south of zero.  We had fine tuned our adaptability to measure 62 degrees.  That is where the furnace was set to begin its purpose of heating.  Every once in a while, when the air exchanger kicked on, i thought it might be the furnace.  Check of the tank and filter demonstrated its quiet but attentive position.

The heat would waft up into the wood floors and billow up the staircase to fill the kitchen and main hallway.  Our house can be called open, with only the master bedroom slightly unhinged from the heat access.  There the temperature would be almost 6 or 7 degrees cooler.  Good for sleeping.

When you use wood, there is much handling, from its place in the soil to it final destination in the stove.  It is burdensome but admittedly mandates exercise daily of which one cannot ignore.  Exercise is warmth too. Like tying those straw ribbons.

We have a Harvey Dunn picture, a copied copy, framed in birch wood hanging in the garage.  Mr. Dunn is an early 20 century painter and illustrator who is a native son of South Dakota.  The Dakotas are short grass States where sod huts and wagons prevailed as shelter for many.  His art work images many of the settlers of the 19 century of which the print in the garage is one of his most famous.

A woman, with her two daughters, has extended out into the short grass to pick wild flowers near the creek.  She is still in sight of the sod farmhouse and her children are close to her side.  She has a pair of scissors and the girls are busy gathering and making bouquets.  The pretty but weathered face is looking diagonal off the print, out beyond the viewers right shoulder.  Is she concentrating on anything specific or practicing the cursory vision to determine safety?

The day suggest that all are well past what extremes endured that winter.  Spring has brought color to winter’s extreme blandness.  The lack of color is as much a mood altering connecter as are the harshness of the snow, temperature and wind.  They have survived, suggesting no fever nor malicious coughing was able to take them from the farm.  Life is being refreshed.

When this winter comes to completion, which pragmatists still insist is a few weeks away (and I quite agree,) there cannot be but great relief.  Perhaps similar of what the woman and her daughters experienced.  Survival was the keynote attribute with not computer or T.V. to transfer their existence into the nethers.  The had the mud walls of the house and barn where perhaps, if lucky, a spider might have been glimpsed, checking its trap line.

Their grittiness makes feeble today’s irritants.