This and That

Well, time is flying by again and I thought I'd better get back to this because it must be annoying for folks to keep checking in and there's nothing new...........So, I thought I'd just list some of the things that have kept us busy the last few weeks - 1. Once the ice leaves the channel, it's time for the boat covers to be put back on the frames and for the boats to get back in the water. 2. The big garden and the raised beds and the muck bed down the hill all get rototilled and ready for planting. 3. The fences that were protecting the cedar trees and the raspberry patch from winter hungry deer are taken down. 4. The flower beds and asparagus patch get weeded. 5. The A-Frame must be cleaned. 6. We clean the house a bit better than usual because we have four fishermen stay in the house with us for a week. 7. This year we cleaned and painted one of the bathrooms. 8. Bing gets all his fishing gear back in catching form. 9. Bing has also been cutting, gathering and splitting a woodshed full of oak firewood from the neighbor's acreage. He likes to get it while the days are still cool. 10. The garden gets planted and the pump that pumps water from the lake for the garden, gets put in place. 11. We whack the weeds around all the gardens and flower beds with the gas powered weed whacker. 12. Bing mows the grass as much as needed. 13. We always find time to play with our grandchildren, visit casinos and pray to our benevolent God. The spring is busy but most of the items are done out in our beautiful outdoors. The energy of the forest air transfers to our bodies and minds and fills us with vitality.

I Muse Over Music

I've been pondering music the last couple of years. It's a powerful part of life. It accompanies our religious rituals, evokes our emotions, moves us to dance and has been proven to heal the sick. I think of myself as a lover of all kinds of music but not as a person that understands it or how it comes to be. Within my and Bing's family, there have been people of musical talent. My mother played the piano, ( I loved it when she played boogie woogie,) and was the soloist/ organist for her parish when she was single. My dad's sister, Mary, played the violin beautifully until she died of smallpox at age 19. Bing's paternal great great grandfather was a violinist and professor of music at a university in Budapest, Hungary. And so it makes me wonder, is musical ability a genetic trait or is it something that is learned, or both? I remember back in 1952, when we moved to Milwaukee from Chicago. I was in fifth grade and very shy, hoping to fade into the woodwork and never to be noticed. (My long red braids didn't help in that regard.) At our school in Chicago, we didn't have a music class but the new school did. The grades on report cards were in numbers then, not A's and B's, and I was used to getting grades in the nineties. I still did in the regular subjects but the grade on that first report card in music, was 47!! I had no clue about sharps and flats and clefs. I still don't know much about those things but when we sing along in church, I know enough to go up and down or fast or slow at the right times. I can sing along ok if somebody next to me carries the tune, but if I'm on my own, it's not too pretty. And so, I am so proud and so amazed to see how Bernie, our oldest son, seems to have unearthed a slumbering musical talent that far exceeds any formal study he ever had. He is rapidly becoming an accomplished singer/songwriter/guitar player. He speaks of riffs and bridges and chord progressions. It's greek to me. I never realized that musicians really work at getting songs to sound right. I just thought that music just happened. At 69, I now appreciate music more. I think it's a gift and an art and a science and I will marvel at those who understand it and pursue it.

Pictures

Those six pictures in the last post are from 1988, not from current tornadoes. I used our digital camera to take pictures of photos from our album. These digital cameras are amazing!

Terrible Tornadoes

High winds are scary. They make you feel powerless. These last several weeks our country has been wracked with more tornadoes than ever. The pictures of the tornado devastation saturate the TV, newspapers and the internet. So many people homeless, so many people stripped of their possessions by the wind. The closest one to us was about 40 miles away in Merrill, Wi. But the broadcasters keep saying, May is typically the month with the most tornadoes. So, we stifle a little fear and hope that we dodge the bullet as we have so far. ...........We were left homeless in 1988. It wasn't a tornado, but wind played a big part. It was March 1st, and March came in like a lion that year. It was bone chilling windy cold that morning when I left for my 10:00 am start of a shift at the racketball club. When I looked back on that morning to trace my steps and try to figure out what went so terribly wrong, I couldn't find a thing. Bing had left for his 7:00am start, the boys, ages 13, 15 and 17, had all left on the 7:10 am school bus. I did a load of wash, filled the crock pot with the evening's intended meal, got ready for work, fed the wood fire in the basement and drove to town. I think it was about 1:00pm, when a neighbor

called and said, "Eileen, I think your house is on fire!" She lived down the hill from us and I hoped she was wrong, that maybe a shed was burning or maybe she was just wrong. Then another call, it was another neighbor on the lake, a few roads away from us. She confirmed it. Our house was ablaze, the volunteer firefighters from four surrounding towns were fighting it and it was bad. I called Bing at the office, got a friend to watch the club, picked up the sons from their schools and we met Bing at home. We stared as the brave volunteers fought the flames but the wind was too strong and the fire won - total loss. .........We pretty much know the feelings of the tornado victims. You are thankful to come out of it alive and together but you also know there is much work to be done. The goodness of family, friends and strangers carry you through the rebuilding. And in our case, the song of the school children at Mass the next morning gave us the knowledge that God would provide. The children sang, "You shall walk amid the burning flames and you will not be harmed." The words gripped our souls and told us all we needed to know.

A Time to Awaken

I love this time of year - the snow is almost gone. The edges of the lake are melting. The birds are chattering. The neighbors" chickens are excitedly scratching the ground to find some delicious treats. The frost is out of the ground and the inquisitive little crocuses poke their pointy leaves toward the beaming sun. Our temperatures still vary from the twenties to the sixties but the twenties don't last as long and the sixties feel like Heaven. God seems to join in the spring cleaning with showers washing away the winter dust and strong winds acting like giant leaf blowers. Each day new buds and leaves will pop out as nature awakens and redecorates with myriad shades of green.

The Pictures from the Last Post

Dance, Dance Wherever You May Be

Happy St. Patty's Day - tis a day to wear the green and dance a jig. I've always thought it was lucky to be born Irish and I've often wondered how my dad's mom and my mom's dad each decided at the age of 19 to cross the vast vast ocean and come to America. I've wondered how they had such grit to leave everything they knew and venture into the unknown. But I'm glad they did and they each lived to age 89, which was quite extraordinary for people born in 1869 and 1874. They witnessed so much change in those 89 years, what stories there would be to tell. If only I had listened when I had the chance. But that is the way of life - the youth think they know more than the elders until they are the elders and they realize they don't yet know half of what they should................We have our elder here at our home right now. Bing's mom, Milli, is 98 now and lives alone in an aprtment in Minneapolis, a few miles away from her daughter, Sue, and Sue's husband, Dan. Sue is on a ten day medical mission in Guatemala, so Bing picked her up and brought her here for the ten days. Milli is just as sharp as ever but seems smaller and weaker now. She's legally blind and very hard of hearing and now uses a walker most of the time. But that's pretty good for 98! We'll hit a couple of casinos while she's here but probably won't stay as long as we used to. Sue sent along a pair of headphones that connects right to the TV and amplifys the sound for Milli so we don't have to have the speakers on so loud. That's really nice ................I've included a few pictures of some activities between my last post and now - In early March, we took the three local grandchildren to Klondike Days in Eagle River. It's a winter festival that celebrates the olden days in the Northwoods. Also, the tapping of the Maple trees has been completed. Bing and Tony and the three little ones put in the 65 spiles and we now await the generosity of the trees for the sweetest harvest of the year..........................P.S. I couldn't get the pictures up from the Klondike Days but I'll add them when we figure out how to do it!