MAX, THE NEIGHBOR DOG

Every time I go out into my yard to do a little yard work or head down the street for a walk, Max, our neighbor dog, goes into a barking frenzy. I have lived in my house since 1976; Max has only lived next door for maybe seven or eight years. I feel I have a right to be in my yard or walking down my street, but he treats me like I’m the neighborhood deviant and he’s the Neighborhood Watch.

Max is not an attractive dog. I think he’s mostly Pekingese—with a little Shitzu (or Shitzhead, as Tom guessed) mixed in. I suppose Max has a breed name, but he’s just a mangy looking dog with a medically serious under bite. Even when he’s not in a barking frenzy, he just looks like he’s mad at the world.

He also roams the neighborhood at will. He will sit in the middle of the street and look at oncoming cars as if to say, “Go ahead—hit me. Make my day. I’ll sue.” Of course, no one would purposely run over a dog, and Max knows it. So drivers swerve and honk and curse while he just sits there on his furry little haunches and looks annoyed.

Once, a new neighbor told me that he thought the dog was ours. That hurt. Just because Max is just always in our yard barking at me doesn’t indicate ownership—or even friendship. Besides, he uses the neighbors’ lawn across the street as his bathroom, which I believe means that Max prefers their yard to ours.

I am generally an agreeable person who likes animals. But Max has a face and disposition that only his mother could love. I'd take a picture, but he's got the kind of face that could seriously damage a camera. My only consolation is that I’m going to outlive him. Dogs don’t live forever, and women in my family tend to die really old, like 95 or 100 or more. I’ll win in the end.

BELLA

I saw another good movie, Bella. It wasn’t until the movie was all over and I was putting the DVD back in its sleeve that the title of the movie clicked. ‘Oh—Bella!’ I thought as the light in my mental attic finally flashed on. (It seems like that light’s bulb is getting dimmer as time passes. What used to be a three-way 1500-watt floodlight is now a flickering 40-watt.)

I didn’t know if Tom would like Bella because in a stretch, it might have been a chick movie. But it wasn’t. It was a movie about friendship and sacrifice and tough lives with tough breaks and flashbacks and pain and family and Mexicans and Puerto Ricans—just gritty enough so that even Tom liked it.

After I had seen it, I read that the movie had won an award at the Toronto Film Festival in 2007. The director was a 29-year-old Mexican making his very first film. So it’s kind of a neighborhood project—our Southern neighbors provided the talent, our Northern neighbors recognized the talent, and we Americans in the middle declared it the #1 film of 2007 in a New York Times poll. Bella was a North American love fest—and we liked it, too.

APOLOGIZING FOR LIVING IN MINNESOTA

It happened again on Saturday. Tom and I were driving down to Collegeville for our annual St. John’s University football game on an absolutely picture-perfect fall day—trees that were beginning to turn color, the blue sky reflected in the blue lakes. We were listening on the car radio to Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers’ show, Car Talk, on Minnesota Public Radio . . . and then it happened.

A woman called into Car Talk from Grand Rapids, Minnesota. You would have thought she said she was from Outer Mongolia somewhere north of the Arctic Circle. “Woo-oo, Grand Rapids, Minneso-o-ota! Just how cold does it get up there?” challenged Brother Ray or Brother Tom, I forget which one. And like a true Minnesotan, the woman from Grand Rapids rose to their expectations and bragged about the one day last winter where the temperature reached minus 40 degrees.

That was enough to send Click and Clack over the edge, absolutely ridiculing anyone who would willingly and knowingly live in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The lady fed right into it; after all, it was Click and Clack and they make fun of everything. “Well,” she said, as all we Minnesotans have said a thousand times, “my dad says it builds character.” Ha-ha, everyone laughed.

Then I held my breath; would she say the other cliché? The one you just have to say if you mention the other one about character building?

She did. She added the one that all of our Minnesota dads have said a million times: “The cold keeps out the riff-raff.” Click and Clack heartily agreed that riff-raff wouldn’t be able to survive a Minnesota winter.

Hurray! She kept the myth alive! What the lady failed to say (dumb like a fox, that lady) is that the Grand Rapids, Minnesota, area is one of the most beautiful spots on the face of the earth. If Minnesota has 10,000 lakes, the Grand Rapids area has a thousand of them. It’s right on the edge of the Chippewa National Forest, and for the next week and half, the whole countryside is at peak for fall colors. Even if Click and Clack don’t want to go to Grand Rapids, other tourists will be driving through Itasca County to see some of the most beautiful fall colors in the nation. These tourists will use the hiking and biking trails, camp grounds, resorts, and fishing lodges.

But by reinforcing the stereotype, the MPR listeners from all over the country believe that Grand Rapids is somewhere near the ends of the earth. I don’t suppose the people up there want Click and Clack’s east coast bumper-to-bumper traffic clogging up Forest Road for the people who appreciate Northern Minnesota’s beauty.

The lady from Grand Rapids did us all a favor—by keeping the riff-raff out. Grand Rapids will be Minnesota’s little secret.

NEW READING LIST

I always get a little nervous when I don’t have a book to read. My left eye starts twitching, and I panic that I won’t have anything to occupy my mind so I’ll have to deal with real life. Heaven forbid.

I recently found a promising-looking new reading list in Shannon’s Real Simple magazine. Readers were asked to write in with the titles of books that their book clubs had really enjoyed. So this will be a reading list I whittle away at for the next several months:

· Secret History and The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
· Nausea by Jean-Paul Sarte (nobody in the book club liked it but it created discussion)
· Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver
· Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
· The Road by Cormac McCarthy
· Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
· Same Kind of Different by Ron Hall and Denver Moore
· Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
· The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
· Little Heathens by Mildren Armstrong Kalish
· Ghost Story by Peter Straub
· Life of Pi by Yann Martel
· Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
· A People’s History of the U.S. by Howard Zinn
· The Quality of Life Report by Meghan Daum
· Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran
· The Bible by various authors
· Maus by Art Speigelman
· Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
· Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
· Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
· Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
· Blindness by Jose Saramago

I had already read a few of them (The Secret History, Life of Pi, Three Cups of Tea, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Bible). I’ve just started Animal, Vegetable, Miracle—looks a little heavy.

I think it’s best to intersperse some of these books with other fluffier reading material so you don’t start taking yourself too seriously. For example, I read the latest Janet Evanovich book, Fearless Fourteen starring Stephanie Plum, girl detective, before I tackled The Secret History (a $15 soft-cover book with 559 pages of super teeny tiny printing, written at a reading level of 11.8—not exactly a skimmer). And after The Secret History, I read an Anna Quindlen book (Rise and Shine), just to keep my right brain as limber as my left brain before I started Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It’s all about balance—and heaven knows, I need to keep my brain balanced: a little fluff, a little literature, a little shallow, a little deep.

PLEASE PICK THE FLOWERS

Last night, it got a little later than usual before I had time to take a walk. Because I was alone and it would be twilight before I got back home, I decided to take the “safe” route and walk down Rosewood Lane, around Melody Lane, and then wind my way around Runestone Heights before I climbed the hill back up to the top of Nissen Street. It’s a familiar, safe walk in my neighborly ‘hood.

For the past three summers, I’ve admired one beauty-loving Melody Lane homeowner who has planted flowers all along the street edge of her property, across the road from Lake Victoria—about one hundred feet or so of colorful blooms. When I pass by, it almost feels like I’m walking along a hedge of wild flowers. Once last summer, the lady was out watering, and I had a chance to tell her what a joy it was to walk down the road next to those beautiful flowers.

Last night as I walked by, it was already getting dark, but I noticed something new. A small wooden sign, hand-written in black magic marker, read, “You are welcome to pick a bouquet for your enjoyment. Add several hosta leaves from the the driveway for accents.” And underneath the sign was a pair of blue scissors, hanging on a nail.

I don’t know why, but that little sign with its generous invitation, its neighborly sharing, just touched my heart. I guess because most of the signs along walking paths usually read, “Private Property,” or “No Trespassing,” or “Vicious Owner Has Gun.” You know the kind of signs I mean.

Feel free to pick the flowers . . . so I snipped a blue one and smiled all the way home.

YOU’VE GOT TO SEE THIS MOVIE

For months, I’ve had a movie on my Netflix list named Young @ Heart. It wasn’t being released on DVD until September 16—and sure enough, it arrived in the mail today.

So do whatever you need to do to get the movie—rent it from a video store, buy it, borrow it, bootleg it, download it illegally, or steal it from your neighbor’s mailbox. Just get your hands on a copy of that movie.

What can you expect when you watch this movie? Lots of nose hair and ear hair (and even old ladies with a little chin stubble). Wrinkles and age spots. Canes and wheelchairs and oxygen tanks. Ill-fitting clothes from the 80s—or maybe Goodwill—purchased when their bodies were a completely different shape than they are now. Genuine old people (it’s a documentary, after all), warts and squirrelly eyebrows and all.

But what you don’t expect is that a guy named Bob has organized them into a senior citizen chorus that sings Jimi Hendrix and James Brown (“I feel g-o-o-d . . . like I knew that I would . . . ). Don’t expect polished, professional singing. They can’t remember the words, they can’t keep the beat, sometimes they end up in the hospital instead of at chorus practice.

It’s one of those movies that you should see if you ever plan to get old someday. It’s a good lesson in how to live well (or as the BeeGees and the Young @ Heart chorus would say, “Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive!).

PAIL LIST

Like millions of other Baby Boomers, I went to see Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson work their way through a “Bucket List” of things they wanted to experience or accomplish before they died. While it’s always been a little tough for me to sit through two hours of Jack Nicholson at one time, the premise of the movie was thought provoking enough that I started my own less ambitious “pail list” after I saw it.

So far, I’ve come up with 38 things I want to do. I did have 40 items at one time, but anyone will tell you that a bucket list is a little fluid. What seemed like a good idea in 2007 doesn’t seem like such a good idea in 2008. Or a place described in a travel magazine in 2005 is now making headlines because a tsunami thundered through and wiped out the entire population—except the chickens who sensed the wave was coming and headed for the hills. Or maybe it’s somewhere that tourists currently get an exchange rate of 2 cents on the American dollar and a bowl of noodles costs $45.

So for whatever reason, my pail list has a tiny tide that goes in and out depending on the mood. I won’t share my entire pail list, but items that I believe will stay on it are:

1. Go on a New England cruise up the east coast past Maine, Newfoundland, down the St. Lawrence River, and end up in Quebec City where we will wander out in the countryside and find Tom’s French-Canadian roots
2. Walk the Dells River Walk that opened in Wisconsin in 2004
3. Fly over the Grand Canyon in a helicopter
4. Go to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia
5. Commit to health: walk every single day and never eat after dinner for the rest of my life
6. Belong to a book club
7. Play with my own grandchildren
8. Teach a night class for one semester at Kauai Community College in Lihu’e, Hawaii (or whatever teaching load is enough to pay the rent on an ocean-side condo during that semester)

Some items on the list are very do-able; some are very pie-in-the-sky; and some are really going to happen (see #7!). There’s nothing on the list that would probably float someone else’s boat, but it’s fun to dream a little, even if the image of Jack Nicholson sometimes pops in uninvited into my daydreams.

BUTCHER? BAKER? CANDLESTICK MAKER?

Twice a year, a small catalog arrives in our mailbox announcing the new classes for adults, the “Learning for Life” Community Education offerings. Just last week, the Fall 2008 issue arrived. I love reading through the Community Education catalog. I have never taken a single course, but I love looking at what I could be taking if I made the time—a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, a dancer, a prancer, or a lifestyle enhancer.

For example, maybe I should take salsa lessons from Nelly DeLaRosby who, according to the catalog, “learned Salsa in Mexico.” So this would be authentic salsa, not your fake Midwestern hotdish version of salsa. If salsa seemed a little beyond my abilities, I could try beginning ballroom dance, swing dancing, or line dance (I think that’s how I got shin splints a few years ago). Or maybe I could try a little Tai Chi taught by the local middle school social worker.

“Are You Moody?” asks the title of one class. A certified nurse practitioner is willing to teach me about various mood disorders for only $5 on November 5. There are also sessions on acupuncture, body detoxification programs, permanent makeup, or intentional living (as opposed to my normal unintentional living). I could take a class on the “psychology of unexpected grace or loss” that would help me with both good and bad unexpected change in my life--everything from winning the lottery to dealing with the death of my cat, I suppose.

If I want something a little more artistic, I can take classes in pottery, water colors, glass etching, jewelry making, and stained glass. If I feel like I need more practical skills, the catalog describes classes in welding, ironworking, photography, song writing, papermaking, candle making, and woodworking.

I could learn to play the ukulele in six easy lessons for $24 or learn to make my own yarn in one session for $24. Hmmm . . . same price, so I’d have to ask myself which one would improve the quality of my life more. If I chose to make my own yarn, I could also take a class that would teach me how to knit for only $7. Evidently, it’s harder to teach someone to make yarn than it is to teach someone to knit. The sheep shearing probably factors into the cost.

I could learn to make my own earrings, learn to play Bunco, or learn to grow really good apples. I could go to a class called “Super Speed Cleaning” or choose from several classes that would teach me to frame walls, tape sheet rock, install windows, side my house with vinyl, install floor and wall tile, or put in a wood floor. I could learn to defend myself from attackers using only objects women usually carry in their purses. I could learn to make wine in the bathtub or spaghetti sauce in a crock pot or home-made bread on a rock in a campfire.

On October 7, I could learn to field dress and cut up a deer for only $14 (deer not included). I am trying to visualize how this can be done in the local high school cafeteria where the class will be held.

I could take the Dale Carnegie four-session series on moving past my comfort zone, or I could learn to market my small business. I could learn to burn DVDs, set up a Facebook or MySpace account, and become a Microsoft Office whiz. Although it’s too late for my recent trip to Italy, I could prepare myself for a future trip by taking a class called “Instant Italian” (or “Instant French” or “Instant Spanish”) that promises to prepare me for typical situations a tourist encounters when traveling.

I could stretch my musical horizons by taking classes in jazz and classical music. I could join a coffee and doughnut discussion group, a short story focus group, a legacy workshop, or an “interactive journey with the physics of sound and magnets.” I could tour Amish country with a woman who left her Amish community at the age of 24 and now gives bus tours of the Amish homes, farms, and schools in the secret society she left behind. I could make a quilt or an apron or learn how to cook healthy meals for one. I could take a hayride where someone from the Douglas County Historical Society points out historic landmarks around the city.

I love to read through the catalog and fantasize about the better person I could be if I would only make the time to sign up for the Community Adult Education classes. I could be an apron-making, Italian-speaking, bread-baking, deer-gutting, tile-laying, ukulele-playing Renaissance woman, in tune with my community and the wholesome activities that make West Central Minnesota such a great place to live.

TRANSIENTS

We just helped moved her again—my middle daughter who keeps moving. She should have been born with wheels on her feet and a luggage handle that you could just pull out of her back. She’s a mover—which seems odd since she really dreads moving. It’s not a genetic condition; her father and I have lived in the same house for the past 33 years.

So after my daughter’s last move, I had to pull out my address book one more time and X out the old and write in the new. My poor address book has been crossed out and edited so many times that I have to stop and think who lives where.

When my middle daughter first left home in 1997, I carefully wrote “Bethel College, St. Paul, MN” in my address book. However, that was soon replaced by a dormitory at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, MN. There were at least four addresses in St. Joseph—including the post office box numbers for two dormitories, Zierdan East Apartments, and Campus Village Townhomes. During these same years, I penciled in addresses for her temporary jobs in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, and Manchester Center, Vermont. She did an internship one January in Nassau, Bahamas, and another internship where she lived on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. After graduation, the addresses included East End Road in Homer, Alaska; Penkiril Street, Bondi, New South Wales, Australia; and a couple of addresses in Olivia and Bird Island, Minnesota. Then a couple of Des Moines, Iowa, addresses followed. Last Friday, we brought a load of furniture to an address on Nathan Road in Plymouth, MN. Is that 16 moves in 11 years?

My youngest daughter’s move count is currently at 10, I believe. She first ran away from home to Towers Residence Hall, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. While in Eau Claire, her addresses included a house on Niagara Street, a house on South Farwell Street, and a final one on Chippewa Street. A change of college majors caused a westerly move, first to Pine Cone Road and then to First Street, both in Sartell, Minnesota. Along the way, I also penciled in a summer address at Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Student teaching resulted in a move to West 37th Street in Minneapolis, and a teaching job offer caused a major move to South 50th Street in Phoenix, Arizona. Finally, after her wedding last summer, she and her husband settled in at North Willow Street in Chandler, Arizona. It seemed like half the people at the wedding introduced themselves by saying, “I used to be the bride’s roommate.”

My son left home in 1994 and his address was pretty stable at the USAF Academy, Colorado Springs, for four years. He moved to different dorm rooms during that time, but for four years, I always knew where his post office box was. Then began the moving: Ciarfeo Street, Laughlin AFB, Texas, and Shoreline Road, Del Rio, Texas, while he completed pilot training. He must have lived in Nevada for awhile because I have an address for Paradise Road in Las Vegas. A little slip of paper tucked in the address book indicates an APO address in Saudi Arabia in 2002. He and his wife were stationed at Canon AFB in Clovis, New Mexico, and lived on Don January Court before they bought a house on St. Andrews Drive in Clovis. Their address in Goodyear, Arizona, near Luke AFB has been in my address book for a few years now, but again, little pieces of paper stuck here and there show temporary training addresses—maybe in Arizona, Florida, Alaska, Denmark, one of the Carolinas? It gets a little fuzzy sometimes. Most notably, there’s an address at Kunsan AFB, South Korea, in 2006-07. I would count up his moves, too, but I’m not sure which were just short-time, temporary moves where he just packed his clothes, and which were actual moves where he brought his furniture along.

This isn’t an accurate count, but I estimate my kids have lived in approximately 12 different states and 4 foreign countries (which would make sense if I had 12 children, not 3). I know I should either just pencil in addresses in my address book or keep them in an electronic database. But that would spoil the fun of looking back and remembering where everyone started out and where they’ve been along the way. My scribbled and x’ed out address book is a reminder of the adventures and opportunities my kids have had while I’ve been hunkered down guarding the home front for 33 years here on Nissen Street.

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

It's Labor Day and Hurricane Gustav is in town. No, I don't mean THE Hurricane Gustav; he's obviously still down in Louisiana. I mean his close-together-isobar offspring, Son of Gustav. The Weather Channel says the wind is blowing around 35 mph in Minnesota today, and it made for a wild walk on the Central Lakes Trail this morning. Since the wind was out of the southeast, it was a crosswind--dramatic and frenetic. I just loved it. When I walked on the bridge over the channel between Lake Geneva and Lake Victoria, I was grateful I wasn't a high-profile vehicle or I might have been swept off the bridge into the choppy channel below. It was exhilarating.

While there are several things in my life I am grateful for, one of the top ten on my list is that I live just a few blocks from the Central Lakes Trail. I never, ever get tired of walking the trail because it's never the same. Sure, it's the same stretch of asphalt--but the weather, the seasonal changes, the hikers, the bikers, the in-line skaters, the dog walkers, the colors, the air--all of them keep changing.

It doesn't matter if I'm tired when I start my walk, I always feel more energized when I'm done. I can be lower than low when I start my walk, at the end of the worst day ever lived by any human being on the face of the earth; but by the end of my walk, I'm feeling pretty optimistic.

The Central Lakes Trail is actually the only form of recreational activity I do where I can come out financially ahead by doing it: the few dollars I spend on walking shoes and deoderant are quickly offset by the money saved in psychiatric fees and drugs for high blood pressure or arthritis. My biggest fear in life--hands down, my biggest fear--is that something will happen to me so I won't be able to walk every day. Three years ago, I developed shin splints and couldn't walk for a couple of weeks. They were among the worst couple of weeks of my life.

So today, when I was joined on my walk by the wild wind son of Hurricane Gustav, it just made the walk better--more dramatic, more dangerous, more exhilarating. Hair whipping, trees bent, white caps crashing--a walk on the wild side.

PISTOL-PACKING PROFESSORS

Just when you think you’ve heard everything—well, you find out you haven’t heard everything. In the little town of Harrold, Texas, located 30 minutes away from the nearest sheriff’s office, some teachers are coming to school this fall armed with concealed weapons. Honestly. The superintendent of schools, David Thweatt, convinced the school board that after two years of looking into security options for the school (security cameras, metal detectors, uniformed guards, etc.), the best protection was to allow selected teachers to carry guns.

In his defense, Superintendent Thweatt isn’t letting just any teacher carry a gun. Only those teachers who have been first approved by the school board as having the correct personality will be allowed to be armed—personality traits that include how that person reacts to a crisis. Although the policy may be radical, Superintendent Thweatt isn’t stupid enough to give guns to emotionally unstable teachers. Yes, all teachers will be entrusted with the responsibility of educating 25 or 30 kids, but they all certainly won’t be trusted with guns. So for school invaders or terroristic students, it becomes a game of Russian Roulette: Does Professor Plum have a revolver in the library? Does Miss Scarlet have a concealed weapon in the chemistry lab? The thinking is that if the misbehaving parties don’t know who is armed, they are less likely to misbehave anywhere.

Another part of the plan: Any teacher authorized to carry a gun must also receive special training in crisis intervention and hostage situations. So while the other teachers in the district went to summer workshops on math curriculum and English as a Second Language, a special elite few went to S.W.A.T. training. How much do you want to bet that Superintendent Thweatt, his friend the phy ed teacher, and his good buddy the football coach all got to wear flak vests and watch videos of the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas—while Miss Millicent, the creative writing teacher, had to settle for three continuing ed credits in ENGL 507 The Poetry of Keats?

I’m waiting for the day when the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities system offers the opportunity for select instructors and professors to carry firearms during the school day. I’m going to be first in line—nobody would ever suspect that I’m packing heat under my green corduroy jacket with the elbow patches. School terrorists would think I was just another Miss Millicent, ready to crumble at the first sight of trouble. But it would be their last thought as I whipped off my bifocals, hit the floor rolling, and took ‘em out with my pearl-handled derringer.

STORIES FROM THE NURSING HOME

I often find myself at the nursing home, sitting in a room with my almost-90-year-old mother and my 91-year-old father, looking for topics of conversation. There isn’t a lot to talk about because their lives are pretty narrow these days—and mine isn’t a whole lot more exciting. For some reason, they don’t confide in me about their health or their views on death or how they’re being treated by the nursing home staff. Instead, they tell me stories. Maybe they tell me stories because I ask questions. Maybe they tell me stories because I’ve always liked to listen to stories. Or maybe they tell me stories to keep me from fidgeting. For whatever reason, my parents tell me stories. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an episode of Garrison Keillor’ Prairie Home Companion.

Recently as we were sitting around my dad’s room in the nursing home, I asked a question about the Carlisle band. Both of my parents grew up in Carlisle, Minnesota, and the community band was a huge part of their growing up years. The band had been organized in 1894, and still today, over 100 years later, the band continues to play at community events. Especially in the early days, the band was always full of both my mother’s and father’s relatives, most of them Norwegian farmers from the surrounding community.

The question I asked was, “When did women start playing in the Carlisle Band?” fully expecting the answer to be that the first women to break into the all-male musical ranks were my cousins, maybe in the 1960s or 1970s. However, here’s the story I got from my parents:

The first women to infiltrate the all-male band were summer visitors to Carlisle during the 1930s, the Hoverstein sisters, who rented an empty farmhouse north of Carlisle. During the rest of the year, the four Hoverstein sisters were all teachers. But in the summer, along with their brother Joe and their widowed mother, they rented a place in the country. My mother seems to remember that they were from the Ada area. She thinks they summered in Carlisle because they were related in some way to the Ogaards who owned the Carlisle general store at the time.

The Hoverstein sisters were a musical bunch, so every summer, they broke the gender barrier and sat in with the all-male Carlisle band. In those days, the Carlisle band was at the center of every single social event in the community. Whether it was the 4th of July picnic at Haldorson Island or a golden wedding anniversary or a celebration at the church, the Carlisle band members were there to entertain. (See above picture for my mental vision of the Hoverstein sisters.)

There was some confusion about the Hoverstein sisters’ names, but my parents positively identified the two older sisters, Ruth (trumpet) and Gladys (French horn). The younger two were less clear, but my dad wondered if one of them wasn’t named Deborah. The reason that trumpet-playing Ruth was especially clear in their memories is that my mother’s trumpet-playing older brother fell head over heels in love with her and wanted to marry her. Ruth, however, turned him down. My mother believes it was because Ruth didn’t want to spend the rest of her life as a farmer’s wife near Carlisle, Minnesota. So Ruth and my uncle were an item until she broke his heart. Later, my uncle told my mother that if he couldn’t marry Ruth Hoverstein, he didn’t want to marry anyone. And sure enough, he remained a trumpet-playing Norwegian bachelor farmer forever.

Gladys Hoverstein turned her attentions on my mother’s other brother, the tuba player. He was, according to my mother, the tender, romantic sort who fell in love easily—and often—so Gladys’s summer fling didn’t scar him for life. The younger two Hoverstein sisters had summer romances with my mother’s cousins who farmed west of Carlisle. My mother didn’t remember the two younger Hoverstein sisters very well and made the disdainful remark that they “just played some little instruments so they could be in the band, too.” Joe Hoverstein, the lone brother in the houseful of women, paid attention to my dad’s older sister.

So if anyone ever asks, the first women to break through the men-only barrier in the Carlisle Band were not my cousins in the women’s-lib 1970s. It was those heart-breaking Hoverstein sisters, way back in the 1930s. I wonder whatever happened to the musical Hoverstein sisters, who spent their summers playing John Phillip Sousa marches and toying with the hearts of those poor Norwegian bachelor farm boys from Carlisle, Minnesota.

LAST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

I’ve been experiencing an eerie “twilight zone” feeling for the past few days. Part of it is reverse jet lag where I am dead tired—and I mean dead as in rigor mortis tired—at 7 or 8 p.m. I suppose it’s because only a few days ago, 7 p.m. Minnesota time was 2 a.m. in Rome. That also explains why at 3 a.m., I am wide awake and ready to go. I don’t mean the drag-yourself-out-of-bed-and-face-the-day type of ready to go. I mean the fired-up-to-take-on-the-world-show-me-a-mountain-to-climb type of ready to go.

Add this twilight zone/jet lag feeling to the fact that it is last teacher workshop week in the last semester I will ever be teaching (retiring January 31, 2009), and you have a recipe for an almost out-of-body experience. I feel like I’m kind of floating at the top of the ceiling, watching myself go through the day.

“Oh, look,” says the floating me, looking down at the flesh and blood me, walking into my office. “Isn’t this special? She’s coming for her very last teacher workshop.”

“Cool,” says the floating me, doing the backstroke up near the ceiling tiles, “she’s sitting through her very last workshop division meeting—and she hasn’t felt compelled to take a single note or volunteer to be on even one committee.”

“Wow!” says the floating me, looking over my shoulder at the computer screen where class lists seem to scroll down forever, “that’s a lot of student names to learn. Since it’s your last semester, why don’t you just call them all ‘buddy’ or ‘sweetheart’ this one time?”

The last lesson plans I’ll ever need to write, the last time a publisher can throw out a new edition of a textbook five minutes before the semester starts, the last time I’ll need to worry about learning new software, the last papers I’ll ever grade, the last time I’ll get to . . . last time . . . last time . . . last time.

The real me is still working feverishly at my desk getting ready for the onslaught of students next Monday, going through all the motions of being the conscientious teacher people expect me to be. But that twilight zone/jet lagged/floating me up by the ceiling is just smiling lazily, telling me to just relax and enjoy all of these “last times.”

EXCERPT FROM TRAVEL JOURNAL (ROME - AUGUST 2, 2008)

Hop-On/Hop-Off Bus: We have found that the HO/HO bus is always a good way to get our bearings in a new city. So we stumbled around until we found Via Veneto (a couple of blocks from our hotel), which was Stop #11 on the sightseeing bus route. The bus took us to Stop #1 at the Stazione Centrale Roma Termini (Rome Central Train Terminal) where we waited twenty minutes for the HO/HO bus to reload and fill with tourists. Sitting in the top of that bus, we were introduced to Rome in August—hot, humid, and unrelentingly sunny. However, once the bus began moving to cover its route, the breeze helped to cool the oppressive heat. The route took us past Quirinale, Colosseo, Piazza Bocca Della Verita, Piazza Venezia, Piazza Novona, San Pietro (St. Peter’s and the Vatican), Ara Pacis, Piazza Cavour, and Fontana de Trevi (Trevi Fountain). It was amazing to see all the historic places we had only seen in pictures before. The streets in Rome are narrow and crowded—but all of a sudden, they open into beautiful squares (piazzas).

Tour of Rome: At 3 p.m. after checking into the Hotel King on Via Sistina, we met and walked back to Stop #11 on Via Veneto to grab the HO/HO bus with the intention of getting as close to the Pantheon as possible. We rode to the train terminal (Stop #1) to load more passengers. However, after a long wait of about 10-15 minutes, while we baked in the sun on the open-topped deck, the driver decided to call it quits for the day. Welcome to Italy! We found a spot on the bottom of a second bus. Luckily, the second bus wasn’t jam-packed because a fight between the bus driver and an irate passenger cleared away some of the faint-hearted tourists. We had just ridden an airplane for a thousand hours or so to get to Rome, so we weren’t about to be scared off a bus by a measly little brawl, so we grimly held our places. All eyewitnesses had different versions of what actually happened; but a little kick to the groin, a few angry words in Italian, slammed bus doors, and off we went.

Pantheon and Trevi Fountain: We got off the bus, consulted the handy map that had been provided, disagreed about directions a bit (first of many times)—but ended up at the Pantheon. What an amazing building! We were close enough to walk over to the Trevi Fountain. Since we were at the beginning of our vacation in an expensive area of the world, we didn’t want to start throwing our precious Euro coins into the fountain, even if that is what tradition tells us to do. Luckily, M&C had brought a supply of U.S. pennies for just such an occasion, so we threw them in. Since they were M&C’s coins, evidently they will return to Rome six times, or so the legend goes.

DOING THINGS I’VE NEVER DONE BEFORE

It seems to me that there are two different kinds of vacations to take. The first type of vacation is where you go to a familiar place and do familiar things. Maybe you have a favorite cabin on the lake where your family has been gathering for years. Maybe there’s a spot on the ocean where you love to walk the same beach, time after time, year after year. The activities are comforting and predictable, and the relaxation is deep. There are usually no surprises—just the comfortable familiarity of a traditional vacation spot.

The second type of vacation is one where you have new adventures and try new activities. The stress level is somewhat high because you are always being confronted with the unknown: How do I get from Point A to Point B? How do I communicate when I don’t know the language? How should I behave? What does this cost in American money? How does this strange process work?

Our recent 35th anniversary trip was the second type of trip, the new adventure with new activities. For the past two weeks, there have been times when we were disoriented, when we were nervous and wary, when we were uncomfortable, when we were hot and sweaty, but also when we were downright dazzled. However, it’s impossible to have a new adventure without risking the unknown.

The following are things I have now done that I had never done before:

• Bought a ticket at 8:09 a.m. for the 8:11 a.m. express train from Livorno to Florence, Italy, and literally ran from the ticket counter down the platform to catch the train, even though I wasn’t entirely sure we were even getting on the right train.

• Saw a cow’s head hanging in the entrance of a meat market in Tunisia where the temperature was 117 degrees that day.

• Camped out for 15 hours on the floor of JFK Airport in New York with approximately 10,000 other displaced travelers who were victims of cancelled flights and missed connections because of two days of thunder storms.

• Went to mass in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vatican City on our 35th wedding anniversary.

• Rode in a van hurtling along at speeds between 85 and 100 mph (speedometer read 145 kph at one point) on the highway between Rome and Civitavecchia, Italy.

• Entrusted my life to an Italian bus driver named Pasquali who managed to get us from Naples to Amalfi on a road along the Amalfi coast that was approximately three inches wider than the bus itself and whose road shoulder dropped hundreds of feet into gorges below (and unlike some other passengers, I never threw up).

• Witnessed a fight between our bus driver and an irate passenger near the Rome Central Train Terminal—luckily our driver won with a swift kick to the groin and slammed bus doors.

• Was serenaded by four members of the Opera La Roma on the Spanish Steps in Rome who sang for free to the unwashed, sweaty masses of tourists and Italians who treat their opera singers like we treat our rock stars.

• Had our anniversary song sung to us in Indonesian (didn’t understand a word but there were lots of smiles and a lot of clapping).

• Walked six miles in 95-100 degree heat (three miles were planned, but the other three were not entirely intentional) in Palma de Mallorca.

• Saw where the richest of the rich people on the face earth go to play in Monte Carlo—where the yachts are so big that they have helicopters perched on the back of them (we now have new standards for what constitutes “rich”).

• Haggled with a street vendor who spoke only Arabic asking 12 Euros for a crudely made wooden camel, during which I resorted to the old trick of pulling an empty pocket inside out to show him that the 3,5 Euros I was offering was all that I had.

Was it fun? Not always but mostly. Was it comfortable? Occasionally. Did it broaden my understanding of other people, other places, other customs? Most definitely. Would I do it again? Absolutely—but not anytime real soon. I need to get caught up on my sleep.