Margaret and Helen

At the intersection of all the major world religions, you will find the Golden Rule. It’s a place where you will never run into Limbaugh, Coulter or Palin. We all should have directions to that intersection.

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Four Rules for Snow Blowing

Journal entry, December 1, 2002


Throwing snow, like mowing the lawn, is more than a job. It is an art. One gets better at it with practice. Here are some guidelines that can steer you away from some of those early pitfalls.

This first rule of snow blowing I learned on my maiden voyage. Don't get Snow on the House. To a seasoned practitioner, this dictum is obvious. It is not so for the novice. My first outing with the machine resulted in a house coated with snowballs. They stuck on the siding until spring. Worse yet, they leave their tracks on the siding, little all season mementos, reminders of the first rule of snow blowing.

A second rule, hidden from the neophyte is, Work from the Inside Out. Snowthrowing is the opposite of lawn mowing. In summer, which works from the perimeter into the center. What works well with grass clippings is a disaster for snowbanks. Blowing from the perimeter soon leaves one with all the snow in the middle of the driveway. This rule is easily remembered after the novice cleans the driveway a second time to repair the first.

Rule three is well known. Keep your Fingers to Yourself. A clogged discharge chute is every bit as seductive as the pump handle is to the tongue. It is much more dangerous. Of course, one is warned away from unclogging the machine with a hand by the user's manual. But everyone knows that those manuals are not about common sense. In this case the manual has it right. A lost digit is the first step life long humiliation. The answer "I used my finger to unclog the snow blower," is like being asked to call oneself stupid, over and over. Even a child knows better.

Dress Slick is the final regulation. Snow does not usually go where it is thrown. Ample helpings of it are for bathing the machine operator. Warm fuzzy clothing absorbs melting snow. Slick clothes repel it. Slick clothes in a snowstorm do look stupid. But you aren't out in the driveway to promote fashion. You are there to do a job. Looking silly means staying dry.

So a word to the wise is sufficient. . . as Miss Loughman used to say to her fourth grade class. This wisdom is the hard won product of long winter nights spent behind a snow throwing machine. Now that you have heard them, you can spend your snow blowing time thinking about other, more esoteric things; like unraveling the mystery of life itself, the libretto to a disco tune or a dripping faucet that requires your attention. The fact is, you will not blow much snow without such distraction. At least you can avoid some of the more unpleasant ones.

Frost and Sun

Reflections on the First Thaw - 1988

The sun rises from behind two jack pines to the east of the study. . . a fiery orange ball. First, it peeks through the trees with its intense gaze. Than it spreads a pink blanket over the horizon and then on the snow in the foreground. From there the sky phases to a yellow, to a white and a then to its blue.

Foolish talk of springtime seasons the day's conversations. Part of me leaps to a resounding "Yes!" The the calendar knows better. Can spring be around the corner, after the next bend in the road?

First Thaw - 1997

Holy Cow! It's warm outside! I opened the door to let the dog out when I first noticed the change. The thermometer outside the dining room window was nearly invisible in the dark. At first, I could not find the column of red liquid. I was looking too low on the instrument. When I finally lifted my eyes up the scale, there it was. It registered well on the way to 40 degrees. Could this be the arrival of spring? Or is it just a winter thaw? My calendar says we are still a month away from the last snowstorm. But the bitter cold has been broken. For now, that is enough to conjure thoughts of spring. I am amazed how 40 degrees can be balmy.

2009

The first thaw inaugurates a wrestling match. Jacob's night long struggle with the angel must have ended in such a dawn, a winter thaw. One does not greet first warmth openly, wholeheartedly. One greets the first thaw with deep suspicion. Hope and Reason may have met together, but they certainly have not made friends. Instead, they squirm and writhe. It is plain that the air in which we bathe sets the stage every other event of our lives. And when it is changing, I contend with it. The warmth on the skin is warned away by the experience of thaws past.

The first thaw is a rich medium for conflict. Only in the fullness of spring is it resolved. That is nearer, but not yet.

Something Lovely About This

The Mining Journal has an astonishing market penetration in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and a reputation for an abrupt and in your face editorial policy. It is the one daily paper that everyone reads. More than once, I canceled my subscription on the heels of a run of hare brained opinions expressed by the editor. Today's hot letter to the editor expressed some very pointed, left of center, advice to readers. (That, in itself, is worth noting.) The editor, knowing the power of his publication, bothered to avoid any confusion that might cost a local funeral parlor business among its right wing or non ideological patrons. It is a lovely thing, this small town courtesy. The editor took the time to attach this line following a red hot letter:

Editor's note: Gordon C. Peterson is not to
be confused with Marquette resident
Gordon J. "Gordy" Peterson of
the Swanson-Lundquist Funeral Home.

I might have subscribed anew had I still lived in Marquette. Maybe. (IF I had some eggs, I'd have some ham and eggs, IF I had some ham.)

Six Degrees of Familiarity

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

So, here we are. It is Tuesday, an afternoon with mom. This Tuesday, we turned our back on the Riverside Restaurant in Bellevue, hoping for a cullinary change. We drove to Bob Evans Restaurant out by the expressway for a little lunch. I opted for three pancakes and two sausage links. . . the jingo, Bob Evans' farm sausage, just right for a Saturday night. . .rattled around in my head. "You know," Ma said, "Bob Evans came to our house for lunch once." You mean there is a real Bob Evans, I asked myself? Indeed. It was the summer of 1961. Dad and Bob had just finished a round of golf, a sales call round of golf. (Bob was into auto parts along with his farming operation in Rio Grande, Ohio.) Golf and lunch. Mom pulled together a store bought smoked turkey; fixed a salad, a baked potato and dessert to go with the libations. Out on the deck, overlooking the golf course from the heights of Mount Parnassus, sat Pa and Bob talking piston rings the way old guys talk out on the front porch. Ma served them. I do not know what was going on with the kids, but we were not in the picture with Bob Evans that day. Children were still to be seen and not heard in 1961. So that was it. That was Bob's visit to our house for a lunch. I do not know if he signed up for any auto parts. But it hardly matters does it? We could have had a sign on that house, "Bob Evans Ate Here," but we didn't.

There were other celebrities, too. Ma came into contact with some others, person to person. Theodore Geisel was Uncle Palmer's next door neighbor. Everybody knows him as Dr. Seuss but in those days, he wasn't very widely known. Palmer took Patty over to the next door neighbors and invited himself to visit. Dr. Seuss showed them around. "He draws his pictures first, tacks them up on a cork board wall and then he writes the poetry next," Ma said. "He was part Indian, you know."

And then there was Aunt Betty's friend Boris Karloff who received Betty and her family for a brief visit in his dressing room. Boris' wife was from Charlotte, just up the road and the rival school to Hastings High in those days. He was playing in Arsenic and Old Lace in the theater in New York when Aunt Betty took them to visit him.

I wondered if Boris was his real name. Or what about Bob Evans? "I think that was his real name," Ma said. And was Jimmy Dean, the other sausage king, really named Jimmy Dean, like on his birth certificate? Celebrity is a realm in which the sheen of reality is so thin, that one wonders about things like names. So many famous people have names that are like billboards, not necessarily what they have on a driver's license. And once we watched Joe E. Brown eat his lunch on the veranda of the Park Place Hotel in Traverse City from eleven stories up. All we saw was really just a speck at the table. I wonder if Joe E. Brown was his name? I doubt it. Sister Susan jumped into the freezing spring waters of Lake Michigan on that same trip. She swam for what seemed forever. Now that is reality for you. Anyone can eat lunch on the veranda of the Park Place Hotel.

Then, there are all those famous folks nearer to the family, Cousin Martha's daughter, Megan Mulally. "She just turned fifty, you know. They had a big party for her in the mountains," That seems a fitting place for a celebrity birthday party. Uncle Palmer says that he once taught Raquel Welch to waterski. "I suppose your Aunt Janet is a celebrity in some circles," Ma went on. Janet writes books. Yup, there are famous people in our family.

What had been a meaty soup now thins out rather quickly. We rack our brains for any other glimpses behind the gauze of celebrity. . . like the time we saw Presient Eisenhower drive by in his limo on the way back to the White House from the airport. . . in Washington D. C. . . . the same trip when your sister got lost and you all got the mumps. . . like the time I greeted Rahm Emmanuel on the street in Washington. He was distracted by his cell phone ringing. By now, the celebrity soup is nearly all water.

What is behind the gauze curtain of celebrity is so interesting because it turns out to be just like us. Isn't that the way things always are? Just like us, except, well, famous. Where I come from, people really talk about these things.

August Dread

Autumn in the great north shows itself even before the leaves begin to change. One feels it as a tightening in the pit of the stomach. The joke line, "nine months of winter and three months of tough sledding," sets the scene for this August, 2005 journal entry written during one of those heavy overcast and sprinkly summer days.

The Buffalo/Green Bay preseason game drones on as a replay. Green Bay fans are all watching it for the second time! It's August, but it feels like autumn has arrived already. Sigurd Olson's essay "Falling Leaf," from his book Listening Point, captures the dread and awe of autumn in the north. Summer was a nervous guest, coming late and leaving early. We never had a chance to talk before it yielded to the approach of the cold. Falttening like a bulldozer. Heavens, I haven't yet mowed the whole lawn! The aroma of wood smoke drifts into the bedroom window, riding the cold air. Up until yesterday, they were open to relieve the summer heat. We close them now. It is probably the Osborn side of the family that anticipates winter from its first hint. We plan our burials early, too. Still the faintest whiff of winter summons a response deep within us, grief and remorse.