Letter to the Kids. Sunday. November 27. 2022.

 

 My Dear Kiddies;

the mottled mountains

holding up blue vaults of snow --

our cable is out.

 

the door swings both ways --

lets in cold, lets out the heat --

damp leaves stuck to boots.

 

I told the beggar "No handouts unless you chop some wood." 

He turned his wheelchair right around and left my yard for good. 

 I gave him ev'ry chance to work, 

 but some folk simply like to shirk.

 

 

Enthusiastic Biden, Democrats spur ban on military grade assault weapons

(WSJ)

 

I wanna buy an Uzi or an AK-47.

Shooting up my neighbors would most certainly be heaven.

I am not a psychopath or crudely maladjusted;

I just like to see a lot of things get shot and busted!

Does that make me liable for the things that I must do

because my brain is missing something like a little screw?

 I have the right to firearms; this cannot be denied.

The Constitution, after all, just cannot be defied!

So do not take my fingerprints or have me fill out forms.

There is a diff'rent drummer keeping me from all the norms.

Patriotic sentiment does guide my ev'ry thought;

so gats are what I think the Founding Fathers would have bought.

Soon I'l have a howitzer to train upon the masses.

I'm hoping that Joe Biden will still let me buy field glasses.

 

 And so those are a sampling of the poems I've written this week. do they give you an insight into my thoughts and heart for the past 7 days? i dunno. but despite various artistic disappointments this week I still feel compelled to write 'em. You might say it is no longer a hobby, but a vice.

 

your mother and i spent thanksgiving roasting a turkey and serving it in the community room here at valley villa, along with dressing and instant mashed potatoes, and an apple crisp. i didn't think very many people came, but your mother, who is a born bean-counter, says that we fed 13 people, so i guess we did okay. 

Today, Sunday, I dumped five cans of pinto beans and a can of diced tomatoes into the slow cooker, then added a pound of fried chorizo and some spices, and we will served chili, along with brown rice, for dinner at noon today. i have no idea how many will show up. yesterday we served leftover turkey with stuffing and gravy and had six people at our door. but today? could be two if we're lucky. doesn't matter -- i like leftover chili, and it'll last in the fridge all week, just getting better. 

we're still binge watching The Blacklist on netflix. last night we started at 5 and went until 11:30, with one break for scripture study. your mother then stayed up another hour to wash dishes and bake cookies. yet we managed to be up at 7 this morning to make church at 8:30. 

right now your mother is working on family search stuff and doing some indexing on the side. she enjoys that kind of stuff and gets real satisfaction and sense of purpose from it. me, i can't stand it. i'm at the point where i am done with paperwork of any kind. i won't take any online surveys, even if it means somekind of bonus like a free pizza coupon.  your mother also likes to clean up my old google.doc files. what enjoyment she finds in that I cannot say . . . 

here's our latest video posted on facebook. it only lasts 30 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uG2O4q4zcL8

 

when i finish this epistle i'll see if i can get us scheduled for some initiatory work at the temple this coming thursday.  we try to go every thursday; last week it was tuesday, and it was kind of a waste of time foryour mother, in my opinion, cuz the queue was so backed up she had to wait 30 minutes and then only got to do one name. i always get to do at least five names. 

 I wonder if i should put a can of corn in the chili to stretch it out?

the weather has been cold and mostly sunny, with a few cloudy days.  the sun is out today and I'm hoping your mother and i can take a walk this afternoon after serving lunch. there's something about walking down a quiet residential street on a Sunday afternoon that resonates with me in a very happy and calming way. the exercise helps me think back to the wonders in my life:

your mother

my health

being a circus clown

being a missionary in thailand

being a radio announcer

having eight kids

pickled herring

 

you mother just sat down next to me to crochet a yarn cap. i love to watch her hands work and see the serene concentration on her face while she works. how do i convey how much it means to me to be a part of such a small domestic scene? i guess i can't. all i can do is tell you it makes me very happy.

the dadster.

  

Enthusiastic Biden, Democrats spur ban on military grade assault weapons

 

I wanna buy an Uzi or an AK-47.

Shooting up my neighbors would most certainly be heaven.

I am not a psychopath or crudely maladjusted;

I just like to see a lot of things get shot and busted!

Does that make me liable for the things that I must do

because my brain is missing something like a little screw?

 I have the right to firearms; this cannot be denied.

The Constitution, after all, just cannot be defied!

So do not take my fingerprints or have me fill out forms.

There is a diff'rent drummer keeping me from all the norms.

Patriotic sentiment does guide my ev'ry thought;

so gats are what I think the Founding Fathers would have bought.

Soon I'l have a howitzer to train upon the masses.

I'm hoping that Joe Biden will still let me buy field glasses.

 

Allison Prang -- A Reporter Who Follows the Money.

 If you have money; if you want money; if you steal money -- you need to read Allison Prang's journalistic essays on the subject of cash, specie, legal tender, gelt. Having cut her teeth writing for Thompson's Bank Note Reporter in Manhattan, she knows her greenbacks.

While studying at the University of Missouri Ms. Prang developed a sixth sense about squeezing blood from turnips. Which she then sold to plasma centers to finance her education. When she graduated with a journalism degree she was immediately hired by the Charleston Post & Courier newspaper. Her advice column, entitled "Scrooge was a Wimp!", guided strapped consumers on stretching their dollars like taffy. Her recipe for Salt & Pepper Soup instantly became a thrift classic, and is now extensively served in public schools and federal prisons. 

At the Wall Street Journal Ms. Prang specializes in broken news. Whenever a story falls apart, she is called in with her pot of library paste to reassemble stray facts and figures back into a compelling narrative. Her expertise in this area has been recognized by the Heinie Manush Foundation, which recently presented her with a frozen turkey. Giblets included.

Her advice to nascent journalists is: "Castigat ridendo mores." 

She is a big fan of Major League Pickleball, and recently purchased a controlling interest in the Florida Smash.

She is currently reading Judge Judy's "Don't Pee on My Leg and Tell Me it's Raining!"

Art Raymond -- A Reporter's Reporter, Man's Man, and Bee's Knees.

 Nobody can say that reporter Art Raymond minces words or beats around the bush. That's because no one dares use any such flatulent cliches around him -- he is dedicated to the resuscitation of the English language, ridding it of all the stale flotsam and jetsam that have accumulated, especially in newspaper stories, over the past century. 

Don't tell him something is 'trending.' He'll beat you over the head with a spud wrench and demand you use the word 'ubiquitous.' Avoid using exclamations like 'Wow!' and 'Booyah!' within earshot of him; he insists that the only proper interjection in English is "by the great horn spoon!"

"It has a robust ring to it" he says, as he polishes his stainless steel alpenstock in preparation for the arduous ascent of Mount Pisgah. Mr. Raymond dotes on rambling about the fallen arches and swollen arroyos of Utah. He has the largest geode collection west of the Kissimmee River. 

How did such a stickler for the King's English ever get into the newspaper racket?

He was shanghaied. 

As a young boy he developed the unfortunate habit of checking out library books and never returning them. When he was brought up on charges of booknapping before the Third District Court of Appeals, the judge gave him a choice:  Either join the Merchant Marines or get a job as a newspaper reporter.

He chose the latter, and has proven to be a stellar scribbler. His recent report on the lime jello embargo won him the prestigious Heinie Manush Medallion. 

His advice to those just starting out in journalism is to heed the philosophy of Lewis Carol's Humpty Dumpty: "Words mean just what I mean them to say."

His favorite food is marshmallow soup.

Jennifer Brooks -- A Working Reporter from Ohio University.

 Jennifer Brooks always knew she wanted to be a reporter.

Even though her earliest memory of words is when she spilled a bowl of alphabet soup onto her lap as a child. Despite this traumatic incident, she was a remarkably handy child with adjectives and obscure grammatical rules. At the age of seven she invented the word "hampup" -- to indicate a pork chop that curled too much upon frying. By the time she reached puberty she was instructing her teachers at school on the difference between an en-dash and an em-dash. Her Master's thesis at Ohio University was on "I before E, except for months with an R in it."

Upon graduation Ms. Brooks was offered a position with the Laramie Boomerang -- but it was a position not sanctioned in the Twister rule book, so instead she signed on with the Detroit News. And there she began her meteoric rise to anonymity. Her co-workers remember her fondly.  Belinda Bellwether, the current whiteboard monitor at the Detroit News, recalls: "Jenny was just a ball of fire! She got more scoops than Ben & Jerry's. Of course, she wrote everything in Latvian, her native tongue, and we had to translate it into English. But considering the scope and depth of her work, it was well worth it."

Tom Sneffle, who worked with her on the Nashville Tennessean, is convinced she's twins. "No one person could do all that work, eat all those hard boiled eggs, and crochet a life-size Statue of Liberty with steel wool in a matter of months, unless there were two of them. I think the other twin has been pensioned off and is now living comfortably on a chinampa in the Xochimilco."

She was invited to work for the Minneapolis Star Tribune ten years ago, during a period of controversy and turmoil at the newspaper caused by the Canadian Pulp Wars (1994 - 2019.) Her quick intelligence and disdain for wiffle ball led to a brokered ceasefire that is still in place today. She also ended the practice of sending cub reporters out to find brass magnets. 

Her advice to new journalists includes this profound thought:  "Anyone can write a news story, but not everyone can read it."

She is very fond of Ding Ding Tongs.   

Jason Horowitz -- A Journalist Who Was Born Thinking the World is Ham on Rye.

Jason Horowitz was born with the sense that the world is ham on rye.

During a tempestuous career that has spanned everything from Chautauqua to chinquapin-collector, Mr. Horowitz remains true to his personal mantra: "Slice it thick and pile it high!"  Such a man is not to be trifled with.

He was born and raised. Of this we are certain. He went to college. This, too, has been ascertained to be true. He collects antique Horlicks containers. That is completely made up, but it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

An expat in Italy for many years, Mr. Horowitz has filed reports on the Pope's Nose; the Lean Tower of Pisa now on a keto diet; pizza bagels; and the Lucretia Borgia Cooking School for Disgruntled Spouses. His work has garnered him standing invitations to Sicilian salt mines and Venetian blinds. He is a frequent guest of the Italian Prime Minister, provided he gets to the party before a new Prime Minister is installed.

Prior to working in Italy, Mr. Horowitz wrote about politics and how to milk a cumulus cloud via blockchain. He holds the record for the number of egg creams consumed in one day at Coney Island.

His last known residence was a phone booth in the Bronx. And he never files his nails, preferring to donate them to charity instead. 

His advice to new journalists is simple and direct: "Never talk through your hat or pay through the nose."

He plays the gramophone in the Charles Ives Town Band, in Danbury, Connecticut.

   

 

Peter Coy -- To this mysterious journalist, "Everything is Economics."

 Some writers seek the limelight, craving its warming glow. Some writers are indifferent to the plaudits of the world, quietly going about their craft without any hoopla. Then there are those mysterious scribblers who actively shun center stage, living as recluses and hermits. 

Such a journalist is Peter Coy, who toils for the New York Times, writing a newsletter on economics.

And there you have all that is actually known of the man!

Where he was born; where he grew up; who his parents were; what schools he attended; what his hobbies and ambitions are; even his current city of residence -- all information on him is as a rebus, with nothing but obscure hints and clues to guide the erstwhile biographer.

In twenty-five years of journalism, his only personal revelation has been three simple words: "Everything is economics."

Some have speculated that Peter Coy is not a professional journalist at all, but merely an algorithm developed by M.I.T. to predict economic patterns. These algorithms are fleshed out by an A.I. program to read like prose.

Others speculate that Mr. Coy withdrew from society after a torrid love affair went wrong. And that when he goes out in public he veils his face with black crepe, while dolefully whispering "Excelsior!" Such a figure has been sighted at Barney Greengrass, noshing on smoked whitefish.

Still others claim the man known as Peter Coy is a Cold War spy emeritus, who has been allowed to slip into the quiet grayness of an economics maven -- impersonating a harmless drudge and pencil pusher to throw his old Iron Curtain adversaries off the scent.

But no one can say for certain just what this mystery man is all about - what moves him, scares him, delights him, or puts him to sleep.

Recently, a cult named "Discover Peter Coy" has developed in midtown Manhattan. Members wear cowls and ring cow bells in a vain attempt to summon Mr. Coy, in the belief that he will then grant them debt relief from student loans and Mastercard charges. Federal authorities believe these zealots are also involved in the recent FTX debacle, and are using Peter Coy's name as a smokescreen for their nefarious economic depredations.

 Whatever the truth may be about Peter Coy, there is no doubt his newsletter is real. And very popular. It is followed avidly by the Chief Usher and his underlings at the White House. At the Minnesota Nice Cafe in Bemidji, Minnesota, Coy's newsletter is served as a lagniappe, along with the coleslaw.

 

John Reinan -- A Reporter Who is Never off His Trolley.

 If you happen to be riding the retro Lake Harriet Trolley some beamish day, you may notice your driver has that skulking, dyspeptic look that newspaper journalists develop after 20 years of peeking through keyholes and eating too many White Castle sliders in haste.

Your driver, in fact, is that distinguished member of the Fourth Estate, John Bestertester Reinan. In his spare time he enjoys driving the trolley around scenic Lake Harriet -- clanging the bell and collecting wooden nickels. 

Reinan comes from a long line of nickel-hoppers. His maternal great-grandfather, Oscar Lumbago Orca, had a mania for collecting Buffalo nickels. His hoard grew so large that it fell through the floor of his home in Embarrass, Minnesota, destroying several prime barrels of applejack. 

Mr. Reinan was born in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, in 1955, and has never looked back. His father worked as a highbinder for Ottertail Power Company for fifty years -- before being permanently sidelined by static electricity. His mother was a homemaker and Edna May Oliver look-alike, who supplemented the family budget by appearing at movie halls throughout the area. Young John helped out by selling bibs to theater patrons who asked for too much butter on their popcorn.

Mr. Reinan excelled in penmanship and woolgathering in high school, and thus won a literary scholarship to Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. While just a sophomore he was awarded a lifetime supply of Green Stamps for his constantly chanting "Fram! Fram! Krismenn, Krossmen" until all his teeth fell out.

After college Mr. Reinan went to work for the Nome Nugget in Alaska as an inkwell cleaner. He was soon promoted to dust mop wrangler. Having angered the Chilblain Cartel with a scorching expose on their manufacture of counterfeit ChapStick, Mr. Reinan was forced to flee the state and find refuge in Florida, working at the Longboat Key Observer. But the call of the eel pout and a long standing addiction to lefse finally drove the young reporter to relocate in Minnesota, where he has successfully parlayed a career as reporter for the Star Tribune into an urban legend. 

Many strange tales are told of his work in bringing to light what really happened in Nye's Polonaise Room on the night of January 15th, 1993. The wig he wore during his undercover stint is on display at the Pavek Museum.

An avid angler, Mr. Reinan is at home on any body of water -- frequently threading his way through the bayous of Lake Minnetonka in search of the elusive lutefisk. 

His advice to nascent journalists just beginning their ink-stained pilgrimage is:

"Keep your nose clean and your thoughts pure so you'll die of boredom before senility sets in."

 

turtle memories

amy is knitting a cap for mary, a lady down the hall. we're watching Colombo, waiting to go to the senior center in an hour for their thanksgiving dinner. i'm at loose ends, not wanting to write any more poetry to post on twitter until i know whether or not the whole thing is going under or not. that's the scuttlebutt right now on the media, that elon musk has murdered the company with his unrealistic demands. oh well  . . .  when we run out of columbos to watch i guess we'll start watching murder, she wrote with angela lansbury. that's a show my mom watched when i was a kid -- i thought it was for geriatric ninnyhammers. but now unfortunately i know what the appeal was -- something that requires little mental engagement, has familiar actors, isn't full of sex and swearing, and allows us to fall asleep while watching.

so today i'm reminiscing about turtles. to pass the time before dinner.

there's been a lot of turtles in my life.

when i was a kid you could go into any dime store (the same as today's dollar store) and buy a little green turtle, a red eared slider, for ten cents. the clear plastic bowl, with a green palm tree in the middle, and a bag of colored gravel, cost another fifty cents, and voila! I had myself a delightful little pet. which i usually kept for about four months before it either went belly up in its bowl, or i took it out to let it walk around on the living room carpet, and then forgot about it. it would eventually turn up, completely mummified, at the bottom of the hot air vent behind the couch.  i suppose i ran through a good dozen of them as a child. 

for some reason i no longer remember, i was once allowed to get two newts, instead of a little green turtle, which i kept in a clear plastic bowl with colored gravel. they were much more lively than the turtles. and their bowl needed to be cleaned out much more often than the turtles. i kept them on the fireplace mantel in the living room. (the fireplace didn't work. it was brick, but it had no chimney. it was just for looks.) well, one night my dad came home late from Aarone's Bar & Grill, where he tended bar, and didn't like the smell coming from my newts. so he put the bowl out on the front porch and went to bed. unfortunately, this was in the middle of january. next morning i discovered i owned a bowl of newtsicles.

one glorious summer day when i was about ten the family all went down to the Aarone farm on the Minnesota River for an employee picnic.  i brought along my bamboo pole and a can of worms, spending most of my time on the river bank angling for catfish.  imagine my delighted surprise when i snagged a snapping turtle on my wormy hook! the huge ugly creature reared its ugly head to engulf my hook and a yard or two of line.  i battled him for a good ten minutes, as a crowd gathered on the bank to cheer me on. the brute finally snapped the line and disappeared under the churning muddy water.  i was the hero of the picnic for the rest of the day. each time i retold the tale to the other kids that day the snapper got bigger and our struggle lasted longer and became more fantastic, until as the sun began to set i had convinced myself that the turtle had pulled a knife on me so I had to shoot it with my colt 45. 

pet turtles were not the only turtles i had at home.  

a mile or so from our house on 19th avenue  southeast, in minneapolis, was a swampy waste that was part of a railyard/warehouse industrial park.  the roads were unpaved, there were no sidewalks, and dirty channels of water crisscrossed the area. in which lived a passel of frogs and herds of false map turtles, about as big as dinner plates.  i tried forever to catch the frogs, with no luck, but i was able to capture a nice big turtle, which i brought home. not finding a suitable place to put it, i appropriated by dad's aluminum beer cooler and turned it into an improvised turtle pond, filled with sand, water, and little dots of speckled green duckweed -- which is what i assumed my new capture ate. when my dad finally missed his cooler (which didn't take very long, since he drank enough beer each summer to float a battleship) i was duly punished for my vandalism by being sent to bed without supper. my turtle was dropped off at Como Lake to start a new life. 

ah, como lake!  where the como zoo was, and still is, located. we went to como zoo every summer to visit the fragrant monkey house, watch Sparky the Seal perform, and ride the giant tortoise. yes, in those environmentally unfriendly days they kept big ol' land tortoises at the zoo for little boys & girls to ride upon. 

my last turtle memory was 30 years ago, when i was in the habit of taking long walks around como lake. one spring day as i was walking along the macadam path i spied up ahead a large nasty-looking snapping turtle, traveling away from the lake up into the tall grass to lay her eggs. joggers were casually passing by her, apparently unaware that a female snapping turtle about to lay her eggs is a pretty ornery critter and apt to snap off any ankle that came too close. so i got me a branch to wave in front of the snapper's nose. she bit into it with a vengeance and i was able to pull the tenacious snapper off the macadam path and into the cattails so she could lay her eggs in peach and quiet. they had to close the lake path down for a few days that spring so the mother snappers could cross over to the tall weeds to deposit their eggs in the tall weeds. 

i wonder if amy would let me have a little green turtle? i wonder if they still sell them anywhere like Petsmart?

maybe i better try for some more newts, instead.

what can i remember in a half hour

 there's a half hour before amy and i go to the temple this afternoon, so i'm challenging myself to write out a complete story from my past in 30 minutes.

about the circus maybe? my mission in thailand? growing up in mpls? my friends. family. school. what?

writing under the gun is no fun. i'm trying to think of a memory i shared with amy recently. let's see -- i told her about the time wayne matsuura and i as teenagers worked all summer to save up enough money to drive up to canada to camp on a lake and go fishing and how the day before we left wayne crushed his thumb and i put my back out, and how we still went on the trip, despite the fact that waynes thumb had a cartoon-sized bandage on it and i was bent over double,hobbling around like an old man.  no, i don't wanna tell that one again.

something pleasant and uplifting. let's see . . . 

oh sure.  the last day we were in the MTC at byu in hawaii before leaving for thailand. i don't remember much about that day except we had a lot of pep talks from the mtc president and counselors and got the last of our shots done and packing, etc. 

what i recall with a great deal of pleasure is that as we lined up to get on the bus that was to take us to the airport for the trip to bangkok, many of the mtc staff lined up to put a lei around each one of our necks.  but for me they planned something special -- instead of just one lei, each staff member put one on me, so that when i got to the door of the bus i was literally smothered with leis -- i couldn't see anything. i played it for laughs, of course, staggering around and bumping into the bus door, etc.  that is a very happy and fragrant memory that has stayed with me all these years.  i like it when people pay special attention to me.  that's part of the reason i became a clown, and something i have really missed in all the years since i've had to give up doing physical comedy.

i have nothing but happy memories of the mtc. of course, the long long hours of memorizing the discussions in thai by rote were tedious -- but when you're young you can put up with that kind of nonsense easily. at the end of the day i always felt great. i still remember that they translated the imaginary 'Mr. Brown' of the discussions as 'Khun Praphan, khrab."  i enjoyed the speakers that gave firesides each night, mostly faculty from byu-hawaii. and i relished the food at the cafeteria -- not that it was all that great, but because, number one, i could drink all the chocolate milk i wanted, and, number two, there was unlimited coconut syrup for pancakes in the morning. boy, i thought that was the greatest thing since sliced cucumbers!

i slept good back in those days, so even though we were crammed into sweaty humid rooms with bunks, i always was able to fall straight asleep and be ready to get up at 6 without a problem. boy, those were the days -- never having to get up in the middle of the night to pee!

i guess the reason they put all those leis on me is because the mtc prez asked me to do a clown show for everyone, which i was happy to do.  back then i had a large repertoire of  pantomimes I could do  -- giving the dog a bath, the sleepy man in sacrament meeting, fishing, and i even made up a special pantomime just for the mtc show -- all about me trying to memorize the discussions in thai and failing miserably. that one got huge laughs. i only ever did it that one time in the mtc, and quite frankly i've forgotten what it was all about.  anyway, everyone from the mtc, and a lot of byu students came to see my one man show.  it went over big. 

so that's why i got all the leis, i guess.

time to put on my white neck tie.   Heinie Manush.