The Middlewesterner

LINES FOR MAY 16

Morning haze
like dread

darkening
the day.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 17, 2002

Yesterday was blue then grey,

blue again, then grey and cold. Today dawned blue but there is a layer of thin clouds moving in from the west. The world keeps turning.

Happiness doesn't look for you. You must look for it.

The mourning doves are thinking of love.

Out in the country, I can see clouds to the north and east, and off to the far west. The temperature is only in the 30s this morning. It seems like we've got more winter in May this year than January.

Peas in a field are thick enough now to hide the earth beneath them, a green roll-out.

LINES FOR MAY 15

The arc of her
fierceness, that

woman's darkness.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 16, 2002

Oh, blow wind,

we said yesterday, and it did. It blew and blew. We've got blue sky blown in this morning.

We choose our happiness; we choose sadness. We say I'm going to carry this weight. Could we cast off the heaviness? The drooping of shoulders is habit. Break the habit, put on the vestments of joy!

As I drive north out of Fairwater, I see that my blue sky is disappearing into a haziness everywhere, thick greyness, light locked up in moisture. Even when the sun breaks through the haze briefly, the light is almost liquid.

LINES FOR MAY 14

Listen. The grass
whispers like rain.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 15, 2002

A great crash

of blue sky. The lid of night has been torn off, darkness banished; the sun will have its way. A great shining loveliness. The middle of the month is anchored solid: you cannot be more pleased; you won't be more disappointed if you lose it.

The season is slinging greenness like a mad artist with only one color in his palette, too poor to buy others, too rich in green sensation to see the need.

It's as if the poet has only one adjective - green. Well, today it's as if the poet has two adjectives - green and blue. It's as if the poet has only three adjectives - green and blue and bright. Hold the warm light as if it's a blanket. Love this, love this, love this.

Dewy-gilded lawn. A race of robins. A lovely lay of sunlight on everything. How can I complain?

Does the wind blow from southeast to northwest? A slow flap, perhaps. Haziness, far off in all directions. Some clouds, farther off. A diffuseness above the black soil, not as thick as fog, yet thicker than light.

North of Five Corners, a shrub in blossom - white and green along the ditch. Finally - winter has its tail nailed into the northland. It shall not return; for now it shall not return.

LINES FOR MAY 13

Climb and fade of haze,
the well-worn view.

IVAN BURGESS'S ECHO ECHO

"Lynn Devlin spilled the beans,"

Ivan said. "Not in her own kitchen, but in Beverly Lambert's kitchen. Not literally but figuratively. For months Arden Devlin has been castigating Joe Lambert and Kendall Nichols for their well-intentioned vote for George W. Bush. Arden explained, in great detail, what a dumb-assed mistake that was. Then one evening last week Joe Lambert invited Kendall and Hazel Nichols and Arden and Lynn Devlin to a soup supper at the North Main home of the Lamberts. Between courses of the potato soup and the chili, politics reared its ugly head. When Lynn sorted through the conversation, she understood that Arden had been questioning the intelligence of Joe and Kendall for voting for George W. That's when she said, right outloud, 'Arden voted for Republicans in the last election.' Joe and Kendall jumped on that like a linebacker on a loose ball. But, like Arden said to them, 'At least I admitted I made a mistake.'"

"If you missed the sign in front of the Methodist Church," Ivan said, "the one that tells the time of the service, sermon topic, preacher's name, and maybe a thought for the week, it is in David Grey's garage/shop. It wound up there by a circuitous route. Jack Yenne, maintenance man/janitor, noticed that the sign was rotting. He told his wife, Kathy. Kathy told Mimi Grey about it. Mimi volunteered her husband to repair it. So if it isn't back and you want to know what it says, drive out to David Grey's place and look in the garage/shop."

"You know," Ivan said, "if you just listen, you will hear some profound statements. Last Tuesday morning Mel Lyon said something about ten dollar wheat making it imperative that you do a good job of farming. Then someone said with the price of fertilizer, you had to have ten dollar wheat. Then Kendall Nichols made this profound statement: 'I would say that the price of wheat can come down a lot quicker and easier than the price of fertilizer.' Now you just don't get profounder than that. I wonder, with the price of fertilizer, weed spray, and fuel, if the farmers' profit margin might be less than it has been for several years. I don't know, but it seems like the expense has a huge appetite that would chew up and swallow a large part of the profit."

"Martha Coon was here a couple of days last week," Ivan said. "She joined the As the Bladder Fills Club, where she was overwhelmed by the knowledge that was so casually slung about by the ATBFC. She was wanting to take some of it home with her, but she failed to take notes or tape-record any of it. It is doubtful that she will get home with any of the knowledge because she has reached the age where she is even getting senior citizen's discounts here in Smith Center."

"Casey Edell had part of his iron fence knocked down in an automobile accident last fall," Ivan said. "He kept saying that he was goig to get it fixed, but he couldn't get it put up until the frost went out of the ground because it required some post holes. With the advent of the spring-like weather, I would think the countdown of days to fence erection would be dwindling down to a precious few."

"Some car company makes a car called Probe," Ivan said. "Wouldn't that make an excellent car for a proctologist."

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 14, 2002

Blue sky and sunlight.

It may be a lovely day.

Dew on the windshield of the car. An urgency of birds. The sound of water over the dam. In the distance, trucks on the highway. The world goes about its lonesome business.

There are clouds to the west and northwest, dark and broken. The land rolls away like a blackness of sea, a smoothed darkness.

LINES FOR MAY 12

Why try to
make sense

of my
nonsense

or why
not?

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 13, 2002

The trees in Des Moines

are leafed out fully - I'd say they are probably a week or so ahead of the trees here. There - it's a great green murmuring. Here - it's a whisper perhaps.

We've got greyness overhead. That extended all the way west to Des Moines yesterday. Saturday was a hanging grey day too.

I have not been writing much. My writing likes a regular schedule, to bed by 8:45 p.m., up at 4:00 a.m., else it plays hide and seek and I can't depend on anything. Sometimes I can't depend on anything even if I do my voodoo rituals and my regular sleeping pattern. That's because when it finally comes down to it, writing is not something you choose, writing is something that chooses you. All you can do is be ready.

An oriole in a branch of the willow at the end of our driveway, in all its fireball orangeness. Color in the tulips along the garage, a few are nearly ready to open. The peonies are stretched to their full height, they don't seem to have set buds yet. The sky is starting to disappear behind some of the trees - those half-leafed out to the half-hidden sky.

LINES FOR MAY 9

The sun did
come up, he said,

yet I wonder
why so late?

LINES FOR MAY 8

I ask these
questions and
sometimes

scare myself.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 9, 2002

A rainy night in Wisconsin.

Wet streets this morning. Flowers in bloom in spite of the weather, because of it. The two-sided, double-edged nature of things. The ying and yang, up and down, yes and no of things. Goodness and evil are different ends of the same string.

With leaves in the trees, the wind roars this morning. It's not a hard wind, but enough to keep us alert. There's a heavy greyness in all directions. Whatever you think I mean, add 10%. That'll be closer to true.

The brightest spot of sky is not where the sun is. The sky is a pack of wolves.

We want to believe in redemption yet the world keeps going the other way.

Sometimes hope is a lesson in disappointment.

LINES FOR MAY 7

Morning delight and a dim
simmering of joy.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 8, 2002

A May day. Gray day.

A kind of heaviness here, thick as conversation even when I have nothing to say.

It is spitting some rain as I step outside.

North of Fairwater, the field that used to be alfalfa is worked to black smoothness; and so is the field across the road from it where, all spring, geese had been setting down to feed.

It's a day neither this nor that, neither hot nor cold, not spectacular. It is only and exactly what it is. Now, if we could get that much truth from everything....

LINES FOR MAY 6

No, he said,
knowledge

is not
nothing.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 7, 2002

This morning, the sorrow

of the dove. How much sweetness would be enough of it? Is the mourning dove's call like the light of those stars which still shine for us but have long since been burned out? Does the dove's sorrow come to us from a million years ago? How should we respond?

The greening has been coming on, we've seen it, yet yesterday it seemed so sudden, intense, like falling in love.

There must have been some drizzle or splash of rain during the night. There are raindrops on the windshield of the car still.

A flash of Baltimore oriole streaking across the driveway. Robins, oh robins are everywhere.

Today the wind seems to be from the north, blowing yesterday back to where it came from.

The question on the radio today is: is public art in the public domain? My question: who owns the skyline? who owns the sky? Who owns the air we breathe, who owns our sunlight, who owns your laughter, your sorrow?

LINES FOR MAY 5

Like an overturned pot -
the spill of sadness

and desperate wisdom.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 6, 2002

Again, a wetness.

Moisture could be the love of God. Could it be that we've been praying wrong?

There is moisture on the street, greyness overhead. I'm a little foggy-headed myself this morning. I'm getting ready to go to work but I don't know why. I don't know what I want today.

Ah, the pond is full of algae, it's a mush surface, a greenness more death to the pond than life. The knife is always double-edged, isn't it, cutting both ways.

The wind appears to be from the south. Downtown there is a slow flap of flag. There is no flag at the cemetery.

Two miles north of the village, a county grader works the shoulders of Highway E.

A field is showing a faint green rug where a drilled crop is coming up already - peas, I suppose.

I think we make secret compacts with ourselves, each of us, but I'm not sure we know all of them, nor that we necessarily fully understand them.

LINES FOR MAY 2

Clanging,
like the rhyming
bell of hell.

Spare us
the obvious
musics,

Muse.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 3, 2002

A morning glory morning.

A kind of wiseness to the wind. The way the shadows lay. The play of everything.

I feel my aging. My shoulders have been sore for months. A man ages in body; he ages in mind and soul if he lets the years restrict him rather than allowing them to open up possibilities. I can see that it is so easy to say "this is enough, there is nothing more." That's a trap we all get caught in. Yet, each time, I want to pull myself free of it, start fresh with no preconception about how things should be.

The trees are leafing out. We should all be leafing out, continuing to set blooms, growing. Yet it is so easy to stop growing. A little adversity, sometimes, we throw up our hands, turn, retreat. Though sometimes we do put our shoulder into it. I want to put my shoulder into it, every day.

Each sentence I write is a leap, I fall towards the period at the end of the sentence; but - starting - I don't know where I'll end. It is freedom to acknowledge that it is okay to go off-track, to run yourself into a failure you don't foresee. You can't tell yourself beforehand what perfection will look like: that would freeze you up.

Part of the challenge I face is learning to stop driving the bus. It is so easy to think you are in charge. You are not in charge. Yes, we have to accept responsibility, but we are swept up in so much more than what we can be responsible for. What fate has in store lands on us: sometimes it's star dust, sometimes it's shit.

LINES FOR MAY 1

Sun. Rain.
All day
the wind.

I push on.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 2, 2002

A light rain yesterday

as I drove home from work, a wetness during the night, the streets are still damp this morning; there are beads of moisture on the windows still; the sky is grey; the day, such as it is, is underway.

I am set to retire as the end of August of this year - I will no longer be making this workday morning drive to Ripon. What will this change mean for this journal? What will I capture if I am not forced to go anywhere, do something other than sit at my writing desk at home? What will come of this habit of creating a kind of repository? A fellow never really knows what he will do. I think I shall try to continue - to keep setting aside a time and place to make this side-wise kind of record. It's not a log of doings, so much as a log of "seeings," real and imagined.

I keep two kinds of journals - a daily events log that won't mean much, I suppose, to anyone but myself and some future foolish biographer (Tom laughs); and this log of observations and ideas. This one holds superior interest in the long run. I also keep a tally of random notes - not really a journal, but phrases, ideas, and observations that I set down as they occur to me, material that I sometimes eventually find useful in other contexts. None of my experience with keeping journals really prepares me to teach anything about journals beyond what I've learned here. Though I would like to teach. But I have nothing to say, no ideas but in the things of my experience. If I find opportunity to teach, that's the place I'll have to teach from.

I step outside to leave for work, some patch of blue sky. Far off to the south, storm clouds. A lighter cloud cover in other directions. It's a chill morning, even in the greenness with some sun.

There is still no flag at the cemetery. Nothing flapping to indicate the direction of the wind.

Out in the country I see storm clouds off to the west, too. And far to the east, over Lake Michigan.

Do we invest ourselves in each day, or simply swim through it as through water, there but not committed to it? What is this investment, this grabbing hold?

A flag just south of Ripon says the wind is hard from the west.

I guess the investment in the day is every day choosing to live as if it's the last day. That kind of meaning in the acceptance of what is. Can a fellow do that? He can hope so, he can strive his damned-est to do it.

LINES FOR APRIL 30

What if
the silence

swallows me?
What if

I can't return?

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL MAY 1, 2002

The day is greyish

but that didn't keep the robins from going crazy at 5:00 a.m. They thought they had something to cheer about, obviously.

I think about "the long valley" we passed through on Wednesday going back to Missoula from Boise, Idaho. We were driving Highway 55. The mountains opened into a long, high valley. It was ranch country mostly - not picturesque, post-card ranches but working outfits where men and women were struggling to pull a living from the land. The long, high light laid a kind of sadness on the land and buildings in the valley. Life is work, you come to understand as you pass through such territory. There's no movie star loveliness to be found, only the persistent grit of those who labor.

Here, while I was away, farmers have been working their fields. The soil is being smoothed to an even consistency. It's a darkness that will soak up heat during the day, will give it back to the night air.

In Ripon, lawns have been mowed. It's only May 1 - it could snow yet this season, yet those neatly trimmed lawns that have already been mowed. A study in green and white.

LINES FOR APRIL 29

The world's noise,
or my own?

I will go alone.

IVAN BURGESS'S ECHO ECHO

"Lyle Morgan showed up

at Paul's Cafe the morning after his 40th Anniversary," Ivan reported. "He said, 'My wife said not to even talk to you.'"

"Casey Edell bought coffee for the As the Bladder Fills Club last Monday morning," Ivan said. "Casey had spent a couple of days attending a Piano Technician school in Vermillion, South Dakota, on the campus of the college there. I hope you noticed that Casey is no longer a mere piano tuner, he is now a piano technician."

"I spent forty-five minutes in Paul's Cafe last Wednesday morning," Ivan said, "and all I learned was - the cool damp weather is good for the late-planted wheat. Lets it catch up. Hope I can remember that."

"When Lady Godiva rode naked down the streets of Coventry," Ivan said, "she was riding side-saddle. I think that was the origin of the yell, 'Hoorah for our side.'"

"Did you know that Bobbi Miles has a doctorate in Chemistry?" Ivan asked. "Since I found that out, I'll probably never be comfortable in visiting with her again."

"Doctor asked me if I had a cataract," Ivan reported. "I said, 'No, I got a Pontiac.' Me and the bank can't afford them high-priced cars."

"Thursday the 17th is the seniors two man scramble at the Smith Center Country Club," Ivan said. "I think you have to be 50 years old to enter. So you won't see me there. I don't have any photo I.D., and I sure don't look like I'm 50."

"If the temperature hits seventy degrees on Monday," Ivan promised, "I'm breaking out my shorts."

"Had several turkey hunters in town this past week," Ivan said. "All the local folks say they see huge bunches of turkeys. Those hunters say a wild turkey tastes better than a domesticated one. I find that kinda hard to believe. Of course I am not a road kill gourmet."

"The way I've got er figgered," Ivan said, "last week was winter's last hurrah. I came to that conclusion when I heard a male sparrow saying naughty things to a female sparrow in the sparrows' rite of foreplay. Then I saw a female cottontail wiggling not only her nose but also her cottontail at a male cottontail. Then lastly I saw a couple of male squirrels running and jumping and climbing a walnut tree. A female squirrel was sitting demurely on a branch watching. I think the one that could run the fastest, climb the highest, and had the biggest nut would be the one she invited into her boodwar. So, Old Man Winter, you might as well pack it in. You've had it. See you next November."

"I still would like to see a moseying contest on Old Settlers Day," Ivan said, "between or among Roger Barta, Jack Benn, and Randy Schultz. The winner would be the one that could walk a half a block in the slowest time. The third place trophy would be a jar of molasses. The second place trophy would be a ceramnic turtle. And the first place trophy would be a ceramic snail. The only rule would be that they had to be visibly moving at all times."

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL APRIL 30, 2002

We are back

from Missoula. We are back from the mountains. We are back from a world of excess - shove of rock and curve of road and up and down. We've come back to our tidy squareness. We've come back to coolness and bright blue sky. It was reassuring to step out of the airport in Appleton last night and not be ringed by mountains. It was reassuring to see a flatness of light and darkness in all directions. The mountains are lovely to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

It's a green, green world we've come back to - the lawns, the ditches, some of the fields. It's a green and blue and black world today - the grass, the sky, the soil. The harsh edge of winter has been softened with greenness all around. Even the trees are leafing out.

A red-tail hawk on a power pole north of Five Corners, its breast to the sun. It is an electric day. The hawk is prepared for anything.

LINES FOR APRIL 28

Strange prayers, these mutterings,
these empty barrels in the wagon.

LINES FOR APRIL 25

Never
whether

weather,
but which.

LINES FOR APRIL 24

The morning like
disappointment

spills its hope.

LINES FOR APRIL 23

This sadness, a coat
I wear by choice?

LINES FOR APRIL 22

The grey lay
of the sky -

glumness like
a blanket

on the day -
enfolds what's

left of hope.

IVAN BURGESS'S ECHO ECHO

"Overhead a fellow

in the Lebanon cafe say, 'I'm not only illiterate, I can't even read or write,'" Ivan reported.

"Over the years," Ivan said, "I've heard Gaylord people talk about people they called Bones, Poke, Derb, Shag, Peeler, Teak, Toad, Smoker John, Jimmy Pepper, Shug, Crab, Keno, Piddle, and on and on. I've often wondered if anybody in Gaylord was called by their right name."

"Some old Scotsman said many years ago, 'The best laid plains of mice and men oft go astray,'" Ivan said. "Had a classic example of that right here in Smith Center last week. Lynn at the Second Cup had a sign up that said, 'No soup until October.' Last Thursday morning, in the middle of the showery rain and with the temperature just barely hovering above the freezing mark, the sign was changed. The sign read, 'Today, Chili.' You just gotta go with the flow."

"I guess if you are not a farmer and dependent on the weather, there are some things that escape your attention," Ivan said. "Last Thursday I heard several farmers say 'We needed this rain.' They were talking about the pastures greening up, mostly."

"Kids must have been a lot smarter in my day," Ivan said. "I see where the modern-day students take forensics. Back in my day we took fiverensics. Some of the really bright students took sixrensics even."

"I have never heard so many people say they are getting tired of winter as I have this year," Ivan said.

"John Sparks," Ivan said, "was comparing our presidential election to a beauty contest in [fill in here the name of your least favorite northern European country, or of a neighboring state]. Someone asked how it came out. The man said there wasn't any winner, but one girl took third place."

LINES FOR APRIL 21

Again

the sun
comes up

again.

WISCONSIN CENTER FOR THE BOOK HONORS LETTERS ABOUT LITERATURE WINNERS

Yesterday, at the close

of the Wisconsin Literary Bash during the Prairie Chicken Festival at the Mead Wildlife Area north of Milladore, Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Center for the Book honored the winners of its 2007-2008 Letters About Literature program. I have been coordinator of Wisconsin's Letters About Literature program since last summer so, as you might imagine, I was front and center.

The mission of the Wisconsin Center for the Book is to promote the culture of the book by celebrating books and the book arts, encouraging the joy of reading and writing, and honoring Wisconsin's literary heritage. Letters About Literature is central in our effort to encourage the joy of reading reading and writing.

The LAL program (as we short-hand it) is sponsored in Wisconsin by the Wisconsin Center for the Book, of which I am a board member, and on the national level by the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress in partnership with the Minneapolis-based Target stores, which provide a $50 gift card for each of our First Place winners.

To enter the Letters About Literature competition, young readers write a personal letter to an author, explaining how his or her work changed their view of the world or themselves. Readers can select authors from any genre – fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or class, prose or poetry. The program has three competition levels: 1 – upper elementary; 2 – middle school; and 3 – high school. It encourages young readers to explore his or her personal response to a book, then to express that response in a creative, original way.

This year, approximately 56,000 young readers across the country participated.

Nearly 850 of those young readers were from Wisconsin. Entries went to the national office, where its judges selected 79 entries as semi-finalists; these were returned to me to send to our Wisconsin judges, who selected our winners.

I am grateful for the good service of the six Wisconsin judges who named nine young winning writers as the best of the best. Thank you.

I am also grateful to Target for the gift cards, to Wisconsin-based Book World and its Ripon store for gift certificates, and to the Wisconsin Center for the Book for the checks. Thank you all!

Last year, in preparation for taking over the program from my predecessor, I attended the awards ceremony, which was held at St. Norbert College in Green Bay.

I went to the awards presentation thinking that the program was about books.

At the presentation, as the students read their letters aloud, it became clear to me that the program is really about life changing experiences – about the powerful difference a book can make in a young person's life, about the power of books in shaping our lives.

Yesterday we honored nine Wisconsin students - a First Place winner, a Second Place winner, and an Honorable Mention at each of the three levels - and we awarded their prizes:

For Honorable Mention: A framed certificate, a $5 Book World (Ripon) gift certificate, a copy of Tom Montag's The Idea of the Local, and a copy of Trinity's Fairy Tales & Nonsense CD.

For Second Place: A framed certificate, a $50 check from Wisconsin Center for the Book, a $10 Book World (Ripon) gift certificate, a copy of The Idea of the Local, and a copy of the Fairy Tales & Nonsense CD.

For First Place: A framed certificate, a $100 check from Wisconsin Center for the Book, a $50 Target gift card, a $15 Book World (Ripon) gift certificate, a copy of The Idea of the Local, and a copy of the Fairy Tales & Nonsense CD.

And the winners are:

LEVEL 1 WINNERS – 2007-2008
-- Honorable Mention: Sydnee Eckberg, writing about Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Sydnee is from Appleton, Wisconsin, where she is in 6th grade at Highlands Elementary School.

-- Second Place: David Johnston, writing about Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli. David is from Racine, Wisconsin, where he is in 4th grade; he is being home-schooled.

-- First Place: Matthew Stokdyk, writing about the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe, specifically referencing "Evening Star," "The Raven," and "The Bells." Matthew is from Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, where he is an 6th grade.

LEVEL 2 WINNERS – 2007-2008
-- Honorable Mention: Abby Mickelson, writing about Jennifer Armstrong's Shattered. Abby is from Barron, Wisconsin, where she is in 8th grade at Riverview Middle School.

-- Second Place: Kimberly Klammer, writing about Marie McSwigan's Snow Treasure. Kimberly is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she is in 7th grade at Whitman Middle School.

-- First Place: Taylor Kurowski, writing about Wendelin Van Draanen's Runaway. Taylor is from Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she is in 8th grade at Parkview Middle School.

LEVEL 3 WINNERS – 2007-2008
-- Honorable Mention: D.B., writing about Travel Team by Mike Lupica. She is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where she's in 9th grade at North High School.

-- Second Place: Alexa Schultz, writing about Please Stop Laughing at Me by Jodee Blanco. Alexa is from Clintonville, Wisconsin, where she is senior at Clintonville High School.

-- First Place: Tracy Haack, writing about the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. Tracy, too, is from Clintonville, Wisconsin, where she is also senior at Clintonville High School. (No, the judges did not know they were selecting two students from the same school.)

Please join the Wisconsin Center for the Book in congratulating these nine students. And, indeed, join us in congratulating all the students who were part of this year's Letters About Literature program. Everyone of the students who submitted a letter is a winner in my book!

NOTE: Students and/or teachers who have not yet participated in the Letters About Literature program can get more information by contacting the LAL coordinator, Tom Montag, at [email protected] or 920-346-5235. Guidelines for the 2008-2009 competition will be available at the end of August or early September.

LINES FOR APRIL 18

An eyeless sky.
This morning storm.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL APRIL 19, 2002

Ah, April.

Yesterday the county was going to conduct its tornado drill. The weather obliged with a real tornado watch for us, so the drill was postponed. A great storm rolled through last night, but I don't think any funnels touched down in Fond du Lac County.

It's a grey, wet morning, about what you'd expect the morning after that kind of storm.

In the driveway and street, a red carpet of buds washed off the silver maples. The trees are no longer red-hued against the sky: all that's been blown out of them.

The temperature is down to 50 degrees. Coming from the other direction, we'd say it was warm. Coming from the heat we've had, it seems a cool morning.

I have been angry, and my anger is slower to dissipate than storm clouds. The fury of my internal weather has not found expression in its kind of thunder and lightning. Where the sun tries to break through the cloud cover in the eastern sky, there is no sun shining through my greyness. You have to get over it, yeah, you do; but you won't until after the storm has moved through.

LINES FOR APRIL 17

A chase of squirrels
at one turn.

The dead raccoon
at the next.

Such light
between.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL APRIL 18, 2002

Last night five planets lined up

in a straight row, shooting right through the moon about dusk. It was a clear evening, full visibility, everything bright and amazing.

A storm rolled through this morning - lightning and thunder and even some rain. So the streets are wet. Before the storm, the birds were crazy with noise, and now afterward they have taken up their business again. Their business is our business, though we don't recognize that fact as often and as widely as we should.

Along the garage - peonies reach up for the sky. They've shot up three inches since yesterday, some of them.

The wind seems to be from the east. The sky is grey. There is an even-handedness to the morning, however - it's grey, but not severe. Though the weatherman on the radio is promising "hail and damaging winds" later on.

LINES FOR APRIL 16

Every day
is not

every day.
This day

is this.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL APRIL 17, 2002

Temperatures yesterday

were in the 80s across the state except in Superior where it was 46. You'd call that locally-heavy coolness.

It's a grey morning.

I saw a wood duck land at a lower hole in the same silver maple I'd seen the wood ducks in earlier. Now - is that two nests, or did one pair of birds change locations? Shall I ever know, and will it matter to the birds? Not one twit.

Two daffodils along the garage.

A spit of rain during the night - beads of it on the windshield. Every bird calls out this morning. A jet rumbles overhead.

Today is "bulky article pick-up" day in Fairwater and the village looks like a garbage dump all along the curbs. Everything is stacked up in a state of abandonment; residents have given up on these items,and resist owning them any longer.

A shurrr of tires on the wet asphalt as I head north out of town. Sound and sun.

It smells like a morning in June - that humus of earth and moisture and greenness.

On a street in Ripon, a shine of blindness where the sun hits a slick of moisture. I drive through it, beyond it; we all do. Every day we go beyond mere reflection into the realness of what is more than image.

LINES FOR APRIL 15

Solace and
sadness. Some

in this pocket,
some in that.

IVAN BURGESS'S ECHO ECHO

"Got a letter to the editor

from Wally Windscheffel," Ivan reported. "I think Wally might have been the worst golfer I ever played with - but that's a different story. His letter said: 'Dear Editor, In the latest edition of the Echo my old friend Ivan Burgess (I emphasize the old because he is older than I am) complained not once, but twice, about the quality of store-bought peaches and tomatoes. Well, don't get all upset and weepy about the poor man's plight. Last summer I invited him to come to Grand Junction, Colorado. To my eightieth birthday party. Knowing how much he says he likes Colorado peaches, I promised if he would come to my party I would personally buy him a whole case of them. This was not just any old Colorado peach but Palisade peaches, the queen of them all. Wally Winscheffel.' Now about Wally's golf. He and I and Bud Bierman were playing the Patty Jewet golf course in Colorado Springs. It was a posh place to play golf. We were on the back nine when the ladies of the club had an afternoon tea or something stronger. The ladies were all dressed in their finery. Large hats and gloves that ran up to their elbows. The tea party was held on the patio outside of the elegant clubhouse. Wally, on his second shot, hit it right on the toe of his club. The ball went straight to his right. The club house had exposed rafters. Wally's ball started bouncing around in the exposed rafters. All the ladies dressed in the fancy white dresses started jumping up, knocking over tables, spilling food and drink all over themselves. We were so far away that nobody even suspected anybody could hit a ball that crooked. We never looked or acted like we saw what was happening. We just walked on down the fairway. They never knew what happened. But I know Wally toed the ball and caused the commotion."

"Jeri Duntz said, and I quote," Ivan said, "'when the temperature gets to seventy degrees, I'm going to wash the windows.' Last week, when the temperature was getting uncomfortably close to seventy, she added these stipulations, '... and it's gotta be on a weekend. It can't be too windy.' And there was something else. I think it was she had to be in the mood to wash windows."

"Saw Doc Shep last Tuesday," Ivan said. "Shep made the observation that neither of us had winter-killed. I told Shep that I was going to come out and watch him play golf one of these days. He said his game was hardly worth looking at."

"At the last forensics contest," Ivan reported, "someone's cell phone went off right in the middle of a presentation. Judge Mike Hughes was really upset. I'll bet from now on all cell phones will be turned off. If they ain't, Mike is liable to take the cell phone owner down and sit on him. Bet the guy with the cell phone would make sure that didn't happen twice."

"I wonder," Ivan said, "if the ballots for president of the United States will have a place for 'none of the above.' I guess you could write it in."

"You talk about getting old," Ivan said. "Last Thursday at the As the Bladder Fills Club, Casey Edell came in, sat down, and said, 'There is one thing I want to know.' After forty-five minutes, no one - including Casey himself - could remember what the one thing that Casey wanted to know was, and no one could remember what the answer was."

"I think I heard Dennis Reinert say early last Friday morning that he was looking for cow/calf pairs," Ivan said. "Then I'm sure I did hear Dick Weltmer say he was taking some 3 to 5 year old cows to a sale. I don't know what all that means, but the people sitting around either did, or acted like they did. We have better actors right here in Smith Center, Kansas, than they have in Hollywood, California. The local actors always act like they understand what is going on when actually they don't have a clue."

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL APRIL 16, 2002

Record-breaking temperatures

across the state yesterday, well into the seventies here. We have blue sky overhead today, a bright sunshine, every possibility fully exposed.

I step outside. The very first daffodil is blooming along the garage, bright as the sun. Geese pass overhead. Yesterday as I walked across the parking lot to the office at work four geese passed very low overhead. The sound I heard I thought was strange goose talk, very strange, then I realized what I was hearing was actually the whirr of their wings. This morning, here at home, the killdeers have gone crazy. Why are they so insane? Are we all insane?

The wind is from the south; it blows away a long, dark line of geese.

The radio talks of trouble. There is trouble everywhere, you'd think. But for this brief, bright moment, there's no trouble here. Of course, as they say, "it's still early in the day."

LINES FOR APRIL 14

Sometimes see-
ing comes from

breaking. Some-
times not. Wis-

dom knows the
difference.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL APRIL 15, 2002

We've got blue sky and

clouds mixed up amongst each other. We were in Iowa for the weekend; Fairwater streets looked a bit wet when we got home, as if there had been some rain in the afternoon.

I step to the car. It is a lovely day - birds sing madly, tires whining in the distance on the highway, the pond a mirror.

North of the village - the haze in the distance - an African plain, early morning, lionnesses think about a hunt, smaller creatures thinking about moving on. About moving on or becoming energy in some larger creature's belly. We are all, ultimately, energy in some creature's belly.

MISS THUNDER 1-3-0

I told you

a bit about her before, here, Miss Thunder 1-3-0, a Guild B30 flat-top acoustic bass made in 1988, serial number 130. I haven't told you that during spring break, on Sunday, March 16, I headed out of town, to pick her up from her curator in Alexandria, Virginia. I would become Miss Thunder's new curator, an awesome responsibility.

Because I had been getting pretty tired of our unrepentant winter by that point, I was hoping the trip would also be a trip into springtime for me, as I headed east and somewhat south. No such luck. It is an awfully grey travelogue I would have to put up. The matted lawns all along the way were still of uniform drabness. All the trees were still bare naked. And, surprising to me, I still saw evidence of snow in a lot of shaded areas between here and Washington, DC.

On the first day's drive, I got almost to Wheeling, West Virginia, before I stopped for a night's rest. I was scheduled to pick up Miss Thunder in Alexandria at 4:30 p.m. local time on Monday, an easy drive. Indeed, I had time to get myself a late lunch in the cafeteria at Mount Vernon (yes, that Mount Vernon), and to sit for an hour in the parking lot making notes in my journal. And to notice that, here at last, there was some greenness of grass in the lawn, and in the trees some urgent leafing. And some sun on everything, as if a blessing on my enterprise.

Near the appointed time, I headed the mile north, located the house where Miss Thunder resided, and parked my carcass in a school parking lot to await the resident musician's arrival at home after his day's work.

He did arrive, right on schedule.

He let the dogs out, then led me upstairs to a roomful of his basses - from a bright and lovely upright to a well-worn and well-loved vintage Fender, a six-string this and a fretless that, a four-string this, a five-string that, and the other. The room was like a shrine to the god that bass players worship, let me put it that way; and I was awed into reverence.

He took Miss Thunder out of her case and handed her to me, offering me a place to sit and try her out.

Oh, my.

"If you don't mind," he said when I was done, and he took the bass from me.

He played her for three or five or seven minutes, I don't know. I felt almost as if I were intruding on some act of intimacy, his moment of telling Miss Thunder good-bye.

"Keep me up to date about what you do with her," he said as he packed her in the case for me.

"I will," I said.

*

I will spare you the l-o-n-g version of getting onto I-395 instead of I-495, seeing the Pentagon off to my left as I approached the Potomac, shortly before I-395 dumped us onto 14th Street in downtown Washington, DC, during afternoon rush hour. Suffice it to say that Miss Thunder was riding shotgun in the passenger seat, and I had no place I had to be.

This is the short version. I got to drive past the Treasury Department and the Holocaust Museum; I got to see the Washington Monument, and did I get a glimpse of the White House there off to my left, or did I just imagine it?

What a mess of traffic. You people are insane! I might have said at one point.

Yet I was having fun driving with the locals, watching their curious way of blocking intersections when the light was against them, so they could get through at the next light change, oblivious to the gridlock they were creating. Suddenly it was starkly obvious why I like Fairwater and rural Wisconsin. For us, a traffic jam is when three vehicles get to Five Corners all at the same time.

At some point, I moved over to 16th Street from 14th, and took 16th the rest of the way out to I-495 on the north side of the city, to I-270, to I-70, to Hagerstown, where I got something to eat and found a place to sleep.

On Tuesday, March 19, I drove from Hagerstown to Fairwater.

*

On Wednesday, as I headed to Ripon to get some groceries, I took Miss Thunder along, to introduce her to my guitar-pickin' friend, Doug Burk. Doug works second shift, and we had time to pick one before I went off to the store and he got ready for work. For the record, with me as her curator, the first song Miss Thunder played was "Bully of the Town."

Doug and I have played a few more songs since then, and Miss Thunder makes some terrific music with Doug's Mr. Martin. This winter and spring we have been working on eighteen instrumentals, trying to get them sweet and clean and smooth and pretty enough that we could even consider recording them. Well, we do record what we call the "practice tapes," even though the files are digital and get put onto a CD, which I bring home and practice to during the week. With our practice tapes, it is as if I'm playing music with Doug every day. And, with my diligent practice, I think I am getting better.

We get together most weekends and work at refining our songs, as we did yesterday, to which these photos of Doug and the Grumble Bear will attest.

Miss Thunder and the Grumble Bear. Photo by Geri Burk.

Doug and Mr. Martin. Photo by Geri Burk.

Right now we're content to work at perfecting our versions of eighteen songs (guitar and bass), and we're having an awful lot of fun. Doug says we have a ways to go. "Never say Whoa in a horse race" is what I say.

*

Miss Thunder may also appear in a few songs on the next CD that Doc Abbick, Dean Schechinger, and I record. We'll be getting together for a long weekend in May to start refining (and eliminating some of) the 17-18 original train songs Dean and I have created since our Fairy Tales & Nonsense album came out last October. As many of you already know, I mostly write the lyrics and play bass; Dean does most of the music for our songs, and sings harmony; and Doc mostly sings the songs, plays the front guitar, and serves as "producer." On the weekend of May 9th, 10th, and 11th, if you hear a ruckus coming from somewhere in the middle of the country, that'll be me and Doc and Dean, and we'll be working out the kinks.

Afterwards, likely, I won't be able to keep myself from telling you about our progress. You know how I am.

LINES FOR APRIL 11

Wind and
wisdom.

One is
nothing.

The other
neither.