Rambling Josh

Here we are, somewhere in time between the holiday trifecta of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. This time, like many times in our lives, makes its way around to us each year. Hmmm…like clockwork. Somewhere in time these times shift and change, sometimes slowly, so slowly they feel almost permanent. They feel as if they have somehow made it to a forever place in time.

Like a massive granite boulder, these times seem poised to sit unchanged, a reliable waypoint to reconvene with those that share our particular orbit in time. Always there, always steady, always solid, always right where it was the last time you moved through that time. A forever place, or, as the great philosopher, Buzz Lightyear, was fond of professing, “To infinity and beyond!”

But, just as that massive granite boulder is sure to erode, bit by bit, as the rain, wind, and snow wear on it day in and day out, so too are our forever places, and one-by-one, those that shared those places. Sure, time heals all wounds, but it also takes no prisoners and leaves no witnesses. So it goes.

I appreciate Buzz’s enthusiasm, optimism, confidence, and selfless dedication to all those that share his orbit. We should all be so lucky as to have someone (a real someone) with those characteristics in our corner. We’re all on a trajectory to eventually fall, might as well fall with a little style and panache while surrounded by those that want the best for us and we for them.

The holidays are the time when many of our oldest and most cherished memories were forged. So inevitably when this time rolls around, so to do those memories. The results of this yearly slow roll of memories can be mixed. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad, many times a bit of both, dependent upon the company you keep and how heavy their hand is when mixing your Tom

Our car has a manual transmission, a stick-shift, four-on-the-floor, actually six on the middle console, but that doesn’t have the same rhyme appeal. I had a 1958 Chevy Biscayne when I went to college, it had three-on-the-tree of course, people like lyrical stuff like that.

I’m sure many of you remember learning to “drive stick”. Whoever took on this instructional task most likely remembers it as well, and may still have lingering effects from the repeated whiplash they endured as their jerky voice tried to calmly spit out, “Give it some gas…not that much…ease out the clutch…EASE it out…start it up and try it AGAIN…”

Unlike standing on the porch and pointing out all the random swaths of grass that somehow evaded the notice of a lawn mower in training, teaching someone to drive stick is not a coffee drinking task.

I believe my Grandpa Ardell took on the task of teaching me to drive stick? By “teaching”, I mean that he stayed at a safe distance while I figured it out.

I was about 10-years old, and I was “helping” Grandpa and Uncle Tim repair some fence that bordered a stubble field. As I busied myself throwing dirt clods and rocks towards the general vicinity of my brother, they worked their way down the fence line. Eventually, they needed the pickup moved down the fence line as well.

Grandpa said, “Boys…Go get the pickup and bring it down by us.” Unlike most other requests, he didn’t have to repeat himself. We never passed up a chance to drive…or to fight…I won the footrace to the pickup, and the wrestling match in the cab, so I got to drive this time around.

I believe it was a blue Ford Club Cab? I remember the two tiny seats that faced each other in the club portion of the cab. It was an exclusive club, reserved for small children and limber adults. Small children that lacked the neck strength to keep their oversized heads from ricocheting between the back of the front seat and the back window as the driver lurched through the gears. So it goes.

Our son recently decided that it was time for him to learn how to drive stick. As a proponent of people limiting their limits, I was happy to set my coffee aside and ride shotgun. Rather than the preferred wide-open stubble field, we went to a wide-open parking lot before we kicked off the training wheels and took to the streets.

“Give it some gas…not that much…ease out the clutch…EASE it out…start it up and try it again…”

I always thought they should have a statement, suggestion, or warning on the rear bumper of vehicles with a manual transmission. Maybe, “Clutch In Use: Wide Berth On Incline Suggested.”

Although he might occasionally experience a little flop-sweat at a stoplight on an incline, Jackson is now a member of the stick shift club. One less limit in life.

Happy November. November is a sneaky month, a month that sort of hides out between fall and full-on winter. Then it leaps out from behind a leafless tree, in a slightly tattered Halloween costume, to say, “Remember everything you had planned to get done this year? Ain’t gonna happen…again.” So it goes.

I recently came across my inaugural “Ramblings” column, published in the November 3rd, 2004 edition of the Burke County Tribune. For some reason I had always thought that I had started writing this column somewhere around the summer of 2006? Like many things I’ve thought, it turns out I thought wrong.

So, if my math is correct, which is highly unlikely, this is the 16th anniversary edition of “Ramblings”. Dry your eyes.

Much has changed in life between the first and the pert near 400th column. Our kids were still kids, my parents were still the “D” and the “J” of DJs Food Center, Grandpa Ardell’s laugh and Grandma Rose’s kitchen creations still filled the air at the farm. It seems as though our lives expand and grow to a certain point, and then begin to shrink and contract.

This shrinking and contracting doesn’t necessarily lead to emptiness, it can lead to a stripped down version of life that is more authentically full, rather than just “full of it”. Fewer bells and whistles, more prairie breeze.

What has changed in your life over the past 16-years?

It seems like just yesterday that Jodi Benge, in her final “Just Jodi” column, suggested that anyone interested in writing a column should contact the tribune. When I contacted them regarding my interest in giving it a go, they responded with a few questions, such as, why I wanted to write a column, what I planned to write about, and how much I would charge?

My “why” was simply that I enjoy writing, and wanted a consistent reason to purposely engage in it. I thought that I would mainly write about health and nutrition, with a little bit of family life and the general goings on of day-to-day life sprinkled in. As it turns out, and as my Grandpa Ardell hoped, over the years I’ve written very little about health and nutrition. Boring my students with that stuff seemed sufficient enough.

Being a shrewd negotiator, my response to their final question of “how much I would charge”, was, “I didn’t know I was going to get paid?” My wife handles the finances in our household.

I named the column “Ramblings” because that seemed to indicate the least restrictive boundaries of potential future column topics. One can ramble about most anything, and I am grateful to the tribune for providing the space to do just that for the first and third Wednesday of the month over the past 16-years, and to you for reading some of them.

What I wrote 16-years ago still applies, “I enjoy writing, and my dad always told me I should make a career out of it. I’m not quitting my day job just yet, and if you find that you would rather clean your geese on this column than read it, you can blame my dad. It’s always the parents fault.”

I received word from my mom the other day that Marlis Glaspey had passed away. Part of living, being alive, and taking part in this life is that we receive word of such more and more as we move further and further along in our journey. Receiving such word always comes with an unpredictable array of thoughts and feelings, all dependent upon one’s personal relationship to the recently deceased individual.

If you lived in Lignite, you knew Marlis. My brother and I were paperboys in Lignite in the early 80’s. My brother, Jarvis, delivered papers to those living east of Main Street, and I delivered to those living west of Main Street.

Due to the very varying temperaments possessed by my brother and I, those that lived east of Main Street were generally a few hours ahead of the game when it came to being “in the know” of any newspaper worthy goings on. As my Grandpa Ardell always said, “Old news is still news if you haven’t read it yet.”

Marlis was the Post Master in Lignite when we were kids. The newspaper bundles were dropped off at the post office, and my brother and I would come to the post office to get the papers for delivery.

I was just a kid, but I remember that Marlis never spoke to me as “just a kid”. She spoke to me as if I might actually know something, and she appeared honestly interested in what that something might be. I always appreciated that, and as so often happens in life, I wish I would have expressed my appreciation to her. So it goes.

As I begrudgingly filled my bag with newspapers, she would always…always…always, ask about my day, and wished me well as I slogged out the door, my scrawny frame swaying under the weight of news, sale flyers, comics, and the such.

Even as a knucklehead little kid, I remember being amazed at how quick, yet effortlessly, she moved while attending to her various Post Master duties. When I got older, no less of a knucklehead, but older, I was always impressed by the dignified way in which she carried herself. Always neatly dressed, hair always done, spritely, spirited, yet graceful with a ready smile and a kind word.

I would go so far as to say that if there were ever a Queen of Lignite, it was Marlis. Not the type of queen that sits around barking orders and pointing her scepter at what needs to be done, but the kind that leads by doing what needs to be done.

Lignite has lost a rock, a pillar of the community, an individual that took it upon herself to selflessly give of her time, and do whatever it was that needed to be done while never asking for anything in return except to proudly call Lignite her home.

My sincere condolences to Marlis’s loved ones, may you find some comfort in the life she lived and all that she meant to Lignite.

Long live the Queen.

“Have a good day sir”…“Good morning sir”…“Good afternoon sir”…I’m suspicious of a conspiracy of late, a conspiracy bent on attempting to make me feel old. These greetings, salutations, and general utterances of good tiding, with the added “sir”, have seemed to increase in the frequency of which they are aimed at me throughout the average day.

I believe the conspiracy was first set in motion by a few students on campus, most likely in hopes of kindness when it came time for me to dole out grades, but it seems to be spreading to the wider world of my general comings-and-goings.

I suppose that the politeness of others should be accepted as such, and simply enjoyed without excessive suspicion. Especially given the impolite arc that is portrayed so often on social media and media in general.

Speaking of “impolite”, I watched my first presidential debate last week. I blame it on all the “sir” stuff. I am officially an adult…though none the wiser.

Politics doesn’t really blow my hair back, never has, even when I had hair. Mullets and rat tails tend to be apolitical, although, if a presidential candidate were to sport such, they would have my vote.

I’ve always found the whole political party thing interesting to occasionally observe from afar. Very far afar. We humans are very social, tribal, team orientated animals who have been evolutionarily programed to view the “other team” with varying shades of suspicion, contempt, and outright dislike.

Sort of like the old high school rivalry between the Panthers of Burke Central and the Eskimo’s of Bowbells. “Those people” think they are so good, “those people” are basket of pompous jerks, “those people” deserve utter destruction on the athletic field.

Then school and sports co-ops occur, and “those people” become teammates, “those people” are sitting in the same dugout with you, cheering for the same things as you, even cheering for you. All through the simple magic of putting on the same jersey, and working towards the same goals, our view of “those people” is forever altered.

The mudslinging between political teams is nothing new of course, Plato wrote about it over 2,000 years ago, and some find enjoyment in observing and being a part of the whole spectacle. Some revel in engaging in meme wars on social media, bent on making the goofy rich mascot of the other team look goofier than the goofy rich mascot of their team. Goofy indeed.

With all the technology we have, would it be possible to have a political-free social media outlet where we can simply enjoy keeping up with the lives of our families and friends? You know…the stuff that really matters. Sure, maintaining our democracy requires an engaged public, but everything surrounding that engagement doesn’t live and die within the nuthouse of Goofy and the gang.

There are no Republicans or Democrats in foxholes, only Americans. Americans helping Americans, people helping people, humans being humane. Panthers and Eskimos uniting.

The silly season is upon us, but like the intestinal impact of a tainted gas station corndog…this too shall pass. Stay well my friends.

Wildfire season comes and goes each year with varying amounts of acreage burned, structures lost, and sadly, lives lost. In passing, we might see the video footage, photos, and news reports of these fires, but generally it is just that…in passing.

In passing, because it’s not our acreage, it’s not our structures, it’s not the lives of anyone we know. It’s news, and, for better and for worse, our lives tend to be inundated with news. Most of which has very little to do with the various comings and goings of our day-to-day lives.

We had a log cabin in Montana, an authentic hand-made-from-the-bottom-up-inside-and-out-off-the-grid log cabin, and by “hand-made” I mean by our hands, the hands of the Ellis and Richter families. We have small hands, so the cabin took quite a few years to fully take shape.

Bits and pieces from our lives gradually came together like the notes in a song, each bit, each piece added something to the melody of our cabin. That melody slowly unfolded into verse and song. A song that seemed to perpetually add verses and to stretch on without end.

Is a song that stretches on without end a song? Logic and reason would indicate that a song, no matter how good, must have a final note. It must end. It must end, or we won’t get to listen to it in its entirety again and again and again…We won’t get to sit back with our eye’s closed and say, “this is my favorite part”.

We could have done without logic and reason. We all could have done without that “final note”. We all would forgo the opportunity to sit back with our eye’s closed and say, “this is my favorite part” for the joy that came from adding more favorite parts. The joy that came from adding notes and verses to a song that wasn’t supposed to end.

As we sifted through the ashes we found various bits-and-pieces, various notes that reminded us of a particular verse of that song we were composing. Maybe in time we’ll begin another song…maybe?

Until then, and most likely ever after then as well, we have the memories of something beautiful, something we built, something cherished, something good. A good thing gone. So it goes.

Thankfully, no lives have been lost in the Bobcat Fire that has burned over 30,000 acres in the Musselshell County of Eastern Montana. Most are not aware of this fire, some may have heard or seen a bit about it in passing, and that’s well and good. To know more than what one learns in passing about any wildfire is to probably know about something one wishes they didn’t have to know about.

We know about the Bobcat Fire, we know the acreage burned, we know the structures lost. We wish we knew nothing about it. We wish our cabin was standing on its ridge, the ridge with grass and trees gently swaying to the music of a never ending song.

We wish that all good things didn’t have to end.

I don’t know him, I never will, but I will most likely see an image of him for quite some time. Maybe that’s all he wanted? Just wanted to be seen, to be thought of, to have someone shed some tears and feel specifically for him. I’ve done all that for him. Now what?

There’s a bridge that crosses the creek, a bridge that takes the bike path from one side of the creek to the other. I like the bike path, it follows the same path as the creek through town, the path gets you away from traffic, the creek drowns out the sound of that traffic. Creeks drown things out, that’s what they do. So it goes.

I like the bridge too. I always stop on the bridge, right in the middle, where its gentle arc up turns to a gentle arc down. I stop in the middle because in the middle all I can hear is the creek, and when all I hear is the creek it makes room in my mind for things that need room.

Why did he do it here? Why did he do it at all? If I had made it to the bridge a little sooner would all that happened have happen differently? Maybe better? Maybe worse? Maybe I should have stayed home, stayed away from the creek, away from the bridge? But, I like the creek, I like the bridge, I like the way the world looks and sounds from there.

I know what the world looked and sounded like the moment before he could no longer see or hear this world that he felt he no longer wanted to be a part of. What he did to himself is over for him, just beginning for me. The creek, the bridge, they are still there, but they are different now. Different to me, because of him.

I’d rather it be different for me than someone else I suppose. Someone much younger, someone just learning to ride their bike, someone just learning to love the bike path, the creek, the bridge. It can stay as it has always been for them.

It could have been different for him, could have been different for me, but it is exactly what it is for both of us. Like the creek, I will move on. Move on under many more bridges, over many more rocks, through life, a part of life. Move on in a manner I wish he could have. Move on and hope that I can look down upon the water from the middle of that bridge and see water again, only water.

Water. Not him. Not that way. But for now I see him. Lifeless, because he chose to be lifeless. I know nothing of the many “whys” that may have moved him to this choice? From that same bridge I’ve paused many times and felt thankful for the life I have, felt moved to smile, felt moved to live deeper and fuller. Same bridge…different lives.

If you feel as though you can no longer bridge some of the gaps in your life, please reach out and talk to someone.

After many months of plague induced recess, it’s back-to-school time for many, myself included. This August is going to be a bit different than most Augusts any of us can recollect. Unless you were around during the Spanish Flu of 1918, which if you were, your recollection ability may be a bit compromised. Being 130-years old, or dead, does that.

Many people have put in many hours over the past months to prepare, as much as one can prepare, to open up the schools again in as safe a manner as possible. At least as safe a manner as our current understanding of the situation allows for. We may be right, we may be wrong, only time will tell.

As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Many have done “something”, many have put themselves into “the arena”, and, as is most always the case, some have done nothing but criticize the actions of those doing the work. Simply running one’s mouth is simple. I guess it is “doing something”, but it’s rarely doing something useful.

Back to Teddy, our adopted son of the Dakotas, and his famous Citizenship in a Republic speech, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man (and woman) who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I thank those that have spent much of the past months in the arena. Doing what needs to be done, so that parents who never intended on being in charge of their child’s ability to comprehend mathematics can go back to basic parental duties.

Things like replacing the cardboard tube with a new roll of toilet paper, not putting an empty milk carton back in the fridge, noticing you have dog crap on your shoes before walking through the house. Run of the mill parenting things. Things that were in the “Stuff You’ll Need to Relentlessly Harp on Your Kids About” parenting manual.

I’m fairly certain that there isn’t a mask large enough to contain the smiles of parents dropping their kids off at school this year.

We don’t know what the coming months are going to bring, we never actually knew, but we used to have a fairly close proximity to the general way of things. We don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but as John Wooden once said, “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” So it goes.

Happy August. The time machine seems to have slipped into a higher gear the past few weeks. There’s a lot more summer stretching off into the rear-view mirror than on the horizon ahead. As Joni Mitchell sings, “the seasons they go round and round…”

I’m looking forward to getting back on campus for the fall semester, and am hopeful that we are able to keep the plague at bay. Hope is useful to an extent, but in reality, bringing a few thousand students from all over the globe to a college campus is most likely going to generate some viral activity. Viral activity beyond the norm of a college campus.

I was able to fly the coop last week for four or five days of cabin time. Just me and the dog, it worked out on both of our schedules. He’s good company, and being a 12-year old lab, most of his go has went, so he’s basically a lumpy rug that eats and farts. So it goes.

The cabin is a special place, and I am quite grateful for every moment I get to spend there. In his book “Walden”, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” I thought of that often as I looked at the empty chairs in the cabin and pondered who I’d like to have sitting with me?

Some people are good at just sitting with you. Most likely because you’re good at just sitting with them? Just sitting, just being, in that space where the silence between words outnumbers the words. Less is more…more or less.

I’ve been waiting for a song about our cabin to present itself, and on this last trip the words rolled off the green tin roof, and were kind enough to let me collect them. The song is called “Little Log Cabin”, and I hope to sit with you there some day.

There’s a little log cabin we call Wolves Ridge
In the Bull Mountains of Montana is where it lives
It sits quietly amongst the pines and the tall grass
Built with love, built with friendship, built to last

Chorus:

Through the winter storms and the summer heat
It stands up to it all so we can just be
Just be together, just be in love
In that little log cabin under the stars above

Music and smoke fills the cool night air
Whiskey and laughter like you haven’t a care
Lovers and family old dogs and old friends
Warmed by the fire of this little log cabin

(Repeat Chorus)

We come when we can, we leave when we must
Head back to the world and all that needs us
That little log cabin we call Wolves Ridge
Waits in the Bull Mountains, yeah that’s where it lives

(Repeat Chorus)

I was conducting a roundup of stuff that is no longer of use to our family, so that it could be donated to those that it may be of use to. This particular roundup was quite successful, yielding seven boxes of stuff. Mainly clothes, books, and shoes that had served their purpose for us, or never ended up fulfilling the purpose we’d had in mind when they were purchased.

As is always the case during a stuff roundup, one always comes across things that have managed to be forgotten or misplaced for whatever reason. A forgotten box of photo albums can quickly put a stuff roundup on hold. An hour can easily pass as you find yourself standing over a box of memories, misty-eyed with nostalgia, flipping through pages of photos from when the kids were little, and loved ones lost were still among us.

This roundup had plenty of that. So it goes.

In a box marked “Jackson’s Room”, I came across a book “The Dangerous Book for Boys” by Conn and Hal Iggulden, that we had given Jackson back in 2007 for his 8th birthday. Jackson turns 21 in a few weeks, not a boy anymore, at least not as far as the world outside of his mom and dad is concerned. He’ll of course always be our boy.

I had written a note to Jackson on the inside cover the book. A note that I had forgotten I had written. It went like this…

Inside every boy lies the man they are destined to be. Inside every man lies the boy they once were. Enjoy being a boy. Enjoy becoming a man. Enjoy being a man. In short, enjoy the journey of life and all the adventures it offers you. If it ever appears that there are no adventures, look harder, they are always there, or they can be created. As you grow into manhood don’t leave the boy behind, you’ll need him. You’ll need him to see all that is good in life. You’ll need him to see the joy of life. A man always needs to keep the little boy in him alive…always. I wish you the best of life. I wish to share in your life, and you in mine. You are my son, my little boy…always. Love Dad.

As Jackson approaches his 21st birthday, my wishes for him remain the same as they were when he turned 8, and I suspect the same will be true for all his years to come. If the chronology of life goes as planned, I won’t always be around to share in his life, that is supposed to be the way of it I suppose.

We only get to have and to hold for so long in life. We can’t have everything, and we shouldn’t hold so tightly that it stifles the growth and development of those within the orbit of our lives. A loose grip is much less fatiguing for all involved, and can be maintained longer with much less effort and angst.

Bit-by-bit, day-by-day, year-by-year…our grip on Jacksons life has gradually loosened more and more, but we’re within reach if he needs us…or, more likely, we need him.

Happy Birthday Jackson. We love you young man.