Rambling Josh

Awhile back there was a newspaper article headline that caught my attention, “Deer Poacher Sentenced to Watch “Bambi” Once a Month”. The gist of the article, for those that prefer the gist of things over the totality of things, was that some guy in Missouri poached hundreds of trophy bucks, got caught (obviously), was sentenced to one-year in prison, and must watch the Disney movie “Bambi” once a month while serving out his prison sentence.

The judge’s reasoning behind the unique sentencing was that he was hoping to illicit some sort of “emotional response” from the convicted poacher.

Once a month? That seems to be an unfairly light sentence. I shot one deer when I was 13-years old (legally), felt so bad that I didn’t give it another try for about 25-years, and then felt so bad that I don’t intend on doing it again. Unless it’s in self-defense, can’t let those young bucks push you around.

Two deer, and I was sentenced to watch “Bambi” twelve times a day for roughly three years. Then our daughter discovered “The Lion King” and my “Bambi” sentence was reduced to four times a day. There’s a lot of fine print and unspoken vagaries that come along with the life sentence of fatherhood. A lot of “emotional responses” too, mostly good, many unforgettable.

Emotional responses that far surpass anything a silly movie with talking animals could illicit (teapots, and all sorts of houseware, once “Beauty and the Beast was added to the sentence). Real life, the ups, the downs, the all arounds. The “good stuff”, as the sleeveless troubadour, Kenny Chesney, referred to it in a song he sleevelessly sang while sleevelessly strumming his six-string.

There’s a line in “Bambi” that I used to use on occasion when innocent little Sierra would ask me, “Where’s mommy?” It may seem a bit juvenile, bordering on mean, but none of us are issued a parenthood manual explaining what may or may not scar a child for life, so I would respond, “Your mother can’t be with you anymore, the hunters have taken her away.”

She only cried the first half-dozen times I rolled out that old chestnut. I suppose you could chalk it up to passive-aggressive behavior brought on my excessive exposure to talking animals attempting to impart morals on children whose parents were failing to do so. Low-fat diets and khaki pants with puffy-pleats were all the rage then too, so there was a general climate of madness in society. We were all victims. So it goes.

I hope the “Bambi” treatment teaches that stone cold poacher a lesson or two. If anything it’ll make his one-year sentence feel a bit longer. They should sentence him to wear puffy-pleated khaki pants and sing “Be Our Guest” to each new inmate brought in during his time at the prison. “No one’s gloomy or complaining while the flatware’s entertaining…we tell jokes…I do tricks with my fellow candlesticks….”

Disney themed prisons. Why should parents have all the fun?

A few months back we bought half a beef from my wife’s hairdresser. To be clear, Dawn doesn’t go to a meat locker to get her hair done, although that would be an interesting business model. “Moo-Mousse” perhaps? Maybe “Cowlicked”? I always found the old gibe, “he looks like he combed his hair with a pork chop” to be humorous. In the battle for clientele, “Cowlicked” could use it as a smear campaign against the hair-and-hock-hacks at “Moo-Mousse”.

Actually, we bought half a cow, but upon discovering that half a cow is not all that playful, we settled on half a beef. Maybe I should investigate my wife’s hairdresser a bit? Ensure that there isn’t any casual chit-chat going on regarding half a husband. You never know what they’re capable of when they get all hopped up on hair dye fumes.

We were asked if we wanted any of the offal, and being adventurous (idiotic), I said we would take the liver, heart, tail and tongue. I didn’t ask what the owner of the other half of our cow got, but through the process of elimination, I would decline any dinner party invitations from them.

There are a couple of reasons why I requested the offal, reasons that I will not entertain the next time my wife’s hairdresser calls for a hit on one of their cows. One reason is that I remembered opening the freezer at my grandparents' house to grab a green Fla-Vor-Ice freeze pop, and seeing a massive frozen cow tongue stretched out to its full length in plastic wrap.

Lacking the ability to resist idiotic inclinations, I held the tongue in front of my mouth and chased my brother around until Grandma Rose suggested otherwise. Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I heard, “Don’t run with a cow tongue in your mouth, you could choke.” A grandma must really question where she went wrong when she hears those words coming out of her mouth.

Knucklehead nostalgia aside, the other reasons for my offal request were academic and curiosity based. I teach a lot of health and nutrition courses, and offal is touted as healthy and nutritious, so I wanted some personal offal experience to share with my students.

Personal offal experience number one, was attempting to make my own liverwurst. I like liverwurst, what I made was not liverwurst. Possibly, liverworst, and most definitely awful. Our dog, who normally devours first and asks questions second, hesitated before helping me dispose of the grisly evidence.

Personal offal experience number two, was perpetrated by my wife. Inspired by the desire to create freezer space, Dawn pushed aside the heart and tongue to wrangle the last of the liver from the depths of the freezer. A liver and onion recipe was retrieved from our old friend, Chef Google, the very same chef that led me down the wayward liverwurst path. So it goes.

We reached through the steamy mist rising from our plates, clinked our wine glasses, tried not to think of Sir Anthony Hopkins suggestion of “fava beans and a nice chianti”, and dug in…sort of. The first few bites were overwhelmingly “ok”, and then the not-so-subtle taste and texture revealed itself, and the culinary experience began its rapid descent. We attempted to slow the descent by demoting our wine to mouthwash, but one can only ask so much from a bargain bin Riesling.

They say that when a pack of wolves brings down a prey that the alpha wolf gets the liver, and the rest of the pack gets the meat. That’s taking one for the team. Perhaps the alpha wolf is the wolf that was absent on the day the pack made nominations and voted for the alpha wolf position?

“Hey Wally, we elected you alpha wolf at the pack meeting last night.” Exasperated, Wally exclaims, “Meeting? What meeting?” “Oh, I guess you didn’t get the message, must have got lost in all the howling and such, but yeah, the vote was unanimous. Congratulations.”

Our dog won’t miss the next pack meeting.

We tend to accumulate a lot of “things” as we move through life. Some of these things are for a specific use, such as a toaster oven or a drawer full of pens (some of which even work). We hold onto these things for as long as they serve their purpose and do whatever it is we rely on them to do.

Some things we hold onto for other reasons. Reasons that go beyond the basic utility of the thing, reasons that only we may know and appreciate. Things that belonged to people we care about, people that may not be with us anymore. We hold onto these things because they serve a purpose, they are a tie that binds us physically to people we can no longer be in the physical presence of.

Some of these things belong to people that are still a part of our life, but the thing takes us to a place and time that has passed. People, time, places…like time machines, these things transport us.

Of course, like anything, this accumulation of things can go too far. Our time machine can begin to look like a dumpster, so overly laden with things that it’ll cease to take us anywhere. Except, perhaps, to a starring role on the latest episode of “Hoarders”. We all have our things, we just need to be vigilant in preventing our things from having us. So it goes.

This past summer, while sitting alone in the quiet of our cabin, I saw some things that made me think, made me remember, made me feel. Solitude (and a wee dram of rum) can take you to unexpected places, and this time it took me to a song. The song is oddly enough called “Things”. I am quite thankful for all the people that have painted the world I see, and look forward to adding a verse here-and-there as life continues to unfold.

Chorus:

I got things that mean something to me

They belonged to people who painted the world I see

To anyone else these things don’t mean much

But to me they’re pieces of heaven I can touch

Verse 1:

An old John Deere hat that wore upon his head

As he joked and laughed in the shade of his Southwind

A coffee pot pours out a cup of her love

Always serving others, now she’s our angel above

Verse 2:

A drill and hammer well worn by his hands

A well-built life, that to this day still stands

A deck of cards that brought her family together

When you’re young these things seem to be forever

Chorus

Verse 3:

A pair of cleats that he wore upon his feet

Fair and balanced, forever young, that’s what I see

Books of photographs, she’s captured everyone

A heart so big, a smile so wide, she taught us how to love

Verse 4:

A stack of love letters written from her heart to mine

Strength, beauty and devotion, stretching through time

Pictures in crayon that say “Daddy and Me”

Now they’re out in the world, finding what it needs them to be

Chorus

Outro:

All these people painted the world I see

All these things are not just things to me

Another semester is in the gradebook. The book told various academic stories, some ending in triumph, some in tragedy, and most lingering somewhere in between. The letters associated with each of these academic stories, the A’s down to the F’s, were laid in place by various human stories.

Stories of students finding meaning and purpose in their course work, and in their lives. Stories of students finding that college wasn’t for them. Stories of students just doing what they have to do to get by, and move a little closer to a yet to be determined destination. These stories, in all there forms, replay themselves year-after-year, and most likely always will.

Over the course of every semester a few students go AWOL academically. Some show up again a few weeks before finals with a new found urgency, asking…begging, “What can I do to pass this class?” A question that always brings forth a flood of sarcastic comments that make my right eye twitch as I struggle to contain them. My left eye is decidedly lazy, and gazes upon the student with detached disinterest.

Much as one would gaze upon anyone asking you what the very least amount of thought and effort is that they must put into something that you have put a tremendous amount of thought and effort into creating. Once the right eye stops twitching, I generally settle on detached disinterest…and mild sarcasm…so as not to complete disappoint my right eye and my mom.

Speaking of my mom, on December 18th, her and my dad (as far as I know), celebrated their 47th wedding anniversary. 47-years…that’s a long time to live in close proximity to the same human. That’s a year longer than I’ve been alive, well seven months, but who’s counting. Thank you Mom and Dad for the love story you’ve written over the years. It’s been an inspiration and a pleasure to be a part of.

Happy holidays everyone, you won’t be hearing from me again until next year, unless my wife has “plans” for me over the holidays. As my high school shop teacher, Leonard Savelkoul, once said, “We’re all alone down here, and “accidents” happen in the shop.” I would like to acknowledge the fact that if it weren’t for my wife’s planning, and her love of the Christmas season, many of our family and friends would get nothing from our household. No cookies, no cards, no gifts…no nothing.

It’s not that I don’t like the holidays, or my family and friends. I don’t really know what it is? Maybe it’s the fact that it takes me a good while to come to terms with the memories of Christmas past, before I can fully enjoy Christmas present? Whatever the reason, I am thankful for the tremendous thought and effort my wife puts into making the holidays special.

Maybe the grief I give my wife over the Hallmark Christmas movies she loves so much is founded in my own deep seeded feelings of insecure holiday jolliness? Or…maybe they are highly predictable sapfests, acted out by Hollywood flunkies who most likely cry mournful tears of regret for their once promising acting career each time the director yells “cut”. Exceedingly good looking Hollywood flunkies, with perfect hair and teeth, draped in form fitting flannel and Santa hats, but flunkies just the same. Maybe I should have quit while I was ahead? So it goes.

Each of us plays a part in a story of some sort. I hope you’re inspired to shoot for an “A” in yours. Happy Holidays.

Happy December. Many of you are most likely treading around, elf ears deep, in the rising tide of the holiday season, lashing yule logs together to stay afloat. Next month that tide will subside, and we’ll give a new year a go. This ebb and flow seems slow in the moment, but quite fleeting when one turns their attention towards all that has come and gone.

My wife and I started a family tradition, back when the kids were little, of venturing out into the Black Hills and cutting down our Christmas tree. With a Christmas tree permit of course. The authorities kick down your door and tear a wing off of your angel for a first offense Christmas tree poaching.

I’m not sure if we set out to start a family tradition at the time, or if it was just something we did once, and kept doing year-after-year? This year, like each of those past years, we went out into the Black Hills and found our Christmas tree. This year, unlike each of those past years, the “we” consisted of Dawn, myself, and our dog Pre. The kids are off “adulting”, revealing yet another territory our empty nest has encompassed. So it goes.

Before you get too far along in imagining us forlornly shuffling through the woods, I should inform you that a few years back the Richter family added this tradition as well, and began joining us for their own Christmas tree hunt. As always, Dawn and I enjoyed the company of my good friend Paul, his wife Jodi, and their four kids.

Paul and Jodi’s children haven’t fled to adulthood yet, so they can help Dawn and I deal with this now, and we’ll help them deal with it later. When their kids ditch them and the family traditions they’ve worked so hard to carry on through the years, we’ll be there. Four old people shuffling through the woods in search of Christmas past. I think I just wrote the plot to a Hallmark Christmas special.

I’ve decorated quite a few Christmas trees in my day, but this one proved to be the most difficult yet. Each ornament I took from the box of decorations had a memory attached to it, and I struggled with the weight of those memories. Dawn put a positive spin on the event, calling it our “honeymoon tree”, and we helped each other navigate yet another change in our lives.

Dawn suggested we watch a Christmas movie once the tree was properly festooned with memories from Christmas past. I was in the mood to wallow a bit longer in the past, and we watched home videos from Christmas 2002. I realized this had the potential of kicking me while I was down, but surprisingly, I found it quite cathartic. As I watched seven-year-old Sierra and three-year-old Jackson bounce around on screen, I felt some of that heaviness lift, and be replaced with gratitude.

The year 2002, sixteen short years ago (for the math impaired). Seems like you should be able to turn around and find everything and everyone it held not much more than an arm’s length away, but I found much of it has drifted beyond the capabilities of my reach.

What has changed in your life since 2002? I would imagine there’s been some good, and there’s been some bad, as that seems to be the way of things. There’s certainly nothing wrong with pausing our forward momentum to honor our memories with a few tears now and then, but that trees not going to decorate itself. Forward we must go.

Happy Thanksgiving. I’m in week 14 of our 16 week fall semester, that time of the semester when niceties are approaching their limits and the students and instructors have had enough of one another. Students are beginning to concern themselves with the final projects they were told to concern themselves with back in week one. Back in week one when I told them, “the semester goes fast, don’t put this off until week 14”…so it goes. I’d be surprised if went any other way.

There’s always a few of those high achiever type students, who consider anything less than 100% on any and all assignments a failure, and, of course, a few more students who consider anything not failing as “good enough”. Making these two ends of the academic ambition scale do group work together is a diabolical little game I like to play. A game played with the hope that both parties will come away with some life-lessons, a smidge of wisdom, and the same number of teeth they started the project with.

“Hope”, a four-letter word that often inadvertently winds up becoming the precursor to a variety of other four-letter words. Some of which I learned while handing my dad the tool he hadn’t hoped for while he was lying on the gravel in the driveway, wedged under whichever vehicle needed to be tinkered on that particular day.

“Tinkered” seems a bit too jovial of a word to describe any of the driveway automotive repairs I witnessed. You would be surprised how accurately you can judge the irritation level of someone just by observing the “attitude” of their cowboy boots sticking out from under a car. Perhaps I should have been less observant of dad’s “angry” Tony Lama’s, and a bit more focused on my tool gopher task. Group work…father and son tinkering on the car in the driveway…oh the lessons learned.

Dad learned that a career as an auto mechanic was not in the cards for his eldest son, and I learned that, with the proper motivation, dad, and his miffed Tony Lama’s, could slide out from under a car, across gravel, with impressive expedience and nary a hint of discomfort. “Ohhh, that wrench. Why didn’t you say something? I’m just standing here, you were all comfy in the gravel under the car.” Those words knew better than to move from my mind to my mouth.

There’s a meme that I share with my students at the beginning of group projects, “When I die, I want the people I did group projects with to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.” The potential for group work to go south is quite high, but when it works it’s quite gratifying for all involved. Keep that in mind as preparations for all the holiday gatherings begin to unfold.

Be helpful. Do what you can, when you can, for everyone you can. Dazzle your host and hostess, leave them hopeful that you and your ugly sweater (or whatever you call your date) will come again.

Happy Holidays.

A few weeks back, a clan of sorts convened at our cabin in Montana for the First Annual Colter Wall Singing Bee and general merriment. If you don’t know who Colter Wall is, take a stroll through YouTube, you might fancy his music. If you don’t know what general merriment entails, your clan has failed you, find a new clan.

Or, perhaps, and more likely, you have failed your clan? Perhaps, your presence scatters general merriment hither and yon, smothering it into a docile, dead-eyed, head nodding existence. How does one know if the clan or the individual is at fault for the absence of general merriment? As Robert Pirsig put it in his book, Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

This particular clan of seven people, and two dogs, holed up in an 18x20 one-room log cabin with no electricity, no cellular service, and no indoor plumbing for a few days on a cold and snowy October weekend. The clan was comprised of myself, our daughter Sierra, her “man friend” Troy, their friend Brittany, my brother Gabe, his friend and co-worker Terry Knutson, and Gabe’s brother-in-law Bradley Rosenquist. If any of these people shirked any duties, or called in sick during this time, I apologize for unraveling their stories.

Knowing how busy life can be, I sent the call out for this gathering a month or so in advance, to allow time for schedules to be bent and twisted a bit, if one was so inclined to do so. There were a few who weren’t able to make it work this time around, but the “First Annual” implies that a second annual may be forthcoming. For those that were willing, and/or able, to give up one of their yearly issued 52 weekends, I am quite grateful.

As the elder of the clan, there were times when I had to remove myself from the group gathered around the kitchen table to reload by the fire. In a one-room cabin you’re never too far removed from anything or anybody, but it was enjoyable to just sit and listen to the “youngsters” laugh and visit about everything and nothing. Good people. All with a firm grasp of the concept of general merriment.

Everyone departed on Sunday, but I had a few more days off, so I farted around the cabin until Tuesday. After a few days of late nights, singing, laughing, and what have you, I suddenly found myself alone by the fire, surrounded by silence. Within that silence I found myself wishing that the door of the cabin would suddenly swing open and everyone would jostle in, take their places around the table, and make the rafters roar once again. So it goes.

Times like this come and go so quickly, but the memories can be relied upon for as long as our memory allows. I look at the empty chairs surrounding the table and see them all, I sit in the flickering light of the fireplace and hear the laughter and music the cabin walls strained to contain. I lie in bed and smile as I recall the chorus of snores coming from all corners of the cabin. Snores of people that gave general merriment all they had, snores of a content clan.

I was doing laundry the other day, and I began to wonder what it is exactly that people who have a full-time staff of maids, chefs, butlers, nanny’s, personal assistants, spiritual advisors, chauffeurs, and the like, actually do all day every day? If anyone reading this has such a staff, please have one the previously mentioned folks give me a call. When your work is done of course.

I don’t care to talk to you personally, I’m sure you’re busy making business for your staff. Sweating in your socks, using more forks than are necessary, not changing the toilet paper roll…making work for others is a lot of work. Come to think of it, that way of life isn’t far removed from the way of life most children lead. Those little tyrants just have a smaller staff to command. Mom and/or Dad.

Maybe that comparison is telling as to just what people with a full personal staff do all day? Spill juice on the couch, eat crayons, yell a lot, and lose their mind when there aren’t any hotdogs cut-up in the macaroni and cheese. They don’t concern themselves with toilet paper either, we’ve got that end covered as well.

I have no sense of smell, for those that do crossword puzzles or play Scrabble, the medical term for it is anosmia, might get you a win someday. Anyway, when our children were diaper age, and said diaper was at or beyond its intended capacity of digested macaroni and cheese (no hotdogs), my wife would sometimes say, “Oooh…this is bad one. You can have it, you can’t smell.”

I didn’t argue (much), it was the least I could do after witnessing the “miracle” of childbirth. The real miracle is that women hang around the likes of us men folk after enduring something like that. I’d have ran off and joined the circus, cleaning monkey cages and laundering their little outfits. On second thought, that’s pretty much what happened. Except the monkey cages probably would have been nicer than our first apartment. So it goes.

Back to my harrowing story of macaroni and cheese, diapers, and crippling anosmia. Having never experienced sniffing around something that seems should be left unsniffed, I have no reference for proper comparison, but my vision is fine. I assume that eventually you can “unsmell” something you wished you hadn’t had to smell, but it’s been about 20 years, and I still can’t “unsee” what I wished I hadn’t had to see. As my dad always says, “Wish in one hand…..”

All these things we “get” to do for our little miracles, are not things I’d pay someone else to do for me. For one, I’d feel so ashamed of myself for them having to do some of those things while I perused my ascot collection, that I’d have to fire them. The kid would have a fresh diaper to work with, but the nanny would be out of job. Maybe that’s what these people do with their time? Hire and fire diaper changers, and buy ascots.

I miss most everything that came with being a dad to little one’s…most everything.

On September 24th my wife and I celebrated our 24th year of “being an item”. It was homecoming week 1994 at Northern State University, Gypsy Days as it’s called, when we shared our first dance at The Zoo Bar. That night may have been our first dance, but we had known each other for a few years, as we were both biology majors and had several classes together.

One class, I believe it was invertebrate zoology, we ended up assigned to the same lab table, which improved my attendance for that course significantly. There wasn’t much of a correlation between my perfect attendance and my grade, which was more than a few letters below perfect. I was there in body, but I found her much more captivating than anything Dr. Wright was attempting to get into my head.

Dawn, on the other hand, was a serious student who worked hard to achieve the best grades she could in every class she took. A very foreign concept to me, but one I admired her for. I figured I’d just enjoy the time with her while I could, keep providing a bit of comedy relief at our lab table, simply because I liked to see her laugh. That would have to suffice, because it was obvious she was in a league far removed from the one I was bumbling around in.

A year or so later, I was in danger of failing college algebra, actually I was failing college algebra, and Dawn agreed to put her patients and sanity to the test, and attempt to tutor the untutorable. If there’s a place in your brain responsible for comprehending math, that place doesn’t exist in my head, or it was shoved aside to make room for song lyrics, movie quotes, and useless trivia. So it goes.

We would meet in the library a few nights a week, apparently that’s where serious students go to do serious studying, and she would point out the errors in my mathematical ways. She did a lot of pointing, but the lyrics, quotes, and trivia refused to concede any ground. As Merle Haggard once sang, “mamma tried”. She’s stubborn, and like Sisyphus, she pushed and pushed and pushed, but my brain kept rolling back down, leaving a wake of mangled, unrecognizable, algebraic equations in its path.

I got a solid “D” in that class. I’m not sure if the professor, a kindly old man, was too tired to fail me and face the futility of the matter for another semester, or if my tutor came through? I’d like to think Dawn came through for me, just as she has every day since.

You never know where life is going to take you, or what it has in store for you once you get there. It took me, in my 58' Chevy Biscayne, south out my little town to Aberdeen, South Dakota. It took me to Northern State University, where 24-years ago I put on a toga to celebrate homecoming (as any self-respecting college student should do). It took me to The Zoo Bar. It took me to where our dance began.

I propose that at the conclusion of any workplace meeting a vote should be taken to determine if those subjected to the meeting found it useful in any way. In any way, large or small, did the meeting contribute to your life?

If the predominate response is “I found the meeting to be quite informative and useful” fair enough…doubtful, but fair enough. But, if the response is “as a result of this meeting I am no wiser, merely an hour older” then whomever was responsible for that meeting must face consequences. Consequences that will dissuade them from subjecting others to such soul sucking drudgery again.

Although moderately justifiable, I’m not proposing that they be subjected to any form of physical punishment or public ridicule. This may offer short-term satisfaction, but as we’ve seen time and time again, in the long-term, only serves to fuel villainous motivation for revenge. Basically, the premise for the majority of movies, television shows, and dictatorships.

The consequences I am suggesting to dissuade people from stealing time from others, and failing to replace that stolen time with anything of worth, purpose, or value, would require the thief or thieves to give an hour of their pay, and an hour of their vacation time, to each person subjected to the uselessness.

I work at a college, and we are only a month into the school year, but if my proposal were instituted, I would already have accrued enough time and money to take the rest of the year off. I keep hoping that one day I will stroll out of a meeting with a spring in my step, my brain dripping with fresh insight, motivated and invigorated by the pearls of wisdom bestowed upon me. I keep hoping…for over 20 years…I keep hoping.

In the meantime, hope can find me at the back of the room, back where the lighting is bad, making it difficult for the den of thieves to see my eyes roll in contempt, or to even discern if my eyes are open at all. Back where I can laugh when I shouldn’t, and remain unresponsive, and unimpressed, when they think I should.

The problem is, the seats fill up quick back there, creating a bit of quandary that necessitates one arrive early to a meeting they don’t want to come to in the first place. So it goes. If the seats are all taken, you can always stand in the back of the room…counting bald spots to keep your mind from stalling out. Everyone will assume you’re one of those anti-sitting zealots, or you have hemorrhoids, either way, they’ll leave you alone.

Time is precious, and those that take it indiscriminately should pay for their crime. Join the fight against time thievery in the workplace. See your local representative at the next useless meeting. They can be found at the back of the room. If you are in charge of scheduling meetings, don’t, the revolution begins with you.