Archive for May 2024
Long Slog
At the rate things are going for Cyndie and me, there will be no quick fix for what is ailing us. On Day-7 of my COVID infection, we tested for the second time and Cyndie was still negative but I showed a blurry positive result. Wednesday, one week later and Day-14 for me, we both had a strong positive result on a test.
I am now experiencing head cold symptoms. Cyndie developed a headache and now has an upset stomach. We both are running on fumes when it comes to energy. Everything scheduled on our calendar of events continues to get canceled.
In attempt to keep my body moving enough to help my lymph circulation, I continue to chip away at chores outdoors as weather allows and my energy lasts. The riding mower is a pretty easy choice in terms of energy required but my attention to detail isn’t a sharp as normal.
When backing up to reach a spot of tall grass on the edge that I had missed, I heard a distinct thud. I knocked over a flower pot Cyndie had recently planted.
Most of the flowering plants were covered in dirt and smeared across the rocks. I tipped the pot back up, lifted several globs of dirt and plants and placed them back in the pot. Cyndie will never notice.
Are you kidding? I immediately took a picture and texted it to her with my apology.
I may be sick, but I’m not insane.
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PWHL Champions!
Congratulations to the Minnesota team in the Professional Women’s Hockey League for defeating Boston in a best-of-5 series to take the first Walter Cup in the inaugural season of the league.
Professional women’s sports once again destroy the myth that Minnesota teams can’t win championships!
You Go Girls!
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Intermittent Soaking
Making plans to do anything outside in the kind of weather we have been experiencing of late is something of a crap shoot. At least we have the consolation of not yet dealing with the threats to life and property from tornadoes like folks to our south have been facing.
What we are getting is tantalizing sunshine that almost dries the grass enough to mow before the skies switch to gloomy clouds.
Just when you figure out those clouds on the horizon are sliding past to the south, another batch of heavy gray clouds show up from the north.
In the seconds after serving the horses their grain, the cloud drops its contents in a soaking downpour.
As soon as the ground is sufficiently saturated, the rain ends and sunshine returns to evaporate the water in steaming clouds off the asphalt driveway.
Rinse and repeat. Good luck finding grass dry enough to mow without difficulty.
If it is too wet to mow, I should go for a bike ride. I don’t like riding in the rain so I am really happy I didn’t get lured out by the temporary sunshine yesterday afternoon.
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Methodical Research
Since our weather pattern yesterday offered just enough periods of rain to keep grass too wet to mow, Cyndie and I busied ourselves with indoor pursuits much of the day. While Cyndie unleashed her creative artistry on making spectacular custom cards for persons known and to be determined, I resumed an attempt to gather local news reports from the 1800s that mention the names of my ancestors.
I find myself easily distracted down rabbit holes of stories both trivial and dramatic on the pages of the old editions of The River Falls Journal, even though they don’t contain family names.
There are simple, yet creative mentions of babies born, comments of individual comings and goings, reports of illnesses and serious injuries, and brief mentions of crop successes and failures. Occasionally, there are official statements of “found” livestock on one’s property that will be kept for their own if not otherwise claimed.
There was a report of a horse that attempted to leap a picket fence but it was unsuccessful and did not survive. In another incident, a man allowed horses pulling his wagon to enter a lake for a drink of water. They began to sink up to their necks! In that case, somehow all were saved.
I decided to transcribe just the portions in which my ancestors were named and sort them by date to better organize the information I was uncovering. I regret that in this form it lacks some of the exciting drama of others in their community being mentioned simultaneously.
These should really be in an olde-timey font, but here is what I gathered yesterday afternoon:
River Falls Journal March 29, 1877
Esdaile
Mr. Betcher has the largest and best stock of hub and spoke timber on hand now that has ever been in this place. S. W. Hays is foreman here for Mr. Betcher at present, and evidently understands his business.
River Falls Journal November 15, 1877
Esdaile
The officers of Green Valley Lodge, I. O. G. T., installed last Wednesday evening are S. W. Hays, W. C. T.; Miss Alice Butterfield, W. V. T.; K. W. Lewis, S.; J. Sleeper, T.; Miss Effie Isham, I. G.; J. P. Johnson, O. G.
River Falls Journal May 5, 1881
Esdaile Echoes
S. W. Hays is at home again for a few days visit with his family
Joseph Sleeper has sold his house and lot in this village to C. Betcher, of Red Wing, for $450.
A little daughter of Mr. Sleeper received so severe a fall the other day as to render her senseless for some time, but she is now all right again.
River Falls Journal June 12, 1881
Esdaile Echoes
C. Betcher has recently been remodeling his horse barn.
E. Hoover has rented a part of S. W. Hays’ house and is now occupying the same.
Henry Bently has decided not to occupy the Sleeper house as was stated a short time ago.
Messers L.C. Rice, L. H. Rice, Joseph Sleeper, and L. Turner, are building a saw mill and bending machine at Brookville, St. Croix county.
River Falls Journal May 25, 1882
Brookville Brevities
S.W. Hays, of Esdaile, called on us last week. He talks of making St. Croix County his home.
Esdaile Echoes
Mrs. Church and mother, Mrs. Sleeper, of Minneapolis, are spending a few days in town.
For reference:
Joseph & Abigail Sleeper are 3rd-Great Grandparents
Charles & Sarah [Sleeper] Church are 2nd-Great Grandparents
Stephen W. Hays (wife Judith [Waite]) are 2nd-Great Grandparents
John W. & Minnie [Church] Hays are Great Grandparents
Charles Betcher (unrelated) was the lumber baron who Stephen W. Hays worked for
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Filling Gaps
Last night our internet connection was down so I did some reading in the most recent book I bought from the Pierce County Historical Association, “Log Buildings and Logging in Early Pierce County, Wisconsin.” In excerpts from journals and newspaper accounts dated in the early to mid-1800s, bits and pieces of what life was like in this specific locale materialize in my head where they mix with cinematic versions I’ve seen from movies depicting the same period.
A name, a date, and basic details of clearing several acres to build a log cabin leave a lot of gaps in my perception of what life was really like. One person’s father arrived some time later. How were they communicating prior to that? Another man is described rather superficially as having “opened a road from River Falls” through the wilderness to a mill and later, one to Prescott for a mail route.
How did one send mail to a pioneer living in the wilderness? How does one man build a road? I struggle to compare my activity managing our 20 acres in the present with the activities and accomplishments of people who were just arriving at this place 200 years ago.
For reference, we rely on what people chose to write about their experiences. If my chronicles survive for a couple of centuries, will readers think that all we did was mow grass and whine about the weather?
Will they get a clue about what life was like when the internet goes down for a few hours?
I am curious about the specific indigenous people who were living here when immigrants started claiming land and building cabins. Not the general story of being forced onto reservations, but the equivalence of a “journal” account describing the experiences of one individual that would depict what it was like.
I am also curious about my specific ancestors who intermingled in these valleys, cutting trees, building wagons, going to schools, and living lives at that particular period of history. It’s easy for me to fill the gaps with versions of pioneers depicted in movies I’ve seen throughout my life.
How accurate a portrayal was “Jeremiah Johnson?”
Life today can hardly compare but when I listen to the birdsongs echoing through our trees in moments when no modern-day traffic, lawnmowers, or airplane noise is occurring, the sound may easily be the very same chorus that played two centuries ago.
I wonder who was standing right here listening to it way back when.
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Special Treat
After a timid start, I gained confidence and began a stroll down our back hill to check on Cyndie while she re-established dominance over the labyrinth with the power trimmer. It is mind-blowing how quickly our surroundings change from hints of new leaves budding on branches into full-blown rainforest-level overgrowth.
Everything is growing faster than we can control along pathways we attempt to maintain through the forest.
As I continued my stiff saunter along the fence line around the back pasture, I was rewarded with a very special nature scene that was an absolute first for me.
In the drainage ditch I was walking beside, in the bright sun of the middle of the day, a trotting spotted fawn appeared moving toward me with a look of pure innocence. I was dumbstruck. The beautiful little creature passed within six feet of me and just kept going toward the woods beyond. It looked small enough to have barely mastered controlling its legs a few hours ago.
Where was momma? I looked around for clues as to where the fawn was coming from or what might have inspired it to move and saw nothing to explain what I had just witnessed. Then I noticed the horses grazing in the hay field were all staring in my direction with heightened awareness.
Maybe they were blaming me for disturbing the fawn, I don’t know.
I decided my exercise walk needed to move to the firmer footing of pavement and set out to plod along the road for an extended session of intentional stride.
As far as remedies for physical ailments go, there are a lot more difficult exercises from which to choose. As soon as my confidence returns, I intend to hop on the saddle of my bicycle. Rolling along carries much more allure for me over the limitations of repetitive step after step.
Granted, if I had been on a bike, I may have easily missed seeing that gorgeous fawn on its own little stroll.
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Double Punch
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. I have done what I could to put the COVID infection behind me and resume normal activity but putting it behind me wasn’t supposed to be literal. I now find myself about as far away from normal activity as I have been in years.
There is something terribly wrong happening in my lower back that feels in every way as if one of my discs is bulging against the nerve that generates incapacitating waves of pain. My poor brain automatically leaps to a conclusion that the timing of these two latest physical maladies are entirely related, but I have no knowledge that this might be true.
All I know is that I am now one week away from the day my health insurance ends with the company that covered me for the first five months of the year and starts with my new choice under Medicare. I was hoping to get through the transition with a clean break from activity on either account.
Today, it is shockingly difficult to avoid stabbing pain when I cough at a time when my asthmatically reactive lungs are teetering on the backside of a virus notorious for negatively impacting breathing.
I am not a pretty sight.
If I could walk without fear of losing my footing, I’d wander down among the horses and bask in their late spring serenity.
We are fast approaching the end of Asher’s on-site training session at a kennel up north. The trainer has scheduled a call this afternoon during which we expect to learn how Asher has been faring during the previous week and what the plan is for picking him up to continue the training at home.
It would really mean a lot to me to be able to walk without pain by the time of Asher’s return.
Walking is once again the exercise that will become my primary focus.
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Intractability
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it’s hiding where none of us will ever look
please don’t tell everyone that you already know
we’ve heard the last best reasons time and again
phrases your mother used to use
heavens to Betsy
usually from the kitchen or bottom of the stairs
sucking the salt from the empty peanut shell
one last time
knowing there were some who could chew the whole thing
at least gave us pause
like when the President told the FBI to kill us too
when they had their chance
but we didn’t go bragging to the world about it
there were fires in our fireplaces
slide projector fans blowing their own hot air
pillows on the floor but we still strained our necks
for a better view
and the way the screen smelled when you got real close
with blended chocolate milk whipped to a froth in that small Dixie® cup
there was no clue a virus would show up sixty years later
reshape the world to varying degrees
leave people gasping for a breath
listening to music without any instruments in sight
no records or tapes or discs
no moving parts
practically impossible intractability
echoing from every corner
of every night
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Separate Rooms
The end is in sight but apparently it’s too soon for me to celebrate. I have completed the full regimen of antiviral meds and am more than ready to be done with this whole COVID infection. Yesterday, Cyndie brought home some new tests and proved she continues to be free of the virus.
My test wasn’t so clean. We have added a cancellation of our plans to go to the lake for Memorial Day weekend to the list of things scratched off our calendar. The variety of people whom Cyndie arranged to care for the horses during all these events must think we are loony. Each day they get another message that their services are no longer needed.
I decided recovering from COVID was going too easily so I added tweaking my back yesterday just to complicate things that much more.
Since our practices have succeeded thus far in keeping Cyndie from picking up my germs, the routine of living separately together will continue for a while. I’ve been granted the bedroom and she is living in the den.
That is getting old. Communicating by text inside the same house is not the usual mode of operation for us.
I tried watching the Timberwolves first game in the series with Dallas last night but there was no magic to be found there to distract me from my health woes. I did find a Joel & Ethan Coen 2018 film, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” to entertain me that I particularly enjoyed.
It was the kind of movie I could watch while isolated in my room and not worry about Cyndie disagreeing with my tastes.
Just trying to make the best of this unappreciated situation we find ourselves in.
If it stopped raining every hour or two I could spend more time outside and maybe work the kinks out of my back. The muscles are probably filing complaints about too much time in the bed or the recliner.
For the record, I agree.
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Mostly Rain
Amid a heavily broadcast series of warnings about the chances of severe weather, I dawdled indoors much of yesterday until time was dwindling in a break between bouts of precipitation. It felt like now or never to get anything productive accomplished outside.
I gassed up the power trimmer and went after as many easy targets as I could hit, with particular interest in two of the most needed places. I reached the strip of longest grass just beyond the culvert as the sky began to grow dark again. It wasn’t pretty, but as raindrops started falling, I finished what I had set out to do.
The area of that strip is now a sloppy mess of long, wet cuttings, but it is a cut sloppy mess. If I’d had time before more rain, I would have used a pitchfork to pick up the mass of wet chopped grass left behind.
Earlier in the day while it was raining, I spent a little time perusing old newspapers for ancestor names again. Focusing on the River Falls Journal in the latter half of the 1800s, I found a treasure in 1878 under “Local News” for Esdaile. It lists the names of “pupils who excelled in their respective classes in the first month of the winter half of the present term.”
My search term was, “Hays” so it was easy to spot my great-granduncles, George and Charles Hays. Those two are the younger brothers of my great-grandfather, John W. He would have been 17 years old at the time. Charles was 9 and George was 8.
What made this find such a treasure was the name of one other excellent student: Minnie Church.
Minnie is my great-grandmother. She was 10 years old that winter when the grades were published. I would imagine the younger three knew each other well, spending their school years together. Ten years later, in 1888, Minnie and John (seven years her senior) were married in Minneapolis.
I wonder how the younger brothers felt about John getting the girl in the end.
Discovering those records was a lot of fun for a mostly rainy day.
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Relative Something 