Archive for August 2026
Fading Light
Not all sunsets are spectacular scenes, but that one looks like there is some symbolism occurring. Cyndie captured the weird sky on her last walk of the day with Asher. We are home from the lake! The drought continues to wither most of our grass to within a slim margin of its life, so there’s not much urgency to mow.
My partner in ranch operations has requested I mow the hay field to knock down the weeds since we were informed the neighbor won’t be attempting a second cut of hay. I guess now is as good a time as any. Diesel fuel probably won’t get cheaper any time soon.
Today is Wisconsin’s primary election to determine candidates for November’s general election. I don’t usually vote in primary elections because I am unaffiliated with any political parties. Cyndie has volunteered to be a poll worker and will be putting in a long shift from noon until after the polls close this evening. She wants me to vote since Wisconsin primary elections are open and I can choose any party, as long as I stick to just one.
I’m more inclined to let each party hash it out among themselves, and then I’ll weigh in after they show me which candidate they have to offer for November.
I will not deny that the pessimist in me fears our democracy is a fading light. I wish I could believe that our elections will get us out of the mess the current administration has created, but both main parties are responsible because none of the people in office with a lick of sense has figured out a way to curtail the insanity. Merely saying they object without doing anything about the daily malfeasance has gotten nowhere.
It would be great if any campaign promises to fix what is broken by getting elected in the midterm election actually came true, but there isn’t a great track record throughout our country’s history to inspire hope from the usual rhetoric.
Getting to rub our dog and the horses again after four days away was a welcome portion of my otherwise uneventful day. Asher’s coat smells like he rolled in something stinky, and the mares were all business at feeding time, but seemed happy to see us bringing a return to the usual routine.
Our health and safety feel all the more precious after viewing videos of Colombia’s powerful earthquake as it was happening. That’s something that cell phones with quality camera features have made a powerful impact on for newsworthy events. I have never been in an earthquake, but seeing videos recorded during quakes that were happening in Venezuela in June and now the one in Colombia yesterday has given me a more intense sense of what it must be like.
The ever-increasing prevalence of surveillance cameras has also recorded as-it-happens depictions of the shaking that have been very informative for me.
I suppose people living through major earthquakes are equally impacted by watching the increasing numbers of tornado videos getting posted these days.
The drought we are suffering in our region isn’t nearly as dramatic. You won’t find many videos of grass slowly getting burned to a crisp by the sun.
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Fun Moments
A few highlights from this weekend at the lake with Cyndie and her mom:
- Cyndie surprised us with some letters she recently uncovered in our archives at home while she was looking for something else. There were almost a dozen, still in their stamped envelopes, written to her by her family while Cyndie was going to school in Spain back in 1977. The amount of detail that Marie (unsurprisingly) wrote gave us a fascinating window into that time of our past. Cyndie had grand plans to have a friend join her after the school session ended to travel around Europe, but had to scrap that adventure when she became dangerously ill and had to return home. Apparently it was wicked cold in the Twin Cities that winter, and the high school hockey team Steve played with was having a winning season. Those subjects were among several that received repeated mentions.
- I spent a chunk of time working on a website for my high school class that we will use in promoting our 50th reunion next summer. Using text messaging to communicate ideas and get feedback from my sub-committee back in the Twin Cities, I was able to make good progress on customizing a pre-formatted site from a service into something more aligned with our sensibilities. You know, changing corny into cool. My classmates deserve something that better reflects who we were back in the 1970s, when “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” were on television. That was back when our generation figured we were going to change the… Never mind.
- Yesterday afternoon, when I found myself getting nowhere in a struggle to outsmart the site’s formatting, I phoned my software-savvy son, Julian, for advice. We linked up so he could see my screen, allowing him to guide my explorations as we unraveled how the available features could be coped with to achieve my goals. It seemed promising when he discovered I could open a view of the source code. Using his code-writing skills, he would text me a block of code to insert into my draft. It is such a thrill when progress is made. I laughed out loud over the fact that we were pulling off our successes with him at home in the Cities, and me on a laptop in the sunroom at the lake. Alas, in the end, I had to settle for a compromise from my ideal when it became obvious that the host software was overriding our customizations at a certain point.
Now that I think on it, this isn’t much different than the battles I wage against the regular “upgrades” to my WordPress platform that are intended to make it easier to use but often end up preventing me from executing the preferred formatting I’ve been using for years. It’s tough being a dinosaur in today’s world.
[insert Tyrannosaurus rex roar here]
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Happily Ensconced
Barely suppressing feelings of undeservedness, I am happily ensconced in the sunroom of the lake house with the 9th and final stage of the Tour de France Femmes on my computer while hoards of hummingbirds dance around the two feeders hanging under the eaves.
I am well aware of how lucky I am to have a place like this; a world away from Nice, France, where the women bicycling athletes are waging a heroic battle in brutally extreme heat, climbing the same peak four times in a row in this last stage of the race, while I recline in the cool morning air overlooking the lake.
A good life, indeed.
A postcard experience, in fact. I’m having a wonderful time. Wish you were here!
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Reorienting Optimal
Pursuing optimal health is a noble goal, but one where “optimal” isn’t a static state. It changes over time. Physical health can change significantly as we age, so what was optimal for me during my athletic peak isn’t a realistic goal for me anymore. My current optimal involves less speed and agility and more rest and recovery.
Same thing goes for my mental health. I stopped playing guitar not only because of benign hand tremors and pain in my hands, arms, and shoulders, but also because I could no longer remember all the chords or verses of songs I played and sang for all the years before. My fading memory and physical discomfort made playing less rewarding for me.
So, my version of optimal health has morphed from playing guitar to an increased appreciation for listening to my library catalog of musical artists who have inspired me over a lifetime. It allows me to cultivate more love for other musicians rather than dwelling on frustration or sadness about relegating my hobby to the past.
Since I believe that love can be telepathically beamed to others, I acknowledge that negative thoughts and feelings would just as easily get projected into the world. It would be great if I didn’t do that, but when confronted with evidence of the awful things people can do to others, my reactions are involuntary. It creates a train of thought that takes commitment to interrupt.
That is something I have some experience doing. Long ago, I learned to recognize and redirect the dysfunctional thinking of depression as a method of defeating the disease. Overcoming depression is probably the most significant stride I’ve taken toward my optimal health.
Learning of people I know who are dealing with memory loss, I am confronted with the question of how “optimal” gets reoriented when our faculties become diminished. What is optimal mental health for a person in that stage of life? You can’t focus on what is no longer possible. Energy needs to be directed toward what is achievable in the here and now.
My here-and-now involves being back at the lake in Hayward, WI, with Cyndie and her mom. We tried to visit a restaurant we remembered well for a Friday fish fry last night, but to our surprise, it had closed last fall. After we dealt with the confusion, the next easiest option was The Steakhouse & Lodge next door, which we’d never been to before. A good time was had by all. I ate too much because it was so delicious.
I should reorient my optimal diet back to healthy portions when eating out. Let me just put that on the list of things I’m trying to remember as aging messes with my metabolism.
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Distinction
.
waiting
for the time
I forgot
all the reasons
why
and why not
all the lights
are constantly aglow
through the night
near the city
by the boats
where the trees
refuse to live
and weeds compete
to survive the longest
as life forms tend to do
striving to thrive
against the ongoing threat
of distinction
while pretending
to be hiding
in everyone’s plain sight
in the broad daylight
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Disappearing Branches
As planned, we spent the bulk of our day yesterday sawing, hauling, and sweating while trying to avoid the poison ivy and scary-looking flying insects that seemed to have an invested interest in the freshly exposed wood of the willow tree. There was evidence that carpenter ants had taken up residence in part of the decay that had been blasted open by the first large limb that gave way last summer.
I sure am glad I got the back pasture mowed the day before. We took another crack at cutting off the weeds before they could go to seed, hoping to give the grass of that field an ongoing advantage. Research revealed that mowing regularly can be the best way to prevent the pasture from being overtaken by undesirable weed propagation when purposely avoiding the use of toxic chemicals.
It always looks so great when freshly cut. Unsurprisingly, the weeds show up soon after because they grow taller faster than the grass. We repeatedly battle the emergence of Queen Anne’s Lace, Sour Dock, and Thistle among others.
With that mowing project behind me, it was all hand saws, chainsaws, and hauling yesterday.
That’s a lot of wood that needed cutting and even more long branches pointing in every direction that needed to be dragged away.
In all fairness regarding the state of Cyndie’s garden, the long, hot, dry spell we have suffered this summer is responsible for putting it under stress before the tree fell onto it. Smothering it with willow branches just made a bad situation worse.
I’ll close with a memory of how beautiful the garden was earlier this summer. Those were the days!
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Disintegrating Willow
Timberrrr! We weren’t there to witness the drama, but on a last walk of the day with Asher, Cyndie came upon this sight:
The third section of our big willow tree has collapsed before I even got around to cutting up the second one that fell.
The portion jutting to the left in the above image is the second one. The big chunk to the right just let go last evening.
It fell right on top of Cyndie’s “Elysa Garden” of perennials.
There will be no putting off the work of clearing this fallen portion. If the garden plants aren’t already smashed, I fear we will end up trampling them while doing battle with the chainsaw and extracting the cut sections.
It’s hard to trust the remaining portion that is still standing, but we are going to take our chances. I may cut off the one limb that is at an angle to leave just the one trunk that stands straight up.
We know what we will be doing today. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what we had planned.
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Fast Day
Another day flies by in a blink. One of the fastest ways time passes for me is in conversation with people at reunions. Yesterday was not part of Cyndie’s class reunion events, but we did host a couple of her classmates in a visit that swallowed hours of the day in one big gulp.
Thom and Paul joined Cyndie and her friends in a variety of activities as they were leaving high school and entering college. We laughed as Cyndie reminded Thom that he had planned a backpacking trip to the Grand Teton Mountains in Wyoming, which he ended up not being able to take with them. A short time later, Thom pointed at a picture and asked when it was taken because it looked like it was his sleeping bag in the image.
Cyndie: “Yeah, that’s the camping trip you planned but didn’t go on. You even gave us your sleeping bag to use.”
Too funny.
The pictures that Cyndie shared led to a few instances in which they all recognized what they were seeing, but without actual memories of the occasions. Witnessing mental files being rummaged through that probably hadn’t been accessed for decades was entertaining.
It was a wonderful day to be outside. Asher was on his best behavior and made sure everyone had a chance to pet him. Cyndie worked her incredible magic in the kitchen and served both breakfast and lunch for our guests. We walked some trails in the woods, visited the labyrinth, and spent quality time with the horses.
Thom took a picture of us with the horses. That was nice. We don’t have many pictures of ourselves together with the horses.
After our guests departed, Cyndie had to leave for an appointment, and suddenly it was just Asher and me. Time slowed down a little bit. We walked to the lookout spot on the first hill of the driveway to enjoy the nice breeze and watch the sun descend through some clouds.
Just like that, our fast day faded toward its end at a more logical pace.
We had a treasure of a day, at every speed.
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Reunion Tales
Now that I’ve had a whole day of not going anywhere, life feels faintly familiar to the norm to which I have grown accustomed. Cyndie drove to the cities to visit her mom, so I had a quiet day with Asher. We went for a walk after breakfast and then took a nap when we got back to the house. It’s going to take me a couple of days to pay back the sleep debts I accrued last weekend.
The highlight for today is going to be a visit from two of Cyndie’s classmates who heard plenty of stories about our property. I wish we could host all the people who show a sense of wonder and interest when we describe our place. It is rarely a convenient opportunity for most people, so we are thrilled that this particular time it appears to have worked out just a couple of days later.
I got permission to share a story of Cyndie’s from an interaction at her class reunion. She was looking forward to talking with a guy whom she remembered had poked fun at her buck-tooth and thick-glasses appearance when they were young. The memory had always seemed curious to her because the guy was the only other particularly noticeably buck-toothed, thick-glasses kid in her year.
Turns out that it wasn’t him. At least, he has no recollection of it and doesn’t think he would’ve ever done that. Now Cyndie is questioning her memory. Was it someone else teasing both of them, and she mistakenly placed it on the other victim? We’ll probably never know.
The eventual outcome is the best of results. The two of them ended up having a wonderful exchange and quickly bonded in their shared experience. I might add that he turned into as good-looking a guy as Cyndie did into a beautiful woman. They might not have even talked if it weren’t for this mysterious memory.
Happy surprises like this are one of several reasons I am a big fan of reunions.
I enjoyed reuniting with the horses yesterday. They don’t offer up grandiose gestures of being happy to have us return after several days’ absence like dogs do. Asher doesn’t hide much with that wagging tail, licking kisses, and leaning into us for scritches. No, the horses are much more subdued in their acknowledgment.
Swings just stood stationary when I put my face to her nose to exchange breath and stroke her neck. Staying put was her way of telling me she was happy to see me.
The amount of food I found spilled beside her bucket last evening was more than I’ve seen before. We need to start soaking her food to help her cope with failing teeth. Do they make dentures for animals? [not a serious question]
Moments after I took that picture, Mix moseyed over to eat most of what had been spilled.
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Older Faces
So, I accompanied Cyndie to her 50th High School Reunion yesterday after driving home from the lake at 5:30 in the morning through varying levels of fog. My poor brain is a little sleep-deprived and mixed up with rekindled memories from so long ago and seeing dozens of mostly recognizable faces that are decidedly older than how we all looked in 1976.
I tried to capture as much knowledge as I could grasp on the fly from the folks on their planning committee and classmates who had traveled from far and wide to use in planning next year’s reunion for my class.
In the end, I have a sense that there’s not all that much we can control in determining attendance at the event. It’s great seeing those who showed up, heartbreaking to see whose lives have ended, and sad to find out who didn’t make it for any number of reasons.
I dredged up images of the old rooftop faces of our schools in the 1960s from historical aerial photographs the University of Minnesota provides online.
The top photo above is the view of Central Elementary that eventually became our middle school. If I have my dates correct, in 1971, Cyndie’s and my class started the year at what was then the high school with grades 7-12. In the middle of the year, they moved us back to that elementary school that had become grades 6-7-8.
The bottom photo above is the view of our high school. I just looked at the satellite view on Google of the way our high school looks today. It has now become the middle school and has been significantly remodeled, but parts of the old core are identifiable.
The two main courtyards have been cut in half, so there are now four courtyards. It’s still possible to discern what the 100, 200, and 300 wings were, as they were called.
I’m feeling a little older today for some reason.
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