While fishing for walleyes I snagged a truck

Spring is fifty three days away. 

We heard this while the weather news was on and the national map on the TV screen showed bands of ice poised to glaze over half the Southeast. 

The mention of spring in the offing was surely intended to inject hope as the end days of cold January play out and a new forecast repeats the old. 

My hunch is the suggestion of spring around the corner succeeded in its aim. It generally works to have a goal to concentrate on even when it may take awhile for it to come into actual focus.

Being given a definite number of days which separate us from spring, but also lead us to it, lifted spirits for many of us. 

It puts a statistical handle on winter. From this light it makes it bearable. It becomes surmountable with relative ease when you have days to count off one by one, however painfully winter has dragged on to this point. 

If you're anywhere in the eastern United States this winter you know it's been a long and unforgiving season. Winter has persisted until its start is lost in the vapors of cold air that keep blowing from the Arctic. 

By the calendar this punishing regime of below normal temperatures began in December. The pattern, as established, is relentless. It's tested the patience of otherwise indestructible winter types who take the cold in stride. 

Adding another layer, shrugging and saying This too shall pass has lost some flavor with them. It's put these more cold-resistant colleagues in the same boat as those of us who weeks ago called surrender to the chill.

Earlier I happened to catch CNN as a reporter was on location in Minneapolis. In this weather segment a local person, bundled up against what's been a battery of below-zero temperatures, gave her comment on the frigid state of things.

It feels like winter has gone on forever she said. She struck me as someone making the best of a tough situation and being honest about it too.

I liked her remark. It indicated a good natured acceptance of something out of her control to change except by the attitude brought to the continuing situation.

Turn to any TV channel and there's a kind of fascination with the rigors being put up with this unremitting winter in the Midwest. 

With the polar vortex calling the shots this year the Pacific zonal flow, which favors more seasonal winter temperatures, doesn't have a chance. With the forecast stuck at the North Pole the parkas east of the Mississippi River stay hanging in the closet by the front door.

CBS TV evening news cast the cold weather parked over Minnesota in a softer light and cheers to them. The story, which aired yesterday, was about an ice fishing contest held at Brainerd in the central lakes area.

It was a well done story. It caught the essence of the hearty way of life that deals with severe conditions and makes sport of it. 

The gist of the story, as I took it, was that cold weather doesn't get in the way of traditions that keep the Midwest strong. In fact, cold weather is part of the tradition.

The ice fishing contest, a yearly event, was an active scene of confident ice fishermen as the cameras panned over the lake ice.

The scene reminded me of a famous line from the popular Lake Wobegon show. It took looking up the exact words to get them right although they were in my head, remembered, in a fairly similar version.

The precise wording is: "Welcome from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

The words are those of Garrison Keillor and they're appropriate for the ice fishing event which is close both geographically and in spirit to the imaginary Minnesota community he has created for his radio audience.

 

The virtuous and hard working citizens of Lake Wobegon, who come to life for millions through the brilliant monologues of Garrison Keillor, would very much approve the endeavors of this convocation of ice fishermen bent on winning a truck, for the biggest fish caught, as grand prize. 

In fact, look around and you might see some of the Lake Wobegon citizenry among the contestants. It's the kind of challenge they thrive on. 

They're versed in the kind of homespun truth that tells them it's worth believing that a good day on the winter ice, a little backslapping among old friends and a spot of fishing luck might combine to let you drive away a new truck.

Hard packed snow, cold conditions (evidenced by the no-nonsense outerwear that collectively was a sports clothing catalog of winter survival gear), the small circular holes of clear frigid lake water (the holes drilled by ice auger, the essential tool of winter fishermen) and the rosy patch at the horizon, which may have been the low late afternoon sun, contributed visuals for the TV story. It came across very Minnesotan and full of life.

Ice fishing as sport and pastime may have baffled a small portion of CBS viewers. Some may have questioned its fit in a news program format. For lots of us, however, the story brought levity and something more.

People joining forces to have fun together, thumbing their noses at Mother Nature, or invigorated by weather too raw for plenty of us, is a refreshing antidote to news with an often grim thrust.

The main point in the ice fishing story could have been one of many. I took it as this, that Minnesota is a rather pristine and rugged place with a good deal of outdoor room for having a good time. 

Minnesotans brace for the weather which comes with the territory. They are its equal even in its extremes. They put up with, they put forward, and unify with the elements. They have great enjoyment in it.

True class has to do with rising above ever changing vicissitudes. It has to do with modesty, hard work and endurance. Sometimes, as at the Brainerd ice fishing event, class is exemplified by gusto and a definite flourish. 

And that modesty thing that pairs so naturally with class? Minnesotans do it reasonably well. 

Don't be surprised if someone gives this answer when you compliment them on their new 2014 GMC. "While fishing for walleyes I snagged a truck."

Ro Giencke - January 28, 2014

Road taken

Getting in touch with my sister I asked about a mutual acquaintance who had the boom lowered. The diagnosis has come back and it's cancer. 

Bad news is something we don't get accustomed to. As often as it might break upon us, in all the forms it can be delivered, we don't ever acquire sufficient armor of protection to deflect the pain when life upends us or those who matter to us. 

Life's just not an easy road. It can be essentially smooth and we're thankful for this. We come to be ecstatic with the uninterrupted good stretches as we get wise to the fact they generally don't last.

Almost all of us, at some time or another, eventually hit the rough spots. They're the unmarked locations along our highway surprising us with frost heave bumps, unplanned detours and potholes deep enough to swallow us entire.

There's not always an inn at the wayside when our road emergency comes. We steer or brake as conditions dictate and do our best and sometimes could use an assist.

On the road of life every kind word shared adds a brick to that structure of hospitality we look for off to the shoulder as it becomes imperative for it to be there. 

When we find it we benefit from its comfort, hope, help or encouragement. It bails us out when the chips are down. It shelters us to send us out when prepared to again take our place in the stream of traffic. 

Kindness in word, backed by considerate and direct action, makes all the difference. 

What we give as help to another, when it's their turn to need it, adds invaluably to the road of life which is the one road we travel together.

Ro Giencke - January 23, 2014

A measure of place

A remark by film star Cate Blanchett in the January 2014 Vogue stays with me like credits on the screen after the movie is over. It comes out of the interview in which we learn the Australian actress is half American.

Her father was a Texan. A parent with roots elsewhere widens your heritage.

Through her dad Blanchett had access to another continent, another way of life. She alludes to this. She says when you have a parent who is from a different place you think of the world as bigger than where you are.

My head bobbed yes at that part. She's right I said. She hits the nail on the head. Later I wondered why the comment struck a chord. Siding with Blanchett so swiftly wasn't a thought-out process. It lined up with something instinctive within me.

It caused me to review my childhood. My dad was from the Mid South. My mom was from the Midwest. As kids we saw, and figured out for ourselves, that our parents, who loved each other dearly, were still at times as on opposite shores of a vast gulf.

The gulf in their case was the dividing waters of the truths that embodied their expectations of life. Their truths were theirs because of where they were born and where they grew up. Places instruct you. The bunch of us understood this without being able to say how we knew.

With our parents it wasn't a matter of one perspective being right and the other wrong. It was that sometimes the two viewpoints were separated by the information put into them, or taken in by them, deep from their starts.

I think that's how it is for many of us. Our world begins with the size that fit our parents. Our original world is the size of those we first know and love.

Watching and absorbing we compare and contrast. We begin the path of making the decisions we make, and the viewpoints and insights we carry and continue to evolve.

Ro Giencke
January 11, 2014

Best word in the English language

When our kids were flying home regularly – college semester breaks and vacation time early in their careers – it came easily to see that landed was the best word in the English language.

“Landed” popped up on the airport flight information screens when planes arrived. 

We headed directly to the screens to check plane status when we arrived at the baggage carousels, usually some minutes before our kids were expected in.

The confirmation on the screen that they had come in safe and sound meant everything to this mom, in those empty nest years, adjusting to her kids being far away.

A decade has passed since then. Landed remains a beautiful word. 

Landed, over this period, has been joined by a word also so meaningful as to prompt me to suggest it for the top of the word list. 

I believe this word shares honors with landed as best word in the dictionary. The word is received. 

To know we’re received by another puts us on firm ground. 

We’re like a jet with wheels down coming in to roll smoothly down the runway. 

In being received we feel the exhilaration of arrival which always starts with a walk through a new opened door.

There are many kinds of being received. We can be received through an act of hospitality.

Our ideas can be received through another’s listening attentive manner. The package that is each of us, in the totality of our interests, habits, needs and gifts, can also be received.

To be received, as the word connotes to me, is to be accepted, taken into or understood. The act of being received significantly influences us.

Similarly, when we receive others, through taking time and making time for them, we connect and make possible the bringing forward of the best in each of us.

We touch firm ground in the touch we give others to count them in. Received, we step up. Received, we step out. Received, we confidently step in where encouraged to belong.

Ro Giencke

January 1, 2014

 

Designed for change

New Year’s resolutions came up as my daughter and I visited. 

Neither of us has resolutions to make (or break) as we compared notes.

Maybe this means we’ve learned from experience (also called “the hard way”) that resolutions can be tough to keep.

Commit to what you intend to do puts a price tag on resolutions we give our names to. 

Resolutions ask honesty of us to stay in the running. Yearly intentions aren’t for wimps. 

Resolutions aren’t keen on our tendency to look for wiggle room on ideas that sounded good but come with snags in the execution thereof.

This year my daughter and I are off the hook as far as resolutions. Nevertheless it’s well to approach January more specifically than other months. 

January is symbolic of all the new starts or renewed intentions there are to make. It's the canvas on which we establish the designs that become the signature of our new year. 

Common sense tells us we should do more with a fresh start than simply celebrate beforehand on New Year’s Eve.

My plan is to take insights gained this year as advice for mindful living in 2014.

When we’re mindful of some lesson learned, and apply its wisdom to present circumstances, or lay it carefully aside for the future, we create a fund of personal wealth which is sure to pay ongoing dividends. 

Each new year becomes richer for what we collect along the way. We change by what we change. We change, as well, by what we let ourselves be changed.

The notations below, entered into my personal journal over the course of 2013, are among insights that will cross over to 2014 with me. 

It’s amazing what someone else’s interests can do for your own.   (January 2013)

Tend to what matters.  (January 2013)

It takes action to get action.  (January 2013)

Risk often gives way to reward.   (April 2013)

How you do things says a lot about how you regard things.  (April 2013)

Open your heart to those who value it.  (May 2013)

Experience leads us to new places.  (May 2013)

You always see something interesting when you travel a new road.  (June 2013)

Your dreams are the future but it’s the present where you have to be.  (August 2013)

Often it’s the small things we remember the longest and with deepest appreciation.  (October 2013)

Luck is sometimes crazy good fortune. Luck can be like that. It’s just as apt to happen when you lay the foundation for it. Luck likes it when you’re prepared for it.  (November 2013)

Live the moment, let the hard days pass, expect good ahead and always appreciate the time given to you.  (December 2013)

Ro Giencke

December 30, 2013

 

 

 

 

December is the color of blue

Every month has a color that suits it.   

Now here’s where I may be showing I’m behind times. Perhaps this color thing is in place already.

Maybe some Pantone-like color choice for each month has long been in existence. If so this is the cue for me to say Oh excuse me, and whistle my way offscreen.

If a color scheme for each month hasn’t been devised, however, let’s get going. 

Just as a month has a birthstone and zodiac sign it might as well also have a color assigned it as part of the package deal.

With this in mind it seems to me that December, of all its confreres, has dibs on the color blue.

Deep blue, midnight blue, cobalt blue, all shades of blue fit with December. 

December is frosty blue skies, blue fingertips and mountainsides of blue spruce mantled with snow.

Its color of blue is also the aquamarine of tropical seas. 

There are no coastal shores here but they're our December getaways. They're right up there with hot toddies for easing seasonal aches.

It's sufficient evidence to second the motion that December and blue go hand in (blue suede) glove. 

For those who need more convincing consider blue in other December formats.

Indigo blue dusk blooms in the withdrawal of each short winter day. The indigo hue, which spreads and intensifies with dark, is a tint of blue I propose be given a name, December Sunset.

December dusk quiets the day. Vast blue shadows of snowy ground merge into chilled inky blue silence.

Night's metallic blue glitter is equally a December color. 

Through frosted windows, or stamping numb toes in lined boots in the crunchy snow, we gaze up in wonder at stars piercing with light the cerulean field above our heads.

The color blue is the festive color of the December holidays. It’s a primary color we choose for gift wrap, ribbon and bows. 

It’s the blue bulbs in sets of colored Christmas tree lights. They merrily twinkle or glow as if under a lampshade under a coating of new snow.

It's pale blue candles which rest in greenery on our fireplace mantels. It's designer blue, in all its range of shades, which is a current color trend in party wear. 

It’s the rich royal blue of cashmere pashimas we fling fashionably around our shoulders as we step into our round of December events.  

This time of year, for a multitude of reasons, can bring a person down. “I feel blue,” we say.

The holidays can trigger flashbacks to a time when we were little and life was secure, as it can appear without a doubt as we look back.  

Comparisons between then and now can lead to a blue outbreak. It may be a fleeting thing. It can sometimes persist through the holidays.

At this time we remember loved ones no longer with us. Each grieves in a personal way. Loss can make celebrations going around us ring not with glad peals but dimly as from afar.

For others the season's downcast mood is a response to lack of sun. Daylight is at its lowest in December.

Those who get blue often can pinpoint what makes them react to the season as they do.

Understanding the seasonal effect is good information to have. It doesn’t automatically lift the heaviness some recognize as a constituent of this month.

 We can take steps, by many different aids, to gain peace over regrets or loneliness at this time of connections and community. 

One approach is to shift the word blue away from a symbol for feelings that have gone south (but  not with the vacationers chasing the sun).

We adopt the tactic of using the color blue to our benefit. We utilize blue as our token of joy.  

We can begin using blue to advantage by regarding it like vivid December sky. On it the clouds of care sail away. The sun beams down to warm us through and through.

Ro Giencke

December 20, 2013