Preserving and Presenting the Past

I know a guy who just spent all of his non-working hours for the past several months scanning and posting the pages of his high school's yearbooks. Why would anyone pursue such a possibly pointless activity? Was it for money? Community or professional recognition? Ego? A tribute to fellow classmates of yesteryear?

I'm guessing that several of those reasons are valid, at least in part. But I think that it's more likely that the main reason was because he thought it was worthwhile to guarantee that  the memories of all of those young people would be kept alive and that anyone who might be interested in looking for this boy or that girl would be rewarded for their efforts.

The NORHIAN

I appreciate his work partly because I'm involved in the results. He didn't scan my photo as he limited himself to seniors in each yearbook. But he did scan some pages of the yearbook that I was in when I was 13 years old. I attended 7th grade at Northfield High School and I still have a copy of the 1965 Norhian. It was the first yearbook that I ever saw and it evoked a quasi-sacred aura in my young mind. Since three of our four children attended NHS, they're included as well, 2001 and 2003.

Recently, I completed a project of similar length and complication that might also seem overdone to some folks. In 2009 I discovered a couple of shoeboxes filled with correspondence between my parents during the 18 months of courtship just prior to their marriage in 1950. During that time they graduated from St. Olaf College, my Mom taught school in Spirit Lake, Iowa and my Dad graduated from seminary. Their letters detailed not only the strong feelings that they had for each other, but the many arrangements that were necessary to allow them to meet each other as often as possible given the geographic challenges of their frequent separations.

I decided to prepare a book of their letters so that I could make copies and share them with family and friends. (Don't be alarmed: I removed a couple of letters that I felt were too intimate to publish. The rest are quite tame and often extremely funny.) I read all 150 letters three times and spent hours at a copier reproducing the letters and envelopes to get them ready to present to a printer for publication. The finished product was a smashing success in my opinion and my family responded favorably as well. My only disappointment was that there were two periods when I  had just one side of the conversation. The answering letters from the other party were missing. At any rate, I felt a deep satisfaction at having assured the survival of these priceless exchanges between my parents for the benefit and enjoyment of their descendants.

By the way, my friend's name is Tim Freeland and the fruits of his labors can be found on Facebook here: Norhian scans. Do yourself a favor and check it out. Oh yeah, and surprising personal postscript: last week I found my partents' missing letters! Not sure what, if anything, I'm going to do about it. Probably just read and enjoy them.

My Big Summer Adventure

On this cold, windy, and rainy day in landlocked southern Minnesota, I'm daydreaming about my next  adventure just over a month from now. I'm going to be part of Tall Ships 2011, a six-week odyssey from home port to Halmstad, Sweden for more than a 90 of the world's tall ships. There are two cruising legs and three racing legs in the event.

I won't be along for the entire ride as I'm only registered for the first leg, a non-racing nine-day journey from Oslo, Norway to Waterford, Ireland. I'll be aboard the Christian Radich, a three-masted ship built in 1937 whose home port is Oslo. I've loved the Christian Radich from afar since I was a boy, ever since my parents took me to see the Cinemiracle movie, "Windjammer". It wasn't until the Tall Ships first visited Duluth, Minnesota in 2008 that I learned that I could actually book passage on her (and any of the other tall ships in the event). What a revelation!

The Christain Radich has a permanent crew of 15-20 depending on the season and can accommodate up to 80 trainees (I'll be a trainee). The trainees are divided into three 4-hour watches to do the work of the ship. This includes look-out, fire and security patrols, sail manoeuvering and steering, as well as maintenance and galley work. The crew schedule is 4 hours on and 8 hours off during the length of the voyage. I wonder how the duties are assigned: first-come, first-served? audition? fiat? I guess I'll find out.

We sleep in hammocks and we're told to bring as little on board as possible because there's very little storage space as one might imagine. No hard-sided luggage, no laptops, no cell service, no alcohol; lots of no-nos. (Curiously, smoking is allowed!) Just lots of fresh air, lots of physical exertion, three squares a day, international camaraderie, in addition to honing sailing and seamanship skills.

Most of the trainees are between 15 and 25, particularly on the racing legs, so I'm going to be one of the elder statesmen. I hope that doesn't disqualify me from climbing the rigging and working the sails. I know everyone has to haul away on deck, but I want to go aloft as well.

I've sailed on the Pacific Ocean, but never the Atlantic and even though I'm not on a racing leg, I'm looking forward to being on the water the longest of any of the legs this summer. That's really the experience I'm craving. And when we get to Waterford, Ireland, we'll be joined by all of the other tall ships in the races. I'm looking forward to seeing the Europa once again, a three-masted bark I had the pleasure of boarding last summer in Duluth at Tall Ships Duluth 2010.

I am so stoked!!

It Takes Years to Empty Out Your House

We've been adjusting to the deaths of our parents for more than 15 years. Each of the transitions resulted in the need to absorb more "stuff" from their lives. We did this happily, both to retain and celebrate good memories and also to pass on artifacts to future generations.

Problem is, what we originally accepted is way more than what we can reasonably store or exhibit. And as each subsequent transition occurred, the energy required to sift through all the "stuff" and winnow it down diminished due to increasing fatigue with the process.

We filled this beast

Which brings us to April 2011. I decided that we couldn't go on like this any longer. That's when I called Waste Management and ordered a 20-yard rolloff dumpster. I've done this twice before yet it still amazes me how much material we can shed and not miss when it's gone.

I thought that we'd be at the task for the entire weekend, but the two of us filled the box in just over two hours. That's two tons of "stuff"! During April I made three trips to the Rice County Solid Waste facility, two trips to the Hospital Auxiliary Book Sale, two trips to town with clothes donations, and recycled two truck loads of cardboard and plastic bags. All that's left is a bag full of batteries.

Not bad for a couple of hoarders, huh? We're trying to change our ways.

The Old Northfield Middle School

The 1934 addition and the future cinema

My employer, Carleton College, purchased the former Northfield Middle School some years ago. We're currently redeveloping the site as the Weitz Center for Creativity and will begin the 2011-12 academic year in September with a marvelous new game changer in higher education. This complex was the place where our children spent four years of their lives. Coincidentally, it's also the place where I spent one year of my life, back when it was the Northfield High School and contained grades 7-12. I was a 7th grader.

Together Everyone Achieves More--2003

Some months ago, when the project was just beginning to take shape, I was lucky enough to be part of an escorted tour and I took a few pictures for the record. In its later years, the building was tired and in need of serious renovation, but the occupants were full of energy. I'm not sure why, but students were allowed to put graffiti on a number of interior areas. Perhaps the administration thought that it couldn't get any worse from an aesthetic perspective. At any rate, the students held forth.

The Auditorium becomes the Cinema

The complex was constructed in three phases: the original 1910 Northfield High School, the 1934 auditorium addition, and the 1954 gymnasium, cafeteria, and sciences expansion. Carleton has demolished the 1954 classroom building, but retained the shell of everything else. The former gymnasium will become the theater, the former auditorium will become the cinema, and the former 1910 building will be the home of the Cinema and Media Studies department, the Presentation, Events, and Production Support, and several  desparately needed meeting spaces.

With Malice Toward None

This enterprise started out with a $100 million price tag and would have been sizeably larger than what we'll produce if we'd been able to raise the required funds. We knew we'd fall short so we scaled it back. Now it's got a $45 million sticker and will be a much more realistic size.

I wonder if  future Carleton students will have any sense of the generations of young people that preceded them through the halls of this building. Much is made these days of the presence of spirits and ghosts in institutional settings where turmoil occurred. My good friend, Greg Kneser, the Dean of Students at St. Olaf College,  regularly regales his students with the stories of the campus in earlier days. Former residents with afflictions continue to try to insert themselves in the present day.

The World Needs Helping Hands--2003

The  future dance studio

The Weitz Center for Creativity appears to be on-schedule for its September 2011 opening. Personally speaking, I know where I'm going to be spending the month of August, but that's a story for another blog. We're going to end up with a new theater, dance studio, art gallery, cinema, video and film studio, multiple classrooms and meeting spaces, and a commons that could potentially be a new social center for the campus. I know it's a worn-out phrase, but it's true: time will tell.

Florida 2010: From the Daytona 500 to Gatorland!

My relationship with Florida has a lengthy history going back to the early 1960s. My paternal grandparents, Ragnvald and Gladys, retired to Florida in '61 or '62, I can't remember the exact year. They built a house in Dunedin on the west coast and lived there until their deaths a decade later. My family and I visited once when I was 10 or 11. I'd never seen a citrus tree before,  we all got to climb a ladder and pick a grapefruit from a tree in their backyard. That impressed me.

The High Bank between turns 4 and 1

I spent about 3 weeks in Florida in 2010. I didn't plan it, but that's what  happened. The first visit I made in 2010 was with my son in February. We made a pilgrimage to Daytona Beach and the annual kickoff race of the NASCAR season, the Daytona 500. The experience was a major spectacle, made more so by the unseasonably cold weather, the world's most famous pothole which caused multiple stoppages, and a race that didn't end for over 7 hours.

Dan with the #20 car driven by Joey Logano

Florida is where the election of 2000 was stolen by the nepotistic collusion between the Bush family, the Republican Party and the misguided Supreme Court. Life in America has been off-kilter ever since. Florida is also the home of one of the funniest writers in the world, Carl Hiassen. He famously quips that as wildly irrational as any situation in his books can get, he has yet to fabricate anything. As a beat reporter for the Miami Herald, he swears that all he has to do is watch the world unfold around him. There's more material than any one person can ever use for storytelling.

Team Camo getting frenetic.

My second Florida trip was in October and was a strictly business affair. I went to a conference in Orlando where my sister-in-law lives and was exposed to all of the newest gadgets in my little world of card-based privileges for financial and access control. One odd experience was the night that we replicated an Iron Chef competition (sort of).

My final journey to Florida last year was in December. We hadn't had all of our children and those of my sister-in-law together in the same place at the same time since 2002 and now we had a grandchild and additional SOs, etc. It was a moveable feast that went on for more than a week and was quite grand. Good food, hijinks, and the chance to sample the fare and ambience at Pie-Fection, a new food venture by nephew Luke Fernbach. What a treat! If you're in the Orlando area and have a craving for the ultimate pizza pie, make sure you visit Luke. Tell him Dan sent ya.

Do you think that we did the Disney thing while we were in Orlando? Seems like that's de rigeur, right? Well, no, we didn't (actually, we did visit Downtown Disney on a chilly mid-week morning, but we didn't do the theme parks). The main attraction for the Ryder/Arnold/Fernbach/Bergeson bunch was . . . GATORLAND!!

Entering Gatorland

Our kids have talked about alligators for years. They kept salamanders and chameleons as pets when quite young and always were interested in crocs and gators. Gatorland covers hundreds of acres and has thousands of reptiles and birds. It's incredibly well-maintained and affords hours of fun at very reasonable rates. We were delighted to have had the opportunity to experience this odd assortment of animals and kitsch (be sure to take in the gator wrestling!) and recommend it to everyone.

I'm going back to Florida many times because there's so much natural beauty to enjoy. There's great entertainment and lots of  people-watching. There's also a passel of weirdness, but that's to be savored and recalled later for lots of great conversation. I recommend that you visit soon.

The Thing About Snaps

We're so accustomed to taking pictures of every part of our lives today that I think it's hard to appreciate how seldom that occurred in decades gone by, especially for those of us born after say, 1980. Today you take a picture (or many) and post them on Facebook and who knows what people do with the original, save it to the hard drive and back it up or simply delete it when the memory card gets too full? During most of the past century, you took a picture and didn't see the results for days or maybe weeks. And if it wasn't a good shot . . . oh well. Even if it was a good shot, if you lost or damaged the print and you couldn't locate the negative, you simply had your memory of the picture.

Grandma Josie and Danny

I recently located about a dozen black-and-white photos of me that my mother saved and it made me wonder, were there others and if so, where did they go? Maybe she split up what she had in three equal parts (with my two sisters). Or maybe there just weren't any more. I have a lot of Kodachrome slides (my Dad and his Dad's favorite format) so I'm not lacking in family memories, but I'm enjoying these little b&w jobs, probably from a Brownie camera.

For example, here's one with me and my maternal Grandmother in North Dakota where I lived from age 2-4. She died when I was 4 so this is one of only a couple of pictures I've ever seen of her taken while I was alive.

Beth and Danny

The next one memorializes possibly the first inflatable pool that the family owned. My sister and I were fanatical swimmers as kids (our mother was not), but this predates swimming lessons and lifesaving. I think it's just a testimony to HOT midwestern summers. It seems a little too small for even two children, but we seemed to be enjoying the wet anyhow.

Sir Danny

I think it's strange that my high school mascot was a Knight and the mascot of the institution where I work is also a Knight. I've been connected with symbolic Knights for more than 25 years. I didn't remember until I found these photographs that there was an antecedent for this relationship. When I was a Cub Scout, I did a project for an achievement that cast me as guess what . . . a Knight. Here I am in my young glory, all of the equipment handcrafted by moi.

Danny at attention

This next one is just a tad bizarre. I've taken pictures of my kids to highlight some quirky behavior or unique moment in their lives. But I don't believe I ever posed them quite like this. I don't know if Mom was trying to show my height or she liked the clothes I was wearing or she thought she was the next Walker Evans. Maybe she was training for some forensic job, cuz it sure looks like a lineup. The motivation escapes me, but here is the result, whatever the impetus. Yep, it's me alright, with the living room drapes as a backdrop. Weird.

The last one I'll bore you with is really a work of art. Not because of the quality of the picture, but because of what it took to produce such an assemblage. My fondest memories of childhood are the kids in the neighborhood and the adventures that we had. We lived on the eastern boundary of town and 90% of the houses had families of 2-4 kids and in some cases more. We spent every waking moment in roving packs that glided from yard to yard with astonishing speed, from early morning until well after dark. It was magical.

The Fareway and Park Drive Gang

The crowning achievement of this time was the clubhouse (known as "The Fort") that we built in our back yard one summer. There were houses going up all around us and someone had the ingenious idea to "borrow" some wood from one of them after the men had gone home for the day. We managed to scrape together enough plywood and pine planking to construct a one-room shack on our tetherball court and paint it. It wasn't until we started to add a second story that not only our parents began to ask questions, but so did the foreman of the worksite. Oops. However, before that happened, we were fortunate that our Mom froze the moment for us with this picture. I can still ID everyone in the frame.

Where Does One Put Wounded Knee?

I gotta admit, right now I'm stuck in 1890. My daily newspapers, my many magazine subscriptions, my Twitter feeds, my Facebook friends, public radio, and CNN all tell me without interruption about the calamities occurring in real time in Haiti, Brazil, Sudan, Tunisia, Australia, Pakistan, Afganistan, and numerous other points on the globe (Mexico?). These are not being exaggerated and people living in these regions are desparate. Nevertheless, I'm stuck in 1890 in South Dakota.

What Heather Richardson's book, "Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre" reveals is the degree to which political party goals determined the futures of thousands of Native Americans in the western regions of the country in the late 19th century. Those of us alive today may think that the divisions currently existant between the Democrats and the Republicans are unique and possibly of epic proportions. Not so! The only thing that's changed in more than a century are the issues being debated. Today it's health care and issues of taxation. In 1890, the issues were the Mckinley Tariff and election reform.

It's sobering and yes, appalling, to realize that the lives of the Native Americans in the western territories and states meant nothing more to the business community, the Republican and Democratic parties, and the government of the United States than how many seats in Congress could be garnered by the mid-term election of 1890. And in the process of this jockeying and bickering, thousands of people were shunted into dangerous or meaningless situations or killed, and were unable to prevent their defeat and their demise.

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. day in 2011, let's remember all of the people in this country who have been stripped of their dignity and their futures by forces beyond their control, and work together to prevent such abuses of power and indifference in the years to come.