A friendly column, nothing about him whatsoever

The lilacs are in bloom out at the old family homestead and it’s pleasant to stand by the bushes and smell them and recall that the outhouse used to stand a few feet away. Who does not feel his faith in resurrection strengthened by this news? We’ve all been stinkers at times but once we leave the body behind, we shall bloom in the life to come.

Someone to sit next to me

There was so much good news last week. Gorillas appear to be thriving, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, and there are about 361,919 of them, twice as many as had been believed. Humpback whales, who were nearly hunted out of existence in the 19th century, are making a comeback in the seas off Antarctica: the birth rate is on the upswing, according to a new study. (The animals are the size of a school bus and have a life expectancy similar to ours.) And a study at the University of Michigan shows that people who work out even 10 minutes a day tend to be more cheerful than those who don’t.

What’s been going on around here lately

The Swedish Academy’s decision to not award the Nobel Prize in Literature this spring hit me hard, of course. I figured this would be my year and was counting on the cash prize of a cool million bucks. A man needs a little boost now and then. I know I do. People associate me with radio but I was also a Novelist — okay? Novels. With characters and dialogue. Lonely guys looking out rain-spattered windows at bare trees and wondering, “Who am I anyway?”

I did some of that last Saturday morning. I am married to a perfectionist, and so my faults are more clear to me than necessary. I am 75 years old, people. How many men of 75 are actively engaged in self-improvement? Are there rehab programs for us? Inspirational books aimed at us? No.

Forgot password? Try “LIFEISGOOD42J75#REAL”

It’s spring in Minnesota finally. My lawn is greenish, birds sing in the morning, we go walking in a sweater, no gloves. There is still ice on the lakes, but if you don’t look at them, you don’t notice. Life is good. This is not pointed out often enough, the goodness of life, because journalists know that Pulitzer Prizes are awarded for exposing corruption and sending the mayor to jail for skimming money off the School Milk Fund so the kiddos get 2% rather than whole milk, it’s not given for writing about a walk in the park on a sunny day. Nonetheless, we do have parks and the sun does shine.

A winning candidate for 2020

Finally we see some spring in Minnesota, temperatures edging into the 50s, maybe 60s, snow gone except in the crevices, green grass, the miracle of going outdoors in shirtsleeves. It’s like the Rapture except that everyone gets to enjoy it, not just the select few. We who were brought up not to complain have been moaning for a month, and we feel bad about that and intend to atone for it by being good to people who have not been nice to us, if we can think of any.

The true story of last weekend’s blizzard

A yuge blizzard descended on Minnesota over the weekend and all of our people who went south for the winter got back home in time to experience it. It was truly yuge, a fabulous blizzard and the snow was up to the housetops and the highway patrol said, “Stay in your homes. Do not drive on account of rabid wolves and jackals running loose.” But some of us went out anyway because that’s how we are. America was not settled by the timid.

A walk down the aisle

There is a long aisle at our grocery store with soda pop at one end and tea and coffee at the other, which my love and I get to after the butter and eggs and 2% milk. We come to the beverage aisle and she selects the coffee, dark ground, with names like Swan Lake and Machiavelli. I notice the can of Maxwell House percolator grind and think of Mother and Dad. And there between the coffee and the soda pop is an extensive collection of waters.

A remaindered sermon from Easter Sunday

I’ve been reading a fine book for Holy Week, Short Stories By Jesus, by Amy-Jill Levine, about the parables in the Gospels, and thought how much better Sunday School would’ve been had it been taught by a Jewish scholar rather than the rigid joyless fundamentalists of my youth. Jesus was Jewish, He wasn’t a Protestant, for God’s sake. Levine covers the whole string of them, the runaway boy, the tardy workers, the kindly alien, the good CPA, the mustard seed, the rich man and Lazarus, and respects the mysteries they represent.

Looking at snow, thinking of crocuses

Late March is a time of rare unanimity here on the northern tundra when everyone — socialists, monarchists, anarchists, humble peasants, mighty tycoons — is ready for the snow to melt and green grass to appear and a warm breeze blow through the open window, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon and so we must live with the fact that the world is beyond our control.

We were wrong and we should say so

Now that the 17th is behind us, the pipes have stopped calling from glen to glen, Danny is gone until next March when the valley is white with snow, I look at my calendar and don’t see much to get excited about. Easter is two weeks away and what with church membership in decline, the day is more about jellybeans and less about the Resurrection of Our Lord. And ladies don’t wear big hats as they used to do.