Day 362 - My Assignment 1: Major Branching Points in My Life

First, there was one

 As the oldest child, I am lucky to have memories of being the most important person in Mom and Dad's life. And those memories are likely the basis for the most fundamental branching points in my life: the addition of each successive child changed my life, four times, and I still learn more each year about the impact of each of those changes.

My earliest memories of Wayne don't include baby pictures. I remember that he had to go into the hospital for a few nights when he got pneumonia. I remember playing with an elaborate set of plastic farm pieces -- fences, cows, horses -- on the living room floor. I remember a Captain Hook puppet that we used to tell each other stories.  And I remember having to share my time with Dad at basketball games, baseball games, and fishing with Wayne. So, with the arrival of Wayne, I learned, perhaps not gracefully, that I had to share.

Then there were two

Joan's arrival is much more memorable for me. I even remember Mom being pregnant, and that I had to help her wash the kitchen floor when Joan's birth was near. I wanted a sister so that I could say I had a brother and a sister, so I was very pleased when Mom brought Joan home. I remember Joan's blonde blonde hair which contrasted strongly with the brown blonde that Wayne and I had. And I remember how cute everyone thought she was (I even thought she was). In fact, only recently I realized that Joan's arrival probably sparked my need for competition because Wayne and I didn't spend so much time with Dad once Joan arrived. I may not have realized then that I was jealous, but I realized since Joan was the cute one, I had to find some other way to excel -- and thus was born my need to win and be the smart one.

And then three

By the time Roger arrived, I began to think more of my being part of a family. I remember Mom telling us that we were going to have a new brother or sister. And I know I wanted another brother -- to keep the genders even I said, but perhaps I didn't want even more competition from another sister. Roger's arrival brought opportunities. I got to "help" Mom give Roger his daily bath. I don't recall doing much more than watching, but being in the room during the ritual made me feel part of it. And I even got to babysit on Saturday evenings when Mom and Dad went out, however infrequently. I felt that I had passed some magic point of growing up with Roger's arrival.

And then came the twins, the biggest impact of all up to then. While my role in taking care of them was really quite small, the impressions on me were enormous. Where taking care of Roger was an opportunity, helping Mom feed, change, and clothe the twins became more of a chore. Thank goodness they were both so cute!

And four

But their arrival also meant I couldn't babysit for all the kids alone. Mom always arranged for neighbors, not always that much older than I, to babysit and for me to help. From this I learned that all responsibilities are not equal and growing up was going to take a lot longer.

Those lessons -- the need to share, the desire to compete, the opportunity to accept responsibilities, and to recognize that I might need help now and then -- probably explain my decisions throughout high school and college.

The additional goal -- I wanted to find something special in myself -- was motivation that made me seek out the opportunity to go to New Jersey for the summer of 1968. That experience within a Cuban immigrant community so close to New York City brought me many life-changing decisions. First, I realized I already knew a foreign language that I could teach, so I changed my major from German to English. Second, I knew I wanted to spend my life in big cities so I shrank away from anything that I thought would keep me in Fargo and Moorhead, including the wonderful man I had promised to marry before those life-changing events.

And more

And that led me to meet Don, a symbol of anywhere else. Don became my means to get to the big city when we headed west to California. And for all the pain that relationship brought, Don ended up the most important influence for me when I needed to find confidence to stay in California. He told me I could stand on my own (not necessarily in a tone of voice I welcomed), so I dared to try. Joan's arrival later that summer was just what I needed to conclude that I really could continue my California life instead of returning to an old life.

Remaining in California made it possible for me to get the opportunity to go to Iran to live and work. And the evenings I spent while in San Francisco at folk dancing halls turned on my interest in Eastern Europe which led me to Romania. While these two events started out as adventures to spice up my life, they transformed into the goal for a new life. And I thought I had found a partner who shared that goal in John. I think the slow realization that his goals were actually so different from mine -- and from what he had told me when we met -- was the unraveling of that relationship. When he asked me why I couldn't just love him for himself, I could only respond that I had no idea who he was -- he changed his story in every situation.

With my entry into the State Department's Foreign Service, I had reached the most significant branching point. I realized when I got the phone call asking me if I wanted to be part of the January class or the March class that having the choice was more difficult than having no choice. Until that point, getting into the Foreign Service had been a goal that consumed an enormous amount of my effort. Once the call came, the dilemma was that I realized it didn't matter whether I joined or not -- I needed a new goal. And I spent the first four years questioning whether I had made the right choice.

And then I met Alex, who helped me realize that my personal life is more important than work. Of course, that has been a lesson long in the learning. We have had many discussions about why I have had to work so late -- or why I have chosen to work so late. But eventually we have both come to realize we each work in order to live, not live in order to work.

Day 361 - Reflections on Mom's Autobiography

Mom at about 27

Since most of these pieces have been more autobiographical than literary, I thought I would end this project with some in that vein that I wrote before, but that needed editing.

While I was in Yemen, Mom completed an autobiography course through church. She shared the five assignments with us kids with the hope that we would also complete the same assignments. While I always intended to, I didn't complete them before it was too late for Mom to read mine. Instead, I chose to respond to Mom's assignments.

The first assignment was to describe life's most significant branching points. Mom began that assignment with these two paragraphs:

I like to think of my life as a tree. I love trees. I am sure my children got bored with my pointing out, as we traveled, that great oak, all by itself, standing so proud. Or that line of trees that were bent permanently from the wind.

Sometimes our lives show us to be straight and proud or at other times we are bowed down by trials, and tears.

I am an integrator. I don't always remember the details, but I know that I have integrated important impressions in such a way that they are now part of me, not a series of isolated memories or even in my conscious memory at all.

I don't remember Mom pointing out trees when I was a child. But I do know that I love trees, too. When I drove down the highways of Romania, I was struck by the arrangement of trees along both sides of all the roads. The bottoms of the trunks were always painted white. John used to insist that the prisoners had responsibility for painting the trees, to keep the rabbits from eating the bark.

I remember being in the park at the shore of Big Detroit Lake when I discovered how complex the patterns of the bark on the trees can be. I stared at the bark so long that my eyes started playing tricks -- it almost seemed that the bark was melting down the tree, like candle wax.

I love to look at the outline of the bare tree branches at dusk in the winter along Interstate 94 between Moorhead and Minneapolis. Those scenes always remind me of Charles Beck paintings. The landscape may be unimaginably boring in its flatness to Alex and others who did not grow up in our area, but the view of the finely woven netting of the tree limbs springing from trunks, evenly spaced and regimented in rows along the edges of fields, is enough to break up the monotony for me.

Mom's assignment continued:

The incident that affected my life dramatically happened when I was 27 years old. I was a mother of two children, Sandra age 5 and Wayne age 2. One evening, the children were in bed and their Dad was at work at the Power Plant, I was doing a correspondence Bible Study Lesson from Lutheran Bible Institute. You got each lesson, filled it out, sent it back, and it would be returned with comments and usually a word of encouragement.

The lesson was on Acts 9, the story of Saul on the road to Damascus. When I studied this story, I too, felt as if a "light bulb" went on in my head. I knew, then, that Jesus died "for me!" I felt like singing, I felt free! My life has never been the same since then. I did not instantly become a perfect person. I am still a sinner, I still found myself "grumpy" with the children when I was tired. Gradually I saw where my actions had to change, in order to be a loving wife and parent, a friend to my neighbors, as Jesus would be.

Since I was five when Mom completed the Lutheran Bible Institute lesson based on Acts 9, I may have some early memories of the Mom before Acts 9 as well as the Mom after Acts 9. But I don't have any memories of a time when I didn't think Mom had more self-confidence than the mothers of most of my friends. And I think it rubbed off. I don't think I ever thought there was something I couldn't do. I always got encouragement from both Mom and Dad to try whatever I wanted to do, whether it was to play the violin or go to camp. I never saw Mom or Dad try something that they couldn't do, or that they seemed unable to complete. As a result, it never occurred to me that I couldn't do something that an adult told me to do -- whether it was an assignment from a teacher or a task from a supervisor at work. I always figured the adult knew better than I.

Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Dad.

Day 360 - Mexican Interlude

The littlest child with her new shoes
Photo by Stuart Gardner

Earlier this month, I spent a Saturday in Mexico. I went with a group from my church to a children's home where the youth of the church have been volunteering each summer for the past several years. The trip two weeks after Christmas has become another annual event for the church, an opportunity for adult members of the church to make the trip to share a meal with the children, to bring presents for them, and to learn the story of the home.

My motivation was to learn about the relationship between the home and my church. In Africa, I was one of many Americans who had opportunities to drop in on groups such as Akany Avoko or Centre Fihavanana in Madagascar, but not much of an opportunity to develop an ongoing relationship. I hoped to see more at Rancho Milagro. I was not disappointed.

Casa Hogar Rancho Milagro is the only children's home in Baja California that is not sponsored by a church organization. Situated on 120 acres just outside of Tecate, Mexico, the ranch is home to 22 children between the ages of 18 months and 18 years or even older. Cesar and Cheryl, the couple who have made the ranch their home for the 27 years it has existed, work through the Baja California Child Protective Services to accept children who need a place to live, but if a child isn't ready to move on to live independently when Child Protective Services support ends, Cesar and Cheryl allow the child to remain.

One of the church members holding
the "ten" year old with Alma in the
background.
Photo by Stuart Gardner

Half of the acreage is not being used at this point, but Cesar hopes to expand the olive grove that covers most of the remaining land. The olive trees provide income for the home. When picked green, the olives are processed on the ranch and are sold to a number of Mexican food companies. Barrels holding one ton of olives each nearly surround the building where the olives are soaked in lye before being thoroughly washed and eventually packed in brine. Olives that are left to ripen on the trees are picked later in the year when they are then shipped to Ensenada to be pressed to extract the oil which the home sells independently to earn income. The older boys at the home who are interested in learning more about agriculture take part in operating the ranch, the only vocational training opportunity the home has been able to develop thus far. But Cesar has plans to expand the vocational training to include woodworking in the future.

The children were doing their chores when we arrived which gave Cesar and Cheryl time to tell us their story. As the children began arriving at the main building, one girl, Alma, came up to me and put her arms around my waist and gave me a big hug. Cesar told them to tell us their names and ages. I was of course curious about the three-year-old boy whose name we had drawn to purchase gifts for. All the boys looked too big. Finally a boy about the right size for the 4T clothes we bought appeared. He told us his name and then announced that he was ten. Cesar chimed in with "in your dreams, little one."

Cheryl and Cesar, Photo by Stuart Gardner

Cesar and Cheryl are following a calling they felt when they met in Mexico City where Cesar is from and Cheryl traveled for a semester while she was a student at Augsburg College. They have lived in Mexico City and in Minneapolis, but in neither place did they find a way to start on the road they knew was theirs. But while in Minneapolis, they met the man who owned the land in Mexico who also had a dream. Their dream fit his and within a couple of years, they and their son headed for Tecate, equidistance from the two cities that had been their homes. Twenty-seven years later, they are still there.

Cesar and Cheryl have so many amazing stories of the joys and the challenges that have crossed their lives. More than once as they showed us the ranch and grounds, Cheryl referred to which chapter that story will go into when she finally writes her book. Before we left, I offered to help Cheryl in whatever way she would welcome - encouragement, editing, whatever. I look forward to hearing back from her.

Two girls from St. Andrews Lutheran Church and two girls from Casa Hogar, Rancho Milagro
Photo by Stuart Gardner

Day 259 - Good Guys vs Bad Guys

Logo for Hostages TV series

I just finished watching the last episode of the TV series Hostages.

I watched the beginning of the first episode when it was broadcast last fall, and I decided then I didn't want to watch the rest. I found the premise of good guys, or at least those who claimed to be good guys, acting out plans with clearly bad consequences reprehensible, so I planned not to watch it.

But then one of the cable networks ran the first 13 episodes back-to-back in a marathon session at the beginning of the year and my sweetheart thought I might want to watch them, so he recorded them all. One day when there was nothing else on the DVR to watch, I watched the first episode all the way to the end. And still I didn't want to watch any more. I still found the plot disgusting. It wasn't just a case of the tragic hero having a flaw. It was the case of many people - I'll leave good or bad out of my description - making choices to do bad things, each for their own personal and selfish reasons. So I decided not to watch the rest.

But then Alex mentioned that his brother in England was watching the series and found several similarities with the series Homeland, another series I watched but always with a question in the back of my mind - just what message were the producers trying to convey? So I watched another episode of Hostages. And I noticed a non-plot-line similarity: both programs are based on Israeli TV series. Again, I wondered, what messages are the producers trying to convey? That government is corrupt? That politicians are corrupt? That you never really know who to trust? That the ends justify the means? That redemption can come to even those who have done terrible things? That promises only mean something until it is inconvenient to have to follow-through?

The two lines that seem to find there way into every episode are "I didn't have a choice," and "I am very sorry."

When any of the kidnapped family members declared they didn't have a choice, the kidnappers predictably responded along the lines of "you always have a choice." But then the kidnappers rely on that same line themselves when justifying their actions. "I didn't have a choice," the rogue FBI agent says to his sick wife to explain why he got involved with people in their plot to assassinate the President by kidnapping the family of the surgeon scheduled to operate on him the next day and forcing her to kill the President in order to save her own family. That's when "I am very sorry" is the predictable next line from the kidnapper. But the frequency of that utterance made the words meaningless.

The motivators for all the characters varied widely: desire to save a dying woman, money, trust, love, fear of threats to loved ones, guilt, and political differences. The alignments shifted as one motivator replaced another. Ambiguity. Ethical questions. The series had both of those in every episode.

I admit that the fact that the series is based on a series written for an Israeli audience was a major factor in my watching the series all the way to the end. I wondered if an Israeli audience is more tolerant of the ambiguity portrayed in the characters actions. On a more sinister level, I wondered if the reason was to influence the American audience to accept greater ambiguity, to accept that good people may choose to do bad things for good reasons. I can't verify either of those thoughts, of course.

I understand life cannot be divided into either black or white. There are shades of gray as well. Actions are not always good or bad on their own. Context is also important. But the notion that good people can do bad things for good reasons seems an attempt to escape the consequences or to avoid looking for another choice. When none of the choices in front of me seem good, I hope I keep looking for another one instead of settling for a poor one.

by  roberthuffstutter  Lies are perhaps the best example of the many shades of gray in life. There are lies intending to deceive, and there are white lies. Are they both equally bad? Lying seemed to come easily to the surgeon once she was sucked into the kidnappers' plans, once she concluded she didn't have any other choice. The first couple of times, I actually felt some tension as she was confronted by someone who seemed on the verge of unraveling the mystery, but she always came through with a convincing explanation. After a few episodes, there wasn't even any tension. It was clear she wouldn't get caught; she would just march forward with another lie. And as she slid down the hill of lying, she moved closer to the conviction that killing the President was the right thing to do. She convinced herself that he was a bad man, bad enough to justify killing him just because someone asked her to do so. Life is not black and white. But we each need to be sure we don't accept that all of life is just shades of gray.

Day 258 - Secrets and Lies

by  val.pearl 

I don't like secrets. I firmly believe that a secret is only a secret when only one person knows it. As soon as a second person knows, it isn't a secret. But that doesn't absolve me of the responsibility to keep secrets when they are shared with me.

In the work I did for the State Department, I needed to know some secrets, even when I didn't want to know them. I think I do a good job of compartmentalizing what I know so I can keep secrets, but I don't like to have the responsibility. If I can't remember what is a secret, I consider everything about it secret. 

Government secrets are only shared on a need-to-know basis. Fortunately, most of the work I did for State could be better described as need-to-share. And now I work for an office at State that promotes knowledge management, knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer. It is a good fit for me.

People whose work, perhaps even their lives, depend on keeping secrets seem to think others, even those who have no need to, are keeping secrets from them. I have met many people while working at State who thought I wasn't telling them everything. Perhaps I wasn't. As I mentioned before, I choose not to say some of what I think if I think the result will be hurtful to someone else. But if only they would ask me about their thoughts and conclusions. If I knew what they were thinking, what they were telling others about what they believed I was planning to do, I would have told them the truth.

The truth. That seems like such a simple concept. Either a statement is true or it is not true, right? And what is not true is a lie, right? And when a statement that hasn't been verified is shared with someone else, that is a rumor, right? And spreading rumors is wrong, right?

If only it were so simple.

Let me tell you a story about someone I knew at one of my overseas posts, someone who tried to keep his private and professional life separate, to keep some things secret from everyone else, but I kept being dragged into the middle.

This someone, Jack*, had a position of responsibility at the embassy with many people reporting to him. Some liked him. Some did not. I liked him, so I had a hard time understanding why anyone didn't. But I couldn't change the facts. A fact is like truth; it just is.

As Jack's assignment was coming to and end, we expected him and his family to begin planning to leave. It was summer, the usual transfer season. But instead of making plane reservations and requesting their things to be packed up, Jack did nothing. 

Summer brings with it the embassy's annual July 4th event. When I asked Jack if he would be in the country for that event, he answered that he didn't know. He said he had some personal things to take care of and he would let me know later what his plans were.

Then I heard from someone else that Jack's wife had said she wasn't leaving that summer. The next question, of course, was had I heard anything about problems between Jack and his wife. I hadn't and I was not about to continue speculating without asking Jack. So I did.

Jack's answer was that since his wife had only started working for her employer within the past year, she did not want it known in the office that she would be leaving soon. It was for that reason that she had not answered the question someone asked her while she was at work with the truth. She had replied with an answer that she wanted her employer to believe. It was also in some way a statement that asserted her independence from the State Department assignment system that assumes all family members will move as a unit from place to place, that spouses (most of them wives) will settle for whatever employment options are available in each place, regardless of the spouse's education, skills, knowledge, and abilities. I could understand those thought, but I wanted to be sure that Jack understood that people would come up with their own explanations for his reluctance to share his departure plans. I predicted that the explanations others would come up with would be much less complimentary than whatever the truth was. Once again, Jack told me it was his business, not mine, so I dropped the subject.

The next time I heard anything about Jack's departure plans, it was from a local employee in another country where Jack had previously served. Alex and I made a quick weekend trip to that country where I also had served. The local employee told me Jack and his wife were adopting a baby from a neighboring country. I corrected him and told him that Jack and his wife had already adopted a baby from that country, a little boy. But the local employee then told us he already knew about the boy. Now Jack and his wife were planning to adopt a little girl, too. They hoped all the arrangements could be completed before they had to return to the U.S. because it would be far more costly if they had to return from Washington.

The curtain rose on Jack's private matter. Now I understood. When I next met with Jack, I told him what I had heard. I congratulated him, and asked him why he was keeping the plans a secret. Again, he said it was a private matter that was no one else's business, especially since it wasn't certain the adoption would go through. He asked me to say nothing to anyone else, and I agreed.

But the next day, one of those people who didn't like Jack told me that she, too, had heard about their plans to adopt a baby girl. I told her that Jack and his wife didn't want people to know and I asked her not to tell anyone else. Her response surprised me. She told me that Jack's maid is the person who told her about the adoption when they ran into one another at the grocery store. Her conclusion was that if Jack's maid was telling people, then there was no reason for her not to do the same.

Jack despised rumors. Now that one of the people who wasn't one of his fans knew about their adoption hopes, I knew there would be rumors. And although I was convinced that no one would think any unkind thoughts about the news, I knew Jack needed to know that others would be talking about his private business. So I told him. I also told him I had told no one, but I don't know that he believed me. 

I really hate secrets.

*not his real name

Day 257 - Please Say What You Mean

by  Brisbane City Council  I work four days a week these days. It was the arrangement I made with the office at the State Department that my company supports when I explained that we would be moving to San Diego, but that I hoped I could continue working for them from a distance. I thought the reduction in my hours was what the office wanted. I recently learned that they thought the reduction in hours is what I wanted. If only we had all just said what we meant. I think I speak directly. That doesn't mean I say everything that I think. I admit that I have many politically incorrect, even unkind thoughts and opinions which if spoken aloud might anger or hurt someone or even change someone's good opinion of me. I keep those thoughts to myself if I think the words will hurt someone. I hope that my actions speak louder than my unspoken words. But when I say something, I intend it to be unambiguous and direct.

I had difficulty speaking or writing this way when I lived in Romania. Or more precisely, I had difficulty being understood when I spoke or wrote this way. My colleague, Chris, the British lecturer, would tell me when our colleagues in the English Department would ask what I meant by what I wrote in the Department book. Over and over again, I would declare that I meant what I wrote, nothing else. Still, they asked again.

This desire to say what I mean, nothing more and nothing less, has impeded by fluency in foreign languages. I love to learn languages, but until I know I can say exactly what I mean, I hold back. I spend my time listening instead of speaking. It took me some time to learn this about myself. I knew I hesitated to speak, and I knew this was a possible disadvantage to my developing fluency. But nothing could overcome my hesitency to speak until I knew I was saying everything right - using the right words and correct grammar. And now that I know a little bit of several languages but none of them completely, I dare not speak at all because the languages are all mixed up. I speak Foreign Language, not any particular foreign language, and I'm the only one who speaks that particular variant of Foreign Language. I'm the only one who understands me.

My first foreign language was German. In ninth grade, my junior high offered German in addition to Latin, the dead foreign language that I would have had on my schedule because everyone told me it would be good to study Latin. No one could tell me why. But when German was added, I knew that was for me. I didn't know anyone I could speak Latin with, but I knew I could try speaking German with my grandfather. That is, if I ever felt comfortable speaking with him at all. I wasn't convinced Grandpa like kids.

The approach of the German teacher involved memorization of dialogs which we took turns speaking to classmates in pairs until we could repeat the both halves of the entire dialog without referring to the book. I can still repeat some of those dialogs.

Speaker 1: Ich kann nicht meine Gummischuhe finden. (I can't find my rubbers.)

Speaker 2: Ach, hier sind sie, hinter der Tür. (Oh, here they are, behind the door.)

Very useful in an emergency.

These days, the language I end up having to translate is a technological one. It is a good experience for me because it is a reminder that not everyone says what they mean. Because not everyone knows the words or grammar to convey what they mean.

As an example, my colleagues frequently ask me to give them a SharePoint site. But that isn't always what they need. They don't know the right words to ask for what they need. So I don't give them what they ask for. I ask what they are planning to do, what problems they hope to solve. With that information, I then suggest what I believe they need, not a site, but a library or a list or a page or some combination of those options.

So I will continue to speak directly, with a bit of diplomacy now and then when holding my tongue isn't possible. 

Day 356 - Thank God for Garrison Keillor

by  Anirudh Koul  I recently finished reading a memoir by Susie Kelly. I didn't know anything about her before I picked the book up. I had been reading mysteries, not very good ones at that, but most of them were free, so I couldn't complain of being robbed. But since I had an equal opportunity to get other genres, also free, from BookBub, I chose to add memoirs and historical novels. Susie Kelly's memoir, I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry, was the one of the first memoirs among my new selections. And her story was exactly like what I thought an author's life was supposed to be like. All of Kelly's earlier books, eight of them, involved her adventures either on her own or with her husband and one or more of their numerous pets on travels through France or getting themselves settled in a new home in France. But the memoir I read was the prequel, her childhood story leading through her first marriage and the birth of her two children.

 by  Mister_Jack 

That may not sound like much of a story, but it took place on two continents. Kelly was born in London. When she was about 8, her family moved to Kenya where, after two years, her parents divorced and she had to choose whether to stay with her father or go with her mother. Because what she really wanted was for her mother to stay, too, she told her father she wanted to stay. Her mother left anyway. Almost immediately her father sent her to school in England where she spent school holidays with his parents who made it clear they didn't want her around. Several years later, her grandparents told her she would be going back to Kenya to be with her father. They also told her he had remarried. By the time she rejoined her father in Kenya, she had a half-sister and a plain-jane step-mother who associated Kelly with her father's first and more glamorous wife, the adulteress. The step-mother also didn't want her around. When she finally was able to see her mother again several more years later, she had hope that she could escape by moving in with her mother and her new husband, but her mother died a week before they were to be reunited. In desperation, she married an unsuitable Italian man whose mother couldn't utter an approving statement about her. They moved back to England and after several years of trying to make things work, he kidnapped the children and returned with them to Kenya. In the end, she was able to get the children back and later remarried, the husband in her other books.

The story is full of all those details that I thought an author needed to be successful: international travel, dysfunctional relationships, drama, and more travel. When I thought about my story, my childhood where we moved across the street when we needed a larger house, where the six of us kids had both our loving parents around us to provide us with both discipline and support, I could almost turn my story into one of woe-is-me, I am so unlucky. I was born into my family in a place and at a time that robbed me of all that I needed to be able to write.

by  TechnoHippyBiker  But then yesterday I read a piece in the most recent National Geographic magazine by Garrison Keillor, There is No Place Like Home. Keillor is the best antidote to my woe-is-me blues. For thirty years I have been enjoying his writing about the ordinary, the everyday, his story growing up and still continuing to grow in Minnesota. And his writing is wonderful, beautifully crafted. His stories make me laugh and make me cry. His stories make me feel good about where I come from, about all the people I left behind, about all the people who are still there. The laughter his stories provoke is not laughter at anyone; it is laughter with others about our common condition.

Thank God for Garrison Keillor.  His stories make me realize I have stories worth telling, too. And his mastery of writing sets the bar high.