Age 70 and I don't need a walker

A very early birthday celebration for yours truly. One candle! 69 since then. Williams family lived in St. Paul. My preschool years were a precious chapter of my life. I was far too young here to know anything about the vicissitudes that awaited me. My father Ralph came to Morris to help launch UMM. Mom Martha managed the campus post office for many years. I try to keep memories of my parents alive. Was I close to my father? No. I wasn't because we were a "generation gap" family. That's just how it was.

 

Significant day for yours truly this past Sunday as I covered my full walking route east of town, for the first time in quite a while. Weather has been too unpleasant: cold, wind, gray skies, just yuk. 

Nice to see the usual surroundings out there. Especially nice to see a fellow walker and especially her dog who recognized me. So I shouted the dog's name "Reese" and he bounded toward me. Supreme source of joy in an otherwise bitter time of year, when we are forced to spend so much time indoors. 

It's important for me to exercise for health reasons. 

So Sunday was upbeat and then came Monday which was the birthday of my childhood next-door neighbor. She no longer resides locally. Her dad was chairman of the Morris school board. I try to remember each year to communicate with her at birthday time. I whiffed one year and I felt that was because of our routines being disrupted by covid. 

And might today, Jan. 28, be special too? Well it's special for me because it's my own birthday. Yes my old neighbor and I have birthdays on back-to-back days and not only that, we're the same age! We are now age 70. It's an accomplishment to make it to 70. I also considered it a milestone accomplishment to make it to my 50-year high school reunion which was two years ago. 

As a kid I would consider people at these milestones to be so very old, doddering some perhaps. And maybe some of us are. Me? I feel fine as I sit here at my residence along beautiful Northridge Drive. I'm writing the first draft on Monday. So on Tuesday all I need to do is click on "publish." Then I'll kick back and with any luck can take my long walk again. We'll see. 

I said I feel fine, but I'm on hold for finding out if I have any issues to deal with. I have to submit a new "blood draw" in about a week. Hoping for the best of course but cannot rule out complications of some kind. 

Since qualifying for Medicare I have found that frankly I don't have much confidence in the concept of "primary care physicians." I have come to believe that if you feel you might have a concerning medical condition, identify the proper specialist and go straight to that person. What a difference this would have made in my life. 

Why might the other system be a problem? Well, I think I heard some light shed on this by Tim Conway Jr. on his L.A.-based radio show on KFI. He was talking about our broader culture and how "there's just no follow-through." I have noticed more than one example of that apparent shortcoming. Sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised. 

If my health falls through, I can take satisfaction in making it to age 70 and having been at my 50-year reunion. I grew up when we consumed the daily news reporting of countless young men getting killed violently in the Vietnam war. Young men only around the age of 20. All this happened in a war that the U.S. lost. 

I am wondering if we are entering a new dark time with DJT being president again. If you disagree with me that there is cause for concern, then you're a hopeless moron. So that means there are so many hopeless morons in the church pews of the various conservative churches around Stevens County. It is hard to continue calling oneself a Christian. 

I attend the "progressive" church of First Lutheran in Morris, a church that may be fading away because of the prevailing attitudes/temperament. 

DJT is showing 100 percent signs of wanting to be an autocrat. America could end up as a smoldering ash pile. Not sure what will arise to replace it but I presume there will be human beings here. 

I have lost friends because of the political climate. But I can count on getting one birthday card. That would be from the U of M Foundation. And of course that happens because I give them money. Today (Tuesday) is my birthday so it's possible there could be another card in mailbox. We'll see. 

It is hard being someone who is known to say positive things about the Democratic Party. I do wish the Dem Party would knock it off with things like "trans." I have no time for that. The huge shift rightward in rural outstate Minnesota got started with the push for gay rights. 

Again I'll say that it was perfectly legitimate to ensure there are fair legal guarantees for our gay brothers and sisters. What we did not need was all the open gay rights crusading as with allowing "gay pride" floats in high school homecoming parades. Don't even talk to me about that. 

So now we have the political right being in almost complete control. It certainly is in control out here in windswept rural western Minnesota. So ironic we have UMM out here, an institution which historically has been known to be so left-leaning. But that might just be an old stereotype now. If so, I'm tremendously glad. 

I'm not sure I should be happy about supporting UMM now. The idea was to help the UMM music department. My how that department has cratered. The evidence is that the music ensembles will henceforth be a combo of what few students we have, and community people. 

My opinion is that community people can have their own community groups. I don't think state taxpayers need to support the new arrangement. The community people who will be in these groups I'm sure are from well-to-do families. They can open their own checkbooks. I feel rather silly continuing to write checks to support this. 

I'm trying to prop myself up in this community by supporting at least one or two proper things, which I have always had a hard time doing. I have gone against the grain horribly in this community. So is there any hope now? 

I support UMM music even though it appears to be dying, and I support First Lutheran Church even though the ELCA is in constant decline and the Trump-supporting churches expand constantly. Is it just bad luck or what? Is this all because of a player on the San Jose State volleyball team? 

Thanks to UMM for the birthday card I got. I need to try to find a ray of hope. And as I do each year, I encourage you to acknowledge my birthday by listening to Elvis Presley sing "Funny How Time Slips Away." You can do so with YouTube link below. God bless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZcnT5gqRXk 

 

Dad and I at Disneyland, a good guess would be 1958. We traveled out there to visit my uncle Edwin, his wife Doris and their identical twin sons Allan and Norman. Edwin was Mom's brother. They grew up in Brainerd. Mom and Edwin had a sister Mildred. Oh, Doris was Homecoming queen for Brainerd High School in 1942! Her name was Doris Alexander then.
 

- Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com