Skip to main content

Posts

"Hullo? MA? "

     Vell, I was sitting' here mind in' me own business when the telephone rings and I notice it's a St. Cloud call, denoting it's a call for the wife. Usually I holler up to Jaquinta that it is one of her own calling to say "I love you, Ma," and defer the responsibility of answering it to her, than make small talk until she picks up the phone in her own good time.    So, not thinking, I naturally answer the phone. "Hullo." I sez.      "Hi," Seth sez, "I lost the keys to the car."      "You're f***ed,' I sez. 'We don't be havin' have a spare key for that car. Where are you then?"      "Deer River, where I spent the night, he explained quietly. "You know, instead of driving in a blizzard. Remember I called you guys about 12:30 AM? There's about five inches of snow over here."    "And you lost these keys, how?' I implored, all the while knowing it's one of thos...
Recent posts

TBD 2026

   Sven threw the stick over the high grass and into the creek with a splash! This was immediately followed by a distinct 'KAPLOOSH! as the smaller of the two dogs, 'Dazee,' and 'Cubby,' hurtled herself off the bank and far  out into the water to retrieve it; 'retrieving' being a far stretch of the imagination, for Dazee just grabs the stick, swims to the other side, deposits the stick there and then swims back eager for another dive.    This dog is the Border Collie/ cross dog we thought was water-shy. Cubby is a Lab/Chesapeake cross and born to the water; she has always leapt into the water with all-knowing abandon, but not Dazee. No Dazee is a latent water lover. Her preference was to merely run along the bank at high speeds catapulting her compact muscular body across beaver runways and rocketing along the undulations of the creek bank as though on a roller coaster track; she had blinding speed.    But it must have occurred to her that she had been...

THE RAVEN COVER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

     I woke up and made coffee as per my usual routine; it was a nice morning. My wife and daughter were living in Bemidji in those days. Alone in the house, I called some friends at Capella in Roseau, just to see who was around, when Jill answered the phone, her attention somewhere else; about which I jokingly commented something I don't recall and she said, quite impatiently:    "DON'T YOU KNOW?? TWO AIRPLANES HAVE CRASHED INTO THE WORLD TRADES CENTER!! THOUSANDS HAVE BEEN KILLED!! TURN ON YOUR RADIO!!"    Then she hung up.    Radio programming was intermittent; I couldn't make sense of it as I hurriedly dressed for the drive to Roseau, 20 miles away. The car radio was the same way; describing the unbelievable unfolding scene in New York City. I swung into the Riverfront gas station in Wannaska to fill on gasoline; they had a TV... The woman affirmed the worse; two airliners full of people had slammed into the two World Trade Center towers ...

Silence: Feedback to a Fellow Wannaskan Almanac Writer

   Reading your post I hear two comments about silence: The first is about a writer’s typical lack of feedback i.e., silence from readers; and the second, to seek silence, as non-Indigenous peoples, in the midst of our typically chaotic lives.    As a nearly life-long writer of 72-years of age, and self-publisher of a northwestern Minnesota magazine for 24 years, I know a lot about what you said that, “‘ ... being a writer is like shouting from inside a glass box:  you can see the people moving out there, but you have no idea if they hear you.’” And is why I kept the little scribbled notes attached to re-subscriptions; feedback that was sent out-of-the-blue after reading something that resonated with them; or emailed us over the course of years as positive comment or criticism -- any feedback is better than no feedback.    And as for experiencing silence about oneself, too much silence is intimidating to my wife and her family who man, woman and child ...

Lots of Fun at the Vet: 2007

  Date:   Sunday, May 13, 2007 12:09 PM Subject: Pets R fine     Danni and Cubby were really good friends. They went everywhere together. And died within days of one another.          Took the cat and dog to the veterinarian on Thursday last week. They were long overdue. Stuffed the totally uncooperative 13.8 lb. cat into a 10 lb. cat box, bought the dog a new blue collar because her old one got melted on the barbecue grill, grabbed the leash, called the dog and off we went, merrily, I might add.     The cat was in the back of the truck so I couldn't hear her hiss to the dog,  "GET ME OUTA HERE OR I'LL SCRATCH YOUR EYES OUT WHEN YOU ARE SLEEPING. DON'T BE FALLIN' ASLEEP ON ME HERE! WAKE UP. YOU GOTTA GET ME OUTA HERE I'M SUFFOCATING. I'M DYIN' I'M TELLIN" YOU. HE PUT ME IN THIS BOX WHEN I WASN'T LOOKIN'. I WILL SO CLAW YOUR EYES OUT! CLAW YOUR SIX NIPPLES TOO AFTER YOU'RE BLIND AND CAN"T SEE ME! HOOHAH! THAT'LL BE GREAT, ...

The Search For Homestead Stories

  Date:   Wednesday, March 26, 2008 10:11 AM Subject:   Re: Homesteads   THE RAVEN   is full of homestead stories, but one such issue that comes to mind is one of the most popular issues because it contained two homestead stories, one from Marshall County and one from Roseau County.  Volume 8 Issue 1   From Marshall County comes   The   Martin & Anna Olafson Story , by Steven G. Reynolds   The story is about family whose homestead log cabin stands NW of Grygla, one that I had taken photos of years before we published its story. One of our subscribers told me of someone who would know all about it as the gentleman's wife had been born in that cabin and so could provide much information.    Thinking about that era, I could imagine:      " Wolves howl eerily in the distance. Below the star-studded black sky, wide eyes look nervously about in the immediate darkness of the new land. The cattle's huge nostrils in...