My father told me that a few generations back, his forebears got stuck with farmland near Lake Michigan. It wasn’t a marsh, but it wasn’t particularly good for growing crops, either.
They found someone who’d buy the place and moved west. Again.
Time passed.
My father’s father got hired at a construction site, working there until someone dropped a crane on him and several of his colleagues. Unintentionally.
I gather that the crane operator relieved the tedium of his job by what he might have viewed as a harmless drink or seven.
At any rate, folks were sorting the resultant mess out into live bodies, dead bodies, and inorganic debris when a rescuer noticed that one of the dead bodies was bleeding.
I haven’t verified this, but I’ve been told that dead bodies don’t bleed: and that this is why my father’s father got reclassified as not-dead. Under the circumstances, not being dead strikes me as good news. Moreover, most of him had been pulled out in one piece.
One of his legs, on the other hand, stopped being a leg somewhere above the knee. But medicos found enough extra skin to cover the stump. Which I’ll also see as good news.
If there’s a story about how he got equipped with a wooden leg, I don’t know it. But I do know that a knack for refocusing, plus maybe skills picked up in construction work — with a fair portion of determination — helped him make a living as a woodworker. And that’s another topic.
Meanwhile, that land near Lake Michigan changed hands quite a few times. Can’t say I blame the owners. It really wasn’t good farmland.
But if the family had somehow managed to hang on to it, they’d now own a sizable chunk of Chicago.
——————————
I could try coming up with morals for my family’s stories: particularly how these ancestors avoided owning some of the choicest real estate in the Midwest. Maybe something along the lines of ‘wealth is a burden’, or this bit from Proverbs:
“It is better to be humble with the poor than to share plunder with the proud.” (Proverbs 16:9)
I won’t, since then I’d feel obliged to start talking about context. Which would involve Sirach 29, loans and neighbors, truth and beauty — basically, it’d be more effort than I’ve planned on for this week.
So here’s the usual link list of family-related good news and other experiences:
The weather this morning, with a winter storm in my area. (December 19, 2024)
A Winter Storm Warning is in effect.
It’s not just for Sauk Centre, Minnesota, although we’re pretty close to the center of today’s banana-shaped weather event. I gather that we’ve already gotten most of the snow we’re going to get this time around.
“Snow likely, mainly before 2pm. Cloudy, with a high near 22. East wind around 15 mph becoming north. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Total daytime snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.” (Extended Forecast for Sauk Centre MN / National Weather Service)
Even so, the W. S. W. is still in effect until midnight.
I get the impression that the National Weather service has learned from past mistakes, and realizes that the common folk don’t panic all that easily:
…A high-pressure air mass tangled with its low-pressure counterpart over Nebraska on June 7, 1953. The June 7th storms weren’t particularly memorable.
But one tornado on June 8th killed 116 folks. The body count was 247 by day’s end.
That photo shows part of Flint-Beecher, Michigan, after the storm passed.
What’s sad is that many of those deaths were most likely avoidable.
Officials at the National Weather Service knew that tornadoes were likely when the storm started ripping through New York state.
Folks in the New England area aren’t accustomed to twisters, though, so the powers that be didn’t issue a warning.
The official decision was, apparently, well-intentioned. Decision-makers at the Weather Service didn’t want common folks to panic. They did, however, issue the first severe thunderstorm watch in Massachusetts history…. (“Sane Environmentalism”, Stormy Weather (August 11, 2017))
And a lifetime here in the Upper Midwest tells me that even the trailing edge of weather like we’re having now makes situational awareness a useful survival skill.
It also tells me that, although we’ll probably still have snow on the ground for Christmas — that’s not guaranteed. It’s like a character in “Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures”, or maybe another of those animated series, said about weather back home:
‘We get thunderstorms, blizzards, tornadoes, but we never let it spoil our Fourth of July!’ (one of Barbie’s friends, in one of those animated series: Maybe “Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures”)
Maybe our familiarity with this region’s variable climate explains the Sauk Centre school system’s decision to go ahead with classes today, after a two-hour delay this morning.
But we’re among the few around here that didn’t simply tell the kids to stay home: and that’s another topic or two.
Now I’m going to get a cup of coffee, sit in an easy chair by the window, and be glad that I don’t have to go outside until Sunday. Right after I list other times I’ve talked about the weather, including last year’s end-of-Advent:
Moorhead State’s gate, a few blocks from where I grew up. (October 2011)
My wife and I met while we were Computer Science students at MSU.
I don’t remember if MSU was Minnesota State University Moorhead by that time, or Moorhead State University. Either way, it was Moorhead State to me: the place where my dad worked, a block or so from my home.
My wife earned a Computer Science degree, I nearly learned calculus a few times. The first time we talked was in the hallway near the Computer Science department’s entrance: a square arch leading to another hallway.
Someone — students, I figure — had put a banner of continuous-feed paper over the arch. It bore a motto: “ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO PROGRAM”. Having written a few programs in the two years I lasted there, I appreciated the sentiment.
We were both in a circle of friends we called ‘the computer gang’, who were also enthusiastic RPG players.1 A bit overly-enthusiastic, and that’s another topic.
A Movie and Pizza, Coffee and Conversation
After seeing “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, we went to a pizza place — Godfather’s Pizza, I think, but don’t quote me on that — on Moorhead’s south side.
I remember that my wife-to-be was sitting by the window, facing north, and that I sat in the chair next to her.
What I don’t remember is practically climbing over an unspecified number of my friends to reach that chair. But that’s what I did, they told me, and I believe them. I really wanted to sit next to her. That, I do remember.
At any rate, pizza and conversation followed. Both eventually ebbed. By that time, I’d noticed that this young woman had not thoroughly enjoyed the movie.
Now, I’m not one of those perceptive, astute, and insightful guys; just simply brimming with sensitivity to the inner feelings of others. I can generally tell if the other person is about to go off the deep end, but that’s about it.
Anyway, I’d been rather tightly focused on this young woman for maybe an hour or more.
Again, I’m not all that sensitive to emotional cues. But noticing words, their context, and their plethora of meanings — connotative, denotative, and allusional? That, I am good at. Freakishly so.
This young woman was, I thought, if not in actual need of more time to get over that movie’s intense imagery, was at least in a position to benefit from opportunities to focus on something else.
Besides, I saw in the then-present circumstance an opportunity to enjoy a bit more of her company and conversation. Selfish? Oh, yes. Altruistic? Maybe that, too.
So I asked if she’d be okay with getting a cup of coffee at another place — a Village Inn, across the street back then.2
Reasonable Questions
I could describe the place, and the booth we sat in, but that part of Moorhead has changed over the decades. There’s a Snap Dragon Asian Buffet there now.3
What’s important, to me, is that we kept talking. A lot. About the movie, at first, but then she asked “how many children do you want?”
Many guys might have run, screaming, into the night at that point.
I don’t remember my exact words, but they were something very close to ‘four or five, I suppose, or whatever happens’. My tone was, assuming my memory’s accurate, calm and conversational.
My interior response was, if it had been expressed in words, something like ‘Schnortt! Dat’s my kinda woman!!’
We’ve discussed the questions she asked. She had a quite reasonable explanation for raising those issues.
She’d been very serious about another member of ‘the computer gang’, had gone through a Catholic pre-marriage course, and remembered the topics raised. To her, they were logical queries which seemed appropriate, given my apparent interest.
Which, of course, they were. My wife is eminently logical and practical. Me? I’m part-Irish.
More conversations, and movies, followed. Time passed.
And at last we reached one of those romantic milestones: our first kiss.
But first, I’d better explain something. I have no sense of smell.4 I can detect things like ammonia, but it’s not so much smelling the stuff as feeling it.
Okay, back to that romantic milestone.
It was a lovely summer night, on Moorhead’s north side.
We were walking under the stars, speaking of this and that.
When I asked my wife if it was okay to write about the experience, she agreed; and, looking back on that memorable moment, added — “you took me past the sewage plant”.
Allusion (“This article needs additional citations for verification….”) (Allusion’s meaning overlaps “connotation”, and that’s a can of worms I’ll leave for another time.)
Connotation (“…a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries….”)
“…In the United States, 3% of people aged over 40 are affected by anosmia.
“In 2012, smell was assessed in persons aged 40 years and older with rates of anosmia/severe hyposmia of 0.3% at age 40–49 rising to 14.1% at age 80+. Rates of hyposmia were much higher: 3.7% at age 40–49 and 25.9% at 80+….” (Anosmia, Epidemiology, Wikipedia)
I’ll start with something that should be flamingly obvious.
Murder is a bad idea and I shouldn’t do it. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2268-2269)
By murder, I mean deliberately killing an innocent person. Which is what someone who apparently expressed “ill will” against corporate America has been charged with.
This isn’t what I’ll be talking about in my ‘Saturday’ post. But an insurance executive from Minnesota getting killed is still international news, and the situation touches on points I think are important.
Some expert said the way folks are reacting is “deeply concerning”.
I see the expert’s point, so I’ll say how I see Brian Thompson’s abrupt death.
I’ll also say why I’m not praising his killer — calling for the proletariat to rise up and make the streets run red with the blood of capitalist oppressors — or saying that we never had these problems in the 1950s, and anybody who’s richer than me deserves death.
“…The three-page, handwritten document found on him suggested a motive, according to investigators. The pages expressed ‘ill will’ towards corporate America, they said.
“A senior law enforcement official told the New York Times it said: ‘These parasites had it coming’ and ‘I do apologise for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done’….
“…Friends have told US media he had surgery on his back. The background image on an X account believed to belong to Mangione shows an x-ray of a spine with hardware in it.
“However, it is unclear how much his own experience of the healthcare system shaped his views.
“A person matching his name and photo had an account on Goodreads, a user-generated book review site, where he read two books about back pain in 2022, one of them called Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry….”
Maybe this person’s experience with my country’s healthcare system affected his opinions regarding its effectiveness. I’d be astounded if they didn’t.
If he’d started out as a devout believer in the efficacy of American insurance agencies and the supreme excellence of each medical practitioner, I can see how dealing with our realities might come as a shock.
But I don’t think that’s an excuse for killing someone. Even if the someone was a top executive in the insurance industry.
And that brings me to a news item discussing opinions expressed in social media — which I don’t, by the way, see as the reason some folks act like twits.
I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure the twit quotient hasn’t changed much since the days when the telephone and television were — allegedly — causing the end of civilization as we know it. And that’s another topic.
“… ‘I have yet to see a single video that’s pounding the drum of “we have to find him,” and that is unique,’ said Michael McWhorter, better known as TizzyEnt on TikTok, where he posts true crime and viral news content for his 6.7 million followers. ‘And in other situations of some kind of blatant violence, I would absolutely be seeing that.’…
“… ‘The surge of social media posts praising and glorifying the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson is deeply concerning,’ Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at The Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University previously told NBC News. (Thompson was CEO of UnitedHealthcare, not of UnitedHealth Group, its parent company.)…”
Repeating what I said before: murder isn’t nice, and I shouldn’t do it.
It’s also something I shouldn’t encourage. That wouldn’t be helping the common good, something I should be doing. I talked about that a couple months back:
“I’m also obliged to do what’s possible in public life. That includes recognizing humanity’s solidarity and respecting authority. Within reason. (Catechism, 1778, 1915, 1897-1917, 1939-1942, 2199, 2238-2243)…” (From “Voting As If What I Believe Matters”, Obligations, (October 26, 2024))
One way or another, I’ve been bumping into my country’s “healthcare system” all my life.
I’ve got opinions, good and otherwise, about individuals. About the system as a whole: in my opinion, it could be worse. And it could be a whole lot better.
But I do not think killing some CEO is a good idea.
Maybe I would, if I somehow convinced myself that he single-handedly had shaped America’s healthcare organizations over the last half-century — and that without him, everybody would start acting nice and nobody would act stupidly, and – – – -.
But I don’t, so I won’t.
I will, however, outline why I think committing murder ‘for the greater good’ is a bad idea.
First, an over-simplified look at what makes a particular act “good” or “bad”. Turns out that how I feel about it is — yet another topic.
Whether something I do is good or bad depends on three things (Catechism, 1750)
The object I choose
The end in view, or my intention
The circumstances of my action
A few actions are simply wrong: no matter why, how, or where I do them. And doing something that’s objectively wrong, even if I have some good outcome in mind, is a bad idea and I shouldn’t do it. “…One may not do evil so that good may result from it.” (Catechism 1755-1756)
We Have Problems, This Isn’t a Solution
Now, was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare “innocent”?
I’ll express my opinion, which is that he was not solely responsible for situations which have been developing since my childhood, at least.
I don’t even think that he could, by virtue of his position as CEO, untangle the bureaucratic snarl we call a healthcare system. Maybe he could have sorted out some of the mess: but that’s something we’ll never know.
Will killing this CEO help make American healthcare less of a problem with folks who are sick or injured? Probably not. But even if that were so: that doesn’t make killing him a good idea.
And I don’t see praising another killer as a reasonable approach to fixing one of my country’s problems.
Good grief. I should have proofed this before posting it. I’ve fixed a typo, and here’s the seemingly-inevitable list of other stuff that’s vaguely related:
I had a little more hair then, and more of it was black, but I did and still do have a haven’t-shaved-in-years beard.
At any rate, while down in the Cities, we bought an Elijah cup.
There’s a lot of history, and even more tradition, involved in the Elijah cup’s story. Including why I should probably be calling it Elijah’s Cup.
But that’s for another time. Maybe around Easter, since Elijah’s Cup is part of the Passover Seder. Then again, maybe not. Calling the topics complicated would be a massive understatement.
The Passover Seder meal goes back to what’s outlined in Exodus 13:3–10.1 This was centuries after Joseph entered Egypt as a slave, ended up handling Pharaoh’s internal affairs, and that’s another story.
The point is that Moses had, reluctantly, gone back to Egypt — that’s yet another story — and had several unsatisfactory interviews with the Pharaoh of his era, before Egypt’s ruler told him to get out of Dodge.2
“During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Leave my people at once, you and the Israelites! Go and serve the LORD as you said. Take your flocks, too, and your herds, as you said, and go; and bless me, too!'” (Exodus 12:31–32)
“Remember This Day….”
Moses and the Israelites were on their way when Pharaoh changed his mind. Maybe he finally realized that they were a fair fraction of his land’s workforce.
Whichever pharaoh it was, I’ll give him credit for decisive action.
Leading a significant military force, including at least one elite unit, he caught up with the refugees. But I’m getting ahead of the story.
Meanwhile, Moses was taking steps to ensure that the folks heading for a homeland they’d never seen didn’t forget this part of their long story.
“Moses said to the people, ‘Remember this day on which you came out of Egypt, out of a house of slavery. For it was with a strong hand that the LORD brought you out from there. Nothing made with leaven may be eaten.” (Exodus 13:3)
Millennia later, they’re still remembering that day, eating unleavened bread and re-telling the story of how they left Egypt.
An Elijah’s Cup is part of that Passover Seder. I gather that it’s the ‘fifth cup’, set for Elijah, a sign of hope and expectation: looking forward to his coming, as herald for the Messiah.
I see Elijah’s Cup as a reminder that the Messiah has come. But that’s because I’m a Christian, and think that Peter was right.3
“Simon Peter said in reply, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.'” (Matthew 16:16)
A few more points, and I’ll get around to the time my wife and I bought an Elijah’s Cup.
First, how I see the book we call “Exodus”, AKA שְׁמוֹת/Shemoth/Shmot (“Names”).
I think the book of Exodus is true. I also think it is not a history book, written by someone with a contemporary American viewpoint. As for what Sacred Scripture is, this is a pretty good summary:
“…Know what the Bible is – and what it isn’t. The Bible is the story of God’s relationship with the people he has called to himself. It is not intended to be read as history text, a science book, or a political manifesto. In the Bible, God teaches us the truths that we need for the sake of our salvation….” (“Understanding the Bible” , Mary Elizabeth Sperry, USCCB)
Moses, Pharaoh —
I’ve been wandering off-topic, but there are a couple more points I want to make about Exodus, Moses, and all that.
I gather that “the modern scholarly consensus” is that Moses is make-believe, maybe based on someone who really existed, but mostly mythical.
“Scholars hold different opinions on the historicity of Moses. For instance, according to William G. Dever, the modern scholarly consensus is that the biblical person of Moses is largely mythical while also holding that ‘a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C.’ and that ‘archeology can do nothing’ to prove or confirm either way. Some scholars, such as Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, consider Moses a historical figure….” (Moses, Historicity, Wikipedia (excerpt taken December 4, 2024))
The consensus crowd has a point.
An historical document of a sort: Thutmosis III cartouches in the temple at Deir el-Bahari.
Whoever was pharaoh at the time didn’t see to it that future generations would remember him as the leader who deprived Egypt of a whole mess of workers, wiping out significant parts of his country’s military in the process.
I’m not surprised. Official records at the time were like today’s press releases, and the debacle described in Exodus wasn’t good PR. Not from Pharaoh’s viewpoint.
If the current academic consensus is right, and “a Moses-like figure” lived in the mid to late 13th century B.C., then about three and a quarter millennia have passed since his time.
I won’t insist on this, but maybe some records from that period got lost in what happened about a century later.
— The Late Bronze Age Collapse, George Washington, and Me
Folks talking about burned cities and unburied corpses littering abandoned streets call it the Late Bronze Age collapse.
Others, discussing Homer’s “legendary” conflict involving the world’s major powers, call it the Trojan War.
These days, I gather that conventional wisdom says Homer’s epic just happened to be set around the time when civilization shattered: abruptly and messily
After the Late Bronze Age collapse, life went on. Folks endured centuries of chaos, poverty, and illiteracy. But they endured: eventually rebuilding, or restarting, their civilizations.
Think of that period as being sort of like those post-apocalypse movies. But without giant mutant frogs.
I’m impressed at how much knowledge didn’t get lost during those centuries.
And, partly because accommodating the academic in-crowd isn’t among my priorities, I figure that Moses really was Moses.
I’m also willing to think that George Washington was a real person: which seems obvious, today, only two and a half centuries later.
But let’s say it’s three and a quarter millennia after our first president’s heyday, the same interval that’s elapsed since a scholarly consensus says “a Moses-like figure” lived.
Okay. My hypothetical future year is 4824. Much of what’s known about the United States is based on “America’s Story”, written during the 21st century.
Let’s also say that academic fashions of this imagined future are like today’s.
Eminent academicians might say that “America’s Story” is an unreliable account, since it was written by Americans: and therefore biased. As for George Washington, he’s clearly a mythologized figure, embodying the spirit of civic virtues.
They’d point out that not only is there no documentation of the Cherry Tree Myth; but artwork depicting the Apotheosis of Washington demonstrate that this figure was worshiped, possibly as a guardian deity.4
And that’s another topic. Several, actually.
Overheard While Getting Our Elijah’s Cup
The Elijah cup we bought in the 1990s.
Finally, it’s time that I recall the time my wife and I, and our oldest daughter, picked up that Elijah’s Cup. Maybe our second-oldest, too.
We had some free time, enough to find a Jewish gift shop and look for an Elijah’s Cup. Three decades later, I can’t remember the name of the place.
I do remember that while we were looking around, a conversation was in progress. Another couple were discussing their options with the man who was tending the shop.
Seems that they had something specific in mind: a wedding gift, maybe. At any rate, there were two versions of this item in stock.
One had been prepared the right way, and was significantly more expensive. The less expensive item was indistinguishable from the correctly-prepared one.
I don’t know why the couple didn’t either buy the one that was kosher, or take the less expensive one, and palm it off as the real McCoy.
I also don’t know if “kosher” is the right word in this context, but never mind.
That conversation went on at some length.
Now, I’m aware of cultural norms regarding eavesdropping. But these folks weren’t making any effort to avoid broadcasting.
They also seemed unable to either (1) accept the correct item’s extra expense or (2) economize and pass off the substitute as a genuine article.
I’m pretty sure my reaction to their expressed attitude was obvious. I’ve got pretty much the opposite of a poker face. I’m not sure that I was exactly appalled, but I can’t think of a better word for how I felt.
Taking Traditions Seriously
Again, I’m about as gentile as it gets, west of the Urals and north of the Mediterranean.
But whoever was getting that item probably took Judaism’s traditions and customs seriously. So do I, for that matter, although I’m not about to start wearing tefillin: and that’s yet another topic, for another day.
The cost-conscious couple made their decision and left. The shopkeeper looked at me, smiled and shrugged as he spread his hands. Then my wife and I got our Elijah’s Cup.
We haven’t included a Passover Seder in our Maundy/Holy Thursday routines.5 It’s not that we’re against doing so. We just haven’t adopted that custom.
I do, however, see to it that I get to Mass on Holy Thursday. My wife: she gets out even less than I do. Ours isn’t the world’s healthiest household, and that’s yet again another topic.
I’ve talked about some of this before, and probably will again:
4 The distant and not-so-distant past, remembering that reality has layers:
“…It’s something too many of us forget, that reality has layers. Occasionally people ask me how I can be Catholic and a science journalist. The answer is simple: Truth does not contradict truth. Both science and religion are pursuit of truth. They’re after different aspects of truth, different layers of reality, but they’re still both fundamentally about truth….” (Camille M. Carlisle, Sky and Telescope (June 2017)) quoted in “Science, Religion, and Saying Goodbye to the 19th Century”, Perspectives (May 25, 2024)
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
I live in Minnesota, in America's Central Time Zone. This blog is on UTC/Greenwich time.
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Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
But if the family had somehow managed to hang on to it, they’d now own a sizable chunk of Chicago.
