From the Tip of My Pen

I never know what words will flow from the tip of this pen. It’s a very mysterious gadget to hold. Mine of choice is a ballpoint pen, sometimes a cheap Bic, sometimes an upscale Parker T-Ball Jotter. When I was a young lad I loved taking my mother’s fountain pen and use it to scribble away. It held a reservoir of words that flowed for quite a long while. That style was an improvement from the dip pen which held only a few words before it needed another dip into an ink well or bottle. Neither the fountain pen nor the dip pen prove friendly to this lefty because of the way I hold the pen and sweep from left to right. The left hand is always in contact with the fresh ink on the page and smears it.

In an earlier age, let’s say the time of writing the Declaration of Independence, writers used something else to pen their words - goose quills. Thomas Jefferson wrote the many-word Declaration with one. A handy device called a pen knife that some of us carry in our pockets today can convert a feather to a pen. It’s just a small folding knife. Its original purpose was for trimming and sharpening quill pens.

Sometimes a pencil in hand becomes as mysterious for its output as an ink pen. I’ve become something of a snob since I prefer Blackwing Pearls which are advertised as writing with “Half the pressure, twice the speed.” Since the Zanbroz store in downtown Fargo closed, I need to find a new supplier. After all, John Steinbeck used them (I can dream, can’t I) and said “they really glide over the paper.” He was said to have looked at his sharpened Blackwing and saw a lightning rod.

As far as putting these writing instruments to work, I only had to look around.  My copy of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold lies open on my desk. The book celebrated its 75th birthday this year, and it contains a wealth of writing. One passage leaps off the page. He reminisces that in his youth with “trigger-itch”  they never passed up a chance to kill wolves.  One day a party of them started firing at a she-wolf until it went down with its wounded pup  following behind. He wrote, “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.” The scene profoundly affected him and he noted that as time passed the thinning of the wolf opened the way for the deer to increase in numbers and negatively influence the environment.

Another story of the wolf comes to mind when the anthropologist Loren Eiseley shared this. He spoke of the time one winter evening while sorting through a box of  fossilized bones he had collected. His dog named Wolf slept on the floor beside him. When Eiseley dropped a large bone between them, the dog woke and took it in his mouth. The specimen, probably 10,000 years old and rock-hard, became the dog’s possession as if to say only fools gave up bones. Any attempt to take it resulted in the animal’s baring his teeth and snarling viciously at his master. As Eiseley noted, “I was the most loved object in his universe, but the past was fully alive in him. I knew he was not bluffing. If I made another step he would strike.”

To defuse the situation, Eiseley got up and walked to the door speaking calmly to his dog, “Wolf, a walk in the snow.” All of a sudden, the promise of some  playfulness outdoors let the dog forget the bone and he willingly came on the run. A blizzard wind was blowing, and after a frolic, the dog wanted to return indoors where he promptly fell asleep on the rug. Uncontested now, the bone was picked up and placed high on a shelf.

As youngsters we listened to a steady influx of stories about wolves: Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and many others such as Jack London’s books The Call of the Wild and White Fang. According to Roman mythology, the city of Rome was founded by twin brothers Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a she-wolf after being abandoned as infants.

Wolf stories have flowed easily and often from the tip of a writer’s pen. Next time you pick one up, stop and wonder how to unlock it. Maybe it doesn’t need to be unlocked. Try pressing it to paper and watch the words tumble out.

Into the Unknown

In this household my wife and I can often be found walking through the history of our immigrant ancestors. Arriving by ship at various ports of entry our grandparents entered an unknown world with only a few dollars and the clothes on their back. Unable to speak English, they had little or no knowledge of the country’s geography or how to get where they could settle. They were jostled, ridiculed, and cheated by sharks who accosted them.

Immigrants coming to the U. S. were escaping poor conditions in their previous homes. Life had been good for German settlers in Ukraine for a hundred years or so. Catherine the Great, a German herself who through marriage became the Empress of Russia, knew they were good farmers and invited them to settle. They moved onto the vast lands of the Russian steppe with her promise of free land, freedom from military service, freedom of religion, and other incentives. Here they prospered. Alexander, one in the line of her successors, held the same philosophy and provided incentive for additional German success.

Unfortunately, their champions at the highest level did not stay in power forever. The German farmers began to be taxed heavily, livestock and produce were taken, young men were drafted into the army, and life became ever more difficult. Stories of America reached them and gave them new hope.

These Germans from Russia found their way westward and began setting roots. Some of their stories have been recorded in county and community history books where one from Grant County caught my eye. We’ll leave people unnamed but will join a newly married couple who received some cattle as a wedding gift. The groom had established a homestead on the west side of the Missouri River and the newlyweds needed to move them and their possessions from the east side. Joined by a few other couples their trek began.

With no roads to follow they traveled in their wagons and herded their cattle overland to a ferry  on the river near the Indian Agency at Fort Yates. Here they encountered a frightening experience. Maybe it was gentlemanly of them to decide the women, children, and cattle should cross first, but that’s what happened. Everything went well, though, and the passengers disembarked. The task of keeping the cattle and the children in check fell to the women who no doubt wished the men would join them soon. The operator of the ferry turned back for the men, horses, and wagons. 

Here’s where their plans fell awry. A strong wind blew the ferry onto a sandbar where it became hopelessly grounded. Efforts to get it afloat again failed. With night coming on they decided further efforts to dislodge it would wait until morning. The women, alone with their wits in a foreign land, suffered through the night and remembered stories they’d heard of scalping Indians, poisonous rattlesnakes, and ravenous wolves. Sleep did not come.

Remember this was the early 1900s and Indians posed no threat. In fact, the ferry operator had many Indian friends whom he could ask for help. By wading and swimming across the river he made it to their camp near the fort and found several of them willing to aid in freeing the ferry. With their help the situation returned to normal. The men and women reunited and continued on their way. 

Fear of wolves played a part in some of the folklore that had instilled an enduring imprint in the minds of the immigrants. Russian literature carried stories about them, real or imagined. Writers like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky can be cited, but I turn to an immigrant named George Aberle who became a Catholic monsignor in the Dickinson area to tell a good backgrounding story. 

He wrote that the Russians developed the three horse troika sleigh to safely travel through wolf-infested steppes. Necessary business such as mail delivery between communities had to be conducted and three men rode the sleigh, two of them “riding shotgun” like we used to say in the Old West plus the team’s driver. In that way wolves could be kept at bay, but their danger was often present. 

Stories of wolf attacks on the battlefields of World War I make one cringe. Corpses and wounded soldiers littering the ground became the target of hungry wolves. The New York Times wrote about the wolves being desperate in their hunger, and even though soldiers of both armies kept shooting them “Fresh packs would appear in place of those that were killed.”

In this country the immigrants didn’t much face dangers of Indian attacks or wolf packs, but rattlesnake bites did. One immigrant, Dan Panko, was concerned about the prevalence of rattler in his location faced the threat with legislation. He ran for a seat in the North Dakota legislature and submitted a bill to pay a bounty on them. Rejected, he persisted by bringing a box full of them, stiff with the cold, to a session and dumped them on the floor. In the warmth of the room they revived and began crawling around. He succeeded in getting the bounty passed which lasted for a few years. In my years out there with my wife’s people I never encountered very many, but when I did I couldn’t miss their presence with all the noise it made with that rattle on the end of their tail.

At the outset of this article, we said we might be found walking through the history of our immigrant ancestors. That history features a pioneering lot who endured the challenges of a new environment where succeeding generations have prospered. Many readers can point to their ancestry and find stories of immigrants.

Transformation

 A few weeks ago I mentioned the novel This Is Happiness in which the author pictured life in an Irish village before and after the arrival of electricity. At first many of the old-timers resisted change, but eventually its benefits won them over. I find value in a good book like this because it creates an urge to remember other milepost events. It so happened that a long list popped into my mind’s eye.

The year was 1957, if I remember correctly, when Russia’s Sputnik successfully orbited the earth. The memory is clear as day when we sophomores sat in Mr. Slatta’s civics class discussing the event in wow-factor terms. We were ignorant of its consequences.  Russian success told us one thing: they were ahead of us in space exploration. Our scientific community awoke, federal legislation poured massive amounts of money into the effort, and NASA got us onto the moon first to plant the U.S. flag on its surface. Now, sixty-seven years later, I don’t know who can lay claim to space leadership, but maybe it matters little. Several countries work in the area, and some sharing takes place.

In a jumble of memories I see an older event shining in the distance. The date was December 17, 1903, and the Wright Brothers took the first powered flight in their handcrafted airplane. They needed a place of strong, steady winds and chose a place called Kill Devils Hill near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina for their experiment. With Orville at the helm their home-built 12 horsepower engine spun two propellers that lifted their heavier-than-air machine to fly for 12 seconds and 120 feet. Anemic as the results were, it became a first step in transforming travel over long distances at great speeds. A modern jet flying nonstop coast to coast might take less than five hours. Compare that to traveling at the speed of oxen while pulling a covered wagon.

Here in our agricultural setting, farmers need power to pull their field equipment. That power is supplied by behemoths having horsepower measured in the hundreds. It hasn’t always been that way. I grew up on a half section farm driving an “H” International and a “B” John Deere and we got the work done. Even those tractors, roughly equivalent to some of today’s garden tractors, were a marked improvement over horses working in a field. Gasoline engines made it possible. Feed them gas instead of oats.

We must emphasize one development in recent history where the door for massive change opened. Computers! Does anyone use pencils anymore? Centuries of calculations, planning, researching, even letter writing have been transformed by keyboards talking to screens. I haven’t used this term yet, but let’s say “in the old days” when home appliances or farm equipment needed fixing we could take them to some handyman for repair and expect further service from them.

We recently experienced a case in our kitchen where the less than a year old microwave oven stopped working. Still under manufacturer’s warranty BestBuy would not exchange it but said we needed to go to manufacturer direct for satisfaction. We did that and will admit we were treated well by them. Our contact set up a service employee from Rigel’s Appliance Store to come to our place. First off I told him the appliance kept tripping its breaker switch. His training told him when a breaker keeps tripping it weakens the switch and should be replaced. Back to the microwave he said since its still under warranty he would order a new computer panel. We waited two weeks and it arrived. In the meantime I contacted an electrician to install a new breaker switch. There went $250. The new microwave part arrived, was installed, and now everything works well again. This cost was on the manufacturer. To cap this story, a couple years ago a different serviceman called to look our washing machine told me he works on everything except microwaves. They cost more to fix than buying a new one.

The subject of stargazing telescopes can be included here. Remember the Three Wise Men  “following yonder star.” They did not have had the luxury of studying it through a scope. Their eyesight sufficed. The origin of the telescope took place in Netherlands in 1608. Hearing of it, Galileo set about building one the following year. Through the centuries it went through a metamorphosis like a butterfly -  egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Now in its adult form the James Webb Space Telescope is the latest leap forward in our quest to understand the Universe and our origins. Launched on Christmas Day, 2021, Webb, says NASA, is examining every phase of cosmic history: from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang to the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets to the evolution of our own solar system.  Further developments? We don’t know yet, but probably.

In today’s world is it even possible to live like an “old-timer?” I know of one successful writer/horse farmer/philosopher who does. Wendell Berry writes in the daylight hours because he doesn’t want to turn on a light bulb nor does he own a television set or a cell phone. He once wrote an essay called “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.” He argued that when somebody has used a computer to write work that is better than Dante’s Divine Comedy he would consider it. A picture of him at work with a pencil and pad in hand shows a wind-up clock on the windowsill. He’s written over eighty books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and received many awards including the National Humanities Medal awarded by President Obama in the White House. We must admit that he is a rare example of success.

 

Random Thoughts - December 11, 2024

Today in 1941 the U.S. declared war on Japanese allies- Germany and Italy … The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread … A headline: He promises the moon but no word on the rocket … How far will the Vikings go? … At my age I’m not afraid of dying young … Winter’s ok, my jacket, not so much … Fargo can’t figure out what to do with its homeless …  I still miss basketball at our little school … Will infinity go on forever? … Our favorite Santa’s funeral is Saturday in Lisbon …   Below I am pictured with Ted Kooser, onetime US poet laureate when he came to Bismarck … Auf Wiedersehen. 

Days Work

 Have you ever tried chewing tobacco, namely the brand called " Day's Work?" This is what I remember.

Day’s Work

Spit a stream from a chaw

of Day’s Work and watch it draw

flies like the puddles

of corn squeezings draining

from a freshly chopped silage pile.

A cheek full of licorice-laced

tobacco leaves drove me to dizzy

heights and shuddering facial

contortions until its blistering

attack on the soft skin

in my mouth eased a bit.

We never failed to think

maybe we should capture

some of that juice running

from the base of that corn pile

and cook it into our personal brand

of liquor. In our wild fantasy

we, in a souped-up jalopy,

could haul white lightning

to thirsty customers near the river

and stay at least one delivery

ahead of the county sheriff. Dad

told of moonshiners along the Sheyenne

who once shoved the sheriff’s car

into the river when he came snooping.

Beneath us, who knows?

At the upper end of those teen years

we hunted rites of passage to prove we

were the men we kept telling

ourselves we were. Those

were the days, my friend,

and often in my reverie,

I thought they’d never end.

A Limerick

 

I drank from the Fountain of Youth,

But it’s claims hold no truth.

I’m still growing old, 

and if truth be told,

 

I’ve gotten a bit “long in the tooth.”

Seeds for the Future

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” Attributed to some ancient Greek philosopher, this is a good example of forward thinking. Wanting to associate the line with some real life scenarios, I remembered a presentation made at a past Germans from Russia convention. 

Mr. Daniel Flyger’s topic that day dealt with “Heirloom Seeds.” I read the Greek quotation to him during a recent phone conversation, and he reacted by explaining what it meant to him. He told me that he and his wife were raising a young grandson who decided they should plant an apple orchard. The boy persisted until he got his wish and helped his grandpa plant them. Now Mr. Flyger wonders if he’ll be able to sit in their shade.

Mr. Flyger reminisced that as a young boy he loved being with a grandfather who raised a vegetable garden. In that garden the grandfather grew an “oxheart” carrot that young Flyger liked, but as an adult he could not find those seeds to plant in his own garden. This awakened in him the potential dangers of losing our genetic diversity and caused him to start doing what he could to collect and preserve seeds that immigrant ancestors in the Germans from Russia community had brought with them. He began talking to older people and asking them if they had seeds they’d share with him. Yes, some did and kindly offered them to Flyger. He stated, “I was so glad that I began this project when I did because nearly everyone who provided me with seed has since passed away.” He eventually joined Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, whose stated goal is to educate and connect people through collecting, regenerating, and sharing heirloom seeds, plants, and stories.

The subject of seeds is largely taken for granted with children often alienated and distant from nature. Fortunately some people work at collecting, conserving, and sharing heirloom seeds. A haunting example occurred in Leningrad, Russia at the beginning of World War II. Hitler’s army had set their sights on capturing the Russian Baltic Fleet as well as Leningrad’s 600 factories. The  Germans encircled the city and kept it under siege for 900 days during which 800,000 citizens of the city died, mostly of starvation. People ate anything and burned everything that gave off heat. At least 2,000 cases of cannibalism were reported.  

Leningrad was home to various scientific enterprises and one called the “Plant Institute” claims the spotlight in this narrative. The institute had earned worldwide renown as a great seed bank and housed up to 150 tons of edible seeds, said to be the world’s largest collection of seeds.   One botanist, Nikolei Vavolov, collected them over two decades from around the world.   Unfortunately, Stalin eyed him suspiciously, took him into custody, and tortured him to death.

The scientists did everything they could to guard this store from the starving people who wanted to eat it. One of the botanists escaped from the city, but starvation had taken such a great toll on his  body that he died in a hospital. The attending nurse was astounded to discover four pounds of seeds strapped to his body and hidden under his clothes. He could have saved himself by consuming the seeds, but his dedication to the project and sense of responsibility wouldn’t let him. The Institute survived and is still in operation.  A recent book called The Forbidden Garden is one source for the story, but it is readily available elsewhere in WWII history.

Norway hosts a huge seed bank called the Svalbard Seed Vault, sometimes called the “doomsday vault,” or the “Noah’s ark of seeds.”  Near the north pole, the permafrost is believed to ensure the seed samples inside remain frozen. They claim it can store 4.5 million varieties of seed representing about 6,000 different plant species. It is a relatively new facility that opened for collecting and storing seeds in 2008. More that 100 countries participate in its support. Why is it important? Some people possess an unshakeable belief that genetic resources must be preserved to prevent a worldwide food crisis. But the best laid plans can go astray. CNN reported in 2017 that due to global warming melted water did flow into the entrance of Svalbard. Fortunately, no seeds were harmed this time.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization  there are more than 1,750  seed banks across the world, both international and local that preserve over 7 million samples of seeds, cuttings, or genetic material. On the local front, Jon DeVries saw wildlife habitat disappearing and decided to do something. Twenty years ago he founded the United Prairie Foundation with its office in Sheldon. Its goal is restoring prairie habitats that wildlife need for survival. In 1907 a local farmer named Charles Hitchcock received the title “The Father of Macaroni Wheat” for bringing to life a small bag of wheat left at his place by a Canadian farmhand, wheat thought to have come with immigrants from Russia. A familiar North Dakota name concerning seeds is Oscar Will who received a gift of beans in1886 from a Hidatsa man. He began propagating them and about ten years later made the Great Northern Bean available. It is still available in stores, and every time my wife makes a pot of cowboy beans I enjoy eating them.

We’ve tried to hang some flesh on the bones of the proverb in the first paragraph. Forward thinking is the buzz phrase. Dedicated people working as botanists or layman with preservation of seeds in mind are helping to insure a food supply will exist even under catastrophic conditions. They might not be able to sit under “trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in,” but future generations would be glad they worked at saving quality seeds for them.