Ok, now I'm effin' pissed!

I worked for two hours on an elaboration of what went on at the Rendezvous, saved it as a draft and now it's gone. *&%##%#@#er!

Well, I saved it as a draft because I wasn't happy with any turns of phrase, but it was at least an excellant set of notes to work with and I'm *&%##%#@#in' pissed-off that it's gone. I must have shut the window too soon.

Yes, this is an admission that I did not, in fact, write one single word while I was gone.

OK, what was I doing instead of writing? Well, I was carrying water, firewood, my baby, pots full of boiling water or various soups and stews, wielding a hammer, axe, saw or knife, or a coffee mug and/or eating utensils (and a couple of times a beer mug, sorry)... Or I was pointing out constellations and the Northern Lights to my older daughter...or plants or trees or birds or somebody's cool stuff... And dancing with Rosie to great fiddle music.

Rosie was especially enamored of the storytellers: Anishinabe, Objibwe, Dakota and otherwise. I'm sad to say I didn't have time to listen to all, or even most, of the stories with her. I told somebody that she showed signs of being a great storyteller herself some day. She sort of shivered in that happy/excited way she does when I said that. She liked that idea. The stories I heard were really wonderful, but she would remember them better than I do.

One time I came back to check on her and the woman who had just finished her stories was sitting with her arm around Rosie while they listened to the next storyteller. Rosie might be pleasantly surprised to find out that I have a lot of those stories in my books.

At the church rummage sale last week, I bought a shelf full of books which have been advertised, in typical philistine ad-man style, as "Six Feet of Classics." My buddy (all right, I've never met him) Morty Adler was a major contributor as an editor to the series.

I find that I am mistaken, it is a five foot shelf of classics chosen by Charles W. Eliot. Here is a comparison of the two lists of classics.

Anyway, to get back to my point, Rosie seemed much impressed when I read to her the beginning of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales from the Collection of The Great Books that I got for $25 (judge the deal I got), indirectly from our assistant pastor.

*****
Back to the Rendezvous, The fatigue and soreness I felt today (yesterday now) give me renewed respect for those ancient canoe paddlers, the Voyageurs (highly recommended book, by me and available everywhere voyageurs are revered), and I hauled my stuff there in a pickup truck.

We didn't camp much as kids; our mother was born in a tent in Oklahoma, on land that my uncle Bill has now aquired, less than a football field away from where my father is buried and Mom will be also when she dies. [I fear that she longs for that day too much, but she cares too much, as a former nurse, for the advancement of medicine to give up the fight. God bless her!] But she had no desire to return to the emulation of poverty that is camping. She experienced plenty of poverty. But like many former Okies, "They didn't know they was poor. They thought they was just broke!" My immediate forefathers didn't sit around waiting for the government to take care of them, they set out to find work. Grandpa Bennett rode the rails all over the country and Grandpa Erkkila was set as a farmer/blacksmith. The key was, you didn't turn away any opportunity to earn money or a meal or whatever you needed to support yourself and/or your family. The American Way is a cross between rugged individualism and a Christian "servant spirit."

Oh, did you notice this?

*****
I ran into my old buddy Steve at White Oak. He told me he used to do these things all the time, but life had taken him away from them for a while. He owns a tipi, though he needs to replace the poles, but he has a good wall-tent that he promised to pitch at Pine City. (Remind me to brag up my wedge-tent. If you ain't got SunForger canvas, you ain't s**t!) Steve was my best friend in grade school and into junior high. Then, I'm afraid, I became a jock and he became an... anti-jock. There have been few moments in my life when I wasn't thinking of Steve with admiration.... He told tall tales as a kid, but he made a lot of them come true. Although, he told me that a classmate of ours had taken it a step farther: J___ G___, whose name is way too distinctive to place in public without his permission, now owns a fishing boat that he runs in the summers, and then he runs a trapline with sled dogs all winter. I said, "that sounds like 'success in life' to me!" Enough said.

Steve told me some stories about great shots with muzzleloaders. I was disappointed to hear he had a Hawken percussion smoothbore. I'm looking for a British Brown Bess musket. Or, perhaps a French musquet that a lowly voyageur wouldn't expect to have stolen from him.

Ah, damn! Look at the time.