Back in 2014 I was the “cover boy” on the Exapta Solutions catalog. I’d emailed the company telling them how much I liked their products. They replied and asked if they could use my email in their catalog, and could I send a picture?

Well, if you know me, you know how I like to draw attention to myself. But for some reason I did in fact send them a picture and I ended up on the cover of their catalog in 2014.

Fast forward to 2023 and I’m reading Facebook and I see this.

What did Kansas Air Seeder Service do? I dug a little deeper and it turns out the folks from Kansas Air Seeder Service are driving around with “14 Words” on the side of their pickups.

I was still in the dark. 14 Words? I looked that up and it’s a white supremacist slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” (Count ’em, 14.)

I immediately replied to this post on Facebook and told Exapta how proud I was, as a former cover boy, to be associated with them. But I thought, sheesh, Exapta is going to get flamed on Facebook over this.

But they didn’t. There are 35 comments on their post, and all stand with Exapta.

So many good people.

Read More

[ Another Mom story I didn’t publish back in 2019. ]

I was helping Mom get on her MyChart account to check for a doctor’s appointment. She’d forgotten her password so we going through the security question rigmarole. “Ok,” I said, “it’s asking for your favorite person from history.” [1]

Mom answered, without hesitating, “Eleanor Roosevelt.” I typed that in and we went on.

But I was thinking, “Eleanor Roosevelt? Really?” I tried remember what I knew about Eleanor Roosevelt that would make someone use them as the answer to their security question.

I realized I knew next to nothing about Eleanor Roosevelt. Was she Franklin’s distant cousin? [2] That was the best I could come up with.

I started reading about Eleanor [4] , how she used her position as First Lady to speak up for African-American rights, for the unemployed, for women’s rights, for the United Nations. She was the first to use her position as First Lady to champion causes like these.

My Mom would’ve been a teenager during those days. What a role model to have at that age. I can see why you’d use her as a reminder, 70 years gone by.

1. “Favorite person from history?” I want to slap you dummies at Epic Systems (Epic is the software company that is the MyChart app) upside the head.

2. They were 5th cousins, once removed. [3]

3. Fun fact, Teddy Roosevelt and I are 7th cousins! (twice removed) And since Eleanor was Teddy’s niece that makes her my mom’s 8th cousin.

4. Always the teacher, Mom, by a casual reference, got me to read up on a topic I would have never looked up otherwise.

Read More

[ I wrote this back in May, 2019, but didn’t post, not wanting to freak Mom out too. ]

I took my Mom today to have a minor medical procedure done, one where she needed a light anesthetic .

All went well and as she was coming back from the anesthetic they called me to come sit with her in the recovery room.

As she woke up she kept saying, “I’m cold. I’m cold.” [1] The wonderful nurses in the recovery room would bring her a warmed blanket each time she said that.

And it freaked me out. I’ve just finished re-reading Catch-22 [2] and one of Yossarian’s recurring memories throughout the book is the gunner Snowden saying, “I’m cold. I’m cold.” after he’s been wounded on a bombing run. [3] Only at the end of the book do you find out that Snowden is horribly wounded and dying.

Like Yossarian, at that moment I just wanted to run away.

I’ve always liked Yeats, but never felt like I really understood most of what he said.  

After reading the Iliad and the Odyssey this year I get the “another Troy” reference. And the tightened bow.

But I wonder about how many Troys are left to burn.

Read More

The Snow Man 

We haven’t had winter for years now. A few cold days here and there. A snow storm now and then. Highs in the 40’s predicted here all week, the first full week of February.

I look at my firewood and I have well over half of what I cut for this year left, and we probably only have a handful of days left this year when we’ll want a fire to ward off the “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is .”

Man-made global warming? Normal variations over a geological timescale?

Seems insane to me to believe we could burn fossil fuels accumulated over millions of years in a century and have no consequences.

But whatever the reason, it seems we no longer need, at least here in northern Indiana, a mind of winter.

Read More

The garden is producing like crazy. Cucumbers, watermelon, sweet corn, cantaloupe, fennel, collards, peppers, tomatillos, eggplant, and tomatoes.

Too many eggplants and tomatoes may say eggplant parmesan, but today I made an eggplant curry to try something different. It was so good!

The eggplant started to break down and made the curry sauce thick and rich. Easy, delicious, and light. Eggplant parmesan is not the only option!

The Recipe

Ingredients
1 big eggplant or 2 medium sized ones
A 14 oz can of diced tomatoes, or if you have fresh tomatoes about 4 nice sized tomatoes
1 can chickpeas
Half a big yellow onion
A red bell pepper
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 teaspoon garam masala or curry powder
2 teaspoons paprika (or 1 teaspoon smoked paprika and 1 teaspoon sweet paprika)
3 cloves garlic minced
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1 can coconut milk

How to Cook
Peel the eggplant and dice into cubes about 1″ square. Toss the cubes with salt and let sit in a colander.
Turn the oven on to 400 degrees.
Dice the onion and pepper.
If I’m using fresh tomatoes I like to peel then by blanching them for 30 seconds or so, then dropping them in cold water and slipping the skins off.
Heat some oil in a skillet and cook the onions and peppers until they’re just starting to brown
Toss in the garlic and ginger
Toss in the spices. Cook until it smells fragrant, just 30 seconds or so.
Pour in the tomatoes and chickpeas. Give it a good stir, cover, and turn the heat to low.
Pat the eggplant cubes dry with a paper towel, toss with a couple tablespoons of oil, and roast on a rimmed baking sheet in the oven for 30 minutes, turning halfway though.
After 30 minutes, put the eggplant in the tomato sauce and add as much coconut milk as you like, anywhere from half to the entire can.
Stir and simmer for a few minutes, then taste. Add salt, cayenne pepper, or sriracha to your taste.
Enjoy with rice, raita, and naan.

Read More

Out of the blue I received a letter in the mail. In it was a photo.

The person who sent it to me said he’d found it in an antique store and wanted us to have it. He evidently found our family on ancestry.com and somehow got my mailing address. On the back of the photo it was inscribed “Pearl Zumbrun.”

I’d never heard of Pearl so I sent it to Josh who has researched our family deep and wide. Turns out Pearl and I are distant cousins, our common ancestor being my great-great-great grandfather Henry Sylvester Zumbrun.

Also turns out Pearl died at age 17, in 1917. Nothing we can find says why. What was a fun and sassy picture all of a sudden became sad and poignant. She must’ve died very shortly after that photo was taken.

She’s buried in Blue River Cemetery, just down the road from my house. I go by that cemetery at least once a week, but I’ve never stopped to look at it.

I stopped this week and snapped this picture and wondered about a cousin I never knew.

Read More

I started my marathon training program today. It’s a 30 week program, so when I complete it I’ll be 65 years old [1]. I’d like to do a marathon on a milestone birthday. The last marathon I did was the year I turned 40.

The program started with a rest day. I think this might work!

Way back when, in the Good Old Days, I had a good score on the English portion of my SAT’s. As a result I got recruitment letters from hundreds of liberal arts colleges.

The most intriguing of those, to 17 year old me, were colleges that had Great Books programs. Their curriculums were based around reading and discussing the great works of literature.

That was incredibly exotic to an Indiana farm boy whose exposure to great literature consisted of comparing Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story.

But then, as now, I was a practical fellow, and I chose my course of studies based on what could result in a well-paying career. I don’t regret that. I’ve had an interesting and well-paying career doing interesting work.

But now, staring retirement in the face, I thought, “What do I want to do?” or “What do I regret not doing?”

And those high school dreams of studying the great books came to mind. I looked around and found that the University of Chicago offers a 4 year program where you read classical literature and meet once a week online to discuss them.

I thought that would be cool do when I retired, and then in a fit of optimism that I could allocate the time to do it, I signed up for it and started this fall.

Before the class actually started there was a 3 week session on how to read classical texts using Mortimer Adler’s “How to Read a Book.” I’ve found Adler harder to read than Plato!

4 weeks into the program I’m saying, “See 17 year old me, you should’ve done this!” And 17 year old me answers, “Could you afford to do this now if you had?”

17 year olds, such smart asses.

Read More

Here in Indiana you can get trees to plant for practically nothing from the Department of Natural Resources. I just checked and you can get 100 black walnut trees for 34 dollars ¹. Of course, they are 6 inches tall. You’re buying twigs to stick in the ground.

About 40 years ago I did just that. There was a hillside on one of our farms that had scruffy brush on it. I cut the brush down and got black walnut and black locust trees from the DNR and planted them on that hillside.

And pretty much forgot about it. Last week I thought I’d take a walk around that farm. Debbie and I had seen a puffball mushroom while hiking on an Acres property and I wanted to see what sort of fungi ² were growing in my woods.

I was stumbling through the woods when I looked up and thought, “what a nice walnut tree!” I stumbled a little more and there was another a nice walnut tree. After stumbling over a few more I remembered that I had planted them.

I don’t remember the details of planting them, but as I walked from west to east along the hillside the black walnuts gave way to black locust trees.

We have 3 acres next to our house that we recently bought. We seeded it last year to clover while we decided what do with it. After seeing those walnut and locust trees I think we may plant it to saplings. I’ll never see them tall, let alone climb them.

But someone will.

1. That’s 34 cents a tree. I think 40 years ago it was more like 5 cents a tree.

2.Lots of fungi.

Read More