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 |   A terminal for all blogs coming in or going out. A view into my life. |
Started July 1st 2019 for contests, etc. as other blogs are filling up and have other purposes.  I'm starting a new blog because
I'll be linking to
I've started an appendix (I no longer have one personally) to keep track of my Space Cadet journals for Space Blog. It's a work constantly under construction. Mind the mess.
I needed to start a folder for contests as there are so many deadlines and details to remember.
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Lilli 🧿 ☕  has the image ofAd Astra Per Aspera at the top of her blog. It is the motto of the University of Kansas, my alma mater. At the time I was thrilled to get away from the cold cold people of the North-East. Kansas was like the Land of Oz in Spring. I bloomed when I started in Autumn. Just call me Sunflower. I met so many kind and interesting people. My partner in Field Biology was much older than me. Marge was a blast! I met friends from Hong Kong, Ethiopia, Iran... and the small towns of waving wheat and endless dusty roads. The campus made me feel like I was attending a "real' university. I got to know it well that Fall, Winter and Spring, deciding to stay for the Summer session to take Meso-American Anthropology and Chemistry. Max was my first roommate in Templin Hall; he hailed from Detroit but had gone to military school in Tennesee. I shared a room in Oliver Hall that summer with Farhad from Tehran, Iran. But my main roommate that year was Lennie from Bushton. From 2005:  Bushton When I recently traveled across Kansas, I decided to go to the town my college roommate hailed from. Bushton. I knew it was small (300 is generous). Remembered the aerial photo he had on the wall. flat and square, checkered patterns interrupt the nothingness of wheatfields. And that he lived on Wisconsin Street. The weather was stormy, with tornadoes in the west. Rice County is flat and empty, I could see it coming. As I drove down the main street, I couldn't find Wisconsin. Who needs signs in a small town? Went east a block, drove back asked a young man (who wasn't born yet when I knew Lenny) if it was Wisconsin Street and did he know a Schwerdtfeger family. He pointed across the side street. I'd parked within a house of it. white house, under the sunset shadow of the water tower, recessed door. So ... went to the door and spent an hour with Mrs. Schwerdtfeger. Found out Lenny, Gwen and their 2 children live in Michigan. Nice visit. Told her how much I admired Lenny. This is ALWAYS a good thing for a mother to hear! And I meant it. dry humor as raspy as wheat in a winter windstorm; warmth hidden from the incurious. Lenny was always decent and compassionate. He grew up with a brother with Down's syndrome. This was no problem for them at a time when society didn't handle difference with love and kindness. But Kansans are kind and Lenny was special. So when his mother told me that his son has tourette's syndrome, I smiled and said how lucky he was to have Lenny as a father. warm enough to melt the ice on winter wheat, to green the fields. Took photographs of the water tower, in the glow of a setting sun, headed west and skirted the bad weather around Goodland and spent the night in Dodge. To know Kansas, one must know the breed of people that inhabit it. To know a Kansan, one must know the dust and storms and be prepared to be amazed by the subtle beauty of a prairiescape that effects the hearts in this heart of the Heartland. miles of emptiness: beneath the watertower, before the coming of the storm, between the letters that come from those who have left. In response, I wrote a poem, "The last boy born in Bushton". Kåre Enga 3 juli 2005 as found in: "Bushton"  The poem needs an editing but it's here: "Last boy born in Bushton" Ad astra per aspera... how little we ever know of the future... 701 |
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