I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Thursday, October 21, 2021

If you were seven in 1952 in northern Minnesota

 

October 21, 2010  (I was 65)

 

If you were seven in 1952 in northern Minnesota

and you heard a plane overhead you looked up

It would be a small plane Piper Cub red

maybe silver but nothing big and of course summer 

If you were at the ball field

you lay on your back in the grass to watch it

It happened every other day or so

You made the connection with the plane

knew someone was alone flying up there

depending on the sound of that motor

to get them back to that little strip in Hibbing

If the engine coughed more than once

you listened hard and looked harder

Your uncle said you had to stall it and restart

just to get your pilot’s license

It seemed dangerous to me 

I wanted to learn to fly

I just didn’t want to have to use a plane

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