J Street

When my husband and I retired in 2010, we bought a park model in Mesa, Arizona. It was on a corner lot on J Street.

We quickly became acquainted with our J Street neighbors, some of whom were snowbirds like us; a handful of others were year-round residents. Some had park models; some traveled in RVs. Our longtime best friends had purchased a park model there a few years earlier which is what prompted us to want to be in the same retirement park. Not planned but coincidentally our unit was across the street and diagonal to theirs.

J Street neighbors soon organized a Monday afternoon “happy hour” gathering that started out informally enough with people bringing a few snacks, but soon grew to a full blown pot luck that sufficed for dinner.

We blocked off the street with cones. Someone donated a large table and the guys put wheels on it so it could be moved around from place to place as we took turns hosting. We collectively bought a supply of paper plates, utensils, cups and napkins which traveled along with the table. 

Games such as corn hole, outdoor Yahtzee, and a ring toss were played. Birthdays were celebrated and holiday gatherings were organized.

An occasional outing, an egg omelette cook, pizza party, fish fry, potato bake and a chuck wagon style BBQ pork dinner were organized through the years. We were introduced to jello shots and our Canadian neighbors made a wonderful variety of flavors each week. Recipes were shared, culminating in a cookbook.

We stayed away from gossip, saw the best in each other, supported and encouraged one another.  Most of all, we had many laughs and an awful lot of fun!

If there was a need for help or fix-it assistance, someone was happy to pitch in. We were there for each other during hospitalizations or crises, and we mourned the loss of a few neighbors as well.

J Street changed over the years with people moving back home or elsewhere, or RVers not returning. New neighbors arrived taking their places, but whether old or new, neighbors quickly and easily bonded and readily joined together in a welcoming culture of friendship. 

After my husband died in 2022, I sadly sold our unit and now I was the one to move away and leave a vacancy. But the cycle of J Street continued. A lovely woman purchased my unit, new people came to fill other vacant units, and life on J Street goes on as before with Monday happy hours, outings and park activities. The same camaraderie exists.

Though we were a core group at the time, I know that before us there was another core group. And before that, another. And now, another core group. And there will be more to come, carrying the culture of friendship and loyalty that makes J Street so special.

Some of my husband’s and my best memories I owe to our years on J Street. Would that they could have gone on, but life (and death) happens. 

Thank you, J Street and friends for the memories and for the best of times. I think of you and our wonderful time together often.

          I appreciate your reading my random musings.

No words.

No words. And I always have words. Words routinely swirl around in my head just waiting to tumble out and be set free, mostly in written form. I’m a student of words. 

So when I say I have no words, I mean that what I’m feeling is so overwhelming that it’s difficult to find adequate words to express myself. When I explain that my being tongue-tied is over the tragic events taking place in the Twin Cities and virtually all of Minnesota, you’re probably feeling much the same. No words.

✍️ 

Let it be said that I have never posted anything even remotely political in this blog. The intent 

of my writing is to provide light-hearted reading, hopefully for your enjoyment, for thinking 

and sometimes reminiscing. I am enjoying a coffee-klatch conversation with you as I write.

But today I depart with that for a bit: not to debate, not to ask anything of you other than to listen to my attempt at words. There’s a time to be silent and a time to speak. So I must find words.

Our beloved state has been under siege. 

Cloaked in immigration reform, it’s actually anything but. It has caused fear to be taken over here and it’s impacting all of us. Our children are not attending school because either they or their parents are afraid, and with good reason.  ICE agents storm into not only areas around the schools but on the school grounds where they slammed a student to the ice-and-snow-packed ground. Other citizens including seniors have likewise been dragged from their cars and forced to lay handcuffed on snowy roads. 

It’s Minnesota, folks. It’s winter. It’s cold.

Places of businesses are operating under locked doors. They’ll unlock the door for you and then re-lock it again. All to keep you safe. But then again, chances are the business may be closed. Businesses have taken a financial hit with customers too afraid to frequent them and too afraid to shop. Indeed, folks are afraid to leave their homes. We’re talking U.S. citizens. And now we’re being asked for our “papers.” What papers? What country do we live in? 

These actions are not reserved for the Twin Cities metropolitan areas. They’re occurring in all corners of the state. A grandmother in a small northern town, a pregnant mother in a rural grocery store, an elderly gentleman with cancer…and on and on…were detained. None were given the chance to identify themselves, not given a chance to have their captors identified. 

ICE agents are in hospitals, skulking around emergency rooms and patient rooms.

Minnesota has been, in Washington, called a train wreck. Well, this is what a train wreck 

looks like.

There is a time for no words but this isn’t it for those in power. 

I urge you to use your words to call out the injustice, the cruelty,

the discriminatory profiling. Watch out for your neighbors. 

Join the volunteers providing transportation to work and school. 

Folks here in Minnesota are doing that and more. Grocery shopping,

watching their neighborhoods, being alert for ICE presence, 

recording illegal activity, surrounding families as they’re torn apart. 

Meeting detainees being released in the middle of the frigid night 

with no coat, no cell phone, hungry, traumatized, and lost.

Volunteers meet them with a hug, a warm blanket, food and water 

and a ride home. Volunteers.

Minnesota isn’t a train wreck. It’s neighbors caring for neighbors; 

strangers caring for strangers. Protesting by singing songs of hope. 

Standing in solidarity and marching peacefully.

In these almost surreal times, it’s that which makes me proud.

Thank you for listening as I attempted to paint a picture 

of life here today. Whatever your opinion, we are hurting 

and scared, trying to hold on to what we are. 

Please keep Minnesota in your prayers.

Eight Zero

That’s 8-0. Eighty. 80. 

It hasn’t quite sunk in. But in the middle of December, I turned 80. It happened and there was no amount of denial that could stop it. As it turned out, it was a lovely birthday and I was honored and celebrated by those I love the most.

So between that event, a lovely Christmas, and a quiet New Year’s eve, I have become introspective today. And instead of any never-kept new year’s resolutions, I’ve decided to give this year a theme. Or themes, if you will. Here they are:

Look ahead. And by this I mean stop looking behind. I tend to over-focus on the past. Past mistakes and regrettable blunders. Past events, people, places and times that will never come again. Thing’s I’ve missed and things I miss today.

So my theme for 2026 involves being present, grateful for my many blessings and focusing on what’s right in front of me, right now. Eighty years have passed but God willing, more years are ahead. I will strive to make the most of them.

Finish what I’ve started. I have so many projects half begun, half finished. Now is the time to work towards completing them. Or at least to focus on moving them along. Or even making a decision to abandon them if I’m really not all that interested or motivated to keep them. I’m thinking of the photo project, started and then stopped. The numerous cross stitch samplers started, then put aside. The family genealogy project, paused when halfway through. The skeins of yarn intended to be knit. You get the idea.

When I was in Blue Birds and Camp Fire Girls in my youth, one of their basic tenets taught to us was “stick-to-it-ivness.” We were encouraged to always finish what we started. I remember it well but it sure went by the wayside for me.

When you reach the age of 80, you realize both how time has slipped away and the limits of the time left to you. Thus, my two themes for this new year of 2026.

And for you, your loved ones, our nation and the world, those in need, those who are fearful, I wish you all a wonderful new year, full of good health, hope and promise.

Thank you for reading my musings.

Dreams turn to dust

I have a guest writer to share with you for this post. My wonderful partner is a great writer and this is one of his latest stories. Hope you enjoy it!

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Beginnings and endings. The circle of life. The seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter, and spring again, but a totally new and unexplored spring. Life continues. Living things come and go. Everything different and all things the same.

Although my mind is currently wandering as I bike down a country road, a story jumps out at me and I stop to take a photo of a dilapidated house nearly hidden in the woods.

 

As it always does when I see an old abandoned house, I began to wonder what story that house could tell. It wasn't always this way. It was once alive and new, full of endless promise.

So how does this story begin?

Harley and Emma, sitting in a tree,

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

And it happened, just like that. First came love, then came marriage, then came Emma with a baby carriage.

They moved into the new unfinished house that Harlan was building with his own hands and with lumber from their woods. A fine house it was, with an upstairs and a southern exposure to let more light in the windows. It was filled with a wagon load of dreams.

Six babies were born in that house. One infant boy died at birth and one of the girls didn’t survive a bout of pneumonia when she was just four. Young and optimistic, Harley and Emma worked together, planting the crops and praying for rain. Joys, sorrow, hope and despair…this old house saw it all.

One by one the kids grew up and moved away. Sunrise, sunset... just like the song says. Soon age began creeping up on Grandpa Harlan and Grandma Emma. Aching joints, sore backs and graying hair. Grandpa Harlan lost a long battle with lung cancer, probably the result of the pipeful of Granger tobacco that was always in his mouth. Grandpa always smoked Granger in the blue can, even though he joked that Prince Albert had been in the can for a really long time. That always brought a chuckle.

Can sadness cause a heart to stop beating? Grandma Emma collapsed and died from a massive stroke just months after saying goodbye to her lifetime partner. It was nearly a week before the mailman found Grandma on the floor when he began wondering why she wasn’t picking up her mail. That was years ago.

Now the house stands empty, almost hidden by trees. The shingles are rotting and the doors and windows are long gone. It was a house of dreams tempered by reality. It had survived the Great Depression, World War II, and a serious chimney fire. The walls had heard and absorbed laughter and tears, pain and joy, and lots of music from Grandpa Harlan’s fiddle.

Does anyone know the story this house has to tell? Does anybody care? Dreams turn to dust. These thoughts and musings flood over me as I wonder about the story this house has to tell.

And then I continue my bike ride down a quiet country road on a lovely morning…alone and content and still dreaming.

DHA 8/30/25