The C word

The dreaded C-word, cancer, has come to our house.

And it came with no warning. No symptoms, no complaints, no suspicions. And completely uninvited, not to mention unwelcome.

My husband went to our local pharmacy to renew some scripts and was told he needed to see the doctor before one of them could be refilled. This was fairly routine and a good medical practice. He dutifully made his appointment and went in to the clinic for the required checkup.

While there, the doctor did some blood work, another good medical practice. Prescription refilled, all was well. So we thought.

Except the blood work revealed a very high creatinine, whatever that is, level and some other abnormalities. Our doctor said my husband was in kidney failure and needed to see a nephrologist, which we never knew existed nor did we know what it was, and an appointment was already scheduled for us that same week.

The nephrologist, which we now know is a kidney specialist, sent us to a urologist. Okay, we knew what that was. After an exam and a cystoscopy, which I insisted on watching, a mass was seen on top of the bladder. I saw it with my own non-medical eyes.

From there, we went to the University of Minnesota to yet another doctor, this time a specialist in urology surgery. It was the first time the C-word was mentioned as he said matter-of-factly that most of the time, these masses are cancerous. Surgery was scheduled to remove the mass but first a nephrostomy tube (another new concept) was inserted through his back into the kidney for drainage and to minimize further kidney damage which was already compromised.

Following surgery, tissue from the mass was sent for a pathology review, which we knew was normal and expected procedure. What wasn't expected was the results, showing it was a stage T-2, invasive cancer of the bladder, in medical-speak.

Thus the C-word came into our house, invading not only my husband's bladder but our sense of security and overall well-being; also disrupting our normal, hum-drum, bordering on boring, daily routine.

Many, if not most, of you have been touched by this dreaded word and dreadful disease. Up to now, we have been fortunate so for us this awakens new feelings and issues, and causes a slightly sinking feeling in our hearts.

However, since this diagnosis and the recommendation that my husband have his bladder removed and a stoma or pouch surgically placed for urine collection, we have heard countless stories of successful outcomes about people who have gone through this themselves, or their brother-in-law, niece,  other relative or friend had experienced the same thing. All resuming normal lives and activities.

We are grateful for the sharing of these stories and hope to add to them my husband's success as well.

We have a lot of hope; yet we know there are some for whom hope is not offered. We will now know the gripping feeling of just hearing the C-word spoken and will pray for all those on their own journey with cancer, or sharing the journey with a loved one. God bless and give you all strength.

Hidden gems

Who knew that there's an old Danish settlement and active community only a half hour from my home in Lindstrom, Minnesota?

I discovered, well, not on my own but through a friend, the little community of West Denmark, Wisconsin. It is a hidden gem.

Tucked away on beautiful Little Butternut Lake, about a mile and a quarter from Luck, Wisconsin, this small unincorporated community still thrives in the Danish traditions, mostly centered around the Danish Lutheran Church, its historic schoolhouse and town meeting hall.

The church is beautiful and in most respects resembles those country churches I have seen in Denmark. It's actually much like the church my grandfather, Søren Roed, and his family belonged to near Lundby, Denmark.

Danish Lutheran Church, West Denmark, Wisconsin

Many of the parishioners at the West Denmark, Wisconsin church have a long line of history to Danish emigrants here. Many were born here and intend to be buried here. It is a quiet, quaint, close-knit but outgoing community that boasts more activities honoring their heritage than I could have imagined.

 

Their calendar offers an annual aebliskiver breakfast, for example, and monthly community dinners with Danish food served: medisterpølse  (Danish sausage), rødkal (red cabbage), parsley potatoes, herring, frugt suppe (fruit soup), delectable desserts. Their library contains many texts in Danish, along with Danish songbooks, storybooks and CDs. The parish hall has an extensive exhibit of historical photos from Denmark and the local area.

 

The upper level of the parish hall is the place for educational offerings and song gatherings. 
The lower level boasts a wonderful dining room leading to an outdoor patio, and a large kitchen.

Each year, the church community hosts a summer family camp. Of course, I registered and counted the days to its start.

 

I had heard of Danish folks camps in the tradition of N.S.F. Grundtvig, a Danish pastor, author, poet, philosopher, historian, teacher and politician. He was one of the most influential people in Danish history, and his emphasis on continuous learning later evolved into the folk school movement across Europe. In short, Grundtvig's philosophy was to promote a spirit of freedom, poetry and disciplined creativity within the education system. He promoted values such as wisdom, compassion and equality. He opposed all compulsion, including exams, as deadening to the human soul. Only willing hands make light work. Therefore a spirit of freedom, cooperation and discovery was to be kindled in individuals, in science, and in the civil society as a whole. (Source: Wikipedia)

 

The idea of the Danish folk school is to be residential, and for all ages so families are encouraged to attend together. Typically, the day includes morning singing, a coffee and gathering time, lectures, classes in all forms of art from fiber arts to wood carving to water color, papercutting, music and dance. A hearty Danish lunch is served while dinner is lighter fare. There is a lecture or demonstration in the evening, followed by dancing and singing.

 

My mother attended a Danish folk camp in Tyler, Minnesota, for many years and was an instructor there in Hardanger embroidery for the last several years she attended. I have a scrapbook of her wonderful memories from the folk camp days.

 

Although for the camp I attended, I opted to drive home at the end of each day, I enjoyed the best of the day. Those who attended came from far and wide, but many were very local. All were welcoming, easy to get to know, encouragining in learning new things, and many new friends were made.

 

This year's slogan printed on my T-shirt

Some days later, my husband and I drove to West Denmark to take some photos and learn more about the area. The school house, shown below, had been used for many years as a single room with no bathroom and no basement. It has since been remodeled to include a bathroom, a lower level living quarters, and two upper level rooms for eventual sleeping quarters for guests. During camp, the upper level was used for the wood carvers.

 

There is a path to the left of the schoolhouse leading to Little Butternut Lake.
(During camp, there was also log rolling and swimming there.)

 

We learned the area next to the meeting hall was the site of a Lutheran seminary.

We also discovered on our little excursion through the town of Luck, right there on Main Street, a wonderful meat market, Van Meter's Meats. There we found medisterpølse sausage, fresh ground that very day right there at the market. 

 

Medisterpølse is an almost sweet-tasting Danish sausage made of finely-ground pork, seasoned with clove, allspice, onion, salt and pepper, and packed into casings and formed into round links. I followed the butcher's suggestion to gently boil it in water for a few minutes (about ten), then discard the water and brown it up a bit. They had served it at camp but my husband had not tasted it yet so the next Sunday I served it to him, my son and daughter-in-law, all of whom gave it a hearty thumbs-up.

 

Continuing on our little day trip, right on Wisconsin State Highway 35, before making the turn to West Denmark, there is a historical marker commemorating the West Denmark creamery and the first buttermaker, a Danish woman, employed there in the late 1800s.

 

Historical sign on highway

The cooperative was another movement from Denmark that originated as early as the 1300s whereby farmers would join together and share their crops and the proceeds from its harvest using shares. Today in America we see cooperatives used not only in farming, but the dairy industry as well as the gas and electric industry where cooperatives pay dividends from the surplus unused fees charged the user.

 

It always excites me to uncover hidden gems such as West Denmark, and this one so close to home.  I have another excursion in mind, this time to Ida Grove, Iowa, where my paternal grandmother was raised. That will be a later story.

 

Until then, let me know what hidden gems you have discovered right in or close to your own back yard!

 

 

Danish Day

The long-awaited day, June 1, came with the threat of thunderstorms. It was the annual event of Minnesota's Danish American Center's, Danish Day.

Located on West Mississippi River
Boulevard since 2006, the DAC grew
out of a local Danish fellowship.

But it takes much more than the threat of a thunderstorm to stop a Dane from celebrating their heritage. It ended up merely sprinkling and didn't dampen the enthusiasm or enjoyment of the 350 people of all ages who attended the day's activities.

Danish Day of the modern variety goes back to 1959, although similar previous events date to  the 19th century. A year in the planning, Danish Day is one of the highlights of the year at the DAC.

Spread out on the Center's lush, green grounds were tents for gathering, enjoying kransekagge, aebliskiver, almond pastries and good, stout Danish coffee; milling around to see the works of nine vendors: Scandinavian yarns, wood carving, gifts, clothing and various crafts; and enjoying a typical Smorrebrod luncheon.

Danish smorrebrod
(open faced sandwiches)

A special exhibit honoring the work of Danish philosopher and theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, was displayed in the Center, and a brief ceremony was held to officially open the Caroline Olsen Danish American Archive. According to long time members, there would be no archive without the extensive work of the late Caroline Olsen, who left us with history monographs, artwork, an authentic regional costume collection and transcribed interviews with older Danes in the community. She was among the founders of the Danish American Fellowship, from which the DAC grew.

Danish Day is also the time to name the "Dane of the Year." The award for 2014 actually went to two well-deserving Danes, instrumental in establishing and maintaining the library and the archives: Helen Stub and Ann Bundgaard.

Danes of the Year:
Helen Stub and Ann Bundgaard

Children were kept busy with arts and crafts activities, making Danish flags and jeweled crowns. That is, when they weren't busy bouncing and climbing!

Fun times for children (of all ages!)

Folk singer, "Spider" John Koerner entertained
the crowd with his harmonica and guitar.
The Carlsberg beer and acquavit only added to the merriment of the day.

 Don't miss next Danish Day if you're in the Twin Cities or Minnesota area. Mark your calendar for June 7, 2015.
 

Hilsen fra the Minnesota Danes!

Sunday mercies

I was headed out the door to get to church on time (for once) when my neighbor, Thelma, came rushing across the street hollering for my husband for help.

She was hearing baby kitty squeals under her deck which is closed off with storage drawers. They are very heavy drawers, Thelma is 90 and her weight about matches her age. You couldn't ask for a better neighbor, and she is a bundle of energy and fun.

Well, church notwithstanding, I needed to see those baby kitties myself. So we went across the street, hubby pulled open the drawers, and sure enough...there were four very tiny, very frightened, very abandoned baby kittens, all rolled up into one furry ball. No Mama in sight.

Having had a windy day recently, Thelma discovered a loose panel on her park model (like a mobile home), put it back into place and thought nothing more about it. How was she to know a very pregnant Mama crawled into the perfect spot for giving birth? So we figured Mama was out perhaps looking for food at the moment.

We got our cat, Catrina's carrier and transferred the wee ones into it, leaving them in the carrier on the driveway for awhile to see if Mama would come looking for them. That was a week ago today, and Mama hasn't been seen or heard from since. Bad Mama.

Thelma was beside herself. She isn't fond of cats and didn't know what to do with them.

Well, of course, I wanted to keep them. All of them. That idea was very quickly vetoed by you-know-who. But who wouldn't melt at the sight of them?

We offered to take them to the animal shelter, not realizing at the time that the nearest shelter is 35 miles away. But we figured a nice day for a drive, plus we couldn't think of any other creative option, so we stuck to our offer.

The Arizona Humane Society is located in Phoenix, I might add out in the boonies of Phoenix, giving us a small sightseeing excursion to discover other mountains and roads.

In we trot with the kittens in carrier, thinking that was the end to our selfless act of mercy. But noooooo. The "intake center" was another 25 miles, through yet another freeway and all through Phoenix.

There, they were very cordial. They immediately took the kittens and put them in their own carrier and examined them one by one.


Three girls and one boy. About two weeks old, they guessed, as their eyes open by ten days. They had been under that deck for two weeks?

I was falling more in love with them by the minute.

Their chances for survival were slim without the mother, they explained. But they would see if they could place them in foster care with someone who was willing to take them. They need to be fed formula by dropper every three hours around the clock.

Yep, like infants. Awwww.......

Well, you know the end of the story. We left them there. But since then, I have thought of them, always making up my own happy ending. Of course, they found foster care. Of course, a foster mama dutifully tended to them and fed them. And of course, someone fell in love with them and took each one, loving them forever.

The car felt empty on the drive home without the frail meows and little squeals. But we arrived home to a grateful neighbor, who insisted on taking us out for dinner.

I never made it to church that day. But I did experience that feel good feeling and know we did the right thing.

Lost somewhere

Here's to 2014. A new year.

So what happened to 2013? It's all kind of a blur.

I do remember gaining a new great-granddaughter with the birth of Tallulah Rosemarie (love that name) in mid-June. But if anything at all happened that was news or memory-worthy in 2013, I'm afraid it was lost on me.

Two reasons for this. They may not seem significant to you, but they have caused time to whiz by like lightening for me this year.

1. I got an iPad.
2. I got a streaming device for Netflix movies.

Okay, if you have either one of these yourself, I needn't say more.

But I have lost countless hours on my iPad by playing Words With Friends with no less than fifteen opponents at a time, checking Facebook and email updates as fast as they're posted, and discovering Magic Puzzles, a jigsaw puzzle game, when I have never put together a single jigsaw puzzle up to this point in my life. You can start with a 42-piece puzzle and work your way up to my current level of 288 pieces. The final level is 550 pieces and of course, I am aspiring to reach that level.

I've also discovered Facetime. Now, from Arizona, I can bug my kids in Minnesota by calling them on Facetime and seeing their faces and further disrupting their lives and spending their time. We watched Tallulah's bathtime via Facetime and saw her giggle with delight at Daddy pouring warm water over her head as Mommy held the iPhone camera. It was great fun.

But worse than the iPad are the Netflix serials. I'm telling you, I am not a television-watcher, A waste of time, I always said. But these series? Ooohhhhh, I am glued for hours totally captivated by the likes of Breaking Bad, Scandal, and Canada's Heartland, (love the horses).


A poor screen shot of so many choices!

There are BBC series as well which I'd never heard of before. World War II-era series such as Bomb Girls and The Land Girls; and the post-war series, Call the Midwife. If you thought Downton Abbey was riveting, you ought to see some of these.

It's hard to believe I couldn't stay awake for the 9:00 news before. Of course, I still don't see the news, but am up till all wee hours of the night. Putting that last puzzle piece in. Playing that last game of WWF. Checking to see if anyone left me an email message at midnight, as if anyone else is awake. And m-a-y-b-e watching one more episode of the current series.

So that's where 2013 went.

But now I learn there's no hope for 2014 as a friend just introduced me to the series, Lost.

Okay, everyone else has watched it already but I wasn't (formerly) a television-watcher so I missed it. It already shows great promise, so here goes...

Forty-eight people are stranded when their plane crashes on an island. They are a diverse group of people so I can imagine that besides just plain surviving, their differences cause all sorts of problems as they struggle to create a semblance of life together there.

I can hardly wait to start it.

And there goes 2014. If anything important happens, give me a call.

Century plant

We've been watching as our desert plant has rather mysteriously started to sprout a stalk...from the middle of the plant.

We thought we had purchased an agave plant when we moved to our winter home in Mesa, Arizona, three years ago. It was just a little plant, but has sprawled out considerably in the last couple of years.

But recently, a chute came up out of the middle and has been very slowly working its way upward.

It's the oddest thing we've ever seen. I wanted my husband to cut off the chute because it looked so strange. But he was intrigued and said to let it grow and see what it becomes.

Then out of the chute came sprout-like buds. We didn't know if they would open, if they'd flower and bloom, or just what they would do. The whole plant was a mystery to us.

I asked around and it was my hairdresser who told me we probably have a century tree plant. She said if that's what it is, she heard it only blooms once a century.

Who knew?

What was once just a small ground plant that fit into a small brick circle has turned into this sprawled out and blooming thing that is sprouting a tree. Apparently, and the picture doesn't even capture the full height of it, it continues to grow.

A web search gave us a lot of information:

If ever there was a plant that had an identity crisis, it would be the Agave americana. This plant, commonly known by the nickname “century plant,” is also known by the incorrect name of American aloe. Century plants are native to Mexico, but are used as an ornamental plant all over the world and have become naturalized, growing wild in many places. A century plant does not, however, live for a century or take 100 years to bloom.

The century plant’s leaves spread out from a central core, resembling a rosette. The plant, which actually takes an average of 15 years to flower, does not look like much until it comes time for it to bloom. A large stalk, 15 to 40 feet (4.572 to 12.192 meters) high and as thick as a tree trunk, shoots up from the middle of the plant and produces hundreds of clustered white or yellow flowers. The blooms remain on the century plant for about a month before the stalk begins to wither and die, killing off the rest of the plant with it.

So I guess we have to wait fifteen years through its growing pains until we see blooms and lovely flowers. Hmmmm....

Life in the desert is interesting as we Midwesterners are learning all the time. It is a breathtaking and awesome part of the American landscape and makes us feel close to the earth as Native Americans cared for this land so beautifully for so long. The majestic mountains and the endless variety of cactus plants and desert blooms teach us that things endure for thousands of years without human interference.

Our century plant, like all plants, have a life of their own. If you care properly for them but let them grow on their own terms, it's amazing what living things of beauty they become.

Kind of like us, huh?

Remembering

Like most people, at least people my age and older, I am remembering fifty years ago today, Friday, November 22, 1963. The day our President was killed.

There are many Facebook posts today from people recalling where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

I had just graduated from high school and was working as a secretary for a private detective agency on the 8th floor of the Pioneer Building in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota. I had returned from lunch and just settled in to resume my afternoon's work when I heard shouts coming from another floor of the building that the President had been shot.

Anyone who knows the wonderful, old and unique Pioneer Building can appreciate that offices were all designed around an open square, hollow in the middle, wrought iron railings around the open square, and a large clock on the floor that could be easily viewed from all sixteen floors. You could see people walking on the floors below you and across from you. The elevators had glass walls so you could see all the floors as you either ascended or descended.

So when I heard those shouts, they literally echoed through the building. People came out of their offices (outer doors were seldom closed) and radios were turned on loudly so all could hear the news.

I doubt any more work got done that day by anyone. It was such stunning news in what was really an innocent age, the era of Camelot.

The ensuing days were spent glued to the television set in our living room on Lincoln Avenue as Walter Cronkite spoke in hushed tones through the events following. We saw first-hand the drama of Lee Harvey Oswald's arrest and then as he was shot by Jack Ruby, a night club owner. And then the funeral, JFK being carried by horse-drawn caisson, First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, veiled in black, her young children at her side, little John-John saluting as his father's flag-draped coffin passed by.

I doubt that any fiction writer or movie producer could conjure up this dramatic plot; yet here it was, happening live and in our living rooms.

Everyone ruminates about what might have happened had this tragedy not have happened at all. A popular President, JFK would likely have been reelected. His work for civil rights may have been accelerated at a faster pace. Would Nixon have ever been elected; would Watergate have ever happened?

Would our age of innocence have continued?

After fifty years, I do believe we lost more than our beloved President.