It's chilly out there...

Curiosity has its own reason for existing

– Albert Einstein

Visiting a zoo generally makes me feel a little conflicted. I really enjoy seeing exotic animals up close, but the thing that bothers me is knowing most of them are free-ranging creatures living in confined spaces through no choice of their own.

My professional life has allowed me to travel to many places. When doing so, I have tried to absorb as much of the local culture as possible. 

On these trips, I have visited some zoos. This weekend, I spoke at a conference and had the opportunity to visit a most interesting place – the Minneapolis Snow Zoo. In some ways, it is different from those I’ve seen in other places.

What do you see in a Snow Zoo you might ask?  Polar Bears? Penguins?  A natural question for the uninformed but no, it is not that kind of zoo. To fully appreciate this experience, you must live in the very Deep South, the desert southwest or southwest coastal regions of the county. Not surprising, for people living in the aforementioned regions, it takes courage, a strong will, or in my case speaking at a conference, to visit the Snow Zoo. It is noteworthy the Minneapolis Snow Zoo is only open part of the year. That’s right – the winter season. So my timing was good.

Like other zoos, short visits are best. You know, take a little time to see something out of the ordinary and then go home. Out of the ordinary, in this case, would be anything outside in the frigid air! 

For the visitor, there are unique things to see. For example, low, medium and quite high piles of plowed snow sit like miniature mountains on the sides of runways and the edges of streets. These frozen piles of white stuff apparently grow larger as the season progresses. 

Usually, when on display, the two-legged inhabitants of this place have multicolored coats covering their skins. While sometimes you cannot see their faces, you can tell they are alive by the intermittent puffs of steam emerging from their partly masked faces.

Once and awhile the inhabitants can be seen with four-legged companions. But during the season it is a relatively rare experience. A good part of the day, the bipeds hide out of sight in warm boxes and other times they are not even available to see at all. You see, a lot of them are seasonal migrators. Wingless as they are, they are identified by their Latin name Non Alatum Frigicus Avoidicanus, more commonly referred to as snowbirds.

As an inhabitant of the Sonoran Desert, I was given the rare opportunity to visit this place this weekend. Typically when I return home from trips, I have the opportunity to talk about the things I saw. This lasts for a few days, then slips away as the experience drifts quietly into the depths and possibly inaccessible regions of my mind.

When asked by friends to recommend places I have seen, I enjoy providing suggestions. In this case, I suggest Minneapolis is a great place to visit...IN THE SUMMER!

The Snow Zoo? It's a chilling experience!

ted

    

Old dogs, maybe a new trick...

“Whatever you can do, or dream you

can do, begin it…begin it now.”

– Wolfgang von Goethe

She turned to her husband, “Bill, don’t you think Ted would make a good Stage Manager in “Our Town.”

‘Our Town’ is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American play written by Thorton Wilder, has been presented hundreds of times and is a wonderful metaphor for life and beyond.

“Stage Manager? Hmmm,” I thought. I had read the play when I was young but truthfully did not remember anything about it. 

The Stage Manager must be some character that comes in and out moving scenery around. I thought.

“Here,” my friend said a week later, “Take my copy of the script and see what you think.”

What I thought when I read the script was, "NO WAY was I going to consider this.” The character doesn’t move scenery but as narrator holds the story together. What about the lines? Holy Cow, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve pages of solid monologue. Great story…love to see the show, but Nope, this was not for me.

It is funny how your mind works when you believe you’re not capable of doing something. The fear of being exposed as a fraud is powerful. Protect your ego at all costs. Don't do anything that gives the impression you have weaknesses. Defend, deflect, excuse, but for God’s sake DO NOT expose the fear.

My defense narrative consisted of… “Well I could do this, but I’m seventy. I mean if I were younger, maybe,” or “I am not an actor. Only done it once in college forty-four years ago." There were other justifications I generated, but show the truth? N-E-V-E-R!! After all, I have an image to protect.

Ignoring these comments and unaware of my internal turmoil, my friend asked, “Well, will you at least try out?”

Hesitantly, using a protective caveat, I said, “Okay, if I can learn the part BEFORE auditions, I’ll at least try out.” I knew I would NOT be able to do this – it was pure subterfuge. When the auditions arrived in February, I would say, “Well, I gave it the old college try, but I just couldn’t get it in my head. Sorry.” Whew, I would be off the hook, and no one the wiser.

I couldn’t lie to the woman, of course.  So, I would try a little, so could say I had.

In late December I opened the play’s first act and began playing around with the text:

“The name of the town is Grovers Corners, New Hampshire – just across the Massachusetts line. Latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes – Longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes. The first act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn.”

Hmmm. That didn't take too terribly long to memorize. Maybe I would try a couple more lines, just to be able to say, you know, I'd given a real effort – being seventy and all.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it (a couple of weeks), I had gotten the first act tucked somewhere in the folds of the three-pound chunk of protoplasm between my ears.

Things have a way…

The resistance voice, I can’t do this, grew a little fainter.

Another voice began to emerge – a woman's voice. It was my mother's, reading to her son, Watty Piper’s The Little Engine that Could. My mother has been gone for many years, and yet there she was reading away as though she were holding me in her arms.

The story goes like this. A little train carrying toys for children is stuck on one side of a mountain – its engine broken down. It has a deadline to get its cargo over the mountain. The train tries unsuccessfully to get help from passenger and freight trains as well as a kindly old engine. Each has an excuse as to why it cannot or will not help. There is, however, a little blue train used only to switch engines and cars in the train yard. Acknowledging her lack of experience and size, she agrees to try the mountain.

My mother's voice picks up the narrative here (I can hear her as I write these words).

“She tugged and pulled and tugged and slowly, slowly, slowly they started off…Puff, puff, chug, chug went the little blue engine. ‘I think I can – I think I can – I think I can – I think I can. Up, up, up. Faster and faster…until at last, they reached the top of the mountain. And the little blue engine smiled and seemed to say…I thought I could. I thought I could. I thought I could. I thought I could..."

No. Mum, you don't understand, I can't do this. It is too much. I could never learn all of the lines. And yet, there she was saying… "I think you can…I think you can…I think you can…" Her voice began to drown out all of the negative thoughts and I actually began to believe that maybe I could.

Mothers – gotta love ‘em…

The auditions took place last week.

The first night, I read from the script as did all of the others vying for different roles. The second night I was asked to read the opening lines of the second Act. I put the book down, took a breath and gave the first two and a half pages of the second act. 

In the end, I did not get the part, but on the way home that night, I was ‘flying down the mountain,' as Fanny Dreisinger sang to her son – I knew you could, I knew you could, I knew you could…

Epilogue

All was not lost, I won a fairly substantial part (Doc Gibbs). A character I had not paid much attention to.

Rehearsals begin Monday night – “I think I can…"

ted

Another mind, another cup of coffee...

“You never know, what you don’t know. And it’s

certain that if you don’t lean in, you never will.”

– Anonymous

It started with a voicemail out of the blue saying I had crossed his mind. If I were still in town, how about getting together. After a return call or two and a text, we arranged to meet at a breakfast place on the East Side. This has been a habit over the years, meeting the unknown – big and small. It had been a while.

Josh is my young cousin by marriage. Behind his open expression and brown eyes, is a mind that is poking around with the interest of a young child. You know, all things requiring exploration. I got the feeling he was programming everything like a quiet, but powerful vacuum cleaner. We chatted for a couple of hours, each pushing and probing a little. The food was okay the conversation better.

Act two…

Saturday morning, we met again. This time in my part of town, at one of those small, but exotic coffee shops – Savaya Coffee Market. I might not be the sharpest tack in the box, but any liquid producing, caffeine dispensing business named ‘Savaya' in Tucson Arizona, and designated as a ‘Coffee Market,’ would definitely be a turn from the ubiquitous Northwest coast chains. Coffee shops, on the other hand, are by any other name…

Once Josh and I got past the ‘hi, how are you,’ and the newspaper reporting as to what was going on in our lives, we dug a little into the things we were interested in. We’re new at this, touching briefly on the ‘opinion pages’ of our lives. It was part of the process, best expressed by the Rogers and Hammerstein lyric, from “The King and I” (sung originally on Broadway by Margaret Landon):

It's a very ancient saying
But a true and honest thought
That if you become a teacher
By your pupils you'll be taught

As a teacher I've been learning
You'll forgive me if I boast
And I've now become an expert
On the subject I like most - Getting to know you

Somewhere in the past couple of years, Josh has discovered he is the one responsible for his own life. This has resulted in significant weight loss, increased physical fitness and healthy choices in the food he eats. He is a writer – prose, and poetry – a guitar player and apparently a writer of songs. The undercurrent of these actions in his life, a deep faith in God and belief in the importance of helping his fellow man.

He didn’t quote writers (though it’s clear he is well read), nor worked to impress his older cousin’s husband. He was free flowing, the way thoughtful people who have spent a lot more time on planet earth, express themselves. Kind of like ‘old money’ – no need to show off…keeping in neutral and going with the flow.

So, there we were, getting to know one another. As with our earlier breakfast, the conversation was good.

Our time together ended, it seemed, almost before it began. We agreed to meet again at a yet undetermined time and location. I walked away from that young man having experienced two of the things I love most about life:

- “…That if you become a teacher…By your pupils you'll be        taught.”

            - “…And I've now become an expert…On the subject I like                   most - Getting to know you.

I expect there will be much to learn…

ted

All she's had to give...

"It's the waiting, isn't it. 

It's never the end."

– Anonymous

The pitter patter of her tiny feet across the wooden floor pulled me reluctantly from my night visions. Suddenly, there she was, sitting by my shoulder, staring in my face, giving me 'the look.' You know, “Listen, buster, I’m going to give you a few minutes then you gotta get up.”

She climbs on my back, and like those expert log rollers of the Canadian north woods somehow manages to remain ‘top up’ until I’ve turned from tummy to back and we are face to face. Settling in, her purring engines hit maximum rpms. It is hard to describe how I love these wonderfully intimate moments. Yep, it has been a love affair from the beginning.

Wait! No!

This is still a dream and what I am actually hearing in the recesses of my waking moments is the gentle scratching as she hobbles across the floor to the steps that help her climb to the bed. She struggles her way up until she slips beside my head, giving me the “Whew, I made it, but it was tough,” look. The engines are muffled by time and gravity, her gentle purring a mere echo of her youth. There is no back climbing and chest lying anymore. Her arthritic hips and rigid spine make it uncomfortable for her to lie flat on my chest. Anyway, she just wants me to get up so I can lift her to the sink (her preferred method of drinking water these days).

She sleeps in the living room on a little padded bed yet has the uncanny knack for knowing when I am up in the night for, well you know, personal reasons. As I sit briefly, expressing myself as it were, she unsteadily wanders into the bathroom and plants herself between my feet. When I pick her up holding her close, she purrs, but ever so more quietly now. The bottoms of her paws cool against my hands and shoulders. In the intimacy of those nocturnal moments, she feels so frail and light – her spine humped and rigid – her shoulders bony and weak. It is almost more than I can bear.

Leah is now in her eighteenth year (the late eighties in human time) and I am in pre-loss mourning. She sleeps more, and when awake, wants to be with me. She comes to my lap and sits, sorting a ‘comfort calculus,’ before snuggling and settling in. In the office, I almost always hear soft scratching as she paws the cardboard box beneath my desk. Once lifted, she curls on a multi-folded towel by the keyboard where her arthritic bones absorb the heat from a warm lamp.

I have watched this gracious creature, who in the beginning, fit the palm of my hand, move through the stages of her life, giving so much more than she ever got. It is so often said it is the memories that are alive. I don’t think that is right. While it is true the memories are there, they are not alive. Rather they are shadows residing in the hard drives of my mind, merely liquid images of events gone by. What is alive, is this moment, the quiet sorrow I feel, the silent tears that fall and the love I feel for this soul, who is softly pawing the cardboard box beneath my desk.

-ted