Coop's Corner

Sunday, February 28, 2021

A Spring Day - 2021/02/27 - Peter Ostroushko R.I.P.

Up extra early Saturday for a reason and instead of a hot cup at home, I was anxious to get out to the car and on the road. This time, a longer, slower dedicated listening trip, the reason explained below. My brother rode his shiny KLR in for coffee rather than using 4 wheels and on my way outside afterwards, there was another machine in the lot, not sure who rode that one in.

After coffee, a stop at GoMoto to pick up two shiny new Golden Boys mounted on the Himalayan rims.

Possibly, a kind and benevolent owner might sometime soon see his way towards giving the poor thing a bath once those wheels are back on, the valves checked???

There just aren't very many places around home where you can truly find Flat and Level. Of course we hope that the floors in our buildings acquire and maintain this attribute but while we can find flat in a few locations, perfectly level is another thing entirely.

On a wonderfully Spring-ish end of February day, I found Flat And Level.

There was even a bit of correspondence with one of the neighbors....

How could I be faulted...with temperatures like this, hard water will soon turn to...well...less hard water. And Real Feel?? No way was it 52, it Really Felt like 75 degrees to me....

After the flat and level, I was out for a loop on roads and in conditions much more typical of my favorite riding area.

That blue Harvestore silo left center in the photo....our uncle's farm, the farm where my brother and I became Boys to Men.

Then on Sunday morning?

We've lost another one of my favorite musicians this week, Peter Ostroushko. He was 67, suffered from a stroke a few years ago that halted his performing and this week heart failure stopped his everything. Like many if not most of Upper Midwesterners, my very first exposure was through the Prairie Home Show on our local (and initially very small) public radio station. At first, through the radio waves, then numerous live performances at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Later, other live performances after he was no longer involved with PHS, some of them very near our home. Eventually, his family and ours were attentively patient while we listened to what had to be hundreds of Twinkles in our Minneapolis Suzuki recitals. I asked Peter once where his very favorite venue was and for all of the many places that he'd performed throughout the world, his answer may have surprised many but it didn't surprise me and once heard, the mention of the place brought a grin to both our faces.

Saturday morning on the way to Diamonds for coffee, I loaded up my best portable sound system, took the long slow road to Nordeast Minneapolis and listened to my favorite of Peter's albums, "Heart of the Heartland". I was in the coffee shop parking lot early and had to dry my eyes before walking inside. Peter's smile and music now bringing Heartland Heart to heaven these days, of that I'm sure.

Others say....

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)