The ashes of Teresa's Uncle Vern were being interred in a military cemetery just south of San Francisco on April 10. He had died at his home in Mesa, AZ the previous April and we planned to join the family at the interment. We had grown close to Vern and his daughter Kelly during several visits to their home in the past few years. After the interment ceremony we planned to spend three days up in San Francisco doing some hiking on the trails around the city. That was the plan anyway. We had reservations for two nights at a hotel near the airport where Vern's family would be staying. A few days before the interment ceremony as we were looking for a hotel in San Francisco's tourist district we got a call from our son Joe. Joe works as first mate on a tug and barge, two weeks on the boat and two weeks at home. When he's home he has his two kids and when he goes back to work, their mother has them. He had called to say the company wanted him to w...
I got a phone call from a musician the other day that quite surprised me. He had gotten my name from Virgil Benoit, an old friend from Red Lake Falls, Minnesota. Virgil offered me his help writing art grants. Our paths have crossed many times in the interim, especially at Old Crossing Treaty Park He had asked the musician to write a song for the upcoming 2026 Chautauqua and, for some reason given him my name as a reference to ox cart trails and whatever else I could provide history wise, I guess. How I came to meet Virgil came up in our conversation; me being in one of my more rare babbling moods in various subjects that I know a little about, and this tomb, albeit greatly reduced in size, was one of them. In the spring of 2008, Virgil invited me to Univ. of Minnesota / Crookston to participate in his Minnesota Sesquicentennial project: Treaty at Old Crossing Reflections, Writings, and Responses to the 18...