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Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 3:30PM
Wonderful! Thank you for sending the gorgeous photo of blossoming trees beyond your deck! Do you know what kind of trees?
How nice that you could locate last year’s dated picture for comparison. When I mowed the grass yesterday afternoon, I noticed our pair of pear trees were (was?) budding nicely. I calculate they are due to be glorious today or tomorrow. I hope I remember to look at them before Celeste and I go to the farm, and we must also remember to notice, today at dusk, whether the sky is going to clear enough to show us the rise of the promised pink moon.
I think I mentioned to you that Everett stayed at the farm Sat. and Sun. nights and left early yesterday for home, intending to drive on blue highways as much as he could. He was planning to briefly get together with a niece who lives somewhere around Sioux Falls, which happens to be, per Google Maps, almost precisely halfway between Fjord, Wisc., and Mildred, Wyo. As it turned out, though, Ev texted C. and me last night from a motel and said he had driven 570 miles and figured he had 380 to go.
This morning, little before 8, Ev phoned to report his further progress and to remark upon his poor night’s sleep in what he called “a shithole motel.” A few minutes after the phone call, though, we received a text. Ev had stopped somewhere for breakfast, and now he sounded contrite. “I was just thinking,” he wrote, “I would like to mention my Protestant guilt upon remarking to myself ‘what a shithole’ when looking for a place to eat in the tiny town where I stayed last night. My second remark to myself was ‘and yet, to the people who live here it is home, and very likely for many the only home they’ve ever known.’”
Ev and I, you might recall my saying, first met in minister school in Indiana. I don’t know if that’s where he came to be so burdened with Protestant guilt; I think self-righteousness was offered as a larger part of the curriculum. I did chuckle at Everett’s choice of words and tried to recall whether our much admired 45th President of the United States had spoken of Protestant guilt when he declared his deep regret for using the exact same unkind expression as that which our weary traveler used this morning.
Thanks again for the flowers.
Love, Dave
♦
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