so i have this one matriarch in my family; her name was mary (polly) sumner turner. she would be one of my great-great-great-great grandmothers. she's got quite a story.

apparently her father was in the boston tea party and then the revolution, but i haven't been able to confirm that. what i know is that she lived in maine and had about nine children. i've been trying to track them down only semi-successfully. she married a guy named ebenezer turner who was a character in his own right.

what happened was, a cousin of ebenezer was a preacher and landed in quincy, illinois and sent back and said you all ought to come out here, the land is great and there's no rocks, it's good farming.

of ebenezer and polly's nine children, the oldest, joseph, wanted to go, but had three children of his own already. their oldest daughter, mary, had married my great-great-great grandfather joseph, and had three already, including my great-great grandfather, but they wanted to go too. one middle one just went out there and the cousin hired him and he got married. then another middle kid went out there and liked it too. pretty soon they decided to do it, and grandpa ebenezer went out there to get things ready for polly sumner turner. he was in his sixties already and she was almost sixty, but he bought a place in downtown quincy and began working on some land that he owned in the northeast part of town too. he was ready for them to come.

it was a 1600-mile horseback journey from maine to illinois. joseph turner and three kids in one wagon, joseph leverett (and mary turner) and three kids in another wagon, young john in a wagon with only luggage, and finally what they called a "one-horse chaise" or "one-horse shay". this was kind of like a racing outfit, horse and small wagon only, no luggage. grandma sumner-turner got that one, along with the other teenager, anne. sure, sometimes they switched off - she could go in one of the family wagons, but usually she took that shay. it was a rough and bumpy road, but she was tough. once the harness broke and she fell - she was in it with ann at the time. this would have been in ohio, maybe. but she made it ok to quincy.

grandpa ebenezer, on his way to maine, had taken dandelion seeds. he'd done that just because he liked eating them. later generations blamed him for the dandelions in their yard, and noticed that dandelions only liked it where there were people. they seemed to feel he had brought them to the midwest (well he had, but was he first? grandpa ebenezer was somewhat visionary - he saw that someday you could get from boston to illinois in maybe only a day. it had taken his family sixty days. family legend has it that he was so homesick and anxious that he walked, with his cane, from quincy to springfield to meet them.

when they had their reunion, they couldn't talk, because they were all crying. the young kids wondered why you'd cry over such a thing.

cholera had taken 6% of quincy the year they got there, 1834. but they moved out to the country, to that land that ebenezer was developing, and they survived that epidemic and a depression that started soon after. they were farmers and carpenters; the two josephs got to work and started providing for their families. both eventually moved to iowa, and the turners somewhat dispersed over the years.

but a couple of years back, somebody vandalized polly sumner turner's gravestone. it was found, undamaged, in some random place around quincy. i guess it wasn't damaged so much as just removed, and thrown around. it was full of lichen and such, and the local monument company fixed it up. in the process they looked up all this boston tea-party and revolution kind of stuff and she had a kind of moment of fame. But unfortunately, as far as i know, nobody spoke up for her in the quincy area.

but when i found out, i wrote to the monument guy. apparently they just do this kind of thing, and don't really expect anyone to notice. but i said, thank you, she's my great-great-great-great grandmother, and we were not around to see you do it, but we appreciate the attention you put into her gravestone marker, and shining it up and putting it back. i'll keep you posted.

quincy is but a hollow shell of what it was in the days of the mormons, and elijah lovejoy, and the railroad and steamboat boom; it was a wild town back then. but that cholera was something you didn't mess with. i think she lived to be a fine old age, well respected as a grand matriarch. there was a question of whether a loom that they had for years, came from her, and was brought out on that 1600-mile trip. i wouldn't be surprised. it's probably why she preferred the shay. you could just get away quickly, if you had to, and weren't tied to the ground like a huge wagon with loom and all in it.

 

another christmas has come and gone, almost. we survived this year as we do others. we had a tree, had lots of excitement, had a lot of good food. we lit the way, with paper sacks, sand and candles. we had kids awake at about seven dying to open stuff. now that they are teenagers they want a lot of clothes, and i'm ok with that, because at least they wear them, it's not like you're throwing money away on meaningless garbage. we gave them what they asked for. it worked, by and large.

the quakers have this idea that you shouldn't make a big deal about christmas. i agree, but find it almost impossible when you live in the world, in the culture, and your kids have friends and go to school. i never lie about santa, and try not to lie about anything else, but it doesn't matter, they come home all convinced that santa is going to drop big piles of loot on them just by virtue of their being a kid. so you get sucked into this materialistic vortex no matter what, and either your kids go back saying they got coal, or nothing, or were disappointed, or they are able to trade notes with their friends and say something like, 'i got a lot of what i asked for.' we choose the latter. we are of this world, and we play this game as bad as any of them.

it's a nice time of year - cold, not too snowy, clear, pretty. i took my wife for a walk out by the fence at the reservation; it's only a couple miles from our house. she was surprised how pretty it was, and that i could walk so far (she rides a horse, but it's not as much exercise, apparently, as a three-or-four-mile walk). the canyon was beautiful in its vast expanse, with turkeys down in the riverbed, evidence of deer and elk everywhere, and narrow paths beaten down by some kind of animal, probably cows. it was a break from home, where she was cooking up a storm, and where we were up early in spite of being up late filling stockings, etc. the house is small, crowded, excited, and full of smells - the canyon wide, cold, clear, beautiful. a good break, as hunters have to take thursdays and fridays off, and were nowhere in sight.

in general i'm deep in the 1850's, researching my first cousin three times removed, a geologist worth writing a biography of. i've run out of ordinary stories, so now i'm telling true stuff. this guy walked from ames to madison - he noticed the ground beneath him, and had a good sense of what he was looking at - and had an interesting life in general. research into it gets me to read up on denmark, iowa, his hometown, first college town in the new territory, before iowa was even a state. back then the river valleys - denmark is near burlington, fort madison and keokuk - were the heart of life and culture. even so, their homes, and the denmark academy, stood up on the windblown plains as they huddled through the winter.

the valley has settled in an uneasy peace - it's quiet around here anyway, when the hunters are off. the fire chief offered the vaccine to anyone in the fire department, but i passed it up because i'm not answering calls. some people took it, though, and everyone's waiting to see if they end up ok. so much is said out there, about it being dangerous and all, you'd think taking it would make you a democrat or something. i'm already a democrat. all i have to do is survive until it's my turn. and that's hard enough, what with the skating rink open (masks required) and all the kids wanting to go down there, and hang out in such a matter as to which they are accustomed.

on these cold nights i put out the footrest of the lazyboy, and the puppy gets up on my lap and sinks in where he can keep an eye on the christmas tree and out the front door as well, when it's daytime. now it's night, and the tree is lit, and cold as it is outside (it's fair to freezing), we are pretty comfortable.

all is not totally well in the household - it's hard for kids to stay away from friends, especially those who are just 'hanging out' and doing their usual teenage things. but it's coronavirus times - there are cases all over the village, and our kids are less than careful - so we're just saying no. cold and lonely as it is out here, we're going to live 'til the spring.

meanwhile amazon has got a lot of our money, and the packages just keep showing up, and getting wrapped, and going under the tree. i've never seen myself as materialistic as some people, but in this sense i suppose i'm as bad as most or at least close. it keeps some of the kids' interest up - all these wrapped presents under there - and the excitement builds up, sometimes so much that the big blowout is kind of a letdown.

but my goal is to survive it. afterward, we have a week until new year, and it's one of my favorite weeks, because being an academic, i've rarely had to work. i could hang back and read "best of" top ten lists, and reflect on the previous year. now everyone seems to agree that this one was a big disaster, and i'll agree inasmuch as this virus thing is messing with everyone's head. but good or bad, it's almost over, and it's always nice to see in the new one, and stay up until midnight with whoever chooses to hold on.

got out to see the "christmas kiss" the other night, by simply walking up a small hill, and turning back toward the house to the west, to see the planets low on the western horizon soon after sunset. i kind of liked that idea of "christmas kiss," but not only was my camera somewhat bad, but my naked eye not so great either, so i can't say i killed it....instead i enjoyed it, and remembered that, the last time jupiter and saturn were this close together, my ancestor patience brewster was arriving in the new world, in 1623, and lucky for me, because here i am today. the new mexico skies were clear and starry as usual; it's been dry. they fill up with stars as the night goes by and i often just go out to look. i'm never really sure about everything i see, but i think i know planets when i see them, so i'm pretty sure i got this one. patience, my dear, i wonder if you're up there.

teens, yes, teens can be tough. you can't blame them, that their world falls apart right at the wrong moment. one told me he would be ok if he got the virus. wrong, i felt like saying. that kind of proved that he needed someone to tell him what's right, at this moment in his life. he doesn't care about the "christmas kiss," not this one anyway. it's not an easy stretch, to be stuck at home right at the moment you need to be out there, talking about who you are. it's hard enough, knowing who you are, anyway.

power outage way out here in the mountains, which means that i get the generator going and we run everything off a few extension cords. we do internet first, being the people we are, but then we concentrate on heat as it gets cold quickly, and food, as you can't live without it. if it goes on into nightfall we bring sleeping bags into the main house so we can all stay warm on one heater.

in any case we are all huddled together in the main house. we could run the heavy extension to the hunter's bunkhouse and we run one anyway for internet. if it comes to night we all find our ways to stay warm. but the generator is strained by the heaters themselves which use up a lot of power, and it's better to limit it to two and internet.

meanwhile the guys get out to fix the power and it takes them maybe a few hours. we worry about whether it's just us or the whole valley and in this case it was the whole valley, plus across the mountain and up the highway, a whole swath of territory. it was some trunk line, but it affected enough hundreds that they got out there right away. actually to their credit they get out there right away anyway, the best they can; they're pretty good at it, and it still might take them a couple of hours. but we're ok with that. we have generator going and our orange cords.

it's a small little house, and the christmas tree takes up a quarter of the living room, even though it was the smallest one they'd sell us. and its lights were off, needless to say, and the cold wind blowing the trees all over the valley. it wasn't that cold though - maybe forty and sinking, down to about thirty two now. i made a gamble that they'd have it fixed in a couple of hours and they did. my wife said, no gambling, we have to be prepared, and she made me hook up the heater before it was too late. she fixed a microwave dinner for everyone though. microwave on the extension, extra things heated up, all wrapped up in burritos. we sat around gabbing and then after i hooked up the heat, we gabbed in relative comfort. of course everyone had their phones; we had the internet.

my wife found out through facebook that the whole valley was out, and that wss good news, because i think the main lines are easier to fix than when some tree falls on some smaller line way out in the forest. that's just my theory though. i really have no idea what those guys go through when they head out on their trucks full of wires, and they locate the break, and make a fix, and run power back to the valley. no idea. i admire them a lot because there's no way i'd be doing that in a blizzard.

somewhere tonight, it's hannukah, and the first candles are being lit. we lit ours, out here, out of necessity, not even being jewish. i thought about that, though, what it's like to be on your own holiday schedule, to light a candle for the times one actually has no light. we had our light - it was from a generator, and small battery-operated flashlights - and orange extension cords. it all worked out. and now we've all gone back to our little corner of the compound, and the puppy got back on my lap. the christmas tree lights are back too. and i hope that wind doesn't pick up more; it's not something i look forward to.

 

a cold spell has lingered way longer than i would think though it is december, and what cold and snow together that we get, we generally get in december, they say. by january it all gets very dry and though it is still cold, maybe even colder, there's generally less snow.

i have to be up, now, at three in the morning, to take these laxatives to prepare for a colonoscopy at eight in the morning. it has been like fifteen years since my last one. it's not a pleasant thought or a pleasant time sitting here as the laxative does its thing on my insides, in the dark and the cold, as i await the early hours of the morning when we will drive the hour down to alamogordo for the procedure. such is life though, i'll survive.

so in the dark and the cold i read the news, sometimes several stories about the same thing, on and on about trump trying to deny a few million people's votes here or there, arguing that you shouldn't let people vote by mail, or you shouldn't let black people vote, or women either for that matter, since they always vote the wrong way. only angry white men should be allowed to vote, and you should be able to prove you're an angry white man when you get up the ballot box by wearing a red hat. all other votes are to be deemed invalid.

or the situation in tigray, which i read about when i'm so sick of the shit show i can't carry on with the US supreme court anymore. in tigray you have this leader who has lost control of one of his state. there were enough soldiers up there who had kind of gone in their own direction that they started taking the government guns and such, to set up an independent state. so this leader had to move in and clean them out. but the problem is there's a kind of ethnic strife there, so some people are going to die just because they're in the wrong ethnic group. and there are millions of people, and no press, and a blackout on information in general. so there's the potential for big trouble.

which brings me back to trump. trump has let what three hundred thousand die, without worrying too much about what could be done or could have been done, and covering up his own mistakes like declining thousands of vaccines that could have helped. but he never started a war - he tried to use police covertly but didn't get away with it - and, as opposed to say bush, he actually tried to get soldiers out of places where he didn't understand why they were there int he first place. like previous presidents the military cozied up to him and said look, your economy depends on these soldiers, and they were right to some degree - now that cigarettes are gone weapons are our main export, and we rely on ongoing strife to keep it coming. but still that's no excuse, he figured, and he began pulling them out. he even pulled them out of somalia.

so i'll hand that to him, and say i have no such confidence in biden. biden will be careful - that's about all we know - but that's not always so effective either. buden will have someone in there that knows what they're doing - unlike say betty devos, who didn't belong in charge of any education whatsoever - or these goons who are there to take apart the epa. biden will have an "expert." but trump got millions of votes for a reason - people aren't crazy about those experts. people didn't want more of hillary for example. they were begging for trump. so we'll have to see if biden can stake a different plan and not come out looking a lot more like hillary.

the problem is, the whole appeal of trump is his giving the finger to the system. the finger to the schools. the finger to regulation. the finger to the irs and the tax code. the finger to political correctness and polite discourse. the finger to the #metoo. the finger to masks and the health profession. the finger to science and climate change. his whole approach is, f- you. and that's what people love. if the election shows that he clearly lost, then f- the election results. he will make up his own reality.

i've read the news too much. what i need now is blood pressure medicine, or some other kind of distraction so i don't think about it too much.

internet is spotty way out here in the country - my wife says we need a new router and if so, all will be well tomorrow. but in the meantime this may or may not make it, we'll see.

i think without question our lucky move to this remote outpost in southeast new mexico saved the lives of all six of us. we are now able to pull our kids out of school and stay holed up, way out at the end of a mountain road - and not go anywhere if we really don't want to. our kids of course are not happy with that, but they get it, when it comes to saving their lives, and they will adjust. it won't be easy. but they will live through the pandemic, if all goes well.

we see around the country, hospitals filling up. our niece in California, an old friend in Lubbock, lots of people have it. Some won't live to tell the tale. But we're thinking, we have to live to tell the tale.

people in this valley don't by and large take it that seriously. our kids' friends' families don't take it as seriously as we do. but everyone, i think, is taking it more seriously. that's because hospitals are full and stores are closed. people have to do what they have to do to keep body and soul together.

a kind of localized storm came up against our ridge and dropped a lot of snow which immediately froze on the roadways. at our own house, we had maybe three inches, which was a lot, and it didn't freeze that badly, but up against the ridge where it gets pretty steep, ice was frozen solid. the odd thing was, it wasn't so bad in the rest of the mountains. it was like we had the only treacherous road. a day or two into it, it was melting a little in the daytime and then freezing again at night, and even now, it's spotty - they've put beet heet on the road, but there are spots that are pretty slick. and cliffs on over half of the road.

the good luck is that, with school out, we don't really have to go in, unless we are ready. and we really no longer want our kids going in. we just don't want them in town. the town had 1, 2, 5, 7, 11, now 17 cases. not exactly exponential growth. but clearly growth, and it's a small town. it's only a matter of time before the kids's friends start knowing people. it has walked into both of their schools. It has hit the family dollar. it's here.

yet at the same time, we stay home more; we have our own world. the four of them entertain each other and that's all they have, besides the four dogs, and two cats which everyone ignores. the dogs are demanding - the new one doesn't want to be left alone - but if that taxes their patience or their time management skills, i'm ok with that, and hopefully there will be a lot of walks going on. as it is i take two of them, but only a short way each time, just up a hill.

tonight i took the little guy and as we got around the corner, a whole herd of deer crossed the road. he was interested and ran toward them, but without barking as he usually does if he's in the house. i like seeing his little ears stand up on end and he gives them his full attention. but he's so small, there's no way he could do more than nip their hooves, and that would be pointless. they seem to know that he's part of our little encampment, and they've learned to go around us. the countryside is filling up, though, i think. even in winter, there are more of us people now than there used to be. even with the hunters gone, the main lonely blacktop through the valley, which i call the main highway, has plenty of activity. no coronavirus, but plenty of trucks.

it's the kind of place where i felt a certain attachment, the minute i saw it. i don't ever want to leave.

 

for some reason it's been so cold this morning that i am still chilled, sitting in my best chair, four layers on, t-shirt, overshirt, winter woolen shirt, and sweater. the house is seventy five, should be ok. my feet have rather pourous slippers on, maybe that's the problem. the chills just won't go away.

outside, a couple of inches of snow linger. it was ten last night, and it's still not inclined to melt. we go from the main house to the bunkhouse, where the kids are, or to the shed where the laundry is, or to the brown trailer where the cats live, to do chores and check on everyone, and make sure the kids are in school, that kind of thing. but we have to go outside each time, and there's still snow on the ground. i come back chilled and stay chilled.

in the cat trailer, one cat had been stuck in the bathroom all night. the heater had been on in the main room, but the water was still frozen. i moved the water over by the heater so it would thaw out enough so they could drink it. we had them in the bunkhouse but they were trashing out the bathroom making it impossible to take a shower. the three kids barely noticed their absence though the cats, i think, had paid much more attention to them, the kids, than the other way around. anyway being cats and all, they are relatively self-sufficient emotionally, but let us know verbally if we have failed to feed them or give them what they need.

my wife says, never another cat. she's sick of the work involved in taking care of them. just move them back in with the kids, i say. the kids are always clamoring for their own pets, let them have a couple of kitties and practice on them. practice petting them, sleeping with them, messing with them, talking to them. nah, they had their practice. they didn't ever clean the cat boxes and we had to walk in on them at least once a day. we did save on the heat bill since they were all crammed into one bunkhouse. but it was not easier, and the bathroom was always a mess.

now, the brown trailer actually has a good view, and guards the hillside that marks the edge of our property. the cats sit up in the window of that trailer and take in the sun, something they didn't have so much of in the bunkhouse. they have each other - they are both boys and curl up together in the sun, often, and sometimes all afternoon. they keep the mice at bay; now, i'm sure, the mice are having their way with the bunkhouse and the shed, in the absence of any cats. it's a constantly evolving landscape. and oh is it cold. it was ten this morning, but now it's like twenty or maybe even twenty five, and some of this snow will be melting. i, however will stay in my chair. i can't seem to get enough black coffee.

a cold sun is setting in the mountains to the west, and it's snowed about three inches, which is generally considered good around here. the rain washes off, they say, but the snow sinks in and replenishes the dried up waters beneath. to me, it's good that i'm not forced to drive around in it; it's cold enough so that the snow has turned to ice and doubtless made the mountain cliffs a little dicey. but school is all at home these days, and we don't have to go anywhere if we don't want to.

i started a new project, which is to type an old account of a life lived in the late 1800's on a farm that i am writing about. so this would be my great grandfather's younger sister, youngest of six, on a farm in wisconsin, near black river falls. then they moved to south dakota, so i'm interested in that part too. i realize it gets more into her older life, which i'm not really following, but i'll put that in the book too. it's history, and it's family.

one thing i've found is that mediocre writing runs in the family. that is, none of us ever made it. but we at least got our feelings out on paper, and they're there, so we have something to chew on now, a hundred and forty years later. it's really remarkable. and some things like wit and subtle suggestion, those things run in the family too.

i've concluded that i'm mediocre, because i've tailed away a little, and just don't even feel great about what i do sometimes. i've been doing this blog, for example, for years, and i've always just loved writing away on it. but feel inspired to write what i know is really powerful? not really. that comes occasionally now, but not with the passion i had at the beginning.

it would be possible, i think, to get in on a kind of writing where you wake up in the morning and just want to do it. when i do novels sometimes, that happens. i get about halfway into it, though, and i'm mired in a general lack of plan or lack of organization. and so i have like three novels, half done. and i'm not even sure i could go back and finish the first two.

they talk about writer's block - i don't really have that anymore. i can always write here, and i can always write something. but i hope this blog is more than that to you - i'm not even sure why people check in to find out what's going on in the inside of my mind. i can tell you this though. it's a record - a living record - of a drift back toward mediocrity, or a kind of floating in a murky sea of mediocrity. it's my life record, so i'd like it to be a little more than that. but if you don't know me, why should it be? it's just writing, and with no caps no less.

glory be, but the first came on a tuesday, which means i'm doing all my statistics. my anemic book sales, my blogs, my twitter hashtags, i'm trying to keep up on the marketing stats.

first job is to find out where the people are. there are plenty of people on twitter, but i'm not sure any of them care about my hashtags, or even my books for that matter. do people read? and if they do, do they read books? i don't thinks so. but it doesn't matter, i'll clear out what i have and start a new tack.

one possible tack is pop artist. in fact i have been doing pop art for years, and have tons of it on my computers. it overloads the computers, and if i had it in books, i could let go of it on this end.

another possible tack is biography. you write about someone's life, and you are attached to that person forever. and it could be someone who is still alive, or someone who is not. doesn't matter. millions of lives are free for the taking. you write about them, you attach yourself to their life, interesting or not. biographies actually sell, especially if you do someone like kamala harris or tom cotton. people want to read about someone's life (sometimes) and they're willing to pay.

the last option is the quaker direction. my plays are like my stories; they're online for anyone who is even looking for them, so no wonder sales are anemic. i can't really expect people to buy books that they can get otherwise. yet sometimes they do, and they like quaker things. there is a kind of quaker revival going on zoom. not sure i want to write about that since i'm in the middle of it; i'm more likely to write quaker history which is an ongoing passion.

then of course i've found things in the genealogy files. there's frank - he's the geologist who walked from ames to madison, first cousin three times removed, i like to say. there's margaret irving, daughter of a prominent family in toledo, who became my grandmother on my mother's side - i just found her scrapbook. now that's wild. and i don't quite know how to deal with it.