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MINNESOTA FOX TALES
Old Man Winter has pinned me down like a butterfly on a board ...
Dear Sarah,
Once again, Old Man Winter has gotten turned around, and sent you the storm that was INTENDED for the Northland. I laughed to read
your complaints about venturing outside in 17 degree weather. I guess New Yorkers aren't accustomed to cooler temperatures. Here in Northern Minnesota, it is 7 degrees at the moment, and admittedly chilly, but welcome compared to the 17 below temps last week. We had a few snowflakes here
today--just a dusting--a kind of winter housecleaning for the New Year.
I think it is kinda cool that we get to celebrate the Millennium last year and again this year--last year because the numbers
changed over, and this year because it is the first year of the New Millennium. Sure, this is confusing to people, but the dogs seem to be taking it in stride. They are happy for the snow and cold weather, and all
they know is that it is winter and sledding season.
Last year I discovered the awesome poems of Tennyson, particularly one which seems
written for the occasion of the new millennium, and I don't think he would mind if I quoted it here:
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1850
The New Year is traditionally a time of taking stock, and it seems even more obligatory at the turn of the Millennium and of the Century. What goals did we not accomplish in
the 20th century that we should set for ourselves for the 21st century?
I'd like to make a grand list--Peace throughout the world, the conquering of disease--the
goals of Tennyson's poem. I'd add few more modern global concerns--find an alternative to the gasoline powered combustion engine, solve the problem of the world
population explosion, stop urban sprawl, save the forests, stop global warming.... But my mind wanders to more mundane matters; perhaps we could outfit our polls with
reliable voting machines, and achieve campaign finance reform, getting the campaigns out of the control of the military industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about half a century earlier.
On a personal level, I'd like to get out of debt, find more time for writing, and convince my husband to turn up the heat so my fingers aren't frozen stiff on the damn keyboard.
your faithful correspondent,
Dot
© 2000 by Rachel Scott
NEW YORK UNEASY
I am calling this New York Uneasy, because that is what it is.
Uneasy. Of course I am referring to the glittering city of New York, not the state. The state is made up of small cities, rural areas, and wilderness, that lies to the north of the
City. Sometimes other parts of New York state too feel like an unrestful and uneasy place, particularly in the Catskills which seem haunted by the poverty of the Depression,
and perhaps some poverty of spirit even before then.
No, New York has the big, power-punched Uneasy feeling. After all, really Uneasy
things have happened in New York City; scenes right out of Batman. The bombing of the World Trade Center Towers. Not that was an Uneasy Event writ large.
Now that we're coming up to New Year's, it's fun to recall faux Uneasy Events from times back. Like last year and the Y2K scare. And has nobody noticed that the talking
heads have slowly slipped into public airwaves and the advertising that this is the real Millennium? Okay. Are we going to have a hyped Apocalypse first, and then a real
Apocalypse later? Are we going to have the five horseman of the Apocalypse ride in, only to be able to distance ourselves from the consequences because that obviously
they can't be the real horseman of the Apocalypse, because there are only four! All of this Millennium stuff is American huckersterism at its worse. Well, okay, it is not worse
than the car sales on American statesmen's birthdays, which is an upcoming event which I am eagerly awaiting.
Consistent with the Uneasiness of New York is the Uneasiness of Christmas. We started strong on Christmas morning with just me and my daughter. I had actually
wrapped all presents in advance, hung stockings, purchased  candles, cleared the table
and put up a small tree. We opened the presents happily, and then I fixed a breakfast with forbidden foods such as bacon and croissants. This serene scene of happiness rapidly went downhill
when friends with whom we were going to meet for dinner decided to drop by two hours early. It's amazing how efficient one can be under those circumstances, but feelings do get trampled on. After I
emerged from the bathroom, clean but decidedly unglamorous, we awkwardly stood around until I gave the youngest kid a sack of wax bottles filled with colored sugared liquid. That created a diversion
and we were out of the house in a flash.
My daughter doubted my ability to make a reservation and assert myself appropriately to seat our party. She is sixteen and
extremely sweet looking. The sweet face hides the constantly turning wheels. She took five dollars and gave it to the headwaiter to speed the process. The poor guy was doing his best to cope with us and a slightly
drunk party of six, who arrived coterminous with us, but my daughter was eager to show off her New York City edge to her New Jersey friends. Suddenly, in the middle of these
hotly debated machinations, she crumpled, said she was ill and begged to go home. Then she proved her claim by going through three solid days of a very bad flu.
I turned from Christmas fairy to harried nursemaid. I also attempted to work. It was all very confusing. I took half days off or left early to be with her. One morning when she
was sleeping late, I just left her alone, planning to bake her a big breakfast when she awoke. Everything went haywire with one phone call from a friend. It woke my daughter
up and she emerged groggy and grumpy from her room. The friend, meanwhile, had committed the cardinal sin of getting drunk on Christmas Eve. During the duration of a
large family holiday party, a dog bit him and he hit the dog on the head. Apparently this was enough to end a relationship that had been solid enough to support a joint
purchase of a Lionel Train, and he was hysterical--no, suicidal.
It was hard to focus on the appropriate target of any nurturing impulse I might have left after that. Finally, I left for work, on the ninth day of Hanukkah, at 4:00 p.m., planning
to at least check the messages and mail. As I stood on the freezing subway platform and admired the rats warm in their winter coats, I realized that I was letting duty overcome good judgment. The trip home would
be even worse in that it would not only be cold and but also late, and dark. I turned around and marched back out the subway. When I got home, my daughter was ready to go off to her father's.
"What are you doing home? Why didn't you go to work?" she asked frostily.
"Well, I got down to the subway and didn't feel
well and decided not to go."
My daughter gave me a hard, blue-eyed glare. That sweet face can become surprisingly severe.
"Well, I just want to say that I think it is immature and irresponsible of you not to go in to work." With that, she turned on her heel and marched down the apartment corridor
Okay, these are personal crises that happened to me and there are probably eight million plus happy stories that  transpired in this city without any small crises, anxieties, or contained moments of rage. You can believe that if you want!
I just think that the collision of the holidays and New York City, while creating a moment of glittering commercialism unparalleled in the world, might give off just a few too many sparks. I mean, after
all, the holidays do stand for something subtle and unspoken, something intangible that we must experience every year. It seems that we are all searching for that moment of insightful quietude, if
for nothing else than to mark on our personal system of internal accounting of time and ordering of memories the turning of the globe.
Yes, another year has nearly passed, and we are uneasily
awaiting the arrival of a powerful storm system. Will the festivities in Times Square be not a bang but a whimper?
Your New York Uneasy Correspondent.
© 2000 by Sarah Scott
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