Marina

Ingots pass the Dubai day away,

rocketing to make Zamyatin’s We

a shadow of its predicatory ennui.

Some select the marina walkway

in a September bereft of breeze.

I took with me Tsvetayeva to be

a fellow passer-by; here she’d say

“think of me simply”—(yesterday,

now)—“and simply forget of me.”

Marina, I have no such disease.

I am among those folks who run

the plains and edges of the world;

visions, muse-like melodies swirl,

luring faux oases to a desert sun.

I needn’t plunge into the shoal.

Instead, I’ll walk marinas where

they lie and run among land lives.

Laborers amass in the city’s hives:

as fellow aliens, they might stare

to say ‘think of me’ in this hole.

Ingots that we are we’ll gravitate

to safeboxes & combination codes

to settle self-reliance. Our in-roads

imperceptible, the myriads await

a worthwhile tally of our worth.

It stands to reason, then, in Dubai

a reader of Tsvetayeva may barely

pass you by. A lizard brightly green

rustles leaves which whisper why  

we run to greater clods of earth.

The Shelf Builder

Greg Elstad - brother, uncle - wrote this poem in 2010, a few years after his marriage to Lola.  In light of contemporary shelf-building in the brotherhood, it would seem appropriate to add it here.

The Shelf Builder

        by Greg Elstad

This house was once home to a Swede we called Stan,
     Content to live here with no shelf building plan.
Stan and wife "Bunny" lived here a long span,
     Loving each other the most two folks can.'

"We've plenty of shelf space!" they said after a scan.
     (But their shelves were all full when their marriage began!)
"Anything extra goes in the trash can!
     Or we'll give it to Goodwill wrapped up in Saran."

Bunny & Stan moved to town by their plan,
     They gave us this house since we're part of their clan.
They gave us their Chevy - a really nice van.
    (Now we're thinking of selling our trusty sedan!)

Most of their stuff they left here when they ran.
     The shelves were all full when our move in began.
We've crowded our stuff in as best as we can.
     Now Lola prays this, again  & again:

"Dear God in Heaven, please revamp my man,
     To one who builds shelves just as fast as he can.
Do this for me and I'll be Greg's best fan,
     I won't scare him stiff with my Shelf Empire Plan!

Please don't make Greg like those men from Iran!
     You know the type - they're a very dark tan,
They mutter a lot of a shelf building ban.
     (They base their beliefs on their prophet's Koran.)

Make Greg a man who builds shelves with elan,
     Good shelves!  Not cheap ones like those from Japan!
Shelves for my dishes, and boxesof bran,
     And one shelf for storing things kept in a pan!"

Postscript: My poem is complete.  But. . . .
I've still got 4 words to use ending with "an":
     The pie nut - the fattening but tasty pecan.
The Indian tribe, river, or city - Cheyenne.
     My niece & my nephwe - Ms. Ann(ie) & Dan.

But this is our place!

Lie in tall grass

Look up at blue sky

Tractor is coming

Of course he’ll see me.

Hunters atop our hill

Cogitating their kill

I in brown jacket

Come to pay a call.

Oh deer.  They see me.

Is that what they think?

There is danger here

When I am center of universe.

     Marilyn Jaeger

Pump Organ - The Challenge

I’m never quite sure if the comments get circulated the way the regular posts do, so I’m going to post this twice, and share with everyone what I already sent Mom - how the whole time I read this I was thinking of another Tom Waits song, a sad sweet two minute instrumental that features a pump organ - or maybe it was a harmonium. Check out Tom's piece - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIWfRb4rbU4.  Anyway, I'll be sad to see that old pump organ go, and moreso now that we know it's story.

But I’m happy to have the chance to get the story.  And now, here’s a challenge to all, and this comes from Mom to me after I recently shared with her a bit of my own twelve year old story.  “Very good, son,” she said, “but let’s get everyone into this.”  My bit had been what I call a moleskin memoir, a 3x5 notebook full of my first homes in Minnesota and then Cook County, and I do look forward to sharing this.  But first, where were you when you were twelve and thirteen?  I’d love to hear from you all!

Pump Organ, the story

Pump organ, the story                                                       September 9, 2014, by Marilyn Elstad Jaeger

A  lovely old pump organ has had a location of prominence in our log cabin great room since 2005, but it goes a long way back in my history.  We moved to Franklin, Minnesota in 1952 when my father, George Elstad, became principal and band and choir director at Franklin High School.  I was thirteen.  This was not foreign territory for my parents.  Haakon and Marthea Elstad homesteaded near Central Lutheran Church, between Franklin and Fairfax, in 1869.  It was later known as the Distad farm.  My father’s mother – his birth mother Lena and his adoptive mother Mathilda (Lena’s sister) – grew up in Beaver Falls, just north of Redwood Falls, Minnesota.  Their father, Martin Jensen, was the sheriff of Renville County.  Mathilda married Ole Elstad in 1895.  My grandparents.

My mother, Berenice Loftness Elstad Ostrom, also had strong roots here.   Her grandparents were Einar (Hunsager) Nelson and wifeThea, who homesteaded right below Fort Ridgely on the Minnesota River in Nicollet County.   They were founders of the Ft.Ridgely and Dale Lutheran Church, located about six miles northwest of their farm.  The whole family knew of how well they regarded their pastor, Rev.  Rognlie.   Einar, 1829-1915, and Thea, 1840-1932, are buried in the cemetery at Ft. Ridgely and Dale Church.  Their third daughter, Palma, was born in 1873.  She was my grandmother.  Much of her early education was done in the home by parents and servants teaching homemaking skills.  According to family historian Elvina Loftness, “music was added after Grandfather purchased an organ.  As a result Palma became a part-time organist of the German Lutheran church where she served as a parish worker.”  Palma and Andrew Loftness, of Clear Lake township near Gibbon, Minnesota, were married in 1904 and moved to homestead in Thief River Falls, Minnesota.

I believe that same organ that my great-grandfather Einar Nelson purchased for their Minnesota Valley home was the one that ended up in our home in Wisconsin in 2005!  For atop the organ in the back room of Ft. Ridgely and Dale was a stick with the name ”Nelson” written on it.

Fast-forward to the 1950’s.   On Sunday afternoon drives an occasional stop for our family was at the churches east of Franklin.  The doors were always open!   Dad would sit down at one of the pump organs in the musty little back room and play.  He was good; I am still aspiring to play the piano like he did.

A half-century later, in 2005, my husband Dick and I borrowed a flatbed trailer from a neighbor and drove from our rural home outside of Blanchardville, Wisconsin to pick up the three pump organs still in the back room of Ft. Ridgely and Dale.  Dick and I had re-discovered them some years before on a southern Minnesota journey.  We learned they now  belonged to Arnemann Grender and his sister Marie Grender Clark.  Their parents entertained musically, and their mother I think was a Rognlie.  The deal was we could have the organs if we fixed up one for Arnemann.

In 2006 Illinois friends of ours, Dan and LuAnn Detloff, came to visit.  Dan was a music professor at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines.  I asked him to assess the three organs, and he agreed with me that two were clearly beyond repair.  We salvaged stops and keys and woodwork but they were otherwise already falling apart.

The third organ, however, was in good shape.  But not playable.  Our local piano tuner told me about a man in Wilton, Wisconsin, Verne Kirchoff, who fixed old pump organs.  In the fall of 2006 Dick and I loaded it onto our pickup truck and drove the 103 miles up through winding roads and valleys to Wilton, between Tomah and LaCrosse.

Verne lovingly restored the organ and delivered it to us in June, 2007.  He had installed an electric motor but I asked him to remove it, preferring the original authenticity.  He replaced the carpet on the foot pedals.   He charged $600.  Along with the organ he brought pages from an old catalog describing it: Packard Style 485 “Humanola” Chapel Organ, 1891-1904, mfg. by Ft. Wayne Organ Company, Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

It has been a fitting accessory to our log cabin, and played occasionally by grandchildren but seldom by me (should have kept that electric motor!)  None of the children have room for it, and eventually we will not be here.  It is time for the old Packard to return to its roots in southern Minnesota, and more specifically, to the Rognlie homeplace next to Ft. Ridgely and Dale Church.