Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Mary and I nearly moved to Bemidji with the petunias in the early 80s. Also considered the Shenandoah. Picked Seattle instead. Milder weather. Also: Boeing! I loved Boeing.
The scenery along US 2 from Minot to Bemidji is beautiful, at least to my eyes. Rolling hills and more and more trees as one moves east. And water! Water, the sacred water!!! Where she is, people are. Where she is not, people are not, nor hardly any other creatures this side of microscopic.
My dancing partner was with me through Minot but unseen and unheard. Today, we rejoined, dancing cheek to cheek.
In 2000 when I drove Douglas’ car to the Academy for him, transiting I-90, which is well south of my present route, I noted the primness of rural MN. She is as well northerly. Even the junk yards are neat and tidy. Once in a while a total mess such as is every Indian property and countless American ones through Washington, Idaho, Montana and North Dakota. In rural MN, that ends abruptly except for the rare exception (one I saw today). MN urban is bleak, hardbitten and dirty as most urban US and especially in the northern deep-freezer, where there is stark contrast between new and older construction, the latter not really maintained and the newer not yet beaten down by the cold.
ND residents’ skin is deeply scarred and lined from the cold and hardship it entails. Especially urban residents. The decrepitude of central Minot teens — white, not black — was astonishing. The gas station attendants are far more hardbitten and epidermally worn than their counterparts in, say, WA or even MT. Drugs must also have a hand in that epidermal deterioration, not a few to the point of never needing a Halloween costume.
I took a side trip to a “National Wildlife Refuge” in MN. That is a misnomer. It is/they are a prairie-rich venue for hunting migratory birds. Francesca and I saw this in, I think it was, Kansas, when we took such a side-trip to such a place.
I listened to farm reports on AM radio, to include prices for cows, talking about them as things, specifically money. I don’t want to hear any more goddamn good deed talk from people who are eating these fellow creatures with faces.
The water table in eastern ND and western MN permits the lone home on the prairie to surround with tall trees serving as both wind break and shade. No such thing on the Indian reservations farther west and only rarely around the Americans’ homes, where they have risen.
No oil activity east of Minot along US 2. But BNSF is right with me still.
I did not drive down this road because the grass was dry (and high), the wind was strong and unrelenting and the car was hot. “Tourist Graham stupidly ignites prairie wild fire” is not a headline I wish to engender.
The local AM radio personalities are kind of lovable. They talk like the local radio announcer in the movie Overboard: informal, mistakes and all, “folksy,” not cynical Lovable. And actually informative for their audience: farmers.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
