Mark Hayes Peacock – blogs

At last the fourth story of my next short story collection is finished. It’s called “Lost Wax” and deals with a sculptor and his wife. I want to be able to read it aloud prior to publishing it online but it should be available in early November. It joins “At Midnight’s Stroke”, “I Loved That Bike!”, and “Snow Job and the Four Dwarfs”, the latter being the latest mangled fairy tale. I think I’ll call that coming book “Another Four Break Time Stories”.

I’m waiting for the next short story to appear. They tend to come partly formed and then get fleshed out over a series of nights between 2 to 5 a.m. when I can’t go back to sleep. Lately, sawing and hand splitting tornado-downed logs, sermon preparation and all the getting ready one does for the coming Winter around here have pretty much shoved aside any short story creating.

I just finished listening to the monthly broadcast of my short story reading–I hear it as it is streamed online on WPCA-FM–and I have to admit that I found myself chuckling over several of the lines in “Hansel and Gertie”, another mangled fairy tale. When we record these, the audio engineer gets to laughing, too; fortunately, the mike doesn’t pick it up or at least I’ve never detected it when I listen. I listen and get irritated at my occasional stumbles or “mushy” pronunciation. But if you’re not critical of yourself, how do you get better? Years ago I hosted Tuesday night for KUSC-FM radio in Los Angeles and I’ve got to say that my diction back then was better than it is now. So was my voice: these days I sound like a geezer!

Since we met last I’ve managed to get down the first go-round of my next short story. My stories tend to come out pretty well complete in the first draft, but early-morning mulling and inner conversations the characters might have themselves work to fill in what more might be needed. If that didn’t make sense, let me give an example: in the story in progress now, it was clear once the story was set down that the ending came up too quickly and the main character needed more development. So she got more development. Simple.

The rest of my time has been spent in doing much of what I said last time needed to be done. The TV antenna was fixed; tree experts came yesterday to salvage the split old oak in our front yard and an elm next to it, leaving me with plenty of branches to haul to the back of the property and lots of wood to cut, split and store for the woodstove; the broken leg on the dock platform got a new leg but will stay onshore until next season; and the pontoon even got a run up the lake on Sunday afternoon this week!

Today I chaired our monthly Osceola Senior Citizens Club meeting. We met Benjamin, the new Village Administrator, who even brought something to share for our potluck. (Class act, I’d say.) Sunday is the Village parade and I’ll be on our float, which–to salute retirement–appropriately is a fishing boat. I figure my usual fishing luck will hold up during the parade.

The pun: my chainsaw has been busy, a result of the recent tornado that topped and downed trees, including some in our yard. That means cutting and splitting wood, which is fine because I need firewood anyhow. Winter is coming, whether I’m ready for it or not. I split logs by hand with a maul I’ve had for perhaps 20 years–at least.

So today was a day without a schedule. I began–when I finally got to the outdoors–with more digging up mostly sumac that ‘s out of place in lily beds. Marina wants me to leave the raspberry bushes that bear fruit, so I try to do that and dig out those that are not working at it or just are in the wrong place. My digging and pulling has brought me all along the western boundary of the property. In the afternoon I changed pants and went about more logging. The chainsaw didn’t work much today but the maul did, splitting and stacking the wood, some of it fresher than other logs. I don’t like working beneath a “widow-maker” that dangles from a tall tree high above where I need to cut several downed trees. Out front we have an oak that’s split, with a portion hanging up in another tree that also is split. That requires a pro, someone who can figure out how to take it down so it doesn’t twist and hit the house or the LP tank. The task is complicated by the drainfield that will keep lifting equipment at a distance or make it impossible to use mechanical tree equipment at all. I put in five calls today, trying yet again to find someone who could do that work. Thus far, no one has called back, only the County Forester, who gave me some names and was most helpful. At about 4:30 we (Marina and I and Andy and Gretel, her two Seeing Eye dogs) went down to the lake and sat on the pontoon boat. The wind has been strong for a couple of days now and the pontoon has pushed the last portion of the dock about 6 inches to the south. I have two anchors out but the smaller bow anchor really isn’t holding, which means there is nothing to buffer the boat’s slamming against the dock but some inflatable bumpers–hence, the dock movement. I’ll have to figure something better. While we were sitting in the boat, two guys came along that have engaged a nearby cabin for the Labor Day weekend. They turned out to be part of a contingent of Sheriff’s deputies from the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities. I figure catching some fish is a good way to decompress from the stress of dealing with the underside of life on a day to day basis. I feel for them.

I did get that story down, the one that had been working in my head for weeks. It needs some “fill-in” work to develop the heroine’s character more fully but the guts of it are written down now. When it’s ready, it will be the fourth story in the next Kindle book. I need to title this story, also. The other stories in this collection are “Snow Job and the Four Dwarfs”, “I Loved That Bike!”, and “At Midnight’s Stroke”.

As it turned out, I ended up doing services at three churches two weeks in a row. The first week–to help out the Upper St.Croix Parish until their pastor can get into place–turned out to be a repeat for another week.The first week I did Wolf Creek, the congregation I pastor, and the Atlas UMC and St.Croix Falls. Last weekend it was Wolf Creek, Grantsburg Central UMC, and Atlas. Things will get back to normal, or at least I think they will.

A tour of neighboring areas close by shows me how fortunate we were with the high winds and tornado damage. We lost trees and still have some that need attention. My chainsaw can handle most of it. Down at the lake the dock needs help but Bernizer is supposed to come this week to give me the helping hand I need to heft dock sections that need repair.

And there are projects: a box to help a chimney sweep access the chimney; another box to protect the batteries that will live outside in Winter; a signal booster to install so I can use my cellphone in the office; an outdoor light for the downstairs door; mounting the outdoors thermometer; moving Marina’s rhubarb; replacing the TV antenna broker by the wind blast; and ongoing tree cutting and stacking and splitting the resulting logs. I need to gather the hazardous chemicals I need to take to recycling next week and that means I’ll be sorting through and cleaning out/organizing the small shed that’s jammed full. I’ve not written a thing in weeks but there is a story begun in my head that begs to get itself on paper.

So we are settling into our new home, the cabin we’ve expanded, and things have been finding their places and other stuff has been tossed or donated or given away. Amid all this, we had a tornado a block away. Trees are fallen, twisted, uprooted, barn roofs hang from trees and the Calderwood sign is nowhere to be found. South of us high winds demolished cabins all along the coast. We have trees down and topped. The large old oak in front that gives such nice shade is split and will need professional help. I think I can handle the other tree that is split. In back, there are many downed trees. I have cleared almost all the fallen trees from our neighbor’s property and now it is a matter of nibbling away at what’s down, a couple of hours here and couple of hours there. That’s in addition to trying to rectify the damage down at the lake. The first windstorm broke a wheel off a dock section. I got help to pull that section and was able to replace the bracket that holds the leg. That dock section is ready to go. HOWEVER, in re-aligning the dock (by myself, of course) I managed to break off a leg on the platform, so I’ve got some young guys coming–probably today–to heft the platform out of the water so I can see what needs fixing. It’s an awkward thing to move in any event, even when it’s “healthy”. Right now the pontoon is tethered to the dock and anchored from the north so it doesn’t keep smashing against the dock, shoving it as before. The storm and its effects, with the pontoon pushing the dock, moved it south about six feet. There was one good sized tree down at the lake and I hacked up most of it. Someone else finished the job. Even the new clothesline was demolished by a flying tree branch. The TV antenna mast was bent in two. All in all, though, considering the rest of the neighborhood, we got off easy. We believe the Lord protects us.

So that has been my major excitement, slowing down what other plans I might have had. Today the woodstove gets its chimney installed. The guys are working now to bore a hold through the cement block wall in order to run the chimney outside.I would have preferred to have the chimney be a straight shot–less creosote–but there is no room inside the house to run a chimney.

I still have a new story on the tip of my brain. I have the beginning and a general direction but I’m not sure where it will go from there. Characters have a way of doing their own thing, so I’ll find out when I can put aside the time to sit and begin to write it down.

Daughter Alice–known to me as “Kid Number Three”–is doing a charity show August 10th. I got tickets yesterday, making fewer than 30 seats left.

Last Sunday I did services at Wolf Creek and Taylors Falls. Then, I trekked up to Cushing for the Settlers Picnic, an event that began in the 1930’s by people who’d lived out in the Barrens and up in around the Cushing-Wolf Creek area but who’d left the area, mostly because of finances. In the Barrens the soil is poor and farmers who were promised good soil and great crops simply starved out. At any rate, the former residents wanted to reunite and had their first picnics out in what now is State land and unavailable for things like picnics. I was at the first indoor event that has been held ever since in what was Cushing Elementary School and now is the Cushing Community Center. The event is put on now by the Historical Society. Marcie Marquardt moderated the event and I think she is president of the Historical Society.

The audience had enjoyed a lavish potluck so long-windedness was a guarantee of putting 3/4 of the crowd to sleep. These people are the third generation to enjoy the Picnic and many of them–most of them–are getting along in years themselves, so brevity, I thought, would be a virtue. And so I talked about being a “Recovering City Slicker”, about growing up in Hollywood and in the Hollywood Hills, where a boy could take his dog and bow and arrows and have to worry about not much more than poison oak, rattlesnakes and an occasional skunk. I wish I’d mentioned people more, people like Harry Jolson, Al’s brother, and how he could be heard on summer mornings in his bathroom doing vocal scales in that brittle, metallic Jolson voice. I did talk about the Sears Foundation and its semi-trailer that came to Valley View Elementary School to let city kids see a real cow (“That’s where your milk comes from.”) and a chicken (“That’s where we get your eggs.”), (“Feel the wool on the sheep.”) and (“Smell the _____.”) I also talked about being a city kid that was taught in elementary school about contour plowing and windbreaks. I told about the farm on Highway 48 that I’d pass enroute to Birchwood and Exeland where the farmer had plowed up and down the hill, rather than across. Sure enough, within a few years he had a gully there instead of productive land. I observed that windbreaks are disappearing, partly because some trees have died of old age and partly because today’s big machinery demands being able to go edge to edge and trees get in the way and so get cut down. I asked why we seem to learn nothing from history.

I also talked a bit about famous people–and I’ve met many over the years–if they have feet they put on their socks the same way you and I do. I learned early that there is great value in treating every person as–simply–a person, a human being worthy of dignity and respect until we find out otherwise. I talked about the power of money and greed and how I saw the San Fernando Valley go quickly, so quickly that when I left California 50 years ago they were buying up vacant lots to create neighborhood parks. Development had happened so quickly that the idea of a park was not considered or even thought about. I said that we have the luxury here of planning, of thinking about what we want our place on earth to be like. I quoted John Borchert, a retired urban geography professor at the University of Minnesota who told me that if we want to preserve our downtowns, we have to work at it because our society is geared to the automobile and strip malls are a natural result of that. And I observed that the local Historical Society was very important; in much of southern California the old timers and history have gone; development and growth happened so quickly that what was is something few people know.

I had a good time, I ate well and sold a book. There was no time to read a story. Speaking of story, Peter Kwong, who spoke with us in Amery a couple of weeks ago, wrote in this week’s column that my reading of “Snow Job and The Four Dwarfs” was “hilarious” and “the highlight of the evening”. What a nice comment! Kwong also thinks I’m famous; little does he know. One thing I have learned is that it’s one thing to write, another to get published and yet another to get published and get paid for it. Another thing I’ve learned is that people may know you’ve got stories out there but it’s a large leap from knowing about them to reading them, much less paying for the privilege. And that’s true of even my own family, which is disappointing.

Enough for today. We had heavy rain and wind. Blown by the wind, the pontoon managed to shove the dock about two inches to the south. I’ll try to re-align it later this week. It’s 4th of July week and a combination of daily living stuff and an electrician coming, as well as the 51st anniversary of Marina and my first date. Someday I’ll write about that date.

A week ago I had the pleasure of reading a short story (“Snow Job and the Four Dwarfs”) as a fundraiser for the Amery Arts Alliance to help its quest to purchase Amery’s Classic Theatre and fix its roof. I was joined by poet LaMoine MacLaughlin, adventurer Lois Joy Hofmann, celebrity chef and columnist Peter Kwong, pastor Randy Dean and educator-historian Dan Girtz. The turnout was disappointingly small, at least in terms of the money raised by the ticket purchases of the people attending (there may have been unknown contributions) but the readings were mostly good. Just about every writer spent time describing his/her background, which I found a bit odd.

Last night I read three stories as a fund raiser for St.Croix Festival Theatre. I was joined by poet LaMoine MacLaughlin, who did his usual good job of making poetry understandable and entertaining. This was a return event; we read for Festival last year. Turnout was a bit less than last year, perhaps half full, and I knew many of those attending. I wish there were more time to visit with each person who comes to those events. I enjoy doing readings (Marina calls them my one man shows) and why not? I can put drama into my own words. The trick it to read stories that are not too long and I barely succeed at that.

Next up is next weekend speaking in Cushing, Wisconsin at the Old Settlers picnic. I’ll talk about growing up in Hollywood and what this City Slicker learned by living in our rural area for 30+ years.

Daughter Alice is in town briefly on her way to International Falls/Rainy Lake/Camp Koochiking where she will spend most of the summer teaching songwriting. (Yes, I misspelled the camp’s name and the county it’s in. Ah, well.) It’s upset time as the family dog was injured by an encounter with a large truck at the camp and is in Duluth for emergency care. Duluth is a three hour jaunt from the camp. Alice has a new recording out and I listened earlier this evening. Two of the cuts made me cry–hard.

Marina and I spent a delightful afternoon with three of my former foreign student advisees, one from China via Austria, an Ethiopian-Italian entrepreneurial dynamo, and a delightful guy from Palau who was a pioneer in computers and their applications. The latter two became residents here and Jane married an Austrian and has a business not far from the Italian border. I’m not doing them justice in my descriptions; they are highly successful people, three among a remarkable group of people I was privileged to “advise” almost half a century ago. They credit me with much of their success, which is untrue. I tell them that we at Macalester College had scholarship money and selected people we felt had the potential to make the world a better place. And as much as I can tell, they have done just that! We met at Cafe Latte, which is a noisy venue, but their food (especially the desserts like strawberry-rhubarb cheesecake) makes up for it. We’ve had a dry spell lately and so we drove through welcome periodic rain showers. Adding another 45 minutes to our drives to The Cities makes the travel seem much longer than it did when we were 20 years younger but coming home is nice.

And things are shaping up at home. Tomorrow carpenters come to finish off a bit of outside work, some electric and a heat duct to be cut into the bedroom. I hope to get the dock in on Tuesday and Wednesday I pick up an electric stove and range hood. We are switching out the stove because it’s dangerous for Marina to be putting her hand over flame and it’s hard for her to see whether a burner is lit or not. Thursday sees an electrician for powering up the new stove, a dryer line to be run, electric for future a/c, some floodlights for what will become a gallery downstairs and putting power to the wiring in my office.

The Amery Arts Alliance reading went well, although the audience was small. Writers generally don’t draw big crowds, or at least those of us who are not well known don’t draw big crowds. The Alliance has a matching grant of $20,000 and if Friday’s event is any indication they have a good ways to go to meet that challenge. The effort is to save the classic downtown theatre, a throwback to the 1930’s that has been restored but has a leaking roof that needs repair. The Alliance would love to do that and own the place, too. I’m hoping for a larger turnout this Friday when LaMoine MacGlaughlin and I read (it’s a return engagement) as a fund raiser for St.Croix Festival Theatre. If you’re looking for a cheap date, tickets are $10 with all proceeds going to Festival. We’d love to see you there!

So we’re in (mostly) our new home above Bone Lake. It’s across the lake from where we were for 20 years and just a bit north. We don’t have the beach in our yard anymore, but we don’t have the taxes either that go with waterfront. We share a beach with 7 other property owners and it’s just down the hill from us.

We managed to exit Osceola just in time; we closed last Tuesday and had to be out, of course. This has been the most demanding move I’ve done and I intend to exit this life from out here. Much of the challenge has been that we are combining three places: our long-time Duluth apartment, our Osceola townhome, and Marina’s fully furnished office (mine, too!). In addition, there was stuff in the cabin that was left when we bought the place five years ago. Marina’s vision means that things go more slowly than with most people; she needs to be able to know where things are so she can find them in the future. (Right now we’re looking for tick protection for the animals that’s in a bag somewhere and for bird seed for the finches.) People Loving People in Dresser has been the recipient of many donations from us and there will be more. We have triplicates of some things and duplicates of others.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Unplanned last week was a pacemaker replacement for Marina, so that meant time in hospitals and clinics. Son John sat with me at Regions and that was a great assist. Daughter Hannah put some elbow grease into cleaning as we left Osceola and that was a great help. This week I have a truck brake repair and front axle to fix and Friday night I’m also reading a short story (“Snow Job and The Four Dwarfs”) to benefit the Amery Arts Alliance’s efforts to buy the Classic Theatre and fix its roof. There will be six writers reading; we’ll see if we get an audience. Meanwhile, I’m locating and putting in place more stuff!

Still lugging stuff to the new location; that’s the report. Moving is such fun! On the other hand I drop a good ten pounds per move so it’s not all bad. I still have some sheetrock work to do and some electric in my office-to-be but we are making good progress and should be out of here and in the new place by the end of the month.

The “possible” event I mentioned in my last post–the one in Amery–now is firm for Friday, June 7th at 7 p.m. at the Classic Theatre. It’s a fund raiser for Amery’s Arts Alliance to help them purchase the theatre and fix the leaking roof. I will be joined by some fine writers: Peter “Wok & Roll” Wong, renowned chef and columnist; Lois Joy Hoffman, author, adventurer, photographer, and circumnavigator; LaMoine MacLaughlin, Amery’s first poet laureate and executive director of Amery’s Northern Lakes Center for the Arts; Dan Girtz, educator and writer of history; and Randy Dean, pastor and author.