Down in the Valley

Money management with my teenager.

2009-04-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

Oh, sometimes this is the hardest part of raising kids. I know it's not like changing a dirty diaper, but it still stinks.

Mary Nagan - November 3, 1917 - October 15, 2008

2008-10-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

Mother Mary in the gardens of Healdsburg, at the wedding of Jeffrey and Christina, August, 2008.

Mary's eulogy –– written by Wendy Lewis.

I remember the first time I met Mary and Bill Nagan. Rita was shuffling uncomfortably around the dining room of she and Mike’s first house on Jefferson St. NE — her tattered turquoise robe barely made the turns around the girth of a very pregnant belly. While I was there, Mary and Bill dropped by. I was taken first with Mary’s brilliant blue eyes, then her infectious laugh and calm demeanor, which provided perfect ballast to Bill’s generous, blustery and endearing theatrics. I fell in love with both of them instantly and little did I know what kind of harvest this affair would bring. I was going to have to buy a few silos.

For almost thirty years, Rita and I have raised our children, survived poverty and calamity, traveled, celebrated our successes and buried our dead together — in short, we’ve polished off a few bottles of wine. Woven inextricably into all these events has been the strong fiber of her family and today we pay homage to the matriarch of this Irish crew — Mary Jane Farley Nagan.

Mary stands alone as my only true hero. Unwittingly, she lived beyond the standards for a woman of her own (or any) generation by truly being who she was and keeping time with her own internal drummer. She has always appeared to me to be disaffected and unshackled by conventional roles or limits of any kind. She was the sort of woman whose autonomy would inspire three staunchly independent and entrepreneurial generations in her own family while deeply affecting countless others on the periphery, myself, and my children included.

Mary was really good at doing what she wanted, when she wanted — and didn’t really make much ado about any of it. She didn’t need permission and perhaps she never even imagined it was part of the process. She didn’t rant, rave, demand or make a scene either; she just slipped through all the gates as if she’d been given a backstage pass. Her way of moving through the world gave me extra clearance to do the same. Without ever spelling it out, she showed me that you don’t have to fight for access; you just assume there is a freeway exit with your name on it and flip on your signal. It really works!

There is an infinite cache of stories family and friends will flush out in the days and years to follow — but here are a few that come to my mind. I was in New York at least twice with Mary and I know for a fact she dug closing wine bars, loved St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was always up for the next thing to do no matter how late it was. She’s also given me a host of gardening tips over the years, innumerable rants on U.S. and Irish politics, and plenty of information on Catholic rituals and saints. While she was one of the least judgmental people I’ll ever know she was certainly not devoid of her convictions. She never excelled at cooking, but she got damn good at those Irish potato buns — they weighed a pound each, stuck to your ribs and became standard Thanksgiving fare. Someone will need to sign up for those this year.

Here are few more things Mary taught me by example about the art of living well. Mary never “got old” but instead got bigger, always expanding and updating her skills, interests, goals and passions. I never thought of her as “someone’s mother”, an elderly woman whose presence required that I behave differently or edit myself. As long as I’ve known her, Mary has always pursued life as if it were meant to be lived right now, not wasting time with diminishing returns or pretense. She met everyone where they were.

Even with the losses she incurred during her years, she didn’t get sucked into the undertow of sentiment as she aged clinging to things that might weigh her down, but instead, made choices in the present tense and towards whatever interested her next. She thought nothing of taking up metal sculpture, traveling here and abroad, finishing a college degree or starting a new business in her 70’s, 80’s or 90’s. She didn’t throw the age card down as an excuse to not learn something, not challenge herself or unplug from the world. She would sometimes make reference to “those old people” as if she were not one of them — and clearly, she wasn’t.

Mary has everything to do with me being on this plane right now, writing about her, bound for Berlin. I’m heading off with three young musicians to tour the world for the next year. The chance that this would happen this late in my career is as likely as the chance I would miss the funeral of this remarkable woman who has had such a profound influence on my life! But, these unlikely events have lined up alongside each other and there is something so unbearably impossible and perfectly Mary about it all.

When I saw her four days before I left town, she asked me to check out Michelangelo’s The Last Supper when I got to Milan because she’d never been able to see it when she had traveled to Italy. I baited her with things like “here you are, still trying to make a Catholic out of me after 30 years” and “I’ll go see that damn painting if you’ll just wait for me to get back to tell you what it felt like”.

When I left her sick bed that day, I went to a studio to record the gospel song she’s long wanted me to sing at her funeral and every time she reminded me, I would say, “Mary … I can’t sing that or any song at your funeral because I can’t sing and cry at the same time”. Her response was always the same, “Well, that’s too bad. You’re gonna have to pull it together because you have to do it — I won’t take no for an answer”. It seems she has held me to that promise and let me off the hook at the same time because the song got sung but I’m not here to do it in the flesh. How she pulled this off will confound me for the rest of my days. If you need more proof, while Rita reads this to all of you, I’m on the ground in Milan trying to get to that painting. Life is a mystery.

You are all gathered here together today because of Mary Nagan. Celebrating her life is going to be easy; living without her will take some painful getting used to, and it may take awhile. Go easy on yourselves. One of the last things Mary said to me was, “So … off you go into the wild blue yonder!” As I write this, I’m flying at 36,000 feet suspended somewhere between the blue of heaven and the deep blue sea. I feel her floating along inside me and I know she will do the same with all who have had the pleasure and privilege of loving her.

Lucky in Lucca

2008-06-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

Life at Il Mulino is fabulous.

Wedding Photos

2008-09-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

Margaret, Joseph and Justine. Just before they joined arms, jumped as high as cheerleaders and shouted, "Obama!"

Johanna, Lillian and Justine. Beautiful cousins.

Emily made the wedding sweets: cheesecakes. And they were darn good.

The Parents of the Groom: Joe and Jennifer.

Mother at the Wedding

2008-08-31T11:46:00.000-07:00

Oh, we had a great time last month at Jeffrey's wedding. Mother looked fabulous and had a great time.

The wedding ceremony was a half an hour late in starting. Someone forgot the marriage certificate –– the priest and the wedding party had to sign the document to make it legal. Then it was discovered that the rings had been left somewhere also. All documents and jewelry were eventually located.

The marriage ceremony commenced. Tears were shed. Tears of joy, of course.

Antipasti dinner in a small restaurant up the mountain from Tofori.

2008-06-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

First course: a small bowl of cherries from the tree we can see from our table.
Second course: cantaloupe with proscuitto.
Third course: tuna, tomato, olive oil and bread salad.
Fourth course: polenta cake with a mushroom tampenade.
Fifth course: crostini - thin sliced tomato with mozarella cheese.
Sixth course: lasagna, like you've never, ever tasted.
Seventh course: eggplant and cheese.
Eighth course: bed of greens topped with roasted pancetta.
Ninth course: pecorino cheese slabs served with honey.

Vino rosa, olives and bread as sides.

Nothing more to say.

the M tour

2008-06-03T05:51:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, June 3 - making a list. checking it twice. cleaning up at the office. cleaning up at home.

Wednesday, June 4 - leave for paris with mother, madge and meghan. meet matthew in italy. the M tour.

Thursday, June 5 - arrive paris. it's my birthday. 54.

Friday, June 6 - still in paris. it's my 28th wedding anniversary -- at 8:00 p.m. paris time and 12:00 Noon Minneapolis time, Mike and I will raise a glass to each other - agreeing to sign on for another year. air hug. air kiss.

Saturday, June 7 - fly to pisa. matthew will pick us up at the airport. mmmmm, really? we've tried this before. default to doris.

spend the next week in lucca, san gennaro and il mulino. details to follow.

il dio li salva da noi stessi.

buon giorno.

Prom, 2008

2008-04-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

viewville.com gets launched.

2008-04-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

From an idea spoken about over dinner almost a year ago to this: the actual moment viewville.com was launched. 7:02 PM CST, April 23, 2008. As Jeremy is clicking that mouse, Viewville is open for the eyes of the world. (Evelyn took the picture) My exposure kept the screen dark, because we didn't want to show the tech page, we wanted to add the home page later. We wanted the real moment captured.

Ideas are floating in the air all around us. Ideas are the easy part. Making them happen is the hard part. We, Jeremy, Rita, Margaret and I have worked on this for almost a year. We will continue to work on it as long as it takes. If it works, good for us all. If it doesn't, we tried. Trying is what it's all about. I think it is going to work.

Bill at the Lake

2008-04-26T09:44:00.001-07:00

I found this image while rummaging through the family archives. One of the rare moments of Bill Nagan taking a rest. His three day stubble and scruffy hair lead me to believe he must have been taking some time off from the office. Not sure the exact year, but it was in the 70s sometime. This was Margaret's dog.

Chinese Pop Soul Advertising

2008-04-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

Most scientists agree. The future is actually going to be more futuristic than they had originally thought. Paving the way perfectly for more Chinese Pop Soul Advertising.

Painting Classes

2008-03-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

The first painting class is complete. Here is the result. The way the class works; you pick a still life that is set up in the studio, draw it identically with charcoal and transfer it to your canvas. All the instruction is about realism. Even Pablo Picasso was a realist first. Getting the shapes in relation to each other, the values, color and detail are what is discussed. Each class we completely recover the canvas with paint. Each class, or week, the subject changes due to aging and/or movement. After 8 weeks you have your result. I am happy with mine for a first attempt. I like the class and teacher and have signed up for another round.

Don't look at the background. I concentrated on the onions. You can tell those are onions, right? Now I am painting apples.

That's Miss Wilker to you.

2008-03-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

There's not much to say about our little sassy-pants. Except that we love her so.

Meghan sent me this image of precious, and I can't stop looking at her. She's as cute as my girls were, that's for sure. (God forbid I'd have said, "cuter than my girls" -- I never would have heard the end of it. Meowwwww.)

Scrabble Me

2008-02-23T05:19:00.000-08:00

Where are my scrabble peeps? I NEED to play scrabble. MC, make sure you have the scrabble board set up when I come for a visit. Travel scrabble would be best -- can we play on the train?

The World is Round

2008-02-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

Remember High School History Projects? Seems as though they're still required -- paper maché has no rivals.

Evelyn Tours Campus at Berkeley Interactively

2008-01-25T08:24:00.000-08:00

Actually, this is a shot from the Exploratorium in San Francisco. We had a fabulous time in San Fran last weekend visiting Lillian. The tour of the campus was real and Evelyn was impressed. We also visited Joe and Jen in Healdsburg and Matt at the Schellville Grill. It was my first time back in San Francisco since the 7o's. Lillian was a perfect host and showed us some great areas, along with the best food I have had in a long time. Evelyn loved Haight-Ashbury and the CitiLights bookstore. My only problem was trying to drive around in the city. Too crowded, no parking and no left turns allowed. The next time I go, I will leave the car behind.

Thanks Lil, for showing us around your incredible new home. It was good for me to see you again.

Karl

2008-02-19T16:00:00.000-08:00

Karl was a man I shared a hospital room with recently, for 2 days. It was one of those rooms with a curtain between the beds. As I was rolled in, I introduced myself, but Karl did not respond. He was moaning slightly, an older man in his late 80’s or early 90’s, with scabs on his legs. The staff got me situated. As I lay there questioning everything about my strange day, Karl began to speak. I thought, of course, he was speaking to me.

“Oh, I don’t know WHAT’S going on.”
“Excuse me? Are you all right?” I said.
“Muriel, open the door. That’s it. I can see it.” He was speaking clearly. “Tell me why we need to call them today.”

I began to realize he was babbling. So, he’s got the Alzheimer’s maybe. He went on and I began to ignore him. My mind drifted back to my day. I had coughed up blood earlier. When I checked the internet about what that might mean, it just said, call an ambulance. I didn’t. I waited and it stopped. It started again and stopped. When it started the third time I went to the Emergency Room at North Memorial Hospital. After many questions, a chest x-ray and CT scan that were inconclusive (no cancer), the doctors were puzzled and wanted me to spend the night and be seen by a pulmonary physician the next day. So there I was, in that room with Karl.

I heard him trying to sit up in bed. The curtain next to me began to move. Then it started thrashing and I realized he was grabbing it, trying to get out of bed. Oh-oh, he’s going to fall. I reached for the flailing curtain and pulled it aside so I could see him. “Are you all right? Do you need some help?” He was grunting and struggling to get up. I used the call button to summon the nurse. Patrick, our nurse from Uganda, with a heavy African-English accent native Africans have from their colonial past, came in and wrestled Karl back into his bed. “Karl. You have to stay in bed.” Karl would have none of it and fought him for a while before laying back. “Oh, I don’t know WHAT’S going on,” he moaned.

“I didn’t know what to do,” I told Patrick, “I thought he would fall.”
“It is fine. Call me anytime. He should not be trying to get up. Just call me if he does this thing again.”

Patrick left and Karl did it again, then again and again for 3 hours. I realized sleep was going to be hard this night. As I accepted my fate and got into the routine of calling Patrick and he apologizing for Karl, I began to listen to the rambling sentences Karl was uttering throughout all this.

“Who got the bid? Did we get the bid?”
“Try putting the wheels mid-range and increase velocity.”
“Have I missed my bus?”
“Muriel, I can’t see you.”
“The data is correct! I’ve been over it a hundred times!”
“Is this the bus that is taking me to the hospital?”
“Oh, I don’t know WHAT’S going on.”

I started to realize I was hearing things from his life. They were so specific. It was if all the sentences he spoke in his life were randomly being selected from some bowl in his mind and uttered again. There were times he sounded like a child. “Gertie, you hide here. I’ll hide over there and they will never find us.” At times he spoke what sounded like German. He even sometimes used English with a thick German accent, as if he had immigrated here, eventually losing his accent. It went on all night and all night I listened.

The next morning I began to see staff changes, new nurses, draw more blood, new drugs injected through my IV and the whole routine of a hospital floor. I was getting annoyed with all these tubes and wires connected to me. They made it hard lay in anything but certain positions. Going to the bathroom meant I had to hold everything in order as I walked along. Karl kept his story going. I tried to make some kind of contact with him.

“Good Morning Karl. How are you feeling this morning?” No response from the other side of the curtain. I had noticed the nurses could get a response from him. They all spoke slowly and loudly to him. “He’s hard of hearing,” they said. Whenever I got up to walk around I would try to talk to him. “Hello Karl.”

“Who are you, “ he asked me once.
“My name is Michael Jensen.”
“I would like some rutabagas.”
“You can release the pressure slowly. No, no, no, that’s too fast.”
“We can finish this all later.”

That is all I ever got.

The nurses attended to him regularly and never heard more then a few sentences at a time. They don’t know it was all about his life, I thought. They never hear enough to put it all together.

“McElroy turned his figures in. 90%. That is what we had calculated.“
“Mama. Gertie has all the bread.”
“We have to water the garden again. Muriel. The garden.”
“You’re a new driver, aren’t you. I haven’t seen you on this bus."
“Can you believe what she said? He never went to Toledo.”
“Oh, I don’t know WHAT’S going on.”

Eventually, they came and took Karl away. “Where’s he going,“ I asked.

“Back to the nursing home,” they said.

The room was just me now. It was quiet. I was tired and needed sleep. Later, an older man came in. He looked around and was about to leave when I asked him if I could help.

“I’m looking for Karl,” he said.
“They took him back to the nursing home,” I said. “Oh.” He started to leave and I stopped him.
“Did you know Karl?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Was he born in Germany?”
“Yes.”
“Was he an engineer, did he build things?”
“Yes.”
“Was his wife’s name Muriel?”
“Yes.”
“Did he ride the bus a lot, use public transportation?”
“Why yes. How do you know all this? Karl has Alzheimer’s Disease.”
“He told me.”

I explained how I had been listening to Karl. He told me he wasn’t related, he had met Karl 18 years ago and thought he was an incredible man. I am back home now. The doctors don’t know what happened to me, maybe a blood pressure spike. I am fine.

I still think a lot about Karl and the way I learned his story.

More Pictures From San Francisco

2008-01-28T08:50:00.000-08:00

Just a few more shots from the trip. Lil's efficient little apartment, visitng Matt at the Schelleville Grill, Joe's worms and Ev at the Exploratorium.

Happy 17th Birthday Evelyn Jensen

2008-01-26T17:58:00.000-08:00

How do you describe this young woman?

Every one of her friends say she is the funniest person they know. And she has an unbelievable ability to cross all cliques and groups of friends. More than one person said that if she is having a bad day and Evelyn comes around, the day becomes brighter -- Evelyn changes her perspective. She is non-judgmental and filled with the patience of a saint.

She loves to share music with everyone -- her musical taste ranges from The Grateful Dead to Miles Davis. Although I heard she loves The Dave Matthews Band the best.

We love her the best.

Let them eat cake.

2008-01-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

And that's exactly we did.

Lillian served up a perfect Christmas dessert: Devil's Food Cake. Buttery, caramel filling skimmed between four layers and frosted with a semisweet chocolate ganache.

And yes, it was all made from scratch.

Sweet.

Christmas, 2007

2008-01-04T18:13:00.000-08:00

The balsam was draped with over 100 ornaments, all hanging freely from the open branches, gently twirling, spinning upon the air, their movement dependent on the cycle and flow of the forced air furnace.

When I was about 12, on a Saturday afternoon just before Christmas, my mother announced we were taking a trip to the West Bank and she dragged me to Holtzerman's dry goods store on Riverside Avenue. Old man Holtzerman was a German, and like almost every recent immigrant, he was an importer, an interpreter of a life left behind.

The wood frame of the building was singed to a dingy gray, the paint peeled from the extremity of seasons -- cold arctic winters, moisture laden summers. The plate glass windows were barely held in place by the cracked and peeling glazing and were layered with a thin film of urban detritus.

The heavy wooden front doors, at least eight feet high, swung inward or outward and we leaned into the movement -- a full body press upon the leather hand plates. Pushing through we spilled into the late afternoon light of the dim, cavernous room. The stale air was speckled with motes -- held in suspension, still and unmoving, but thrown into chaos once the outside air swirled inward. It took a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the low light.

We tentatively made our way across the worn wooden floor to tables that lined the long center aisle, the floor creaked and groaned with every step we took. Each surface was filled with tightly packed boxes, each container sectioned in a grid of 12, and sitting quietly in each square was a small piece of Germanic beauty.

There were ornaments as far as I could see. Most of them were glass. Santas, churches and houses, butterflies, birds with feather tails; others were glittered: stars, soldiers and pine cones. I followed along behind my mother and we poured over the tables, amazed at the bounty spread before us. My mother held up a glittered star and let out a gasp. She held up a small pale colored bird with a feathered tail, admiring it's delicate stance. She continued like this, down one side of the aisle and up the other, holding up different ornaments, fully engaged with a mysterious seduction that took me years to comprehend.

I can't imagine now that she had a lot of money to spend, but we always came away with a few ornaments. And when the tree was put up, she would proudly point out “that’s an ornament from Holtzerman’s”.

On my first trip to Holtzerman’s I was a reluctant tag-along. But to this day, I find it very difficult to pass by a display of glass ornaments, without taking a look. Without picking up, coddling and admiring just one. And if I succumb to the temptation, I usually come away with at least one ornament. A small nod to the testament of impressionable youth.

One year in the early 80s, when we still lived on Jefferson Street, we had picked the perfect tree, although the trunk wasn't more than a few inches in diameter. The tree was so light, so airy, that once the ornaments were hung, the weight of the ornamentation dragged the poor little thing over -- it fell in slow motion, a faint tinkling of glass upon glass, measured sound for about five seconds. I can still hear the soft "poof" sound it made as it struck the floor. A coveted ornament broke into a hundred shards of hand blown ornamental glass. That cluster of grapes would never be replicated, although I have looked for a replacement for over 25 years.

The Spaghetti Film

2007-12-16T12:51:00.001-08:00

Mike and the Fuller Brothers shot this 16mm film in 1979. All the scenes (except eating) in "The Spaghetti Film" were shot in reverse sequence so the actors had to move through time in reverse. One take each scene, in-camera editing only. Created in an afternoon. Digital remastering, titles and music by Wilker.

I think they were high.

Fine China

2007-12-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

Last month I traveled to China on a business trip. While I can say China was never on my list of "must see" places, I would venture back -- the first time is really only a reconnaissance mission. I was in Hong Kong for two days and on the mainland for another three days.

With eyes wide open, I tumbled through a landscape that was Canal Street multiplied by a million -- every public square is teeming with people, culture-shocked tourists, bicycles balancing five-foot high provisions powered by 60 pound old men, more people on foot -- everyone carrying packages, relatives or animals.

Every street is filled with scooters: families commute 3 to a scooter, school girls ride side-saddle behind their boyfriends (and they don't hang on, only balance to keep from falling off) and business men scoot to the office. Add a multitude of double-decker buses, brand new American cars, 20 year old Audis and Toyotas, stores brimming with dried fish of every kind, people walking with no concern or worry about traffic laws and you have controlled chaos. There was movement and noise everywhere.

The madness tends to keep you alert -- I was always waiting for something to happen. Some kind of drama to unfold. But it never really did -- I was an American Giant bobbing in an ocean of tiny, chattering natives.

Luckily, I had a contact in Hong Kong, who not only served as a business partner, but was also my interpreter. Teddy, took us on a 12 hour whirlwind tour of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Island. On the way to Lantau Island, we traveled almost an hour by subway. Then grabbed a cab for the last few miles up the mountain. Our first destination on Lantau Island was the Po Lin Monastery and the Big Buddha.

The Po Lin Monastery was built in 1906 and ranks first as one of the most magnificent structures amongst the four popular Buddhist temples in Hong Kong. We toured the monastery and the Buddha -- similar to touring the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Because it is a sacred site, photography was limited. Families come to honor the dead -- and in a series of small rooms situated beneath the Buddha, at it's base, people have left flowers, photographs, letters and plaques.

A shrine is a shrine the world over. The only difference expressing grief is the language.

To get from the monastery to a small fishing village nestled in a bay in the South China Sea, we took a bus. And it wasn't a tourist bus -- all of the local farmers and villagers were riding with us. Oh, and we had to travel back down the mountain about four miles -- when you read the small in-fill articles in the New York Times with headlines that read: BUS CRASHES OFF MOUNTAINSIDE, 24 PEOPLE KILLED -- that was the mountain I was on. That was the bus I was riding.

While I was hard-pressed to take photos while I was hurling down the mountainside, here's a few snaps of the village Tai O.

MGG Moving Pictures - Winning Film!

2007-10-22T04:30:00.001-07:00

The Minnesota History Center hosted it's Moving Pictures event yesterday -- seventy three films that explored the lives and legacies of Minnesota’s Greatest Generation were entered in the competition and screened at the festival, attended by more than 500 people.

One of our films "Skating the Pacific to Europe" was in the top five -- selected as the best collaborative effort. We are thrilled at receiving the award -- Jeremy sums it all up at moonpost.

Muir Woods

2007-03-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that Muir Woods is less than a half hour drive out of San Francisco. A national monument, devoted to all things natural, will not be a disappointment.

Something about John Muir: He was a Philosopher, Scientist and Author. His family emigrated from Scotland to Wisconsin in 1848. He had a lively interest in nature and after brief studies at the University of Wisconsin - you knew he was a Badger! - he left school for what he would call "the University of the Wilderness." On his lengthy wanderings Muir contemplated man's relationship to nature, concluding that all life forms have inherent significance and the right to exist. Humans, Muir decided, are no greater or lesser than other forms of life. Muir eventually won public acceptance of conservation as an environmental ethic and inspired generations of wilderness advocates. Go hug a tree in his honor.