I will write this without amendation or revision. It comes from the heart. When I think of my family, when I think of the past I think of what I have been told and what I remember. I don’t research, but I believe and I know what I know from those I loved and one of those stories came from my father who told me we came from Poland and one of our ancestors made his living in Poland by performing as The Strongest Man In Poland. Imagine. At a time when my great grandfather immigrated to American to build a log cabin and live in Wisconsin and raise eleven children with his wife in that log cabin which still stands, one of our people made his living as The Strongest Man In Poland. There are many strong men and woman in Poland and in Ukraine today. In those days […]
Matriculation
What you do is send your soul off to school. You know the day will come. You dread it in a way, selfishly wanting the child to stay at home, but you know there comes a time. So all neatly dressed and ready as you’ll ever be, shoes without a scuff, Big Chief pad, two pencils and a pink eraser, clutch of coins for lunch or sandwich in a bag and off you go. What you do is learn. It doesn’t matter what, but learn some subject other than yourself so fine and heretofore unknown you fall in love with learning and the subject grows within your soul until you’re filled almost to the top and overflow. Then your soul comes back to you with a report card you’ll have to sign and homework and questions you can’t answer and you will be so proud, because your soul is becoming […]
Endurance
In 1915 the ship Endurance of the Earnest Shackleton expedition to Antarctica became trapped and sank in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. Shackleton’s men abandoned ship and began a 350 mile trek across ice and open water pulling and rowing their lifeboats to Elephant Island. It took them over two months. When they arrived they stood on land for the first time since the beginning of the expedition, a total of 497 days. Now marooned, Shackleton and five members of his crew eventually set out in a 22-foot lifeboat by dead reckoning 800 miles to a whaling station on South Georgia Island. Fifteen days afloat, they survived a hurricane that sank a 500 ton steamer in the same waters. Shackleton and two others then hiked across a previously uncharted glacier, a distance of 32 miles in 36 hours without mountaineering equipment to find help. Eventually Shackleton returned with […]