FROM THIS VALLEY By Pete Steiner
2
The Annual Christmas Letter
021 wasn’t even half over when the first free 2022 calendar arrived in the mail. Along with an offer of (yet another) free tote bag (there’s already a pile of them in the corner) plus 30 more free return address labels to add to the 10,732 already in the catch-all drawer, 9,999 of which will probably never get used. Yes, all this, free! But by the way, it would sure be nice if you’d send us $15 or $50, or hey, even write us into your estate plan. As with PBS beg-a-thons, I suppose it’s probably hard for nonprofits to come up with new gimmicks to encourage donations. I don’t mean to be too cynical: I hope you will contribute something to your favorite charity, as I do at this time of year. So anyway, that calendar arrived in June, but I wasn’t ready to write off 2021 just yet. Sure, it was the second straight year dominated by COVID and by extreme weather. Yet Easter, somewhat metaphorically, had brought sunshine, 78 degrees and increasing rates of vaccination. Buoyant brunch-goers that day flocked to our city’s pleasingly proliferating sidewalk cafes or to backyard barbecues. (You might recall, Easter 2020, already burdened by the great COVID shutdown, had also brought a blizzard!) So 2021 was trending in the right direction. By June, social calendars were quickly filling up after the Great Seclusion; people were getting out to hear live music. Like Brigadoon, our city was suddenly, magically coming alive. I had to try to remember names of people I hadn’t seen in 15 months. nn n n After canceling a January trip because of the pandemic, Jeanne and I found it exhilarating to take a July excursion to Duluth and Grand 44 • DECEMBER 2021 • MANKATO MAGAZINE
Marais. Summer had been hotter than normal – all those 90-degree days in June. So North Shore coolness and beauty were welcome. Then came that long stretch of lovely days here in September and October, maybe the most extended stretch of near-perfect Minnesota weather I can recall. We took a day trip to visit some of the sites of the 1862 U.S.-Dakota conflict. Birch Coulee is such an idyllic little prairie, with pleasant trails to wander; it’s jarring to imagine the great death and suffering that occurred there. More beautiful tall grass prairie awaited at Jeffers Petroglyphs; strolling the paths on a dry, breezy 72-degree day, I actually felt my anxiety melting away. nnnn The sly virus surged again in late summer. Thus I am still fistbumping instead of shaking hands. I still mask in indoor spaces; a longtime hypochondriac, I am very wary of COVID’s stop-start tendencies. Jeanne and I had actually come down with COVID before the vaccines were available. Thankfully we had “mild” cases, if you call 103-degree fever, aches and coughs and chills, frequent emergency bathroom trips, and wanting to sleep all the time for eight days “mild.” The arrival of booster shots for the vaccine was encouraging. nnnn It’s been a year-and-a-half since the murder of George Floyd and less than a year since the insurrection at the Capitol in D.C. Having lived through the Kennedy and King assassinations and 9-11, I suppose I shouldn’t still be astounded by how much the tragic events of one
day can reverberate for years or decades. We are coming up on the 80th anniversary of Dec. 7, 1941, the day FDR declared would “live in infamy.” And yet, Pearl Harbor became the impetus for what would become “the American century.” For boomers like me, that “day of infamy” may actually be the reason we’re here: The baby boom of the ‘50s was a response to all the death and destruction of World War II, a declaration of hope. Does it seem hope is in shorter supply in our time, what with all our political infighting, the persistence of COVID, and the ever more apparent effects of climate change? nnnn After being out of radio for more than two years, I thought it sounded fun when Dwayne Megaw at KMSU asked if I’d like to fill one hour a month (the fourth Tuesday at 3 p.m.). Also, I’ve been trying to write music again. Working on a song called, “To be a Minnesotan.” One possible line: “To be a Minnesotan, ya gots to learn to love a loser, ‘cause the Twins and Wolves and Vikings could turn ya to a BOOZER!” nnnn My editor says I have to wrap this up (nobody ever said that to Aunt Hilda – she’d go on for two or three more pages…). In conclusion, I hope where you are that everyone’s holding steady, and I hope the supply shortage hasn’t deprived you of what you want to put under the Christmas tree. If I could, I’d wrap up good health and happiness for you, and slip that into your stocking.
Longtime radio guy Pete Steiner is now a free lance writer in Mankato.
