Amoco Oil Company District Office – Garden City, Long Island – New York – August 1963

We’re looking for weak spots in the regional sales organization and have decided to replace you as New York District Sales Manager, Dave.

You’re joking, Ray.

No, I’m serious.

For God’s sake, I’ve won every regional contest for the last two years by a wide margin.

How can I make myself more clear?

Why in hell should the best district sales manager in the region have to sit here and take this shit?

It’s your attitude. You don’t have the same enthusiasm I’m told you used to have.

Right. I just got through dumping 25,000 tires on 550 dealers who couldn’t sell food to a starving man. I know damn well most of those tires will be returned to the warehouse when the dealers can’t make the payments, and we’ll put the poor bastards out of business. Now our genius vice president of marketing in the general office wants us to dump another 25,000 donuts on them. The company can’t afford such stupidity.

You are no longer the New York District Sales Manager.

Does my boss sitting over there in the corner with the silly grin on his face agree?

Yes.

So, what do you have in mind? I do have a job, don’t I, after busting my butt for 12 years?

Regional office manager.

What’s the salary class?

`Nine.

Nine! You expect me to take a two-step demotion when I can’t support my family on what I make now?

We think you can handle the job.

Right. To hell with it! I won’t take it. What else do you have?

The general office in Chicago has an opening for a marketing research analyst, but they want at least a masters degree.

What’s the salary class?

Twelve.

Get me an interview, Ray.

They need someone who can be productive immediately. You couldn’t be.

Really? Get me an interview.

No. This meeting is closed.

Then I’m going right over your head to Blaine.

Why waste your time?

Because you don’t know beans, and this is a stinking, rotten deal!

Next Day – Regional Manager Blaine Yarrington’s Office in Manhattan

Blaine, I can’t believe you agree with our new regional marketing manager that I am a weak link in the sales organization and I should take a two-step demotion to office manager. You know I have the best record of any district sales manager. I don’t understand what’s happening.

Dave, that’s not the message Ray was to deliver. We believe you can go farther long-term in staff work. You have an excellent mind that is not being utilized in marketing.

Can you get me an interview for the analyst job in Marketing Research?

Certainly, I’ll get Don on the phone right now.

Two Days Later – Don Warning’s Office – Marketing Research Department - Chicago

We’re looking for someone with broad field experience who can handle the discipline of research work—-designing studies, conducing field surveys, analyzing data, writing reports and making action recommendations. Your file indicates you have a BA in economics from Carleton College magna cum laude and that you were elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Twelve years in sales from the bottom up. Started in 1951 working in a company training station. You’ve been promoted five times.

Yes, sir.

Our analysts have strong academic backgrounds in behavioral science but no field experience. That gets us into trouble. We need your help. I can offer you a senior research associate’s position, class 12.

Thanks. I won’t let you down.

Good. Welcome aboard.

One Year Later – Warning’s Office – Annual Performance Review

Gil gave you an outstanding performance evaluation and a maximum salary raise. He also recommended you for promotion to staff director. You have helped us gain respect from the entire field sales organization, and we have received many thanks for your Weekly Market Monitoring Report.

It’s been a great year, Don. I guess I should thank Ray for getting me out of New York and into work I really enjoy.

Where is Ray?

He left the company. I guess Amoco’s investment in him went down the drain.

And what happened to the guy who replaced you as New York Sales Manager?

Bert? He lasted six months, resigned and leased a Mobil service station.

While respecting the importance of myth in all cultures, when I read the Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar D’Aulaire to my two grandchildren they were puzzled by the D’Aulaire’s contention that Greek gods “could do no wrong.” The story of Asclepius, the first physician, heightened their skepticism about the righteousness claim.

Those were the happiest days of my life—living in an Evanston, Illinois duplex with our daughter, her husband and two exceptionally bright grandchildren who loved to explore the best of children’s literature. My grandson Winslow, 7, and his sister Margaret, 4, listened raptly as I read them the story of the world’s first physician.

“Nothing but a small heap of ashes was left of Asclepius, the first great doctor. But his temples and his teachings of medical science remained, and the gods put his image among the stars as a constellation.”

Thus ended the brief but brilliant career of the first physician, according to the D’Aulaires.

When god-king Zeus hit the good doctor with a lightning bolt and reduced him to a tiny ash pile, Asclepius was performing medical miracles and was worshiped by the people of Greece.

Asclepius built the first hospital—a converted temple.
He went into dream analysis long before Jung.
He brought the dead back to life.
His daughter, Hygeia, from whom we have learned basic hygience principles scrubbed hospital patients “from morning to night” with soap and water and cured them at a time when folklore taught that soap and water would kill the ill.

So, why, oh why, did Zeus zap Asclepius?

We must backtrack to Apollo and a Lapith princess named Coronis. They were lovers, but Coronis was unfaithful and omniscient Apollo found out and killed her or had his twin sister Artemis, goddess of the hunt, out her. We’re not sure who fired the fatal barb.

Coronis was carrying Apollo’s unborn child. As Coronis was being cremated on a funeral pyre, Apollo felt a pang of pity and plucked the unborn child, nearly full term, from her womb. Thus Asclepius came into the world.

Now Apollo could not abide the baby boy and placed him in the care of Chiron, a wise and kind old centaur—in fact, the only wise and kind centaur. All other centaurs—half horse and half man—were wild and vulgar barbarians, trampling fields, pillaging, eating raw meat and raping Lapith women.

The first centaurs tumbled to earth from a cloud that Lapith King Ixion had married and impregnated by mistake. Stupid Ixion thought the cloud was Zeus’s wife Hera.Zeus had set a trap to test Ixion. Ixion failed. “Nix on Ixion,” Zeus proclaimed and had the Lapith monarch tied to a flaming wheel that twirled forever in the Underworld. [We don’t believe genealogical research will uncover any link between the old Lapith King Ixion and former President Nixon, although the famous Zeus quotation, “Nix on Ixion,” has a familiar ring.]

Chiron’s cave sheltered the baby Asclepius who grew in knowledge and wisdom beyond belief—soon surpassing his centaur mentor in brilliance.
But why medicine? And how come Asclepius became so adept at doctoring? He listened to snakes. Like Melampus, the smartest man on campus, Asclepius gained his diagnostic and therapeutic know-how from snakes that “knew all the secrets of the Earth.”

As a child, Melampus found a dead momma snake in the road. Instead of kicking her into the ditch, as you or I might, he gave her a fitting funeral and cared for her tiny orphaned offsprings. So grateful were the little snakes they crawled into Melampus’s ears and licked them so clean he could not only hear but could understand the language of all living creatures.

Well, you wouldn’t believe all the good fortune that befell Melampus because of his cross-species multilingual capabilities. His act of kindness to a dead mother snake paid off royally. He did not win the California Lottery, but he did win a third of King Tiryn’s kingdom and one of the king’s daughter.

No wonder Asclepius was never seen without a live snake curled around his staff—the so-called Aesculapian Caduceus. Such rich symbolism in the caduceus.This universal physician’s symbol of a winged staff with two snakes entwined about it has nothing to do with the first mortal physician, Hyppocrates, from whom doctors take their ethical oath to do no harm.

In Greek mythology the snake is seen as a positive force bringing wisdom to Melampus and Asclepius. If Asclepius had lived and continued to commune with snakes his curative powers would have been unbounded. Certainly, a cure for caner would have resulted. But Zeus’s preemptive strike aborted medical progress and doomed mankind to several thousand years of maladies.

In Genesis, we see a different kind of snake—the embodiment of Lucifer the Devil—tempting Adam and Eve and sentenced by an angry Old Testament God to crawl on its belly in the dust and be despised.
The conflict between the two snakes is irreconcilable. Thus, we have two snakes on the caduceus—one representing evil; the other, good. We don’t know which is which and don’t care.The dictionary tells us the word “caduceus” is a Latin modification of the Greek work “herald” and the Old English word “glory.” Ergo, caduceus means “herald of glory.” Wow! No wonder doctors love this icon.
Back to Chiron’s cave and Asclepius. Asclepius was revered as a god. The sick, the blind and the lame came from all over the Mediterranean world to his temple hospitals.

According to the D’Aulaires, “Asclepius grew famous, rich and pink-faced . . . so skilled in his art that he could even bring the dead back to life.”

His best-known case was the resurrection of Hyppolytus who had been wrongfully killed in a chariot “accident” orchestrated by vengeful Aphrodite and Poseidon.

Hyppolytus was a folk hero. A Bruce Springsteen and a Rambo combined. Great mobs gathered before the temple-hospital and begged Asclepius to resuscitate their hero. Asclepius could not ignore the populace plea.

In raising Hippolytus from death, Asclepius, son of Apollo, achieved his greatest healing feat and was worshiped exponentially more by the people—but not by the Fates who measure out the lives of men and not by the gods who were angered by Asclepius’s meddling and not by Hades who was denied another subject for the Underworld and especially not by Zeus who could do no wrong but could not abide having a mere half-breed-god-mortal behave like a god.

To compound his felony, Asclepius accepted a large bar of gold for resurrecting Hyppolytus. He might have escaped the wrath of Zeus if he had left well enough alone—simply restored Hyppolytus—but to accept payment went beyond the bounds.

Zeus struck. A million-volt bolt converted the great physician to a tiny ash heap. Thus ended the career of the first physician.

Alas, the serpents failed Asclepius. So intent were they and he on finding the causes and cures for diseases they completely ignored basic medical practice protocol—fee splitting. If Asclepius had split his fees with Zeus, Hades and the Fates we might have a disease-free world today. Instead, we are throwing billions of dollars into frantic efforts to find cures for cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, AIDS, Alzheimer’s and on and on—because Asclepius, for all his medical wisdom, was bereft of common sense—a numbskull, a dimwit and a nerd.

Having become a convert and ardent fan of his half-Lapith-hero-son-the -doctor,Apollo, god of light and music, was furious with homicidal Zeus and plotted revenge against his god-king father, but that is another story.

I experienced the happiest days of my life living in an Evanston, Illinois duplex with my first two grandchildren living upstairs. Almost every night I read them The Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar D’Aulaire who insist, “The Greek gods looked like people and acted like them too, only they were taller, handsomer and could do no wrong.” At age seven and four, my two grandchildren—after a few pages of reading—giggled at the D’Aulaire’s characterization of Greek god behavior as innocent.

Take the case of Prometheus.What a terrible price the great Titan paid for defying Zeus and befriending freezing mortals with the gift of fire.

“No! No! Not again!” Prometheus cries as the giant eagle swoops down upon his helpless, naked body, rips open his abdomen with ten-foot-long talons and devours his liver.

Poor Prometheus. Proud Titan. Lover of mortals. Fire giver. Unrepentant. To put an end to the daily carnage he must declare to Zeus, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Take fire away from mortals. I will not disobey you again.” But he is adamant. Deep in his heart he knows he has done no wrong.

Deep in his heart as well is a huge wedge of adamant, a rock as hard as diamond, pinning him fast to Mt. Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains. Zeus’s son Haphaestus reluctantly pounded in the adamant wedge after securely chaining the mountain-tall Titan to the 18,510-foot peak. (Incidentally, “adamant” is not what the picnicker replied when asked, “What bit you?”)

So, every day for 3,000 years the eagle returns for its daily diet of an estimated 500 pounds of raw Titan liver which, of course, grows back again each night in time for the next day’s horrendous ordeal.

My seven-year-old grandson Winslow and his four-year-old sister Margaret are appalled at such cruelty from a god-king “who can do no wrong.”

Pity poor Prometheus. Pity the poor eagle. A continuous diet of liver is loading the big bird’s arteries with cholesterol.

Why does Zeus mete out such cruel punishment? If Titan-god Prometheus can do no wrong and Zeus can do no wrong, is this the classic exception to the rule that proves the rule that two wrongs make a right?

Prometheus, whose name means foresighted, was one of six Titans born of the union between the heavens—Uranus—and the Earth—Gaea. The six Titan males married their six Titan sisters. They had no choice.

According to the D’Aulaires, the Titans were “taller than mountains.” Question: How tall is a mountain? Mt. Olympus, home of the gods, is 9,550 feet; Mt. Everest, 29,028 feet. Could a Titan be 2,000 feet tall? Is that mountain high? Who knows? Given the power to see into the future, Prometheus knew exactly what was going to happen to him. You’d think he’d be a bit more hedonistic—from the Greek word hēdonē, which means pleasure—knowing about the daily visits of the screaming, ripping, tearing, liver-eating eagle? Hedonism means seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

How did Prometheus get into such a predicament?

One day it dawned on Zeus that the Earth’s entire population of living beings had been obliterated in the ceaseless wars fought by the gods and goddesses “who could do no wrong.” Zeus was deprived of his favorite pastime—impregnating lovely mortal maidens to improve the breed and enrage his sister-wife Hera.

So, Zeus sent for his two sons, Hephaestus and Epimethus. “Boys,” he commanded, “hop down from Olympus and repopulate the Earth. Use river clay. And here is an amphora filled with physical, mental, emotional and sensory attributes. Use them wisely.”

Epimethus was a slob. Slapdash, he threw together all kinds of weird critters, while Hephaestus carefully, lovingly and painstakingly shaped men and women from the clay. Unfortunately, Hephaestus worked so slowly by the time he was ready to implant attributes sloppy Epimethus has used them all. The jar was empty.
Epimethus’s creatures were ugly; but they could run faster, jump higher, swim farther, smell, see, taste and feel better than any of Hephaestus’s creations—and they had fur coats and other protective coverings men and women lacked. Hephaestus was furious. Only bare skin for humanoids. They shivered in their nakedness on cold Greek nights.
So, what to do?

Prometheus interceded. “Please, oh please, great Zeus, let me give them fire to warm their freezing bodies.”

“No way” Zeus relied coldly. “Let them freeze in the dark—a saying borrowed by Texas oilmen in 1974 when they learned that New Englanders refused to let Exxon build an oil refinery in Maine. “Fire belongs only to he gods,” Zeus proclaimed. “If you give them fire, you’ll rue the day.”

Forewarned and foresighted but soft-hearted, Prometheus could not stand the sight of cold human flesh. He sneaked some embers from Olympus in the hollow stem of a fennel plant—sort of a fireproof funnel of fennel. He gave fire to humans. Happy day for humans. Bad day for Prometheus.

Zeus was really pissed. Prometheus tried several ploys to assuage the god-king’s wrath. For example, he had mortals make sacrifices of burnt meat offerings to the gods. The gods loved the smell of barbecued beef. Zeus’s heart softened slightly. The Olympians lived on a strict diet of orange slices garnished with cocoanut—ambrosia—and the glandular secretions of plants—nectar—so the smoke from broiled prime beef was tantalizing.

But Zeus was adamant. Prometheus was adamant. “You disobeyed a direct order. An eagle will disembowel you and eat your liver every day from here to eternity!”

Was the sentence carried out? Is Prometheus still pinned to Mt. Elbrus? Does big bird still eat 500 pounds of liver every day?

We have conflicting answers to these haunting questions. The D’Aulaires reported that Heracles tore away Prometheus’s chains, yanked out the adamant spike and set our hero free.

In his “Prometheus Unbound,” the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) invented a super god, Demogorgon, who dethroned Zeus and sent him packing to the Underworld, freed Prometheus as LOVE triumphed over EVIL. Shelley was a simpering, incurable romantic.

In “Prometheus Bound,” the great Greek playwright Aeschylus gives us the real answer. Zeus became so fed up with Prometheus and his constant nagging, whining and screaming that he made a big storm, coiled up a monstrous lightning bolt, hurled it at Elbrus, reduced it to rubble and buried Prometheus under a pile of rubble where he remains even today in an unmarked grave deep in the Earth’s bowels.

Winslow, Margaret and I buy the Aeschylus version. After all, Zeus could do no wrong; and, even if Prometheus had not died from the thunderbolt, he would have been drowned in the Great Flood Zeus sent to wipe out all living creatures on Earth—all, that is, except Deucalion and Pyrrha. But that’s another story.

Reading Greek myths from the children’s Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar D’Aulaire was a favorite pastime shared with seven-year-old Winslow and four-year-old Margaret, now 33 and 30. The happiest days of my life were spent living in an Evanston, Illinois duplex with my first two grandchildren and exploring the world of children’s literature with them.

In the book’s Introduction, the D’Aulaires state unequivocally: “The Greek gods looked like people and acted like them too, only they were taller, handsomer and could do no wrong.”

Although we recognize that mythology plays an important role in shaping the culture of diverse populations around the globe, we did find the D’Aulaire’s pronouncement of Greek god innocence and infallibility a bit of a stretch.

Seeking enlightenment, Winslow, Margaret and I attempted to be objective in evaluating the authors’ claim when reading about the birth of Athena, god-king Zeus’s favorite offspring—the goddess of wisdom and the namesake of Athens.

We discovered to our amazement that Zeus, king of the Olympian gods “who could do no wrong,”committed such indiscretions as adultery, incest, murder, infanticide and genocide.First, Zeus married his sister Hera, knowing she was his sister (unlike poor Oedipus who was unaware he had killed his father and married his mother). Zeus’s favorite recreation was impregnating lovely mortal maidens to increase the population, improve the breed and infuriate Hera.

This great role model was petulant, petty and capricious. Possessing an unlimited supply of thunderbolts, he hurled lightning at anyone or anything that gave him the slightest annoyance.On the positive side, Zeus did give birth to Athena. How could a macho Olympian god-king bear a full-grown woman wearing a robe, a helmet and a body-length shield and carrying a spear? Simple. Zeus swallowed a fly. The fly was his first wife Metis, goddess of prudence who turned out to be imprudent.

Years earlier, Metis had tricked Zeus’s father Cronus into swallowing an emetic herb that caused him to regurgitate his five children he had swallowed whole one by one as each was born. Cronus had dethroned his father Uranus by waving a flint sickle under his nose. Uranus had a flint phobia and promptly fled leaving Cronus the throne. Cronus could not risk a similar coup d’état by one of his offsprings, so he ate them seriatim. Cronus had a large mouth, esophagus and stomach. He did not masticate his food. Everything he ate went directly into his tummy whole—even a rock wrapped in baby clothes he thought was newborn baby Zeus.

Metis’s emetic did Cronus in. When he upchucked all five kids and the rock, Cronus wisely abdicated. He vomited Hades, lord of the dead; Poseidon, lord of the sea; Hestia, goddess of the hearth; Demeter, goddess of the harvest; Hera, Zeus’s choice for queen and the rock swaddled in baby clothes. All five had become full grown. Cronus had one humongous sore throat.

From Cronus we get the word “chronometer.” When he threw up the Big Five and the rock, Cronus knew his time was up and he skedaddled, as his daddy Uranus had done before him.

Although amniocentesis—a test to detect fetal abnormalities and sex—is etymologically a Greek word, Zeus, who had married Metis and impregnated her, had no way of knowing whether Metis’s fetus was male or female, but he feared the fate that had befallen Uranus and Cronus before him. He must off the embryo. No male heir was going to dethrone him. To facilitate the destruction of Metis’s unborn child, Zeus tricked her.

“Let’s play the shape shifting game,” he suggested.
“Oh, yes, let’s. What fun!” Metis cried.

She turned herself into a camel, an elephant, a crocodile and a manatee. Then she blew it. She became a blue tail fly. Instantly, Zeus sucked in the fly and swallowed it. Apparently, Metis did not like being in Zeus’s belly, so she migrated into his brain. Why she didn’t turn herself into a fire-belching, razor-toothed dragon and eat her way out of his stomach is a mystery.

So, pregnant Metis is now in Zeus’s head. What do pregnant goddess-blue-tail flies do? They make preparations for the new arrival. Metis wove a magnificent robe for her unborn child and hammered out a huge helmet adorned with an elaborate cockade, a body-length shield and a sword bigger than Excalibur.

All this needlework and hammering gave Zeus a king-size headache. He cried out in agony. Hephaestus, one of Zeus’s sons and a skilled artisan, amateur midwife and brain surgeon, was so upset by his daddy’s persistent pain he split Zeus’s head open with a huge meat cleaver. End of headache. No harm done, and out of the cranial chasm came full-grown and fully garbed and armed Athena, goddess of wisdom and the inventor of the olive tree.

At this point my granddaughter Margaret could no longer restrain herself and burst out laughing.

What happened to Metis? We don’t know but speculate that even a large blue tail fly giving birth to a full-grown amazon would die. In effect, Zeus murdered the woman who had assured his reign as god-king.

Zeus treasured Athena as she led armies into battle accompanied by her friend Nike, spirit of victory and an obsolete short-range missile the United States built hysterically by the thousands to protect our cities from Soviet nuclear bomb attacks when the Soviet’s had no aircraft capable of flying into the Nike’s firing range. Madness is contagious and inheritable.

When she wasn’t winning “just wars”—the only kind Athena fought—Athena taught arts and crafts.

Winslow, Margaret and I apologize for teasing the D’Aulaires; and we thank Athena for creating spiders—even if done in a fit of jealous rage when she was bested in a weaving match by a mere mortal, Arachne. Athena transformed Arachne into an arachnid.

We love spiders and fully appreciate how important a role they play in maintaining a balance in the insect kingdom that dominates the natural world in an orderly manner, unlike the strange, irrational, “do-no-wrong” behavior we observe atop Mr. Olympus, in Washington, D. C. and among the nations of the world.

“I love you, little sister.”
“Oh, and I do love you, big brother.”

Those were the last words that passed between Nadia and me when I called her at Redeemer Health and Rehab in Minneapolis on June 10th.
I tried to call her at least once a month, but in July somehow I could not get through the third floor nursing station into Room 342. Probably a shift change.

My mother’s number one grandchild Roxanne phoned me August 24, the day after Nadia left us without any long, drawn out goodbyes. We cried together, but what a class act—bang! Gone. Shot like a Delta 4 space rocket through Heaven’s gate to be with Bob, Mom, sisters Elaine, Jeanne, Mary and brother Fritz.

Thank you, dear little sister, for sparing us all a long, slow, painful journey to the Great Beyond. For all your ups and downs, I remember how much we liked to hear each others voices on the phone. Always upbeat in spirit despite your broken body.

Laurel Albertini, a St. Olaf senior working at Redeemer Health and Rehab, got my e-mail address by googling and sent her warm memories of you, Nadia:
I only knew Nadia for a few months, but she was such a nice lady.
Very beautiful too. Nadia had a parakeet in her room named Billy
she liked to tell others about it and loved to hold and pet the facility’s guinea pig. . . .
The day before Nadia passed away she and about 15 others sat in a circle and played “horseshoes.” I can still hear her cheering the others on with a “Yea!” whenever someone got a “ringer” with the foam “horseshoes.” Her close friend
Nancy always sat across the dinner table from Nadia and I observed
them in happy conversations with many smiles and laughter.
I just wanted to tell you a little about her life here, since your website indicates you live in California. . . .
I hope I haven’t upset you by writing. Also, since I live in Northfield, I want to visit Nadia’s gravesite. Do you know where she is buried in Northfield? Please let me know if there is anything you would like me to do. I am very sorry for your loss.

Sorry, Laurel, Nadia was cremated, but she is buried eternally in the hearts of all who knew her and loved her. Thank you for caring for Nadia when she was no longer riding her roller coaster of highs and lows thanks to the miracle of modern medicine.

The frame-stucco house at 606 East Fourth Street, Northfield, Minnesota where Nadia lived for 67 years, first as the sixth child of Ruth and Buzz, then as the wife of Bob Heibel and as the mother of five beautiful children: Roxanne, May 7, 1950; Charles, July 4, 1951; Catherine, June 2, 1952; Anne, January 1, 1956 and Mary, October 23, 1960. Mother sold the house to Nadia and Bob when they were married in 1949.

Built in 1916, the three-bedroom, one-bath abode was a wedding gift from Charles Webster Blodgett and Edna Winslow Blodgett to their son Alson Bertram Blodgett and his bride, Ruth Loretta Stowe.

Covered with grape ivy, its back yard embraced with an inexpensive, white wooden picket fence. The lawn was basic crab grass blanketed with dandelions that scattered its seeds generously to neighbors’ yards. Spiarea bushes provided welting switches on little boys’ bare legs that refused to get to dinner on time. Wild prickly gooseberries dug from a farm wood lot “beautified” the front foundation. A giant lilac bush dominated the back yard. If you look closely, you can see the “t” shape of a clothesline pole with steel lines over which carpets were tossed for beating out clouds of dust accumulated during the winter.

In the front entryway, the first generation of five Blodgett kids operated a rental mystery library kept stocked by Grandmother Edna who bought mystery books by the carton and devoured them like popcorn. Most clients who paid two cents per day per book were Carleton College professors indulging in bedtime relaxation.

Ruth Loretta Stowe was born in the Minnesota State Penitentiary in Stillwater, Minnesota on November 26, 1995. Her father was Andrew David Stowe, the prison chaplain and an Episcopal minister who published and edited Stowe’s Clerical Directory of the Episcopal Church in the United States, the “Who’s Who” of the Episcopal Church, a task our beloved Aunt Grace Stowe Fish inherited when our grandfather Stowe died.

Alson Bertram Blodgett was born on August 24, 1891, one of eight children who grew up next door at 403 Nevada where I mowed the large yard for fifty cents. I earned twenty-five cents for memorizing the last stanza of “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” one of CW’s favorite literary works. Dad was a fair and balanced Municipal Court Judge, but he inconsiderately died at 47 on Nadia’s 8th birthday, November 9, 1938. Not a nice birthday present for a sweet little girl.

Mystery. How could the union of this beautiful woman and this handsome man produce such a motley crew, as demonstrated in this group photo taken by an itinerant photographer promoting a contest to determine Northfield’s most handsome children and, unfortunately, projected on the screen of the Grand Theatre, much to the amusement of the movie audience.I sport an Uncle Chuck and CW haircut, but why the pigeon toes?

Assistant Northfield Postmaster Robert Heibel and his lovely bride leave a legacy of five beautiful children. And what a fabulous legacy they are.Big sister Roxanne, Charles, Anne and Catherine. But where is little Mary?

A chilly day. The brittle soft maple trees stripped of leaves. Standing in the front yard of our common childhood home. You didn’t really have to address me as “Uncle Dave, Sir!”

In her mid-forties Nadia went to work in the Carleton News Bureau for 20 years and loved interaction with students.

Bob died too young at 77 in March 1999. Nadia had sold the house in 1997 to her Carleton boss, Joe Hargis. Thankfully, it is still filled with children’s laughter.
.
Nitz, we envied you when you got a Shetland pony and cart housed at mail deliveryman Doc Phelps’ “farm” on Prairie Avenue. We envied your beauty. Your smooth golf swing. We admired what you did to make 606 not only livable but also handsomely and tastefully decorated.
We wish you had stopped smoking. Your big sister Jeanne died at 60 from lung cancer. She never quit smoking. Your brother Fritz died of a massive coronary at 65. Our dear mother died at 62 in 1957 from bungled surgery. Your punishment was a massive, paralyzing stroke. I smoked one and one-half packs a day for 26 years, then quit at 1:30 pm, Friday, December 20, 1963. I got drunk on cheap wine and drove a car full of friends on icy roads from Faribault to Northfield. I drank mandatory vodka martinis with my district manager boss and ended up sleeping on his office floor back in 1958.

Today I don’t bother. I quit the usual dinner glass of box wine. Just calories. No kick. At 86, I have the “worst looking arteries” cardiologist Dr. Jason Shen has ever seen. One heart attack. Six angioplasties. Three stents and a blog--http://davesdigs.blogstream.com.(If you want to find our what kind of nut your only surviving sibling is, log on.) But that’s why I can’t fly to be with friends and family on October 6 to hear the eulogies and once again enjoy the ambience of Skinner Memorial Chapel with its green wood interior that matches the green wood interior of our home.

Sweetie, today I am lonely. My wife Jean of 64 years is in Paris with daughter Anne and granddaughter Margaret. I am so lonely I almost dialed 1-612-827-2555, Redeemer Health and Rehab at 625 West 31st Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55408, for one last cheery chat with you.

Today is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. I ask forgiveness of everyone whose feelings I ever hurt. I don’t remember trashing you, little sister, but I probably did. Please forgive me and make room for me in thy dwelling place. We’ll play a round of golf with angel caddies and unlimited mulligans. Farewell, little sister. Adios. Auf wiedersehn. Au revoir. Vaya con Dios. Je t’aime.

Hugs and kisses,
Your big brother Dave