Hail, hail the new year, I guess.

Leif Erikson, upon discovery of the Regency Condominims.

Farewell to the old year, and best wishes for the new one. I'm old enough to view the passage of time as a frightening prospect, but I must say I won't miss the holidays. Their greatest gift is to make you appreciate your routine.

We had the kids here, staying in a nearby Airbnb, a perfect combination of proximity and distance. We love each other, of course, but living on top of each other is too much, which I'm sure they would affirm.

Ms. V is up in Appleton at yet another funeral, her parents longtime neighbor and best friend. I attended another a few days ago, a resident at my mom's place, John, who we got to know through his slow, fraught peregrinations of the halls. He was a nice man, a graduate of Ripon and the Parsons School, a former New York designer who worked for Mary Tyler Moore, among others. I never did understand the fascination of the elderly for the obituaries, but now I'm studying them, too.

I am planning a bike ride from coast to coast, to begin at the end of May. I've started lifting weights, trying to resurrect my upper body, and biking indoor at the gym.  It would be about 3 months, 3000 miles. Hopefully this will work -- hopefully I can do it. I'm exploring making it a fundraiser for Muscular Dystrophy -- details to come. My old friend Bruce says he'll do the first few weeks with me. I'm looking forward to it!

Death everlasting

Where to put it?

Mom continues to haunt these parts, and it will ever be thus. I remember her mostly in her last days, which does not give a full picture and skews toward frustration more than is good for me. 

In the practical realm, we have a storage locker full of stuff she left behind. (Honestly, some of it is mine, but it's easier to blame Mom.) Photo albums, boxes of slides, bins of paper, camping gear, a collection of bibles and hymnals that only a Lutheran could love, college work by my grandparents (!), and more. I have, in fits and starts, culled a little (a very little) bit, and brought home what I thought I could handle. I even bought a bookcase to manage it. I can work at this for about one hour at a time before I get depressed.

Every inch is a storage space.

Pretty nice, I think.

Yours for the asking.

Free room and board and breakfast at the Plaza to anyone who'll help. 

That's all I have to say about that. 

*

On the bicycling front, I have for years resisted getting the kind of pedal/shoe setup that allows you to clip your feet firmly to the pedals, fearing that my sloppy ankle situation and generally accident-prone nature made it a bad choice. (For all of you non-bikers out there, the pedals are called "clipless pedals," but they most certainly have clips, so I don't get the name, really.) Now I've made the plunge. I have fallen a couple times -- coming to a stop and not getting my foot out -- but I'm getting better at the little flick of the heel that frees your foot, and it is a minor revelation -- it makes you more efficient, gives you more oomph per stroke. 

Some day, maybe, I'll be able to keep up with the big boys.

This metal cleat on your shoe attaches to . . .

. . . this clamp on your pedal. 

  

Here and there

Toilet convention in Sister Bay.
Agenda: New flushing standards.

Spent a few days in Door County, and another couple days up -- way up -- at our friends' cottage in Three Lakes. When you do summer things after Labor Day, everyone is gone and the rates are great.

We did our first actual touristy thing in Sister Bay -- assuming that going to Sister Bay at all is not touristy -- by signing on to an evening sailboat ride. We did not sail -- we sat while the two-person crew sailed. The boat was a ketch? Sloop? Cutter? I think it was a windjammer, if google is any guide. Two masts with big sails, a smaller foresail and a jib. Lots of ropes.

It's been a jerky-jerky summer, with its funerals and vacations. In recent days I came to crave my sad, quasi-productive routine. On a good day, I'm up by 7:30 or 8 -- late by working standards -- eat a little breakfast, comb through the Times, crab about the state of the world, and then sit down to write something -- anything. Whatever seems to be working. Then I do the actual paying work I might have, and when my mind punks out I organize my room, pay bills, and go for a bike ride. It's pretty good, and I'm grateful.

So here's a blog-related update -- I should have done this long ago. There's a new little box on the first page, on the righthand side. The label says: Follow by Email. If you put your email in that box, you'll get get an email notification when I put up a new post. Just in case anybody cares.

Here's the best single sentence I read in the paper this week:

"Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?" 

                                                                           -- Kamala Harris to Brett Kavanaugh 

I just wonder if, say, men telling women they can or can't get abortions isn't a little like some future government of women telling men they have to get vasectomies or that they can't get them. Reproductive rights! 

Kind of a grab-bag, this one. 

Gwen coils the ropes.

She smiles pretty well. Me, not so much.

Why you go to a funeral

So we went to Amy Lee's funeral in Atlanta Sunday afternoon -- me, Sisters S and K, and their husbands J and C. There were 600 people there, and it lasted almost two hours. Before the service, they showed pictures of her on a screen behind the altar -- in every one she was smiling. Her older brother Tim told us "16 Things About Amy" -- her way of saying "I love you," her hugs, her love of "every kind of cheese," her way of weedling back into his good graces when they'd had a dispute. Her friends and roommates submitted anecdotes read by the pastor. The whole service evoked her vividly, brought her to life.

We went to the reception and to the family's house afterwards. It was packed, and everybody talked talked talked and what's strange is that humor was such a part of it, even after the funeral of a 21-year-old college student. It's not just what Amy would've preferred, I'm sure, it's what you need to cope. It has happened at every funeral I've attended. The hard part, for her family, comes after everybody leaves.

The day before, Saturday, we ate breakfast at Fly Biscuit -- an avocado restaurant, you might say --  went to an outdoor book festival, saw a cooking demonstration, went to Victory, a trendy bar (heavily dosed popcorn), and watched the Michigan-Notre Dame football game at yet another bar. After the funeral, we made a 10:30 pm stop at a Korean restaurant for heavy appetizers. We are all in our 50s, and I'm older than that, and it was like we couldn't get enough. Life is short!

Message in a mirror
(Sister S's house)

Guest post

From Amy's brother Tim (Saturday, Aug. 25):

Yesterday I was released from the hospital. The doctors say I will take a month or two to recover from my injuries, but I fortunately should not have any long-term health effects. Today we fly home: one less with us physically, but one more that will be with us forever. As I leave St Mary of Michigan in Saginaw, I’d be remiss if I did not thank the beautiful God sent angels that constantly watched over us. I could see my sister in each one of you and what you did for my family and I am eternally indebted to your warm kindness.

To the first responders, the air flight crew, the sheriffs deputy, and the EMT workers who have come checked on us, hugged us and cried with us every day since the accident, thank you. Those 15 minutes you’ve taken for each of the last six days to be with us and cry with us will never be forgotten. To the nurses, doctors, hospital techs and all other hospital staff who constantly watched over us, made sure we were always comfortable, and took care of every need we had before we even knew we needed it, thank you. You guys were some of the nicest, most caring people I have ever met. To the hospitals hospitality house that let my parents stay on site, thank you; to the family members who drove hours to be with us each day, thank you; to the family friends that flew up on a moments notice to be with us, thank you; to the hundreds of people, both who we know well and who we don’t know well yet that have sent messages and stories of support, thank you.

I don’t know why you guys did so much for us and cared for like you did but it means more than you will ever know. The recovery will be long, but all the support makes each step a little easier.

A friend said this to me and I think she summed it up perfectly:

“It's so beautiful that even though Amy isn't here, her kindness and loving nature is reflected in all of these people who are coming together for your family. She still brings out the best in people”

In Amy’s words: To all you beautiful humans, Thank you ❤️

Amy

Amy

Beautiful Amy Lee died Wednesday following a car accident Sunday, the day after attending her grandfather Dick Lee's funeral. She was 21. It is unspeakably sad.

There will be a service Sunday, and most of us Olsons will be there. Seems like all we do lately is go to funerals.

Death and life

Bois Blanc Island

We went to another funeral Saturday, this one in Hubbard Lake, Michigan, near the farm my Grandpa Ole grew up on. This was for Dick Lee, my dad's cousin, who was raised with my dad like a brother. He was 85 and had dementia, so it was sad but not a shock.

Leaving the family gathering, on Sunday, a car carrying Lee relatives was hit head-on by a vehicle that had crossed the center line near the little town of Omer. Amy Lee, Dick's granddaughter, a passenger, suffered serious abdominal injuries and has had two operations in a Saginaw hospital. Her brother suffered a broken wrist, and her mother, the driver, had cuts and bruises. So we're praying for them.

Like Lydie said, we all rush to be there for a funeral and things can happen.

*

I haven't written here in months.

I did a nearly 600-mile bike ride in Michigan and Wisconsin and around the UP to the Straits, ending up at the Vosper island, near Mackinac Island. I spent a week there recovering. Ms. V was kind enough to drive up and take me home.

I was home a couple days when I noticed my right leg was swollen all the way down and hurt something awful. So I went to urgent care, where they told me that perhaps I'd strained my muscles on the ride, giving me "compartment syndrome," and that one possible consequence was amputation. Might as well shoot me. I went to the Froedtert ER hoping to find better doctors, and they diagnosed a blood clot in my lower leg, probably unrelated to my ride. What a relief to have a blood clot. So, like a junkie, I'm self-injecting myself twice a day with a blood thinner and gimping around the house.

I've been on my bike just once in three weeks. But I have been dreamily poring over maps on how you might ride coast to coast. For example, how do you cross the Rockies? Glacier National Park, up Going-to-the-Sun Road, over the Logan Pass. Casual uphill riding for miles, then a steep 10-mile climb and 10-mile descent. The road is closed to motor vehicles till June, so there's that. But I'm probably too old for this, and -- have I mentioned this? -- I have muscular dystrophy. So there's that.

My MD condition is on the mild side as these things go. I can ride without impairment. It's just eating, walking, swallowing, talking and using my hands that pose occasional challenges.

But hey, I still have, not just one, but two legs. And only one of them has a blood clot.

Wilderness State Park, in northern Michigan

On the island

Jimmy Vosper tends the bonfire

We want the funk

George Clinton and P-Funk at the Pabst.
For a representative slice of this, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kw2zSgm6BA
George is the old man with the wild hair in the video (or above, in brown). 

Went to church today to atone for Friday night's concert. A young pastor from Carroll College discussed the decline of the church. For myself, I think it's due to the rise of our fascinating machines. 

I'm going through my mom's files -- still -- this time with a goal of throwing stuff out. I try not to focus too closely on anything, lest I give in to my predilection for hoarding. But I came across a medical diagnosis that caught me up. It's from December 2013 in Michigan. It lists 11 medications, from carvidopa-levodopa -- "1.5 tablets by mouth three times daily" -- to prunes -- "4-5 by mouth every morning."

Her specific problems were episodes of "major depressive disorder," along with "cognitive impairment" and "anxiety."

This is four years before she died. This is how hard she fought to stay with us.

I was present for some of her appointments in her last few years, and got reports on almost all of them, and it got to be routine, and I felt little, cared little, really, for what was said, how she might be feeling, what it would be like to be her. 

After a couple years here, she would say, with real anguish,"I can't think straight. I'm worried about my mind." I would say, "You're fine, Mom. You're doing fine." But of course she wasn't. And after a while, her mind was so affected she couldn't even say that she was worried about it. 

I am not sleeping well. At church today I thought that possibly I should talk to somebody. 

Last things

Larry, who is perfect at what he does,
lowers Mom's remains at Forest Hills Cemetery.
We sent her off with treats.

We buried Mom Saturday morning, January 12, before the memorial service, where she will lie next to Dad, who was buried in 2013. It was difficult, Mom so warm in memory, and the ground so cold. We sang hymns, said what we wanted to say, and threw in dirt by hand or shovel.

Living day-to-day, you rarely get the long view, but you get it at a burial.

I wrestle with my feelings about Mom, and I hope that's OK. A mom is a complicated thing, I am a complicated thing, our relationship was a complicated thing, and conflicted emotions are probably inevitable. But she did pretty darn well, and I am bereft as I write this. I can hardly see the screen.

So many people came for the funeral, some of them from hundreds of miles away, and it was heartwarming to see them. I hope, between us, we at least said hello to everyone, but if you were there and we missed you, Hi! Thanks for coming!

*

Just a Little Bit Cranky will continue, for better or worse.

Chris, Charles, Kaia, Jon, Kari, Madeline, Julie, Lydie, Solveig, Siri, Jonathan

In her element

Mom at her peak. You can see that she's smiling.
Lydie, already a multi-tasker, is eating and maybe even singing
as she gets a new diaper.

Just a reminder we're having a service for Mary O Saturday, Jan. 13 at Zion Lutheran Church in Ann Arbor, starting at 2 p.m. Refreshments and conversation to follow!

We're in the middle of a blast of arctic air here. I walked on the lakefront yesterday and froze my face.

The Calatrava in midwinter.