Forbidden Sounds

by Eric James

When the banshees wail,
And the werewolves howl,
When the dead in the churchyard sigh.
When the witches scream,
And their demons hiss,
When you hear the song of the Lorelei.
When the bogies shout,
And when goblins yell.
When the shades call out
From the depths of Hell.
When the phantom drummer
Drums his drum,
When the midnight wraith
Whispers, "Come, oh come ..."
Then who will go?

Not I.

The Haunted House

by Vic Crume

Not a window was broken
And the paint wasn't peeling,
Not a porch step sagged --
Yet, there was a feeling

That beyond the door
And into the hall
This was the house of
No one at all.

No one who breathed
Nor laughed, nor ate
Nor said "I love,"
Nor said "I hate."

Yet something walked
Along the stair
Something that was
And wasn't there.

And that is why weeds
On the path grow high,
And even the moon
Races fearfully by --

For something walks
Along the stair --
Something that is
And isn't there.

Alone

by Sharon Hudson

Alone in a house with no one to talk to,
With the floorboards squeaking,
And the wall boards creaking,
Windows rattling like ghost tapping.

Rustling trees, knocking knees,
Scaredly I walk down the hall;
Footsteps following I call,
No one answers, no one at all.

The Bogus-Boo

by James Reeves

The Bogus-boo
Is a creature who
Comes out at night -- and why?
He likes the air;
He likes to scare
The nervous passer-by

Out from the park
At dead of dark
He comes with huffling pad.
If, when alone,
You hear his moan
'Tis like to drive you mad.

He has two wings,
Pathetic things,
With which he cannot fly.
His tusks look fierce,
Yet could not pierce
The merest butterfly.

He has six ears,
But what he hears
Is very faint and small;
And with the claws
On his eight paws
He cannot scratch at all.

He looks so wise
With his owl-eyes,
His aspect grim and ghoulish,
But truth to tell
He sees not well
And is distinctly foolish.

This Bogus-boo
What can he do
But huffle in the dark?
So don't take fright;
He has no bite
And very little bark.

Mayo Empire: Education

Once again, Daddy's day off, spent at the hospital.  He must either really love his work or really love his family (hey, maybe it's both!). Clint and Nicole engaged in a mini lesson in the patient education center. 

Grant LOVED this old bypass machine.  Clint thinks Grant will make a fine perfusionist one day.

Even doctors can learn new things!

Mayo Empire: St. Mary's Hospital

Clint and the kids in front of St. Mary's hospital in Rochester, Minnesota.

(Grant wasn't looking at cameras this day.)  This was the hospital where Clint spent his days (and some nights).  We very kindly consented to take us on our tour on his day off.  What a good sport!

St. Mary's was founded in 1883 after a tornado ruined the town.  The nuns proposed the building, and the Mayo doctors (William Worrall Mayo and his boys Will and Charlie) provided the care.  Since then, the hospital has endured many additions and is currently the largest hospital I have personally ever seen.

We found a statue display of Dr. W. W. Mayo and other Alfred Moes at a park near the Gonda building.

St. Mary's is owned by the Mayo Empire, but it still has a touch of godliness to it.  I really like their motto, which is engraved in Latin in several areas around the hospital: Et Sanavi Omnes (and He healed them all), in reference to Christ (see Luke 6:19).

Hey, look!  There it is again!

The hospital had a historical exhibit with some antique medical tools.  I would like a similar display in my house.  The old tools are so fascinating (and sorta creepy sometimes, too).

Look at the picture above Nicole.  Yowsers!  You see things like this and should be really grateful for advances in medicine.  The painting is actually depicting Dr. Daddy (in the suit) and his boys. Nicole is standing next to the first operating table at St. Mary's, which was designed and constructed by Dr. Charlie in 1889.  Apparently it was common for doctors to also be inventors (still is, if you think about it).

The children's floor of the hospital was very beautiful.  Our kids loved the giant compass, which was positioned in front of a glass wall on the west side of the hospital, so as to give any observers a perfect view of the sunset.  It was breathtaking and majestic!

They also had some neat art exhibits, one of which was this wall hanging, which from a distance, appears to be a painting.  Up close, you can see that it is actually made of strips of fabric. 

 In the courtyard we found a statue of Edith Graham Mayo.  She was Rochester's first trained nurse, and coincidentally wife of Charlie Mayo. I think Scotty likes nurses.

You wouldn't know it, but I was freezing in this picture, and it was only October!

Mayo Empire: An Overview

This is the night view from our hotel/apartment.  We were on the 22nd floor and faced west so that we could open our curtains every morning and look out on the Mayo Empire.  I loved to stare out the window and just watch.  Every time we saw a group of men pass by in suits, Nicole or Grant would say, "There go the doctors."  We could access all four of these buildings (and many more!) without stepping one foot onto the cold pavement below.  The sky bridge system made the cold, wet weather endurable.

St. Mary's hospital isn't pictured here because it is about a mile down the street.  Clint walked the mile every day, and in theory, you can also get there without breathing fresh air, but we never found the way.

Flying Kites

The kids made their own kites at an art workshop in Rochester.
Unfortunately, the kites were more cute than aerodynamic.
It didn't stop Nicole from making a good effort, though.

My Other Kids

Scotty dominates the camera these days because he doesn't whine as much as the big kids about getting his picture taken. However, I snatched a few candid shots (and forced a few smiles) from Nicole and Grant anyway. The pictures in this post were taken at the same orchard as the previous post. We took a tractor ride out to the orchard and then picked our pumpkin.
We told the kids they could pick any pumpkin they could carry. That narrowed things down quite a bit. We ended up with a very small one that even Scotty could pack around. Just as well, though, because the pumpkin rotted out in less than two weeks. I didn't know that was possible. We had even cut it fresh off the vine ourselves. Next year, I want to find an enormous, lumpy, lopsided, ugly pumpkin and carve a really scary face on it for our front porch. No more cute stuff. The kids have reached an age where it's time they learn the true meaning of Halloween. (This coming from someone who doesn't practice the religion of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy -- Clint calls me a hypocrite. I say a man ought not utter such words about his beloved wife.)

The owner of the orchard encouraged us to sample the grapes, which were very different from grocery store grapes back home. They were small, round, dark, seeded, soft and sweet. Very reminiscent of French vineyards. *sigh* Grant loved the picking, not so much the eating.
We measured Nicole at the farm. I don't know how it could be very accurate since the sign was pounded into a steep hill. But since we haven't lived in the same country house since Nicole's birth, we don't have those permanent marks inside her closet door to keep track of "how tall this fall" for the past seven years. Let it go on record that, at seven years old, Nicole was nearly four feet tall, plus or minus six inches.

Grant found a goat to pet. Turns out he was getting all friendly with Grant just so he could steal Grant's flower.
Grant loves plants, and he always gathers leaves and flowers (rocks and bugs, too) on our outings. He carefully selected this purple flower, only to be persuaded to watch a goat eat it. At first, he wasn't too keen on the idea.
It took a gentle hand to help him.
In the end, Grant grasped the humor in it and searched for more flowers for the goat.Fun, fun times together with the kiddos. I pray that they never grow up. Miracles still exist, right?

Scotty Chooses ...

A Halloween pumpkin

A tree on which to hang his freshly picked apple
New friends
An ear to pullA goat to love
A gaggle of chickens to love

A new home -- with the llamas and the goats and the chickens and the bunnies ...

(He really did try to break in.)

To look irresistible with wire cage shadows on his head

To dress up

Boo!

A good time to hitch a ride (corn maze)
To quit!

Fall Trip: Reuniting with Old Friends

The last time we saw our friends from medical school was, well, in medical school. I lugged my camera all over the Mall of America, yet didn't manage to capture a single photo of any adult, Grant or Scotty. Oh, before I forget to tell you, don't go to the Mall of America on a Saturday. But do rendez-vous with friends wherever/whenever you can, even at the Mall of America on Saturday.

So, here are our three girls in front of bumper cars (yes, inside the insanely large and crowded mall).

 Halle, Nicole, Taylor

And in bumper cars. Nicole and Taylor were destroying machines. The more they crashed, the harder they laughed.
Oh, to live closer to our old friends!

Sweet Omaha

I was 22 years old the first time I visited Omaha, and I have loved it ever since. My grandpa had gone to medical school at Creighton, and Clint and I were considering going there as well. So we packed up our baby Nicole and drove to Omaha during Spring Break. While there, we met with the medical school and also spent some time researching my family history. My grandpa was from Texas, but when he went to medical school, he met my grandma, who lived in the cutest town outside of Omaha. It's still a cute town outside of Omaha. After they left Omaha, they spent many years in another cute town in California. I love a cute town.

For Clint and me, this was our second time together in Omaha. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to all of the familiar family sites this go around, but we did see my cousin (whose husband is at Creighton medical school) and her two babies.

The "big kids" were instant friends.

Nicole, Grant and Emmett

They found fun in no time.

Emmett, Grant and Nicole

We did get all of the babies to sit still for one picture. Here they are from left to right: Scotty, Nicole, Grant, Emmett and Melynn.

Since the Mormon pioneers (none of whom are in my family tree, but interesting nonetheless) passed through Omaha as well, we stopped by the visitor's center where Nicole (with the help of my cousin Alicia) pulled an empty handcart. Nicole thought it was heavy and difficult. Good thing she wasn't a real pioneer; she never would have made it. But not on grounds of the cart being heavy. It would have been from starvation. Nicole would never eat cold mush and bugs. I don't really know what pioneer children ate, but I doubt seriously it was even remotely related to the chicken nugget or Spaghettio family.

Alicia and I go way back. My mom and Alicia's mom are cousins. So, I think that makes us second cousins. Her family was the closest to mine geographically (even though it was still a three hour drive), so we saw each other more often than we saw our other relatives. Alicia and I used to go on long walks together at night. I would never let my kids do that. We also used to walk down a semi-busy street with no sidewalks to a gas station for penny candy. I would not let my kids do that either. We talked a lot, we hung out in Alicia's room, we worked on craft projects, we played the piano, we went to the movies, we went sledding, we went on mini trips to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. One time, we thought that Alicia's mom had asked us to bake a cake for an event that was only a couple of hours away. So we did. It was a yellow cake, and even though I'm not really into cakes, it did look appetizing. But what would a cake be without frosting? (Uh, hello? Everyone knows frosting is the best part!) So we found a recipe, and everything was going along fine until we read the word "confectioner's." We thought that since it didn't say "powdered sugar," it must mean granulated sugar (I'm sure we didn't call it granulated sugar). So we made the frosting with granulated sugar (yuck!). We immediately detected a problem, but you know, we were kids, so we thought it would probably be OK. The next problem was that we frosted the cake warm since we were in such a time crunch. The frosting, of course, melted all over and ended up mainly on the cake dish instead of the cake. So we made MORE frosting with granulated sugar to recover the cake. Oh, boy! By the time Alicia's mom came home, we were hopeful that she would be grateful for our effort. She looked at the cake, laughed herself silly, and then said, "I didn't ask you to bake a cake!" Moral of the story: never entrust an important dessert with two young girls. Their combined inexperience will multiply against them and produce an inedible result (and a funny story to tell their grandkids).
Our time in Omaha was so short that Alicia and I didn't get to do any baking together (and we have both improved substantially, I'm quite happy to report). And we didn't sew anything. And we didn't go on a midnight walk. But it was still just as fun as old times!

The Funniest Thing I've Heard in a While

"Surgery is a miracle. Surgeons are gods who walk the earth."

-- Los Angeles trauma surgeon

Middle American Caterpillars

I know that caterpillars must exist in wild Arizona ... we just haven't managed to find any yet. That's why this was so incredibly exciting!!!