Thanks, Alex ~ August 3, 2005

David Heiller

Alex Westberg is my nephew, and he’s got a couple good traits, as this photo shows.

Alex from the newspaper photo:
Cig and sucker...

One, he’s a good fisherman. He caught this white sucker on the fiver a couple weeks ago. It weighed about seven pounds. Turns out the state record is 9 pounds, one ounce. We didn’t realize that at the time or we might have kept it. But Alex let it go. He likes to do that. He’s got a good heart, at least of the figurative sense.

I’m not so sure about the physical one.

Alex is a smoker as this photo also shows, and that’s his other good trait that I’ll mention here. I never used to think that smoking was a good thing, but in encouraging it every chance I get, and I thanked Alex every time he lit up a coffin nail.

Smokers are funding our schools in good old Minnesota, and they are helping pay for the Minnesota Care health insurance program.

Don’t try to figure out the logic behind this.

Our governor proposed a 75 tent ‘fee” on cigarettes, and since he took a no-new-taxes pledge, he felt this was entirely appropriate to fund our government. It’s a fee, not a tax. Duh, OK Governor, whaddeever you say.

So smokers are paying for our health insurance and schools.

Schools should he very grateful to smokers. Take down those anti-smoking signs in the hallway of Caledonia Middle School. Forget about that anti-smoking poster contest for the fourth graders. We should be encouraging kids to smoke. They’d be helping to pay for their education; it would be a good life lesson. “Good job, Johnny, drag on that sucker. Well get another full-time fifth grade teacher yet!”

Teachers, light up. It’s job security. Bring back that smoke-filled teachers’ lounge that we all (cough cough) remember (hack hack) so well.

Cancer? Heart disease? Not to worry. There should be enough health insurance money left over from your habit to help pay for the surgery and chemotherapy and respirator. Your wife will have to worry about the funeral costs, but nothing is free anymore.

Got a problem with any of this? Don’t write to me. Here’s the man you want to see: Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Tell him you’re not afraid to pay a little more in taxes. We should all pay our share for the common good. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

Or we could actually raise the income tax for the wealthiest Minnesotans, another propose that the governor opposed. A tax bracket of 11 percent on income of single filers over $166,001 (the state’s richest 42,000 people) would have raised nearly a billion to pay for extra spending on schools and health care.

Alex and Laura, 2005.

And tell Tim no more Taxpayer Protection Pledges that cozy up to groups like Americans for Tax Reform. Don’t make promises you cannot and should not keep. Then maybe common sense will return.

Until then, thank you Alex. You’re a good kid. You’ve got a good heart, for now at least.

Music is worth the price of admission ~ August 7, 1997

David Heiller

Last week was a special one for me. I’d like to share it with you, in hopes of having you attend something similar.

Last week I took a two-day banjo workshop. It was offered by the Minnesota Bluegrass & Old-Time Music Association (MBOTMA), as a kickoff to their annual music festival.

The lessons were held at Camp In the Woods, which is near Zimmerman, Minnesota. That is where the MBOTMA festival is held every year.

Music was a huge part of David's life. He was never shy about getting in and trying. He is playing here
with Bob Bovee and Gail Heil, and Sara Lubinski. 
I am the music appreciator in the group!

It had been about 25 years since I had taken any banjo lessons. I’ve played the instrument for all those years, but it seemed like I never really got better.

That didn’t bother me. I like to play music for fun, with friends. I’m not a professional, and probably never will be. Still, it’s nice to make improvements in whatever you do. Sometimes lessons are the only way to do that.

That’s part of what happened last week. The lessons worked, although not in the way I expected. Of the seven people in my class, I was at the bottom. I was the dunce.

Singing with the daughter
made David so very happy!

 
That was frustrating. I just couldn’t get the knack of the clawhammer style that the teacher, Rafe Stefanini, was demonstrating. I could see it and hear it, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t get it.

So I followed along as best I could, and taped a lot of his songs, and hoped that something would click.

In the meantime, I enjoyed listening to Rafe and watching his hands. He played so well. I could have sat and listened all day.

The group he played with, Big Hoedown, did a lot of songs too. They play old-time music, with fiddle, banjo, and guitar. It was amazing to see the skill they had on their instruments, and their love of that style of music. They are totally dedicated to it.

They don’t change songs to make them sound prettier. They are carrying on a tradition that is almost as old as our country.

Wednesday night, after the evening session, I played music with a couple of guitar players. I learned some beautiful new songs, and I shared some of my favorites. We sounded good! And without ever having played together before. There’s something special about playing and singing with people. Making music is really a magical thing.

When I crawled into my tent late that night, I could still hear people singing and playing throughout the campgrounds. Different groups doing different songs, with different levels of skill. But they all had one thing in common: They loved to sing and play. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought to myself, if more people did that?

That leads to my sales pitch, if you can call it that. Check out MBOTMA’s music festival. http://www.minnesotabluegrass.org/
I went back to it on Saturday with my wife, Cindy. We heard so much good music. We went to Cajun and clogging dance workshops. I jammed with some musicians, and took another brief banjo lesson.

On our way home, Cindy and I sang in the car for over an hour. We haven’t done that in many years. The music festival bug had bit us. And it felt good!

You can get more information on MBOTMA http://www.minnesotabluegrass.org/ 

Music in the kitchen is the BEST!

My workshop wasn’t for naught either. When I got home on Thursday evening, I sat at the kitchen table, which is always the best place to play the banjo, and started playing like Rafe had tried teaching me. And just like that, I got it. It clicked. I figured out the clawhammer style, and, suddenly my old songs sounded like new ones, only much better.

Cindy noticed it. Her mother noticed it. The kids noticed. Of course I did too. Wow, that was a neat feeling. It was like having a whole new instrument, and a whole new desire to play the banjo and improve and learn new songs. That was worth the price of admission.

Cheer for the Minnesota Turtles ~ August 8, 1991

David Heiller

It was a weekend to remember, what with the Twins and the Turtle.

FIRST THE TWINS: I’ve got a hunch that any Twins fan who was listening to last Saturday’s game will remember it for years and years. It will be one of those baseball memories that gets etched firmly into a certain time and place, where you’ll remember who you were with, what you were doing.

I can still remember a dramatic Harmon Killebrew home run against the hated Yankees in 1965. A bunch of us kids were playing on the rocks in downtown Brownsville, and someone had a transistor radio going. The Killer was up with two outs, two on, and the Twins down by two. It was almost like Casey at the Bat, only this time it was Killebrew, Mr. Clutch, who clouted a three run homer to win the game. Someone started yelling, “The Twins won, the Twins won!” It seemed like the whole town exploded. We jumped off the rocks and danced and yelled all the way home. I can still remember that.

Saturday was like that too. Noah and I were playing bat and ball, listening to Oakland slowly pull ahead of the Twins, 4-0, all on solo home runs  “The Twins are lucky they are still in this game,” I told Noah. “They could still rally.” (It ain’t over till it’s over, you know.) By the time I started re-siding house, Canseco had hit another one, and it was 5-0.

Connie with Noah and his turtle, Shane Mack,
 and Malika with her Beanie Baby.

Then, in the eighth inning, the Twins rallied, and suddenly it was 5-4, with two men on and Brian Harper at the plate.

I was standing at the top of the stepladder, Noah was standing below me, both of us frozen, listening to the announcer. Then we heard Herb Carneal’s voice rise in a mixture of excitement and disbelief: “There’s a long ball to left field. If it stays fair, it’s gone.” We knew it would stay fair, and it did.

I jumped down from the top of the ladder, and shook Noah’s hand, both of us hopping and cheering. We called into the house to Cindy, and she started cheering, and yelled for Noah to run around the outside of the house. I have no idea why she told him to do that, but he did it, and I raced behind him. He beat me. It was pure exhilaration.

The Twins went on to win, 8-6. All the Baseball Analysts said afterward what a pivotal win it was. Very significant. I don’t know about that, but it sure was unforgettable for Noah and me.

Noah really liked his net.

NOW THE TURTLE: Other than having Twins fever, Noah has had Turtle fever lately. He goes through stages, where he fixes on certain things, like snakes, or antlers, or dinosaurs. Lately it’s all turtles, specifically hard-shell snappers. He has a book showing an alligator snapper that weighs up to 200 pounds. That’s the one he really wants, but he would have settled for one like the soft-shell that his friend, Jake, has in a swimming pool in his backyard.

So on Sunday we headed to a friend’s house to visit their lake and follow up on a report of a snapping turtle sighting. It was a beautiful August day, temperature in the low 70s, sun shining, a little breeze keeping the

mosquitoes away. I sat on the dock and caught a few small sunnies, while Malika swung on a rope swing up on the bank.

Noah had come prepared with a big net, with a walking stick jammed into the handle to give it an extra five feet of reach. He walked the bank, and walked the dock, and puzzled over the bubbles that came from the mud of Elbow Lake. But nary a turtle did we see.

We finally conceded defeat and left after an hour and a half. And wouldn’t you know it; as we neared our house, guess what was crossing the road? Yup, a turtle. It wasn’t a 200-pound alligator snapper (thank goodness). It wasn’t a snapper at all, just a painted turtle the size of a muffin. But it looked pretty darn good to us.

We brought it home, and fixed up a cozy spot in a wash tub with two rocks and some water in it, where it sits right now, eating our fishing worms. Noah has named it Shane, after Shane Mack of the Minnesota Twins, of course.

You knew I’d get back to the Twins, didn’t you? In fact, a Turtle Analyst would say it was ironic that we looked so hard for a turtle at Elbow Lake, then when all hope seemed lost, we found one quite by accident on the way home. A Baseball/Turtle Analyst would even point to the similarities between finding the turtle like that and the Twins winning that game on Saturday in such a dramatic fashion, when all hope had been lost. That’s pretty significant, I guess.

At least it sure was a fun weekend.