Imagination and Curiosity Are the Keys

Across the Fence #419

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Albert Einstein, one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, made that statement. I would add curiosity to the equation. Imagination and curiosity will open many doors that knowledge can’t. Knowledge will only take you so far, and then imagination and curiosity takes you to the next level. It opens new doors that we didn’t even know existed. That’s how discoveries and new knowledge are found.

Too often, education becomes a memorization of facts and figures. Take good notes, memorize everything, and you can ace most tests and come out in the top percent of your class. I never liked those true or false and multiple-choice tests. Give me an essay test where you are expected to analyze a subject and come up with conclusions and solutions to a problem. That’s where imagination and curiosity come in as you try to find a new way to do or say something. It keeps your mind active.

It reminds me of a woman I met several years ago while we were still living in Madison. My friend, Tom Deits, and I were at a book signing when Brian Green was in Madison. He discussed his new book at the time, The Fabric of the Cosmos, and talked about string theory and parallel universes. A half hour before the event, the seats were filled. Tom and I sat down on the floor near the front. Others did the same. An older lady sat down beside us. I was 61 at the time and not exactly a spring chicken, but she was in her late 70’s. Tom and I started visiting with her as we waited for the program to begin and she was a fascinating person. She was auditing classes at UW-Madison, going to lectures, taking writing classes, exercise classes, and on and on. I mentioned to her that I get frustrated when I hear someone say they are bored and there’s nothing to do! 

“Oh,” she said, “I’d like to slap those people up side the head and tell them to get off their butts and start living!”  

What a wonderful, energetic lady, and a real joy to talk with. She was full of questions and looking for answers. It’s fun to be around people with such curiosity and zest for life. There she was at a talk about string theory, parallel universes, and other mind-boggling theories. She was curious, just as Tom and I were, and wanted to learn more about these theories and their possible implications to the world we live in. Those subjects and Brian Green’s talk, fueled our imaginations and stirred our curiosity about the origins of life and what discoveries may be found in the future.

I’m like that woman, when I hear someone say they’re bored and there’s nothing to do, I want to tell them to get off their butts and start living. As long as you have an imagination and curiosity, you’ll never be bored. I have so many things I still want to do and learn; I’ll never have enough time.

I would rather read a book or write than sit and watch television. At least those activities require my imagination. When I was young, I loved listening to shows on the radio. My imagination ran wild as I visualized what was happening as the Lone Ranger and Tonto chased down the bad guys. With radio, you had to visualize what the characters looked like and use your imagination to create the scenery and the setting of the story. Perhaps that’s the reason I still love listening to Garrison Keillor and his stories about Lake Wobegon. My imagination becomes a participant in his stories. That’s an element that I feel is missing in television.

My friend and writing mentor, Ben Logan, also stressed the importance of curiosity. I spent many hours visiting with him at his farm, while he was still able to live there, on Seldom Seen Ridge near Gays Mills, Wisconsin. His book, The Land Remembers is one of my all-time favorites. I think his “Santa Claus is a Woman” from Christmas Remembered should be read every year as a Christmas classic. He often talked about the importance of curiosity in life and how important it is to a writer.

Ben and I have many things in common. We were both in Ag Journalism at the UW-Madison Ag School. One of his instructors was Professor Sumner, a very common sense person. Ben said, “Professor Sumner told me, ‘The trouble is, most journalism students write pretty well, but they don’t have a damn thing to write about!’  He had me taking philosophy and other courses to learn a wide variety of subjects. This fit perfectly with my curiosity.”

Ben and I both have an irresistible urge to push open the door of an old deserted barn or farmhouse to see if those who once lived there left any fragments of their life story. My sixth book, “A Door To the Past,” will be published in December. The cover photo is of the latch on the door to our old barn that’s now gone. It’s a symbol of the curiosity I feel when I want to turn a latch, open the door, and see what I can discover on the other side.

Imagination and curiosity are your keys to knowledge. Don’t be afraid to use them.

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The Ninth Year of Our Journey Begins

Across the Fence #418

All journeys begin with one step. This Across the Fence column began with one story nine years ago. Yes, this column begins the ninth year of this journey of visiting with you each week.

I think it’s fitting that it always falls during Thanksgiving. I realize how lucky I am to have an outlet where I can share my stories with you each week. I’m thankful for the newspapers that run it and I’m thankful for everyone who takes the time to read it each week. Please support your hometown newspaper so they can continue bringing you local news and also Across the Fence. 

Thanksgiving has been relegated to the kickoff of Black Friday, and now I hear that major stores are even going to invade the day of Thanksgiving itself. They aren’t even letting the turkey settle and the leftovers be enjoyed before waves of humanity descend on the shopping malls. You won’t find me anywhere near a shopping mall on Thanksgiving or Black Friday. I don’t enjoy crowds. They’ll probably move Black Friday up to Halloween Eve next year.

Thanksgiving certainly has changed since I was young. It was always a busy time of the year because it fell during deer hunting in Wisconsin, and quite often, case weather arrived at the same time. When the heavy, wet fog rolled in, everything else ground to a stop and we headed to the tobacco sheds to take down the tobacco that had been hanging in the shed and curing since it was harvested in the fall. When its raining and foggy, its perfect “case weather.” There’s something about that type of weather this time of year that kicks in the old memory bank, and I have an irresistible urge to crawl up in a tobacco shed and go to work! I can smell the cured tobacco and hear Dad yelling up to us, “Make sure you check the poles so you don’t fall down and kill yourself!” Telling that statement from our father has become a yearly tradition in this column. I’m thankful I don’t have to crawl up in a shed any more. Now I think it would kill me, and it wouldn’t be the fall.

I’m thankful for the memories of those Thanksgivings of the past, when it seemed all the relatives lived within a few miles of each other. My grandmother, Inga Sherpe, lived with us; my mother’s folks, Oscar and Julia Hanson, lived just down the road next to Smith School. I spent eight years there, contrary to popular opinion that it took me twelve years to get through grade school!  Most of my uncles, aunts, cousins, and other relatives, lived within a five-mile radius of our farm. Holidays were huge family get-togethers. 

Many Thanksgivings were held at my Hanson grandparent’s farm. Remember that old song, “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go, the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh….” Well, we didn’t go to grandmother’s house in a sleigh, we rode in a car, and there was no river to cross or woods to go through! We could see grandmother’s house from our kitchen window. But it was still a wonderful time when we all got together for holidays. I miss those big family gatherings. Now families are spread out from one coast to the other and it’s hard to find a time when everyone can get together. I think those times are gone because we can’t see where half our relatives live just by looking out the windows anymore.

There was never a lack of food at those family gatherings, as anyone with a drop of Norwegian blood running though their veins knows. Grandma Julia cooked the main meal, but everyone else brought something. I shouldn’t speak for everyone… but I ate until I was so full I didn’t even feel good!  I try to push myself away from a Thanksgiving table sooner nowadays, but old habits are hard to break.

This year will be special as we enjoy our first Thanksgiving with our grandson, Sean, who will be almost six months old. That’s one more thing to be thankful for. It seems like he was just born. Time seems to go faster and faster all the time. 

I’m thankful I was raised in the country, on a farm. When I was young, I didn’t always feel that way. Like so many young people, I couldn’t wait to leave and seek life in the big world outside the confines of the line fence on our farm. A lot of things have changed since those days. I’ve found the old saying, “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy” is very true. At least it’s true in my case. It’s nice to be back home in the country where I belong.

I’m also thankful for all the things that money can’t buy. You won’t find them at a shopping mall on Black Friday. I’ll keep traveling on this journey, visiting with you each week, and keep checking the poles. 

Give some thought to the things you’re thankful for as you sit down to that Thanksgiving feast this week… and please, don’t eat until you feel as stuffed as the turkey, and I’ll try my best to do the same! 

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It All Boils Down To Lutefisk

Across the Fence #417

It’s that time of year when you can feel a cool nip in the air; leaves cover the ground; you hear geese honking as they glide majestically overhead; the first snowflakes fill the air; and you can smell lutefisk wafting from the basement of every Lutheran Church of Norwegian heritage in the Midwest! Yes, it’s that time of year again… it’s time to get in touch with our ancestry, and celebrate lutefisk. A big serving will help get the bad taste of all those dirty political ads out of your mouth.

I recently wrote about all the wonderful church dinners at this time of year. The Super Bowl of all church dinners has to be the glorious lutefisk dinner.

For all you non-Scandinavians, Lutefisk (pronounced loo-te-fisk in Norway and the United States, and loot-fisk in Sweden) is a traditional food of the Nordic countries. It’s made from air-dried whitefish (normally cod), and lye (lut). Sounds delicious, doesn’t it? It must qualify as one of the strangest culinary delights around. 

In case you want to make some lutefisk yourself, here’s how to go about it. First soak the fish in cold water for five to six days (change the water daily). The saturated fish is then soaked in an unchanged solution of cold water and lye for an additional two days. The fish will swell during this soaking, becoming bigger than the original (undried) fish, while the protein content decreases by more than 50 percent, causing its famous jelly-like consistency. When this treatment is finished, the fish is full of lye, and is basically poisonous. You don’t want to eat the fish at that point, so to make it edible, a final treatment of yet another four to six days (and nights) of soaking in cold water (also changed daily) is needed. Eventually, the lutefisk is non-poisonous and ready to be cooked.

You might be asking yourself, how in the world did people start eating such stuff? No one really knows the answer, but Scandinavians are a hardy, adventurous people and if anyone was going to be the first to eat a lye-soaked fish it’s us! Most likely Scandinavians were the first to see a chicken lay an egg and say, “Hey, why don’t we cook that thing up and see what it tastes like.”

Rumor has it that a fish was accidentally dropped in a wash bowl containing lye, and because of the poverty the Vikings were living in, they didn’t want to waste a good fish. Another story tells about drying racks for stockfish that caught fire. This was followed by many days of rain. Ashes of wood, combined with water, will create lye, and again, because of poverty, the fish had to be eaten. So they picked the fish from the ashes, and soaked them in water for several days to get rid of the lye before cooking and eating them. They decided it tasted pretty darn good.

I have some theories of my own about lutefisk. I think it gave us the Viking Age! One day the women were cooking up a big batch of lutefisk and the stink finally got to the men who were just sitting around telling fish stories and drinking Aquavit. Ole said, “Let’s get out of here until dey get done cookin’ dat horrible stuff. Why don’t we all get in my boat and we’ll sail across da water for a while and see what we can find.” Next thing you know, they landed in England, did a little plundering and pillaging, and the rest is history! All because of lutefisk! 

That’s probably how they conquered other countries too. They realized that if they took along a supply of lutefisk, they could threaten the people with either surrendering or being forced to eat lutefisk. People took one look at that jellied glob of fish, got a whiff of the “odiferous” smell, and quickly laid down their weapons! History books don’t tell you about this stuff. You can only find out about it here, talking across the fence. 

If only the government would listen to me. We wouldn’t need to spend billions of dollars on military stuff. We get all the Lutheran church men’s groups in the Midwest to cook up a big batch of lutefisk and we take it to whatever country we’ve decided to invade and give them the same deal as our Viking ancestors did. It would take the fight right out of them. No more war, and all because of lutefisk!

Up at Coon Ridge, the highlight of fall is the annual Coon Ridge Lutheran Church lutefisk dinner. People can hardly wait for that great event. The men’s group at church isn’t exactly looking forward to it though. They love to eat lutefisk, but they hate cooking it. So the boys have been wondering if there isn’t a way they could order the lutefisk already cooked and they could just sit down and eat it. But that would require paying someone else to prepare it, and they’re too cheap to do that.

So that’s the strange smell that fills the air when you drive through Scandinavian communities this time of year. Don’t be shy. Park the car, wander in, and enjoy a delicious meal of lutefisk, meatballs, lefse, and all the trimmings. It will be a culinary experience you won’t forget!

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Dr. Paul Dunn - Iwo Jima Veteran

Across the Fence #416

I was born in May during World War II, a month before the allied invasion at Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. When I was nine months old, the Marines hit the beach on the small island of Iwo Jima in the Pacific on February 19, 1945. Some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting of the war in the Pacific occurred on Iwo Jima. One of the men who went ashore with the Marines was 25-year old Navy Corpsman, Paul Dunn. 

He’s a retired physician, who now lives in Maplewood Terrace Assisted Living Apartments in Viroqua, Wisconsin, with Katheryn, his wife of 61 years. I had the honor of sitting down with Dr. Dunn two days before his 93rd birthday and interviewing him about his World War II experiences. As a fellow medic, I was interested in learning what he went through as a medic. Navy medics are called corpsmen.

He was working as an office boy at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cincinnati and taking evening courses three nights a week at Xavier University when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He knew that sooner or later he would be going into the service. He wanted to be with the Army Medical Corps or Navy Hospital Corps, so he began taking first aid courses and became an instructor giving classes in first aid. As draft times got closer he decided to join the Navy, where he’d either be on a ship or a shore station. He didn’t want any of that foxhole infantry life.

On September 23, 1942, he became a member of the U.S. Navy as a Pharmacist Mate 3rd class. After four months he became the first Navy Corpsman in his training group to be assigned to the 5th Medical Battalion of the 5th Marine Division (Fleet Marine Force). Among Navy Corpsmen, the FMF was the worst thing that could happen to them. Life was short for corpsmen in the South Pacific. So much for spending his time on a ship, he knew he’d be living in a foxhole with the Marines. As long as that was to be his destiny he decided to make the best of the short time that could be left of his life.

After field training with the Marines, he and three Marines were chosen to attend commando training school for six weeks. He was the only Navy Corpsman in the school. He said after completing the training he had never felt so good in his life–before or since.

After more training at Camp Tarawa in the Hawaiian Islands they boarded ships and headed for combat at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Pacific islands. They were finally told that the target was the small island of Iwo Jima, 700 miles from the Japanese homeland. There were 20-25 thousand Japanese troops on the island who were expected to fight to the last man. They were told that they should have the island secured in three days because they had been bombing the hell of it.

On February 19, 1945, the first waves of Marines hit the beach. At first they encountered little opposition. The Japanese intentionally let more Marines get on the exposed beaches before letting loose with intense artillery, machine gun, and rifle fire. Paul said that when all hell broke loose from Mount Suribachi, they were pinned down on the open ground with no cover whatsoever. It was like shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun. Their regiment was finally able to cross the narrow part of the island and establish a beachhead with great loss of life and horrible casualties. 

His regiment finally took Mount Suribachi after five days of heavy fighting and they raised the flag that was immortalized in a photo by Joe Rosenthal that became a symbol of the fighting in the Pacific. One of those men was a fellow Navy Corpsman, John Bradley. Paul said that three of the men who raised the flag were later killed in the fighting on Iwo Jima. During the 35 days of fighting he slept in a foxhole at night. Not exactly the life he had planned and expected when he joined the Navy.

The amount of human destruction he witnessed on Iwo Jima was horrific. There were more than 26,000 American casualties, including 6,800 dead. Over 20,000 Japanese soldiers were killed. There’s no way to measure the psychological damage that took place among the survivors. Some aspects of war never change.

After leaving Iwo Jima, Paul’s unit returned to Camp Tarawa to prepare for the invasion of Japan. He feels the dropping of the atomic bombs, as terrible as they were, saved the lives of millions of Americans and Japanese that would have been killed during an invasion. 

After the war he went to Medical school and was a physician in the Chicago area for 50 years. I’m sure the training and experience he gained as a Navy Corpsman made him a better doctor. Thank you Dr. Paul Dunn for being there to treat and comfort the wounded and dying during World War II. I salute you and all the remaining veterans of that war for your service and sacrifice.

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