I grabbed the book from the pantry on the way back about the tyrant who did that to Europe. Keeping informed.
So, this is our reward? I don't think so.
Remembering "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" today. Jack Nicholson enters the asylum pretending to be "off" and tries to transform the thinking of the inmates. He's the visionary, telling them they don't have to endure the rules of the evil head nurse. He even tries the impossible feat of lifting the water fountain as a means to escape the asylum.
The Native American in this crazy white mans' world observes. He is tall and strong. He appears to be sane and stable. When Jack is finally defeated by the backward electric shock treatment, the Indian, out of deep compassion, performs a mercy killing. Probably out of rage, he has the power to use his strength to pull up the fountain, crash the windows, and run like a deer to freedom.
When I was small, I saw my dad and brothers intently watching the McCarthy hearings, facilitated by none other than Roy Cohn who helped shape the foreboding Donald Trump. Being a child, I glanced at them, went up the stairs, and played with my toys located in a pink and blue painted ammunition chest at the very top. I'm sure they paid no mind as I was 1) a girl and 2) the youngest.
But there's a lesson in this story. My attitude at the time was, I was the one at peace, and I'm pretty sure they were on the edge of their seats, wondering what more damage McCarthy would be allowed to do to our country.
My shepherd's pie
was a colossal failure today. Everything was being done the right way, and it required concentration, like doing math in my head. I read instructions, cut everything in fourths, made the necessary substitutions, and I was so focused that, when Bill sneaked up behind me, I yelped. (He said he didn't sneak up. He was just there, because he lives here.) Doing exactly as I had been told online, I remembered what someone advised years ago, "Can you read?" 
"Yes." "Then, you can cook." Oh Contrare! The problem was I put it in the Slow Cooker for exactly as long as it said to, on the right temperature. Much later, it was time to boil and mash the potatoes
and grate the cheese.
I kept wondering why it seemed as though the cook pot was OVER doing the contents, as far as the aroma was concerned. I put the mashed potatoes and cheese atop the meat and vegetables, anyway. Would that I hadn't! The rest of it was totally charred, and the potatoes got mixed in too much to separate. I suppose I could have a sense of humor about it as my mother did. She was required to make a "fairly stiff batter", which stayed (stiffly) on the spatula, so she could carry it to my dad and ask if it was, in fact, a "fairly stiff batter". But instead, I'm disappointed,
because I was really excited about this project. Guess I'll stick to writing and such things
which have stood the test of time.
White knuckle driving today.
Saw a man at the store, who looked like my late brother Alan; he noticed me and said, "You're a smart shopper", as he remarked that I had a pen and paper. 
I said, "You have to be...even here!" (Aldi's) On the other side of the store, a lady complained to me about the high price of eggs;
I looked, and sure enough, it said, $5.42.
So, I was right; you have to be economical, even at Aldi's. Bird flu, they say, is responsible. I skipped the eggs.
On our way out to Colorado, as we didn't know we were going there, we stopped in the Stoughton/Madison area, and I re-employed myself as a nurse assistant at Skaalen Home where I'd previously worked for my mom. The newest procedure for dementia patients, I found out, was some kind of reality therapy. If the patient claims it's say, 1910 and he/she needs to go find her/his mother, you don't just let that go, you'd say, "No, your mother is dead, and it's day, month, 1977 (when it was 1977). But searching my memory banks, I remember there was a cute housekeeper with an infectious laugh, who watched an old farmer reaching several times toward the floor. She'd address him by name, encouraging him to "plant that corn" (giggle). It didn't occur to me until now that encouraging him to think he was out in the field years ago was contrary to the new "reality" approach and could unravel our intentions.
The Two were pictured as part of our family picture, dressed in a real military uniform, my dad, and in a little boy's military uniform, my brother, Kendall.
My dad. Albin Fortney, was known in his agricultural family of ten for entertaining them with hypnosis and interpreting their drawings of trees. He grew up speaking Norwegian and later, English. He and his older brother, Henry, could converse in both languages.
Farming didn't really much interest him, though he did go to ag school, because he thought he had to. I figured that was where he attained his chemistry ability, while still having an artistic flair. Against his own father's will, he chose to go to college, and got a scholarship to Concordia College, and sang in the choir. He had a very deep baritone voice, much like his speaking voice.
His desire was to become a teacher, where he'd also been a basketball coach, and soon, principal. He had that kind of size and charisma.
Since teaching wasn't high paying, he boarded at the house of a couple called, the Rostads and their son. He was impressed with their meaningful Christian faith, which was the catalyst for his becoming a minister, and so was ordained in 1935.
He became Chief Chaplain of the Liberation Army, liberating Norway and receiving the Norwegian Medal of Honor by King Haakon. I witnessed him being given the Valley Forge Medal for preaching at 1st Lutheran Church on Whitehall Road in North Muskegon, Michigan, whose building he facilitated. He attributed his rich speaking voice to the use of his vowels.
My youngest brother, Kendall, six years my senior was an artist and a good writer. He came by it naturally, as Mom and Dad both engaged in oil painting. He drew cartoons for me and told tall tales of Paul Bunyan concurrently when I was young, But his artistry was more obvious to me when we lived in Northern Wisconsin, where his bedroom, adjacent to mine, became his art studio.
Instead of resembling his father, he resembled his grandfather, also a minister and professor at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Minneapolis.
When we lived in Stoughton, Wisconsin, I attended a play, "Caligula", cast with two of my brothers and was surprised to see that my more extroverted brother, Alan, was not as good an actor as Kendall, who was more reserved. Acting seemed to come more naturally to Kendall, and his movements were more fluid, as well. Perhaps, he and I could have been emulating our grandfather whom, my dad called, "an actor in the pulpit". Kendall, like my other brothers, became a University of Wisconsin graduate.
One college summer at home, my dad also told me about the attack at Pearl Harbor, where he was in a white Chaplain's military uniform, wondering why they were doing target practice on Sunday morning, in the distance. He became an almost perfect target, getting "strafed". Having survived that, he became graves registration officer, identifying the casualties.
I wrote to Kendall, of course, when he was sent to Viet Nam, and reread the letter much later, where he told me he'd passed my picture around to the guys and to "keep those letters coming".
I am back in college. I begin to receive the envelopes back, "return to sender", and I begin to suspect something is wrong This suspicion is clinched when the chief advisor and campus minister, want to talk to me, to tell me that Kendall is Missing in Action.
I am already cast in a play about someone missing in action, called, "All My Sons" by Arthur Miller, and have to go through that. But by performance time, where my parents are in attendance, Kendall is already identified as a casualty.
Apparently, at home, and concurrently, the family is getting edgy at not hearing from Kendall and write letters regarding their concerns. But the officer arrives to inform my mother, and my dad is also informed at work in Madison and drives home all alone with that dire news. My parents, later, when Kendall's death is confirmed, visit my eldest brother, Steven, at his classroom where he has been teaching, and he embraces them silently.
When I arrive home, and my brother's casket is delivered, I watch as my parents kneel by it, at the funeral home.
My father gets cancer and dies two months later.
So, these two, pictured in uniform, are those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, one almost killed by strafing, at Pearl Harbor, and the other directly, in the TET offensive, as a medic and conscientious objector, in Viet Nam.
My mother observed that those who had direct experience in war, oftentimes didn't live very long, thereafter.
