We're only about a week away from our exchange student, Laurin arriving. I wanted to write about that whole experience, and invite him to join me in talking about the experience. However, I don't want that to take over this site, or to radically shift the focus and rhythm here (which I like).

So, this is just a quick note to point to a separate Wordpress install I set up to talk about the cultural exchange we're going to be experiencing.

If you're interested in what the year hosting an exchange student is like, head on over. Otherwise, it'll probably only show up here when it makes sense.

Photo: raemin Zhang

I'm reading a lot over the last couple of weeks about the memoir as a form of writing. While I'm not planning on writing one myself, there is a reason behind this newfound interest: my project Rememoir. That's the thing I mentioned a few days ago as a project I'm excited about. I'm doing a lot of reading about them because the project is centered around helping people write and publish their memoirs.

I think it will be interesting technologically, but will be even more interesting from a "story" perspective. Creating a place for people to specifically share their personal story intrigues me. I really like the idea of helping people through that process. I think it's that whole combination that has me excited about the project.

One of the things I've been reading to have a better understanding of memoirs and what makes them tick is "Inventing the Truth", edited by William Zinsser. I've only just started it, but the intro essay is triggering lots of colliding thoughts.

2 topics are mentioned in that intro essay are things that have been recurring themes in my life. One of those is the nature of truth, especially how it relates to memory. Zinsser talks about the respective reactions he and his mother had to his writing about his childhood. He wrote it and remembered it as being a lonely childhood, which surprised and saddened his mother, who remembered his childhood as being positive and happy.

He wonders about which vision of his past is infused with more truth. Did his mother just not notice his loneliness or has his memory blown it out of proportion? In my own life, I've become aware of this exact thing. Memories that I remember painfully because of the activity involved are cherished by my dad because they were with me.

Even thinking about some of those now grabs at my heart. I tears me up that my memory and sharing it could actually disturb some of his favorite memories. At the same time, there are some of my most treasured memories that I've found are either completely unknown to my parents or that I've clearly remembered them in a much better light than they actually happened.

I'm intrigued by this whole mess and how the importance of those memories to us affects and determines just how true they are. One of the passages from "The Things They Carried" is that the some of the truest stories never happened and there's some stuff that happened that's not true.

A true story that never happened is a grenade landing on the ground and a guy jumps on it and dies saving his buddies. That's a true story. What really happened is that the guy jumped on the grenade and they all died anyway.

What that says about truth is complicated and hard to articulate, but resonant nonetheless.

The other topic that jumped out at me was Zinsser's description of humor as the "universal solvent". That is a great turn of phrase to describe how I feel about humor. It does act as a solvent, dissolving tensions, fear, unease, etc. That kind of humor has been a constant part of my life as a method of dealing with pain and frustration, showing up in some fairly dark humor. People close to me can attest that the bigger the tragedy or pain, the more likely I am to use humor to deal with it.

I'm not alone. That's pretty much the culture of my family and probably one of the reasons I like dark humor as a tension release in really tense moments in movies. It just works.

All of this has me in a reflective state. I'm not planning on writing a memoir, but thinking about helping other people do just that, you can't help but think about the important moments in your own life and how you'd characterize them. How many of my memories are true, how many actually happened, how many of the painful moments were punctuated with humor and how many remain stark and without the dissolving power of a good laugh.

Photo: Marco Musso

After I got home today, the UPS guy came to the door with a dolly loaded 5 feet high with large boxes addressed to Shelly. I signed for it and brought them to the staging area, known in most houses as the living room and left them for her to open when she got home.

An hour or so later, she sliced open each of the boxes and unpacked the contents: all of the scented candles from her PartyLite party. At the time, I was in the basement, sitting in my home office, returning a couple of phone calls.

That's when it crept down the stairs, around the corner and punched me in the nose. The smell of . . . brown.

That's the only word I can come up with to describe this smell. It's kind of like how if you take a half dozen really attractive colors of paint and mix them together. You just end up with a nasty shade of brown. This is the olfactory equivalent of that nasty brown.

It's magnified by the fact that my nose is overly sensitive anyway, but I'm pretty much getting an instant headache from the swirling scents of melon, sun-kissed cotton, exotic spice, and wasabi ginger. By themselves, some of them are probably OK, but together, they form an entirely unholy union that's better suited as a cologne for Lucifer himself than as a way to improve the scent of our house.

Thankfully, the candles all ship out tomorrow and the portion that's ours will be sealed up in plastic bags to be used appropriately. One scent at a time. The way the chemists who formulated the artificial odors intended.

Today I started a family tradition. I took my dad, brother and my 2 nephews to a Saints game. I'm hoping to make this an annual tradition for all of the guys in our family.

Because we all live all over the state, we tend not to all see each other except at Christmas and maybe one other time throughout the year. This gave us an opportunity to get together outside, do something fun, eat hot dogs and cheese curds (though I'm already regretting that), and generally hang out, just the guys for an afternoon.

The game was packed to capacity, but opened up after a few innings as the lightweights left. I don't understand going out to a baseball game for only 3 innings, but whatever. It gave us more room.

The Saints won handily (after a 7 run inning) and we had a good time. I was, however, surprised by the interest that the boys had in photography, particularly Taylor, who wanted to use my Canon digital SLR. At only 6 (I just know I'm somehow getting his exact age wrong), his hands were really too small to handle it, but, on his own, he asked me if there was some way I could help him hold the camera steady. I offered my hand as a tripod under the lens and he announced that a solution had been achieved, "Thanks, that works". He then pretty much filled up a memory card with photos, including this remarkable one of my dad. I'm really impressed with the shot he managed. And, this one was a refinement. He took one right before this one that wasn't as well framed up and he wanted to take it again.

After each shot, he hit the preview button and was checking them out to see if he captured what he was after. It was cool to see him so interested in what he was doing.

I also had my Fuji in my pocket, which gave James a chance to take pictures too. Between the 2 of them, they shot 142 frames in a matter of a few innings. It really caught their interest and got them into the game. I think I'm going to see if I can track down some cheap 3MP cameras and get them each one for Christmas. I'm going to get prints made of a few of these this week and send them to them with a note of encouragement.

Also, Tim told me that he picked up an old eMac for $60 for them, so they have a place to look at these photos and mess with them. I'd really like to see what they'll produce on their own.

My Grandfather

It's been a rocky week. On Sunday, after we got back from Up North, we got a call that my Grandma Zwart (maternal grandmother) was sent by ambulance to the Sioux Falls hospital from the nursing home she's living in as her already failing health was going downhill. By Monday morning, we had gotten an update that she was doing better and would be back in the nursing home by Thursday. That ended up being exactly what happened, but with her condition varying with each passing day, I decided to take off half of Friday and drive down to see her.

She is really having a hard time of it, with pneumonia settling into her lungs and congestive heart failure is starting. I sat with her for a while on Friday night again on Saturday morning. She was definitely doing better on Saturday morning and was in better spirits, but she's clearly ready to go and has a "do not resuscitate" order on file. It's really hard to see her like this, unable to lay down because she can't breathe.

Beyond actually seeing her, the trip itself was interesting in a couple of ways. Pretty much my entire extended family lives in Sioux County, IA or within a few miles. That includes my dad's parents as well as all of my uncles and aunts, etc.

I stayed with my Uncle Delbert on Friday night and stayed in a room (my cousin Brian's room) I used to stay in a lot when we were visiting. It was funny to be in a room that I remember being pretty much frozen in 1985 or so. It no longer has Knight Rider or Airwolf posters and was now sponge painted blue.

However, despite remodeling the main level the nearly ladder-steep stairs and the overall layout of the upper level was exactly like I remember from the last time I stayed there nearly 20 years ago.

The houses I actually grew up in are all long gone (one burned down, another has a highway to thank for its dissapearance). So, I don't get this sense of nostalgia about many places.

Then, Saturday morning when my Uncle Ron stopped by for 9:30 lunch. . . let me explain a minute as that's confusing to most people. See the day on farms in NW Iowa is broken up like this:

• 6:00am - breakfast with eggs, bacon, toast, cereal, etc.
• 9:30 - lunch with cookies, pastries, doughnuts, and coffee
• 12:00 - dinner with meat, potatoes and vegetable
• 3:00 - lunch with a similar menu to morning lunch
• 6:00 - supper with alighter full-size meal
• 9:00pm - lunch again. This is only on really long days like baling hay.

Anyway, as I was sitting there having my morning lunch, I looked across the yard and saw the first car I ever drove, a gray Ford pickup. I spent the summer between 6th and 7th grades working for Ron, Delbert and Ver (the 3 work the family farm together) and moved this truck a few times from one end of the farm to another. Weird to see it still in use.

On Saturday, after leaving Grandma Zwart, my dad and I headed over to my Grandpa Wynia's apartment to take him out for lunch and then on to the nursing home where my Grandma Wynia is staying and sit with her for a couple of hours. Grandpa shared some of the geneological information that he's been writing down over the last few years, including how Jesse James' gang watered their horses on the family homestead. My family (on pretty much all sides) came to this country in the 1880's and settled in NW Iowa. Until the last 30 years or so, that's where the vast majority have remained.

I'm looking forward to getting a chance to read through what he's written down. It's also prompted me to get back onto the project I started a while back of digitizing the boxes of slides I took home when he moved into the apartment. I got busy and it fell to the side. I'd really like to get them done and onto video for him to watch.

Saturday afternoon, I drove my dad home the 4 hours to his house and then the 2 back to mine afterward and crashed for the night. It's been a long weekend and a short one all the same.