My favorite day in February

This painting of a double steam engine train in snow is an oil on canvas by Howard Fogg. He had a bachelor's degree in English literature and was enrolled at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts when World War II interrupted his education. He became an Army Air Corps pilot and flew seventy-six combat missions in P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs. After the war, Fogg was hired as a company artist for the American Locomotive Company. He described himself as a railroader with a paintbrush, and his work was noted for its accuracy and realism. For the record, there are places in Minnesota where this might be the actual landscape.

Happy birthday, grandpa ....

Today is my grandfather's birthday. It has been a number of years since he last walked upon the Earth, but I think about him literally every day and my memories of him are clear and sharp.

I often credit my mother for my fascination in and with books, but my grandfather deserves a substantial amount of the credit as a role model in that regard. He read more than any other man I am aware of and he owned a near-countless number of books. Western fiction and non-fiction -- which is to say, tales about cowboys -- detective stories, mystery pieces and similar books were his primary picks.

He was full-blood German and had spoken that language at home until he began school. He loved polka music, and he always had his radio tuned to a New Ulm radio station when he was at home. During summer months, he often sat outside in a rocking chair beneath the shade of a tree with his radio and a few books, sipping lemonade as he read; during winter months, he sat inside the house in the same rocking chair with his radio and a few books, sipping beer as he read. He worked for the Great Northern Railway thirty-nine years, and would have made at least to forty years had not a heart attack forced him into retirement. He loved horses and had raised them as a young man .... I think he had been born out of time -- a few decades to late ....

When another heart attack took his life a few years later, his last word was my grandmother's name -- Rachael ....

I wonder/wonder/wonder

Do you ever wonder what if?

I like those words, too .... almost as much as I like "once upon a time."

Do you ever wonder where we were before our arrival on planet Earth? Do you ever wonder where we will go after our corporeal departure from planet Earth?

I have been thinking (and wondering) about those things more and more during recent months. Too much time on my hands? Very possible, but beyond that, the more I read about ancestry linkage, genome study, DNA and RNA and the multiple pre-human species which inhabited our island drifting in this mystical, mysterious, possibly boundless universe, the more questions I have and the more confused I become.

I like to think my questions will be instantly answered the moment I die, but I have no hope they will be then or at any time ever after.

As Ernest Hemingway once wrote: "Life is a cheat and don't forget it ...."

Depending upon how one views life, old Ernie might have been correct ....