On losses and gains

We were saddened today to note the death of Peter Ostroushko. We once saw him perform live at the University of Minnesota Morris campus during a multi-day Symposium on Small Towns we attended back around 2004. If we remember correctly, one of the songs he sang was Dylan's Girl from the North Country. His rendition was / is among our favorite covers of that beautiful song. We also thoroughly enjoy his soundtrack for Minnesota--A History of the Land. He will be missed. Several of his albums are available through Red House Records, if you're interested.

On a brighter note, have you begun to feel any symptoms of Spring fever yet? We're enjoying a string of sunny, warmer than average days that almost compensates for the recent polar vortex visit. One of the tantalizing questions is whether Spring will actually arrive early or if we're just being set up to be dumped on by a series of March/April/May blizzards. If memory serves, July is the only month in which it hasn't snowed in Minnesota. Then again, we're now at the time of year when the average daily high temperature is 32℉. Better yet, effective tomorrow, the normal high temperature is above freezing.

There's no sign yet of open water. We'll start checking the Sunrise River pools more regularly now, in anticipation of arriving geese, ducks, swans and sandhill cranes. Who knows, we may stand a chance of enjoying an actual Spring that lasts for weeks instead of days and a melt season that doesn't yield Spring floods. That kind of return to normalcy would be a wonderful respite from the past four years.

Music

By Juhan Liiv
Translated from the Estonian by H.L. Hix & Jüri Talvet

It must be somewhere, the original harmony,

somewhere in great nature, hidden.

Is it in the furious infinite,

in distant stars’ orbits,

is it in the sun’s scorn,

in a tiny flower, in treegossip,

in heartmusic’s mothersong

or in tears?

It must be somewhere, immortality,

somewhere the original harmony must be found:

how else could it infuse

the human soul,

that music?

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