© Catherine Haslag

Warmth and Laughter

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A beautiful Christmas tree in St. Paul, MN 2020

Christmas 2020 was different for most everyone.

I typically travel home to Missouri to visit my family. We used to gather at my uncle’s for dinner before or after Christmas Eve mass. He loved to make New England Clam Chowder and play Christmas music on his stereo during the holiday celebrations. We would enjoy a meal and laughs together. When both my grandparents were still alive, sometimes my cousin and I could talk them into letting us open one gift on Christmas Eve. One year we both chose to open the heaviest package. It turned out to be a pound of nails from my grandpa. That year, we were consumed with building forts outside. There wasn’t a board on the property we hadn’t punched full of nails to build our forts. We even confiscated the dog bed for one of our structures before we were told to put it back. I don’t know if grandpa was trying to encourage our interest or simply keeping us from consuming more of his nails. So much Christmas tradition has changed over the years; however, the warmth and laughter of those times with family and friends have always been a part of Christmas for me. It is the one tradition that hadn’t failed me.

This Christmas has been very different for me and not just because of social distancing. My uncle died in 2019 and the family home we celebrated so many Christmas days in sold last month. This year was going to be different for my family even before COVID-19 jumped the pond. I chose not to travel home to see my family because of coronavirus. My significant other and I had a quiet Christmas at my house instead. We made Indian Butter Chicken (I chose a non-traditional Christmas dinner on purpose) and celebrated Zoom style with various family and friends. We spent the day in our jammies, exchanged gifts, watched Soul on Disney+ (totally worth the watch), drove around and looked at Christmas lights (it was a banner year for Christmas lights), and ate enough sweets to make us diabetic. It was cold outside in Minnesota and there was snow on the ground, but there were warmth and laughter inside.

Of all the things that have changed about Christmas for me, warmth and laughter is one tradition that remains constant. May it remain constant for you as well.

The Life of a House

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This is the family home sometime in the 1910s.

There was an old farm-house that once sat on Fort Avenue in Springfield, Missouri. It didn’t fit the structural style of the nearby ranch homes constructed around it in the 1970s and 80s, so it was likely the home of the family who previously farmed the land before the area was developed. It was a two-story wood-framed home with a small front porch. It was clear no one lived there nor had for awhile. The house sat dark and cold.

Every time I drove past this house, I thought of the life that once filled it. How it kept a family dry during the spring rains. How a mother snuggled her young child in an upstairs bedroom on an autumn evening before turning out the lights. The many warm holiday celebrations held in the home for beloved family and friends. Celebrants gathered, singing Christmas songs with a beverage in hand, the united voices uncontained by the plaster and siding. This house once held space for its occupants when they grieved the loss of a loved one or birthed a new life into the world. The grassy green yard hosted games of baseball, tag, and hide-and-seek. The warmth, laugher, and love that once filled the corners of every room seemed to ooze out of the broken windows, evaporating away. There is a reason why empty houses fall into decay so quickly: there is no love to keep them standing.

This house was demolished sometime between 2007 and 2009. The placeholder for the lives that once occupied that home wiped away. Google Street View of the property shows it hasn’t been redeveloped. All that is left is an empty parcel.

Do we really give houses the gratitude they deserve? They are our basecamp, the place we always know we can return to from our adventures out in the world. They provide warmth, shelter, and safety for those we hold dear. Homes hold our memories and stories and tell them in a mark on the wall or the squeak of a floorboard. A house can hold a family’s history and be a stable nucleus for the generations that grow up in its walls. A place where everyone comes back and again to congregate, share, and love.

That last Thanksgiving my family celebrated in the family home, November 2019. Thank you to Peggy Dunsworth for providing this photo.

Recently, the house my great-grandparents built-in 1908 was sold. This 4-bedroom, 2.5 bath home was the place 5 generations of my family lived, laughed, and loved together. We celebrated nearly 70 Thanksgivings with our cousins in the dining room, opened gifts for over 100 Christmases in the living room, and prepared nearly 41,000 meals in the kitchen (yes, I did the math). My grandmother and all of her siblings were born in that house and at least one person (my great grandmother) was laid out there so people could pay their last respects.

The last Thanksgiving we celebrated there was in 2019. More than 30 family members remembering, laughing, crying, and commemorating what we all knew would be our last Thanksgiving in that sacred place. At one point, I felt like all the Thanksgivings that had ever been celebrated there were intersecting. As if all the generations of my family that knew that home were there in some way to join in one last big party across time.

Thankfully, the house has a new family to fill it with love. It will not meet the empty fate of the house on Fort Avenue, at least not now. While that house is no longer the nucleus for my family, I am thankful for all the years it held us within its boundaries and grateful that a new family will love it into the future.

© Catherine Haslag

More Than a Band-Aid Box

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The band-aid was invented by Earle Dickson in 1920 to provide ready-made bandages for his wife, Josephine, to use when she injured herself in the kitchen. He told his boss at Johnson & Johnson about what he created and the company soon began producing their BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages. Because BAND-AID® Brand was the first band-aid available, eventually all-ready-made bandages were referred to as band-aids, though not all bandages are BAND-AID® Brand bandages.

One of my grandma’s band-aid boxes, found in her sewing supplies after she died.

According to the Johnson & Johnson website, they began packaging BAND-AID® Brand bandages in decorative tins in 1926. The website indicates that people reused the empty tins to store many things, including “small nails, holding extra buttons and safety pins, even storing marbles and baseball cards.” My grandmother was no exception to this.

My grandmother kept cash around her house in band-aid boxes. White metal BAND-AID® Brand tins and green and white plastic Curad® boxes. They were under where she sat in the living room, in the cabinet in the kitchen, and in the top drawer in the utility room. They were sprinkled around the house. One time, the family was sitting around the living room, talking about who wanted what when grandma died. Grandma was in the room, participating in this conversation. In a moment of silence during this macabre conversation, my Uncle Jerry said he wanted the band-aid boxes. Everyone laughed, including grandma.

My grandparents came of age during the depression. My grandpa was born in 1916 and my grandma in 1918. They both knew how to make do with very little. Grandma didn’t just repurpose band-aid boxes. She could reuse just about any container. When she died, my Uncle Willie cleared stacks and stacks of Cool Whip, Country Crock, and other plastic tubs of similar size/shapes from her kitchen and basement. To this day, I don’t assume that there is actually Country Crock in a Country Crock container any more than I assume there are band-aids in a band-aid box.

In reality, she used band-aid boxes for more than storing money. The one pictured here was in her sewing cabinet holding notions. I found it after she died and kept it. A remembrance of my grandma and the story I shared above.

Last November, my aunt, and uncle sent me $40 for my 40th birthday. Each $20 bill was carefully folded into a heart. I couldn’t bring myself to unfold them, so I placed them in my grandma’s band-aid box. It seemed like a fitting home for them. The perfect place for an emergency stash of money and love.

© Catherine Haslag

What’s In a Smell?

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It is a few weeks before Christmas and I am cat-sitting for my boyfriend. He has a beautiful 3-year old female black, grey, brown, and white feline named Piney. She is a skittish cat. She doesn’t like to be picked up or carried. She isn’t a lap cat by any means; however, she is incredibly curious, especially when it comes to smell. She sniffs everything. The spider plant hanging from the office ceiling. The Christmas presents stacked in the corner. The baseboards running around the living room. She sniffs carefully, completely as if she is getting the whole history of the room and its contents through her nose.

Piney, the curious sniffing feline.

She begins to sniff around the cabinet I use as a TV stand, a small art-deco style piece with sliding front doors. I began to ponder what her nose detects.

Can she smell the homes it sat in before I purchased it from a flea market on Commercial Street? Can she detect the distressed red paint that covered it when I first brought it home? Does she smell how I stripped and refinished the cabinet on the balcony of the first apartment my then-husband and I shared? Does she inhale the aroma of the white china with silver decoration I once stored in it in the dining room of that apartment?

Does she detect notes of the first house I owned with my ex-husband? This cabinet sat in the living room, to the right of the TV. A silver dish my then mother-in-law gave me sitting on top of it. Can she smell the parties and movie nights we threw during the 2 years we lived there together? Does she detect hints of the fire that started on the deck the morning after my birthday party? A cigarette someone didn’t put out properly in the container on the deck.

Does she breathe in any notes of the end of our marriage? The arguments, tears, and stress of two humans realizing they don’t work together…or who maybe never really worked at all.

Does she smell the home I lived in on Main Street? Single again. Finding my way forward.

Is there an odor from the moving truck, a cold, crisp January whiff of winter leaking into the tractor-trailer as it cruises up the interstate towards its new home? Can she detect the work of settling into a new town, new state, finding a new way?

Or does she just smell wood, stain, and dust from 7 years of the cabinet sitting in one place?

© Catherine Haslag

Living On the Edge of Science

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I teach chemistry. One of the first things I teach my students is about the scientific method, the systematic process by which scientists learn about the world. I wrote the following back in April near the start of the pandemic. I wanted to share it here for your consideration.

Science is the systematic process by which we learn about the world. Scientists are basically professional students and explorers. They are constantly investigating the world around us to learn more about how and why it works as it does.

When you first started learning something, did you instantly know everything about it? At your first piano lesson, were you able to play Ragtime by Scott Joplin? On the first day of Spanish, were you able to speak and read fluently to your classmates and teacher? When you first got behind the wheel of a car, were you able to brake without jerking, shift smoothly, and merge on and off the interstate without concern?

The answer to all of these questions is no. You needed time to learn the keys and the notes on the piano, to learn vocabulary and how to conjugate verbs, and how to coordinate your hand, eye, and foot to smoothly maneuver the car and navigate traffic.

This is what scientists do on a daily basis. They learn, share the knowledge they have obtained, and continue to study so they can learn more. They work with what they know, understanding that tomorrow, they will know more and that may change their working hypotheses/theories about a concept. Scientists are on the frontier of what we know. This is the difference between a scientist and a Spanish teacher – the teacher already knows the vocabulary and how to conjugate the verbs. When they teach their classes, they are regurgitating what they already know. Scientists are not only speaking the language but also expanding the vocabulary and trying to teach others what they know as they learn it. They are on the edge of knowledge.

Most of the science we learn in school and see in the world around us is tried and true. It’s already gone through the process of rigorous testing and investigation. We missed the learning and changing that went along with that process. Coronavirus is on the edge of the science we know. It is still being studied and we are learning new things about it every day. This is why the information changes so quickly. It’s not that science doesn’t know what it’s doing but rather that it is constantly learning new details and getting a better picture of coronavirus. Humans just aren’t used to this rapid change in information and behavior. We like certainty and we don’t have all the information yet about coronavirus to be certain in the situation.

 

© Catherine Haslag

What Happened to Flattening the Curve?

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I have been following the data on the spread of the coronavirus updated daily by the New York Times since I was made aware of this resource sometime in late March/early April 2020.

On April 9, near the first peak observed, 34,699 new cases were recorded and the 7-day average was 31,544 cases (obtained from the NYT page on coronavirus cases linked above). I am writing this blog post on December 2, 2020, though I am not sure when I will be ready to share it online. The most recent data posted on the NYT page is for December 1. It states that 184,294 new cases were reported yesterday (December 1) with a 7-day average of 161,245 cases. As I write this, the NYT reports that more than 13,888,300 people have been infected by COVID-19 and at least 272,100 people have died due to this virus.

Hospitals are overwhelmed and healthcare workers are struggling to keep up with the demand for care.

These are just a few of the stories I found about how hospitals and healthcare workers are currently stretched because of coronavirus. If you do your own search, you are likely to find many, many more.

How did this happen? Back in March and April, the goal was to “flatten the curve.” According to the graph of coronavirus cases reported per day since March, not only have we not flattened the curve, but we don’t seem concerned regarding what the curve looks like at all.

Back in March when the US first began to respond to the pandemic, I realized that there were going to be people who died not because they caught coronavirus but because they had a medical issue and didn’t receive the treatment they needed because of the coronavirus. The person who had a heart attack or stroke and weren’t treated in time because there wasn’t a bed available or enough doctors/nurses to care for them. The woman who’s tumor went undetected because her mammogram was postponed due to all medical staff being needed to treat COVID patients. If our hospitals and healthcare workers are overwhelmed, there may be no help available if you get sick at all, be it from COVID-19 or not.

This is exactly where we are now – if you become ill for any reason, our medical system is so overwhelmed that the help you need may not be available to you. Preventing the spread of the virus isn’t just about keeping people from getting sick from COVID, it’s also about preventing our medical system from being overall so medical services available for all those who need it.

I know everyone is tired, including me. The only things I have really succeeded in doing is putting on the COVID-19 (actually 15 pounds, but still more than I would have liked) and hosting some wonderful Zoom happy hours. I also manage to shower and cloth myself on a daily basis, usually in stretchy, comfy pants. I totally understand the grind that is living in this COVID Groundhog’s day. It sucks the big one, but I believe we need to keep going. Masking. Washing our hands. Social distancing. It’s our only choice if we want to curb the spread of this virus.

2020 has been the longest decade most of us have ever experienced, but I also know we can pull together and beat this. I saw the nation’s reaction after 9-11 and the unity that came out of a horrible tragedy. I experienced incredible acts of kindness, compassion, and community when my hometown was ravaged by massive flooding in 1993. I have seen in my own lifetime how people can pull together and overcome.

When did we lose sight of how to care for each other?

I know we are capable of better than I have seen from us in 2020. I am disappointed that so many aren’t coming together for the safety of their neighbors and community. So many who can’t see the big picture of how to care for each other.

We are capable of better than this.

© Catherine Haslag

Class Reunions

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Recently I began to wonder why we still hold high school reunions and how this tradition started. I tried to research this and there isn’t much to be found. About an hour’s worth of research uncovered a few opinion pieces where people contemplate if they are going to their high school reunion and why this is still a thing, a history of reunions at Princeton, a lot of class reunion announcements and summaries of the events, and a few pieces about weight loss and improving your looks before attending a class reunion. Vanity is apparently a cousin to the high school reunion. The best I can determine is that class reunions date back at

Me at my high school graduation.  I was fat and wore glass until my senior year, when I dropped a bunch of weight and got contacts, thankfully.

least 200 years. Beyond that, I don’t have any details as to the origins of this practice.

Today, in the US, this ritual is held approximately every 5 years for most high school classes.  Some small colleges also hold class reunions, but in the US, this event is generally saved to remind us of adolescence past – a tumultuous time that some of us are very happy to leave in the past.

In school, I was the fat, nerdy kid with glasses who had a big vocabulary I wasn’t afraid to use. During my freshman and sophomore years, I read sci-fi books rather than chit chat with my classmates between classes or on the bus. I had zero athletic ability and wasn’t afraid to answer (or ask) questions during class. As you can imagine, this made me really popular with my peers. I was one of those who found their tribe when they went to college. High school wasn’t exactly hell for me but it definitely wasn’t the best 4 years of my life.

When the time came, I decided to attend my 5-year reunion. I hoped to connect with some of my high school friends only to discover the only people who came were those who were still living in the same clique of friends they had in high school. They had all settled close to home after graduation. Some went to college and then settled back in the area after earning their degree. I had nothing in common with them and didn’t feel the need to make small talk (my own personal hell) with people I couldn’t relate to in high school let alone years later. When I found this same scene at the 10-year reunion, I decided this wasn’t for me. I won’t be attending future reunions.

I feel high school reunions try to celebrate who we were, where we came from, and who we are now but fail to hit the mark. When we return to this situation with people we knew in a very limited context, we tend to revert in some ways to who we were in high school I don’t dislike who I was at 16, 17, or 18, but I do really like who I am now. I would rather hang out with who I am now than revisit who I was then. Reunions remind me of school dances with loud music, awkward small talk, and never getting asked to dance during the slow songs. For me, it’s a superficial event that I survive not enjoy. I would much rather connect with a few specific high school friends over drinks or dinner. This provides me with the deeper, more meaningful connection that I crave.

For those who enjoy reunions, more power to you. Have a enjoy remembering that time a bunch of guys from the senior class drove tractors to school during spirit week for “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” day.

I will be there in spirit only.

© Catherine Haslag

Crucible as Myself

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Crucible is from the Medieval Latin Crucibulum for “melting pot for metals” and “night lamp.” The first part of the word, crus, could also originate from the Middle High German kruse meaning “earthen pot” or from the Latin crux in reference to a cross.

The word crucible has two meanings:

  1. As a noun, a crucible is a ceramic, graphite, or metal container that is used for the melting of metals or conducting of chemical reactions at high temperatures.
  2. As a verb, a crucible is a severe trial in which things interact and something new is created from it. This meaning of the word began sometime around the 1640s.

Example of a crucible used in a chemistry lab.

A classic chemistry lab uses a crucible to react with magnesium metal with oxygen gas at high temperatures to produce magnesium oxide. Crucibles are also used to melt bronze and other metals for casting bells and statues. If a crucible is ceramic, it can be brittle despite its ability to withstand extreme temperatures.

Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible told a fictional account of the Salem Witch Trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692 and 1693. It was an allegory for McCarthyism, a time in the 1950s when people were being accused and persecuted for being a communist. Much like the Salem Witch Trials, most of the accusations were false and were very dangerous to the lives of those accused.

A crucible is also a container, a place for work to be done. Its job is to hold, to be a space. Based on this definition, anything can serve as a crucible: an office, journal, classroom, tennis court, website.

The book Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott spoke of the role of the crucible in the work she does with her coaching clients. She pondered if she could become the crucible for her clients, her family and friends, or herself.

The title of this blog comes from this idea. I have created a space for me to bring my writing, thoughts, and ideas to the world, but I am my own crucible in this process. I contain the reaction or heated metal in me and eventually present that work to the world on this site. This is page is my voice, my practice is finding, developing, and crafting it into something that is authentic to me. What I say here may not be popular, but it is authentic to me and hopefully will resonate with others.

We all have different crucibles that present themselves in life, some of them we choose for ourselves, some are chosen for us. This is a combination of the two. I have felt for awhile that I have something of value and meaning to share. This feeling grew so strong that I felt it was being chosen for me and I had no other option than to choose it back. I don’t know yet if the words you read here is that something or if this is just practice for that something. Only time will determine that.

References

Online Etymology Dictionary. (2020) Crucible. https://www.etymonline.com/word/crucible

Scott, S. (2002). Fierce Conversations (Second Edition). The Berkley Publishing Company.

Sparknotes. (2020). The Crucible. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/crucible/

© Catherine Haslag

To Blog or Not to Blog

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Taken at Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, Northfield, MN

This is my second go writing my first blog. You won’t get to read the first one because it didn’t sound like me. I tried to be clever, witty, and funny. While I am all of these things, what I tried to write the first time didn’t sound like my voice.  So I decided to give it another try. What are you reading now sounds much more like me.

We all have a voice. Some of us use our voices, other’s don’t. Some have strong, clear voices that carry easily through valleys, others have quite, delicate voices that required the room to hush so they can be heard. I am using this blog to find my voice, explore it, develop it, and use it in the world. This blog is for my growth. It is a way for me to think, process, write, share, and (hopefully) grow.

I will likely write on a broad range of subjects – biking, camping, hiking, books, educational projects, trips, experiences. Whatever I feel I need to and want to share my opinion, thoughts, or experience regarding. I enjoy researching and learning about new things, which you will likely see in my blog posts. If I include information from sources in my writing, I will cite them or otherwise give them credit to the best of my ability. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. Additionally, the resources I have used may be helpful to others, so I want to share them.

This is an experiment for me and I don’t have an idea where it will take me. Life is a great teacher. We not only learn from the experiences life brings to use but also from each other. While this blog is for my growth and learning, I hope that sharing my experience here with you will provide for your growth as well.

I look forward to seeing where this experiment takes me.