"Each man who dares to dream..."

Yesterday I found myself on Harry Chapin's Website. A site that gives me one of those I-haven't-been-home-in-a-while-but-oh-Lord-I-have-returned kind of feelings. Do you know what I mean? Like you've been on vacation all your life and you finally get to come home to your own bed.

From the site, I was lead to YouTube to listen to that man's stories singing to me through my headphones in a stuffy campus computer lab.



I've never met this man. I never saw one of his concerts or listened to him from a standing-room-only, sold-out concert. I didn't grow up when his songs were on the radio or go to the store when one of his CD's first came out. But there is no one else who can make me remember how things used to be like he can. No one else can remind me of dad better than this man and his carefully molded words.


Month 4 is coming around very soon. And through these months, I have learned ways that I can feel ok about everything that has become of my life.


Yesterday I was reminded of how much Harry resembles so much of dad. Maybe they formed each other in ways I'll never know. Dad had a way of taking everyday things and making them into this beautiful kind of scene - he romanticized things. Like on Sunday mornings when he would come up from his shower just before we were to leave, he'd say "Wow, Etta, you look so nice." Harry did the same thing in songs like "Dancin' Boy" and "Corey's Coming."

"Folk singer Harry Chapin died in a bizarre 1981 accident on New York's Long Island Expressway," Google let me know. I guess they weren't much different in their death, either. Just change the year and Long Island Expressway to North Dakota's Highway 46.

As I've been writing this, Harry's "What Made America Famous" has been playing on repeat:
"We have the choice to make each man who dares to dream reaching out his hand a prophet or just a crazy God damned dreamer of a fool, yes a God damned fool."

And I now find myself wishing so badly that I could have met this man, perhaps become his wife in some different kind of life, shared his on-fire-passion for those stories he tells so well. But then I know that how things are now is how they are supposed to be. Every part of it. From my heart-ful love for Harry to my heart-heavy want for those Sunday morning compliments just once more.

Thanks to you MSUM.

I never tire of the fact that life never allows us to go bored for too long. We are never left to think that our days are mundane.

This morning after my first class I was walking in the hallway to get a Diet Coke. As I passed the mass comm lounge the chair of the department was walking into his office. He saw me and stopped.

"I'm sorry about your dad," he said.

He wished me well in getting to England someday and thanked me for helping out with tutoring a student (I was originally going to be in England this semester; I'm helping a Japanese student out with some reporting.)

Now, I'm from Gackle. College was a very impersonal jolt into reality. No one knew me or really cared to know me when I first got here. Now that I am older I have either become even more comfortable with who I am or I have just relaxed and found my own way. I now say "hi" to people in the halls and my professors have become more human.

But to be able to walk down the hall of a college building and have a professor stop me and talk to me about this personal thing is this amazing blessing. And I'm not so sure that one could get that anywhere else.

I always struggled with where I was supposed to go to college. I always assumed NDSU was where I'd be. But throughout it all, MSUM was the only choice that sat right with me. The support I've felt here and the friends I've made - Jackie, my love; my professors - Deneen and Camila and all the others that have been concerned for me; I simply couldn't ask for anything else.

So I guess this is a thank you to everyone here. The personal, familiar, homey feeling that has become Flora Frick and this mass comm lounge. It's almost as familiar as the halls of Gackle-Streeter high school became.

As I've said before, I'll say again:

I am so Blessed.

Here is a song for you today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xz3R6icUTU

Shadow on the Wall - Brandi Carlile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYgZMjW0TTE

Humble Me - Norah Jones

This is my home.

Although I look a little like a boy with the hair cut that I still resent my mom and dad for giving me and baby Lindsay looks somewhat like a wet cat - dad looks quite possibly the best I ever saw him. He is so proud of his girls, a smile he saved only for us.
And that is my house how I like to remember it. How that wall looked will always remind me of mom. That Rolodex. That cord on the phone that always twisted. Mom behind the camera. This picture is my home. It holds everything I've ever loved with every ounce of myself. Even that terrible hair cut.

I am blessed.

It's a beautiful, foggy Thursday morning.

Now, a little fact about this girl is that I love nothing more than a slightly cool, dark, dreary morning. This Thursday morning is beautiful. It is cold, frosty and foggy. And the best part is that I get to have lunch with my grandpa at noon, go to my Death & Grieving class (more on that to come, I'm sure,) and then GO HOME. Going home seems to have become one of my favorite things to do.

As I was driving to school - freezing, seeing my breath the whole way but not out my front window - I realized that nothing that's going on right now is that bad.

If God can give me this astonishing Thursday morning drive and He took the time to make it just right, then I can get through the assignments that will be late and the grades that are just a little lower than I expected and the hours when missing my dad seems to overwhelm me.

I can get through those because God has taken the time to shape me in just the right and perfect way that He wanted me to be shaped. And that even though I'm not in New York City or England right now, He will meet me and use me today in Fargo and tonight in Gackle.

There is a hope that comes with the morning.

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Psalm 143:8 (The Message)