Alfredisms

Alfredims

Unpublished Journal
March 20, 1992

Yesterday’s weather was more wet than dry. Today the sky is clearly blue, and the morning sun has an unimpeded chance to flood the terrain with sunshine. I’m writing this at 9 a.m. and, heeding the Progress Swedish Philospher’s admonition, “You never know how a day goes ’til it gets to the end,” I refuse to predict an all-day blue clarity overhead. Gloria Eckerson of Aurora called earlier today, and I promised to help her and Wilma Aalborg check bluebird boxes in the Platte valley where she maintains a bluebird box trail.

Unpublished Journal
March 24, 1992

Yesterday I spent most of the day watching the sandhill cranes between Doniphan and Shelton, along the Platte River west of Grand Island. Pastor Bruce Berggren of the Swede Home Lutheran Church has been wanting to go birding with Lee Morris, and I arranged it Sunday evening with Lee, when he and Shirley, son-in-law Earl Fuehrer and four grandchildren came into Coach’s Corner just as I was finishing eating. I joined them to visit and told Lee what I was planning, adding, “I’ll call Berggren about 8 tomorrow morning. If he can’t go, you and I will go anyway.”

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
Nov. 29, 1992

Today marks a return to the gray days. Temperature is in the 30s and wind light out of the north. Three consecutive days of sunshine and cloudless sky was a winter treat worth mentioning.

Maybe the mechanical Babcock word printer and the electronic Brother word processor will generate a togetherness, but I doubt if an old letterpress printer will be a congenial third partner.

Alfredisms: Norris, a Moustache and Shades of Gray

By Brian Tyler

My late afternoon visit to the Polk Progress was at the invitation of the publisher, and I was not prepared for the multisensory assault of his office. The first wave was the strong smell of ink and solvent, followed by the clatter of a Linotype machine, and finally a visual of printer’s ink, gradually transforming the interior and its contents toward black. Equally stark was the December view across Polk’s Main Street through the front window. The John Deere Implement dealership and the IGA grocery store were closed and dark. Pickup trucks parked in front of the American Legion Club were muddy and utilitarian. Their rear bumpers defined 1971 with a Nebraska license (black lettering on a white background) and a bumper sticker that read “America—Love It or Leave It.” At 17 years of age, the world was only visible in black and white.

Alfredisms

By Frank Partsch

Prairie Fire has occasionally mentioned that Norris Alfred was a Pulitzer nominee. That fact, standing alone, adds little to his stature. Anyone can be a Pulitzer nominee for the price of a postage stamp and an entry fee. Some people even nominate themselves.

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
April 10, 1992

Time slips by with increasing rapidity during the misnamed “golden years.” There is a time to die. Now in my 79th year I know my personal future is short, while the past continues to lengthen at an equal rapidity.

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
March 31, 1992

In defense of “Slower Is Better” I have been critical of the speed at which we live. We have developed a need to hurry, hurry, hurry. In connection with bird-watching I have written (and stayed within the speed limit) that at 55 mph we don’t see the bird in the bush nor the hawk soaring high in the sky. I thought of that when reading Ian Frazier’s piece about the Great Plains in “Nebraska Humanities,” a periodical of the Nebraska Humanities Council. At 500 to 600 mph and 30,000 feet up, he missed much more than the bird in the bush.

Alfredism

Unpublished Journal
March 14, 1992

Years ago, so many I have lost count, I attended a Prairie Plains Resource Institute meeting where I was one of several speakers. One of the goals of the institute was to save as much of the original prairie and its flora as they could. There are only patches of it left in impossible places for tractor and plow to reach.

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
March 7, 1992

Two weeks ago I received a note from Marty Strange, co-director of Center for Rural Affairs, asking that I send a copy of the correspondence I had had with the agronomy department professors at the University of Nebraska, which I had published in 1972, to Robert L. Zimdahl, a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and Weed Science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. I did and yesterday received a letter plus a published essay on weed science titled “A Plea for Thought.” The letter stated he had read the exchange of correspondence, which dwelt on what was happening to the fertility and life-supporting quality of the soil in a field that had been planted to corn for the plus-twenty years I had watched. Twenty years later it is still being planted to corn and yields up to 200 bushels per acre. Is this monoculture harming the life-supporting environment of the soil? Worms, grubs, ants and various insects use the soil for a living environment throughout their life cycles or, as many insects do, need the soil for a stage in their development into a flying insect. Gophers, badgers, prairie dogs, ground squirrels, burrowing owls, moles, etc., live in the ground. The soil is their home base.

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
Mar. 6, 1992

The grass is turning green. The change began with the exceptionally warm weather since the first of March. Leaf buds are showing on the trees amidst dire predictions of more freezing temperatures in the immediate future. Yesterday and today have been wet (rain wet), not snow.

While I visited Earl and Adelé Byleen yesterday, he reported his next-door neighbor had planted radishes the day before.

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
Feb. 19, 1992

The Polk Progress Swedish Philosopher, Alvena Lind, is having emotional problems adjusting to life in a care home. At 83 years of age she is having heart problems that have nothing to do with valentines. She told me, more than once: “When the time comes that I need to go to a retirement home, I’ll go and enjoy visiting and talking to others staying or working there.” The fuss she is loudly making is over that key word, “when.”

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
Feb. 2, 1992

Feb. 1, 1992, was a warm day with a top temperature of 65 degrees and enjoyed by everyone in Polk, including me. It was definitely sweater weather but not quite open-door temperature. Warm weather in February generates warm thoughts and, maybe, concern about the possibility of global warming—greenhouse effect —because 65 degrees of heat in February means temperatures steadily above 100 in August. Philip Heckman, former president of Doane College and now head of the Lincoln Foundation, told me about a conversation he had with a person who had spent his life studying the planet earth. Phil mentioned his concerns about the deteriorating environment and how our political leaders are paying little attention to cleaning it up. He predicted disaster in the next decade if more attention isn’t devoted to correcting our polluting ways. This knowledgeable conversationalist responded with: “Oh no! The planet is beginning to improve its environment and will continue to be more livable for the next 150,000 years. There’s a 300,000-year cycle the planet goes through…” Philip realized they were talking in two different time frames. He was in today’s and his conversationalist was in the far future.

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
Jan. 10, 1992

The weather is warmer and dryer—an open winter is how the winter of 1991–92 is being described, though there is still most of January and all of February and March before this winter can accurately be described as open. Most of the moisture, to date, has come as rain and welcomed. The big snows came the last of October and first of November. The Polkites figured on a closed winter. Predicting is a chancy occupation when it comes to weather and length of life. Predicting is a mental exercise to forego surprises. The only surprise from this mental exercise is the occasional accuracy of the prediction.

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
Jan. 8, 1992

The weather has been stormy Jan. 7 and 8. Most of the moisture came as rain on the 7th. Today started out warm and then a north gale brought a sifting of snow and freezing temperature—a January thaw preceded a January freeze. Today is a day for staying inside and looking out. Inside the print shop the chores are now cleaning the presses, organizing material, ridding it of the remains of children’s toys and sorting through adult’s tools.

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
Jan. 2, 1992

I learned, through reading about it, that there undoubtedly was a time when life was evolving on the planet Earth that was lived without eyes. Not to see!? Incredible! There was light and no eyes to see it.

Alfredisms

In the dark of morning the day began with thunderstorms (calm ones) that continued, off and on, during the light of morning, with heavy clouds trying to extend the dark into the light. The resulting light of night is dark enough to cause some questioning if there was a sunrise.

Aldredisms

Yesterday’s high temp reading was in the 80s, which was appreciated. It proves the possibility of global warming can still be one of the many worries and fears of the future. Today will probably be another warm day. I’m writing this bit before 9 a.m. I still have a tight grip on my resolution never to predict the weather. The weather column I wrote for the Polk Progress reported what the weather had been. I never went out on a literary limb and predicted the next week’s weather.

Alfredisms

Unpublished Journal
June 17, 1993

What bothers me most these days is how easily I tire. I can remember when it took strenuous effort over a period of days, not hours, before I had to recharge my batteries. Now 10 hours in bed, reading and sleeping are needed. I think new batteries would help, but I’m forced to wait until the heroic technologists have developed a no-fail battery for the electric car. It’s a matter of priorities. A non-noxious car is more important.

Alfredisms

“When his painting had to take a backseat to publishing the Polk Progress, [Norris Alfred] began to express his humorous side with his ‘Whatzits.’ These are simple line drawings with color often added that took on a more abstract and whimsical nature.

Aldredisms

Unpublished Journal
Jan. 13, 1992

I have always had a special interest in trees, which seems odd considering I was born on the Midwest plains, which were more grass than trees. The individuality of trees—cottonwoods, in particular—were the cause of this compelling interest. When I think about the plains, my thoughts concentrate on space.

Alfredisms

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