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In 2000, I purchased a house from the estate of my mother-in-law Irene Rudie.  I bought the house “lock, stock and barrel”.  One of the many treasures that I found was a diary that Irene had started on March 1, 1927.  Once I started reading it, it was hard to put down. She started the diary when her husband John and her were moving from a rented house in South Elmdale, to a forty-acre farm northeast of Upsala.  John had remodeled a lumber jack’s shack which they would have to live in until he finished building the barn and the house.  The cows got priority over Irene and the children. 

At that time, they had three children. The youngest was Jacky who was less than two years old.  The journal started with Irene getting the car stuck in the mud on the way to their new farm.  She had to walk the last two miles with Virgil and Theresa walking beside her while she carried the baby.

One of the stories in the diary dealt with a cow getting mired in a mud pit. She and John had to leave the children on their own in the shack while the two of them worked long into the night to free the cow.  The fear of loss was evident. Every nickel was important. Their abundance was in their capacity to work.

A few years later there was a single entry in the journal for the day.  “Bessy got stuck in the mud pit.  John shot her.”

Tomorrow morning you will have an opportunity to enjoy a very special Christmas concert at Ritsche Auditorium on the campus of St. Cloud State University.  The St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra will be performing “Children’s Holiday Sketches” at 10am.  Another “Holiday Sketches” performance will be at 3 in the afternoon You can purchase your tickets at stcloudsymphony.com or at the door. I hope to see you there.

“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”  Leonard Cohen