That old hymn

Sitting here in the computer room, and Kathy gets an email with a link to a presentation whose audio track is a country-western rendition of "How Great Thou Art." It's not in our hymnal, but whenever I hear it it takes me back to Midland mid-60s and the worship-music program on the AM station WMDN (the call letters now belong to some station elsewhere) on Sunday evening for which this was the theme.

What a different time that was.

Note for next visit

Nice to see some institutions living on. The Midland Daily News reports today on the 50th anniversary of Pizza Sam's. I don't have clear memories of the place and certainly won't now because it's moved, though I do remember the Community Drug Store mentioned in the article.

We will have to come by the next time we visit Midland.

Response to "WA Adventure #2"

With a bit of downtime today (next trip is 2-1/2 weeks away and it's a short one, to Lost Wages NV), I thought to check up on the Midland Daily News online. Living in Washington State, the column/blog titles WA Adventure #2 naturally caught my eye. Welcome to the Evergreen State, Mrs. Palka, and if you get across the Cascade Range to the Pacific Northwet side, give this old Midlander a jingle.

But I noted your remark:

So I wonder why it is that we have such sameness across the land? From Birch Run to Spokane, I could have stopped at identical outlet shopping malls. I had the choice of 5 of the same hotel chains everywhere I went. The same 5 fast food restaurants were listed at every major highway exit. The landscape changed beautifully, my retail options did not.

As a too-frequent traveler I rely on the sameness of hotel chains, and sometimes restaurants, to predict what I will encounter. Some of the sameness comes from corporate presence or brand identity -- for example, my employer's products look the same no matter whether you're buying them in Midland, Mumbai or Moscow.

But even though a brand hotel or restaurant may look the more or less the same around the world (though you can't buy beer in an American McDonald's the way you can in Germany), there is another difference: the staff. They can make a big difference: I found the staff at Midland's Hampton Inn to be typically Midwestern: friendly and helpful. In Germantown MD where I have stayed over many years, they're nice enough but hurried or harried. Other places can be worse. (Or much better, as a no-name 3-star old hotel in Bangalore turned out to be: not fancy by any means but if I needed something they were on it instantly -- I'd go there again quite happily.)

Maybe one just needs to travel more to pick up on these differences. All I can really say is that on our visit to Midland my wife and I picked up on the welcoming difference between Midlanders and much of the rest of the world. Restaurants and hotels alike.

Congratulations, Midland!

I was just reading a news item about the Grace A. Dow Library (it was certainly a great library when I lived there --I wish it hadn't been closed when we drove by last summer-- though it's odd that I remember it being somewhere else nearby), but at the end of the article they had to explain a little about Midland:

Midland is a city of nearly 42,000 people and is the international headquarters to The Dow Chemical Company and Dow Corning Corporation. According to the October 2010 edition of Forbes Magazine, Midland is considered to be the fourth-best area in the U.S. to raise a family.

Fourth-best? I don't see how it could get much better. Unless you get rid of the muggy summer days (though I guess most everybody has A/C these days -- we don't in Seattle but it's rare that we even want it) and February. Still, this echoes what my MHS classmates said at the reunion. And it's FAR better for raising a family than anyplace I've lived since. Bested by Marquette, Manitowoc, and Dubuque in this rating, but I'd take Midland hands-down.

Looking at the article's photos, I remember downtown Midland looking like Warsaw, Ind.

There are some things I like about living on the West Coast, but I still miss the Midwest.

Ouch

I just realized it was 43 years ago today that my father announced we were leaving Midland. Nothing significant; anniversaries of larger life events have sometimes passed unremembered. But... 43 years! Now I feel old.

Auld Lang Syne

For me the time leading up to the New Year has long been a time of remembrance and reflection.

Perhaps it's a Scottish thing: when I took up the Great Highland Bagpipes almost 30 years ago I was becoming immersed in things Scottish (my surname is Scottish) and I was often around those who speak in "braid Scots" (broad Scots -- whether it's a dialect of English or a sister tongue is an old debate) and later, as a result of our Gaelic classes, Scottish Gaelic.

But there is a Scottish tradition of "remembering" at the New Year. One Hogmanay (Scottish New Year) tradition is to gather at midnight, hold hands in a circle and sing "Auld Lang Syne" ("Old Long Since," or "Long, Long Ago"). For Seattle's Gaelic community there is a similar tradition: closing events (including Hogmanay celebrations) with the equally longing "Chi Mi Na Morbheanna", literally "I [Will] See the Great Mountains [of home]."

Both songs speak of separation by insurmountable distances, the latter from the Highland Clearances that sent so many Scots to North America -- it is recorded that some Scots emigrants wept when they sighted Nova Scotia because it looked so much like home.

Interestingly, although Robert Burns' Auld Lang Syne is sometimes touted as merely a song of a long-separated friend, it isn't. In Scots the word "jo" means "sweetheart." In the Scots chorus of Auld Lang Syne:

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Further evidence is in an earlier song, pre-Burns:

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:
Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
on Old long syne.

CHORUS:
On Old long syne my Jo,
in Old long syne,
That thou canst never once reflect,
on Old long syne.

But I digress.

For me the annual remembrance had started in Advent with the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem", in particular the lines "Above thy deep and dreamless sleep / The silent stars go by." Two conflicting images always presented: one a middle-eastern scene, the other an image of Midland, winter '67-'68. The only "deep and dreamless sleep" there was in my own mind -- once I lost all contacts with Midland friends in the early 70s I had only memories to draw on.

New Year/Hogmanay still brings me back: where are my old friends, what have they achieved? Questions with no answers. And "Chi Mi Na Morbheanna" brings a fine contradiction: the home I remember has no mountains, no hills. But the song is really about coming home to the people who live(d) there.

This summer I saw that the Midland I held in memory is unsurprisingly long since gone. Now I have new memories of it today. Though many of my classmates and other folks there now say, "It's a great place to be -- from" I missed it('s people) for a long, long time.

But as a result of this visit the triggers of such remembrances are gone, and maybe that's a good thing. I know I can never go home again, but I'll forever remember fondly the Midland where I once lived, auld lang syne.

Merry Christmas to you

who continue to check on this blog.

Recalling many merry Christmases there... of a time a long time ago.