Sins of the Episcopal

I once attended a church that had an amazingly complex system for following the service.  I was inspired to write the following sonnet:

The sermon's not the only path in church
To learn of sins and how they do defile
The human soul.  One hasn't far to search.
The service leaflet proves the perfect trial.
My awe is tinged with envy as I hear
The others jump to Book of Common Prayer
And back again with ease, as rage may rear
Its head as inserts green and pink prepare
To flutter off and land ahead one pew.
To sing, I grab the hymnal book with greed.
I pride my skills compared with someone new
But find they're still of insufficient speed.
In sloth, I cease to follow or to ponder.
The other sins are where my thoughts will wander.

MINNESOTA STATE FAIR 2013

(Attendance figures came out two days after this was written.  236,197 people were at the fair on this date making it the largest single day crowd in the history of any state fair in the country)
     STATE FAIR 2013

    We know the Minnesota State Fair is basically the same every year.  I lived out of state for 27 years. When I went to the fair my first year back almost nothing had changed.  Many rides on the midway are different and there are now a few Mexican food stands.  But as far as I know these are the identical cows, horses, goats and pigs that I used to see in the 60’s and 70’s.

    Why do I go to the fair if everything is the same every year?  I think it’s partly a feeling of tradition and loyalty.  After all, the Minnesota State Fair is the “largest state fair in the United States by average daily attendance.”  You can look THAT up on Wikipedia.

    Also, if I miss the fair one year, I’ll have to wait another 50 and-a-half weeks for its return.  At my age I just can’t take that chance anymore.

    I missed the fair completely last year by a rare fluke.  I decided that I wasn’t going to the fair unless the high temperature was below 80 degrees.  That shouldn’t have been hard since the average high is in the 70’s this time of year.  But it never cooled off.

    This year we had a cool summer.  But once again the temperature skyrocketed as soon as the fair came to town.  Temperatures were setting record highs in the 90’s.  Attendance was down.  Finally, on the 11^th day of the fair’s 12 day run, a high of 76 degrees was predicted. 

    I got up on that 11^th day, today, a Sunday, at 8AM.  By 8:20 I was on the road.  At 8:50 I arrived at my usual parking spot, a dead-end street three-quarters of a mile from the fair.  From here, I walked to the fair sooner than the rest of the fairgoers who were paying up to $15 to park closer.

    I’d made a list, taken from newspaper and Internet sites, of the food stands I wished to sample this year.  I got to the scotch egg stand first.  A scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg surrounded by a lot of dough and then deep fried.

    I was shocked to find 23 people in line at this stand.  I don’t like waiting in lines.  No problem.  I walked a couple blocks to the next place on my list which specialized in battered and deep fried olives on a stick.

     Finding many of the places on my list was not easy.  The addresses that had been given for the food stands were for the general area…and they were generally wrong.  The olive stand for instance was not west of the grandstand ramp.  It was east of the grandstand ramp.  What WAS on the west side of the grandstand ramp was the end of the waiting line for the olive stand.  There were 57 people in line here!

     At this point I realized that I probably wasn’t the only person who’d strategized coming to the fair early on the first cool day in two years with a prospective list of favorite places.  I decided to try back later for my olives.

    There WAS no line at the giant piece of bacon on a stick for four-dollars.  After squeezing the grease out of the bacon with napkins, the giant bacon was almost regulation size.  But I loved it.

    I searched diligently but was unable to locate the taco sliders.  And after the bacon, I decided my gall bladder might not take kindly to the spam curds.  I was nearing the end of my list.

    I toured the Exxopolis Luminarium, a brightly colored multi-chambered air pressured plastic structure.  Then the Minnesota Highway booth to pick up a free map of the state.

     Then back to the fried olive stand.  They had a second window open.  But between the two lines I now counted 163 people! 

     I stumbled away from there and came upon a maze.  I’ve loved mazes since I was a kid, watching Laurel and Hardy get lost in the Oxford Maze.  I eagerly paid the five dollars and went in.

     It took me less than two minutes before I realized what I’d done.  I’d already exhausted myself from a morning of bumbling around the fairgrounds, unable to find the food I wanted and needed for sustenance.  Now I’d intentionally gotten myself lost in a maze…and paid five dollars for the privilege.

     I decided to back track and get out.  It was way too late for that.  And it made no sense to ask directions or follow anyone to get out.  We were all lost.

    I noticed a gaggle of adults looking down on us mazers from a stand set up above us.  I guessed these were the parents.  Was I the only adult here?  I could feel my face getting red.  Was it the heat…or the first stage of embarrassment.  A signpost up ahead.  An emergency exit.  I take it.  I’m outta there.

    I had had enough of this fair.  Heading for the exit I watched for a decent food stand with a short line.  Only a short wait for a bag of Tom Thumb donuts requested by my wife before I left home.

    The scotch egg stand was across the street from me on the way out.  And there was no one in line!  But how to cross the street.  By now it was almost 1 PM and there were two thick streams of people creeping zombie-like in opposite directions.

    I doubt I’m the first person to think of this solution:  I mingled with the crowd walking to the right.  Half a block later I had mingled myself to the center of the street where I turned around and walked back, angling slowly to the right and ending up right in front of the scotched egg plant.

    Seven dollars seemed a bit high for an egg basically surrounded by a donut.  But it WAS tasty, and I was content to have eaten at two of the nine places on my bucket list.

    I’m already working on refinements to my strategy for next year’s fair.  One of them is to buy TWO bags of Tom Thumb donuts for my wife instead of only one.  You can guess what happened to those 16 sugared mini-delicacies on the way home.

                                     That is all,

                                       Dan Shepard

LUNCH WITH MARCIA

                                

    Wife Marilyn, sister Marcia and I went to Midtown Global Market in the old Sears Tower on Lake Street for lunch.  It’s now a marketplace with about 50 shops on one floor.  As we entered I found a directory and counted 23 ethnic places to eat.  Or rather, 22 ethnic places and one American eatery.

 

    Marcia, living only a mile away, was apparently an aficionado on the Global Market.  She led us from one counter to another, extolling the virtues of the delectable food at each of the foreign eateries…Middle Eastern lamb, lefsa from Café Finspang, French Bun Mi sandwiches, chapatti from African Express.  About the time Marilyn and I had looked the menu over at one place and were ready to order, Marcia  was insistent on going on to the next, more exciting and savory place.

    Finally, Marilyn and I could take no more.  Marilyn said she was ordering Vietnamese and I picked Mexican.  Marcia made it clear she did not particularly care for our choices and said she was going to what she called a much more “interesting” place down the aisle.

    We agreed to reconvene at a table in the center courtyard.  Marilyn and I were well into our meal when Marcia showed up with what we had to agree was a particularly interesting meal considering the circumstances.  From the lone American eatery, she had brought back…a hamburger and French fries. 
              That is all,        Dan Shepard      

Let's Be Each Other's Problem

This was the first song I wrote for GOT IT MADE.  It came to me after a conversation with my husband.

Chapter 12:  GOT IT MADE ("Let's Be Each Other's Problem;" Molly Goes To The Police) http://vimeo.com/67784609

https://vimeo.com/67784609

BREAKFAST WITH MARCIA

              

    My wife Marilyn and I went out for lunch with sister Marcia yesterday.  It was Sunday and the host at Hazel’s in northeast Minneapolis said we’d have about a 20 minute wait.  This was just about perfect for Marcia I thought, since she takes about that long to figure out what she wants.  I found a menu and handed it to her. 

    “This is for you,” I said.  “You’re got 20 minutes to decide.”

    “20 minutes later we were seated.  Marilyn and I were ready and ordered first.

    Then Marcia.  “Oh my, what do I want?”  She began asking questions.   “What kind of hash do you have?  Is it fresh?  Hmmm…what kind of frosting is on the donuts?”

    I tried to hurry her along.  “The senior citizen bacon and egg special looks good,” I said. 

    “Too ordinary,” said Marcia.  “I can get that anywhere,” she said, continuing to peruse menu, all of one page long.

    The waitress was patient.  Marcia began to order.  “I think I’ll have the cinnamon roll.  No, no make that a donut.  Can you heat it up a little please?  But not too hot.  They tend to get hard when they’re overheated you know.  I’ll have the pancakes….just one pancake…do you have blueberry syrup? A waffle would be nice, but I see they’re not on the menu.  Is the coffee fresh?...I think I’ll have an order of hash too.”

    The formerly patient waitress was now impatient, fidgeting with her feet while tapping on her order pad with a pen.  After a few more hems and haws, questions and changes of mind, Marcia was finished shopping. 

    The waitress departed.  She wasn’t even in the kitchen yet when Marcia sprang from her seat.  What now, thought Marilyn and I.

    “What was that all about,” I asked when Marcia got back to the table.

    “I changed my order.”

    “To what,” I asked.

    “Bacon and eggs.”      

Review of Vencil

                Jimmie is the young narrator of Vencil -- a novel by local author Frank Shima.  Against the rural background of mid-20th century southeast Minnesota, Jimmie's favorite Uncle Vencil disappears, and Jimmie leads his family on a picaresque journey to find him.

                Here are a few things I had never thought about before reading Vencil:

               

                • It's not just Scandinavians who immigrated to Minnesota -- there were enough Czechs who settled an area south of the Twin Cities to name the local town "New Prague."

                • As recently as the mid-1950's, it was not uncommon for Czech families to live on farms in the New Prague vicinity without indoor plumbing or electricity (let alone TV).

                • Some of them were recent-enough immigrants at that time that they spoke only Czech (including Uncle Vencil).

                • A young boy born on such a farm could arrive at the age of six never having seen an African-American and believing New Prague to be the "big city."

                Jimmie is just such a six-year-old farm boy.  Through his eyes, we are not only exposed to this Czech subculture, but we experience his wonderment as he starts school, sees his first indoor toilet, learns of the advent of a mysterious force called television and travels to Minneapolis and St. Paul -- a metropolitan environment that dwarfs New Prague.

                Mr. Shima has a delightful ability to put us into the head of a six-year-old boy seeing for the first time many aspects of the world that are otherwise familiar to us and even banal.  In addition, he had me completely caught up in the suspense  of learning what had happened to Uncle Vencil. I looked for whatever opportunities I could to get back to this slim novel until the mystery was unraveled. 

Note:  The first chapter of Vencil, entitled "Superfarmer," won the 1987 Lake Superior Writer Series Competition for Fiction.  The whole book was published in 2005.  Mr. Shima is currently working on a sequel. 

WANT TO BUY A COPY?

Signed copies available on Amazon.com by Seller Riverdog11:

Amazon link to buy Vencil

Or, you can email frank@novelgems.com.

Shepard’s Top 10 Movies--2012

1. Django—I dislike long movies, but I didn’t want this one to end.  Extended, fully developed scenes .  Astounding writing and acting.  Lots of actors I thought were long dead had bit parts. 

2. Life of Pi—Spectacular and suspenseful family fantasy with a point.  I think. 

3. Jack Reacher—Old-fashioned rollicking private eye flick combining suspense, humor…and Tom Cruise.

4. The Way—Diverse and interesting people on a three month walk in the Pyrenees.  Wish I could have been one of them.

5. Stand Up Guys—Pacino, Arkin and Walken.  Very funny yet serious movie about aging friends facing moral dilemmas.

6. Skyfall—Another spare-no-expense James Bond thriller.

7. Taken 2—Liam Niesen single-handedly slays dozens of Albanians in picturesque Istanbul.

8. Bernie—Was this supposed to be so funny?  Jack Black would be funny in a Holocaust movie.

9. 2016-Obama’s America—D’Sousa catches Obama blundering into admitting what he’s really up to.

10. Moonrise Kingdom—Bill Murray is hilarious in the quirky, witty film.