THE CHARMING LITTLE tea set below belonged to me as a very small boy. I guess. I don’t remember it, but many decades later, when my mother was failing, she passed it on to Kathy, saying ‘You might want to have this, it was Dougie’s when he was little.’ It was evidently a gift, perhaps from my Great Aunt Mary,
OF ALL MY BOOKS, 40 of them now I guess, this has long been my favorite. At least among my children’s books, or those considered cross-generational. Even more than ‘Old Turtle.’ It is the story of my relationship with my Grandad, my childhood hero. It’s also about finding spirit in the natural world, of which we are a part. It’s
THE OLD KNIFE: When I was ten, my Grandad, my hero, bought me a souvenir Royal Canadian Mounted Police sheath knife. With this trusty implement on my belt, I could roam the North Woods of Lake Kabetogama with no fear of bears, wolves, lynx, or whatever other fierce citizens might haunt the forest. I wore it constantly (see pix below,
THIS IS MY Great Aunt Mary. Although I only ever knew her as ‘Aunt Mary.’ When she was only 17, my dad Jim and his brother Dick—due to a family trauma—came to live with her and their grandparents on the farm near Douglas, Minnesota. Grandpa Frank died not long after, and Aunt Mary became, in effect, their mother. With everything