Big City Life

I was at a clinic that I care for 2 weeks ago and did not get out of there until rush hour at 430pm. About 2 inches of powdery snow fell. I took me 2 hours to get to Bloomington from Coon Rapids, 30 miles apart. I was doing 4 mph at times on Highway 169 and that is white knuckle driving with spin outs and crashes everywhere. With 2.5 million people in 7 counties, the powdery snow quickly converts to ice and black ice. Driving is the pain. That is how the one inch becomes a hassle. Grafton may seem like a dead end. It may seem like hicksville. It may seem like a one-horse town, with nothing to do. Actually, all those urban stereotypes about small town and rural America do not capture your attractions: peaceful, quite, off the grid, little traffic, little noise, little pollution, little crime, lower taxes, natural beauty and people that do not waste their lives, so much anyway, playing silly games of keeping up with the Jonses, etc. With No Daks, what you see is what you get, your word is your bond, you put in a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, and you say what you mean and mean what you say. One can keep busy and find or create culture and self-actualize anywhere, in Minneapolis or Pisek. We are only limited by our imagination and daring. One can be crass, conformist, anti-intellectual in any highrise salon in downtown Minneapolis, or bright and original on a potato farm a mile north of Hoople. Life is what we make of it. Geography is not destiny: what we can envision and will determines our destiny, our fate, God willing and approving.