Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:20:35 -0700
No one could accuse me of being a neat freak. In my mind I love organization and my only hope of getting there is to have less stuff. My goal is to be a minimalist but it takes too much work. By the side of my bed there has been for many years a binder that started out as a journal. Over the years it has become a place that I stuffed memorable things that I wanted to save.
Tonight I pulled it up on the bed and started going thought it. There were letters from my children, talks, birthday notes,appreciation notes from ward members, lists of all the cars and trucks I had bought over the years,{it is in the 60's} etc. My goal was to throw much of it away. That didn't happen. There was a reason I had stashed the stuff in the binder and I found that even though I hadn't looked at it for years I wanted to keep the evidence that someone thought kindly of me at some time.
One of my favorite birthday cards was from Heidi.[Picture of trees and forest] Dad I'll never forget how you used to take me places---Open card--but I always found my way home. I hope we will always know where home is and be able to find our way there.
This week my plan is to start training as a Lemo driver. There is a Lemo/ bus business up on Main that I stopped in at this week. I only work 30 hrs for the school so I thought I could get a few Lemo gigs on the side during the holidays. The pay is higher plus tips. Just branching out the arms of my new career.
Bad news this week. For the last five years I have been nurturing four aspen trees up in Pine. Rob and family helped me plant them. I was told it would be a challenge as the elk and deer love to eat the bark. We dutifully sprayed them with liquid fence [terrible smelling stuff that repells most animals] for these years but lost two of them last year. The other two were getting healthy in size and we love the look of Aspen. Last week when we went up these two were stripped of all there bark. So much for my Aspen forest. Love Dad
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Random Thoughts
Subject: RE: Random Thoughts
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:11:34 -0700
One final thought on "The final resting place" here on earth and then I will give this a "rest".
I thought Terry gave the best summary of reasons to be buried in a certain place. I have lived most of my life in Arizona. Memorial Day in Arizona is almost a non-event in the Ray family. It is already hot and none of the wonderful traditions of going to the graves and getting together with relatives are practiced here. In the thirty years since Elaine's Moms death she has been to the grave, which is less than three miles from our home, three times. Her Mom is very close to her and she has felt her presence often but not in the cemetery so she feels no need to go there. Star Valley too is my "Home" but it is unlikely that my children would ever come there to pay their respects and in Arizona respect paying is a non-event.
I resent the costs of a traditional funeral and burial even though it is minute fraction of the monies that supported one in life. The billions spent putting people in the grave it seems could have a better use on the needs of the living. I remember Mom telling about when her brother Gerald died. The body was laid out in the family living room and they stayed up putting ice on it though the night until the funeral. I suppose the main expense was the casket which grandpa probably made.
One remembrance from the Fairview cemetery on memorial day when I was maybe ten years old. There was a particularly well endowed older woman there that Dad asked me to go up and ask her what she had done for him when he was a baby. I did not ask so he told me. Being the ninth of ten children apparently Grandmother Bagley was not able to nurse him properly so he got supplemented by this neighbor lady. He claimed that was why he was bigger than the rest of his brothers.
Anyway, that leaves me with the Grover hill fly over or they can sprinkle my ashes up on the hill above our Pine home. My children and grandchildren are sure to visit there. Perhaps none of my wishes will be considered and as Loren said "over my dead body" they will do what they want. On with the joys of living. Errol
From: Terry
To: Errol
Subject: RE: Random Thoughts
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:35:29 -0600
Dear Family: As I am the eldest I prefer to contsentrate on living! But in the event I am not twinkled with Christy I have arranged to acquire two lots in Afton from Partsy where Jerry , Ryan, Mom, Dad, Uncle Gene, Aunt Ida and Eugene are resting. I could just as easily have chosen Fairview, but I want to be with "my family". I never lived at the Grover Ranch, so I have no connection with it although I understand Errols affinity with it. I have always considered Star Valley "home". Yes I have lived in California, Washington, Oklahoma and Idaho, but Star Valley is "home". It is where I grew up, worked with dad and Jerry, went to school, went on my first date, kissed a girl for the first time, had my first love and went steady my junior year; graduated from High School, left for and returned from my mission. It is where I gave my wife a diamond and announced our engagement. It is also where Mom & Dad gave us a wedding reception and sent us to the cabin for our honeymoon. But I would really like to be "twinkled" Terry
From: Errol
Sent: Saturday, October 24, 2009 1:16 PM
Subject: RE: Random Thoughts
Sent: Saturday, October 24, 2009 1:16 PM
Subject: RE: Random Thoughts
I am waiting for the wisdom of Terry and Christy on this important topic. I think I will add something John and I can both take some pleasure in. I think I will hear Dads call just as well from the Grove hill as anywhere as that is where I heard it the most in the Grover house. I would like John to do a fly over of the Grover hill and drop my ashes from at least 100ft elevation. I think the prop wash would insure a good even spread. One added memory from that hill was that I shot my one ond only deer just on the top. There were two standing across the first draw. Dad said" You take the one on the left and I will take the one on the right". We dropped them both. Errol
From: Jule
To: Errol
Subject: Re: Random Thoughts
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:12:16 -0600
My Oh My but this has taken a serious note!
Errol: don't paint any more lockers and get to Wyoming as soon as you
can to get some fresh air!! Take in all the air you can in Idaho as you go.
Breathe slow. breathe deep. As Dolly Levi said in "Hello dolly": Just keep breathing!!!
Like Merissa, I too was happy that you brought up cremation.
That wasn't incarnation that you were thinking of, was it?
I have long expressed that the thoughts of being under the ground are most distressing tome
LIke Aunt Christy, I just gotta have a way to get out!
I have said to John, maybe just wrap me in a shawl and put me in a tree.
But, as to where? The Ranch in Teton Valley has my heart.
I too love Star Valley, very much, but, my life has been lived with my family in
Teton Valley. I love our ranch. I want to be sprinkled in a bed
of natural wildflowers on the hill with the Tetons ever visible.
I would like all of you to join me, as that's whar we are:
a varied and wonderful family of wild flowers with mountains
to climb or fly over or walk through.
Now, on with the joy of life while we are living!
Julie of the South China Sea
On Oct 22, 2009, at 9:44 PM, Errol Bagley wrote:
Dear Family,
You must understand that I spend five hours a day [90 miles] driving school bus. Bus driving only uses 37% of your brain except at intersections [150 per day] when it can go up to 65%. I therefore have time to think of the meaning of life and of death with the other parts of my brain while driving. Today I was thinking about death and particularly where I would like to be buried if I could be buried anywhere and not confined to a cemetery . I would ask each of you to think about your answer to that question before you read mine.......................
I decided that I would like to be buried on the dry farm on top of the hill behind the Grover Ranch house. I used to be opposed to cremation but I have mellowed to that idea and I would not mind if my ashes were spread up on that hill. Grover has many great memories for me. It is where I came into my own in young manhood. I loved the ranch. My High School years were good. It was on that hill that we baled hauled and staked a 1000 bales one day. That was a lot of hay in those days. I was watching the bale counter and immediately told Dad when it hit 1000 as we had never done that before. I thought he might call it a day. He duly noted the fact and kept on baling.
I saw an arcticle about a burial place where no caskets or markers were allowed. The bodies were just wrapped in a blanket and put in the ground. A geo-marker was put in the ground so the location could be identified electronically in the future and the body would speedily return to mother earth.
I am not discounting how much I enjoy going to the cemetery and visiting the place of our loved ones final resting place. It is very special to me. I would be interested in your thoughts on this subject if you care to share them.
Errol
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The Good Life
Dear Family, For those of you in the mist of making a living, raising children, and finding love I salute you. I have had a great life but there is no part of it that I need to go back and live over.
I find I am most satisfied with being older and having a great store of memories that I can access from my hard drive and relive in my mind if I wish and I do regularly.
To live with the pleasure of my wife, children, and grandchildren is reward enough for whatever good I may have done thus far. It goes by very quickly and each stage needs to be savored even in its challenges.
I share this with you in hopes that it will be an encoragement in whatever stage you are in to live it to the fullest. Then, when you get older like me you will have both posterity and good memories. Love Dad
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The Cat Man and the Inner city
We live just four blocks from the Arizona Temple. It is one of the most visited spots in Arizona. Unfortunately it is no longer the best part of Mesa, which brings me to the cat man. Some months ago at the end of our street on Horne a man set up shop feeding cats. He arrives before dawn and stays for hours feeding cats from the neighborhood. He appears to check them off on a list he keeps and carefully feeds and holds each cat till he is satisfied that all have been accounted for. The cat man is very thin wears a safari hat, cargo pants, and has plastic bags tied all over his bike. I am told he is well educated but for some reason has dropped out of mainstream society.
We also have Dizzy who has haunted Main Street for decades now. He carries a cross and a bible, is usually listening to music and does dances and makes unusual hand gestures as he performs crossing the intersections mostly at Stapley and Main. He is getting older and gaining weigh but still keeps up a fairy vigorous pace. Years ago I saw him dancing at Mesa Drive and Main with what appeared to be a just a large diaper on. I called the police.
We also used to have a long legged prostitute that patrolled Horne between Main and Brown. She is missing this year.
There is of course Bob of Third Street. Bob has more jokes and the greatest sense of humor of anyone I know. He works for Ellsworth and serves many of the widows in the area mowing their lawns and taking out their trash.
Such is the flavor and texture of the inner city.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
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