A wonderful movie that is hard to get hold of these days is "Heartland", which was funded in the 1980's by the Wyoming Arts Commission or some similar agency. It stars Rip Torn and Conchetia Farrell, who come together while homesteading in Wyoming and , first as employer and housekeeper and eventually as Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, who are real characters in Wyoming history. At a point of tragic loss in their lives, Rip (who plays the transplanted Scotsman, Stewart) says to Conchetia, "When you get what you want, you get what comes with it." That sentence struck me at the time, and has stuck with me for over 20 years now, as I see how many times "what comes with" what we want has high impact on our lives.

Dearest Readers:

Out there in the blogosphere, maybe there is someone who will like the poems I like or have written, like to hear about the people and places in my life, enjoy the songs that move my heart, share some of my view of the world and politics, and see the life of flowers and trees and birds and sunrises and sunsets that make up our life on an 80-acre farm in rural Minnesota. Either way, I'm going to give this modern form of connection a whirl for, as Garrison Keillor says, "We need to write, otherwise noboday will know who we are."