NOVEMBER 9th, 1940

It happened at the IHS Hospital, Red Lake Reservation, Beltrami County, Minnesota, USA that I left my mother's womb. It was 9:30 AM. The great and terrible Armistice Day blizzard was on the way and when it hit on the 11th Mom and I were still in hospital. I was put into a warm safe incubator with baby boy Graves who did not survive. My Grandparent's always said that I'd been born "the winter of the great storm". So when I got to St Stephen's Parochial School in Mpls that's what I told the teacher. She was upset because I didn't know my birth date. I went home that day to ask my Grandmother when I was born. She said "the winter of the great storm." So I had to wonder what was wrong with the teacher who didn't even know about the great storm. My Grandmother explained that the date of my birth was November 9th, 1940, but I was "born during the winter of the great storm". They never let me forget the baby boy who died. He was like my little lost brother. This journal will be my attempt "to meander (my) way through fields of the future" (Jim dale Huot Vickery). To help celebrate the arrival of my seventh decade I will be following Mae Sarton's journal. On Nov 9th of her 70th year she wrote, "I am fully aware that the presence of a muse literally opens the inner space, just as November light opens the outer space... The clutter falls away." She promised herself "to make every effort to live in eternity's light, not in time."