Today: the usual random dreck, folded around something I need to note. If I put it at the end, it would make everything that came before seem more important; if I put it up top, it would be a hard thing to follow. So it's in the middle and I'm telling you that it's there, just to say that its placement means nothing. There's no good place to put it anyway.

Sat outside watching (G)Nat’s soccer game; felt like it did last October, when it was freezing the first week of the month. It was cool and windy all day, with morning sun dying with the wane of noon. As the poet might say. A bad poet. He might also say “this sucks,” if he’s off the clock.

Put the Element through the wash the other day. The vents must have been cracked a jot, because the AC / Heater was shorted out again. Again. This time I’m going to the manager of the Richfield-Bloomington Honda and put the owner’s manual on his desk and ask him to highlight the passage that says I have to turn the vent dial to CLOSED before the car comes in contact with water.

Anyway. As I was going through the wash I noted something with dismay. The Hotshine brand used to have a great logo – it was an H in the shape of a flame, like those little self-aware pieces of fire that would caper around a Disney cartoon singing Donald in the tailfeathers. It’s been changed. To this:

Ugh. If there’s one typeface that shouldn’t be used a lot, it’s that one; if there’s one typeface that really shouldn’t be used in italics, it’s that. It seems that the Mister Car Wash company is folding the Hotshine brand into the general brand image, so they’re unifying all the typefaces. Since I have no idea what Hotshine is, or was, I don’t care – but I did like looking at the old logo.

Ah well.

* * *

When I toured Fargo North for my thirtieth reunion, it had been remodeled out of recognition. Just as well: if the room where the speech club met still existed, I would take this opportunity to demand a plaque. It was a small room, but when you stood in front of the speech coach’s desk and began your presentation, it shrunk even more. There was you, your pitiful words, and two piercing pitiless eyes judging every atom of your being.  You and Mrs. H.

As I wrote in the summer of 2006:

To the callow student who drew her for English, she must have seemed like a bemused bird of prey; to those of us who had her for a coach, she was the ultimate authority on the superficial aspects of our craft. How to stand. How to walk. How to gesture. She was also the one who tore apart our arguments and built them back up, taught us to construct a thesis, rebut on the fly and think on our feet, act like junior Barrymores, deliver a humorous speech or a tearjerking monologue, then head over to the Extemporaneous Speaking round and whip a defense of Israel or the 55-MPH speed limit out of our own heads in 15 minutes. She had a sense of sarcasm sharp enough to shave granite in micrometer-thin slices. When you got one of her exfoliating critiques you felt it down to the bone, and when she reacted to your humorous speech with her dry smoker’s cackle – the tenth time she’d heard it! – you were on top of the world. She treated us all like grown-ups who’d unaccountably ended up in high school, but she wasn't our peer and she wasn't our pal; if we doubted her authority, it took one arched eyebrow to bat us back into place.  She expected victory and she got it. She loved us and we loved her. She was the most important teacher of my life. 

I sat at my desk in the motel; I cracked the window. I made a pot of coffee. I got out the phone book. I had a cup, collected my thoughts, dialed the number, and wondered why I felt so oddly nervous. Well, because it was Mrs. Hansen, that’s why.

She was pleased I’d called. She read the column; she’d kept up. She was happy I’d done well. I told her what I wrote above, more or less. I felt 15 again. I felt like I should be standing in front of her desk, hands clasped behind my back (the reverse fig-leaf position, she’d called it) while she gave me a critique of my career since leaving her charge. She was dismissive of her impact, but I had to set her straight on that. She gave me confidence and craft, without which energy and ideas just fizz away.  I will always owe you everything.

We said goodbye. I closed the phone and put it on the desk and looked at it. Damn.

What took me so long to do that.

We called her Mrs. H. We didn't dare call her Rhoda to her face. I'm as old now as she was then, and I wouldn't have dared. Her name was Rhoda J. Hansen, and she died Friday, May ninth, at the age of 79, a few weeks after the death of her husband, Delmar.  On behalf of everyone who stood before her desk: 

There ought to be a plaque.

* * *

Ten pages devoted to the Lumber Exchange – a much bigger and better site. Part of the annoyance of this Minneapolis Project has been the search for a consistent interface. I’m sure you know what I mean; you wake up at night in bed sweating over inconsistent interfaces. I thought I had one, but it was boring; I’ve reworked it twice, which means going back and redoing the other sites. I think I have it down now, and I’ve pared the dead code from the legacy pages so they’re not looking for things that aren’t there.

See you at buzz.mn, where it's a Three Lance-Lawson day.