Day before yesterday George called and asked me to take him to the hospital. Too much pain. Long waits. Waiting rooms. Emergency room cubicle. Transfer to regular room. Added diagnosis: throat cancer too. Holding his sister's hand. Drying tears.

I had a fine time with my friend from high school days. In sending him a note to that effect I said something like sometimes the old friends are the most important ones. I'm also noticing a peculiar something about this blog: the comments and the e-mails that come to me in response to the blog have become important. I have a sense of connection with a few people that I just wouldn't have or at least wouldn't maintain without my blog, and, in a few instances, without reading theirs.

And speaking of connections, today I leave for the state Elks convention. I am once again the leader of the local lodge, so I am obligated to attend, but I've been going when not so obligated for many years--fifteen, in fact. The cool part of the conventions is that they are attended by the leaders who try to effect good work in their communities. These are the civic-spirited activists. Being around them sends me back home energized to try to do good work. In July I'll attend the national convention again--the third time for that one. Always the agenda is about what we can do to serve the country's young people and the country's military. Though I don't like the penalty I have to pay to do these things (I hate the stupid titles for the offices: my current title is "Exalted Ruler," which still makes me shudder even though I carry it for the third time and have been in the organization for twenty-nine years), the satisfaction of participating in something good is worth the penalty.

Off to swim, lunch, and hit the road. Back Sunday night.

George goes for a test tomorrow to see whether the surgeon can cut out one lung and the ribs on one side of his chest in hopes of saving his life.

Allan is in the Mayo complex today after suffering a heart attack. He awaits heart surgery this week.

One of the accompaniments to reaching late middle age is that your friends start dropping.

Meanwhile, I committed to doing a role in an opera this August and to trying to help establish a Bemidji Opera Company for next summer. After a bike ride and a walk I will go to the pool in a few minutes where I will swim a vigorous mile. After that I will have a light lunch, come back to school to help out a graduate advisee, and then greet an old friend from Cromwell High School teaching days. In light of George and Allan, I will try to enjoy my gifts and my health.

Is it weird to feel guilty about being fortunate?

I've been the social fellow this week. Old friends of the family came to visit for a few days and are leaving later today. Another old friend is coming this afternoon to visit for a couple of weeks while he looks for housing, as he is moving back to town.

The friends that have been here this week are people who were my parents' friends long before I was born and have remained in close contact since 1943. He was a music professor here at Bemidji State all the years Dad was an English professor. They shared an interest in music and in piano performance. She was also a concert pianist. There was a lot of piano played at home during my childhood.

Last night my mom and I invited another retired music professor, who happens to be my current voice teacher; his wife, who is a retired public school music teacher; a mutual friend who has long been an adjunct voice teacher here at the college and has done many performances with my teacher; and his wife, a music lover though not performer, to join our guests of the week for dinner and conversation.

Do you suppose we talked about music?

Then we did performances. Some hadn't heard me sing before; some had. Some had before I started my recent training. All were complimentary. I played accompaniments for other performances. A grand time.

Once the evening guests were gone the two who are staying with us alternated giving piano performances and then I finished the evening with half an hour of sightreading Broadway songs. My sightreading reportedly impressed the piano performers, which was an unexpected bit of flattering, as I have no piano training whatever.

I haven't had so much music in the house in years. I reveled in it.

I am trying to learn an aria from Gounod's Faust. I've learned the music; I am struggling mightily to learn the words. I can, with some effort, learn English or German songs. I can, with some greater effort, learn Italian ones. So far, with great effort, I'm failing to learn the French. I can pronounce it. I can't remember it. Two rehearsals a day most days for almost three weeks and I can't get through the first phrase without missing the middle of it.

My mind has curious flaws.

Blogger wouldn't let me on yesterday.

Miss Bishop requested that I be one of her pallbearers, a duty and privilege I will perform this afternoon. After the funeral I have a hospital visit to make.

On Monday afternoon my friend of many years was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was told that it was localized, and scheduled to meet an oncologist on Wednesday. Immediately after that appointment he told me the oncologist said it was "advanced," and had moved into his neck and chest muscle. The oncologist scheduled an appointment for a second opinion with another oncologist for today, Friday, and for a procedure to look at the lung via scope on Monday. An hour ago George's sister called to say that in today's exam they discovered George has a cardiac arhythmia and may not be strong enough to go through the scoping. Right now he is undergoing cardiac testing, after which he will be admitted to the hospital.

After the funeral I go to the hospital. A reversal of the usual order.

My kindergarten teacher, Marie Bishop, died yesterday. In 1959 Miss Bishop was my first contact with the world of school, and she did that wonderfully. She made me feel important. She made all of us feel important, and that what we did in school was both serious work and delight. I still feel that way.

An anecdote: My family moved away from Bemidji when I was ten. I returned to teach at Bemidji State in 1990, when I was thirty-six. That fall, as I was waiting in line to enter the movie theatre on the west edge of town, Miss Bishop came out of the theatre, saw me, and said "Hi Mark. How's Normie?" Norm was my brother, who had been Miss Bishop's student in 1952, seven years before I was. She had never seen me as a grownup, never seen me with a full beard, yet at first glance she knew me and my name and who my older brother was nearly thirty years after her last contact with either of us.

I asked her how she could possibly recognize me after all those years. She said "Oh I remember all my students. They don't change much, they just get bigger. I remember that the girls all wanted to walk with you and hold your hand when we lined up to go to lunch. Janice Hogansan and Beth Nordheim and Karen Martin would argue about whose turn it was."

I don't remember that, but Miss Bishop did. She never had children, yet she knew more children well than nearly anyone has. She was a blessing in our lives.

Yesterday I was in a fishing tournament. My dermatologist would hate the major result: I am now deeply tanned. I can't help it; I slobber on sun block and turn brown anyway.

The lesser result: I finished in the same position I have finished in every golf tournament I've entered. The difference: yesterday I shared last place with many people who also didn't catch anything. In golf tournaments I have sole possession of last place.

Resolution: more fishing tournaments.

I'm in the office today for a thesis defense. Starting last Friday I have been out at the resort my family goes to each year for holiday fishing and playing in the water with my nephews, now three and six. Back Tuesday night, Wednesday and Thursday catching up on homelife errands and Elks Club responsibilities.

Today's thesis is by a student who started seven years ago and quit just before actually finishing, then returned after a two year hiatus. Much of the work is work she did in classes she took from me in 2001 and 2002. When she submitted the thesis I was surprised to see how easily I recognized the work and how well I remembered it.

I read about seven hundred student-authored essays a term. That extends to perhaps twenty thousand of them in my career so far. Yet all five of the essays that my student wrote for my classes four and five years ago I remembered clearly when I encountered them again last month.

I can't remember what I did this morning or what I'm supposed to do this evening, but I remember papers written five years ago by a dropout I haven't seen in three years. I remember picturing her in my mind as I read them the first time. I remember some of the things I thought about them and some of the things I considered telling her about them and whether this comment would be helpful or hurtful and whether I should have a conference with her about this particular stuff and just write out that particular stuff having to do with what she might do to improve the work. I remember thinking about what kind of voice I needed to have in my written responses to her. I remember thinking about her shy wit and personal reserve.

How do I remember this stuff? One student in thousands; five papers in many thousands. Yesterday I couldn't remember my neighbor's name. Sometimes I forget which road gets me to where I want to go, even though I took it just the previous week. I once forgot my brother's name for a minute. I often don't remember conversations I had the day before.

What's with my weird memory?