Past Newsletters

1997

Greetings:

With pre-printed cards and labels, we’ve automated just about every aspect for mailing our holiday cards, so we thought we’d top it off with one of those tacky holiday form letters with news about all we did over the past year. First off, we posed for a family picture with our cat, Poncé (which you’ve probably figured out by now). We’re still amazed we came up with one shot in which we were all looking toward the camera at the same time. Poncé is doing well, although he had quite a summer of horking up fur balls. Our carpeting took such a beating we almost considered selling our house (but finally decided against it). We’re completing our first full year at our townhouse in Roseville and still really like the place (except for the barf stains in the carpet).

Brenda did the Iron Man bike ride in late April, knowing it would be her last bike riding for a while since she had knee surgery scheduled for April 30. She had blown out the ACL in her left knee in December 1995 playing racquetball and was finally getting it fixed. It was an ordeal for awhile after the surgery, but she did get a temporary handicap parking permit. It was really cool when we went to the grocery store or Menards, being able to park right up front. I even suggested she have her other knee operated on so we could get another permit; she wasn’t as enamored with the idea and suggested a few things I could have operated on if I was so gung-ho to get another handicap parking permit.

We had some nice trips this year (one of them even together). Brenda was to go to Dallas for a convention in May (and would have seen the Yankees play the Rangers from a private suite at The Ballpark in Arlington), but her doctor vetoed the trip. In August, she did get to go visit her friend, Deb Lund, on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound. She also went to Washington, D. C. in March and got to see a play at Ford’s Theatre.

I went lots of places and picked up a new hobby: visiting notable gravesites. It started when my friend, Paul Rittenhouse, and I went to Indianapolis in March to see the Gophers in the Final Four in Indianapolis, where we also went to Crown Hill Cemetery and saw the graves of John Dillinger and Benjamin Harrison. In June, when Paul and I went to the national convention of the Society for American Baseball Research in Louisville, we got all over Kentucky and Tennessee, visiting graves and seeing minor league games in Nashville and Louisville. Right after that, over Fourth of July weekend, I took a baseball trip out east (seeing the Mets in New York, Phillies in Philadelphia, and a minor league game in Trenton). During the days, I got from New York to District of Columbia (and a lot of points in between) and managed to squeeze in trips to 56 notable graves, including 8 Baseball Hall of Famers, 5 presidents, 2 presidential assassins, 2 secretaries of state, 1 gay Vietnam veteran (whose tombstone reads, “They gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one”), 2 vice presidents, 2 Supreme Court Chief Justices, 1 drunken Yankee manager, 1 five-star general, 1 Union general, 1 Civil War photographer, 1 good witch, 1 Marine Corps Band director, 1 heavyweight boxing champion, 2 North Pole explorers, and 1 cross-dressing FBI director. In New York I also visited the former site of the Polo Grounds, an historic baseball stadium I’ve always been fascinated with. The site, which is beneath Coogan’s Bluff on the northern edge of Central Harlem and right across the river from Yankee Stadium, has a plaque marking the approximate spot of home plate. This was enough to renew my interest in the Polo Grounds to the point that I’ve been researching the stadium’s history ever since. If all goes well, there may be a book that comes out of it.

I made it back to New York in September, this time with Brenda, my mom, and a friend, George Rekela. We went to a couple of exciting games at Yankee Stadium (Yankees won both in extra innings) and made it to Ellis Island for the first time. We stayed at the Gramercy Park Hotel, which meant we had access to Gramercy Park, which has a locked gate and is open only to residents in the area. The Gramercy Park area has always been one of my favorite parts of New York, and it was fun to finally get in the park. George and I flew home on Monday afternoon while my mom and Brenda stayed to go to Opening Night at the Metropolitan Opera (one of Brenda’s longtime dreams). They saw Carmen and also saw Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also attended the opera opening. Everyone sang the national anthem before it started (apparently to make them think they were at a baseball game), so Brenda now reminds me that she has sung at the Metropolitan Opera.

I also saw Bill Clinton (without Hillary) in November. I was in D.C. for the National Association of Government Communicators convention and went to see Clinton place the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Veteran’s Day.

Other than that, it’s been a quiet year. Happy Holidays.

Stew and Brenda

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1999

It’s been a pretty good year (meaning no major disasters or felony convictions) so we decided to do another one of those tacky holiday newsletters. Here goes.

Our cat, Poncé, is doing fine. We actually have him trained to get off the carpet and on to the linoleum before he horks up a hairball (every so often, like once every 10 times). Other than that, he’s still making a living by being cute (something I can no longer get away with).

Brenda and I are taking a Spanish class together. She was already pretty fluent before she started, so she’s way ahead of me. We try to stay in practice by occasionally speaking Spanish to one another although we’re polite enough that we don’t do this if other people are around (unless we’re gossiping about them, of course). We’re not planning any trips to Spanish-speaking areas. Last summer, though, I got to try out a few words (such as “Cuanto cuesta?”) in Mexico. My friend, Paul Rittenhouse, and I were going from Phoenix to San Diego and stopped to walk across the border in Mexicali. We took a short cut to get back and somehow missed the customs checkpoint. There was a U. S. border guard waiting for us when we got back into California. He informed us that we had made an illegal border crossing and were in the country illegally. He threatened to make us walk back and go through at the right place. He also threatened to put us in the back of his truck, which made me a bit more nervous. As it turned out, he did neither which, I guess, means we’re still in the country illegally.

Brenda and I had some fun trips this year and, once again, a few of them were even together. We went to Iceland in March. Most of the time we spent in Reykavík although one day we got into the interior and visited Thingvellir, where the Althing (the first Parliament) was established a long time ago. We were going to go farther, but the driving on the snow-covered roads in the mountains was pretty treacherous so we headed back into town.

In October, we went to South Dakota, where Brenda is originally from. She was born in Mobridge, so we explored that area. On the way, we stopped in Antelope Valley—in Grant County not far beyond the state line with Minnesota—where my Grandpa Hubbard’s family was from. My great aunt Mary, who died about a year ago just a few days before her 91st birthday, wrote about this in her book, Memories of the Pasque and Prairie, which she had had published on her 80th birthday. One of the things Aunt Mary wrote of was a bridge that crossed over a stream that connected Round Lake with Punished Woman Lake. We found the lakes and the stream that connected them. I pulled a large rock out of Punished Woman Lake. We hauled the rock home, and it is now in our garden. (Note to the Hubbard side of the family: I’m enclosing a picture of me on an abandoned concrete bridge over the stream with Punished Woman Lake behind me.)

It was a lot of fun for both Brenda and me to trace our prairie roots. We also went to the Black Hills and then to Devils Tower in Wyoming.

Brenda had the chance to trace some other roots in July when we were in Nebraska. In a cemetery in Lincoln, we found the graves of some of her ancestors who had come from Russia.

As for other trips, Brenda went to a convention in Toronto and saw an inter-league game at SkyDome between Toronto and the Montreal Expos. She noted that it was one of the few times she had gone to a major league baseball game and not heard the Star Spangled Banner played or sung.

In addition to a bunch of Twins games, I got to games this year in Tampa Bay, Miami (Florida Marlins), Arizona, San Diego, and Denver. We saw a few games at the Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix while we were there for the convention of the Society for American Baseball Research. Mark McGwire homered in one of the games, but the most excitement came the next night in the game between the Cardinals and Diamondbacks that the entire convention group attended. Randy Johnson of the Diamondbacks struck out 14 batters but lost the game, 1-0, to Jose Jimenez of the Cardinals, who pitched a no-hitter. Later in the year, I saw Eric Milton’s no-hitter at the Metrodome, so it was a pretty good year for seeing no-hitters. A couple of friends and I also made our annual trip to watch the Gophers football team on the road. We picked a good one to go to this year as we were at Penn State on November 6 when the Gophers upset the Nittany Lions, 24-23, on a field goal as time ran out.

Brenda is still at Metro Transit and has been doing two jobs—her own and that of her boss, who retired last April. Brenda was named acting safety manager. She won’t know until next year if she’ll be hired for that position or not; either way, though, she’ll be happy since she’ll be back to having only one job.

Brenda also took part this year in the Ironman bike race. The last time she did it was in April 1997, just a few days before she had knee surgery. She was really happy that her knee was strong enough that she could do the race again.

Meanwhile, I’m still at the state health department, doing various things such as training and public affairs work (I’m the “Paid Flak”) for the state’s drinking water program. I like it a lot, and it still leaves me time to write in my spare time. I’m continuing to do sports biographies for a children’s book publisher in New Jersey. This year, they came out with a new series of sports books, designed for third-graders. The books are only 3,000 words long, and they’re pretty quick and easy to write.

My bigger writing project has been a book on the Polo Grounds, the long-gone stadium in New York City that had been home to the New York Giants baseball team since the 1880s. I actually finished most of the writing last year. This year (as well as most of 1998) has consisted of checking the mailbox each day, hoping for news from a publisher (and hoping that the news would be good). Sometimes the news would be good, sometimes not. I had been working with one publisher for nearly 10 months, as they sent the manuscript out to external reviewers for there comments. Finally, in May, I got the final news from the publisher: they decided not to publish it. It was a downer, and I gave myself a week to wallow in self-pity. I then sent out proposals to another 11 publishers and got a couple of bites. Once again, the waiting game continued as they sent it out to reviewers. Finally, in September, I got an acceptance and a contract offer, which I accepted, from Temple University Press. I’ve dealt with other publishers before, but this has been the most grueling process I ever have been through with any writing project I’ve done. At least it had a happy ending. The book should be out next year. It’s primary market, of course, will be in New York, but it should end up in bookstores elsewhere, including here in Minnesota.

I’ve also continued my graveyard exploring, visiting the gravesites of notable people, especially Baseball Hall of Famers (I’ve now been to 85 Hall of Fame graves). A few years ago, I left a signed note at Babe Ruth’s grave (it said, “Babe, you’re the best”), and I found out from someone that the noted ended up in a display at the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum in Baltimore. Also, the baseball reporter from City Pages did a profile on my graveyard exploring. Brenda got quite a kick out of it since she says the reporter really had me pegged. One of his descriptions was that I had “the slightly rumpled look of a college professor . . . ” When I saw the reporter later, I told him that I didn’t think it was necessary for him to use the word “slightly.” I always thought I had a more fully rumpled look, and I’m pretty sure Brenda agrees. In case you’re interested, I think the article is still on the web at http://citypages.com/databank/20/967/article7678.asp.

Anyway, that’s it from here. Hope to hear from you all soon, either through your own tacky holiday newsletters (which I always enjoy reading) or some other means.

Stew and Brenda

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2000

I am taking the lead and writing our annual letter from Stew and me. Since Stew has always kept you informed as to our cat’s activities. I am pleased to say that Poncé has been barfing with much less frequency. For a while, I had feared that he might have an eating disorder that caused him to purge. He has, however, developed bald spots. When I first noticed these I rushed the protesting animal to the vet, only to be told that the bald spots are caused by him licking himself because he is neurotic. I paid $35 to be told something that everyone knows: cats are neurotic.

This summer I hardly saw Stew at all. He once again had a press pass for Twins games. He covers them for Total Sports, and he made it to nearly all the Twins’ home games. Also, he was asked to write a brief history of the Twins for their 40-year anniversary. The book was for kids and was a giveaway at one of the Twins games. They weren’t as popular as the bobble head dolls, but it was pretty cool.

When Stew was not at the Metrodome he was traveling around the country going to ball games in other cities and visiting state capitols and graveyards. He’s now been to every capital except Juneau and has also kept up his hobby of visiting the graves of famous people, especially Presidents and Baseball Hall of Famers. He’s now been to the graves of all the presidents who are currently dead and about 130 Hall of Famers. Stew also got press credentials from major league baseball to attend the All-Star Game in Atlanta as well as the season-opening series in Tokyo between the Mets and Cubs. He’s beginning to get a reputation with major league baseball. Let’s hope that is a good thing. (He invited me to come along to Japan with him but I went to Portland, Oregon, for work at the same time. Portland might not be as exciting as Tokyo but it was still pretty nice.)

We did get to do some traveling together. In May we went to New England and New York and saw a couple of Yankees-Red Sox games at Yankee Stadium. We also took an exciting trip in November to Amsterdam, Edinburgh, and Paris with side trips to the Highland countryside in Scotland and the French countryside along the Normandy coast. Though the cities were exciting and the museums interesting, I got the biggest thrills out of walking through the heather where 10,000 Scotsman and British loyalists were buried and strolling along the now-peaceful beaches of Normandy. I never understood the attraction of old battlefields till I visited these places and felt how heavy they are with memories.

As I write this Stew and I are preparing to go back to New York City. The purpose of this trip to promote his new book, Land of the Giants: New York’s Polo Grounds. He has a book signing set up for the main Barnes and Noble store and some radio interviews to help promote the sale of the book. For those of you who don’t know it, the Polo Grounds was a ball park in New York that was home to many clubs, including the New York Yankees before they moved to their current stadium and, of course, the New York Giants. It has been great for Stew to have a book with a broader audience than Minnesota sports history, which has been his area of expertise to date.

Our next big trip will be a baseball tour to Cuba next February. We’ll be going to some games in Cuba’s National Series and seeing other things of baseball significance as well as a lot of other sights.

For myself I will say that I am too happy for my own good. After over a year of working in an acting position, I have been promoted to Rail and Bus Safety Manager. Now I am getting more money and only doing one job. In addition to Portland, I’ve been to New Orleans to learn more about rail and bus safety. I have been heavily involved in fatigue and transit issues and have asked to speak on the subject on twice outside of our Metro Transit organization.

I hope that all you are doing well and will keep in touch even if you are crazy and neurotic like my cat.

Happy New Year!

Brenda and Stew

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2001

Hello—

Brenda did our newsletter last year, but I’m back at the word processor this season. I think the opening to the last one I did said it was a good enough year to send a tacky holiday newsletter since we had had no “major disasters nor felony convictions.” I’m happy to report that this is once again the case, although for a while this year, we weren’t sure about the latter.

Usually, Brenda and I get our picture taken together on a vacation and use that for our holiday card. This year, though, we never ended up in the same photo, so there’s no card. All you get is this letter, which, as is traditional (and you know how big I am on tradition), will start with a story about our digestively-challenged cat, Poncé. Over the past couple years, Poncé has found a way to warn us when he’s about to hork up a hairball. If we hear a low, yowling sound out of him, we quickly get him off the carpeting and onto the linoleum (which is much easier to clean) in the foyer or kitchen. Last August, I was unwinding after a Twins game when I heard him yowl. I grabbed Poncé and threw him in the foyer. But he didn’t appear to be sick. He kept yowling, rushed back to the patio doors, and started shrieking. I finally realized Poncé was mad because something, probably another cat, was on the patio. I chased off the other cat and Poncé chilled out. The same thing happened the next night. As I was reading after a Twins game, I heard Poncé yowl. I went to the patio doors, flipped on the outside light, but didn’t see anything. I turned and said, “There’s nothing out there, Poncé. What’s the problem?” Poncé’s response? He barfed on the carpet. I guess the lesson is to never try and understand your cat. The vocabulary for “I’m upset because there’s an intruder on our patio” and “I going to yak up another hairball on your nice carpet” sounds too much alike to try and differentiate. By the way, Poncé turned 14 sometime in July. We’re not sure of the exact date, and neither is he.

The best trip Brenda and I took this year was a baseball tour to Cuba in February. With about 20 others, we spent a week riding a bus through Havana and other parts of Cuba, attending games in the Cuban Winter League and taking part in other activities of baseball significance. What a great place to go in February. The weather was great, and the people down there were just as warm. As for our fellow travelers, we all got along great, and that’s one of the big reasons the trip was so good. Brenda described Havana as “a lot like New Orleans, only without the decadence—the old colonial buildings, the open season on pedestrians daring to cross the street, and the music everywhere. Havana has the best ice cream in the world. The local people have to stand in line for hours to get the ice cream, but tourists can have it in any restaurant.”

Since the U. S. has restrictions on its citizens traveling to Cuba, we went through Toronto to get to Cuba and back. Our plan was to go without the U. S. government knowing about it. However, we were intercepted by immigration officials as we were coming back to the U. S. from Canada. With Plan A having blown up in our faces, we switched to Plan B, which was to claim general license authorization for the purposes of professional research. It took several months, as well as the intervention of our Congressional representative, Betty McCollum, but the U. S. Treasury Department—the agency that regulates travel of U. S. citizens to Cuba—finally determined that we had qualified for general license authorization. That was a big relief since we each could have faced a fine of $55,000 (although the average fine for such a violation is only $7,500).

In Cuba, we visited the grave of Baseball Hall of Famer Martín Dihigo. Over the last few years, I’d been visiting the graves of Hall of Famers and had been wondering how I’d ever get to Dihigo’s. After getting there, I decided it would be possible to get to all the other Hall of Fame graves. (I’m hoping to do a book on this and thought it would be nice to complete the circuit.) I had a busy summer visiting graves, even attending the funeral of one Hall of Famer, Lou Boudreau, after he died in August. If all goes well (meaning if no one else dies in the meantime), I’ll finish them off next month.

One of my graveyard trips took me to Louisiana last January. I got to New Orleans and visited the new D-Day Museum and also went to the Aquarium of the Americas, which is home to their famous otters, Bucky and Emma. Brenda had also been to the aquarium when she was in New Orleans the previous September and saw the otters. One of the otters, whom she presumed to be Emma, was swimming around with a tube. Brenda became alarmed because it looked like Emma’s foot was stuck in the tube. She summoned aquarium officials, who told her two things:

• the otter she was looking at was Bucky, not Emma, and
• that wasn’t his foot.

Even when I’m not on strike, I like my job, and it leaves me enough time to do a lot of sports research and writing on the side. I’m also still doing “cybercasting” of Twins games, entering pitch-by-pitch data and having it sent out to the major league baseball web site (www.mlb.com), so that people can follow the game on the web. Whether I’ll be doing it again next year depends on if the Twins are still here.

I made it to 73 of the Twins’ 81 home games this season and also got to regular-season games in Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Chicago (Cubs at Wrigley Field), Kansas City, and Houston. The real highlight, though, was going to Yankee Stadium for the three World Series games played there in late October and early November. The Yankees won all the games played in New York—two of them in extra innings after they had tied the game with a two-run homer with two out in the ninth. Unfortunately, the Yankees couldn’t win any of the games in Arizona and still lost the World Series. It was a great experience, though. I had media credentials from major league baseball, so I was able to go on the field and into the clubhouse and attend the interview sessions before and after the game. They also had a lot of free food.

As for next year, Brenda’s planning on continuing her Spanish classes and doing some interesting travel, even to non-Spanish-speaking countries, like Sweden. I’m planning on attending a lot of ball games (although I’m not sure where yet). And Poncé’s planning to continue destroying our carpeting, hairball by hairball. It’s nice that we all have a hobby.

Hope all is well with you. Stay in touch.

Happy Holidays, and God Bless the Whole Doggone World (not just the U.S.A.).

Stew and Brenda

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2002

Greeting to Friends and Family,

It is my turn to write the annual newsletter for Stew and me. I shall follow tradition and begin with the adventures of Poncé, our 15-year-old cat. Poncé’s barfing was much better this year (meaning not as often). I attribute this to his fancy new water dish, complete with a tiny flowing waterfall, causing him to drink more water, and to his being frequently lubed with these new kitty treats, which he loves to eat only because he doesn’t know that they contain kitty laxative.

Last February, Stew and I went to Alaska for a long weekend in Juneau and Sitka. It rained the day we were in Juneau. It also snowed that day in Sitka and, when we arrived in Sitka the next day, we were greeted with sunny skies on top of six inches of fresh snow. We tromped through the snow in Sitka National Cemetery to see the grave of Charles Paddock, one of the runners featured in the movie Chariots of Fire. Speaking of cemeteries, the previous month Stew completed his quest of visiting the graves of all the Baseball Hall of Famers (at least all the dead ones). It’s 184 graves and a book on it is now in the works.

Another trip we took was over Labor Day weekend to all four of the Maritime Provinces—Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. In Newfoundland, we went to Cape Spear, the easternmost point in North America, as well as Dildo Pond. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, we went to a cemetery that contains the graves of some of the victims on the Titanic. On Prince Edward Island, we saw the grave of Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote Anne of Green Gables. We also had a McLobster in Moncton, New Brunswick.

There was at least one happy election this year. Stew was elected national Vice President of the Society for American Baseball Research. We went to Boston at the end of June for the national convention, where he began his term. Every morning, we began the day with a walk past several cemeteries loaded with famous people.

Prior to the convention, Stew and I went to Cape Cod. We rented bikes and rode to the beaches. We had lobster bisque at this quaint little roadside restaurant. I was not able to identify any trace lobster meat, however, since there was this smell like the bottom of an aquarium. I imagine that the remainder of the liquid consisted of the tank water where the lobsters were stored. It was almost as good as the McLobster in New Brunswick.

Once again this year, Stew worked for major league baseball (mlb.com), doing “webcasting” of Twins games from the press box at the Metrodome. He also went to a lot of games in other cities, including the All-Star Game in Milwaukee. Stew received a press pass, which irritated Sid Hartman of the Star Tribune and WCCO Radio. However, it was a good thing Stew was there because Sid had already left when the game went into extra innings, and Stew was the only one still there to do a live report with Dark Star on WCCO. Stew also tried interviewing Barry Bonds but got blown off. “Barry Bonds blew you off?” I said when Stew told me. “Who does he think he is?” Stew replied, “Barry Bonds.” Stew had better luck with interviews with Willie Mays and Rachel Robinson, Jackie Robinson’s widow, following a press conference held earlier that day.

In November we went to San Francisco. Stew was there on state Health Department business, working with the Environmental Protection Agency on a program to help teachers teach kids about the science of safe drinking water. Stew was instrumental in developing the program here in Minnesota, where it has been very successful. (It even won a national education award.)

When Stew was done with his work in San Francisco, we went to Yosemite National Park. (The photo on the card is us in front of the giant Sequoias in Yosemite.) The trees were our favorite part of Yosemite, which was made famous by Ansel Adams. Shoot, even I can take spectacular photos in Yosemite. Did you know that there is a cemetery at Yosemite Park, and can you believe that we did not stop? I cannot remember the last time that we went on a trip and didn’t stop at a cemetery. Somehow it just didn’t feel complete.

Speaking of photos, I’ve continued my new hobby of taking pictures and even entered some nature photos into a contest. I won a few ribbons, including one for the photo below, entitled “Sitka Swan.” I’m also practicing my Spanish and was president of the Los Lagos Toastmasters Club (all meetings in Spanish) and was named the club’s Toastmaster of the Year.

In other news, I sent 50 cards to my sister, who turned 50 this year. The irony is that when I was making my purchase at Hallmark, I was asked for the first time in my life if I wanted to take the senior discount.

On the home front, my year has been spent renewing friendships on the golf courses and bike trails and uniting with my South Dakota family. It is nice to remember your roots.

Happy holidays and stay in touch.

Brenda and Stew

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2003

Hello—

As always, we start our tacky holiday newsletter with news of our cat, Poncé, who turned 16 this year. Brenda thinks he has retired from a life of hunting and gathering, but he’s still pretty feisty. And he had a good check-up at the vet, so it looks like he’ll be with us for a while longer. Since we don’t yet have to worry about final arrangements for Poncé, we decided to take care of our own. Our big purchase this year was a grave at Lakewood Cemetery. This actually came up because I’m doing a book for Minnesota Historical Society Press on the gravesites of notable Minnesotans, which will be out next fall. I’ve always loved Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, and we had thought about getting a plot there before. With the book on gravesites, I figured I’d need an author photo, and getting a cemetery plot so I could pose in front of my own grave seemed like an interesting (and tax-deductible) way to do it. So we bought one.

Brenda and I took a lot of trips, and, once again, a few of them were even together. In March, as part of the book project, we visited graves in Duluth and up the North Shore, going all the way to Thunder Bay. The next day we came back to Duluth and saw the Gophers women’s hockey team in the Final Four in Duluth. We had media credentials and had a good time, even though the Gophers lost to Harvard in the semi-final round. In August, we worked our way out to Montevideo and then back along the Minnesota River, visiting sites related to the Dakota War of 1862. Interesting stuff.

As for trips on our own, Brenda had a great weekend in her hometown of Winona, visiting a couple of old friends, Patty Walsh and Barb Pellowski. I made it to New York for the first time since the 2001 World Series, when I saw the Yankees win three straight. This time, though, they got swept in a four-game series by Toronto. It was still fun. I always love New York, even when the Yankees lose. There were a couple road trips with the gang, one down to St. Louis in August to see the Cardinals with a side trip to DeSoto, Missouri, site of my first job in radio announcing, to visit the grave of Pinkney Cole, the station manager at KHAD and one of the meanest people I ever knew. I’d been looking forward to visiting his grave ever since I worked for him 28 years before. We also went to see the Gopher football team play at Ohio University in September and worked in a bunch of National Park sites as well as baseball games in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati (new ballpark there), and Cleveland.

Brenda came with me to my 30th high-school reunion in August, which was a lot of fun, connecting with old friends and making some good new ones. Other than an all-70s reunion in 1996, this was our class’s first reunion since 1983. Brenda’s stayed busy with her photography and won a few more awards, including one of a turtle. She also wracked up more than 300 miles on her bike and a bunch more miles on the golf course—a nice way to spend the summer. Much of my summer was spent, again, in the Metrodome. I’m still doing “cybercasting” of games for mlb.com, the website of major league baseball, transmitting pitch-by-pitch data that immediately goes out to their site so you can follow a game on-line. Beyond that, we’re still at our regular jobs—me at the state health department and Brenda at Metro Transit, where she is looking forward to being a part of the first light-rail journey, which will be next April 3.

My other big news this year was achieving one of my goals in life. Last February on a Saturday morning, I went to Old Country Buffet at 10:30, paid the breakfast fee and had breakfast, then munched my way all the way through lunch until dinner, which I ate. I brought a lot of work to do (but stopped short of hauling out a laptop), and a few friends stopped by throughout the day to dine with me. Somebody bet me a free breakfast that I’d get kicked out, which I wasn’t, so I got another free meal out of it for another time. I heard about this one guy whose goal is to lie under a Dairy Queen spigot and pump the ice cream straight into his mouth. Hope he achieves it someday.

Ho, ho, ho,

Brenda and Stew

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2004

Stew and I started 2004 with a home improvement project, making our home ADA accessible for kitty cats. Poncé turned 17 this year and was having trouble making the leap onto the ledge in the bedroom window, so we designed and built a ramp he can use to get up there and catch the afternoon sun. He loves it.

Early in 2004 Stew was contacted by ESPN television. They were looking for someone to interview about the 1950 Minneapolis Lakers game that they lost by a score of 19-18 as a result of stalling tactics by the other team. They set up the interview at a studio in town and said they would send a car for him. However, Stew turned down the car offer and drove himself. Later he learned that they would have sent a limo. He has never ridden in a limo. Now he regrets his decision.

For excitement this year at work I was part of the opening of the new Hiawatha Light Rail. My job was to plan how to deal with crowds so the platforms would be safe. The biggest security incident that day involved two lost children. Platform announcements gave a description and the Transit Police had them found within 15 minutes. For me the scariest incident was when my boss called me on the radio to tell me there was someone on the track. (He was watching on the cameras.) I turned around and there was a toddler in the middle of the tracks. The father got to the child before I did and all was well. The rail was open. Fifty thousand people came to see it and no one was hurt. I slept well.

Since the Yankees were only scheduled to come to Minnesota once during the regular season, Stew and I went to Florida to see them play a weekend series against Tampa Bay in May. Stew also got to the grave of Hoyt Wilhelm, which made him current again with his quest to visit all the grave sites of members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. (However, with presidential graves, he’s now one short after the death of Ronald Reagan.)

During the summer, Stew had a goal of attending all the Twins’ home games which he did, along with games in many other places. One was a minor-league game in Edmonton, Alberta, when we took a road trip to the Canadian Rookies. I always wanted to drive out across the plains and see the canola fields and the mountains growing on the horizon. Driving to the mountains was incredible, but I was surprised how the mountains just seem to suddenly be there. We saw some mountain goats who defied having their pictures taken by the angle of the sun. They are pretty smart. There was a big dumb elk by the side of the road that got me really excited. Later there was an even bigger and dumber one that had traffic backed up for miles and I got an even better picture.

However, the best wild life pictures I got were in North Dakota. We didn’t rollerskate in a buffalo herd, but we came close. The ranger at the entrance to Theodore Roosevelt National Park said that we should not get out of the car. At the campground facility, though, Stew got the inside scoop on the location of the buffalo herd. It had trapsed through the campground the night before. We found the herd, but the bright light outside and the dark inside the car required one to lean out an open window to get a decent shot. When we came across a small calf close to the road, Stew had to get out of the car. My job was to watch his back. The calf started to get up and was so cute I had to take a picture, too. In the mean time the great “karmani” papa buffalo started making noises that were a cross between a moo and a growl. I suggested to Stew that he get back in the car, but he didn’t need that bit of advice.

There was yet another attraction that got Stew out of the car. Buffalo leave really big pies, and a few were right in the middle of the road. Stew got out to take a “before“ picture, then slowly ran over it, and got out again to take an “after” picture. A little later was another huge one that Stew drove through, going about 30 miles per hour, causing it to splash all over the rental S.U.V. we had. The rental contract said we needed to keep it clean inside; fortunately, it didn’t say anything about the outside.

Before	After

I have had to adjust recently to be being the wife of a celebrity. Stew’s latest book came out in October to a plethora of media attention. This is the gravesite book, Six Feet Under. So far, Stew has been on FOX 9-TV morning show, WCCO Radio, All Things Considered on MPR, Cities 97, and in several newspapers, including City Pages and a couple articles in the Star Tribune. One photo of him at our grave site (remember last year’s holiday card photo?) in the Star Tribune showed my name quite prominently. I had to return several calls to friends to assure them I was not dead yet. I also had to get used to the fact that everyone knows I am 50 and a year older than Stew. Many of you helped or accompanied Stew on some of his quests for gravesites across Minnesota, so it has been especially fun to be a part of the promotions. Which is why we had a Six Feet Under open house in November, which produced some interesting cakes:

As usual, this letter is arriving early in the holiday season. Stew and I will be skipping much of the fuss about Christmas this year and are heading back to Florida to explore the Florida Keys and go to Dry Tortugas National Park. Think of us, and we will be thinking of you as we snorkel and watch for sea turtles.

Brenda and Stew

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2005

Our cat, Poncé, turned 18 this summer, but the weird thing is that it’s now like we have a one-year-old in the house. He started yowling in the middle of the night and waking us up on a regular basis, so our strategy became one of walking him around and tiring him out before bedtime, just like parents of a newborn, so that he’ll sleep through the night. We’re thinking about getting a treadmill for him, because we’re getting more worn out from this than he is. And all that walking still doesn’t stop him from yowling. Beyond that, he’s very healthy, so we have a few more years of this to look forward to.

Brenda and I went on a few trips together this year, including the Society for American Baseball Research convention in Toronto. The Yankees were in town that weekend, so we went to three games and saw the Yankees beat the Blue Jays twice. Brenda also went to Toronto Island, rented a bike, and stumbled across a nude beach. Over Memorial Day weekend, we went to Maine and drove U. S. Hwy. 1 all the way to Fort Kent, its northern terminus. Last December, we were in Key West, Florida, the southern terminus of Hwy. 1, so we decided to get to the other end. We really like Maine, and this time we saw a moose while we were there. In November, we went to Keweenaw peninsula on the upper peninsula of Michigan. Separately, Brenda went to Phoenix for work (where she gave a presentation on the award-winning video she had produced on distracted driving), and I went to a communications conference in Austin, Texas. I also made a couple baseball trips, including a driving trip to Atlanta during the first full week of July, when I was out of work because of the shutdown of state government. The shutdown didn’t affect me much because I had a lot of vacation time, but some of my co-workers really were hurt by it. I also went on a Gophers football trip to Indiana in November with my usual gang of traveling buddies. On the way down, we stopped in Milwaukee and saw the grave of The Crusher, who had died only two weeks before. I poured a Miller beer on the grave for him.

As for work, same stuff. Brenda is still at Metro Transit, and I’m at the Minnesota Department of Health. On the side, I’m still writing (and have a book on the history of baseball in Minnesota coming out next spring) and doing datacasting of Twins home games for mlb.com.

I continued to play on a Metro Transit softball team in St. Paul and hope to do so again next year. However, in August, in our end-of-the-season tournament, I collided with the other team’s first baseman, went flying, and landed on my right side. I didn’t think it was that bad at first, but it turned out that I broke my wrist and elbow. I managed to stay out of a cast—just a splint—even though the orthopedist wanted me to have a cast, especially after I came back after five weeks and the x-rays showed that the wrist hadn’t healed much. I told him that the physical therapist he had referred me to had been having me doing stretching exercises for the past few weeks, and the orthopedist freaked out. He had intended for the therapist to work only on my elbow, not my wrist, and he certainly hadn’t wanted her stretching the wrist. So once we got all that straight, the healing was able to take place. It was my first time playing after I had turned 50, so I guess you could say I’m feeling my age.

Brenda and Stew

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On St. Patrick’s Day, we got two new kitties, a pair of littermates named A-Rod and Jeter. Since then, the house has been full of life, laughter, and lots of toys. In addition to the large assortment of stuffed mice, strings, and grocery bags, there are fuzzy balls, jingle balls, sparkly balls, flowing balls, flashing balls, and plain old ping pong balls. The toys are spread out all over the house until they get knocked into the black hole under the stove. When one of those toys is retrieved, it achieves most-treasured status for a day and is worthy of wrestling over. A-Rod and Jeter are co-captains of the U. S. Feline Olympic Bathtub Ping Pong Ball Hockey Team. They practice everyday. They also have their own web site at http://stewthornley.net/jeterandarod.html with lots of pictures and news of their activities.

Stew has had almost as busy a year as the cats. Last spring, the Minnesota Historical Society came out with his book, Baseball in Minnesota: The Definitive History. Stew enjoyed the speaking and signing gigs, but he had to schedule them in-between cybercasting Twins games for mlb.com and being the official scorer for the St. Paul Saints. He and I found some time to go to the Society for American Baseball Research convention in Seattle and took a few days to go to British Columbia. We celebrated my birthday with all of Canada at a minor league baseball game in Vancouver on Dominion Day and then took the ferry to Victoria. Stew now has another book out, with co-author Marc Hugunin, on the history of basketball in Minnesota. He continues to visit graves of Baseball Hall of Famers, which made for a busy year. The Hall of Fame inducted 17 members from the Negro Leagues, and all of them were dead. Stew had already been to a few of them, including two on our Cuba trip in 2001, so he didn’t have to go back to them. But he got to seven of the new ones, who are buried between Washington and New York, when he went to his government communicators convention in Baltimore in May and has been making other trips to get to some of the others.

Stew’s mother and I went to many Twins games together this year, and this kept me busy along with biking and golfing. I have also been involved with the Harriet Alexander Nature Center. I am secretary of the Board. We have big plans to save the marshlands and rebuild the boardwalk so that city kids don’t grow up to be environmentally disabled. At our Earth day Wildrice Festival, some of the kids asked me if they could take some sticks home. Of all the activities we had organized for them, they liked collecting sticks and playing with them more than anything. Coming from homes with immaculate suburban yards, sticks were foreign to them. This made me realize what a great childhood I had, with rivers, lakes, and woods all within easy reach.

Here is hoping you have a year filled with great things.

Brenda and Stew

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