Christmas: Savoring the Memories

It was a quiet Christmas here in Salinas. There was no tree. There were no lights. Christmas dinner was cioppino, a fish stew originated by Italian fishermen sailing from the Monterey and San Francisco wharves in the early 1800’s.

I hadn’t recovered enough from Jeannie’s passing to shop, and there was none of that while she was in the hospital. It was the same with Christmas cards. We had plans to make our own again this year.

Still, it wasn’t as gloomy around here as all that sounds. There were calls from family and friends, and every day there were the Christmas and sympathy cards together in the mail box. My mother packed up krumkakke, sandbakkelse, and lefse – even threw in a stick of butter and some brown sugar – and overnighted the traditional Norwegian pastries to arrive Christmas eve. It did. All intact, too.

Before that I’d already decided that I was doing Jeannie no honor by ignoring Christmas, so I dug into the place where the season’s decor is stored. There, clamoring to get out, were her Christmas elves, little creatures that annually have helped us bake, straighten, and clean in preparation for the holiday. Well, I had to let them out, of course, along with the plush reindeer riding in the wooden sleigh and the mousie with the antlers tied to her head.

With our little elf friends scattered through the apartment, and the cards a few gifts arranged on the dining room table, it was almost festive. The cioppino was excellent (Murphy’s got the recipe). With the lefse...and sandbakkelse...and krumkakke, it became a quiet night in which some wonderful memories could be savored.

Christmas Day was consumed with work on a gift from Jeannie to those who loved her. After that’s done I’ll get to the cards of thanks for the kind thoughts and memorials so many of you sent.

I deeply appreciate the support of family and so many friends, and wish each and every one a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

Someone Had a Clue

In spite of considerable effort to give it away, the Vikings won that game against the Bears. I was on the right track, but wrong again (even if I didn't predict an outright loss, I was getting ready for that outcome, wasn't I?) My son reminded me that he had a different - far more accurate, as it turns out - pre-season view of the Vikings prospects. So I dug out his August e-mail. He tells me he's available if ESPN calls.

In an idle moment today (August 30) I came across the ESPN NFL power rankings. Naturally, I scrolled down to find the Vikings. And scrolled and scrolled, until foundthem at 27. I know they're not exactly Walsh's Niners but what the Heck? Below the Chiefs, the Lions? Dolphins, Bills, Redskins? I was stunned. What were they thinking? Well, here it is:

"Vikes: Whew! The Kelly Holcomb Sweepstakes are over, and the Vikings are the big winners. And their prize? A journeyman quarterback with 21 starts who'll provide backup for Tavaris Jackson."

Never mind that Johnny Unitas couldn't win throwing to Dennis Northcutt and Steve Heiden, but who cares about Kelly Holcomb? Defining a team solely by a backup quarterback is pretty thin, and in this case, way off the mark.

The Vikes have the strongest offensive left side of the line in all of football, and two very capable runners to pound behind it. That, coupled with a top ten defense (top 5 against the run) should merit them more respect the 27th spot.

Of those listed ahead of the Vikings, let’s start with the Chiefs. You want to talk QB problems? Damon Huard won some games last year, but apparently has had such a bad camp that he was one dropped pass away from losing his job to Brodie Croyle. Ok, they do have Larry Johnson and, well, that's it. The line is depleted, the defense sucks and Tony Gonzales is so far from his glory days he's getting mistaken for Carlos Mencia at the local Bi-Lo.

The Lions make me sick really. Everyone in the country must have Alzheimer's and be sun-downing at the same time. "Jon Kitna must be pinching himself. Roy Williams? Calvin Johnson? Any quarterback would love to have that combination," This could easily read "Charles Rogers? Mike Williams?" Why is this year so different? They did nothing in the off-season about the O-line or lousy defense.

I’m not sure if sports writers that think this is Detroit's year remind me of more the Heaven's Gate people trying to hitch a ride on Hale Bop, or the old woman in The Notebook who can't remember 5 minutes ago.

The Dolphins are marching out an opening day roster that has an offense led by Trent Green, and a defense led by Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor. Combinedage? 103. These guys still turn-on MTV and expect to see music videos. They remember when cameras just took pictures and phones just took calls.

Minny gets no love. They'll just have to earn it on the field.

Ashley Thomas

Been There, Done That

I’ve been notoriously bad as a football prognosticator, including that “sure fire” Las Vegas parlay of last year’s bowl games. Mercifully, we didn’t pay much for the humiliation.

At the beginning of the season, I derided the Packers for not retiring Brett Favre. I poked fun at the Motor City Kitties (who started strong, but have come back to earth), and I had nothing good to say about Vikings coaching or quarterbacking. The Bears were the defending NFC champs, so you have to give me some slack for being on their bandwagon.

My picks for the NFC North were the Bears, followed – distantly – by the Packers, with the Lions and Vikings contending for the league’s futility trophy. (The Dolphins have that wrapped up now, though the Raiders and 49ers have made them work for it.) I was pretty sure that the collection of teams once known as the Black and Blue division was now the worst in the league.

How wrong can you be? OK, there’s that parley card.... But this is pretty bad. The Bears are at the Humphrey Metrodome tonight to play the perhaps playoff-bound Vikings. The Monsters of the Midway are out of the running. The cheezeheads are celebrating the Pack’s tied-for-best NFC record. And the Lions? They’re still Kitties, but six wins is a modern era high water mark. The Black and Blue is a not-too-shabby 21-15 against the rest of the league. For perspective, the formerly much-feared AFC West is a putrid 13-23 playing outside their division.

So that brings us to tonight’s tilt in the Hump. The Chicago press is dismissive of the Bears, and despairing of any but a Vikings romp. Sun Times columnist and ESPN contributor Jay Mariotti wrote today,

“ ‘RRRRRRR-UUUUUUU!!!' the trumpet echoes in all its Nordic power, followed by an equally maddening fight song (``Skol Vikings, let's win this game! Skol Vikings, honor your name!'') when they score a touchdown or field goal.”

The Bears will be hearing the toot all night.”

Then he and five of his Sun Times colleagues unanimously picked the Viking winners in a walk.

Which is why I’m prepared for a Scandinavian loss. Call it contrarian. Call it “been there, done that.” Whatever. I remember the 1998 NFC championship game, the 1961 Rose Bowl, four Super Bowls, recent Twins playoff “runs.” Well, you get the picture. “Sure things” are too often like my prediction for the NFC North, or that parley card. Bring ‘em on. I’m ready. For anything.

A Personal History of Computing - Part 3

(This was written on Wednesday, November 28. I thought it was now time to get on with the story.)

I was headed off to the United States Army when we left Part 2. The army of the sixties and early seventies wasn’t much into computing power. Of course there wasn’t much computing power any place else, either. Perspective? We went to the moon with less data processing and storage than a cell phone. Heck, the space shuttle’s computers – all together – don’t have the power to run a good photo processing application.

The sixties were a different era in every way, including computing. I don’t know what NORAD was doing inside Cheyenne mountain, but the Army was using plotting boards to compute the trajectory of an artillery shell over its twenty clicks of distance. They (and I) were pretty good at it, too. But I’m getting ahead of myself – that artillery phase was a few years later, in the Guard. In the sixties, in Vietnam, the Army was into communications. Not cell phones, but secure radio with scrambling devices set every day with a different code key via a plunger of seventy-two different length rods. The Air Force in Vietnam dropped small listening devices, into the jungles of the Ho Chi Minh trail. In the 1st Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, from OP Phantom in I Corps we listened, then called those artillery rounds, the ones plotted on a table, computed on a purpose-built slide rule. Then we listened to the result. Entertaining stuff.

After those GI days, the United States paid for more college, and as much as I loved history, I had bigger aspirations than teaching. (Not sure how I could have been that stupid. That’s exactly what I should have done. Taught history.) I returned to the University of Minnesota, to the school of business. That’s where I ran into the FORTRAN thing I mentioned.

There was a super-computer at Lauderdale, a postage-stamp inner-ring suburb between the two U campuses. Control Data? Not sure. It was a Sperry Univac in Blegen Hall, (also known as “Classroom Building”) between the Business Tower and the Social Science Tower that I was concerned with. That computer was downstairs behind a glass wall next to a lunch room filled with studying business and social science (yes, including history) majors drinking coffee and studying, talking, eating. I was sometimes waiting for a computer program to run. In FORTRAN.

It wasn’t that simple, and it sure wasn’t foolproof. After you decided what you wanted to do, say a linear regression analysis of something or other, you had to flow chart the logic of it. If A ---> then B -----> Is B > C? Yes ----> then....well, you get the idea.

After the flow chart confirmed (or seemed to confirm) that logic, punch card the statements. Punch cards. Sometimes called IBM cards. I can still hear, feel the clunk of those heavy metal machines making chads. long before that word entered our cultural lexicon. Logic (program) cards, and data cards, all checked and rechecked and arranged just right, then put into cubby holes, where the computer operator could grab then from the other side and “run” the program

Then off to drink coffee, and wait for the result to come back. One hour, two. There it is – in a cubby hole – and immediately I can see it’s trouble. The card pack, and one thin sheet of greenbar paper just enough to ID a dreaded error, card punch, logic...something. More than once the beginning of a long night, running the damn thing until it worked. Back to the coffee, pencil, flow chart, cards. Find the error, re-punch the cards that (I thought) were wrong. Run it again – and again – until that thick bundle of green bar came back with results, pages of data, and a crude graph.

Such was computing in the early seventies. In 1973 I was on my way to work for a big corporation, a first home, and a baby. In Bettendorf, Iowa.

Eulogy

Jeannie was many things – manager, technician, traveler, photographer...one of the information age’s early adopters.

Over a decade ago, I was on the internet, before it was just “on-line,” and got a note from PeachesH. The topic was trivial, Broncos football, but we soon were corresponding. It was Jeannie, of course, a long time before there was a match.com.

She made Pueblo Blue Print a document technology leader, the first in southern Colorado to scan, plot, archive to digital media, and work with vector drawing tools. She installed a sophisticated network that ran reliably for a decade.

A local big business got a proposal to scan and archive deteriorating prints. They had no idea why they’d want to do that – then. Jeannie was ahead of them all.

Hard words never came to her. If someone or something hurt her, they just weren’t again mentioned.

Jeannie pitched a tent in Holland, took a train to Moscow, slept on the dirt floor of a hovel in Afghanistan, stood on the Acropolis. She shot lions in Africa – with a camera, of course. She spent three days in Paris without a change of clothes, never complained. Such trivia shouldn’t distract her from enjoying. Much of the travel she enjoyed so much was with her mother, Irma Jean.

She was playfully humorous, in an endearing way. Whimsical.

Everything had a personality, a story, a soul, a name. Of course pets did, and Jeannie had those, including Peaches the Elkhound, and Morris the neurotic cat.

Zeus was the undersized Hyundai that struggled over the mountains to visit a friend in New Mexico. After that there was Snobal, then Prancer.

The cows grazing the Monterey hills have their stories. On Friday, they’re waiting for the bulls to show up for a night out. Naturally, our partner and alter ego is a stuffed bear named Murphy. He was in our room on a trip to Sonoma. There was no doubt she’d have to adopt him.

She became a recognized photographer in auto racing. She counted many in the sport amongst her friends. Her peers were her biggest fans, one writing that Jeannie “...quietly went about taking the most wonderful pictures of life in the ALMS and on the road...”

I began a letter to Jeannie while flying here Sunday. Within its pages I wrote, “You’re so deep in my life, in my memories, in all the things around me, that you’ll never really be gone. You’re everywhere, in everything – but you’re not there. I’m not alone – but I am lonely. Does that make sense?”

It does. Reverend Calhoun read a verse noted in Jeannie’s confirmation bible. I got it out of her nightstand the night before she passed away. I turned to the presentation inscription, but was drawn rather to this, written in her hand on the opposite leaf at a very difficult time, when her father took his own life.

God, give me sympathy and sense
And help to keep my courage high.
God, give me calm and confidence
And please, a twinkle in my eye.

The sun shows after every storm,
There is a solution for everyProblem,
and the soul’sHighest duty is to be of
Good cheer.

Through the beauties of
Nature and growing things one
Sees the everlasting
Presence of God.

She never lost that twinkle, or the ability to see that everlasting presence. Nor should we. Go with God, Jeannie.

Services for Jeannie in Pueblo Wednesday

Jeannie Kjos, 60, passed away peacefully after a short illness at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California. She was born Jean Marie DeWitt in Albuquerque, N.M., September 18, 1947, was confirmed at Tabor Lutheran Church in Pueblo, Colorado, graduated from Pueblo Central High School and from the University of Southern Colorado (now Colorado State, Pueblo). She majored in English and taught second grade, then worked in special education.

Jeannie Kjos (then Hutchens) returned to Pueblo after the death of her father, John DeWitt, in 1978 and toook over the ownership and operation of Pueblo Blue Print with her mother, Irma Jean DeWitt, until 2003. She was an accomplished photographer with hundreds of auto racing credits.

She loved traveling, including Russia, Afghanistan, Europe and the Mediterranean, and Hawaii. Jeannie was a loving daughter, companion, best friend, and wife. She was a light in every life she touched.

She is survived by her mother, Irma Jean DeWitt, of Pueblo; husband Tom Kjos of Salinas; uncles and aunts, Carl and Olga Petersen of Florence, Colo., and Pat DeWitt of LaGrange, Ill.; and cousins, Cindy DeWitt of Aurora, Ill, and Cathy DeWitt of Albuquerque. She was preceded in death by her father, John C. DeWitt; and grandparents, Bert and Mary Petersen.

Service 2 p.m. Wednesday, Montgomery & Steward Chapel with the Rev. Dr. Rick Calhoun officiating. Internment will follow at Imperial Memorial Gardens. The family will greet friends at Pueblo Blue Print, 2nd and Court following the internment. On line condolences montgomerysteward.com.

Flowers and remembrances to Montgomery & Steward, 1317 N. Main St., Pueblo, CO, 81003. (719) 542-1552, and/or a donation to your favorite charity.