It's strange how connected the bits and pieces of our world feel at times...

As you guys all know, today was the first day of the Young Writer's Conference that myself, Joe, Adam, Emily, Kristen, Molly, and Erin volunteered our time at. Although I went into this experience thinking that it was going to be exactly the same as the last two Young Writer's Conferences that I volunteered at, life threw me an extremely interesting coincidence that I'd like to take a moment to share with everyone.

To keep a long story short (Joe mentioned some extremely good detail about the day in his blog, so if you want a more complete explanation of the day itself check it out), after we met our group, introduced ourselves, and had a snack, we were led into the Weisman's main auditorium where we were treated to an extremely engaging presentation by Wing Young Huie, a self-taught professional photographer. As an artist, Wing Young Huie uses his camera and photography skills to capture individuals in their everyday lives, in the everyday places where they live, doing everyday things. In relation to the Weisman's current exhibit's theme of "identity," Wing Young Huie explained that he tries to represent individual's identities through his photography by making and presenting an imprint of their neighborhoods, activities, traditions, and so on; their very selves.

As Wing Young Huie clicked through slides of his pictures, he stopped on the photograph displayed at the top of this entry that completely grabbed my attention, and at first, I had no idea why. (The above picture is property of Wing Young Huie, and has been acquired from his website for purposes of academic discussion).

I knew this man, and these two children, but at first I couldn't figure out how, and from where. Then, Wing Young Huie described a conversation that he had with this man and everything suddenly became extremely clear to me. While talking with Wing Young Huie this man said that he made the "conscious" decision to walk down alley ways with his children as they can find art to use for everything, in particular, making puppets. He then went on to describe that we can find art everywhere. He concluded by giving tribute to the "raw, mechanical creativity" of another man by the name of Fred Polnau… my Grandfather on my mom's side of the family. At this point, I was able to recall who these people were. This was my cousin Dan Polnau who I haven't seen since my Grandmother Mae Polnau's death back in 2005, and scarcely ever before that.

Dan himself fit wonderfully with the exhibit's theme of identity. From his youth, he was always interested in art, and went into professional puppet making. After recalling this detail, I recall a vague memory of him doing a puppet show, animating a large, black crow, during one of my childhood birthday parties. As a matter of fact, I google searched Dan Polnau and learned that he runs a successful puppet performing business (I know there is a word for this, but I can't recall it right now) in the cities. Here is a link to an article that MPR ran on Dan and his puppet and other art business:

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2004/01/23_robertsc_puppetepic/?refid=0

In our family, nobody really ever "understood" Dan, and I always got the sense, even as a child, that nobody really wanted to. As opposed to the rest of our family, Dan was very "earthy," didn't like to shower, use mass produced chemicals (deodorant), and just loved to live off of the earth. He loved to truly be "one with the earth." I remember it bugging my Grandma Mae to death. I remember that she would give him some money with a note wrapped around it that said something like, "Dan, here is some money. Go take a bath." I recall Dan recalling this same story during my Grandma's funeral back in 2005; she loved him so much that she made him promise her to give her eulogy. The day she died Dan was camping up in Duluth. I recall nobody was able to reach him. Finally, someone was able to reach his camping outpost, and as he rushed down from superior he composed her eulogy while he drove. When he delivered it, there was not a dry eye in the house. It was one of the most moving things I've literally ever heard. For as much sarcasm and disapproval of Dan that I recall being given to him, I feel as though he is one of the most creative souls I have ever met. Dan's identity is truly unique, and truly beautiful. He is a puppet maker. He walks down alleys to find crap to make puppets out of. And he loves every minute of it. So many of us would kill to be so happy with who we are.

Until this morning, I had forgotten many of these memories ever existed. My Grandma Mae suffered in a nursing home with severe dementia for the last 5 years of her life. An absolute living hell for her. I remember her begging to die. Since then, I haven't really thought of her. I guess I was too afraid. But my Grandma Mae was one of the most loving people I have ever known, and I truly miss her. I remember that she used to pick me up when I was a child, take me to McDonalds, and we would spend time together all day. Time and money were no object when it came to me in her eyes. Even though she had nothing, if I had my eye on something in a story, my mother had to beg her not to buy it for me. "He has enough stuff," my mother would say. "Roxanne, he's my little Ricky and it's my money, I'll do what I please with it," my Grandma Mae would shoot back. I actually have tears in my eyes as I sit here and write this, I haven't thought about these things in a long time. It really hits me hard now that it all came back so quick, all this morning.

To connect this to the class in some way, depending on what the nature of the assignment is, I would like to continue with this for my multigenre paper. As I've read Romano and Barry Lane, I really didn't believe in much of this creative writing stuff. Like my other blog post, I thought it was kind of all bullshit. But now as I sit here remembering my Grandma Mae in such strong, pretty painful detail, I'm literally dumbfounded. In this vivid flash of memory I finally understand how much she means to me, and how hard it is that she's gone. And it's not like it just happened, it's been 4 years. More on this, thank you for reading.