Karen an I are in the process of retrenching as we live out our remaining years while navigating troubled waters. We have recently arranged for in home care and assistance. Though a Godsend, we now find ourselves dipping into savings to get by. (Not to worry, barring an economic collapse, we should be fine.) We have had to cut back on things like travel, leisure, dining out, charitable giving, and helping family members.
We see some dark clouds in the future. I retired under an archaic public pension system that virtually no one is still paying into. For now, it seems safe, but the system has few advocates left. The current wave of anti-government populist nationalism will probably create some instability in all our lives. Perhaps ours more than yours.
I expect the cost of living to go up dramatically as tariffs are imposed and workers are deported. The air and water will get dirtier while temperatures rise bringing more adverse weather events. Farmers will adapt to changing conditions by finding new ways to raise new crops. Safer areas will see an influx of climate refugees. Energy prices will continue enriching the oligarchs, Russians, and Middle Eastern potentates. They will have increasing sway in domestic and world affairs. People will continue to feel that their governments don’t care about them. The right to freedom of expression will be constrained by social pressures if not by legal means. Governments will become more authoritarian. Pressure groups will seek to impose their values on others. No country will step forward to promote world peace and human rights. Whole populations will find themselves increasingly marginalized.
Here at home the economy is about to go through considerable disruption. Tariffs will raise prices and result in retaliatory tariffs on our exports. Any jobs created by domestic protectionism could be offset by decreased sales of American goods overseas. Income disparity will continue to increase. Hunger and homelessness will be on the rise.People who can no longer afford health insurance will get sicker. Social unrest will get uglier.
God help us if another airborne virus strikes. There will not be enough mask wearing, social distancing, closures, or vaccines to protect us. Waters will rise as more glacial ice melts. Kiss the coastal areas goodbye if Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier slides into the sea.
I no longer see myself as part of the solution to the world’s problems. Like you, I have concluded that it is now every man for himself.
Good luck. I’ll see you on the other side, if there is one.
The little Cree camp in the quiet valley hunkered down in fear. Somewhere out there it was watching them. Eyes that glowed red in the snowy moonlight. A gaunt apparition with limp skin sagging over its emaciated body. It was the worst of all fears. And the Wendigo was hungry.
It was the middle of the starving time. The caribou were gone. The People were consuming the last of the pemmican. The dogs looked warily at their masters. A baby died from lack of mother’s milk. The winds howled through the tundra. Snow was piled deep. The People huddled in their lodges. Spring was far away.
Inside the lodges children played their warrior games. More often than not, the Wendigo was their foe. You can cut off his leg but he will still come for you. If he eats the flesh of a human child, he will be hungry for more. Only great warriors working together can kill one. Many have perished in the attempt.
It is always watching, its eyes piercing the darkness looking for a careless victim. It springs on the unwary, ripping pieces of flesh off even before they are dead. A whole corpse is devoured in one sitting. It is ravenous. The more prey it consumes, the hungrier it gets.
Someone saw a Wendigo trail once. It left no recognizable foot or hoofprints. The beast simply glided through the snow leaving nothing but a wake. After a mile or so the trail suddenly disappeared. Could it fly? Perhaps. Brave men looked up.
The children tired of their games and drifted off to sleep, their dreams filled with images of valiant little boys guarding the camp with their bows and arrows. Oh, the feats they could perform! The councils of the elders stretched far int the night. Finally the teepee fires lay low, their red coals glowing like glaring eyes. Only their hunger reminded the elders of the voracious ogre outside.
A hunter was missing. Lost in the vastness of their frozen world. No one knew what had happened to him. Perhaps his body would wash up to the shore when the ice melted. Maybe his bones would appear at some lonely campsite scattered by the wolves. Few dared to mention what else might have happened to him.
The hunter’s name was Baptiste. He was a Metis, a mixture of Cree and French blood, who spoke the language of the People. He had brought them traps and taught them how to catch the beaver, the ermine and the other furry creatures coveted by the Whites. Each summer he led a trading party to the fort of the Hudson’s Bay Company. There they traded for the goods of the White Man; the smoking guns, the steel arrow points, the knives, the blankets and the strange drink that made men crazy. Baptiste was a friend of the Black Robes, but he never brought them to the camp of the People. That was good because they only brought bad medicine like the disease with the spots that kills. Baptiste was a follower of their religion. He spoke of a spirit called Jesus. Jesus was like Manitou, but more powerful. Baptiste sometimes prayed quietly in the dark edge of the teepee circle, crossing his hand over his chest to show when he was done. Missing for three days, his medicine had clearly failed him.
An expedition was formed to search for Baptiste. The Shamen had cautioned the warriors. “It is out there. Do not go alone. It takes many men to kill one. It will eat the lone hunter and go looking for more. It is never satiated. It is watching as we speak.”
The warriors grunted. They were brave men. One had killed a bear with his knife. Three scalps hung in the lodge of another. They only feared one thing; the Wendigo.
The next day search began. The hunters tramped in the direction Baptiste had taken. They felt like they were being watched as they trudged through the snow. The winter’s day was bright, refreshing, and short. They made a huge fire when they camped for the night. Men took turns watching for the things they feared while the others slept fretfully. Wolves howled in the distance but the Wendigo only stared silently from the darkness.
The next morning, they found Baptiste. His frozen body lay on a limb where he had climbed to get away from something. It was undisturbed. Ice crystals hung from his beard. His steel gray eyes were frozen open and his mouth gaped in horror. What had driven him to his frozen perch?
The Shaman, his face grizzled from too many hard winters said, “Only Manitou knows. His ways are a mystery.”
They pulled Baptiste down from the tree and loaded him onto a sledge. His limbs protruded at grotesque angles as though he was still clinging to the limb. The men hoped they could get home before darkness fell. They knew they were being watched.
If all went well, they would bury Baptiste during the Spring thaw. No one spoke of what they might have to do with him if the Winter starving season lasted too long. It was their darkest fear. No one wanted to be a Wendigo.
Anne looked at the little box for the last time. She remembered the day her father had given it to her on her 6th birthday. Oh, what a joy it had been. He had found it in Berlin after the War. It was beautifully crafted from dark-grained wood. The outside was hand-painted with a floral design. The key was gold-plated as were the springs, tines, and cylinder inside. Its beauty was only surpassed by the magical tune that burst forth each time she opened the lid.
“Make sure you don’t overwind it,” her father cautioned as he showed her how it worked. “You might break the spring.”
Anne nodded as she swayed gently to the music. It had just become her most treasured possession. She kept it on top of her dresser and played it every day.
She was 9 years old on that awful day in 1957 when the spring broke. She cried for hours. Then she remembered her father’s admonition, “Don’t overwind it!” Was it her fault? Had she wound it too tightly? What would her father say? She tearfully placed the magical music box in her drawer, never to hear it play again.
The years passed and the box remained in countless other dresser drawers. The plain one at he college dorm; the used one she bought for her first apartment; the nice Maple bedroom set she and Rob bought shortly after their marriage. She thought about having the box fixed when she told Rob they were about to be parents. What little girl wouldn’t want a magic music box? Alas, Baby Mark probably wouldn’t get much enjoyment from a little girl’s toy. Neither would Tom who came later. Life went on as the little box remained silently in the drawer.
Finally, her boys grew up and had kids of their own. Anne loved spoiling little Molly, her first granddaughter. Someday the box would be hers. As Molly’s 6th birthday approached, Anne began to make a plan. She found an old watchmaker who still repaired music boxes.
“Can you fix it?” she asked anxiously.
“”Not a problem. It’s just a broken spring. A little cleaning and it will play like new.”
“Oh ,that’s great. While you are at it, could you check its value? We may need to insure it.”
“It’s valuable all right. The company that made it was one of the best. I’ll talk to an appraiser friend of mine about it.”
A week later, Anne got a call from the Watchmaker.
“I found something interesting inside the box. It’s a picture with some writing on the back. I think you should look at it before I put it back into the box.”
Anne was intrigued. Perhaps the photograph would offer a clue as to the box’s provenance. It would be a neat little element to add to the mystique of the amazing little artifact.
At the shop the craftsman sat the box on the counter. Then he carefully laid the tiny picture next to it. Anne couldn’t believe her eyes. It was a little girl about 6 years old with large dark eyes and a thin enigmatic smile. The little girl looked just like Anne did when she was six. Even the school uniform resembled what Anne had worn when she stated First Grade at St Rafael’s Catholic School. Carefully, she turned the picture over.
Anne gasped. The caption read “Anne Cohen, Mozart Schule, Wein, 1938”
“Anne? What a coincidence.”” she wondered out loud. Cohen. She must have been Jewish. Schule means school. Wein is Vienna. 1938? Was that the year of the Anschluss, the year Nazi Germany annexed Austria?
Anne shuddered at the thought of what might have become of little Anne Cohen after the Nazis took over Austria. The Nuremburg Laws, the yellow stars, the roundups, the boxcars, the camps. Oh God, what had happened to this sweet-faced little girl?
How did the music box in the picture find its way to a second-hand store in Berlin? Confiscation? Maybe some petty Gestapo official stole it from little Anne. Hobnail boots on the cobblestones, a loud knock on the door. “You have 5 minutes.” Poor Anne.
The grown-up Anne from Des Moines took the box home and pondered what to do next. It wasn’t hers. It never had been. But what to do with it?
She did her research. Sadly, Cohen was a very common name. The Goethe School was a big help as were various Holocaust survivor groups. She found more records on the Internet. The family had been interned at Sobibor in 1942. None had survived.
In desperation, Anne posted the picture and what she knew about the Cohen family on Facebook. All her friends reposted it. Their friends did the same. It went viral.
Three days later, Anne got a direct message. “Anne Cohen was my Great Aunt.”
Grammy would have to find another gift for little Molly. She carefully rolled the music box in bubble wrap and placed it gently in the box. It was going home.
Outlaws, Outrages and Outright Lies 