Great and small, sweet and sad, each day brings news

I have been thinking about Lee Colvin, whose funeral begins in a couple of hours over at Mortensen’s in Central Lake. He seemed to me above all a truly happy man, who loved his abundant family and Torch Lake, liked his neighbors, and thought life was just one interesting thing after another. I enjoyed watching him on the Township Zoning Board of Appeals and more recently on the Planning Commission. He had a gentle sense of humor and the ability to find the right question, which to my mind is often more important than having the right answer. I’m going to miss him.

Ken Krumlauf died of a sudden heart attack at the end of April. He was only 49, and it seems impossible that the gregarious soul is gone. He, too, will be missed.

I have been thinking, too, of happier things. Of a tiny little girl named Grace, who has brought exactly that to her deliriously happy adoptive parents. Of Daugherty and Elizabeth Johnson, who celebrated their forty-first wedding anniversary yesterday, and who show every sign of celebrating many more.

I have been thinking, too, of the past two nights of hard frost, and what they might mean to all the fruit farmers of the region, and to the rest of us as well. Russ Bolt says he picked as much asparagus as he could but the frost took a lot. It’ll come back, and on balance he feels lucky. John King was up in the wee hours running the wind machines in his orchards. I don’t know yet how that turned out. I’ll stop by on my way home from Central Lake and find out.

And so it goes, as Molly Ivins of blessed memory used to say. Lives well lived, work well done, time and nature taking their course. I do not know what it all means. The trilliums are in bloom.