About Me

The Howling Coyotes

My wife Becky and I, aka The Howling Coyotes, live in a remote corner of Northeast Iowa on a hilly and wooded tract of 30 acres. I am retired after spending most of my working life in psychiatry, the therapeutic activities end of it, toiling in mental hospitals. Becky is still working in the health field, now in the administrative end of things after her early years being devoted to pyschiatry and gerontology. We have a variety of interests, including bicycle riding, skinny ski-ing, hiking, gardening, landscaping, woodworking, putting up firewood for winter and occasionally attending a musical performance. Another interest of mine is mental hospital history, and I once developed a museum known as the "Days of Yore," which spoke to treatments and environment, through the years, at the Asylum for the Insane in the early days and later as Mental Health Institute at Independence.
Our family consists of 11 children and 17 grandchildren, all of whom, alas, live at distant points. We also lost a beautiful grandson, named Jack, to SIDS a few years ago.
The distaff coyote, Becky, has another interest, that of interior decorating where she has considerable talent. Mine is that of following my roots which are in Norway, as forbears immigrated from Valdres, Hallingdal, Luster i Sogn and Osteroy in the middle of the 1800's. I should also mention that I am a volunteer at Vesterheim, in Decorah,an outstanding museum with focus on Norwegian immigrants in America. My job is that of tour guide in the Friluft, which means the outdoor buildings of that facility. On a less frequent basis, I team up with John Glesne to make lefse during special events and when Elderhostel groups come to Vesterheim.

I was born west of Northwood in Worth County, Iowa, but have lived in a number of Iowa communities like Independence, Knoxville, Madrid, Afton and Mason City. You can get the idea that I have been around for awhile. As I am retired, I probably am busier than most souls as that is the wont of people who are retired. When people ask what I do, I simply reply, "I kind of hang around," or I am in landscaping." That is a modest explanation for there is more to it than that.

When I entered the world, at home, the Doctor told my mother, "If he isn't worth a quarter, he isn't worth anything." She never forgot his words, not even into her 99th year when she died, and there was probably more than one instance when she agreed with that physician, i.e., "the isn't worth anything part of it." I attended the Kensett, Iowa public school, later Waldorf College in Forest City, the Luther College in Decorah and finally ended up at Drake University in Des Moines. My intent was to become a teacher, later a school administrator, before winding up in mental health and remaining there for a career, thus validating that line about the "best laid plans of mice and men," and probably that principle advocated by Lawrence J. Peter, as well.

Tres Amigos

Well, Grandpa said he liked little girls.

Each year, from May through October, I tour visitors through the Friluft, or outdoor part of Vesterheim, the Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah. The Friluft features several buildings that were part of the life of Norwegian immigrants in America, plus a couple from the Motherland.