Jay Wrote

  Linen: The Warp and Weft of History. Jay Wilkinson, April 2025 jewilkinsoniii@gmail --- jwwrote.blogspot.com “Show me that you’ve been working over, Christina.” He leaned forward in the  rocker and touched the square of linen. His speech sounded of his Silesian birthplace.  His granddaughter pulled the piece away from the loom, carefully to keep the threads  aligned and untangled.   He rubbed the cloth between thumb and forefinger and remarked: “Very vell done!  The tight weave will last a lifetime.” “It's my first one, I want it to be right so I don’t forget, poppa. You know I sowed the  the flax seeds, weeded the field, pulled the plants, laid them out, soaked them, broke  and stripped the threads out, carded out the seeds and such.” “Yes, under your muter’s supervision and with Nana’s spinning help. You’ve done  a wonderful job. Talented nine year old, you are.” I am touching this fabric as I write. Did my fifth great-grandfather,Christo...

  December 2024 Well, that’s a helluva note. A general comment applicable to the year, I think.  Shall I just sign off now?  Nope. I actually have something positive, lovely and hopeful to send along - see page three. How about I talk about the weather? In late 2023 I signed a contract for snow removal for most of the winter as Karen and I planned to travel to NZ to visit family there.  Was it $400 a month?  Something like that.  Snow total was maybe 4 inches in total, maybe 7 all winter. $$$!  We then had lots of spring and early summer rain and then drought returned in August and September. This year we have a young neighbor who will handle the snow with a $/# of inches/days formula. His eyes got big thinking about all the money he hopes to earn.  How about I talk about seed art? My former colleague and friend Laura Melnick and her husband, Mark Dahlager, have been getting blue ribbons at the MN State Fair for many years for their seed art....

Northrop Auditorium, March 2025 The audience sat on stage, surrounding a ropeless red boxing ring. As we moved to our seats, Pitts and Tushrik Fredericks, his dance partner and co-combatant, shadow-boxed and wrestled with fast movements, some smooth, some jerky, for a long stretch, never quite touching but so close as to be a sequence of abstracted ballet moves between the two men. Moving together, their legs, arms, abdomens, backs, chests, and hands intertwined but somehow always remained separated by an inch or two as they moved across the ring. This must have been more physically difficult than moves where a hand supported a partner’s leg, a back supported another’s torso.  Pitts is strong, rounded, muscled, - conventionally and undoubtedly handsome or yes, beautiful. Fredericks is skinnier, angular and his strength is more hidden.  They move with enchanted control. Ignorant of dance details, I was glad for the program’s reference to the Lindy Hop, the early 20th Cent...

 Family and Inheritance:  The Wilkinson Case My paternal grandfather and name-sake,  J. Edgar Wilkinson, who died soon after I was born, was a private firm lawyer practicing in Philadelphia’s Orphans’ Court.  We call that probate court in Minnesota and it addresses disputes over the deads’ estates and wills and oversees trusts and guardianships.  I was told he spent a lot of time seeing to it that the needs of widows and orphans were attended to.  But I know nothing about his practice save the following story I have pieced together. In a case where he was appointed guardian of an older man, Brooks, there was much at stake.  It was alleged in the Philadelphia court filing that led to J. Edgar Wilkinson’s appointment, that Brooks was "feeble minded and unable to properly care for his property; that he was the victim of designing persons; that large sums of money had been secured and extorted from him …”  The guardianship, with its first stop in Phil...

   December 2023 I write to you from Aotearoa/New Zealand as Karen and I are summering here just before the “winter” holidays. It's an upside down world! I know that Minnesota is going to have a brown Christmas but this is something different - the semi-tropics with Sara, Don, Lily, Lachlann and many Harris relations.  We’ve been in Auckland for a week and today, the 23rd, we drove to Hawke Bay, a vacation spot.  Next week we go on to another place for more R&R. Early in January we’ll attend the interment of the kids’ Kiwi great-grandparents' ashes before returning to the metropolis.   Karen and I visited here 4 years ago, Sara and crew moved here 20 or so months ago.  Lily likely remembers visiting her great-grandmother during our 2019 visit and we’ve learned some interesting family history from Don’s aunt, Sandy.  Murder most foul!  Among other things.   It was a full day, door-to-door, to get here. 17 hours + in two flights w...