The Learner Soul
The Learner Soul was story idea I came up with after my beloved Grandmother Christine Verdi died in August 2001. Shortly after her funeral I had the inspiration to wonder what she was doing in Heaven at that particular time on that particular day. The original idea was to do a diary of a young man who went to Heaven but as I began to write I realized the story needed to be different than my original idea. 

I somehow came upon the idea of a young boy who died and went to Heaven and was greeted by his great-grandmother who died in the Spanish Flue Pandemic of 1918. I used that idea because my great-grandmother, my Grandma Verdi’s mother, died during the Pandemic. It was a story I heard early in life and it never left me. I was also able to use my grandmother’s story of the communal ovens on the south side of Dilworth where families would take turns each week using the ovens to bake their bread.

While the story is serious and has some weight to it with its ideas and thoughts of Heaven and God, I was able to work into it the name of my favorite local bar band from the time in the late 1970s and early 80s when I went to college at Moorhead State University.

Christmas Is…
My story about Christmas came about because I always wanted to write a Christmas story. This one again began as something completely different and turned into the story it is as I was able to visualize the twists and turns as it was completed.

It includes the scent of oranges as a big part of it. This was because when some friends and I drove to Florida in 1983 we stopped after reaching Florida for a break and when I left the car to stretch my legs I was pleasantly surprised to smell the scent of orange blossoms in the air. Where I grew up there was no such scent. When there was a scent in the air it was either diesel from the locomotives or the smell of pulp from the sugar beet plant. When I discovered that there was a place where the air smelled like orange blossoms it was truly amazing and wonderful.

At the time the story was written we had our first three children. The girl’s name in the story comes from their middle names in the order in which they were born.

While Christmas stories are common, they all seem to have a single theme that runs through them all in that the meaning of Christmas is always found. In Christmas Is… the meaning of Christmas is not found, it is discovered. The story is unique in its message.

A Marriage Poem
A Marriage Poem was an idea I came up with to incorporate the idea that there is no such thing as too much love. That idea first occurred to me when I saw a picture of my daughter holding our first grandchild. I felt the phrase was very powerful and I decided to try and expand on it and use it to show the beauty of two people coming together in a way in which they discover they have found each other forever and that there is no such thing as too much love. The poem is a great idea for a wedding present or an anniversary gift.

A Baby’s Prayer
A baby’s Prayer came about because I was so filled with joy as the birth of our first child came closer and closer as the days went by. I wanted to write something that would let our child know that we loved her and understood how wonderful she was to us no matter how much she would challenge us. A Baby’s Prayer makes a great baptism gift.

A Minnesota Poem
The idea for A Minnesota Poem came to me after I had written our wedding invitation and noticed the layout of the wording made an interesting design. It was from that realization I came up with the idea of creating a poem in the shape of Minnesota. My newspaper career had me moving all around Minnesota from the Red River Valley to the Iron Range to the Metro Area. There were also travels around the state to see different places and towns and physical features. This gave me a good idea of the state as well as how wonderful it was with it’s beauty and its people.