Death And Globetrotting (with Jon Tevlin)

[00:00:00] Just at that moment, the psychiatrist and the social worker walked in and I looked at him and I said, what am I doing here? And they said, well, we've been looking at your charts and we kind of wonder the same thing.

[00:00:24] Death and Globetrotting. I'm Victor M. Sweeney, licensed mortician, and I'm here today to talk about travel and not necessarily the places that we go, although that will come up with our guest. But really talking about how we travel, how we travel with ourselves. What's that baggage we bring along with us? The person who we always have inside of our head that we can never escape from.

[00:00:55] Today, we have on the show Jon Tevlin. He's a retired journalist of 30 years. He spent 20 years at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Fun fact, he went to high school with Prince. But Jon is a man who stumbled across my path not even a month and a half ago. He wandered into my little town and bought a copy of my book and we got in touch with each other and found that we have honestly literally nothing in common.

[00:01:25] Jon was a writer. He's opened the door to travel on practically every continent. He spent months of his life abroad. And yet, the same things that we all deal with. Life, death, the person we are, maybe the person we become. These are all things that have shaped his life just before I met him. Before we get into our interview, which I think you'll enjoy for its strangeness and meandering way,

[00:01:54] I want to answer some questions. So without further ado, let's pick some out. Here's a question from Jason Milliken from YouTube. Can somebody have part of their body buried and some of it cremated? Okay, this is an interesting question. I would say technically, yes.

[00:02:17] Oftentimes, if you have a limb amputated, that limb will be disposed of in biohazard, often cremated. See, I do believe in some places they will let you request to have that cremated portion back. I do think sometimes they also will let you bury it, although that is rarer.

[00:02:39] But as something done post-mortem, I am not allowed under the stipulations of my license to desecrate a body, if you will, right? To post-mortem amputations. So, you know, cremate the left hand but leave everything else whole. Even in my state, I'm actually not allowed to remove teeth. So oftentimes, I'll get questions about the gold fillings in teeth, right? Are those something we can have back?

[00:03:07] And in my state, at least, you need a dental surgery license to remove teeth post-mortem. So if you have any hopes, Jason, of having your right foot cremated but the rest of you buried, we may have to wait for a law change or two or three or someone who really wants to cut you apart when you die. So good luck, my friend. Interesting question. I like the way your strange little mind works.

[00:03:37] Here's a question from Chill Dude. Mr. Sweeney, here's something I've always been curious about. All the people who died in the 60s and 70s and were buried in 100% polyester suits or dresses, would those clothes still be intact? In fact, I absolutely shudder at the thought. Chill Dude, I've had this thought myself. You'll be walking through the cemetery. And I just picture in my mind's eye. What is beneath the ground?

[00:04:05] A short three, three and a half feet beneath my feet, there is a box. And in that box, there is another box. And in that box, there is a body. And in that body, what does it look like? Does it look the same as the day it was put in? Is it skeletal remains only? Is it some awful conflagration of the two? And then what are they wearing?

[00:04:29] I've often had the somewhat magical thought that oftentimes we bury our dead shoeless. Family will bring in clothes, undergarments, glasses, jewelry. They don't often bring in shoes. And so they're buried without their shoes. And the irony is not lost on me that my family and I, little kids, we spend a lot of time in the cemetery just running around and playing because it's a safe place to do that.

[00:04:55] And my kids will be running around barefoot above the ground while there are hosts and hosts of people that have gone before them barefoot underground. So to the question more exactly, I think those polyester suits are still sitting there and still powder blue, baby. I think they look exactly the same as they did the day they were put in. And maybe they are bedecking skeletons. Maybe. But in some ways, it's the sign of the times.

[00:05:21] It helps you place them in their point in time in which they lived. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Thanks for the question. Thank you all for the questions. I'm so grateful for them. If you would like to send a question to have answered on the show, the best way to do it is to send it to deathandpodcast at gmail.com.

[00:05:48] Or if you're feeling brave, you can leave a voice recording at deathandpodcast.com where we can hear your lovely, sweet voice as it comes over our listening devices. Without delaying much longer, I want to jump into our interview. And I don't really believe in trigger warnings. Okay. But I do want to say that we talk with John not just about traveling all over the world.

[00:06:16] But we talk a lot about sadness and about self-harm. We touch on things like drug and hallucinogenic therapies. We talk about death, of course. But we also talk about discovering that one has a new life. One that is unexpected. And I think very lovely. And it should give you hope, dear listener.

[00:06:44] If you were in a dark time yourself, that things could start anew for you too. And in ways that you don't understand yet. There are good things coming for those who know where to look for them. So have heart. And enjoy the interview.

[00:07:14] I want everyone to welcome today to our podcast a brand new friend of mine, John Tevlin. John was a writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years. 30 years. Probably 20 at the Star Tribune. And he's recently gone through some changes. But I want to talk about those. I want to talk about journalism as a discipline. And really, I just want to get to know you again. I looked.

[00:07:44] We only got in touch with each other June 11th of this year. We started talking. And I'll just give our, before I ask you 100 questions and sit back and listen to your wisdom. I want to tell people how we met. You wandered into the little coffee shop in my town of Warren, Minnesota. You bought my book, Very Graciously, which was on the shelf. And then I got a call to the funeral home from you saying, hey, we need to meet.

[00:08:14] And so we got together. I'd say less than a week later, you came over to my house for lunch. And that half hour conversation turned into lunch with your children and wife. And that was a great afternoon. It was. It was. So, John, tell us, how the hell did you end up in the coffee shop in Warren, Minnesota? The bigger question is, how the hell did I end up here? Which is the first question.

[00:08:40] When my current wife and I walked into the church, the Catholic church, a man from the church rushed over and sat down next to us and said, I can't wait to hear how you got here. It's a roundabout kind of journey. But we got here. The end game is that my wife, who we just got married in February on Valentine's Day and the day before, actually, went to Africa. She is African. She's from Kenya.

[00:09:10] We had met almost two years before that. And she got a job offer in Thief River Falls as a psychiatric nurse practitioner. And she couldn't pass up the job. So within three months, we got married in February, went to Africa for a month to meet her family and then came back and moved to Thief River Falls. So that's where I am.

[00:09:36] And as my therapist said, when I checked in with her, she just said, can I just pause for a minute and go, whoa, what has happened to you in the last three years is kind of remarkable. Because it's a completely different life than I would have ever thought of or imagined. Well, and this is what really attracted me to you in the first place is that you you've lived two lives. And I want to talk about your first life. Yes.

[00:10:06] In Minneapolis. Definitely two different lives. Deep into journalism. So how how did you start? How did you get into the world of writing? Because I've recently stumbled into it and I'm just winging it. You're you're a pro. You're winging it pretty well. Thank you. I read a lot, which helps. But how did how did you end up as a journalist? How did you end up? How did you start? How did we get there? I was started.

[00:10:29] I was majoring in psychology, but decided to take a exchange to London and went to school at the University of London when I was 19. And found out all the tests were written tests. They were no question and answer, multiple choice kind of tests. And I found that I did really well. And one of the teachers, he was a teacher from Oxford at the time, pulled me aside and he said, have you ever thought about being a journalist? And I said, never.

[00:10:59] And he said, I think you should think about it. And so I went back and went to the University of Minnesota journalism school and decided that's what I was going to do. And took right after college, I went off to teach in South America and then came back and started my career at a small town newspaper. It was a daily, but new old Minnesota. So not much bigger town than where I live now. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:26] And did, you know, as you, I think those of us that stumble into professions, it's really lovely. I think because when you don't have necessarily a preconceived notion of what you should do, I think you do find the thing you ought to do. Have you found that to be the case? I think so.

[00:11:46] Everybody I met at newspapers was the type of kid who started the newspaper on their block and interviewed people and put out newspapers. And I was never that kid. They were always the kids that wrote for the yearbook. That was not me. I was partying and doing other things. And that was never me.

[00:12:11] But it turned out that I was pretty good at it and it got me my first job. And then pretty quickly from there, moved up to a couple of different newspapers and started writing magazine articles, both locally, regionally and nationally. Took a big trip to New York City just when I was in my early 20s and sent out cover letters to every big magazine I could think of and said, I have ideas for you. I'm coming to New York.

[00:12:41] Could we meet? And three or four, I think four of them said yes, which terrified me because I had no ideas. I had to come up with story ideas. And I actually went to New York City, never thinking I would get one bite. But I think I came home with three assignments. And the first one I remember paid me for Glamour magazine of all places, paid me over $5,000 for an article. And I thought, this is easy. I am in.

[00:13:11] I'm in this rarefied air of magazine writers. And as it turned out, the editor soon lost her job, as they all do within two years. And you have to start all over again. And so I didn't get another assignment from New York for a while. And so, but meanwhile, I did travel stories for different travel publications that were pretty popular at the time and still are some of them. And you've been, you have been all over the world. Yes, quite a bit.

[00:13:40] The thing about funeral service is like you are very, very tied to your locale. Right. Right. I can't, I can't travel to Spain and do a funeral. Doesn't work like that. No. Do you, do you, I have to believe you've appreciated like the freedom that your profession actually gives you. Like you're, you're, you're chained to the words, but everything else you can, you can figure out on the way.

[00:14:03] Over the years, I think I've been very clever at figuring out someplace that I wanted to go and then figure out a business reason, journalism reason to go there. So that a, I can either get it paid for, or at least write a story while I'm there and write it off on my taxes. So I got pretty good at it. And my first wife I met in college and we both decided we wanted to go to Cuba.

[00:14:32] And at the time the Russians were basically in charge of Cuba. And so I needed to get a journalism visa. And so I was working in the town of Rochester, Minnesota, home to the Mayo Clinic. There you go. I discovered that the head heart cardiologist for the Mayo Clinic was from Cuba. And so I thought, I wonder if he has a counterpart in Havana that stayed. And sure enough, he did.

[00:15:02] He had one of his friends was the head cardiologist at the Havana hospital, which is very renowned. So we had these two people and I proposed a profile of the guy who left when Fidel Castro took over and the guy who stayed and how their lives were different. And all my colleagues were, how did you get a trip to Cuba? And I said, I asked. And I came up with a good idea and it turned out to be a good story. Really interesting.

[00:15:29] So I've done that over the years many times. And so you met your first wife when you were very young. Tell us about her. We met in an international travel work study job. What's her name? Ellen. Ellen. And so we met there and we're just friends for a long time. Never dated really or anything. And we were both in journalism, never had classes together. She tried journalism.

[00:15:58] She got an internship at a small newspaper in Brainerd, Minnesota. Oh, yeah. He did it. And so she went into public relations. But along the way, both had bad relationships, found out that we, you know, kind of hit it off and got married. We actually eloped to Mexico because we didn't want to have a big ceremony and pay for it. And in Minnesota, everybody started telling us what kind of wedding we should have. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:26] That happens day one on engagement, actually. And it really put us off. And so she said, you know, why don't we go, why don't we just elope someplace? And so some friends happened to invite us to their condo in Manzanillo. And we said, how would you feel about us getting married while we were there? And they said, well, that's great. You know, and so I sent a letter down to the Justice of the Peace saying, we'd like to get married. Could we have someone come out to our condo on the beach? Yeah.

[00:16:56] Never heard back. So we just, my wife bought a wedding dress and I bought a suit. We brought it with us just in case. And sure enough, she showed up when we went to the city hall and found out and said, can you do it Friday evening? And she said, yes. And so we got married on the beach. What we didn't know is that in Mexico, you need four witnesses. And we only had our two friends. So we actually went combing the beach.

[00:17:23] We found a couple of Minnesotans and said, what are you doing Friday? Would you like to stick up for us for our wedding? And they said, yes. And then the next day they knocked on our door and said, we're with a tennis singles group. And it's just the two guys. And he said, and the rest are women. And they were wondering if they could come to your wedding. And so we had probably 20 people we had never met. And they showed up with presents.

[00:17:54] And I got a notebook from the drugstore down the block and had them sign in. And that was our wedding. And then we went out to dinner at a beautiful place. People stood up and clapped for us. And then the magic thing was, is that we asked a guy outside the restaurant. Is there some place we could go dancing? And he said, yeah, there's a place just outside of town that I could take you to. I've got a van.

[00:18:23] So we hop into a van of a stranger. Four of us all dressed up. And he drives us out into the dark in Mexico and drops us off at this place. And there were a few cars there, but not a lot. And we knocked on the door and it said, closed for a private celebration. And so the woman came to the door and said, we're closed. But she said, did you just get married? And we said, yeah. She says, come on in.

[00:18:51] And it turned out to be the graduating ceremony for the Folkloric Ballet of Mexico. And so they danced for us all night. So I don't know how you plan something like that for a wedding, but I couldn't imagine any better wedding. And how many years were you and Ellen married? So we were married 35. 35 years. And then you lost her in 2023. Am I remembering that correctly? Yes, about three, a little over three years ago. About three years ago. Yeah. Can you tell us about that?

[00:19:21] I hate to, I mean, no, actually, I don't hate to pry into hard things. It's actually something I really love. This is what you do. Yeah. But tell me about that. Yeah. She was diabetic for childhood diabetes. So all the diseases that go along with that. Yeah. And she had, it ended up being kidney disease. And so she started dialysis. Actually, I retired early. I retired at 58. In order to take care of her, it became more clear.

[00:19:50] That she needed more help. And so we purposely traveled all over the world early in our lives because we knew that she probably wouldn't live very long. And they told her when she was a kid that she would be lucky to hit 35. Wow. And so she was, I think, what was she? 71 when she passed finally. But it, so it was difficult.

[00:20:19] So I stayed at home and we still traveled when we could inside the United States. And then she just kept deteriorating. And she was on dialysis for four years, I think. Oh, wow. So I took her to dialysis three to four times a week. And basically then she was in a wheelchair and then on oxygen. And so it went on for three or four years that I was pretty much her sole caregiver.

[00:20:49] And it was wonderful because she never complained. But it was also really difficult. And it was a lot of stress. Was there a difficulty in that? You know, people talk about that a lot. But is there a difficulty in that she didn't complain too? Like, did you feel a lot of that fall back on you? Yes. I figured, how can I complain if she doesn't?

[00:21:14] And why in the world would I be at all put out by this when she's going to try to do something that she probably shouldn't have tried to do? And then I would get mad. We had traveled someplace warm for the winters for several years. And at one point, she was very sick. She was in the hospital with pneumonia. I knew she didn't have very much longer. She knew she didn't have very much longer. And she said, well, they're going to let me out tomorrow. Are we going to Savannah on Saturday?

[00:21:44] I looked at the doctor and I said, we shouldn't go to Savannah, should we? And she said, she looked at my wife and she said, if I told you you were going to die on this vacation, would you go anyway? And she said, yes. So the doctor looked at me and said, yeah, I'd go. And she died on vacation. Wow. So that's, you know what? That's a good doctor though. That was a great doctor. That was a great doctor. Yeah. Although she did not have to carry the oxygen. No, that's okay.

[00:22:13] My wife in and out of the hotels and things. But it was amazing. We rented a nice house in Savannah. Stayed, I think, six weeks. And we were planning to stay two months and she died six weeks in. But we had spent the time looking around Savannah. We checked off all the best restaurants that she wanted to see. And I think it was the night or two nights before she died. She said, have we done all the day trips that we wanted to? And I said, yes.

[00:22:42] And she said, have we gone to all the nice restaurants? I said, yes. She said, okay. And then she died like the next day. And the doctor came in and said, I don't see that. You know, she was hospitalized down there. And the doctor said, it's going to be a while. You're going to be here a while. I just don't see how you're going to leave. Your kidneys are failing. And she just said, well, then let's just call it a day. So she said, I've had a great life. My husband's here with me. That's all I need.

[00:23:13] And please just give me a big shot of morphine. So you went back home. You had her funeral. Did you take up writing again at that time, John? Yes, I did a little bit. I'd been writing a little bit off and on, but not very much for several years. But we didn't really even have a funeral. She wanted a party. Yeah. So we rented a place. We did not do it in a church. They were both Catholic.

[00:23:42] And we did it in a very nice hall, a club that was near our house. And so we did that. I went into a terrible depression after she died. I thought that because we were prepared for this for so long that she was going to die, that it would be a lot easier than most people think and most people face. But I was wrong. It was just as hard.

[00:24:08] I had that moment of driving home, I remember, from Savannah by myself thinking, I'm free. I can do anything I want. And that lasted about a day. Wow. That I thought, I have complete freedom. I can do whatever I want. I don't have to take care of her anymore.

[00:24:34] You know, I haven't traveled for years except for these small trips in the States. And she had said before she died, I said, honey, what do you want me to do when you die? She said, I want you to travel. I want you to go to all the places that you wanted to go to that we couldn't go. I want you to go to Spain and then maybe Portugal and wherever else. Just, you know, take the money we've saved and go enjoy yourself. Did you do that? I did. Yeah. I did.

[00:25:04] And it was kind of miserable. Really? I went to Spain. I went to Madrid where I had a beautiful apartment in the Las Letras district of Madrid. It's really great. And had the French doors that opened up and looked out over the plaza. And I thought, you know, I've got a nice bottle of wine, sat there, and I just cried. Because I was alone. Yeah.

[00:25:34] And I thought this would heal me. I thought it would help. But it just reminded me every evening. During the day, it wasn't so bad. I'd go to museums. I'd go walk a lot. But at night, I didn't have anyone to talk about it with. No one to deconstruct the day. And that's kind of the coolest part about traveling is you have someone with you where you can say, wasn't that amazing? What do you think of that artwork? What did you think of that play? Whatever it was.

[00:26:04] And I didn't have that. And I was pretty miserable. Isn't that interesting? So you can build a day by yourself, but you can only deconstruct it with two people. Yeah, I could. I think some people can. And I think I found that I was not one of those people. And my wife said before she died, she goes, now, people are going to tell you, wait two years before you marry, before you even date anybody. She said, please do not do that.

[00:26:33] She said, I hope you wait a couple of months, but please. Because you are no good at all. It's very pragmatic. I like that. She said, wait a couple of months. But you're not that person. She goes, you will not do well by yourself. But she was really right. I did not do well at all. So I came back from Europe and spent a lot of money. First class. Went all over.

[00:27:01] But I knew people knew that I was struggling because I was posting some things on Facebook. And at one point, I was describing my journey. And it just dawned on me at some point that why am I going back home? My condo was paid for. I can just sit there. I can just continue to travel around the world. Yeah. If I want to. And I just said, why should I even go home? I had no reason.

[00:27:28] I got two calls, one from my brother and one from my wife's cousin saying, are you okay? Wow. And then, so I got home. I was still restless. So I went to Puerto Rico for a week. Got a beautiful condo overlooking the beach. And pretty much drank rum and looked out at the beach and cried for a week. And I came home. And that was kind of hitting the lowest point.

[00:27:55] And it wasn't long that I was, after that, that I was told to go report to the ER. Wow. The site yet ER. And I think your story, what's interesting to me, right, is you hear all the time, you know, kind of like people's goal is to travel, right? They're like, I don't want X. I don't want Z. I don't want to be tied down. I don't need kids. I just want to travel. Yeah. And I think travel is good. Like, I love traveling when I get to.

[00:28:25] But the fact that you can sit in Madrid and, like, look out over beauty and have the finest bottle of wine and still be lonely is really a testament to the fact that maybe, like, while it's good, it doesn't fill in all the gaps. It doesn't fill the gaps. And it wasn't what I was looking for. And I didn't know that until it happened. And then you're far away from everybody and everyone around you is having fun. And you're sitting in a corner.

[00:28:54] They give you the crappy table in the corner because you're alone. And you sit and watch everybody have fun. And I would go home early and go to bed. If you could do it over, would you still go on the kind of solo world tour? Or do you think you do it differently now, looking back? Well, I think it woke me up to the idea that I was a lucky person to have a relationship like this for so long.

[00:29:22] And so it made me realize that I could do anything I wanted. I didn't have to go home. But I wanted to go home. I wanted to see some family members. And I wanted to see friends. And I could always go later. But hopefully I would find someone else who would like to travel also. When my nurse said, I think you need to go to ER. First of all, she said, do you want a gun?

[00:29:49] And I said, no, but I could get one in 45 minutes. It's America. Yeah. She said, and I said, and fentanyl. She goes, well, how do you know that? I said, because I've asked around. Yeah. That's well, you're, you're, you're an inquisitive journalist. These are the things you'd probably know. Could you get me a gun? And someone I know said, yeah. And could you get me fentanyl? And they said, yeah. And the nurse said, did they ask why? And I said, no. And I wouldn't have told them.

[00:30:18] She goes, you go to the hospital right now. You take yourself to ER and you call me when you're there, or I'm going to have the police come to your house. Wow. That's dark, John. So I was sitting there in this hospital, realized that I was in the psych psychiatric wing of the ER because the door was locked behind me and the bed was this far off the ground. And I went to move the desk chair to sit in it.

[00:30:45] I could not move it because it had sand in the bottom so that you could not pick it up and throw it through a window if there had been a window in the place. But and someone down the hall was singing at the top of their lungs, sly in the family stone, we are family. And just at that moment, the psychiatrist and the social worker walked in and I looked at him and I said, what am I doing here?

[00:31:11] And they said, well, we've been looking at your charts and we kind of wonder the same thing. And so we had a long talk. They were great. They were familiar with my writing. And so they said, you know, there's an opportunity here for you to write about this and for to tell people about it and to write about how crappy the mental health care you're getting has been. Because it was. I mean, I was trying to get prescriptions. And one of the reasons I blew up was I was on the phone for hours.

[00:31:41] I hadn't transferred nine times to get a medication paid for. And finally, I said, what do you want me to do? Kill myself? And I slammed the phone down. And because they had my my prescription had gone from five dollar copay to twenty thousand dollars. And so I said that and I slammed the phone down. And about an hour later, there were four police officers at my door. Was it different than kind of writing intimately about a situation you found yourself in as

[00:32:10] opposed to, you know, going to Cuba and writing about your experience? It's a very different situation when you're writing about your experience inside your own skull. It's very different. It exposed a lot of myself, which is not always easy to do. I had written about us before because because my wife was in a coma in 2000. And I wrote a series about that for the newspaper.

[00:32:36] And because she was saved by a kind of miraculous doctors doing what doctors do. And so my friends all said, this was an amazing thing that happened. Would you write about it? So I did. So I kind of opened us up to that at that point. But then it was, you know, years and years later that I decided to write about the ketamine experience and. How that had helped me come out of the depression.

[00:33:02] As did meeting someone that. That I wasn't expecting. Tell us about the ketamine experience. We've had, we've had before here on the show, we had a doctor who deals with psilocybin and hallucinogenics to treat. Hallucinogenics. Yeah.

[00:33:27] So tell us about this as someone, you know, within that experience rather than outside of. Yeah. And I did it after an old friend came to me, saw that my wife had died and she had had a terrible divorce situation and had gone back to Columbia and had done a psilocybin experience there over a couple of days. And I think with like a shaman. Okay.

[00:33:54] She wanted to tell me how great that was in clearing her mind. And I said, well, I'm not going to Columbia into the jungle and do this. You know, but thanks anyway. But then I discovered at some point that they were experimenting. They had just been approved. And there was one clinic at the time in Minneapolis that was using ketamine with similar results.

[00:34:20] And so I went and did that and was put under, I had a, after a couple of intake interviews, the psychiatrist and a therapist sat next to me, injected me with the ketamine.

[00:34:39] And then as the therapist sat next to me and it went on for two or three hours where I had a very, you know, blindfold on music, headphones on with, I don't know if it was music, but it was sounds. Yeah. Founded like from Asia or something and very unfamiliar, no lyrics to it, you know, just music. And it was extremely intense.

[00:35:08] It was, it was not all comfortable, but it was kind of freeing in a weird way. And apparently I cried a lot during that time. And I said, I said to the therapist, I said, are you still here? And she said, I'm here. And I said, am I here? She said, you are? Because I was not sure. I melted into the chair. Yeah.

[00:35:36] And then I said, and she said, and your wife's here too. I said, I know I'm holding her hand. Wow. And so, and I had seen her in my vision. And so afterwards we have a session where I talked to the therapist and I said, did I say that? I said, I can't tell what I said out loud and what I was thinking. I said, did I say I'm holding my wife's hand? She said, yeah, you did. And when you did that, you reached over and you held your own hand.

[00:36:06] Whoa. Yeah. It was weird. Three or four weeks later, I did another session with the ketamine. And during that vision, it was more upbeat. I didn't cry as much. I was obviously feeling a lot better. But I had a vision of my wife again. And this time she was holding Irene's hand, which freaked me out. So. And now, and so I want to jump ahead a little bit.

[00:36:34] So you get married after a few years to Irene. Yes. After just about two years, I proposed in Central Park. And you have a fundamentally different life than when you started. So. Yes. Now you're married. You have Irene, who's from Kenya. Yes. She has six children. Six children. We had men because my wife could not have children because of her diabetes. And now you live a stone's throw from where I do. Exactly. So just adjacent to the middle of nowhere.

[00:37:05] Right. You can see it from here. And I remember after you came over, I was just thinking of like the strange poetry of you were talking about, you know, my condo in Minneapolis. I can walk out in the balcony and I can see the basilica. Yes. And, you know, at your lowest, you're on a balcony and you're overlooking this beautiful place. And you're on a balcony overlooking the ocean. And now your balcony overlooks what, John? It overlooks the Kmart parking lot in C4.

[00:37:34] And, you know, some evenings when the sun sets, the sun sets right behind the Walmart. And when one of my friends said, what are you doing moving up there? First, a lot of them said, what are you doing marrying this woman? She has six children. What are you getting yourself into? And I said, well, I'm getting myself into a challenge. Yeah. But I absolutely love it.

[00:37:59] And so, but we sit out on the balcony and look out over the Walmart parking lot and see the sunset. And it's kind of almost as beautiful as seeing it set in Madrid or in anywhere. You know, it's this time I have company. So it's much better than the sunset I saw in Puerto Rico. We've talked a little bit about, you know, you want to take up some writing again.

[00:38:25] But you just told me, actually, you've taken up a little personal writing through one of your kind of new volunteer activities. Can you tell us about that? Because so one of the things that I realized is I have to keep busy. She's on a career trajectory. She got her master's degree and she's I think she's doing really well here. I think people like her. We were worried that an African immigrant coming in here and trying to help people with their

[00:38:53] mental health in northern Minnesota might be a challenge. They seem to really like her. So she's on this trajectory, but she says, you have to keep doing something. So she had me. She suggested in Minneapolis that I volunteer a hospital there, which I did. And I really liked it. And then I'm volunteering now at a nursing home, which I didn't want to do. I thought it'd be too depressing because I spent a lot of time in hospitals with my wife. Yeah. And is it is it the care center? The care center. Oh, the care center is cool.

[00:39:24] It's really great for our listeners. It has like two huge wings and there's like a like a central kind of park ish area in each wing. And then where the rooms are, they have a facade of like a house, like a Victorian house, a bungalow, whatever around each room. It is the cutest thing you've ever seen. A small facade along there with a barbershop and everything. Yeah, it's so cool. And it's it's just beautifully cared for.

[00:39:51] And so I was just thinking, actually, yesterday I went to volunteer for their coffee and I thought, you know, I've been a writer my whole life, so I have absolutely no skills. You and you and me both, buddy. I have a very I have a very narrow set of of skills I can use. I went to the volunteer coordinators and I said, you know, I'm trying to think of what I could do besides visit people. And I said, and I can't build anything. I can't bake. I can't do anything.

[00:40:22] But what I've done my whole life is listen to people, talk to them and listen to their stories and then write something. Do you think there'd be people who might want to talk to me and I can write short biographies, things that they might want to leave to their kids or grandkids that those kids will probably really appreciate at some point. And they thought it was a great idea.

[00:40:48] So I just floated the idea yesterday and a couple one woman just said, absolutely not. And then I said, well, look at it this way. Are there things you wish you would ask your mom and dad? Oh, yes. Yeah. And I said, well, I think those are your kids are going to have those same questions. Why don't you answer them? Yeah. And you can throw it away if you want to. But if you want to leave it for them or give that to them now, that would be okay, too. So we're just starting. But I think there's a couple people who are very excited to do it.

[00:41:18] And I am, too, because there's some fascinating people. Well, and that's, I think, the irony of it. You travel around the world and you think, I'm going to an exotic place with an exotic people. And then it turns out the folks in your backyard adjacent to the Walmart parking lot are just as interesting. Yes. I'm meeting people every day that surprise me with stories just pop out of nowhere. I'm at the gym the other day talking to a couple.

[00:41:49] And suddenly it just pops out that they were going to Europe because the woman has discovered that her father was quite the player in Europe. And she has numerous brothers and sisters all over Europe. It's like, wow. I said, well, that's going to be quite a trip. And she says, yeah, I can't wait to go. And so people discovering themselves all over.

[00:42:15] And there's five or six people who are at one of the gyms and they're all in their 80s. I'm in my 60s. They're in their 80s. And it comes out that they're all doing gummies. Like, what? Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sleep or for just fun. And I'm like, I did not see that coming. Yeah. And this is in a very boring town. Very boring town.

[00:42:45] Very conservative socially, I would think. But they just were, yeah, we discovered that this makes us feel good. And so. Unreal. But it's funny because I introduced myself and then someone said, have you met John? He moved up here from the Twin Cities. And I'll say, oh, yeah, what suburb? Binocca? And I go, no, downtown. Like, what suburb? I said, downtown. Like, right downtown where the big buildings are. That's where I grew up. And that's where my condo is. Yeah.

[00:43:15] And I don't know if I would ever say this to someone who came from a small town into Minneapolis and told me where they're from. But as soon as I said that, he looked at me. He goes, bet you're glad to get out of there. And his wife goes, hell hole. Hell hole. So I thought, you know, it's funny because when I said I was moving up here, the people in my condo said, what are you doing moving to that hell hole? Right.

[00:43:43] And so it's a matter of perception. It's the same people who say we live in the greatest country in the world. Have you been anywhere? No. Yeah. And it's the same thing. And so I'm finding that neither place is a hell hole. And so I don't know. My wife and I, Irene and I, had a discussion on the way up about, I said, do you believe in heaven? She said, yes. I said, do you believe in hell? Yes. And I said, I'm trying to figure it out.

[00:44:11] I said, because I have not, and she goes, there's a hell on earth, I think. And I said, there probably is. I said, maybe that Abbott Northwestern ER room. Yeah. And that's about as close as I've been. I said, but I, I said, this is not Minneapolis is not, I've had a hard time finding that. And I also find, find out having a hard time thinking about what heaven would be like, that would be any different than this. Would we have no problems whatsoever?

[00:44:40] Wouldn't that be kind of boring? Well, and that's, and I think that's the beauty. That's the beauty of having the inquisitive mind and, and, and being able to put it towards something, you know, towards a career in journalism, uh, towards just being curious about people's lives. And now, you know, I can see you absolutely writing biographies of, you know, soybean farmers in Northern Minnesota. Yeah. Um, and it's, it's funny because it just all has value.

[00:45:09] It doesn't matter how many, you know, how you cut it. Yes. And, and, and I think, I think a lot of times I have some, some haters on the web, you know, and they'll be like, well, you know, do you do X type of funeral? Do you do Y type of funeral? I'm like, no, like I just do, you know, whatever, whatever it is that's around me. Um, but the diversity isn't necessarily in the external, like the diversity is internal for everyone you meet because they are wildly different than the next person. Right.

[00:45:38] And, um, and, and to know that I think is a great, a great gift. And it's, and it's a great gift to have known you, John, we're going to, we're going to see each other again here real soon. I hope so. But I, I just appreciate you wandering into my coffee shop and wandering into my life and, uh, wandering today onto the podcast. So thank you, John. We will be here for a while longer. Uh, we are looking at property in Kenya now. So it may be a dual life from the savannas of Kenya to the plains of Minnesota.

[00:46:08] So we'll, we'll see. I love it. It's all good. John, thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much. Well, I hope you enjoyed our time with John Tevlin as much as I have enjoyed getting to know him. Really what I want to think about here and what I want to send you home with is that, that final idea we were discussing, the idea that, that it turns out everybody is diverse in their own way. Once you start to get to know them, but you have to be curious about it.

[00:46:37] You have to want to get to know someone in a deeper way. And I think it's something you can learn. It's something you can teach yourself. Sure. You know, maybe some of us like John are born with a proclivity for curiosity. But I think one can train oneself to want to get to know another person because when you do, you will find that they are strange and paradoxical even, uh, and wonderful.

[00:47:04] And, and that even sometimes those things you disagree with, sometimes those, those paradoxes within themselves are the most compelling parts. Uh, I just had a funeral for a gal and, uh, her family was telling me like she loved to take pictures. And then they showed me the picture she took and they're like blurry snapshots. And they were telling me she, she loved to eat ice cream. Okay. Uh, but also she was lactose intolerant and like was just oblivious. She was like, why do I feel so bad when I enjoy this treat so much?

[00:47:33] Uh, and it's those paradoxes I think that make us come to life. And the more we discover those within one another, uh, I think the closer we can become. It's a real gift to meet a new friend. I barely know John. Uh, and yet I have every confidence I will get to know him deeper and deeper as, as the weeks and the months and the years roll on up here in Northwestern Minnesota. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:47:59] I am your host, Victor M Sweeney, and this has been death and globe trotting. Listened here right in the comfort of your very own home.