Mea culpa on Big Mike

When baby-faced Mike Johnson came on board to direct heavy traffic in the Republican party, I winced. He seemed so much a nobody, an  Alfred E. Neuman type whose record on the whole MAGA agenda certified, at least to me, that he was going to be trouble. 

Never forget that the Speaker of the House isn't a throwaway a job, no matter how many Marjorie Taylor Greens inhabit the place. The Speaker is third-in-line to run the whole show, which is more than a little scary in an age of geriatric Presidents. Who knew this guy? Nobody really. After a few of the Republican firebrands went down in flames, this guy, picked out of obscurity, ascends to the difficult but powerful position. Most people said "Who?"

"Look, I'm a Southern Baptist," this new kid said. "I don't wanna get too spooky on you. But you know, the Lord speaks to your heart. He had been speaking to me about this, and the Lord told me very clearly to prepare and be ready. Be ready for what? I don't know. We're coming to a Red Sea moment. What does that mean, Lord?"

Okay, I'm spooked, and I said as much--or thought I did soon after he took the chair. When I went back and read what I said, I was thrilled because I hadn't unloaded on the guy as I might well have liked to. I'm embarrassed, but not too embarrassed. I just don't know if you can trust someone who appears to have the Lord God almighty on speed dial (as we used to say). I was skeptical, especially when the my favorite pundits claimed he was on the front line of the "Stop the Steal" madness, which he was.

If you look over my skepticism that morning, you'll see a mess of options, including "Buckle up! This ought too be a ride!" 

Well, as of last weekend, it has been a ride. Call me Doubting Thomas, and let it be known far and wide that my doubt is gone, at least for the moment. What little Mike did last weekend was absolutely heroic. He did something akin to honest-to-goodness patriotism. He looked over and beyond Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz and the rest of the MAGA minions, and allowed three separate bills to come up for House vote, after determining initially that none of them would--AND, most specifically, after a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and the grand opportunity to kiss whatever was available of the King. No matter. He said no to all of them, for what he'd come to see as the good of the country.

We can argue whether continuing to fund the Ukrainians is good (I think it is), or whether military aid for Israel is right or wrong (I'm skeptical), or whether or not to hang everything on a border bill is a worthy move (I think not after the Republicans listened to the mobster and said no to a bill one of their own had written). These issues aren't slam dunks, but as issues they deserve a vote, and that's exactly what Mike Johnson determined right sometime last weekend, after prayer and, I'm guessing, once more listening to the Lord.

Amen, I say. 

Who knows what tomorrow might bring, but right now Rep. Mike Johnson, R-LA, Speaker of the House, deserves a badge of courage for taking on the forces of sheer chaos in his own blessed party. He's recognized the need of compromise, of working across the aisle to get things done.

Back in December, I dumped my skepticism on him. Last weekend, he heartily proved me wrong. I'd be more embarrassed if I weren't so happy. 

________________________ 

You may have noticed that I used the same photograph on both posts. This time, I grew it much bigger.

Sabbath Wanderings

For the record, the down quilt was in place from last week, and Mom and Dad were still around. But when I came up on the nest, they decided to go over to the other side of the pond and sit and watch. In fact, they stayed there for awhile quite a distance away. So I did too, spittin' distance from the nest. 

Nothing moved. Not in the nest, not on the other shore, and not me. I can wait, I thought. They'll do a little familiarity thing again, like last Sunday. When finally the two of them took to the water, they paddled on by as if there were no nest at all, a goodly distance out in the pond too. It seemed almost as if they weren't bothered at all. They didn't hover, didn't dawdle, didn't restrain themselves one bit, just made their way up on shore a hundred yards in the other direction--I could barely see them, a mile away.

It was perfectly disappointing. But I told myself I could wait because I fully expected them to circle back before coming closer and closer until, like last week's Sabbath visit, they'd hike up on shore right there beside me to tend the troops. 

They didn't. They stayed afar, almost as if I could have a look beneath the pile of goose down for myself, inviting me almost. I didn't. Somewhere within my psyche is the promise that if you even look ai a bird's  nest, the mother will not return--it's a promise.

So I left, walked all the way around the pond (which is still quite a feat for a half-crippled me), and sat down on a bench. Last week, I counted six expectant families who have taken up residence on Alton's South Pond, one of them, the closest to the parking lot, already caring for little fluff balls. Yesterday, the whole bunch were gone--greener pastures, I'm thinking, since the top of the island, where they and another couple haven taken up residence, looked half-bald, denuded.

Another pair weren't showing themselves, but all else seemed in order. 

It was not cold out, but not warm either yesterday afternoon, but sitting there on a bench at the water's edge was a ball. People came--all of them Ukrainian--and I chatted with both crews. 

It was a fine Sabbath day excursion, but I'll admit it--I was disappointed. Not only was there no family life whatsoever at the big rock nest, the only show in town last week had apparently pulled up stakes.

Sad. Then suddenly and totally unannounced and unexpected, the Mom and Dad from the long grass appeared out of nowhere and took to the water--Mom, Dad, both peacock-like in their showy pride, and three yellow puff balls merrily paddling along right there at mom's side.

They were a ways away, but I reached out with my lens and took this shot and one other before they disappeared somewhere behind the island. I was shaking, thrilled at the obvious new littl'uns--I'm tempted to say cute as toys. But they're not. Rubber Duckies are meant to look like these. It's not a great shot, and I do so wish it was.

I'm embarrassed to say how thrilled I was to witness pre-K swimming lessons, but then, I suppose, I'd invested some time in watching the goings-on, and had been disappointed at the way on the other side of the pond where I'd anticipated some real action. This family came out of nowhere like an answer to prayer, right out of the long grass on the west side, and in perfect silence took to the water, showing no fear, parents or kids.

 I told the Ukrainian family about them, and they took off, hoping to spot the kids. Then I went up the hill, back to the truck, remembering how toddlers coming into the old folks home where Dad was spending his last years, remembering how powerlessly those little stinkers instantly lit the place up, even--and maybe especially--those residents with forms of dementia. Made their day. I'm embarrassed to say his old man jumped into the truck, just that silly-excited. 

And then I remembered this:

That's my granddaughter. The handsome tall guy beside her is her husband. What she has in her hand is a series of photos of a tiny little who that's somewhere marking time inside her. They're holding a pink onesie to say just about all that can or needs to be said. 

They're going to be parents, those kids, and we're going to be great-grandparents. Just thought I'd mention it, along with a flotilla of goslings on a nearly perfect Sabbath afternoon.

 Not  a bit cold really.

Sunday Morning Meds -- from Psalm 84

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty!”

 It’s silly to make the argument—there were countless other factors—but historians who know the Sioux Indian wars often point at a Mormon cow as the cause for a half-century of horror on the Great Plains. It was August, 1854, when that cow, belonging to a Mormon party moving west, wandered into a Brule camp and was killed.

 The owner demanded restitution. Lt. John L. Grattan, who had little to no experience with Native tribes, insisted on arresting the killers and led a group of 30 infantrymen to the Brule village. When the culprit refused to turn himself in, Grattan turned his howitzers on the people. Chief Conquering Bear was killed with the first volley, but the what seemed impossible happened—the Brules wiped out the entire detachment and the Sioux Indian wars began.

 Nonetheless, when I read this all-time favorite psalm, strangely enough, it’s the Mormons who come to mind because when I consider their grand narrative—the long overland trek from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the basin of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, a pilgrimage that began in 1846, eight years before that wandering cow—I think I feel at least something of the exuberance that marks this very precious psalm.

The story of the Mormon exodus is a purely American story, just as Mormonism may well be the first truly American religion. From 1846 to 1869, 70,000 Mormons traveled west to a place where they believed—and they were right—they could live in peace and freedom, protected from persecution they’d suffered wherever they’d lived before. Hundreds, even thousands, pulled handcarts, walking the entire 1300 miles.

 But they had a goal, a destiny. They wanted a place to worship, a place to live their own pious vision. That shared goal, I’d guess, gave them the strength and dedication, the sheer will to endure every last horror the plains and mountain passes could throw. Along the way, they even improved the trail, knowing others would follow.

 Daily life was strictly regimented; chaos and in-fighting would be the death of them and the enterprise. Each day they read scripture, prayed, and sang together. It was a massive, dangerous, difficult pilgrimage, and it was unbelievably successful. Once safe in Salt Lake City, their incredible journey became a story they could tell—and do--for generations.

 The incredible joy that rises from Psalm 84 does so, I think, from similar long and difficult pilgrimages, exacting journeys of faithful believers to beloved places that are both “of this world” and of the next, a wagon train of worshippers on their way to a city that is, in a way, celestial.

 “How lovely is your dwelling place,” the psalmist writes, almost as if he were, in effect, wordless. Sometimes I wish I could feel that kind of ecstasy about the weekly worship I attend, but I don’t believe we’re talking about similar rituals. What evokes the delight that makes this hymn ring through the ages is pilgrimage, in the oldest sense of that word’s usage, a vivid and exacting spiritual journey.

 A dead cow is even part of that pilgrimage, an altogether too human story of religious aspiration and, gloriously, finally, of arriving. That’s why I think, somewhat enviously, of the Mormons.

 If it’s difficult to find yourself in the triumphant joy of the singer in Psalm 84, consider the Mormons. Imagine their joy.

 Then try this. Consider this vale of tears—consider the depth of human sadness--and then imagine the loveliness of a dwelling place in a warm eternal sun. That too can make us sing.   

Listening in to who tells the story

Most people likely guessed that when Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun and Josephine Waggoner got together, they were, once again, going over old times, just two residents of a Hot Springs retirement home bringing back a little nostalgia. They were both mixed-bloods who'd seen more than their share of living through the years. 

It was Waggoner who had the bright idea to write it all down, to make a record of what the two of them and many others of their era could remember, could say, could explain. They'd seen it all, from the nomadic life on the Plains, through the whole reservation era. They'd been there, eye-witnesses. Mrs. Waggoner used to read Sitting Bull's mail for him--and there were lots of letters and notes because Sitting Bull was the most well-known Indian of them all. She'd been there when he died, when he was shot and killed.

So it must have happened a lot, the two of them sitting together in the Home, Josephine with her pen and ink and tablet, Susan wholly willing to go on and on about the old days. Together, the two of them created their own history of the Plains Indians, bringing in others of the old ones to testify as to what they saw and did and remembered.

Witness, Josephine Waggoner named it, and a subtitle, A Hunkpapa Historian's Strong-Hearts Song of the Lakotas, and it didn't get published until long after Josephine Waggoner had passed away, as her friend Susan Bettelyoun had passed before her. Why so long? Because there were no footnotes. All Mrs. Waggoner had was what people told her, and some people told her different accounts of the same stories others told. Witness, was a witness all right, but who could believe it, who could really rely on what was there on paper, if there was no proof.

So what they created was what one might call "Indian history," the story of a time on the plains when everything was in flux, that history told--remembered--by the Native people themselves, with no verification because, simply there was none. 

Years after the two of them were gone, the manuscript was published by the University of Nebraska Press, its fine narrative history available for anyone to read.

Here's a good sample, from With My Own Eyes: a Lakota Woman Tells Her People's History (1998), a kind of companion volume.

Is it true? Is it factual? It's quite fair to say that no one will ever know.

What's perfectly clear, however, is that,here as elsewhere, who tells the story makes a difference. It's helpful to remember that the Oregon Trail, in some places, was a mile wide. Here, Susan Bordeaux Bettlyoun is doing the remembering.

~.  *.  ~.  *.  ~.  *.  ~

My uncle Swift Bear and many others tried their best to clear the country of the invaders. They allied with the Cheyennes and Arapahos for this cause. They watched the traveled ways to make attacks to intimidate the travelers but there seemed to be no end to the emigrants. Down in Kansas, below the Republican River, my uncle Swift Bear and some of the foremost braves were sent down to make raids and cripple as many of the emigrants as possible. They spent the whole summer up and down along the Republican River and its tributaries to head off the oncoming emigrants. They made attacks and raids, they ran off stock such as oxen, mules, and horses. At one place, my uncle said they surrounded an immigrant train and besieged them till they used up all their ammunition and as they drew in closer on them, these white people all fell on their knees within the circle of wagons with their heads bowed without any resistance. Everyone was killed and the wagons were all burned. This was the days before they knew or heard of religion. The Indians wondered why they went down on their knees with bowed heads. They did not understand because their form of prayer was different.

Revisiting (myself)

It's not often I turn back the pages, but I did this morning. For no good reason, I turned up this old post from December of 2015, forever-ago, at the outset of the Reign of Trump, although I didn't recognize back then how dominating it would become.

Sort of scary. He's only gotten worse. 

How Time chose Andrea Merkel for the 2015 Person of the Year is understandable (quick, who was Andrea Merkel again?). Keeping the European Union afloat was a task that required superhuman skills (well, requires because dissolution is still a possibility). What's more, in a year of massive displacement of populations, her determination to admit thousands upon thousands of Syrian refugees must seem to most Americans, most Republicans at least, and, post-San Bernadino, all Republican Presidential aspirants, perfectly insane. (dissolution, immigration--the more things change. . .well you know the adage).

Truth be told, to homebody Americans, Person-of-the-Year Merkel couldn't hold a candle to the U. S. of A's ace noisemaker (colossal understatement), Donald Trump, who single-handedly sucked the oxygen out of newsrooms all year long. When the Donald declared his candidacy, Jon Stewart turned green right there before our eyes because The Daily Show's veteran host had already announced his retirement. The opportunity to skewer Trump made Stewart wilt in envy. (Stewart retired, threw in the towel, but couldn't help himself and returned, part-time)

Of course, at that moment, no one believed Trump would triumph as he has. Right  now, most polls have him at double the strength of any one else. In fact, Texas's Ted Cruz is in second, a man who reportedly is disliked by most of the people who know him well and has basically been drafting behind the Trump phenom. (Cruz? Can't place him right off. Wasn't his father involved in the Kennedy assassination?)

Trump has destroyed Jeb Bush, just as he destroyed Wisconsin's Scott Walker, both of whom pundits with significant Washington cred once upon a time simply assumed would be front-runners. (Talk about a footnote--Scott Walker?)

The fact is, no one totally understands how the Donald has done what he has (no change there), and these very words are proof of the fact that people--me too!--can't stop talking about him (yup). The accepted wisdom is simply that the Donald Trump has tapped into something that no one else has, some vein of something almost radio-active in the electorate. (yup)

If the common wisdom is accurate, then living in American democracy is far more precarious than I would have guessed a year ago. (yup) After two long years of almost total government inaction and hostile bickering  that most claim to be more acidic than it's ever been (are you kidding? back then, too?), it's no surprise that people are sick to death of the way things are (nope).

Still, the numbers are daunting. A new CNN poll, just released, claims 75% of Americans are "dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed," while 69% claim to be "at least somewhat angry." (little change there)

Trump's base is with those angry people, and especially with those people. Among Trump's millions, 97% are dissatisfied. That's huge.  And he's scoring at what?--40% of the Republican electorate. 

(That's really incredible, but it's not new. Those percentages are similar to what they were at the end of 2014. Check out these numbers:

So the vein of radio-active sentiment Trump has discovered and so successfully tapped into, something no one else had as efficiently, is simply downright angry Americans, people totally at odds with the system, the culture, the entire American pageant as we know it today. Let me just repeat that one more time. Among Trump's loyal followers, 97% believe are "dissatisfied" with life as we know it in America. (Not much has changed, although perhaps the true believers are somewhat fewer.)

Maybe it's a good thing that Mr. Trump has uncovered this seething mess, but it's greatly unsettling to have to believe so many Americans really despise "how things are." That's immense disenchantment. (I  haven't seen it, but apparently the movie Civil War scares the bejeebees out of most of those who've seen it.)

"Democracy is the worst form of government," said Winston Churchill, "except for all the others."

What Trump has discovered and exposed and nurtured is something apparently no one else has--real palpable dissatisfaction with the way things are. It's there. In spades. (Once, this may have been news; today, cliche.)

I don't care what anyone says, that it is, is scary. They're following a man who once told reporters he could not remember ever asking forgiveness. That's really scary. (Nope--nothing's changed.)

I'm not among that 97%. I greatly prefer Andrea Merkel. (Ha! ha! very funny.)

Banned books

You've heard, of course, the oddities, like the dictionary and the Bible, but what made the news this week was that Pen America, who tallies such things, reported that more books were banned here in the second half of last year (2023) than in the entire year before, twice that number in fact. Among the states in the running, Florida holds a commanding lead, which should surprise no one since their governor's failed bid for the Presidency made cleaning up the shelves a campaign issue. By the way, Escambia County, Florida, not to be out scrubbed, presently has the lead by including not just one dictionary, but--count 'em--five!

These days, Florida is, I'm sure, a much better place to raise kids, having swept a grand total of 3,135 books off the shelves. 

Here's my story.

A gang of guys are playing cards in the dorm. I'm among 'em. The jabbering makes the game secondary. Mostly they're just talking.

It's fall, 1966, and I'm a freshman at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa, far, far from home. But friends aren't hard to come by when they all have similarly unreadable last names like Schaap and could sing more than one verse of "The Ninety-and-Nine." And, like I said, we're playing rook when some local guy mentions a name I'd never heard, "Feikema," but it sounds pretty much like everyone else's.

"He's a writer," some other local kid says, "big guy--huge--writes dirty books." There's noting doleful about the way he says it. He was marketing."Naah," I say,  or something similar. "Gi'mee a break. Guy writes book, and he's from here?"

"Not right here--Doon," somebody says. I had no idea what a Doon was.

Some weeks later, in a bookstore in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, I spot a paperback with the name that came up that night, "Frederick Manfred." If I hadn't had 75 cents along, I would have walked out of the store with the skinny thing stuck in my pants. This was the local guy, the one who writes dirty books.

I read The Secret Place cover to cover (175 pp), a rarity. I wasn't a reader, never was; and, sure, the story had more than its share of sexual hijinks. The kid at the heart of the novel gets two girls pregnant, both out of wedlock, and this Manfred/Feikema guy brings us out into the country to watch.

But something happens. I get lost in the story, especially when the kid in the story gets brought before the consistory--something in that scene especially smells familiar. He's writing on my ground somehow. Something I'd never, ever imagined happened before--I recognized the characters, recognized the world of The Secret Place (1965).

In point of fact, I was so moved by what I only vaguely understood--finding myself in what some call the "felt life" of the novel--that I went to my English prof to ask her if I could write my Freshman English paper on a novel by this guy, Frederick Manfred. I had to tread lightly, I knew, because those guys playing cards had said--and they seemed to know what they were saying--that somehow that the fiesty little college president had seen to it that no one could check out Feike Feikema's books from the college library, unless they had some kind of special permission.

I told her I owned my own copy of The Secret Place, and my prof, something of a lib, said yes, so I did, wrote my term paper on Manfred's The Secret Place. That excursion into strange, felt life made me think I could write too, tell stories. That contraband novel set me off on a lifelong commitment to watching newly formed letters march over a page or screen. I've been at it pretty much ever since, devotionals for kids, novels, short stories, denominational books, family albums for the Back to God Hour, the CRC, and Rehoboth Christian Schools, innumerable personal essays, and now, radio productions.

In truth, it wasn't just The Secret Place that set me off on a journey, but when I look back at a half-century of sitting here at the desk as I am right now--early, first light just now opening the sky--and this morning, like always, trying to get the words right, to create something somehow worth my time and yours, the first book I remember as central to that long story is a skinny one, by a local n ovelist, a dirty book, I guess, banned back then in the college library. 

All buffalo

Let this image stand for what we all know, that Indians (what we've called them, erroneously for centuries) used just about every square inch of the buffalo they hunted and killed. It's third-grade stuff, and it's important, and furthermore, it's true. Thank goodness for our wonderful third-grade (or whatever) teachers.

Just for the record, those sticky notes all over this poor girl make all of that perfectly clear. Even that grimy tail get used for a broom, the note in the center, top, says robes had a multitude of uses; buffalo wool was used for stuffing things, like pillows; bladders were used to lug water--it just goes on and on. The wide range of uses--look at them all--suggest the rich importance Plains Indians placed on the buffalo and begins to explain how it was that some noteworthy figures, not unfamiliar names in 19th century American history believed and said aloud that killing the buffalo would kill the Indian.

All that is fairly well known, but once in a while I stumble on some explorer's description of what he (or she too) saw when first discovering herds of bison. In this case, it's someone who's becoming a first-rate hero to me, as he has been to Native plainsmen and women for close to two centuries: Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, who some call a Dutchman, but may be better described as Flemish. De Smet, a Jesuit, was as awed by this country as was Meriweather Lewis. De Smet held to a different mission, to save souls, which sounds almost like an indictment. De Smet was a great man, a peace-maker. Here's how he noted his first sighting of bison.

After marching for seven days alongside the Platte, we reached the plains inhabited by the buffalo. I left the camp alone, very early one morning, to see them more at my ease; I approached them by way of the ravines, without showing myself or allowing them to get the wind of me. This is the most keen-scented of animals; he will detect the presence of a man at a distance of four miles, and take flight at once, since that odor is insupportable to him. I gained, without being perceived, a high bluff, resembling in shape the Waterloo monument; from it I enjoyed a view of perhaps a dozen miles. This vast plain was so covered with animals, that the markets or fairs of Europe could give you only the feeblest idea of it. It was indeed like a fair of the whole world assembled in one of its loveliest plains. I looked with wonder upon the slow and majestic walk of these heavy wild cattle, marching silently in single file, while others cropped with avidity the rich pasturage, which is called the short buffalo grass. Whole bands were lying amidst flowers on the grass; the scene altogether realized in some sort the ancient tradition of the holy scriptures, speaking of the vast pastoral countries of the Orient, and of the cattle upon a thousand hills.

You got to love him. He just couldn't stop himself. 

I could not weary of gazing upon this delightful scene, and for two hours I watched these moving masses in the same state of astonishment. Suddenly the immense army seemed startled ; one battalion gave the panic to another, and the whole multitude was in flight, running in every direction. The buffalo had caught the scent of their common enemy; the hunters had rushed among them on the gallop. The earth seemed to tremble under their steps, and the dull sounds that came back were like the mutterings of distant thunder. 

Father De Smet, a man of the cloth, a Black Robe, in fact, the most famous and most beloved Black Robe of them all, was astonished, stunned, blown away, awed, as if--and he would never have said it t his way--as if he had actually witnessed deity before him. He wouldn't, and it's likely none of the Native folks back in camp would either.

But historians make the case that the awe or reverence in which Plains Indians held the buffalo was a kind of religion. Father De Smet himself grew weary of attempting to create a Christian society among the Flatheads because it became perfectly obvious to him that his faith--Catholic Christianity--simply could not compete with the devotion, the ardor, the Flatheads--and most Plains Indians--held the hunt, the traditional time when everyone--men, women, and children--would go out to specially regarded hunting grounds to "harvest" all of what they needed--hooves, ribs, bladders, and hides--from and in the great American bison.  

In all my travels I have never wearied of watching with admiration these truly majestic animals, with their rugged necks, shoulders and heads. If their peaceable nature was not known, their aspect alone would terrify one. But they are timid and without malice, and never offer to do any harm, except in their own defense, when they are wounded and hard pressed. Their strength is extraordinary, and though they appear clumsy, they run notwithstanding with great speed; it takes a good horse to follow them very far.

Sometimes it took three-horses, that is, to try to run them down.

Amazing, awe-inspiring, even to imagine. You can't help but love 'em.