The Last Buffalo

Bierstadt, The Last Buffalo

[If you would prefer to listen to the podcast, click here.] 

"Now, boys, is our time for fun." That's what the hoity-toity artist said when he saw a herd of buffalo Comstock, the rancher, had spotted along the Republican River.

Albert Bierstadt was on his way back from California when he and the newspaper man traveling with him stopped at the Oak Grove Ranch and decided to try his hand--not at hunting buffalo but painting them. Comstock and his men armed themselves with rifles; Bierstadt packed brushes.

He wanted an angry bull, he said, "so mad that he'll bellow and tear up the ground," Bierstadt told Comstock.

That kind of rage would take some doing, Comstock thought, but he aimed to please the famous artist. He put Bierstadt and that easel of his up on a knoll high enough to see prairie Comstock was proud of, the land where he'd chosen to live.

Comstock said he and his son and a neighbor named Eubanks would create the scene Bierstadt wanted. He’d pick out a bull and wound him, get him hot-blooded.

All these years later, this whole business sounds beastly and wasteful; but it is, after all, 170 years later. Besides, this whole thing was being done in the cause of Art.

Eubanks shouldered his rifle from a draw near Bierstadt, should the beast decide not to sit still for the portrait. Once that bull was fierce, Comstock figured to steer him out toward that knoll where he'd attain eternal life as art. And it worked.

The buffalo spit and bellowed as predicted, and charged Comstock, who was aboard a horse so expert he could circle the bloody animal and still aim him toward the artist.

But the story goes that Comstock played it just a bit too close and got himself beside the buffalo where that bull couldn't see him. Just like that, that huge animal raised his shaggy head like a dying king and looked straight up the rise at the artist Alfred Bierstadt, then started pawing and snorting.

Bierstadt took off running faster than he ever thought he was able, and that insane bull made short work of the easel, then took off after the artist.

No one can prove this, but what Comstock claimed was that Bierstadt ran so fast his swallow-tail coat flowed out behind him so straight and hard the whole gang could have played a couple hands of euchre right there on the table that fancy coat became.

Finally, with that bull right there taking aim at that artist's behind, Eubanks’ rifle cracked and that animal fell in his tracks. For years, Comstock told people that the artist Alfred Bierstadt fell over, wiped out but saved from "a fearful death."

And that's the end of the Oak Creek Ranch part. But there's more.

In 1998, the U. S. Postal Service created commemorative stamps to celebrate American art. One featured a massive painting wide as the prairie by none other than Albert Bierstadt, The Last of the Buffalo. You may have seen the stamp.

And there's more. In 1897, that famous Bierstadt painting was put up for sale at the Chicago Exposition. It sold—now hold your breath--for $75,000.

You really ought to see it. No, it’s not Comstock riding the majestic white horse; it's something like a half-naked cigar-store Indian deliberately chosen and outfitted to make rich Easterner art buyers drool.

And if you get a chance to look close sometime, you'll see the landscape's not the prairie either. Siouxland has Spirit Mound, but otherwise nothing close to mountains like those in the background.

Now any art teacher will tell you that Albert Bierstadt knew how to paint sprawling American landscapes, and he also knew how to sell what he committed to canvas.

And what about Comstock, the rancher, you ask--that man never forgot the story, and was more than happy to tell it, the whole truth, right up to his grave. Well, maybe not the whole truth, either, you know?

That blasted January bustle

To be sure, it's not my favorite day of the year, ranks among the worst, in fact, although there are others upcoming, I'm sure, that will make me forget totally about the ratty jobs coming up soon and very soon.

When I walked past the tree just now, I couldn't help to realize that seasonal joy will once again be coming down, along with the nutcrackers on the corner table and even the baby tree I have here behind me in the office space. It's end-of-season today, now that New Years is new no more. No more Christmas carols either; our smart speaker stopped pouring out glee a week ago.

What sprang to mind just now, literally, was the first line of a much-beloved little poem from the magical mind of Emily Dickinson, who had very little to say about Christmas actually, but much to say about death. 

Goes like this:

The bustle in a house

the Morning after Death

Is solemnest of industries

Conducted upon Earth.

We bought a tree this year, from Hobby Lobby too (half-price!), so there'll be no dying in the our little retirement place once the bustle begins. In fact, the  most dreaded aspect of this year's post-yuletide clean up is where on earth we're going to put the tree--garage somewhere, I'm sure, but our new digs aren't spacious.

That the holidays themselves are over once again for another year carries its requisite sadness, but just as difficult, it seems, is this morning's concurrent realization that what lies before us and around us out here on the edge of the plains is three months, maybe even four, of winter. I feel like I should change the font on that last word or toss in a picture--all right, I will.

Of this--

If we could only control snow and ice as easily as you can with one of those darling little knick-knacks where all you do is turn the thing over and snow falls like grace, heavenly snow. But out here winter (!) doesn't work that way. Nothing comes in feathers. Snow comes sideways starting right about now and continues for a third of this new year--2026; and what I'm saying is that the bustle in this house on the day we take down Christmas is among the solemnest of industries we'll undertake all year. We ought to make it its own kind of holiday to keep the spirits up. 

Meanwhile, there's another verse worth repeating:

The Sweeping up the Heart

And putting Love away

We shall not want to use again

Until Eternity –

And that's depressing too, but eternity is pushing it, I think. Then, who am I to judge Emily Dickinson? Let's say it this way: 

The Sweeping up the Tree

And putting love away

We shall not want to use again

Until Next year, mid-December.

Maybe a day or two earlier.

It's not the same I know, but this Monday morning I can't help thinking it.

Sunday morning meds from Psalm 32

“You are my hiding place;

you will protect me from trouble.”

Edward Taylor, who lived from 1642 to 1729, was probably just an ordinary Puritan preacher. He lived about fifty miles west of Boston, in Westfield, Massachusetts, at a time when he—and many others—thought the way of life of Puritans was in immense and therefore perilous decline. Like other clergymen, he served his people’s physical needs as their physician, as well as their preacher. But I’m sure that in good Puritan fashion he railed on people for their sin.

Few would likely remember Edward Taylor at all today, but sometime in the 1930s, someone at Yale happened upon a sheaf of poems he’d written during his life in Westfield, 250 years before, the vast majority of those poems unpublished and likely unseen.

Weird, even bizarre, often shocking. That’s what students think when first they read Edward Taylor—and so did I. Let me edit a little—so do I. Taylor is given to the most outlandish metaphors—bodily parts and functions galore, just plain strange comparisons, odd ways of saying things—but always with respect to God’s amazing grace. He says divine things in sometimes outlandish ways, some of which you might rather not remember.

It’s Edward Taylor who I’m reminded of when I come to the second half of verse seven in Psalm 32, because, if we stop and think for a moment, we can’t help but be shocked at how greatly David has changed. The psalm begins in bone-chilling fear of the Lord. Just a few verses later, however, we’ve arrived safely “within his bosom,” as old preachers used to say. The Lord God almighty, once the source of horrific fear, has been, by his confession, suddenly transformed into a massive cushiony teddy-bear.

And that reminds me of Taylor’s Meditation 39 (First Series) which is a meditation on 1 John 2:1: “If any man sin, we have an advocate.” Our judge is God, the cosmic author of all law. We’re the perps, of course, and we, Taylor says, are guilty. But there’s a species of nepotism at work for us here, because Jesus Christ himself is our lawyer, and he’s our ace in the hole because he is, get this, the son of the judge.

Sounds like a set up, a divine kangaroo court. If we but ask the Lord to take our case, it’s case closed. That’s far more shocking than any Taylor metaphor, really.

“My case is bad, Lord, by my advocate,” Taylor says. “My sin is red; I’m under God’s arrest.” He asks the Lord to plead his case, then testifies what he knows from the passage in John: “Although it’s bad. thy plea will make it best.”

And then comes vintage Edward Taylor: “If thou wilt plead my case before the king,/I’ll wagon loads of love and glory bring.” I haven’t a clue what “wagon loads” has to do with the court system, but Edward Taylor wasn’t thinking about in creating great art—he simply wanted to testify to what he knew was forever true.

As does King David in Psalm 32. This shockingly blessed reversal—from mourning to dancing—is the inspiration for the poem. That which he feared now offers comfort; the Lord that scared him silly has become—viola!--a haven of peace. That’s weird, it’s bizarre, and eternally shocking. And he can’t help saying thanks.

And thanks is the reason both of them write songs—King David and Edward Taylor, each in his own peculiar fashion. And me, too. And you—or you probably wouldn’t be reading these words.

Thanksgiving is at the heart of things.

Truth be known, in my life I don't remember really raucous New Year's Eve parties. The  one I'll never forget is the very first one just six months after we were married. We were invited over to the home of a woman from a church we were attending. If I'm not mistaken, it was hardly Times Square. There were just three of us there--my wife and me and the hostess, who was only slightly older than we were at the time--maybe 30 or so. 

The transmission my memory sends me about that night has to be missing something--maybe another guest or two--but what is there in my mind is a bitching session when the hostess, after a drink our two, opened up about the lousy state of her marriage. We'd been married for only six months or so.

I wasn't thinking it was going to be some bacchanalia right there in the streets of the city. I honestly didn't imagine some hot party. I did expect some drinking, which wouldn't have been unusual, but may well have been unusual in volume. Instead, we got a sobering recitation of the woman's loveless marriage. 

We went home soon after twelve.

I should have guessed NYE was never going to be what its cooked up to be.

Number 53 is now history--no regrettable memories, but history will record one little detail that quite accurately summarizes our history of NYEs.

Barbara got the sweet idea that it might just be fun to have real champaign for once, so on NYE afternoon, she shuffled off to Wal Mart and lugged home a bottle, along with the prerequisite wine--we'd invited friends. 

Interestingly, two of the three couples who dropped by carried in their own bottle of the bubbly with the same motivations--they thought it might be fun to actually have champaign when the clock struck midnight. We giggled together because there stood three bottles of champaign on the buffet beside the wine.

One couple left before twelve, but two others made it to 2026, without much drinking, I should add. In fact, all three bottles of champaign stood right there, untouched, where they had when the party had begun. Okay, some wine was gone, but none of the true NYE fare had even been touched.

When the early-departing couple left, they took their bottle along, as did couple #2, which explains why the bottle my wife bought that afternoon is, as we speak, standing beside the milk in the fridge, still corked. 

A good time was had by all--don't get me wrong. But it warn't no blowout. 

NYE 2025 is in the books, memorable only for three graceful and untouched bottles of bubbly, who, if all goes well in 2026, may well show up again next year.

We're not getting old, we're there.

Looking back at 2025

 

You can see, I'm sure, the problem. It's vanity, I know, but were I to walk around in public with these monster shoes holding up my horribly big feet, they could not only pass for boats, but for entire piers. Ugly?--absolutely, an admission of age too. I'm confident were we to take a hike through the nearest old folks home--there's one or two  plenty close, by the way--we'd find a dozens of these leviathans on rugs in front of TVs. Can you imagine some college kid wearing these? And remember, I'm confessing something here--I'd need size 16. Huge, not boats, battleships.

But I'm sick of shoes that don't fit, or, maybe it's better to say, shoes that make my feet ache. I've got no idea if these could bring some comfort, but they're marked to do just that, not to be impress any of the guests at the opera, but to keep down complaints from my feet.

And that's a nice thought. My feet haven't smiled for years, and their aching is not getting any better. That's why I'm shopping this morning of Old Years Eve--not because I'm lookin' for pizazz--I'm just after comfort.

Old Years Eve is an officially approved day to look back, even though, at my age, it seems that I look back far more frequently than ahead; there's more subject matter back there than there is out front. I can honestly say that I didn't think much about old age until I started wearing a knee brace a year and a half ago, assuming that if I did it would somehow miraculously stop my knees from caving for no good reason.

Turns out faulty knees were a symptom of what was happening neurologically throughout my body, a condition, when professionally assessed, led to a diagnosis of spinal stenosis, a condition I'd never heard of until it determined to go to war with my body. There's a walker right beside me here, and two canes hanging from a coat rack at the back door. I don't go anywhere without, at least, one of them, a cane or the walker. I'm a public service message for the cripples among us, and, if I can and will believe every doctor and/or specialist I've seen, I ain't getting over it anytime soon.

So, from the vantage point of this Old Years Eve, what's to assess that's behind me during the year of our Lord 2025 isn't a bowl of roses. Lord knows hundreds, thousands, millions of humanoids find themselves in far worse straits, so what right do I have to complain, right?

Be happy the wheelchair is in plastic storage in the garage, long abandoned. Be thankful for a half-dozen physical therapists who not only direct my body's recovery but must have been told sometime in their degree programs that the very best therapy they can deliver may well be telling the patient that he or she is doing great.

I don't care, I love it. "Yeah, well, Jim," they'll tell me, "you did well today, don't you think?"

For all those sweet PTs, I'm greatly thankful this December 31st. For the three PTs at Heartland Home, who had the toughest job; for the half-dozen or so at Orange City Hospital; and now for the three or four here at Pro-Edge, thanks so much for putting me through the paces and then telling me, even through my pouting pride, that I'm doing just fine. 

"Just fine" is just wonderful. 

St. MTG

She's just about come to the point where her name can be invoked simply by way of her initials--MTG. She's not quite risen to the level of a woman who would have been her nemesis--AOC, or the new czar of American health, RFK. She might have, had she not had what she considers a true Damascus Road experience, at least that's how she might well characterize it, or so says Robert Draper of the NY Times in a highly discussed and long feature article earlier this week.

The intent is to help an American public understand her, someone who was the captain of the cheerleaders for Donald Trump ever since she came on the scene. She was not only an advocate, she was an accomplice. Today, she's on his hit list and was heard on her phone, in public, berating her in the savage rhetoric he's known for. What happened?

The answer that Draper gives is fascinating in an eternal sense because Draper claims--via her testimony--that MTG met that Damascus Road experience during the commemoration of the life of Charley Kirk, yet another Trump champ and conservative hero, who was gunned down a few months ago.

Draper says MTG explained it this way. Mrs. Kirk stood up and said, among other things, that she forgave her husband's killer. She did so because it was the Christian thing to do--forgive one's enemies. Next to take the podium was our beloved President who quite forthrightly told the audience that unlike Mrs. Kirk, she didn't forgive Charley's killer, but hated him--and mostly them because our dear President has rarely backed away from a friendly conspiracy theory.

When MTG heard those two diametrically opposed positions, she shuddered deeply because she knew that one of them was the "Christian" way, while the other--hate speech from the Pres--was not.

That was absolutely the worst statement,” Greene wrote to me [Draper] in a text message months after the memorial service. And the contrast between Erika Kirk and the president was clarifying, she added. “It just shows where his heart is. And that’s the difference, with her having a sincere Christian faith, and proves that he does not have any faith.

That difference made MTG shudder because it reflected on her own faith, and her own contribution to what she and others call our "toxic political culture." She looked inward and saw her own toxicity, her own sin, to be more traditionally theological. She knew she'd been wrong and had to change. “After Charlie died," she wrote a friend, "I realized that I’m part of this toxic culture. I really started looking at my faith. I wanted to be more like Christ.”

Wow! That, my friends, is a story, in Christian terms, a testimony.

I have a bit of a better sense of what it took for the disciples to accept Saul, their fierce enemy, as Paul, servant of the Lord. It's hard to think of someone more loyal to the whole MAGA fantasy that the blond bombshell from Georgia, and suddenly I have to look to her as Mother Theresa?

That's tough sledding, even in a winter like ours.

Almost immediately, she quit the House, resigned from her political position. She also gave up her sustaining family in the MAGA movement. Almost immediately, her life was threatened, as was the life of her son, a college student.

For a ton of reasons, her story is a block-buster. Might it push other evangelicals to reconsider their intense loyalty to the Donald? Will MTG now quickly disappear, given that her ability to generate headlines is compromised? Can she be believed?--after all, it's the old "come-to-Jesus" story. Is she a harbinger of things to come?--might there be more MTGs? 

And there's this: Paul's Damascus Road experience was no dodge. It was authentic, something believers recognize. 

After all, miracles happen--just ask us.

Lully Lula

 

 Breughel, The Massacre of the Innocents

This morning, just hit the "Listen" button and don't bother reading.

https://www.kwit.org/featured-programs/2017-12-31/lully-lullay 

Who to believe?

First, you are to think always of God,

of Wankan-Tanka. Second, you are to

use all your powers to care for your

people and especially for the poor.

Black Moon, Hunkpapa Sioux

Long, long ago it seems, I was told--no, warned--that I should be careful around Native spirituality because it is, well, enchanting, but not as profoundly beautiful as it sometimes seems from the outside--and maybe especially by white-liberal types (meaning, someone like me).  

The "warn-er" was herself Native, a sincere Christian Cherokee, a writer named Diane Glancy, who has made it her dream to draw out the stories which delve into spirituality, both Native and Christian--and Christians in Native settings.

This morning's little reading in a book Barbara gave me for Christmas, 365 Days of Walking the Red Road, started with this quote by a man whose name I'd never seen before.   

But some approximations are too difficult to look past. For instance, those qualities of living--spirit-filled living--held up as exemplary by the "Red Road," include virtues like humility, respect, generosity, and wisdom. The kind of life sought on the Red Road is a spiritual, ethical life. For quick reference, run through the "Fruits of the Spirit" (Galatians 5): Love, Joy, Peace, Forbearance, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Self-control. It's long, maybe a bit more comprehensive, but basically we're all talking the same language.

A decade ago, I did a book for Rehoboth School and Mission in New Mexico. I interviewed families who had been influenced by their experience there. One man, a retired lawyer, told me that before his father had sent him off to the mission school, his father warned him about listening too closely to talk about the white man's god, but he also told his son that he'd grown to like the people who ran the school and did the evangelical work on the reservation. He liked them not because they were Christians but because those white people believed in the same things his people did--something his own people called "the Beauty Way." If his son would go to school there, he'd learn about living spiritually, ethically--and his father greatly respected that way of life taught in the mission school.

Want a shorter catechism? How about Luke 10: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Now look up there at the top at the sermon delivered by someone named Black Moon. 

I'm not about to run out to Marty, South Dakota, try to find a Native church, and join up; but what I'm saying is that life itself, in a variety of avenues I've taken, has taught me to be far, far less sure of the Beauty Way is or has been in the tribe from whom I come.

One of the most conservative men I ever knew, Rev. Cornelius Van Schouwen, writing from the beleaguered country of France during WWII, couldn't help but feel at least something of what I'm talking about, even though the contrasting way of life is not Native--it's simply to believe where GIs worship and why.

The war teaches one to love the brotherhood of all Christians. As a chaplain, you don't ask a soldier what denomination he belongs to, but rather if he is a Christian.

Here, Van Schouwen is at his most theologically lenient. I am tempted to say it is the  moment at which he seems least sectarian through the years the diaries  present us. But a realization of the brotherhood of all Christians does not linger. 

 I can't help wishing it had.