". . .and for Governor. . ."

 

It's not easy to pinpoint the specific feature that does it, but there's no dispute that something in Rob Sand's very countenance creates the impression that he should be running for student council--not yet, at least, for Iowa governor. 

Maybe it's the slightly jug-ish ears or the long neck. His clean-shaven face makes you wonder whether or not he could grow a beard at all. His clear blue eyes convey an innocence that suggests boyhood too. The fact that there ain't a bit of silver in the mop of hair that flops, kid-like, over his forehead makes you wonder how it is that a kid like the guy up front could be serious about running for Gov. 

Whatever combo of factors create it, his kid-dish looks are remarkable to just about everyone in the room, so remarkable, in fact, that he uses his shockingly youthful appearance, uses it himself when his campaign speech does a little winsome self-abasement. "How can someone with this face be a rotten politician?" He didn't say it exactly that way last night at a campaign stop in Sioux Center, but he gets a laugh when he says something similar.

Rob Sand is an interesting guy, a resident and native of the northeast corner of the state, a Luther College grad, a Dem who loves to hunt and fish (and is unafraid of saying it). He's the only Democrat to hold elective office in the state and has been, or so I'm told, a fierce critic of politicians who have a penchant for spending the public's money.

At times, he seems to want to project his innocence. He held forth last night, took questions from an audience that may have been entirely Sioux County residents, but wasn't all Dems, and throughout the evening spread lots of good cheer without being silly or childish. He accounted himself well and likely secured at least a few more votes from a corner of the state where the Democratic party regulars, people say, used to meet in a phone booth. 

Amazingly, his stump speech never once mentioned the word "Trump," despite the fact that he could have held our President over an open fire.  He never used the word "president" either, not because he has sympathy for our commander-in-chief, but because the heart of his appeal is his assault on a two-party politics that makes Iowa neighbors into enemies. He says if he gets elected, he'll work on making Thanksgiving a joy again (people chuckle--they know what he means!)

He was impressive, very impressive. That he can take Sioux County, however, is a real stretch, about as likely as a July blizzard. What works against him here, of course, is not his almost shocking youthfulness or his take on any of the most pressing political issues, but a long and deep conviction in lots of Sioux County hearts that voting Democratic is abomination, a sin, and no matter what Rob Sand says about the horrors of the two-party system, he's a Dem.

Last night in the Sioux Center library, I thought he was terrific.

When I can't seem to learn

I don't know exactly what the little machine looked like. What I do remember is that its sole purpose in your life or mine was to facilitate this new thing that tons of people had begun to use--e-mail, or electronic mail. That was its sole purpose. It was fashioned to resemble a work desk. The idea was that it would sit on an ordinary desk without getting in the way of other work. All it was meant to do was make the process of emailing easier than it was when it was only one function of a desktop computer. 

We're talking two decades ago here, I'm thinking, although I won't swear by the numbers. What I remember best is that it seemed perfect for my dad, who'd spent most all of his working years in offices. He knew his way around numbers and letters, but this whole computer-thing was sweeping its way into his life without being formally introduced.

I bought the little machine--it wasn't terribly expensive. I figured on a trip home I'd introduce it into the spare bedroom we'd sleep in and he used as an office when no one was using the spare bed. That was the purpose of the cute little email-er--make the processes of the new digital world a little less intimidating.

So the two of us went at it, sitting there at his desk. "Watch the words you type run across the screen here, Dad," I told him. His son was no expert, but this cute little machine was a great little foray into the tech world.

"Now hit 'Return,'" I said, maybe two dozen times. I don't think he was quite 80 years old at the time, about my age maybe. 

A thriving classroom requires a two-way street, equal doses of clear exposition and a willingness to learn. Dad was increasingly impossible. It seemed to me that he wasn't paying close attention. Nothing I said would go in. I was a teacher, for pity's sake. I knew how to find a way into a student's brain. This email thing?--there was no way he couldn't learn. 

My frustration level went through the roof, made me ever-increasingly angry. "Hit return, his return." I tried not to show it, but that frustration piled up like a bank of snow I hadn't seen coming. I'd never begun to imagine that with the help of this little electronic wonder, Dad couldn't learn a ridiculously easy task: to send us emails. Sheesh! Piece of cake or what?

I don't remember ever getting an email from him. That cute little machine got dumped, I'm sure. I don't believe he ever used it.

A few years later, Dad died. On our last visit, I stayed at his hospital bedside for a couple of days while he walked very much alone down a well-trodden path. When he died, his doctor left us a card expressing his sympathy and listing four or five causes for Dad's having passed away; one of those causes was a surprise--"Alzheimer's." 

That was news.

Our TV is just a few years old, our old TV set got soaked in the flood. This new one is a smart TV, I'm told, but it insists on showing us a donut that circles and circles and circles some more. We're trying to understand what a "cache" is and how to live with it, but it ain't easy to learn when you're approaching 80 years.

Ain't at all easy, I know.   

Rigged?

 

The red card this man from the U.S. World Cup soccer team was given regularly carries with it a one-game suspension for whatever foul play triggered the sentence. This man, U.S. forward Folarin Balogun, was sentenced to sit out the next US game by the long established rules. Balogun had scored three goals and is acknowledged to be one of the mainstays of the American team. The U,S., without him, would clearly miss him and be playing at less than optimum strength.

Apparently, the President of these United States heard about the sentence (quite controversial, I'm told) and apparently decided to do something about it. He called the  FIFA president Gianni Infantino. 

Then something very unusual happened. Suddenly--and largely without notice or documentation--that suspension was lifted, and the U. S. team will operate at full strength when it faces Belgium today.

Highly controversial, I'm told, although there is a possibility that the President's call to the Commish had nothing to do with the Balogun suspension. The world--and me too!-- may simply have fallen to a classic logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc, "after the fact therefore because of the fact."

All of which might well be easy to believe if it weren't for the fact that the President of the United States is far too capable of the kind of shenanigans behind the highly unusual resolution to the problem. And, of course, the crooked story does nothing for the reputation of the U. S.  of A. As the Pres himself likes to say: "it was rigged."

The truth? Who knows? The smell, however, is altogether too familiar. 

And don't look for the stink to drift away by game time tonight. 

_______________________________

Oops. Forgot to hit "Publish" yesterday. The U. S. lost last night, ending what had become a wildly sweet story AND defusing the problem our President had struck up by butting into the business of the World Cup. Losing is far worse than it's cracked up to be, and last night's game was a case in point. Wasn't fun, watching. I'm sure it was even less fun there. No one wants to lose.

But if you look hard enough for a silver lining, there's at least one. Trump didn't triumph. Had Folarin Balogun played a great game, had he led USA team to a glorious victory, the win would not have gone down well with the rest of the world. It would be forever smudged by the President's deliberate and very public intervention. It would have stunk.

But he didn't, and the team looked like the team that should have lost, Belgium's superior strengths so vividly on display. And, thus, the President's leaning on the commissioner became, at worst, a footnote. And that's a blessing.

So while no one would choose to end the US's Cinderella story in this year's World Cup, at least we can say that Trump can't claim the trophy.

Independence Day iii

 

He found the captain sitting at his desk, a map before him, roast pork still steaming on the plate to his left. The door was open to the warmth of that July morning. Johannes knocked.

"Yes?" The captain turned in his swivel chair and looked over his shoulder. "What is it?"

"Captain, my people would like to sing. Would it--"

The captain looked up at him blankly.

"Psalms," Johannes told him. "We would like to sing the psalms."

"Psalms!" the man repeated, puzzled. He unbuttoned the top buttons of his coat. Johannes waited. "The psalms, you'd like to sing?" He wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. "But today is the Fourth of July. No one I know sings Psalms today--in church, yes. Maybe Christmas, you know, or Easter--but on the Fourth? You don't know other songs?" He leaned back, smiling as if the thought was absurdity.

Johannes shrugged. "We would like to sing the psalms."

The captain pushed aside his plate as if he was finished eating. "All of them?" he asked.

"Surely not. Just maybe some?" It felt to him like a good idea, like something they should do. "We would be happy like the rest. When we sing the Psalms, we can be happy. We can celebrate too."

The captain raised his fist to his lips and burped, not loud, then stood and put his hands in his pockets. He walked to the doorway, past Johannes, and surveyed his deck. Most of the crew and many of the emigrants, the passengers, were still eating. He stood a head taller than Johannes, his thick black hair falling nearly to his collar. "That would be good maybe--I don't know," he said, as if addressing them all. "If it would make you happy--all the Hollanders--then go ahead and sing the Psalms." The captain turned to look at him. "Some of them, eh?" And giggled. "Not all."

"It would make us happy," Johannes told him.

"Then go ahead and do it." He smiled as if the whole idea was an odd joke the two of them had shared. "It's not what Americans do, you know," he said. "This psalm-singing on the Fourth of July, but you say it will make you happy? Then it's a good thing--a good, good thing."

The shooting continued later until the ammunition was spent, but the emigrants, adding their own bit of celebration and their own vision of independence, raised their voices in Psalm 68, one of their favorites, Johannes as voorzanger.

Let God be praised with reverence deep;
He daily comes our lives to steep
In bounties freely given.

The captain strolled over, shaking his head, his hands clasped behind his back. The crew, nearly exhausted from all the celebration, listened and laughed, then smiled. Some Germans joined in, their own language harmonizing with the Dutch.

God cares for us, our God is He:
Who would not fear His majesty
In earth as well as heaven?
Our God upholds us in the strife;
to us He grants eternal life,
And saves from desolation.

They never felt exactly like they did--the psalms they sang, the notes moving along faster than normal. He had only to determine pitch, for his people moved independently at a pace too strong and joyous to be tempered by the voorzanger. The captain was right, of course. It's not what the Americans did, but until his people did it--sang the psalms on the deck of a ship going across the ocean--they hadn't either.

He heard the needy when they cry,
He saves their souls when death draws night,
This God is our salvation.

Beneath them, the ship moved almost silently beneath them through calmed seas once again, pressing ever closer to the Newfoundland banks.

Independence Day -- ii

 

In a moment Johannes swung himself out of the berth and stood, his knees full of stiffness. He held up the blanket and saw his wife sitting up, her elbow propped beneath her for support.

"How is it, Maria?" he asked.

She swept her tangled hair from her face with her left hand and drew it back behind her ears.

"Good," she said. "I feel better. And you?"

Johannes saw a slight smile, warm like a summer morn­ing, break from the unfamiliar creases that lined her face. But she was still beautiful. Two weeks on board had robbed her face of its youthful sheen, but her blue eyes, glazed by sickness during the storm, were now bright and clear. The baby, Geesje, turned slowly in her sleep, her mouth puckering as if she were already nursing.

He ran his fingers through his hair and smiled at his wife. "I will go up to see what is happening here."

The ocean was still, the sky broadly blue, and the deck as full of activity as it had been during the fury of the storm. But Johannes knew that it was not yesterday. A long box of firearms stood opened on the deck and multi-colored flags festooned the rigging. Crew and passengers alike were firing round after round, hooting and shrieking. One by one the passengers had left their berths and were joining the fest. Some of his friends were standing amidship, watching and laughing. He hesitated momentarily, then walked quickly over to join them.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It is a holiday! July 4. It is the Day of Independence for Americans." The men watched closely as the crew sang and drank and ate in unchecked celebration.

Johannes enjoyed the spectacle, but unlike the Germans who participated more readily, the Hollanders were reticent; they stood apart, laughing and joking with each other for the first time in days.

He ran back to the stairs and descended in a flurry, rushing to his berth, where he found the canvas open and Geesje awake and nursing, Maria lying comfortably on her side.

"It is the American Day of Independence, Maria. You should come above."

"What is that though?"

"'Independence'--the Americans celebrate every year today, July the Fourth. Something about their War of Independence."

Maria's smile changed into a hesitant laugh, as her brows hunched in confusion. "So they shoot off guns?"

Geesje was unwilling to give up her mother's breast, but she turned her blue eyes toward her father. He shrugged his shoulders. He didn't understand either, then he turned back toward the stairway.

*

By the time Johannes had returned to the deck, his Dutch friends were shooting and laughing and dancing like the rest. 

The morning passed quickly, full of the gleeful charm of a new and unexpected holiday, celebrated by adopted children only beginning to sense the ardor of a changing life. By noon everyone was on deck, even those who had suffered most during the storm, and all were served from a roasted pig the crew prepared specially for the holiday. The Hollanders watched the men hoist their tankards and sing lusty songs.

Maria approached her husband soon after their dinner. The men sat like birds in a circle, the women also together.

"Johannes," she said quietly over his shoulder, unwilling to break the spirited mood of the conversation. "Johannes, we thought we might like to sing to God a bit--the psalms. The women said."

He looked up at his wife. Her eyes were shining from a face flushed with pink. The rest of the Dutch women sat behind her. He paused only momentarily before moving from the circle and running toward the chartroom to look for the captain, a burly man with skin as weathered as the boards on his ship.

________________________ 

Tomorrow: Celebrating freedom in a new world--the end of the story.

Independence Day

 

50th anniversary of the Dutch immigrants to Sheboygan County, WI

[Because I wanted to understand my own heritage, I read all kinds of local history books when our little family moved to Iowa from Arizona. It was 1976, America's Bicentennial, and like many others I was following the Roots phenomenon, trying to locate the Kunte Kinte that was in me, a Dutch-American. The stories I found were a delight. I'd always wanted to write. I was embarking on a career of teaching in higher education. It was time to put the pen to paper, so I did. Thus begat a collection titled Sign of a Promise and Other Stories. "Independence" is one of those stories, now fifty years old.

_________________________ 

Johannes clung to the rail with his blistered hands, but relaxed his body as if he were in a saddle, absorbing the lurches of the ship in his knees as he stood, dumbfounded, staring out at the wind-driven schooner scudding across the waves. The winds had subsided as the storm passed, and the ship had responded, it creaking muffled in relief. But the ocean had continued its frantic throbbing, as if the entire drama had been staged in a theater of measurable proportions. Then, suddenly, its labor peaking, the sea had borne this ghastly three-masted schooner, torn and battered, its ragged sails flapping from what masts still stood on her decks.

He watched, silent. The others stood beside him on the deck, quiet, eyes focused on the ship that rolled, dipped, and rose with the swells of the ocean. Jagged wooden frames rose statue-like from the deck, and the base of one thick mast jutted skyward like a broken spear, its shaft snapped by the storm. The schooner danced like a specter, so close now that they could hear its shrieking timbers; then it jigged aimlessly into the purple horizon until it disappeared as suddenly as it had come, its past--its crew, cargo, even, perhaps its emigrants—as mysterious as its destiny.

He was awed. Two ships had been so close here. . .nowhere, yet he knew nothing of the other, nor would he ever. He couldn’t help remembering Zeeland and Middleburg, the town, the house and shop. It was all so close, so warm, he knew everyone; the very streets seemed lie family now.

“But the new country!” people had said. "America!" When he heard them, the streets, the village, the house and shop, had all become so close, so confining, so colorless.

And what of the people who had once stood on those decks, he thought, people just like them, watching and waiting, their eyes straining constantly toward the fickle horizons? He kept looking west, following the trail of the ghostly schooner, even though it already had passed into the mist. What he'd seen, what they'd all seen, was all he would ever know, he told himself again. No names, no faces, no trunks, no lives, no souls. Had the storm flung them all into this endless rolling sea? Had their lives been simply swallowed ? His own ship surged beneath him, floating like some trifling pendant on the breast of the sea.

His steps were cautious but weak as he left the deck. He moved slowly down the stairway, his left arm braced against the wall to steady himself. German emigrants moved carefully throughout the lower quarters, speaking very little. Children cried-they never seemed to stop; at least the passing of the storm would quell the rage of sickness among the passengers. For several days the hold had been littered with bodies and trunks, the floor coated with vomit, the halls cluttered with anything that couldn't be secured. In Johannes' mind, listless bodies sprawled there yet, for he had seen it all and would always remem­ber. No dominie could preach human depravity and dependence on God so clearly as he had seen it, had heard it, had smelled it, had even felt it. But the halls were clear tonight, and the storm had broken.

He stopped at his berth and felt the dampness in the cur­tains that he had specially hung about his quarters. He had tried hard to make it livable. The sailors had smiled when they saw him decorating, preparing the berth for Maria and his Geesje, but it was useless. His wife and daughter could appreciate nothing since their departure . First, there had been the nearly constant quarreling with the Germans, then the disregard and cynicism of the crew, and finally the storm. 

He lifted the canvas. Maria lay motionless in the berth, her mouth gaping, her face sallow and drawn. Geesje lay at her breast in a gray pallor, cramped and weak, thin and tiny for her nearly fifteen months. She would still take nothing but her mother's milk. Johannes backed into the berth, swung his aching legs into the bed, leaned back slowly, and pulled the cover over the opening behind him. The berth was dark and damp. He reached over, almost as an afterthought, and felt for his daughter's pulse, then his wife's. He found them both alive, crossed his arms over his chest and tried to relax. From within the hold the ocean felt smooth finally, as he said a silent prayer.

*

The sun rose above a calm ocean. His family had slept well, their strength returning in a tide of repose, when they were awakened by shouts from the deck and a cannonade that boomed like thunder through the sleeping quarters. It was early, very early.

Johannes turned on his side, drew back the canvas, and looked down the narrow hallway. All down the line heads popped out in similar fashion, searching for some explanation of the thunderous noise.

"What is it?" someone gasped. More curious questions, a waking babble of voices. 

_______________________ 

Tomorrow: A celebration.

July 4, 1803

 

Stephen A. Ambrose says, in Undaunted Courage, that the Fourth of July on the Missouri River began with shooting off "the canon." Comes as a shock almost. Lewis and Clark, et al, packed that kind of heat?--an actual canon on board? Sheesh.

Yes and no. Simply making headway through the wily Missouri River' sandbars was enough trouble. With three or four ways of moving upstream, against the flow, the men had their choice; but none were particularly easy. Two of them--using lodge poles to pole the beast up, or else pulling the boat and pirogues upriver with ropes—were truly back-breaking. Pulling that thing against the current while marching along the river's edge had to be enough to make some of the men consider alternate professions. And then, on top all of that, they lugged along a canon?

John Ordway, as others, calls it a "Bow piece." That's a mite better than "canon" methinks. What ornamented (and that's not far from the truth) the front of "the boat," as the men described the biggest vessel of their armada, was anywhere from 18 inches to 36 inches long--not that humongous.

Still, the canon was meant as a weapon of war, should war break out. It sounds a little vainglorious to say it this way, but it's true: war was not the intention; peace was. Lewis and Clark--unless they lied their way through their own journals--were embarked on a business venture. First and foremost, they were explorers in the best 19th century definition of that word; Jefferson wanted to know everything about this unmapped chunk of land he'd bought from the French.

But L and C were also out there on business. The fur trade was big money, and the French were in it, as were the English, both big-time. They were all making money on beaver and an occasional buffalo hide, and Jefferson wanted to secure control of the business already going on out west in his new country. That might be best accomplished, he thought and thusly directed L and C, by meeting with the Indigenous and letting them know that there was a new Great Father in town, and that Great Father wanted to work with them, not against them. And by telling them that the near-constant warfare between some of the tribes wasn't good for anybody's pocketbook.

Amazing as it may seem, no matter what you call it, that cannon on the keelboat never took aim at any human being, not up or back, not for two long years. Still, even though nobody shot at anybody, lugging that "bow piece" along turned out to be immensely useful. Hunting and scouting parties went out frequently, looking for game, looking for Native people. After a day or two absences, the men couldn't help but wonder where the others might be. Voila! the canon. Boom! --a welcome call home.

It's been American military policy almost ever since: we avoid war by arming ourselves to the teeth. Sounds like idiocy, but it's worked, often.

Besides that, that "Bow piece" went off for celebration too. On July 4, "we fired our Bow piece this morning & one in the evening for Independance of the U. S." says John Ordway, and then, same sentence, no end punctuation, "we saw a nomber of Goslins half grown today." Wasn't much of a celebration, but it got a half sentence in Ordway's journal."

You can keep this information to yourself, but the men were given a double shot of whiskey that night on the occasion of the birthday of the United States of America. Prost.

I'm not at all sure if Ordway wrote this last sentence before or after that extra gill of whiskey (about four ounces), but the what he says about what he saw is sweet, whether he was a little holiday happy or not: "One of the most beautiful places I ever Saw in my life, open and beautifully Diversified with hills & vallies all presenting themselves to the River."

That extra gill of whiskey and a couple of rounds from an 24-inch cannon constituted the very first Fourth of July celebration west of the Mississippi. By all accounts, it was a good day.