"Sing, O Sing"

Just one more day on the tabloids. 

Once upon a time I had an aunt--I used to think of her as an aunt, but she wasn't. Maybe she was a second or third cousin. Anyway, she was--I'm sure she's gone now--a roly-poly thing with stringy Dirkse hair and a pin-cushion nose. She was blessed with a happiness most people would aim for if they had half an idea of what exactly it was. 

I'm quite sure she was Mom's second cousin, but the two of them got along like sisters, because she was both kin and kind. Like Mom, she could not pass a piano without laying down a two or three hymns, "peppy things," she would have called 'em, her faves. She would have been at home with a big Wurlitzer at Wrigley Field, but were she so blessed, she wouldn't have kept the job for more than a half-hour without breaking into "I Will Sing of My Redeemer."

I could go on, but I already have. This cousin-of-my-mother long ago made a sustained appearance in a story I wrote, where, when introduced, she marches off the page thusly:

To see Sarah Esselink outfitted in a Santa suit would be to behold Saint Nick himself. She has his round face, his pudgy nose, and his apple cheeks. What's more, her sticklike legs seem inadequate to lug her heft around town. She has his eyes too--bright, sparkling twinkles that glitter when she's at the piano--and everyone recognizes that silly, chattering giggle of hers, even in a crowd. 

Calvary Church has its share of guilt-ridden folks with over­cast faces, but no one would accuse Sarah Esselink of being among them, even though, given what her son's become, many would say she has a right to be dour. 

She has never led any of the many organizations she's served--Ladies' Guild, Booster Club, Legion Auxiliary--but most people would say Sarah long ago found her own distin­guished place on the piano bench at Calvary. She was blessed with massive hands, a titon's heart, and sensitivities so promis­cuous that whenever she hears children sing the old favorite hymns-"The Old Rugged Cross" or "I Come to the Garden Alone"-those thick fingers of hers wiggle into her purse for the tatted hanky. 

Such powerful hands and such a tender heart make her piano playing remarkable. She is self-made as a pianist, having pulled up her skills from the bootstraps of her own meager talents; she hears a melody once and owns it thereafter, as if God in his infi­nite wisdom stowed a computer chip in that round head of hers. 

In the story, she has a gay son. In real life, she didn't--at least not that I know of. But in the story she has this thing about the National Enquirer--she's, well, addicted. She regularly buys them, brings them home, devours them when her husband's at work, then trashes them so he can't notice.

He knows, of course, but he's big enough to allow her some a few incidental transgressions. This Sarah Esselink and my mother's cousin carry their remnant Dutch Calvinism in somewhat traditional ways--they're too Calvinist to speak in tongues, but if the two of them had had a choice, they both wouldn't have minded being splayed out in spiritual rapture at least once in their lives. 

When I was a kid our two families occasionally vacationed together. I was old enough to distinguish strange goings-on, but my parents handled it like the joke it was. My mother's cousin allowed herself to sin gloriously when she was on vacation, so gloriously that she bought a copy of every last tabloid at the grocery store. Overdoing it on vacation was okay because God's house was somewhere back home; on vacation, He allowed his people some space. Sort of like skipping church if you're at Yellowstone.

David Pecker's got to suffer through cross-examination when the trial resumes, but I think we've buried ourselves in the sleaze long enough. The entire nation needs a shower from Trump and his ilk.

David Pecker makes me think my mom's cousin had a more urgent sense of sin than the other Calvinists in the family. After all, my parents giggled her addiction away. 

But she's in glory these days, unhooked, and if there's a piano around I'd bet anything those little fat hands of hers are finding every last key. And you know what else? In whatever Wal-marts exist on high, I'm flat out positive there's not an Enquirer anywhere to be found.  

Sing, O sing of my Redeemer!
With his blood he purchased me;
on the cross he sealed my pardon,
paid the debt, and made me free.

For the Likes of David Pecker -- ii

You may remember--if not, have a look--yesterday's post offered a little more than half of a "poem," by an old friend, John Leax, who put a book of such meanderings together based on title lines he picked up from National Enquirer--they're his stories, but their headlines. If it suits your fancy, call them "found poems," because, as a matter of fact, they are--they're "found" on everyday grocery store tabloids.

Here comes the second half--two duck hunters who, to their dismay, find that what they knocked out of the sky was actually a celestial being, who--woe and woe and woe--appears to be dead.

Odd thing about Leax's oddities, they're funny as anything, and then again, when  you think about them, not.

That's their art.

Duck Hunters Shoot Angel (second half)

"Ain't no angel," I said. I was thinking,
if it was an angel it woulda sung out
from the sky hosannas and not come in like
some buzz-bombing buzzard set on supper
It woulda shouted, "Holy, Holy,"
and I woulda known to take off my shoes
'cause Christ himself was coming right
behind. But no, it just come on at me
like nothing you never seen, so I pulled
up and killed it. I was thinking that
when Harold gets to laughing. He just
plopped down in the cold muck,
clutched his big gun, and laughed.
"Oh," he gasped, grabbing for breath,
"you got hell to pay." "You shut up,"
I said again. I coulda shot him
and buried him and the thing
and no one been the wiser,
but it was getting to look like an angel
to me. I couldn't think what else
it might be, so I left it with Harold
and the dog lying down looking
in its eyes, like it understood
something I didn't, and went and called
the sheriff. He come right along,
along with a Baptist preacher he rung up.

The preacher stood over the thing.
"That's an angel all right. Biggest one
I ever saw. Sure be a shame we won't
ever hear its word." And he looked
at me like I'd killed his God
and nailed up his church forever.

The sheriff said he couldn't see
I'd broken any laws. Angels ain't
protected or anything, but I don't know.
I ain't never killed no angel before
and ain't nothing no one can say
seem to be the right thing.

For the likes of David Pecker

 

Yesterday's national news was all National Enquirer--who lies and who pays and who gets the cover of the magazine that sits on just about every grocery store counter in North America--maybe I'm wrong about that; maybe there are some who draw the line.

Anyway, a man unfortunately named David Pecker put me in mind of an odd little book of poetry by an old friend named John Leax, who got into the vile habit reading tabloid headlines. (He's not alone in that particular sin, I can confessionally  say.) 

But John Leax wasn't satisfied with that smack of the sensational because, those titles recorded, he determined to write his own stories with his own angles and his own--you might say--worldview, using those pirated titles. Leax's slim little volume of David Pecker-like poetry is titled Tabloid News. I grabbed my copy off the shelf just now (it's actually dedicated to me) and read a few in light of all the fiction-talk at yesterday's Trump Trial. This morning I think Leax's work is even more a scream.

So here's the origin. Like everyone else on the continent, Leax lingers in the grocery line, scans the tabloid headlines, scribbles some ribald things down while his milk and cookies or whatever are waiting to be checked out.

He gets the Pow! headline, then creates a story to answer to the title's promise. Remember, as Pecker said, it's all about headlines. Nobody bothers much with the copy--they buy on headline.

Here's just one of the John Leax poems from Tabloid News (WordFarm, 2005). (Laughing is not only permitted, it's encouraged, maybe especially in the wake of all of yesterday's news.)

Duck Hunters Shoot Angel

The thing was coming straight at me,
head high across the open water,
and it was big. I pulled up and let
loose with both barrels, dropping it
ten yards out. I turned to the dog
but it wouldn't retrieve,
just hung back in the blind whimpering.
It was twice her size anyway. 

Harold, my partner, nearly blind himself

with keeping off the cold all morning,
just stared, muttering, "Holy shit, holly shit."
So I slogged out--breaking the ice,
sinking up to the waist, freezing
you know what--and dragged her back.

Big as she was, she weighed nothing.

I dumped her on Harold's feet.

He stood there, slack-jawed and dumb,

then he said, "Ya think it's in season?"

I lifted a wing, and damn, there underneath

it was an arm muscled like Hulk Hogan.

"I thought she was a big bird," I said,

mostly to myself, and dropped the wing,

But Harold had seen. "Sonabitch," 

he pointed, "You killed yourself

a male angel." "Shut up," I answered.

"Angels ain't neither male nor female.

Any fool knows that. What's more, ain't

no one can kill an angel, they're immortals."

"This one weren't," Harold said,

and he was right. It was dead.

"Then the dog come alongside and begun

sniffing and then licking about it. 

I pulled it away. It didn't seem right

even though the dog seemed somehow

to be affectionate-like and worshipful.

Harold realized the thing was flopped

on his feet, and he give it a little push,

getting aside from it, and it rolled over part

way coming to rest on those rough wings.

That's when I saw the face. It was

human-like and not very pretty, without

a beard, but awful to see. It scared me,

looking up like I was the one dead, like it

could see me and I wasn't making it happy.

_________________

No, no, no--it ain't over. The rest of "Duck Hunters Shoot Angel" will appear tomorrow. I promise.

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.