tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-296489912024-03-18T08:11:54.946-05:00Stuff in the BasementUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2736125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-83077314108221093162024-03-18T07:02:00.000-05:002024-03-18T07:02:17.713-05:00DeSantis and the Death of WOKE<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQujEHMMHb29UG3hCNzKERV06C6RLXxxgKvbpDkz7ImmlPQBHFfD1YQ5auIsfBA0nylVpdOdPaM6A90bjm9lSjEOMtEkBFBI7mbROeceZr_j4ZmicSFbt4hhYv5hv2B_0ODXUc18-QGqnRuBwHvvDQo7xxUBaSB4OBzikX_c-BP9Q4VHpKdBaW" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="1130" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQujEHMMHb29UG3hCNzKERV06C6RLXxxgKvbpDkz7ImmlPQBHFfD1YQ5auIsfBA0nylVpdOdPaM6A90bjm9lSjEOMtEkBFBI7mbROeceZr_j4ZmicSFbt4hhYv5hv2B_0ODXUc18-QGqnRuBwHvvDQo7xxUBaSB4OBzikX_c-BP9Q4VHpKdBaW=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm more than a little shame-faced. I'm downright embarrassed, mortified even, at myself and myself alone because I fell for the guy's claptrap. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">One-time Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis blew all kinds of air into the trial balloon by questioning the righteousness of literature and social studies teachers throughout the nation, who he claimed were poisoning minds and souls by spoon-feeding the nation's youth unabashedly WOKE materials, by pushing LGBTQ at them, even "grooming" them for unspeakable things.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And that's not all.<i> He went after librarians</i>. That's right--librarians. It's not easy to villainize the school librarian, or the peaceable staff downtown. I mean, you've got to go out of your way to make them out to be as depraved as DeSantis wanted to make you believe they were. But he did--and scored some significant results.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And the whole CRT thing, too, clear and present danger, an issue that grew out of some Southern swampy mess that established a clean and clear premise: there is no such thing as racial prejudice in America because here in the land of the free and the home of the brave we took care of all of that with the Civil War. I mean, look at Oprah. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The monster was fed energetically by concerned parents who looked at their kids' education and found it riddled with ideas they thought way, way, way beyond the pale. It was as if the American public had simply assumed that teachers and librarians weren't lecherous, deranged libs. Doggone it, it was time for parents to take back the classroom and retool it with the values of, say, Donald J. Trump. America needed to arm itself with MAGA to kill off WOKE. Florida, De Santos claimed, was where WOKE went to die. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And I fell for it. I did. I'm so sorry. I thought DeSantis' WOKE silliness worth fighting.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nope. According to its own progenitor, the whole thing was a bit of a "false narrative." Not long ago, none other than DeSantis chided the Florida public for going too far with the whole book banning thing, told them to cool their jets, to let up a little because the whole thing was devolving into sheer madness. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">After all, some included the Bible on the list of objectionable books, and the dictionary. DeSantis says some of the objections schools and librarians face are an "abuse of the process" undertaken "to score political points."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, he should know.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And I believed the guy, when, dang it, it was all politics.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Long live WOKE. May MAGA rest in peace</span>. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-41267492291854285262024-03-17T06:26:00.001-05:002024-03-17T06:27:41.225-05:00Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 42<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgyNi1Xk2Ru2En8rNkGlUEIaU6xfhXNVIEvjXEO0WZXp-xpHW4WIJXZIHtsXCjI_ItQCOzhNoj14S-UJbwhH1wJP3vitrsHO0wYRw_r5hPmXdGMtyJmcmZkv-KlbTXHq_LvBrI2EoTaUGR-dZt7kHgcTM0ZsWjpNK9dW6SQrppBdRyIOzgteF/s4594/Home%20of%20Standing%20Bear.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2442" data-original-width="4594" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgyNi1Xk2Ru2En8rNkGlUEIaU6xfhXNVIEvjXEO0WZXp-xpHW4WIJXZIHtsXCjI_ItQCOzhNoj14S-UJbwhH1wJP3vitrsHO0wYRw_r5hPmXdGMtyJmcmZkv-KlbTXHq_LvBrI2EoTaUGR-dZt7kHgcTM0ZsWjpNK9dW6SQrppBdRyIOzgteF/w640-h340/Home%20of%20Standing%20Bear.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">“My soul is downcast within me; </span></b></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">therefore I will remember
you from the land of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Jordan</st1:country-region>, </span></b></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>the heights of Hermon—from <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Mount</st1:placetype>
<st1:placename w:st="on">Mizar</st1:placename></st1:place>.” </b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">For a decade at least, just about every Saturday morning
I could, I ventured out west into the rolling hills that have formed, centuries
ago, along the Big Sioux River, a place where the land opens broadly into a
landscape that, like most of the Great Plains, ends only in what seems infinite
space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Literally, there is nothing
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s corn and there’s beans
and there’s some grasslands, but nothing is substantially present to fill the
frame of a camera lens; and that’s why it’s such a challenge to try. I do what
I can to get an angle on a subject that offers very little. We live in fly-over
country here, but then I’m a fan or Thoreau: “<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself,” he once
claimed, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“than be crowded on a velvet
cushion.”</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some time ago, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
York Times</i> ran a story about Californians leaving the state for the Midwest.
When I sent the story to friends, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Times</i>
website told me that story was their most-emailed piece that day. Amazing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And in some ways, terrific.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be nice for everyone here if some
companies would relocate to the rural <st1:place w:st="on">Midwest</st1:place>,
where wages are dismal and, often, benefits are worse. We could use a financial
shot in the arm.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But I’m not all that interested in a flood of new
residents. I am blessed—I really am—by living in a place where open land is all
around, just a farm or two per gravel road. These days, from my own backdoor I
can see for miles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some people in tall-grass prairie country lament the
death of hunting, pheasant hunting specifically. The number of hunters is down,
even though the headcount of pheasants, by my estimation, is up--at least I see
more out here. Just scared up a half-dozen hens out back yesterday.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’ve always thought Thoreau wasn’t wrong when he claimed
that boys (his word) really ought to hunt when they’re young but give it up on
becoming men, and that’s why I don’t lament the loss of hunters. But I’ve been
one, and I still sometimes long to get out there in the silence. Just the same,
I wanted to write a letter to the reporter suggesting that we’d all be better
off—even the pheasants—if we all packed cameras instead of 12-gauge pumps.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some Saturdays—lots of them this time of year--the sky,
at dawn, is thick with clouds, so thick that I don’t bother going out. When I
made a habit of it, cloudy Saturday mornings hurt because I came to need my
Saturday morning’s hour-long pilgrimage into open spaces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kathleen Norris, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dakota</i>, makes clear what others have said—that sometimes where there’s
nothing, there’s really something.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And I say all of this because in the second bout of
sadness which David discusses in this psalm—and it’s interesting that 42
doesn’t end with verse six—he is a bit more specific in the means by which
he’ll fight the blues. He’ll return—thoughtfully if not physically—to the open
land, to the “heights of Hermon.” He’ll go back to the open spaces as an
antidote to his weary, downcast soul, because there he can remember God.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Honestly, I think I know what he’s talking about. Just a
week ago I was all by my blessed self in the snowy country just a few miles
east of Glacier National Park. All by myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Oh, maybe a horse or gang of deer, but all by my blessed self, and it
was a blessing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Snow had just blew in from the far north, chilling
everything and leaving an icy glaze over the entire world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should learn how better to adjust my camera’s
f-stop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Just the heights of Hermon---the mere memory of standing
there all alone, David says, gives life to a weary soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I think I know that one.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-56717996135813235092024-03-16T07:00:00.001-05:002024-03-16T07:00:00.128-05:00An old story, "Anna"<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicarFuYdR08Jm3yN4ZEb791ehle9_2-SjHQKjtvBSGUW4e4oAdE0UzarJTgtWdoGJXb2h_2OHeFn8hpoXR5rKOVBocLUXsPKqEONS-S-LaxkBNIlibFVlb78agwNopW6pNFD4RcnYvxSiSPaW169NPRgBkI3pKZtOfP6ZKf5msWoXi34jxBP0R/s4608/P3240079%20filtered.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicarFuYdR08Jm3yN4ZEb791ehle9_2-SjHQKjtvBSGUW4e4oAdE0UzarJTgtWdoGJXb2h_2OHeFn8hpoXR5rKOVBocLUXsPKqEONS-S-LaxkBNIlibFVlb78agwNopW6pNFD4RcnYvxSiSPaW169NPRgBkI3pKZtOfP6ZKf5msWoXi34jxBP0R/w480-h640/P3240079%20filtered.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: small;">Continued from yesterday. . .</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Years have passed since then. Today the church pays a music director to order a Christmas show from some slick Christian catalog out of Texas, but Anna is still teaching Sunday school, and now she has my own three-year-old boy. No one else her age teaches, because kids have a way of forcing early retirements, just as they always did. But there is a smile on Anna's face whenever we drop our son off with her for Sunday school. It's a smile unlike anything we ever saw before on her face, a smile that surprised me at first. And Anna has a permanent now, her curly gray hair curled up tight around her head like any of a dozen other women in church. <br /><br />Time fills in gaps the way dawn colors a lakeshore landscape. Some things I know now about Anna. I know now that Anna cared for her parents until the day each of them died. I know now that her father was no gentle man to live with-blustery, hardheaded, stubborn as the toughest Hollander. I know now that when he was gone, every Sunday she dressed her mother, set her in the wheelchair, and pushed the old woman to church, even when she knew her mother understood little of the sermon. I know now that giving her life to them was a thankless, blessed job that might have turned anyone's face into something grim, something less than radiant. <br /><br />I know now that the woman who never married regularly plays grandmother to two little blond-haired boys no older than my own son, two little boys her niece was left alone with when their father ran off with another woman. <br /><br />Why does she smile that way today, twenty years after a class of fourth-grade boys decided she was much too owly to be a good teacher? Why does my son love her today? Why does he curl around my leg and turn away from her when she talks to him, as if he's embarrassed to have all of her attention himself? Why does Anna smile? <br /><br />Maybe it's because life is easier for her now, later on in her years. Maybe the privileged burden of her parents' care is there behind her, settled in the pages of her mind like yellowed photographs. Maybe the anxiety of being alone has settled into a firm assurance that all things have worked together for good. Maybe playing grandmother has swelled the limits of her tolerance. Maybe the smile is simply the inherent reward of many years of Christmas programs interspersed annually in a lifetime of quiet selflessness. <br /><br />Four hundred years ago we reformed the church and stopped canonization, stopped making saints. Maybe it's a shame. Today we don't know how to revere those who give themselves, all of themselves, through us to God. We let them pass on too easily, and we don't elevate them like heroes. After all, what was Abraham to David but a symbol of belief and courage, of faith and promise. <br /><br />So this is for you, Anna. And this is for me. And this is for our son. And this is for our Lord. <br /><br />I'm happy you're out of intensive care, and so is my son.</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*~*~*~*~*</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;">There's a bit more to the story. When the piece appeared in a magazine I knew some people in the community was published, I hoped my masked name might keep it away from those who would know who this central character is. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;">Nope.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;">A man who grew up not all that far from where I did, took a look, read a few words, and said, "Hey, he's talking about my aunt." That discovery got back to me, and more. No one seemed angry however, although if they had been angry or hurt, I may never have known.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;">Then, years later, when we were visiting the town where I grew up, the fictional Anna came up to me. I don't know that I had ever spoken to her before in my life. By this time, she was most certainly elderly. I will admit that I wondered what she was going to say, but when it came out, mid smiles, she told me she'd had the whole essay decoupaged and it hung in her bedroom.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;">I'm happy to say that it seemed to me that "Anna" was a winner.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-76266744210649457472024-03-15T10:48:00.003-05:002024-03-15T10:48:48.615-05:00An old story, "Anna"<div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5HPgvBjAvvWuS4bvOZLQ6ijeEdbxqjipfIpxi6gCN9ytXZTvCVpqr4zAapZ3wLYNJgIPFOkFQu9URW7daum8A_aNeWEJogL12Cyb75dO8bzm9EPU2VC5sNgjv390ORBoSwj0dRhuSf8a1X-xEsxo6xcAvrMi0lzHhznfkcdT9UoT5zAvHh2Y-/s4608/P3240079%20filtered.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5HPgvBjAvvWuS4bvOZLQ6ijeEdbxqjipfIpxi6gCN9ytXZTvCVpqr4zAapZ3wLYNJgIPFOkFQu9URW7daum8A_aNeWEJogL12Cyb75dO8bzm9EPU2VC5sNgjv390ORBoSwj0dRhuSf8a1X-xEsxo6xcAvrMi0lzHhznfkcdT9UoT5zAvHh2Y-/w480-h640/P3240079%20filtered.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>If my son, here referred to as three years old, is today well into his forties, the story I'm telling is now more than forty years old, originally published in a magazine that, by my direction, gave the author a made-up name. Why? Because, back then, I was afraid of how the individuals might react, given my going public with their lives. It's a difficult line writers walk when writing stories which "use" characters and situations others might recognize, and I was aware of that with "Anna," because here those characters attended the same church I did. So I hid, or tried to.</span><div><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;">But here's the story.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: small;">*~*~*~*~*~* </span></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Anna is out of intensive care now, and I guess that's why I'm saying this. Because it strikes me-now that she has wrestled through a fight with her heart-it strikes me that we are far too good at eulogies. Nice things are always easy to say after the funeral. But today Anna came out of intensive care. <br /><br />Anna is an organist in our church--self-taught for the most part--and a Sunday school teacher for three or four generations probably. When I was a boy, we feared Anna because her grim face wore no emotion; her lips were locked together in a twist that was neither smile nor frown. We read it as perpetual disgust. <br /><br />Sunday school programs brought out the worst in her. A hundred kids with lit fuses would shoot around the church sanctuary during practice the night before. "You fourth graders, act your age!" <br /><br />She would always snap at us. We were sure she had no loving voice in her. When she'd tum to the fifth graders, someone would mimic her for sure. Years later I discovered that Anna created those annual programs. <br /><br />Anna never married. In a church of families, even kids don't quite know how to take women who don't marry. They're different, and a boy starts recognizing such things about the same time he starts reading the script writing carved into the Communion table at the front of the church he's attended for ten years. Suddenly, it's just there. Fourth-grade boys just figured a woman like <br /><br />Anna--sour Anna--couldn't get a man. Meanwhile, another Christmas program would come and go. <br /><br />Halfway through adolescent rebellion, I thought Anna was an icon of the staid, traditional, immovable church of my youth. Fashions arrived and left, but Anna's hair looked forever the same, as if she'd surrendered to being out of time. I swore that the older she grew the slower she played organ, until even the bouncy hymns poked along like the old psalms. And always you'd see the expressionless face up there, lighted by the soft glow of organ light. She chewed gum, not vigorously but quickly, nervously, when she played.</span></div><div>______________________ </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;">More tomorrow </span><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-34770659897540744802024-03-14T07:15:00.001-05:002024-03-14T07:15:35.808-05:00The Tabor House, Tabor, Iowa<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG53L0rvzyo0qHA4gNIEAzIZTiEDv329TmC6yiaHw8M0DcJnDH-nAiqE3XNkhrDjEn11U7Urb7Bx2KVWbsf2PjSHP6tuGguYnnet27Kaec3jrC9-nZKqvW1DqsJxXPlvsYYBE7PYF-S8oXOp-nc8njlQu-IFrX1p3aj149S0_bCPR5QzoqLckr/s880/ugrr%20house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="660" data-original-width="880" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG53L0rvzyo0qHA4gNIEAzIZTiEDv329TmC6yiaHw8M0DcJnDH-nAiqE3XNkhrDjEn11U7Urb7Bx2KVWbsf2PjSHP6tuGguYnnet27Kaec3jrC9-nZKqvW1DqsJxXPlvsYYBE7PYF-S8oXOp-nc8njlQu-IFrX1p3aj149S0_bCPR5QzoqLckr/w640-h480/ugrr%20house.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small;">The John Tabor House</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Religious visions were everywhere in the years preceding the Civil War. Boom towns out west here may have been hell holes for a time, but they were also peopled by starry-eyed believers who claimed their marching orders came from on high.<br /><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tabor, Iowa, sits on a bluff far above the Missouri, the highest point of Fremont County. The place is not in terrific shape today; but Tabor has an epic past, created when fiery abolitionist Congregationalists set up camp here, just across the river from Nebraska. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/ia1.htm">The Reverend John Todd House</a>, in town, was a stop on the Underground Railroad in the 1850s, often a port of entry to runaway slaves who weren’t free until they could be protected from slave-holders and vigilante northerners looking to make a buck from substantial bounties. There was money to be made: slaves were property, after all. <br /><br />In the 1850s, slavery was under attack, and Rev. Todd was a soldier in God’s army. <br />Truth is, he got into trouble before there even was a Tabor. A discussion about slavery aboard the steamer he came up on became heated. Once other passengers detected an abolitionist, they wanted his scalp. "Shoot him," someone yelled. "Kill him." One idiot told him if it was his choice, he’d straight-up trade the pastor for a mongrel dog and shoot the dog. Todd says he learned later that man was "a minister of the gospel from Missouri."<br /><br />Both Iowa Congregationalists and Iowa Quakers thought the institution of slavery an abomination. What separated the two faith communities was a commitment to violence. The Quakers said no. Rev. John Todd and his Congregationalists said yes and became a prototype for an abolitionist preacher in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.<br /><br />The manse of the Reverend John Todd sits right on the square in Tabor--don’t expect a palace. But the old house still has an tiny door leading down to a dank basement. John Todd was no more than a shim over five and a half feet tall, so what’s downstairs is more his size, a cave really, not inviting.<br /><br />But if you stop by, don’t not go downstairs. At one point in time that basement was an armory full of guns for the war he thought about to begin in "Bleeding Kansas."<br /><br />What's there today? Nothing. No cement floor, just dirt, a humming dehumidifier, random stones, bricks. That cellar was was never meant to be lived in. It was a place to hide when the prairie sky turned foreboding. <br /><br />At the request of none other than fiery John Brown, who stayed right there in Tabor, Pastor Todd stocked his house full of guns because he simply could not abide the sin of slavery. Slaves, he and his friend John Brown claimed, had a more righteous reason for rebellion than did patriot colonists a century before. <br /><br />In his own memoir of that era, Todd described himself and what happened this way:<br /><br />The parson had one brass canon on his haymow, and another on wheels in his wagon shed. He had also boxes of clothing, boxes of ammunition, boxes of muskets, boxes of sabres, and twenty boxes of Sharps rifles stowed away in the cellar all winter. <br /><br />The preacher took up arms. His eyes had seen the glory.<br /><br />You'll have to get off the beaten track to find Tabor, and you’ll have to call ahead to to get in the house. Not many Americans stop there anymore, if they ever did. <br /><br />But the basement still beckons, and the memory of that time and place and the war it begat somehow seems more real when you stand beneath ancient beams on a dirt floor, where once a preacher readied himself for a war that God meant to happen, a war to free the slaves.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-13400719472775680852024-03-13T07:35:00.002-05:002024-03-13T12:35:31.352-05:00The Man with the Branded Hand<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgomM-ECjE0QFDjzizP88mPrTF_y1HKc-P4MBXAmTX4pgLy8WLjdZI-UDUkAKDZqQFVVsUVquKLmzVkO3J5_YAyObcV1FLdJF9Sz4SnShiFmX5D9EkdRQdfX2NxwuPSs8mJ5MIrLDwg6Tro9_jIEcqEu2ZIyh8nC7HWLsmeIpELe6qAsV9G7RB5/s551/Jonathan_Walker_branded_hand,_1845.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="551" height="514" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgomM-ECjE0QFDjzizP88mPrTF_y1HKc-P4MBXAmTX4pgLy8WLjdZI-UDUkAKDZqQFVVsUVquKLmzVkO3J5_YAyObcV1FLdJF9Sz4SnShiFmX5D9EkdRQdfX2NxwuPSs8mJ5MIrLDwg6Tro9_jIEcqEu2ZIyh8nC7HWLsmeIpELe6qAsV9G7RB5/w640-h514/Jonathan_Walker_branded_hand,_1845.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The fact of the matter is, he was a favorite on a circuit of sorts, a circuit of American abolitionist audiences looking for more and more information about and inspiration for the cause. Abolitionists were not without a mission. The crusade they'd created when they signed on had a clear and righteous purpose--they advocated an end to slavery in these United States, and, many of them at least, meant the abolition of slavery to happen not next year or next month, but now.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oh, my, were they hated. Southerners understood that what was at stake was their wherewithal. Loss of slaves meant loss of property, loss of economy, and loss of power, loss of a culture, loss of a way of life. In the early years of the 19th century, the battles over slavery were but a foretaste of what was to come after Fort Sumter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But the righteous anger of the abolitionists could not be underestimated. Sometimes, slave-holders saw those dirty, rotten abolitionists wherever they looked, bound and determined to destroy their might and right. So they made laws that made them criminals, thieves when they clandestinely went after the property of slave-holders. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Which only served to turn up the heat. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thus, a circuit of rostrums was created up north, where advocates for freedom would gather to hear people speak of the mission they shared so passionately. And that circuit included this particular man, Jonathan Walker, who became a favorite, not because of his oratorical skills--he was sadly wanting on that score--but because just a few minutes into his SRO presentations, he'd step off the podium and walk through the crowd, his hand open, because there on his palm stood, almost proudly, the scars from his branding--"SS" for slave stealer. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The man with the branded hand had been a sailor since he was a kid in Massachusetts. In fact, he'd crafted his own ship, which explains why people called him "Captain Jonathan Walker," and, yes he did, he picked up slaves and brought them to freedom, sometime from Pensacola, Florida, where he and his family lived in the 1840s. It was quite simple: he'd be contacted by bondsmen, arrange a time to meet under the cover of darkness, and, this time at least, take passage to the Bahamas, where the good men and women he'd helped shook off the shackles that bound them, the whole bunch more than willing to risk their lives to escape the oppression of slavery. Walker picked them up and brought them to the Bahamas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When he returned to Florida, he was badly infirm, a victim of sun stroke--it was not a big ship, more of a sloop than a ship. Since a number of slaves had been missing, he was accused of the theft, jailed, beat up, and then, of all things, branded by authorities--with the help of slave-owners--branded on the hand, the branding iron left in place for what seemed forever.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When finally Jonathan Walker recovered, his acclaim as a speaker rose like high seas on the abolitionist circuit, not because his rhetoric soared. By all reports, he wasn't much of a lecturer. What people remembered was those horrible scars on the man's hand, his branding, the "SS."<br /><br />WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray,<br />And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day;<br />With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain<br />Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or so wrote the Quaker abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, in a dedicatory poem to Jonathan Walker and his righteousness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal cravens aim<br />To make God's truth thy falsehood, His holiest work thy shame?<br />When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,<br />How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!<br /><br />Make no mistake, that branded hand was God's own to the abolitionists. Jonathan Walker had taken up the Lord's mission, after all. When Walker looked in the face of a slave, Whittier says he was looking into the face of Jesus, that very face, Whittier says, many "in blindness" miss entirely, even as they kneel "to a far-off Saviour." <br /><br />While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour knelt<br />And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt;<br />Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim,<br />And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Upper-case H.<br /><br />John Greenleaf Whittier's salutary poem "The Branded Hand" does the kind of work I'm sure he believed was the calling of the poet/prophet, immortalizing those sacred scars, making them sing forever. <br /><br />Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of the wave!<br />Its branded palm shall prophesy, "Salvation to the Slave!"<br />Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads may feel<br />His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.<br /><br />It had to have been an amazing time, religious people, Bibles in hand, going to war--literally and figuratively. Walker's time was even more divisive than ours. Just 16 years after the branding in Pensacola, there were Yankees and there were Rebs and there was blood all over the South, a death toll of 628,000, more than the combined deaths in every other war this nation has ever fought.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Just as so many others did, Jonathan Walker took his family west to Wisconsin for the Civil War years, then crossed the lake and ran a fruit orchard. He is buried in Muskegon, Michigan. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For the rest of his life, he claimed the branded letters, "SS," meant "saved slaves." His body rests in a Quaker cemetery in Muskegon, Michigan. It is proudly marked.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit7ZxK5V2q9AuV4GZIuzCmiR2IJbbiCaPorbUto2e25kgqncjj72QPszlHpcbd7PIqZSJpJ61durnsw8wjlAthF0jVjY2JBBB8zF8kJ51vSjnReeFu3d5fXabJqGytOt-FPTIgmwVOLOVYf62PgU3cYOKFShY4LmYEqk4K0Kcq5M9NZhk2lYKh/s1067/Branded_Hand_Monument_2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="800" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit7ZxK5V2q9AuV4GZIuzCmiR2IJbbiCaPorbUto2e25kgqncjj72QPszlHpcbd7PIqZSJpJ61durnsw8wjlAthF0jVjY2JBBB8zF8kJ51vSjnReeFu3d5fXabJqGytOt-FPTIgmwVOLOVYf62PgU3cYOKFShY4LmYEqk4K0Kcq5M9NZhk2lYKh/w480-h640/Branded_Hand_Monument_2013.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-88974880398390594752024-03-12T06:16:00.001-05:002024-03-12T06:16:35.178-05:00Aside<p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuxMtjhWlcxwDhAvH5mGReWlVg29SkJLFCvtutLKRiacHfqiHAz6g1x4kpS1gfw7iLHEOaJuWkZ_CzCEcSyR2QpNsC9y42FR9keLK5wpakSzJHI9-Bcwm8IdqYBsJFNppqFQhDQnaw3rAsnrH8lf43r8Ysi0LIl5dw3IS-3UbbmPVjzcIhw4bG/s4032/PXL_20240225_120620055~2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuxMtjhWlcxwDhAvH5mGReWlVg29SkJLFCvtutLKRiacHfqiHAz6g1x4kpS1gfw7iLHEOaJuWkZ_CzCEcSyR2QpNsC9y42FR9keLK5wpakSzJHI9-Bcwm8IdqYBsJFNppqFQhDQnaw3rAsnrH8lf43r8Ysi0LIl5dw3IS-3UbbmPVjzcIhw4bG/w640-h360/PXL_20240225_120620055~2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;">I don't even know how long I've been at this. Years ago already, I thought to shore things up, so I went through years of </span><i style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;">Stuff in the Basement</i><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;"> posts, picked out some I thought might have some relevance someday, dumped hundreds, then erased thousands of others, and, sort of, started over fresh. I think I undertook that trimming post-retirement, so if I would follow the last reach of what's here below the page, I'd run into blog posts put up here about a dozen years ago.</span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">At 76 years old, sifting through the stuff in the basement is even more prudent than it was when I walked out of the classroom. Someday--maybe soon, maybe not--one of my children will come down here and turn on the computer--I hope the old thing doesn't stumble along and take all day like it often does for me. Chances are, it'll be my son. He'll use the passwords I'll leave for him, then call up siouxlander.blogspot.com and sit here pensively--at least I hope so--before he hits the delete button. One of our kids will have to do that, so why not make the event less difficult and do it for them--after all, I'm the crazy who put all that stuff up. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've learned some things through all those years. I've learned, for instance, that short stories don't generally do well in the day-by-day blog-post format. Almost inevitably, if I put up a story, even a story that will last only four days, like "Light and Life," inevitably the clicks fall off, largely because short stories have more import if they can be read at one sitting and not sectioned into 15-minute segments. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've also learned that obituaries score greater numbers than almost anything else, especially when the deceased has a following among those who frequent <i>Stuff in the Basement.</i> Makes me wonder if local newspapers would say as much. In a dark way, that's comforting.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Anything about Trump generally draws something of a crowd. I don't know if there are any Trump supporters among those who stop by daily, but I rarely get any angry retorts. You certainly shouldn't think I'm creating clickbait when I put his royal Orangeness up some mornings. Color me addicted. It's awful to have to admit it, but I've likely read more about the daily horrors of Donald Trump than I have any other single topic or subject since he and his wife came down the elevator. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Blogging, I'm told, had its day. When the internet had more wide-open spaces, a ton of people like me determined to try the blog. Originally, I started <i>Stuff</i> when I returned to full-time teaching, having been half-time for a half-dozen years or so. I knew the change would end long projects, and I didn't want to shut down completely. Blogging was a new thing--and sort of like getting up to greet the dawn. I found it a joy, have ever since really, except when things get tight when I get busy. Otherwise, I've long ago fallen in love with a ritual that pushes you to be creative when first your feet hit the floor (actually, I do most of my plotting the day and night before).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You shouldn't think some major announcement is forthcoming. I'm not quitting quite yet. I thought to thank those of you, my most faithful readers, for wading through four days of a short story. Fiction just doesn't work in this genre, I guess. Then again, maybe "Light and Life" is a lousy story. Whatever the cause, it's not unusual to see the numbers drop off with each passing day when I'm running a piece of fiction. I wasn't surprised.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A kid told me the story of his sister's letter in his mother's drawer and his mother's inability to tell her husband even the good news--a long-ago student told me that. Almost any fiction has prototypes. This story was just too much a projection of a sad tale one of my students told me. There was a time in my life that I couldn't help but try to write something like that out, to make sense of it, to build some sort of order out of chaos, which is the aim of most art, or so it seems to me. But with this one, I'm pretty sure it never appeared anywhere because I wanted to avoid the consequence of appearing to break that student's trust. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's old. Like I said, the only copy I have is in dot matrix print on yellowing paper. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tomorrow? On my way to Bancroft, Nebraska, yesterday, I listened to a kind of biography of Harriet Tubman. The speaker at yesterday's gathering at the John Neihardt Center was going to be talking about Nebraska's role in the Underground Railroad, and I thought I'd just listen in to the story of Harriet Tubman. I remember hearing that she was raised in a Dutch Reformed household; about that, I was wrong--that was Sojourner Truth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And it turns out that there isn't really a definitive edition of Harriet Tubman's life, which seems impossible given her reputation and the temper of the times (and all the talk about CRT, although it's subsided a bit since the demise of De Santos). Harriet Tubman worked the underground railroad with such frequency and passion that she was sometimes called the Moses of her people.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tomorrow, something about Dred Scott, just one time the Supreme Court and, for that matter, the Bible went sadly off course. You may want to tune in.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">________________________</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;">And what of the picture atop the page? It's got nothing to do with the price of eggs. Just another taken in front of that Lake Michigan cottage we inhabited a week or so ago. It's what I was doing, early morning, when "Light and Life" was running.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-89045141419826862332024-03-10T06:42:00.000-05:002024-03-10T06:42:32.182-05:00Sunday Morning Meds--Psalm 42:3<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisUfUtukhNfiM8P2IgUm0aN3ZSDlB8yO1nFq9lKpKZDpOEPoDAd3JwFImrP81EcnzF_IIsSb_GBQat0rwnDBdwVh0kYN5e7qX0KUKurE2Ili_N7uVmc4nuJZz3GIsqLRhc_6KacKmzvJ725P77Pe7ky4hNPWQ3fF5YIi6qQHk-zIQHZMCvHuRT/s2778/P1010106-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2084" data-original-width="2778" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisUfUtukhNfiM8P2IgUm0aN3ZSDlB8yO1nFq9lKpKZDpOEPoDAd3JwFImrP81EcnzF_IIsSb_GBQat0rwnDBdwVh0kYN5e7qX0KUKurE2Ili_N7uVmc4nuJZz3GIsqLRhc_6KacKmzvJ725P77Pe7ky4hNPWQ3fF5YIi6qQHk-zIQHZMCvHuRT/w640-h480/P1010106-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Why are you downcast, O my soul?</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why so disturbed within me? </span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Put your hope in God, </span></b></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”</span></b></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">In verse three of Psalm 42, some shrill voices are taunting, as they do again in verse ten; but unlike so many other songs in the book, in this one, Psalm 42, the enemy is not the psalmist’s Godless neighbors, but his own miserable self.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />What’s clear in the opening verses is that David—if he’s the author—has seemingly fallen into a chapter from Saul’s life, Israel’s very first king, the potentate who wrote the book on depression. His darkness is self-imposed: “Why are you downcast, O my soul?” is not the question David would ask himself on a battlefield. The war here—or so it seems to me—is within. “Why are you down in the dumps?” is the way Eugene Peterson puts it. <br /><br />If Psalm 42 were a short story—which it isn’t—I might be willing to hazard this analysis: in verse six, we’ve arrived at the climax, maybe not the dramatic climax of the narrative, but the technical climax, because, somehow, we get the sense he’s turned the corner, that the conflict, whatever it may be, has been bested. <br /><br />Right here in the psalm, this narrator—emotionally enfeebled—rallies, not because someone tells him he should, but because he tells himself he should. “Put your hope in God, fool,” he argues and then commits: “I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” He’s gritting his teeth, pushing himself up by his own spiritual bootstraps, rallying himself as if he were the captain of his own cheerleading squad. <br /><br />Were some student to hand me this story, I’d likely red-pencil, “I’m not convinced” somewhere in the margin, and then scribble in something even more widely scribbled in on student stories: “show us, don’t tell us.” <br /><br />But when we read on, it seems clear that the answer he commits to in this verse doesn’t shoo the darkness. Psalm 42 is not at end. The whole poem may well be a technical climax to the big story. I sort of like that idea, even<br /> if there is no satisfying denouement. <br /><br />It seems to me that what David is calling on to cure himself is what he already knows but may have forgotten or simply not mustered. What he now believes will deliver him from the darkness is not a bromide he’s buying from someone else because he already knows the way to health and joy. <br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">You can almost feel him trying to bully away his personal demons: “I WILL YET PRAISE HIM,” he tells himself, doing everything he can to refresh his own faith, telling himself—a mantra even—something he knows so very well but has somehow lost. <br /><br />He’s not asking God to ride in on a heavenly steed; he’s not asking to be saved. Instead, he’s telling his own darkened spirits what he already knows but has forgotten or stopped believing—that his only hope and comfort is in the Lord. <br /><br />The joy of David’s poetry, read thousands of years later in a world David himself wouldn’t begin to understand, is our blessed realization that a human heart beats in every line. These are God songs, divinely inspired; but to read them as if they weren’t the work of a human soul is to miss half the inspiration. <br /><br />In Psalm 42, David knows the truth he simply can’t muster. Every believer who’s ever been “down in the dumps” has been there, feeling exactly that pain. Every one. <br /><br />David knows, but somehow he just can’t. The psalms are ours too. The psalms are us.</span><br /><p class="MsoNormal">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-35004658304379481782024-03-09T07:06:00.001-06:002024-03-09T07:06:00.139-06:00Light and Life -- finis iv<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtbefNCvZVZ_LMCT6ezEVnSrIMeg9cXCYjr5UQD-ZS9wUsQXA6eDGt0kJrslcxb11ptvJy8ygJ01cGwSvqQstSJWEphm2P4Htof6s9KLFzKTwFmuW8t4bQpnNLLdpIyoiIffMR8e9Fpe2iLO0VbIpOErPbqd4xlnhWwDrimGVEWX-Mv1HzPhhF/s2048/DSCF0005.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtbefNCvZVZ_LMCT6ezEVnSrIMeg9cXCYjr5UQD-ZS9wUsQXA6eDGt0kJrslcxb11ptvJy8ygJ01cGwSvqQstSJWEphm2P4Htof6s9KLFzKTwFmuW8t4bQpnNLLdpIyoiIffMR8e9Fpe2iLO0VbIpOErPbqd4xlnhWwDrimGVEWX-Mv1HzPhhF/w640-h480/DSCF0005.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;">Today, the end of the story.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;">*</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">In three weeks we'll be married, Shari and me, and I really believe I'm better off knowing what I do now about Kenny and Sally, and about my own parents. Shari's from such a model family--everything's perfect. At college she gets these recordings her dad makes of the conversation at Sunday dinner, and it's all so "nice." Besides, Shari's the oldest.<br /><br />It's December now. We decided that I'd spend some time alone with my parents when the semester ended and before we all head out to California for the wedding. So I'm back home now in my bedroom, where the pennants are still tacked to the wall because Mom won't let that bedroom belong to anyone other than her little boy.<br /><br />Yesterday, when Dad was at the store, I told Mom what Sally had told me, how she'd claimed she wrote her about Light and Life. I didn't want to hurt her, but I felt like I needed to know. We talked about what Sally had said. "How is it you can't tell Dad?" I said. "I'd think he'd be just plain thrilled."<br /><br />She'd been sitting at the table with both arms up, but they dropped right away. Then she looked up at the chandelier as if an angel might just then descend from all the light. Her hands came back up to her eyes. "If you would know the hurt that girl gave us," she said. Then she breathes in deeply, as if what was coming would take more than words. "You can't ever know how much we cried. You wouldn't believe it, Brian. You wouldn't." <br /><br />I reached for the radio and turned down the volume. "I don't understand how you can keep that from him. It ought to give him hope," I said. <br /><br />She breathed in deeply again. "Who knows what goes on in the corners of his mind? I don't doubt your father prays fifty times a day for that girl. I don't doubt right at this moment, when some guy is buying a new hammer or whatever in your father's store, paying for it at the counter--I don't doubt he's thinking about two grandsons he's never seen."</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"And his daughter?" I said.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"And his daughter," she said. "Praying."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">She pulled her hands down around her coffee cup. "We can't talk about all of that anymore. We just can't. There's only so much hurt somebody can take and that's it. Something else has got to break through the silence." <br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Do you love him, Mom, or are you scared of him?" I said. <br /> <br />She took off her glasses, laid them beside her toast. "You get to be one flesh," she said, "and you know exactly how he's going to react to anything and everything, because you know how he's part of you." She sipped her coffee. "I'm not afraid of him. But I'm afraid of all that pain." She closed her eyes tightly. "He once swore he didn't have that daughter--that that's the way it was going to be."<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*</span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />My mother keeps her letters in a little, shiny cedar box that resembles, in a way, her own hope chest. It has a key somewhere, but it's been lost for years. When I was little I used to look in it because it had two pink bracelets that my sisters wore when they came home from the hospital, fresh from God--and mine, a blue one, P-0-S-T printed in the beads, the family name. Jewelry, and other stuff--birth certificates and my grandpa sent my grandma during the war. <br /><br />I don't think Sally writes often, because I didn't find many letters. Mom keeps what she gets in there. She wouldn't throw them away. I'm sure my father knows too about her secret place. <br /><br />When I checked it yesterday, I found the one about Light and Life Christian School. There it was, just like Sally said. <br /><br />I think he has to read It. Besides, he taught me himself to believe in miracles. So I'm going to the store this afternoon. Place will be full of Christmas shoppers, but he's got enough holiday help so I can sit him down in the back at his old roll-top, take out the letter, and put it in front of him. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I want peace at our wedding, when all of us together go over those vows. If we can't have joy, we can at least have hope. Besides, I know my father needs an answer to a a thousand prayers he never spoke out loud, and I know from the way Sally turned her eyes away that the Lord of rubber cement hasn't finished with her either. One way or another, the God I worship, the one my father respects and fears, the God who brightens Shari's family's faces, the Wonderful Counselor the two us want right there at our wedding in two short weeks, that God, the super-glue God, is going to have His way with my sister, just as I can't help but believe He will with Dad.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Faith itself, I want to believe, is its own kind of miracle. <br /><br />I've got that letter here with me right now. It's in my billfold, along with two school pictures of Mark and Bryant, pictures he's going to see. They're perfectly darling kids, and his daughter is a good mom. He's going to know.<br /> <br />Maybe I am naive. Maybe I am. But I believe.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-63661822884733238282024-03-08T06:19:00.000-06:002024-03-08T06:19:16.377-06:00<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_NOtoc_JFYQtrCWi07lq_D7mmynooGRCWPzmYVnUtFiojKukBoPiGSnsdP-tMBi4tU3ZCRmgI27Jjxf8u8FjAM1JNXNnSQn7hWWJBrKL2iUeNZaYiXcyd9MJ7uArUx4aenzV0GyKiYOuYlR1pAsVJd4od2RbPY1o17l4QDvqWQ27d3lywNfLt/s1825/suffering.2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1691" data-original-width="1825" height="594" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_NOtoc_JFYQtrCWi07lq_D7mmynooGRCWPzmYVnUtFiojKukBoPiGSnsdP-tMBi4tU3ZCRmgI27Jjxf8u8FjAM1JNXNnSQn7hWWJBrKL2iUeNZaYiXcyd9MJ7uArUx4aenzV0GyKiYOuYlR1pAsVJd4od2RbPY1o17l4QDvqWQ27d3lywNfLt/w640-h594/suffering.2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;">"Light and Life" is maybe thirty years old, and, I think, unpublished. Why not? I think it was one of those stories that might have been too "Christian" for the small magazines and literary journals, and too, well, "obvious," if it were to appear in the kind of church magazine that it could have reached. Plus, too close to the real thing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;">There were prototypes for the characters and the action of the story, prototypes--real people--that I wouldn't really want reading this story or living with the fact that maybe some of their neighbors were.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;">I may be wrong, but after writing it, I think I stuck it in a drawer. My only copy of "Light and Life" is boldly outfitted in dot matrix print.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;">So this could well be its first public appearance. The people I wouldn't want to shame have long departed this world of sorrows. Whether or not they made their peace is something I don't know. I'd most certainly like to believe they did.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;">* ~ * ~ * ~ *</p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Shari takes the boys on the tramway down at Santa Cruz' Boardwalk on the oceanfront. She's up there floating over the whole amusement park, and Sally and I are sitting down beneath them, sharing a gyro. Mark and Bryant poke their hands out when they're right over top of us, and all I can see is their pink flattened palms against the pale blue skies.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sally is almost ten years older than I am, and Kenny's not the first man she's lived with. She works for the county social services, investigating abuse cases. She takes referrals from people she calls "mandatory reporters"--doctors and teachers and other school officials--and tries to check them out. It puts her in places you wouldn't believe. The old man should be proud of her. She works hard and she gets tired because sometimes she says the pain won't go away. To me, what she does is a kingdom calling. The stories are enough to make you weep, seriously.<br /><br />Anyway, we're sitting down there on a bench along the edge of the beach, Bryant and Mark right above us in the tram car with Shari, and Sally's got a mouth full of gyro.<br /><br />"Why don't you get married?" I say, just getting it right out there in front of both of us, the same tone had I asked her for shampoo. "I don't get it. What's the big deal?"<br /><br />"You got Dad in you," she says right off. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"So do you," I tell her.<br /><br />She nods at me as if truer words have never been spoken. She's got that gyro in both hands so it doesn't leak all over, but she pushes it at me. I take the sandwich, but I don't want to take a bite just then.<br /><br />"Tell me," I say.<br /><br />She waits, looks around, jabs at her lips. "Listen, little brother, whyn't you mind your own business?" she says, wiping the juice from the corner of her mouth with a napkin, still trying to laugh it off.<br /><br />"It is my business," I tell her. "You're my sister." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Shuttup and eat," she says.<br /><br />It's a Saturday, but Kenny's off working somewhere, making a delivery.<br /><br />"You go to church ever?" I said, this big glob of sandwich right between us.<br /><br />Now she waits for a long time, looking right at me. I'm thinking she's mad--didn't want me asking. Finally, she looks off into the sky and says, "What's left in me for faith is between me and God--not you or Dad or Mom or anybody else."<br /><br />Lines are drawn in around her eyes. I sometimes wonder if she didn't lie out in the sun too long because her skin seems almost calloused, hard and edgy, spotted, but not with freckles. Her hair falls off her face and is pulled back behind her ears, tied there in a style popular years ago. She's getting older.<br /><br />"I'm going to have to tell Mom something," I said to her. "When I get back, she'll want to know about you."<br /><br />"Easy enough," Sally says. "Tell her we're all fine, we're all doing just fine."<br /><br />"Are you?" I said.<br /><br />"I don't need your righteousness, little man," she tells me. "You lived all your life in that burg. Only thing you know is hardware."<br /><br />Like I say, she's my big sister, and I didn't grow up with her; but I saw her slay my father's spirit. "Dad's had more pain about you, Sally, more than I'd ever hope to see anyone have," I tell her.<br /><br />Shrugs her shoulders. "I'm sorry about that, but the old man screwed up my life," she says.<br /><br />There the both of us are, this messy sandwich between us, little kids running all over, spending money, a big log-ride concession splashing down into the water, not fifty feet from where we sit.<br /><br />"How'd he ever hurt you?" I said.<br /><br />"You're a tail-ender. You don't know shit about what it was like to be breaking the freaking ground."<br /><br />I took another bite of the gyro. I didn't want her to know how serious I was. "You still believe in God?" I asked her.<br /><br />She stood up, walked over to the railing, and looked out over the quarter-mile of beach toward the ocean. The wind pulled at her skirt. Her legs were whiter than I'd ever seen them.<br /><br />I threw the sandwich in a barrel and looked up at the tramway. Shari and the boys had to be on their way back. I felt like I had to get something down in my mind. "Tell me," I said. "I don't care about Mom or Dad. I got to know myself what's going on with you--tell me."<br /><br />She pulled her arms back from the railing and stood there as if she were chilled. "Mom knows," Sally said. "Mom knows well and good. She knows everything. I write her."<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'd been gone to college for three years. Maybe Mom had never had the opportunity to tell me what Sally told her in her letters. I wasn't even aware of Sally's writing anyone. As far as I knew, it had been years since Sally's name was even spoken. That's what the old man ruled.<br /><br />"What do you tell her?" I said.<br /><br />"Ask her," she said. "She knows." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"I didn't know you wrote her." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"She does."<br /><br />"I'm sorry," I said.<br /><br />Both of us watched a gull float by and beg for popcorn.<br /><br />"I wrote her already last spring to tell her I enrolled Bryant in a Christian school," Sally says. "I wrote that. It wasn't easy. Well, she knows it. This little Christian school a couple blocks away. 'Light and Life,' it's called."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I didn't know what to say.<br /><br />"What do they want from me?--blood? She told me how wonderful it was. I got a letter back that wasn't like anything I'd ever received before--almost as if I were back in the fold." Then she laughed, the same as when she told Kenny they hung blacks in Denton--same mocking laugh. "But she can't even tell him," she said. "She can't even tell the old man because he won't hear about the damned black sheep. I'm just lost." She twisted her purse back behind her shoulder. "You ever think of what that man does to her? You ever think of that?"<br /><br />The beach was full of people, but we couldn't have been more alone.<br /><br />"You are so much like Dad," she said. She pulled her shoulder up to her face, as if to wipe away something that might have slipped from her eyes. "You're such a kid," she said, pulling the back of her wrist through her eyes, and looked down as if gyro sauce were running down her fingers. Then she looked at her watch, turned it around on her arm so she could read it clearly.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Lately I think He won't let me go--I mean the big guy," she said, pointing up. "It's like something sticky is between us--super glue. The other day I was thinking that's what it was--super glue. Isn't that nuts?--just super glue. Or rubber cement--that too, stretchy stuff that won't let go."<br /><br />"Hey, Mom," the boys yelled from above. "Look up here."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">She raises a hand to her eyes to see the kids, smiles. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I tell myself that's enough.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-49657121843606438772024-03-07T06:37:00.000-06:002024-03-07T06:37:03.612-06:00Light and Life -- a story ii<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQeoRRHhnXFEXqIrzJPhSBs_EXyr4DrBzsJiUYGml3K1jbFeecXk11bofj9Ki5eipZL4Aty52_0wHFs7c9mw-QudKkhVzgL1IqpparXNmFC83D1m_lBNeaJotphyFYGA89YghO-JTfUfgqqGryOFYEa_fc9KnIH8La0mZ2iflvGsgay4VeOB6/s4080/PXL_20231227_212409654.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4080" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQeoRRHhnXFEXqIrzJPhSBs_EXyr4DrBzsJiUYGml3K1jbFeecXk11bofj9Ki5eipZL4Aty52_0wHFs7c9mw-QudKkhVzgL1IqpparXNmFC83D1m_lBNeaJotphyFYGA89YghO-JTfUfgqqGryOFYEa_fc9KnIH8La0mZ2iflvGsgay4VeOB6/w640-h482/PXL_20231227_212409654.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Rev. Ellerbroek isn't a ball of fire, but Shari's parents like him--just like mine would--because basically he's conservative as heck. Shari and I saw him on and off last summer, when I worked out there on her uncle's dairy. We're getting married in a couple weeks now, in January, and Ellerbroek is marrying us. <br /><br />He's dry as sticks from the pulpit, but in his study he's all there. When he talks about the Lord, his face is lit as if he's in love. <br /><br />He was telling us how when we plan the wedding we ought to think that it's not just for us but for all the people who attend. I don't think he knows about Kenny and Sally. <br /><br />He was saying how the people who attend hear the vows when they're sitting out there listening to us, and how just listening in again to the commitment people make is important, no matter how many years you've been married. He says that repeating the vows means everybody else renews them. <br /><br />I told Shari it was hard for me to think of my parents actually repeating vows again, as if through the years they may have forgotten they were married. <br /><br />She said she thought when you're a kid you don't know everything--maybe not even when you're an adult. You still I don't know all there is to know about your own parents, even though they brought you into this world. <br /><br />I suppose she's right. The older you get, the more you know that there's mystery in life, balances in the way we get along. Sometimes, I suppose, a very fragile truce. <br /><br />"I'm scared anyway," I told her. "Going to be a hot time in the old town with Sally and Kenny there in the same church as my old man." <br /><br />"Maybe Ellerbroek's right, honey," she told me. "Maybe we can be a blessing." <br /><br />A blessing's one thing, I thought. This one'll take a miracle. <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">*</div>I worked in California last summer because I wanted to be with Shari and I didn't care to sit alone at home selling ten-penny nails. Sometimes I think it's hard on my dad to know that I'm not taking over for him. The store has been in the family for three generations, ever since the late 1800's. Don't ask me why I want to be a teacher, but I do. Actually, I think it has something to do with the way my parents raised me, to aspire to something noble, like teaching. It's been my father's undoing, I suppose, to make me think that being a teacher or a preacher is a kingdom calling. I took him seriously. <div><br /></div><div>But then, who knows? Maybe someday I'll run the store. Stranger things have happened. <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">*</div><br />Santa Cruz is more than just a couple hours' drive from Shari's place. It's like a whole different world. The tree-lined streets downtown are full of VW buses and jeeps and old woodies, surfboards strapped up-top. Bearded guys with graying hair tie it up with farmer's handkerchiefs. They sit on downtown benches and play chess in the soft sunlight that falls between the trees. </div><div><br /></div><div>You see the strangest things. I bought a tape one day from a place where the guy who took my money wore a Fu Manchu mustache and silver-flecked orange glasses with the wildest butterfly rims. <br /><br />I met Shari at college. She lives in Denton, a California town that would look just like Apple Valley if it weren't for mountains whose sloping shadows rise from the horizon. It's a small town, where the Coast to Coast has a big quadrangular desk and the men come in on Saturdays to lean up against the edge and talk--just like they do at the old man's place. The only difference is that in Denton's Our Own you can't buy an icepick. <br /><br />Shari's along with me one weekend, when Denton comes up in the conversation at my sister's place. It's Saturday night, and we just got back from this dive where we had terrific Mexican food, not just your standard taco. Shari's playing with the boys on the floor and we're all laughing, when Kenny tells her that he's made deliveries in Denton before and he knows what kind of place it is. "I been there," he says. "You're a California girl all right, but you're from Denton, really." <br /><br />In the way he says it, I feel this blade across my neck, and I figure Shari feels it too. <br /><br />"Sometime I want to stay up there overnight and party in that white town, party big-time," he says, rubbing his palms together as he sits there on the couch, his elbows on his knees. "All night long," he says, looking at Sally. <br /><br />He's talking about all the stiff old farmers in Denton. I know what he's saying, and so does Shari. But he doesn't mean it for us, he means it for Sally. He keeps looking at her. <br /><br />"You party up there and you're dead," my sister says. She's pointing her finger at him. "They'd hang boys your color." And then she laughs. <br /><br />I didn't know how to react, but the thing is, he laughed at Sally. I thought he would have kicked her. I thought he never would have let her say that, but the two of them sit there laughing at each other's poking. <br /><br />The way they laughed together about what Sally had said about Kenny being black--as if she he just let her talk that way to him--it's just something I didn't forget right away because it said something about them together. I can't find words for it exactly, but it felt different being around them after that. <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">*</div><br />Shari takes the boys on the tramway down at Santa Cruz' Boardwalk down on the oceanfront. She's up there floating over the whole amusement park, and Sally and I are sitting down beneath them, sharing a gyro sandwich. Mark and Bryant poke their hands out when they're right over top of us, and al 1 I can see is their pink flattened palms against the pale blue skies. <br /><br />Sally is almost ten years older than I am, and Kenny's not the first man she's lived with. She works for the county social services, investigating abuse cases. She takes referra1s from people she calls "mandatory reporters"--doctors and teachers and other school officials--and tries to check them out. It puts her in places you wouldn't bel leve. I think my father would be proud of her. She works hard and she gets tired because sometimes she says the pain won't go away. To me, what she does is a kingdom cal ling. The stories are enough to make you weep, seriously. <br /><br />Anyway, we're sitting down there on a bench along the edge of the beach, Bryant and Mark right above us in the tram car with Shari, and Sally's got a mouth full of gyro. <br /><br />"Why don't you get married?" I say, just getting it right out there in front of both of us. "I don't understand." <br /><br />"You got Dad in you," she says. "So do you," I tell her. <br /><br />She nods at me as if truer words have never been spoken. She's got that gyro in both hands so it doesn't leak all over, but she pushes it at me. I take the sandwich, but I don't want to take a bite Just then. <br /><br />"Te1 1 me," I say. <br /><br />"Listen, little brother, whyn't you mind your own business?" she says, wiping the juice from the corner of her mouth with a napkin, still trying to laugh it off. <br /><br />"It is my business," I tell her. 11You1re my sister." "Shuttup and eat," she says. <br /><br />It's a Saturday, but Kenny's off working somewhere, making a delivery. <br /><br />"You never go to church, do you?" I said, this big glob of sandwich right between us. <br /><br />11What1s ln me for faith is between me and God," she says, "not you or Dad or Mom or anybody else." <br /><br />Lines are drawn in around her eyes. I sometimes wonder if she didn1t lie out in the sun too long because her skin seems almost cal loused, hard and edgy, spotted, but not with freckles. Her hair falls off her face and is pulled back behind her ears, tied there in a style popular years ago. She's getting older. <br /><br />"I1m going to have to tell Mom something," I said to her. <br /><br />"When I get back, she'll want to know about you." <br /><br />"Easy enough," Sally says. "Tell her we"re all fine." <br /><br />"Are you?" I said. <br /><br />"I don't need your super righteousness, Arlan," she tells me. "You lived all your life in that little burg. Only thing you know is the store." <br /><br />Like I say, she's my big sister, and I didn't grow up with her; but I saw her slay my father's spirit. "Dad's had more pain about you, Sally, more than I'd ever hope to see anyone have," I tell her. <br /><br />"He"s screwed up my life," she says. <br /> <br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />There the both of us are, this messy sandwich between us, little kids running all over spending money, a big Jog-ride concession splashing down lnto the water. not fifty feet from where we slt. <br /><br />"How/d he ever hurt you?" I said. <br /><br />"You/re a tail-ender, Arlan. You don/t know what it was like to be first in 1 ine, breaking ground." <br /><br />I took another bite of the gyro because I didn/t want her to know how serious I was. "You sti 11 be!ieve in God?" I said. <br /><br />With that, she stood up, walked over to the calling, and looked out over the quarter-mile of beach toward the ocean. The wind pulled at her skirt. Her legs were whiter than I/d ever seen them. <br /><br />I threw the sandwich in a barrel and looked up at the tramway. Shari and the boys had to be on their way back. I had to get something down in my mind. <br /><br />"Tell me, Sally," I told her. "I don/t care about Mom or Dad. I got to know myself. Tell me." <br /><br />She pulled her arms back from the railing and stood there as if she were chi 1 led. "Mom knows," Sally said. "Mom knows wel 1 and good. She knows everything. I write her." <br /><br />1/d been gone to college for three years, of course, so maybe Mom had never had the opportunity to tell me what Sally told her in her letters. I wasn/t even aware of Sal Jy/s writing anyone. As far as I knew, it had been years since Sally/s name was even mentioned. <br /><br />"What do you write?" I said. <br /> <br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />"Ask her," she said. "She knows.11 "I didn't know you wrote her." "She does." <br /><br />"I'm sorry," I said. <br /><br />Both of us watched a gul I float by and beg for popcorn. <br /><br />"I wrote her already last spring that I enrolled Bryant in a Christian school," Sally says. "I wrote that. It wasn't easy. <br /><br />She knows it, Arlan. This little Baptist school a couple blocks away. Light and Life, it's cal led. Bryant goes to a Christian schoo I . 11 <br /><br />I didn't know what to say. <br /><br />"Shoot, what do they want from me? Blood? She told me how wonderful it was. I got a letter back that wasn't like anything I'd ever received before--almost as if I were back in the fold." Then she laughed, the same as when she told Kenny they hung blacks in Denton--same mocking laugh. 11But she can't even tel 1 him," she said. "She can't tell Dad because he won't hear of the black sheep. To him. I'm lost eternally." She twisted her pu se back behind her shoulder. "You ever think of what that man does to her? You ever think of her, Arlan?" <br /><br />The beach was ful I of people, but we couldn't have been more alone. <br /><br />"You send Bryant there for her sake?" I said. "Is that why you dld i t?11 <br /><br />She looked at me as If she hated me. 11You.are so much like <br /><br />Dad," she said. <br /><br />11Te l l me ," I sa i d. <br /> <br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />"The only difference between us--between him and me--is that he thinks he knows why he does things. I don/t.11 <br /><br />Maybe I was asking for myself only right then, I don/t know. "Sally, you still pray?" I said. <br /><br />She pulled her shoulder up to her face, as if to wipe away something that might have sl lpped from her eyes. 11You/re such a kid,11 she said, pulling the back of her wrist through her eyes, and looked down as if gyro sauce were running down her fingers. Then she looked at her watch, turned it around on her arm so she could read it clearly. <br /><br />"Lately I think He won/t let me go," she said. "It/s like something sticky is between us--rubber cement. The other day I was thinking it was rubber cement. Isn/t that nuts! But it/s like God won/t let me alone. He won/t.11 <br /><br />11 Hey, Mom," the boys ye1 1 ed from above. 11 Look ,·a here." <br /><br />11That/s all, Sally," I said. "I just had to know." <br /><br /> <br /><br />* <br /><br />In three weeks we/11 be married, Shari and I, and I really believe that I/rn better off knowing what I do now about Kenny and Sally, and about my own parents. Shari/s from such a model farnlly--everything/s perfect. At college she gets these tapes her dad records of Sunday dinner, and it/s all so nice. Besides, Shari/s the oldest. <br /><br />It;s December now. We decided that I/d spend some time alone with my parents when the semester ended and before we all headed out to Califor·nia for the wedding. So 1/rnback home now, <br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />in my childhood bedroom, where the pennants are still tacked to the wall because my mother won't let that bedroom belong to anyone other than her little boy. <br /><br />Yesterday, when Dad was at the store, I told Mom what Sally said, how she'd claimed she wrote her about Light and Life. "How is it you can't tell Dad?" I said. <br /><br />She'd been sitting at the table with both arms up, but they dropped right away. Then she looked up at the chandelier as if an angel might suddenly descend from all the light, and her hands came back up to her eyes. "If you would know the hurt that girl gave us," she said. Then she breaths in deeply, as if what was coming would take more than words. "You can't ever know how much we cried. You wouldn't believe it, Arlan. You wouldn't." <br /><br />I reached for the radio and turned down the volume. "I don't understand how you can keep that from him. It ought to give him hope," I said. <br /><br />She breathed deeply again. "Who knows what goes on in the corners of his mind, Arlan? I don't doubt your father prays fifty times a day for that girl. I don't doubt right at this moment, when some mother is buying Lincoln Logs in your father's store and paying for it at the counter--! don't doubt that he's thinking about two grandsons he's never seen." <br /><br />She pulled her hands down slowly and surrounded her coffee cup. "But it's a subject that we can't talk about anymore. We just can't. There's just so much hurt somebody can take and that's it. Something else has got to break through the silence." <br /><br />hDo you love him, Mom, or are you scared of him?" I said.<br /><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-90730470807925360072024-03-06T07:28:00.001-06:002024-03-07T05:37:31.343-06:00Light and Life - i <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEitVcTTcK5CToybEZvKqr_HcsZ3bc5_KGHeYde-4T8SIyhgHzeYHpX1iOvkkgb8fHN8DRzdqQF050qUb6utq6lDDzDmzZVS51c5L3ZeZAnwGIhTvpP647p3sa20cD7xtUHHv828x1_63Yi615lQvS2gKANlANZubaMnUBlSG5wfzmB_aieMMfzD" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="241" data-original-width="320" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEitVcTTcK5CToybEZvKqr_HcsZ3bc5_KGHeYde-4T8SIyhgHzeYHpX1iOvkkgb8fHN8DRzdqQF050qUb6utq6lDDzDmzZVS51c5L3ZeZAnwGIhTvpP647p3sa20cD7xtUHHv828x1_63Yi615lQvS2gKANlANZubaMnUBlSG5wfzmB_aieMMfzD=w640-h482" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier;">A story for lent.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">In point of fact, Kenny Hays is not my brother-in-law--not by man's law or God's. He's only lived with my sister Sally, not married her, and the whole business has been almost the death of my father.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />But Kenny Hays feels like my brother-in-law, and maybe by common law he is. What he's not, is my dad's son-in-law; not yet anyway, and not ever--if you listen to the old man. But neither is Sally his own daughter anymore; I heard him say just those words to Mom once, years ago, and once is as often as he says important things. <br /><br />Kenny's black, but that's not the reason. Long ago when I just started in my father's hardware store I was arranging fishing lures up front when the men who come around about ten in the morning to stand around and jabber--looking over the <br /><i>Journal</i> lying open on the knife case--when those men were talking about the black guy who, strangely enough, walked into Apple Valley from the lake and was standing across the street in front of the cafe. I heard every word they said about him--about blacks. I was just a kid. <br /><br />The guy was a string-bean in a cut-off sweat shirt, with a bluish tattoo against his bicep; and he had on a hat, even though it was warm for May. His boots were scuffed, as if he'd been walking through sand since dawn. That far north of the city you just don't see many black people. <br /><br />My father came up from the garden department to help Jenny Wassenaar carry out a rented lawn seeder, and he heard the men talking about the black guy, about blacks in general--in fact, about black men--in words I never heard adults say before. Bill Aanders looked right in my father's face and laughed as he spit it all out·--what they'd been saying--hoping to get a laugh out of him too. <br /><br />But my father didn't crack a smile. He glanced over at me as if to tell me he knew I'd heard what they said; then he turned away and walked to the back of the store, leaving the chorus of yucking behind him. <br /><br />I don't think my father has written off his daughter because she's shacked up with a black man, although that may be part of it. In a little town like Apple River, to some people Kenny's being black is a worse curse than the two of them's not being married--but not to my father. To him, Kenny and Sally are living in sin, and Sally's left absolutely every last value he tried to teach her, like an empty can of pop, along the road she took to get as far away as she could in record time. There's two kids over there now, little bushy-haired boys, Mark and Bryant, whose skin is the color of hot chocolate and who talk Just like Kenny. But both of them have short legs like their mother--like I do too--and when they hop off the kitchen stools and head out to watch cartoons in the morning, their feet make the same shuffle I've heard for years when the boss walks over the hardwood floor to his roll-top in the store's back room. When I heard those kids walk last summer, I thought right away that it was something my father should know, once I dare to tell him.</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*</span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I visited at Sally's this summer, when I worked in California. I'm on a ride with Kenny one day down to Modesto, even though he's not supposed to take riders--company rules. He works for Gardener's, an industrial delivery service in Santa Cruz, and sometimes he makes long trips with this Audi truck. <br /><br />"You like dried fruit?" he says to me when we come up on a roadside out in the middle of sand hills. "I'd kill for dried bananas." <br /><br />"Sure," I said. I'd tried it once when we carried some ten- dollar bags of trail mix we thought hunters might buy. <br /><br />So we're walking around this fruit stand, looking at every kind of dried fruit you could think of, and Kenny grabs one right out of the bin, a little sharp slice of banana, and he sticks it into my mouth. "Lay that on your tongue one time," he says. <br /><br />It was okay, kind of tasteless really, just a little sweet. "That's good," I tell him. "I see what you mean." And he puts one in his own mouth as if he's never tasted dried bananas himself, just picks a half dozen right out of the bin. <br /><br />"You can buy everything here, can't you?" I tell him. <br /><br />We're looking at dried apples right then--flat, donut-shaped things that feel like soft rubber when you bite them. <br /><br />"In California, you can buy every last kind of thing all right," he says, chuckling at little as he rips at a piece of apple. "Whole lot more than dried fruit." <br /><br />I got a hint of what he's trying to say when he laughs, so I figure I'll bring it back. "Beautiful state," I tell him. <br /><br />He just shrugs his shoulders. "I grew up in a place where a boy could take out a fishing pole and spend all of a day down at the river pulling catfish," Kenny says. "I grew up in a place where there wa'n't any drugs to speak of, where we used to play ball every afternoon we weren't fishing, and where there was more than enough real air to go around--you know what I'm saying?" <br /><br />I'd always figured Kenny was born in California. <br /><br />"I'd move back to Mississippi in a twinklin'," he says. "People say I'm nuts, but I know what's real, see? Thing is, it wouldn't be no place for your sister."<br /><br />I didn't think any black man in his right mind would would want to move back Mississippi, but I didn't know how to say that to him. "I didn't know you were a Southern boy, Kenny," I said, and once I'd said <i>boy</i>, I wished I hadn't. <br /><br />But Kenny laughs so hard he almost loses the hunk of apple. "I'm a real Southern boy for sure," he says. "Thing is, a black man knows where he stands in the South. Go north or out here, and you don't know what's the score with some folks." <br /><br />Tons of prunes and nectarines are piled up in separate bins, but Kenny grabs a plastic bag of bananas, another one mixed fruit, and a pair of fresh apricots, then pulls out his wallet by the chain, and marches up to the woman who makes change from her denim apron. <br /><br />"Ain't no place for a kid to grow up," Kenny says. "They rot from the inside out. Can't find a place to be alone," he tells me, as earnestly as my own father could have. "I'm thinking about moving back to South Dakota."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I looked at him strangely, I suppose, before he busted out laughing.<br /><br />I guess I'd never thought of Kenny in the same way I'd thought of Sally--as someone who couldn't go home.</span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*</span></div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-65265494897121055682024-03-05T07:42:00.003-06:002024-03-06T06:11:30.702-06:00At Fort Belmont<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyaVibe6F-XPNtVPHz50KMi3BTGT7UN8aZo1BgkpQ72UWUwp3FHq1fs1nkoC4s5JXGWbHh2RySMEV3NdPUFOsgRpuir1eq7Zx6CJAIRBuWSFB99flry4CKUi-FlzbJhU6ZjdKu4x5ngl_QBVzig3P-gt63JKUSfD1mBJtLB6xkP6B_1wBGZMmO/s800/6a7e2a8b4f04c93fc0407e5d6035ed51-800.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="800" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyaVibe6F-XPNtVPHz50KMi3BTGT7UN8aZo1BgkpQ72UWUwp3FHq1fs1nkoC4s5JXGWbHh2RySMEV3NdPUFOsgRpuir1eq7Zx6CJAIRBuWSFB99flry4CKUi-FlzbJhU6ZjdKu4x5ngl_QBVzig3P-gt63JKUSfD1mBJtLB6xkP6B_1wBGZMmO/w640-h402/6a7e2a8b4f04c93fc0407e5d6035ed51-800.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">My daughter seemed unwilling to believe her parents used to travel back and forth--western Iowa to eastern Wisconsin--on a two-lane road. I don't know why she thought that impossible, but the plain truth is I'm a good bit older than Interstate 90, old enough to remember Hwy 16 that ran through hill and dale down at the foot of the state of Minnesota.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Personally, I go back even further, my very first trip undertaken in 1956, when I'm guessing I-90 may have been little more than someone's dream. Back then old Hwy 16--I get nostalgic just typing out the numbers--jig-jagged through what seemed endless miles of boring farmland until it began to spaghetti through the hills west of the Mississippi. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Occasionally a river valley would break the endless miles of prairie. Already at Jackson, old 16 snuck down into the woods along the Des Moines River, dipped into the shadowy darkness wrought by honest-to-goodness woods, and passed a tourist trap on its way into town--Ft. Belmont, the signs said, a shady spot on the prairie that--or so I couldn't help thinking--had designs on, in the days before Visa, loosing you from whatever you had jingling in your pockets. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">We never stopped. We were on our way home after all, miles to go before we'd sleep. Ft. Belmont stood up and out from the trees right there where somebody would be glad to sell you a little war bonnet or a rubber tomahawks or a full set of bow and arrows. "Trading post"?--sure. Most everything made in Japan, I thought.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Along came I-90. Ft. Belmont was off the beaten path, so the chamber of commerce (or something similar) made haste to move it all--store and reconstructed fort a mile or so north to a nice big spread along the interstate, easy access on and off. Eventually they put an old Lutheran church there too, and a school. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">The new Ft. Belmont keeps hours only between Memorial Day and Labor Day, so the whole place was shut down last Saturday, when finally I stopped by. What's new now is I know something about Ft. Belmont. I know Inkpaduta and his outlaw gang of cold-blooded Santee killers moved north after the desolation they left on Lake Okoboji in March of 1857. I knew that they kept up the slaughter when they came up river north to here. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I knew all of that, and that's why I left I-90, hoping I could at least walk up to this good old phony Ft. Belmont. What I didn't know was that during the 1862 Dakota War more local men and women and children were killed here, slaughtered by yet another outlaw gang of killers. I didn't know that, had to read it off a memorial.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Mned0ijUWa7YOTxZkMJ3b1iwAdJC5QpfwzhYc2OG0NIFS3i8wvrgsSTFnrKt-4Bx_w7nmsUarlusudUILNXmzSuYDfNBCeeyPziqaRzUl2SAVc_F4XXP5PdBiC_SI7FOBixA0uY6wHBRmavdajUratHfU4Sps3f-vzEIJfDThkSFETjIlAU4/s4608/P1010745.2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Mned0ijUWa7YOTxZkMJ3b1iwAdJC5QpfwzhYc2OG0NIFS3i8wvrgsSTFnrKt-4Bx_w7nmsUarlusudUILNXmzSuYDfNBCeeyPziqaRzUl2SAVc_F4XXP5PdBiC_SI7FOBixA0uY6wHBRmavdajUratHfU4Sps3f-vzEIJfDThkSFETjIlAU4/w640-h480/P1010745.2.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Believe me, I know the historical context, the required background. I know the Santee Sioux were losing their homeland to newcomers named Ole and Britta and Lars. I understand their loss of homeland, but if you call those Santees "freedom fighters," then you better do likewise with the Hamas killers who swarmed into Israel one early Sabbath morning in October. There's no pardon for slaughter. Murder is murder.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Three women tried to escape the horror here near Jackson by bringing their children with them and climbing into a hole in the ground beneath the cabin. One child could not be stilled, so one mother took it upon herself to leave the cave so the others might be saved. She did, and she and her baby were immediately slain. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">On Saturday I stopped at Ft. Belmont. No one was around. I stood a hundred yards from the tourist-y fortress facsimile, alone in a little cluster of historic buildings that still felt tourist trap-y, just as the original had when years ago it was clustered down the hill at the edge of town, surrounded by trees so otherwise foreign on the prairie we'd travelled.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I stood there, in a way, to apologize. The sight isn't sacred. That monument you see, set there in 1909, is in a city park downtown. You have to hunt to find it. Sure the new Fort Belmont is touristy. You can't miss it from the highway. It's huge, and, sure, its more than a little silly. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">But this time, when I had the time and actually stopped, like I never did sixty-some years ago, this time I stopped and remembered the suffering I now know something about. I stood there alone, just off the interstate, and nearly bawled because I know the brutal stories and because I couldn't help but think, once again, how blasted unredeemable we can be before God, but how, despite whatever arrows befall us, whatever roads we travel, He is somehow never all that far off the highway.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjHCIUqLOM-OeWjgR4QGHRYQbTyrEgHIUgdqPD2mPMecGftNzHD_Agk1mLsipNJwX3tJl3c27xs7rhitIS3Oyk56F1zSF0DEYfy1P8SU7ObrjwdAsOecpJscrHKZH3sLfLyr5Eqw0JXB-UdElBRE9WBtOj3a76HdLgDPSIrKoI_TOnuUuLplHE/s4608/P1010741.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2200" data-original-width="4608" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjHCIUqLOM-OeWjgR4QGHRYQbTyrEgHIUgdqPD2mPMecGftNzHD_Agk1mLsipNJwX3tJl3c27xs7rhitIS3Oyk56F1zSF0DEYfy1P8SU7ObrjwdAsOecpJscrHKZH3sLfLyr5Eqw0JXB-UdElBRE9WBtOj3a76HdLgDPSIrKoI_TOnuUuLplHE/w640-h306/P1010741.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-52168595426920186522024-03-04T07:15:00.000-06:002024-03-04T07:15:16.170-06:00State Champs!!<p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi17ZXtyM24_f1xugBUmB2wCeUFPD25S09laWlsUSwr8MVY2D7HSL2pb-8z9gQsZzeHod0XcYf4NHk4nrroLYdfnHkkk-cEEmTtwrPri2HA2vEq6fV3DKvOrulFm8Flkb1odo2Y5PzK5gu42rivRU5TD2eRbZru_mW0DD48puT71wBt-d4GNPnR" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi17ZXtyM24_f1xugBUmB2wCeUFPD25S09laWlsUSwr8MVY2D7HSL2pb-8z9gQsZzeHod0XcYf4NHk4nrroLYdfnHkkk-cEEmTtwrPri2HA2vEq6fV3DKvOrulFm8Flkb1odo2Y5PzK5gu42rivRU5TD2eRbZru_mW0DD48puT71wBt-d4GNPnR=w480-h640" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">They're state champs. If they were a volleyball team--or buckets--they'd ride into town aboard the city fire department trucks, all of them, horns and sirens blasting. Won't happen. Didn't. They'll be lucky to get an inch or two in the local newspaper, even though a sub-state basketball game will get a page. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So let me just say something--a little bit about those kids in that picture--because somewhere way back I had a hand in their incredible victory. The guy who, literally, runs the show isn't even the teacher. Call him a para-professional maybe, someone who gets a few bucks for taking on their competitive forensics program. Anyway, last summer, when he was casting about for material for his readers theater troupe, he called. "Got any ideas?" he said.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've done a few in the last few years, the first of which was a simple readers theater text created from the fine poems of one-time American Poet Laureate, Ted Koozer. I loved his <i>Blizzard Voices, </i>a book of poems with stories that aren't exactly his either. Koozer listened to the stories of hundreds of men, women, and schoolchildren, who'd lived through the Great Blizzard of 1888 (GB88), sometimes called the Schoolchildren's Blizzard.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Listened</i> isn't exactly the right word either--just plain <i>read</i> is a better fit. Years ago, some wise person thought it might be a good idea to get people who remembered GB88 to put their memories on paper and send them in, then put them all together in a book you can buy yet today, a book that goes by that name, <i>The Great Blizzard of 1888</i>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Koozer, who's from Nebraska, picked up that book and crafted a small book of poems from stories he'd read. A decade ago, I read his book of poems, loved it, and couldn't help thinking it would be really easy to create a readers theater script from those poems, a script that would, as Koozer did, tell the immensely powerful story of GB88. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A readers theater presentation means no one has to recite lines, action doesn't have to be blocked, and it doesn't require a cast of thousands or a stage manager or lighting or music. It's just three or four people--maybe six or seven--maybe just two people reading great material, like memories of an terrible blizzard, the GB88.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Furthermore, a readers theater doesn't even require lots of rehearsals. I've got one coming up twice this month, and I'm guessing the cast--four people--will read through it only once before it goes live at the town library and, later, the museum.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The blizzard's got me far afield--back to high school forensics. The coach called me and asked about ideas. I told him about Koozer, sent him my script, and he ran with the whole idea. The result--I saw it yesterday in a very special showing for parents and family of the state champs--was wonderful, warm-hearted, touching, very moving, creatively accomplished. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">People died in GB88, hundreds, mostly children. You know the story--the storm struck as if without warning and left scores of rural school teachers, most of them just teenagers, with the very same difficult question--should kids be sent home or kept at school? The answer to that question in hundreds of rural school throughout the region turns out to have been "kept at school." </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So the high school's take on <i>Blizzard Voices</i> made it through regionals and went on to state, where they finished first, best in show, state champions. The list of finalists included schools twice and three times their size. Their depiction of <i>Blizzard Voices</i> was perfectly masterful.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">My role didn't amount to much. I merely pointed at an option, a story line, and the director took it from there. What I pointed at was a treasure, and he realized that, shaped it wonderfully in his own way for the high school kids he had, and created what I'd be more than happy to call a work of art. Let me repeat that--"a work of art."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And art is good. The beauty it brings is a blessing. Stories that speak to the heart do just that--they actually speak to the heart, as did--and does--MOCFV's "Blizzard Voices." </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That State Champ banner at the top of the page is worth more than a State Champ basketball trophy. Their care-filled depiction of a monster blizzard brought the kind of beauty that rises when a very human story is brought to life before our eyes and somehow leaves our hearts moved.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Congratulations!!!</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-26819027806165099822024-03-03T05:55:00.002-06:002024-03-03T05:55:40.526-06:00Do Process<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTAMD2gT-nP7Xutmi9r_LqbabhsaUbBNAz9p2UCQa86wP35BIMQXP5Abro8fyFMh9kzTpALLOxDlPe-tB-Ra2yrMA9N7JnfZFZBQVyWuHlk0kmDSNiZgIAf7yhQc-fo3WFzLXgcbmZRYIgNWy9tvgswOmm5hLsMLX3OJsbc_VRQvLjRIQ6JJBp/s4032/PXL_20240302_130020177.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTAMD2gT-nP7Xutmi9r_LqbabhsaUbBNAz9p2UCQa86wP35BIMQXP5Abro8fyFMh9kzTpALLOxDlPe-tB-Ra2yrMA9N7JnfZFZBQVyWuHlk0kmDSNiZgIAf7yhQc-fo3WFzLXgcbmZRYIgNWy9tvgswOmm5hLsMLX3OJsbc_VRQvLjRIQ6JJBp/w640-h360/PXL_20240302_130020177.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>“Why are you downcast, O my soul?</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Why so disturbed within me?</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Put your hope in God,</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”</b></span></div><p></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">One night late, years ago, a preacher friend of mine, over a few beers, began talking about what he went through when his wife left him, years before, an event that’s not supposed to happen, and certainly not supposed to happen to preachers. He didn’t blame her; he knew he’d had a hand in what happened himself, preacher or not. <br /><br />At that late hour, with a bit of lubrication, I stayed with him when it appeared he wanted to talk. I sound as if I was using him, and maybe I was in a way; but what interested me was his use of a phrase I’d heard before: “It took me a long time to process that,” he kept saying. “I didn’t have the tools at first to process what had happened.”<br /><br />I’ll admit I thought it was psychobabble, a cliché, an entirely strange word drawn from what we do to legislation or cheese or army recruits. But the emotion he carried as he told me the story made me wonder what that pat expression meant in the context of his adultery. I wanted process unpacked.<br /><br />By “process,” he said, he meant becoming able to look at the wound and not cry or rage. Process, he said, meant stepping back from the immediacy of the emotions, a step that wasn’t at all easy--and it took time, he said. And it took work. Like forgiveness. <br /><br />It seems to me that in verse five of Psalm 42, David (if he’s the writer) appears to have processed something. The unforgettable opening verses of the psalm emerge from the core of his grief; but verse five steps back from the sadness that threatens him and he begins talking to himself. “For heaven’s sake,” he says, “what’s with me anyway? Why am I so incredibly depressed?” <br /><br />Then he pulls out an old bromide and tells himself what he’d obviously known for years and even sung in a whole psalter of his own ballads, something the curtains of his despair had seemingly covered: “Put your hope in God,” he tells himself, processing his sadness. <br /><br />And then the resolution. Picture him, gritting his teeth, almost a snarl, pulling intent and dedication out of truth he knew, inside out: “. . .for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” <br /><br />I may be wrong. Maybe there’s a gap in this psalm. Maybe, like the preacher without a wife, it took him some time to process the emptiness in his life. <br /><br />Wouldn’t it be wonderful to consult some standard King David biography and discover that this song was finished months after it was started, that he’s simply telling the story? <br /><br />But we don’t know that, and no one ever will. All we’re left with the psalm. And in this verse—or so it seems to me—David seems to bottom out, to take hold of the promises of God he’s relied on throughout his life, at a myriad of other moments when he stood in dire need of being rescued. “Put your hope in God,” he says, in command form. <br /><br />In this verse, the story the poem tells is at its climax because the writer has stepped back to tell himself, to shout, in fact, the truth into his own ears, and now ours. “I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God” [emphasis mine, but I think his too]. <br /><br />Sounds like a preacher friend of mine, talking to me over a beer years ago. <br /><br />Sounds like Job. Sounds like a lot of us. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-24650939448695060442024-03-01T07:18:00.000-06:002024-03-01T07:18:29.147-06:00. . .but not forgotten<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWdW-FMXioyN_LZAw7p5RBp57OHyjQMkgBfXqcbmM-fcb_HawJA-ctoHwlMjEfl_dqd4iXYV-XHAyONq78D29K1aVapu0vaF9X8VkdwgGh68VsUzsHqd5VlHfnkQNk1Sw2NOCdE6mcSbVfZJsqK68TpEgCLDfdGXmpR1QNJuvS4Mydu3KBKZqv/s3264/P1100337.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWdW-FMXioyN_LZAw7p5RBp57OHyjQMkgBfXqcbmM-fcb_HawJA-ctoHwlMjEfl_dqd4iXYV-XHAyONq78D29K1aVapu0vaF9X8VkdwgGh68VsUzsHqd5VlHfnkQNk1Sw2NOCdE6mcSbVfZJsqK68TpEgCLDfdGXmpR1QNJuvS4Mydu3KBKZqv/w480-h640/P1100337.JPG" width="480" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><p>In a work of fiction, it's almost impossible to make a character as supremely loveable as Nebraska's Willa Cather does with the great earth-mother Antonia, in her century-old novel <i>My Antonia</i>. This Antonia isn't one bit divine, but her zest for life, notable throughout a childhood Cather recreates, is perfectly enchanting. If you've read <i>My Antonia </i>and you love the novel, as gadzillions have and do, then you probably adore Antonia, or Tony, as Jim Burden calls her in the story.</p></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tony is not untouched by the dark side. She is the oldest daughter of an immigrant Bohemian family struggling to make a go of it on uncooperative Great Plains land, one family of thousands, many from all over Europe, who believed that this new country was their chance to escape the bondage of poverty. For some, that dream was real. For others, just staying alive required every last stich of strength and perseverance. Some didn't make it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tony's father, Anton Shimerda, was something of an aristocrat in the old country. But he'd married a tyrannical woman, then lost himself in the vast expanse of treeless prairie he found himself in here, bereft of the art and music that had enchanted his soul.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tony's father ends his life by suicide. She was just a girl. His death not only emptied her life of her father's presence and grace, but forced her to take over the hard, hard work of breaking ground for a sustainable life.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Still, like Jim Burden, who cannot forget her, readers can't help but love Tony Shimerda, who eventually came to town to work for well-situated town folks. What she and the other hired girls take with them is rowdy earthiness of their country ways. Off-limits to town boys of means, the country girls just want to have fun. Jim Burden's parents, in sanctified righteousness, forbid him from going to dances, where the country girls just plain shine. They're thought to be loose. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">No matter, like Jim, who tells the story, most readers love her zest. Besides, the hired girls are great and sexy dancers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Quite suddenly, Tony finds herself with child, and on a train to Denver, where the father, Larry Donovan, a passenger conductor on the railroad, told her he'd meet her, marry her, and raise a family. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In Denver, he was not to be found. Tony Shimerda was pregnant and abandoned.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">She can do nothing but return. With her brother, she slaves through harvest season and into winter, when one night she locks herself in her bedroom and delivers her baby boy herself. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You can't help but love the woman. And, well, hate this scum, Larry Donovan. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you've never been to Red Cloud, Nebraska, schedule a trip sometime soon. Because Willa Cather used so much of Red Cloud and its history, the town's heart and soul is their favorite novelist daughter. You can visit the little old Catholic church where Tony eventually married the farm boy who gave her the rest of her kids. You can visit their farmhouse, the Pavelka place, north of town.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tell you what--take a car tour through the whole wide country where Willa Cather remembers her childhood so fondly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And be sure to stop the tiny cemetery plot at the beginning of the tour. You can't miss it--it's right there along the gravel. In it stands the stone of the man who abandoned Antonia Shimerda, in real life, Anna Pavelka. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Of course, his name isn't Larry Donovan; for the record, what's etched there in stone is "James William Murray." There's the stone all right, just where the tour notes claim it is. And here's the thing: the bottom of the stone bears this old cemetery cliche: "Gone but not forgotten."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">No kidding. "Gone, but not forgotten." Every year thousands of people take that gravel road tour, and nobody forgets what Larry Donovan did to your and my Antonia. Poor James William Murray: in Red Cloud, Nebraska, so much just can't be forgotten. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Visit sometime. Stop there at the grave and tell him he was a cad. Or worse. Good night, was he ever. Like a hundred others, tell him he's gone all right, but not forgotten.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYkqe_xLGcBXSXvyeSPRoOFlrIEeL_4Kl0osQKDTZVyEtpPX5AW8E5n4J21B7o2H_QH7F9iAbcYryXGCinNtSKzDvwCQla7zzSsgqtF-S_5X4CIz9H6YFQfDhBuWoyRiWp0Bj5skPpVuSs8LAsIqYYPp1bJCZ3Ek10S__Ul9zG8MsxFGx20hvb/s4608/P8060319.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYkqe_xLGcBXSXvyeSPRoOFlrIEeL_4Kl0osQKDTZVyEtpPX5AW8E5n4J21B7o2H_QH7F9iAbcYryXGCinNtSKzDvwCQla7zzSsgqtF-S_5X4CIz9H6YFQfDhBuWoyRiWp0Bj5skPpVuSs8LAsIqYYPp1bJCZ3Ek10S__Ul9zG8MsxFGx20hvb/w640-h480/P8060319.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-13840637487808970282024-02-29T07:31:00.000-06:002024-02-29T07:31:58.290-06:00Willa's world<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4CPkaoToEdumjbHFv4EhRVXVhcRUI6-krhPhE8yougLqVKI_4zNQg-c-o1NpQTu5X2GjqVSLgysP_6sRpI3qQBHgH6HMFinNvJuiTOPjtQg0I7BmkOlESM86FB73-3VGluYQSHTvO24wDuqeELpuxkihOSKLJBf1qA_-r2nSa6kYgJbbjCAkJ/s500/Cather.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="393" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4CPkaoToEdumjbHFv4EhRVXVhcRUI6-krhPhE8yougLqVKI_4zNQg-c-o1NpQTu5X2GjqVSLgysP_6sRpI3qQBHgH6HMFinNvJuiTOPjtQg0I7BmkOlESM86FB73-3VGluYQSHTvO24wDuqeELpuxkihOSKLJBf1qA_-r2nSa6kYgJbbjCAkJ/w504-h640/Cather.png" width="504" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let's be clear about this. In Willa Cather's most beloved novel,<i> My Antonia</i>, a pure celebration of the beauty of the world of her childhood, she offers some intriguing complexities, specifically in gender or sexuality.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Her short preface gives the entire story to a childhood friend of hers, Jim Burden, an old friend but now a New York-based attorney for the railroad. She and Jim find themselves on a trip across the prairie together and get to talking, the trajectory of their conversation aimed precisely at the red prairie grasses where they grew up. Jim tells "the narrator," who we certainly can't expect to be any one other than Cather herself, that he's been toying around with a book about Tony Shimerda, a woman they both, long ago, deeply admired.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Once back in New York, Jim Burden drops by "our narrator's" apartment and drops off a manuscript. That manuscript, "our narrator" says, is <i>My Antonia</i>. Old English teachers could argue all day long about exactly why Willa Cather chooses to begin the tale that way--you're reading a story from a writer named Willa Cather, but it's actually written by her old friend? Seriously?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">All right, we'll give her that mystery, but there's more. It's fair to say that Jim Burden may lack some typical male attributes. There is, after all, his proud worship of the Bohemian girl--she is his mother, his lover, his wife, he says; she's his everything. But that she's not at least her heart throb seems odd. In fact, at some moments throughout the novel, it's not a stretch to think of him as maybe a bit, well, gay.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Then there's Willa Cather herself, who, as a young lady, wanted to think of herself as a young man, and did, by dressing like a man, cutting her hair like a man, and signing the name "William," rather than Willa. She never married, lived with a woman named Edith Lewis for forty years. She was mightily circumspect about this area of her life, burning her letters and determining that what remained couldn't be opened for years and years. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gender mysteries abound in this greatly famous novel. Please!-nothing I'm saying should lead you to think I'm nay-saying. I read it first when teaching, several times since. I've been to Red Cloud, Nebraska, four or five times, and I'd go tomorrow again tomorrow if someone would ask. I love her worship of the world where she grew up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But there's this gender thing that's a little intrusive, and it begs some investigation, which you can be sure it's gathered throughout the one hundred years the novel has been around. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the years that I taught "The American Novel," <i>My Antonia</i> didn't change a whit; however, the students did, and did so massively. I remember my first year, hardly daring to bring the subject up (it doesn't need to be, by the way). Perhaps incorrectly, I presumed that if my good, Christian students knew that the novel they held in their hands and had come to love--most have loved the novel--was written by a lesbian, it would affect their admiration and, well, them. My Antonia would suffer some shunning surely.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">By the last time I taught it--and that must be 20 years ago--things had changed. Not only were good Christian students more questioning, they were downright fascinated and wanted to know quite desperately, "Was Cather gay?" </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Answering that question only complicated matters, because no one can know for sure anyway--and besides, what would you look for anyway? Real Cather scholars frequently say she was in a "lesbian relationship."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's been a long time since I've been through the novel, but I went back into its reveries this week for a discussion at the museum, all adults, many of them retired. Gender questions entered into the discussion, but they certainly didn't dominate.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Cather herself appears to have created some of those questions in this wonderful novel. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">While as a culture we may have wandered far afield from the repressions of old, gone wildly across the line into spaces unheard of years ago, such as middle school kids demanding to be addressed as "we/they," I much prefer the freedom to deal with the questions Willa Cather's wonderful worship of her Nebraska childhood raises than leave them somewhere under lock and key.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-59504844004868223422024-02-28T06:55:00.000-06:002024-02-28T06:55:15.832-06:00Playing the numbers<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiZY9qchmq9AhMov4XU0ZYhx4gFa8t9ECQR6oQlIRe1NhpqfaeNKn8Kea2UpzVPFYL4gBrI2hOo43UsGvohqUMXASD3-SCtSzD4tKsCWFLaKwZ6TYIf376_vABv3vcAcr8G4-Ew-DhIQguO56la9ogt4rEAYX5etbso-DQfAlhoFw_TCr6Tyk5c" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="474" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiZY9qchmq9AhMov4XU0ZYhx4gFa8t9ECQR6oQlIRe1NhpqfaeNKn8Kea2UpzVPFYL4gBrI2hOo43UsGvohqUMXASD3-SCtSzD4tKsCWFLaKwZ6TYIf376_vABv3vcAcr8G4-Ew-DhIQguO56la9ogt4rEAYX5etbso-DQfAlhoFw_TCr6Tyk5c=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let's do the numbers.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Donald J. Trump won the Iowa Republican caucus going away, a landslide victory, 98 of the 99 counties, amassing a vote total that smashed records. No one had won a Presidential caucus in Iowa by 30 points. He took home 30 delegates by winning 51% of the vote. Nothing like it, ever.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">[For the record, Trump won Sioux County, where I live, with 45% of the total; DeSantis had 31%--and quit the race; others, including Nikki Haley, only notched 24%.] </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In New Hampshire, a conservative state with a populace notably without the thousands of evangelicals in Iowa, once again Trump won, this time over a field significantly diminished, taking home 36,000 votes more than Nikki Haley, the only real opposition candidate left standing. To be noted: more votes were cast in the New Hampshire Presidential Primary--318,000--than the earlier record set in the 2020 Democratic Primary-- 288,000. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In Iowa, Trump won despite losing the backing of two significant Republicans, Governor Kim Reynolds, as well as Bob Vander Plaats, generally assumed to be the voice of the Iowa's Christian Republicans. In New Hampshire, the highly popular John Sununu campaigned hard for Nikki Haley.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">No matter. Trump took home all the bacon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In South Carolina, a state widely perceived as far to the right of either New Hampshire or Iowa, Trump crushed his former Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, taking home all the delegates and winning 60% of the total vote. All this despite the fact that Ms. Haley had been the state's own highly popular, two-termed governor.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For anyone who has watched anything surrounding American politics, Donald J. Trump, the twice-impeached ex-President, swimming in upcoming court dates, a man who now bills himself as a martyr to the MAGA cause--whatever that is--seems the inevitable Republican candidate, although he's no more "Republican" than I am. The numbers don't lie. He will be the MAGA candidate.,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But, if you believe the newscasters I listen to, the numbers don't lie about other things either. There was swirling snow and cold the night of the Iowa Caucuses after all, and maybe tons of people didn't show up because they knew the outcome of the whole affair before it even began. On the other hand, maybe scads of people didn't show up because they weren't at all interested or thrilled. One way or another, here in Iowa, only 15% of the registered Republicans caucused that night--15%.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thusly, let me (and my leftie friends) spin the numbers. In Iowa, Donald J. Trump won the caucus hands down, but he did so with only 51% of the 15% Republican voters. Hmmmmm. Do I smell a weakness? In New Hampshire, 43% of the Republicans in the state who voted didn't vote for<i> </i>him. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's the fuel Nikki Haley is running on--with some significant financial backing too, of course. But it's the only faith we Dems have to hold on to right now amid Trump's blowouts, and MSNBC is full of that kind of talk--that even though blitzkrieging Trump is rolling over whatever opposition attempts to break his hold, there's more to the numbers than meets the eye.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's all we've got right now. But then everything changes if the two candidates that seem destined to be America's choice in November, aren't. Could that happen? You bet. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Somewhere in the area of 65% of the American populace would vote for Bullwinkle rather than the Orange Man, whether or not he was behind bars. The true-blue MAGAS make a ton of noise, but they're a shrinking percentage of the American people. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Numbers don't lie, but they can be spun. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Keep the faith!!</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-80831046082880569672024-02-27T07:40:00.000-06:002024-02-27T07:40:41.695-06:00Home (2)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib2U3bG5xhX4rCuJ_Q1UTw-2gOhlbfM7ijQRjbwnBc5QHYYcu_R_AFCTFt67TLYHagtmOa0zh-hYN1UsN68u249xVqQtuITG8WVlLkP0Fy_CzcHo1irMmxuiCxDGAx5dJ6i_jqEkbYlDsNxEpqlrey2BZGiHZQuy3yb_1lzRjFrJ6QBxyEyOMg/s4032/PXL_20240224_143108425.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib2U3bG5xhX4rCuJ_Q1UTw-2gOhlbfM7ijQRjbwnBc5QHYYcu_R_AFCTFt67TLYHagtmOa0zh-hYN1UsN68u249xVqQtuITG8WVlLkP0Fy_CzcHo1irMmxuiCxDGAx5dJ6i_jqEkbYlDsNxEpqlrey2BZGiHZQuy3yb_1lzRjFrJ6QBxyEyOMg/w640-h360/PXL_20240224_143108425.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is a new thing. I knew my phone was touted as being able to shoot pictures at night, but I'd never really tried it. By the time darkness fell, that placid orange pond did its Jekyll-Hyde stuff and turned angry. I have no reason to call this <i>angry</i> really, but the roar outside demanded attention and made talking tough.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Once it was obvious the camera would do as it was told, I kept snapping, outside. I can't help but think there is some kind of other-worldliness in these shots, but they're fascinating--and totally wrought by the phone, a Google Pixel 8.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNOK83Ykk-EovAGNlRrb4dAu5QuxoP8zWbPjHGh2_wv9LP8xILXJ9a60l42Jh3HnY7bLCM75MpD69mdcBS8xdeN8OVHBiCmE4_RSIEe945VAthgkqNDNrIAqUKcbBUM0odgCoCj8Mg7fuji3V06D0j9PWJ5Bzq1ym40HdtJHvdCpUfKTBHlHW/s4032/PXL_20240224_141622457~3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="2268" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNOK83Ykk-EovAGNlRrb4dAu5QuxoP8zWbPjHGh2_wv9LP8xILXJ9a60l42Jh3HnY7bLCM75MpD69mdcBS8xdeN8OVHBiCmE4_RSIEe945VAthgkqNDNrIAqUKcbBUM0odgCoCj8Mg7fuji3V06D0j9PWJ5Bzq1ym40HdtJHvdCpUfKTBHlHW/w360-h640/PXL_20240224_141622457~3.jpg" width="360" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lest you think the phone decided this night shot would be better in a dusting of snow, it fell that evening, just a little, like icing. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not to be outdone, here's a night shot done the old-fashioned way--with the camera. To my eyes, this one looks more "natural." </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIOLo5ohrW3bden7J8YfXZ47gLBt4Dv_u5Xyj0cg0F1wg7Y8g0gRkXjZdrtGprGHcBi6t0O5nYZiiwUF8ziHW0UOBWKqrgNH2TDe4QDIG6mAwZRZIRzdpA5eQV9G-wQk_w5FZnuj673oSaHBY-iHwog941RMUKwgXo1k4tth6G_6vteunDMt8r/s4640/P1010750.ORF" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4640" data-original-width="3472" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIOLo5ohrW3bden7J8YfXZ47gLBt4Dv_u5Xyj0cg0F1wg7Y8g0gRkXjZdrtGprGHcBi6t0O5nYZiiwUF8ziHW0UOBWKqrgNH2TDe4QDIG6mAwZRZIRzdpA5eQV9G-wQk_w5FZnuj673oSaHBY-iHwog941RMUKwgXo1k4tth6G_6vteunDMt8r/w478-h640/P1010750.ORF" width="478" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When morning lit up the sky on Saturday, the lake had calmed, and the dawn the sky offered wasn't generous with color, even though I thought there would be an explosion way out there somewhere above Michigan. Saturday was the exact opposite of Friday, when a clear sky suffered only a far away belt of thick clouds. This morning, there was only a faraway belt of clear sky beneath huge cloudiness.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgICilyWVYB2t5LwIDqFlkwfulqflTUveFBzTaAiGrC0D-pIJHETP0-m_ThU3qCa_GFkVDlpLxhaAwzjRQk-snKYpJ5CZup9hLBKADksw0Djcff3ceIYnNTC4UIWfEpCRKj-2Twdf_jik3VuSD7lADfIS8TcB95yRsjDG9YJRzkhWjZk8_QA6Sc/s4032/PXL_20240224_121520507.NIGHT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgICilyWVYB2t5LwIDqFlkwfulqflTUveFBzTaAiGrC0D-pIJHETP0-m_ThU3qCa_GFkVDlpLxhaAwzjRQk-snKYpJ5CZup9hLBKADksw0Djcff3ceIYnNTC4UIWfEpCRKj-2Twdf_jik3VuSD7lADfIS8TcB95yRsjDG9YJRzkhWjZk8_QA6Sc/w640-h360/PXL_20240224_121520507.NIGHT.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So when the sun finally appeared, it had just a tiny stage before it slipped away for the day. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7YwzGzAZzRm900T3cJSphw_EbXRvMo9d6BGimPpRS5lESsCc2BDqnO-81izQXeGc4PaSEmG9oy7vUOcgQ6zy-p5kT8_QJ93tGbwQ5Mjz8eJp3Bm-M7TCtrNAiDnMmZ6ZH6vaRSJKN90XxWBgXuSWBz67WHhDk6iIzB_kdlVHkPOBhC2hGveOf/s4032/PXL_20240224_123500922.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7YwzGzAZzRm900T3cJSphw_EbXRvMo9d6BGimPpRS5lESsCc2BDqnO-81izQXeGc4PaSEmG9oy7vUOcgQ6zy-p5kT8_QJ93tGbwQ5Mjz8eJp3Bm-M7TCtrNAiDnMmZ6ZH6vaRSJKN90XxWBgXuSWBz67WHhDk6iIzB_kdlVHkPOBhC2hGveOf/w640-h360/PXL_20240224_123500922.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But Sunday was glorious, as Sunday should be, even before the sun appeared. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXjlWpBmO72DgMTc_k2lcm7fgt-MM8bcvAJm91zY5UZsO-FiR78C91oavG45lmzNSNGXEXatEL8K2VFThupOSpwqkpQGr4ZVszs8_EptXOeDrG4QSJMAShWx2ZpWm572Ugapkj5-_cHS4CJPGuv_9G8ikkw1SszJ81BsBFdsiaY21KDQxIWUDr/s4032/PXL_20240225_123129952~2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXjlWpBmO72DgMTc_k2lcm7fgt-MM8bcvAJm91zY5UZsO-FiR78C91oavG45lmzNSNGXEXatEL8K2VFThupOSpwqkpQGr4ZVszs8_EptXOeDrG4QSJMAShWx2ZpWm572Ugapkj5-_cHS4CJPGuv_9G8ikkw1SszJ81BsBFdsiaY21KDQxIWUDr/w640-h360/PXL_20240225_123129952~2.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFuQm5wcQmb4honsbKWlW3G5hvICJVeEfw9XVaEzytJrItbLOVfr67WtFR6Tt3aK75SJg6irjYLbG6j7I8ATdX59k9eqYPECSJM4EsJ_sUjJZJNWtfNMni_Vs8cYP67Xs46l3lW3wyP_guKccYoAUWxiiNyvTa7CJbz-FrPo9eewrGWqpQpgN6/s4032/PXL_20240225_123743514.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFuQm5wcQmb4honsbKWlW3G5hvICJVeEfw9XVaEzytJrItbLOVfr67WtFR6Tt3aK75SJg6irjYLbG6j7I8ATdX59k9eqYPECSJM4EsJ_sUjJZJNWtfNMni_Vs8cYP67Xs46l3lW3wyP_guKccYoAUWxiiNyvTa7CJbz-FrPo9eewrGWqpQpgN6/w640-h360/PXL_20240225_123743514.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">On Sunday, some massive freighter came by, faster than I might have thought. It seemed to me that he'd be right in the eye of the dawn when the sun rose across the waves. I thought about going back in the house for my big lens, but something told me not to feature it--a bigger lens could have. Something told me that massive ship was only an ornament to the heavenly palette laid out in glory before me.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's the camera's version, offering a good sense of the lake's mood.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk6YXOwl6du69AdUNMD8RbdhQ2eMF_TL4Bfd7hEeYRUj3gWnRTZRaWtoVVyKC0ZLLFZfN08Sl20wnyoy5DkHSmcd_8vib7TsfqHjKqFns1tSeUDWeT81zF32st0vIjkucv4Ekw4GPKZQeanqdHJosOwbXizbvwrsbfs6_ZURwPnowpq4q5ECW/s4415/P1010725.2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3311" data-original-width="4415" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk6YXOwl6du69AdUNMD8RbdhQ2eMF_TL4Bfd7hEeYRUj3gWnRTZRaWtoVVyKC0ZLLFZfN08Sl20wnyoy5DkHSmcd_8vib7TsfqHjKqFns1tSeUDWeT81zF32st0vIjkucv4Ekw4GPKZQeanqdHJosOwbXizbvwrsbfs6_ZURwPnowpq4q5ECW/w640-h480/P1010725.2.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But what the phone offered created a shot that topped the weekend. This one, IMHO, is really quite memorable. I'd like you to believe it's strength comes from having been shot by a photographer who knows what he's doing.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihJCdws-wUWDNCYnn2SpYfH1rNfgA4hOXS3urxDpRGNiXItE7MAOSbEe-4D3a9wlqe8tyNcaqLzPHNmmHbfGUstkNWDMQuZDGJEmzRa-6MIaZXLHF7nxat8klIBdxijzaKBZB4YG98m5smdpoTvFdMfpl6qQuS-X2DSyFJiQc5T-V8EXYQfT1c/s4032/PXL_20240225_122714018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="2268" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihJCdws-wUWDNCYnn2SpYfH1rNfgA4hOXS3urxDpRGNiXItE7MAOSbEe-4D3a9wlqe8tyNcaqLzPHNmmHbfGUstkNWDMQuZDGJEmzRa-6MIaZXLHF7nxat8klIBdxijzaKBZB4YG98m5smdpoTvFdMfpl6qQuS-X2DSyFJiQc5T-V8EXYQfT1c/w360-h640/PXL_20240225_122714018.jpg" width="360" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nope. Just blessed with good fortune: I was there at the time. All I had to do was squeeze a bit and something of what we witnessed got itself into my camera and my phone. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A couple more Sunday mornings here:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLRPD3JLDJL2_xnnCAQE1GebrF1CPfF_qNbqCW5LBt_cskecXTY_LB0iMRCklWmiNpCaVkeTuCE23XYVGtVa5okInv6SPm3iRRRdZVmQu8TT2g5OCOcY9_N_kiGBe1K_wq4gbaLcFgfMUA54gHkuct1XdvmlM7rEXVONo_1rmXDNyGQDiq7-hM/s4032/PXL_20240225_120620055~2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLRPD3JLDJL2_xnnCAQE1GebrF1CPfF_qNbqCW5LBt_cskecXTY_LB0iMRCklWmiNpCaVkeTuCE23XYVGtVa5okInv6SPm3iRRRdZVmQu8TT2g5OCOcY9_N_kiGBe1K_wq4gbaLcFgfMUA54gHkuct1XdvmlM7rEXVONo_1rmXDNyGQDiq7-hM/w640-h360/PXL_20240225_120620055~2.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Just gorgeous--the sky I mean.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So with limited mobility--I still can't get around well--and about a 50' beach to work from, I still had a great time. Even better than sitting there with a camera was, well, sitting there. You can't come away from a visit home, on the lake, without feeling somehow humbled by the presence of a something we call God.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was a great weekend--and that's not counting the blessings of family. Really good to be home again.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeWuVriYnjCEzCL1ckGNKlJh9NSfQfGUttn1AgqFaROZno_zukkr1wjw93hr48W2Dx-DwJ57UpAluaP3buZ-hs2KKAiJofljcWr21-9Zuvhe4lP5BV3dTNf1OytfYIA-zmyiyQjbNMr7hGCFM0Or-AOnPYGqFgJwxM6xb9G9t_0rct6zpZja1q/s4608/P1010731.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeWuVriYnjCEzCL1ckGNKlJh9NSfQfGUttn1AgqFaROZno_zukkr1wjw93hr48W2Dx-DwJ57UpAluaP3buZ-hs2KKAiJofljcWr21-9Zuvhe4lP5BV3dTNf1OytfYIA-zmyiyQjbNMr7hGCFM0Or-AOnPYGqFgJwxM6xb9G9t_0rct6zpZja1q/w480-h640/P1010731.JPG" width="480" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-21026711585918553922024-02-26T07:00:00.000-06:002024-02-26T07:00:28.489-06:00Home?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5RYzNc7qxCFOjHf8NsmacG3e13CH6vSN6bw2HkQyuayokSohfnqxZAxE7VJf1zlCAgEY7tNQwKHJtK8-cXcPbWzs19ENjLRnYZhdK9iUyemjTmGT0LO9fWEzBPmanl9hi2M85R1MAJLLp4QmQXnud2JMdTpe3oDUpRrxYaY_TQo3VGRcc-wTF/s4608/P1010726.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5RYzNc7qxCFOjHf8NsmacG3e13CH6vSN6bw2HkQyuayokSohfnqxZAxE7VJf1zlCAgEY7tNQwKHJtK8-cXcPbWzs19ENjLRnYZhdK9iUyemjTmGT0LO9fWEzBPmanl9hi2M85R1MAJLLp4QmQXnud2JMdTpe3oDUpRrxYaY_TQo3VGRcc-wTF/w640-h480/P1010726.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I went home last weekend, a bit of a misnomer because I never lived on the beach when I was a boy, and while the neighborhood is where I grew up, I haven't really lived there--save a two-year sojourn, 1980-82--since 1966. You do the math.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So whether or not I can call home "home" anymore, we'll let the sociologists determine. Meanwhile, I'm not shying away from saying it because it rises to my heart without apology: "I went home last weekend, home to Wisconsin"--and yes, we bought cheese, sausage, and beer. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That cabin above is the place we rented, newly remodeled--and splendidly, I might add--but small and ancient, by cottage standards. I'm sure it's been there for years, but it was greatly comfortable and, well, downright <i>gezellech </i>(a Dutch word--I'm not sure of its spelling) which means just plain<i> </i>fingers-laced-across-the-belly <i>goed. </i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As you can see, our little abode stands right smack dab on the lakefront, so close that a line of gargantuan rocks, piled four feet high just a bit east, kept the cabin from floating out to sea some time ago when the lake was high. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I started messing around with photography when I still lived "home," so it's fair to say I've been taken by what kind of beauty can be captured in a camera for a long time. A cottage on the lake let me greet the dawn--and get what I could of sheer beauty through a lens. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">We arrived back home in the middle of a beautiful April day--February to be exact-- temps in the 50s, windless for the most part, clear skies, so sweet a day that looking out over Lake Michigan the next morning didn't seem a whole lot different than watching the sun rise on a fair-to-middlin' farm pond. At dawn, it seemed only as if some almighty hand had spilled orange juice over most of the world.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV_rxqZYutkXDQo-8cilzcYD78Kpyp__5StamWnfgTvxF_FeB18tbRJ0yW3hb3OuVXtAKZusxLz2zC-xta89XK6XqYtsLMEcfreEMqq4a3Mr3UB9xH2NjCQ_5kbaztTd2hdC-fV1J4_M7wOAKKtcYoZY5DWfAmQ6CUg6Qevm1i6d6JJwg1g32D/s4032/PXL_20240223_120413961.MP.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV_rxqZYutkXDQo-8cilzcYD78Kpyp__5StamWnfgTvxF_FeB18tbRJ0yW3hb3OuVXtAKZusxLz2zC-xta89XK6XqYtsLMEcfreEMqq4a3Mr3UB9xH2NjCQ_5kbaztTd2hdC-fV1J4_M7wOAKKtcYoZY5DWfAmQ6CUg6Qevm1i6d6JJwg1g32D/w640-h360/PXL_20240223_120413961.MP.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I started messing around with photography when I still lived "home," so it's fair to say I've been taken by what kind of beauty can be somehow captured in a camera for a long, long time. A cottage on the lake gave me the opportunity to greet the dawn--and get what I might be lucky to find into a camera. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJMCZ7MxnoO3KdThZu-ZnDZzOXTWOxcPU3d6A_uUq4sNDhyBNkmsIOdG09dasuyULA3yoMtF047bH95gFgBc7RZKt2M-LOt0o6OwJYcLQ1j8y7kkNlX7cwn9Esj0SqPfu5bWaCBNsMydTQE4Fk19js52G-wZTaOqkIPDlMLpXOGNfLUH-cANQj/s4032/PXL_20240223_120623802.MP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJMCZ7MxnoO3KdThZu-ZnDZzOXTWOxcPU3d6A_uUq4sNDhyBNkmsIOdG09dasuyULA3yoMtF047bH95gFgBc7RZKt2M-LOt0o6OwJYcLQ1j8y7kkNlX7cwn9Esj0SqPfu5bWaCBNsMydTQE4Fk19js52G-wZTaOqkIPDlMLpXOGNfLUH-cANQj/w640-h360/PXL_20240223_120623802.MP.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">All the while I waited that morning for the sun to rise, that dark belt of something or other out there was slowly advancing, east to west, a weather pattern we rarely see. It was notable only because it broke up what might have been an orange sea. And, it offered it's own kind of pleasure. The shot below is with a 150mm zoom lens out. Still, the thing seemed a little ominous, a broad, dark curtain rising, strangely, from the stage floor.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtVDvF2XdzffWTXwS5KuKOYfi3MZkVZBJMphlCUUq8qKZaGFOqdYZG-AlGVoQ6w91ftwqQiocMz004pFUyVNgMydawzMcPvtbGsgI1s9Ov5jVKwuzSWdlAwt8XcGlj8C97sKcus837Ml-vMlBGbdbaSgLXGx3MC-mq6r8fh5dYT-O_Guh5FnKj/s4032/PXL_20240223_121439387.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtVDvF2XdzffWTXwS5KuKOYfi3MZkVZBJMphlCUUq8qKZaGFOqdYZG-AlGVoQ6w91ftwqQiocMz004pFUyVNgMydawzMcPvtbGsgI1s9Ov5jVKwuzSWdlAwt8XcGlj8C97sKcus837Ml-vMlBGbdbaSgLXGx3MC-mq6r8fh5dYT-O_Guh5FnKj/w640-h360/PXL_20240223_121439387.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">When the sun finally came up--6:30 or so--it had to climb above what now, clearly seemed a cloud bank that suggested--and so said the weatherman--that April would be fleeting for us. February was returning. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdTUCdIopxKM-r6ozFhWUfxqsD1DTJkPmNavu5hmDdCi4mpVUOYi7Rzr1LToZjYWLtob3vvYGnfMYu3mxSnKS2gXtgPUZt2QLD8qSY7lE2MhsSfrCRjh-rLmKfPdPFL_v8Ck715njqKA1liJZ6WZ-Gtqv-tpIkPtsRidnc7RFMg_VzvbWO4yNK/s4032/PXL_20240223_124459682.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdTUCdIopxKM-r6ozFhWUfxqsD1DTJkPmNavu5hmDdCi4mpVUOYi7Rzr1LToZjYWLtob3vvYGnfMYu3mxSnKS2gXtgPUZt2QLD8qSY7lE2MhsSfrCRjh-rLmKfPdPFL_v8Ck715njqKA1liJZ6WZ-Gtqv-tpIkPtsRidnc7RFMg_VzvbWO4yNK/w640-h360/PXL_20240223_124459682.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">See those rocks at the bottom edge? By later that afternoon, I was happy they were there. Conditions had changed. The big lake was flexing its muscles. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3i7-4Q7HiTpSJEPhSgiX9YO3wW2LrxGXvo6w8Pary00K1T1Gw0bRgncsu7zC-JheUHwwSNeNeRpGdRS6fs-_iIW1GPgX2GUnqoDGosmjis6ahuWiH4DKfeu0sKGbKi3dRJp7cz6L_M9CNJlEusO8VBnoTt7n2uJ_4Cl30s0tz7Xm5SPaXNC9C/s4640/P1010734.ORF" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3472" data-original-width="4640" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3i7-4Q7HiTpSJEPhSgiX9YO3wW2LrxGXvo6w8Pary00K1T1Gw0bRgncsu7zC-JheUHwwSNeNeRpGdRS6fs-_iIW1GPgX2GUnqoDGosmjis6ahuWiH4DKfeu0sKGbKi3dRJp7cz6L_M9CNJlEusO8VBnoTt7n2uJ_4Cl30s0tz7Xm5SPaXNC9C/w640-h478/P1010734.ORF" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">In a day, we fell back a couple months in weather and charged forward through ten thousand syllables of noise.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: xx-small;">***** more "home" tomorrow</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-75838993581537020632024-02-25T06:30:00.001-06:002024-02-25T06:30:00.132-06:00Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 42<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF6hJP27ZmRUkdQb4iJrslEHTNBvI0YxmGkpMOpgJBgciLLYEP2X_w7sM0CT2BqnPj2IF0H5nVzzjJoLU5KByhruz4Dkmrl0bae2XtDNKFdCmOw358nVwHxeUdB-wc1OiaUkNg3OeZH8CWwVtcBOKlYZdhJPylwOClEVY5NvWT5afFrSNzGwBl/s3264/ed%205960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF6hJP27ZmRUkdQb4iJrslEHTNBvI0YxmGkpMOpgJBgciLLYEP2X_w7sM0CT2BqnPj2IF0H5nVzzjJoLU5KByhruz4Dkmrl0bae2XtDNKFdCmOw358nVwHxeUdB-wc1OiaUkNg3OeZH8CWwVtcBOKlYZdhJPylwOClEVY5NvWT5afFrSNzGwBl/w480-h640/ed%205960.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>“These things I
remember as I pour out my soul: </b></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>how I used to go with the multitude, leading
the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among
the festive throng.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #333366;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Those who don’t know David’s deep sadness in this verse
are truly blessed, but I can’t believe there are many.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A decade ago or so I took a trip from Sioux City, Iowa,
to Billings, Montana, up the Missouri River valley through the magnificent
country explored 200 years ago by the Lewis and Clark and the Corps of
Discovery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of that territory hasn’t
changed dramatically; there are no cities to speak of, and most of the towns
are dying and have been for a century or more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Agriculture reigns throughout that region, even though making a living is
just as tough as it ever was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
great joy of traveling the Lewis and Clark Trail a century after they did is
that so much space, so much grandeur is still there waiting to awe.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I left the river and angled through “Indian country” on
my way home, stopping at the 125<sup>th</sup> anniversary commemoration of the
Battle of Little Big Horn, and then visiting a desolate place called “Wounded
Knee.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole trip was, for me, an
epic journey, resulting in a novel—and more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I fell in love with territory that keeps me dreaming of a life out there
somewhere in the humbling reverie of so much open space and such a big, big
sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These very words are part of that
trip’s legacy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">One moment, however, was purely personal and unrelated to
history or landscape, a moment in the Black Hills, where the Schaap family vacationed
when our kids were kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Camping in the
Hills was always a joy, the children so young they could spend all day on a
beach no larger than a backyard and not complain a mite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I intended to drive through Center Lake campground, where
we always set up our tent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when I
passed the lodge and store at Sylvan Lake, I was time-capsuled back to a moment
when I stood in that very store and watched my two tow-head kids trying to
determine which of the little Black Hills curios they were going to lug along
home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The memory was crystal clear, almost a vision--their
blonde heads, their innocent indecision, and myself, a young father who knew,
honestly, little more than joy and pride and the wide horizon of expectation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I too, it seemed to me, was an innocent back
then.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I didn’t go in the store that day, just drove by; but
when I came to the Center Lake turnoff a few minutes later, I didn’t go to the
campground either but headed in the opposite direction. A visceral grief so
profound I almost cried hit me like some unseen Black Hills bison. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ubi sunt</i>, that
grief is called in literature—a grief of soul at the transience of life, of my
life and yours. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know what what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ubi sunt</i> is. I taught literature for a
lifetime; but that I knew it in a textbook didn’t heal the sad pain that came
over me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Today, remembering that moment, I can’t help but think
about how much deeper Lakota grief must be for those Hills, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paha Sapa</i>, because Native memories are
so much richer and so much more profound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s another story for another day.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">David’s lament in Psalm 42 has within it the same
profound lament for how things were and how those things are no more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His may well be the original <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ubi sunt</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Put yourself in a grand memory, a place and time now
totally unreachable. Think of the Lakota at Pine Ridge, not that far away,
remembering the joy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paha Sapa</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think of me turning away from Center
Lake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Remember </span>David and that unforgettable
mad dance of his before the ark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s
what’s haunting him, and that’s why he needs God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As I do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you do
too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As all of us do, I think. </span><o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-32185538401969529572024-02-22T07:11:00.000-06:002024-02-22T07:11:06.461-06:00Those cliffs at Running Water<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg16lrkeb2zRCw8qpGsluHTagbcS5eNmYWQYaj5te8E-KIKQGhMWMAipik36H4dxxvER-l8q7B1VitsDHrjiVndFqGaECVadR8Wkr-Y_ZQlbSiqOW3gPQlODqH31PR2OzSZ6Dl7RhGMNcIvX6Ns6wlvrf64K_poT-P5Ja9M9c_EpXFKtgk7JP2O/s4608/P2100040.2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1875" data-original-width="4608" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg16lrkeb2zRCw8qpGsluHTagbcS5eNmYWQYaj5te8E-KIKQGhMWMAipik36H4dxxvER-l8q7B1VitsDHrjiVndFqGaECVadR8Wkr-Y_ZQlbSiqOW3gPQlODqH31PR2OzSZ6Dl7RhGMNcIvX6Ns6wlvrf64K_poT-P5Ja9M9c_EpXFKtgk7JP2O/w640-h260/P2100040.2.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">These magnificent sandstone cliffs along the Missouri are stunning, even gorgeous. To find something like like this in the middle of endless miles of treeless prairie must have seemed a miracle. And in a way, I suppose, it was. This sculpted row of cliffs stand almost militarily above the confluence of the Niobrara and Missouri Rivers, just a bit north and east of Niobrara, NE.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Over on the east side of the river, there used to be a town here, a place called Running Water, which happens to be the English translation of the word "Niobrara," which is Native--Ponca maybe, or Sioux. There still are some homes along the river here, still something of a community. My guess is you could find a half-dozen families who would be more than happy to tell you that you're doggone right there's a community here, been so for years.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But once upon a time, there was almost a port here, more life certainly than you can roust even on a Fourth of July weekend--fishermen, you know. Once upon a time lots and lots of Poncas were around. This is Standing Bear country, after all, the place he stubbornly returned to twice, the second time battling white man's laws to stay (and he won!). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A bunch of Mormons were here one winter, on their way to Zion, wherever that was going to be. They had real troubles. It was deathly cold. In a story that should be told over and over and over, the Ponca dropped in at the meager winter quarters of those Mormon families and likely saved their lives.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A chap named Albertus Kuypers stepped off a steamer here--in the old days, when steamships still attempted to squeeze up and down the Missouri--and when he did, he motioned to the others, several dozen immigrant Hollanders, who had made a deal on land they must have been anxious to find, just a few more miles up river. He motioned to them and they all shouldered their burdens and walked north and a bit east to a place they eventually called "Friesland." No surprise there. Friesland was where they came from.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">They were, in the 1880s, only one of thousands of European immigrant families who wanted out of the old world and a place of their own in the new one. These Hollanders were Dutch Reformed, a particularly righteous bunch; but they also were men and women of some standing in Holland, so, well, dignified that when they began to gather their cows, their men milked in white shirts and ties beneath their bibs, and the women wore some unlikely dresses.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For a time. Then, like all the rest, they got acculturated. The frontier wouldn't stand much pretense. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But farming in those early years was no picnic, and the weather didn't cooperate--too many years of too little rain. When Kuypers' Hollanders grew weary, they talked of moving to northwest Washington, where, people said, good Dutch people grew watermelons you could lift only with both hands. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So Kuypers went exploring, took the train up to Whatcom County, Washington, right up there on the Canadian border, where people showed him produce left him slack-jawed. All that ballyhoo back in Dakota wasn't wrong. Abundance was understatement.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When he went back to Friesland, South Dakota, he thought about leaving the place they'd come to when they'd immigrated, thought about it long and hard. When the people looked to him for their futures, he told them he'd decided after much prayer and deep consideration, that they were going to stay in Dakota. They were going to raise more pigs and cattle, rely less on row crops, but they were going to stay.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Friesland, South Dakota, today, is long gone; but I'm sure if you would ask around in Platte or New Holland, you could find a name or two from the bunch that came up from Running Water, looking, like those Mormons, for their own version of Zion. Some, by the way, parted company with Kuypers and went to Washington anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are enough old stories here to fill up those gorgeous yellow cliffs, but who'd want to? Those cliffs are here, just as they always have been, even longer than the Ponca, the Yankton, the Frisians, or the Mormons have been. Those beautiful cliffs up over the river have outlived them all,, even though they wear no buffalo coats, even though they're sandstone and change, subtly, but change, every year. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And the picture?--it doesn't even come close to capturing the beauty. You can't get that kind of immensity in a lens, on a canvas, or a page. Stand there for awhile and it makes you want to dress up like those old Hollanders, makes you want to wear a tie.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-49326049747866566902024-02-21T07:13:00.008-06:002024-02-21T20:32:27.917-06:00Morning Thanks--Ed Kellogg<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU6ZQTFadmGtZSO6mCmNcLamiMMJ3vSvo_XkuOZrLKqAFnUXNfa6cUJGuiyq9RSQQagbzrHZfKAwG5aADAVShONaGnqA2CaRcgtfbuB41Y_Sr2vun3izvGMLZmBS6jp4pjf1UBY1FojO-F4lmyEf-aIwONaSA8XMk6WP-kfrbnHzchiH02x8h6/s2922/PXL_20240219_145520673%20Copy.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="2922" height="496" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU6ZQTFadmGtZSO6mCmNcLamiMMJ3vSvo_XkuOZrLKqAFnUXNfa6cUJGuiyq9RSQQagbzrHZfKAwG5aADAVShONaGnqA2CaRcgtfbuB41Y_Sr2vun3izvGMLZmBS6jp4pjf1UBY1FojO-F4lmyEf-aIwONaSA8XMk6WP-kfrbnHzchiH02x8h6/w640-h496/PXL_20240219_145520673%20Copy.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is the sky yesterday just a step out of my back door. Whenever jet trails get this showy, I can't help but think something is being communicated--or else the pilots are just being goofy.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I grabbed this shot because of an artist named Ed Kellogg. Once long ago Ed Kellogg spent a semester or two at the college where I used to teach, and did utterly breath-taking work of this world--the emerald eastern edge of the Plains. He didn't just do a painting or two, he kept himself monstrously busy by doing loads of them, most of them, as I remember, landscapes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I grew up on Lake Michigan, so coming to the northwest corner of Iowa fifty-some years ago was all new. The terrain, the <i>landscape</i> (I wouldn't have known that word or thought that way when I was 18) was entirely new and interesting. Jackrabbits bounded around--I remember that (they're gone now), and the sun was no stranger--it was much cloudier on the lakefront. Outside at least, things were just plain wide open. From some spots in the country, you could see forever. It was like the lake, another place where sheer expanse makes you feel small--and that was just fine with me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ed Kellogg's paintings as I remember--huge canvases sometimes--made perfectly obvious that his time here was just as fascinating to him as this edge-of-the-Plains place had become to me. I'd been a resident for a while by that time, having taken a teaching job some years before. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">To say I loved his work is understatement. It wasn't love that made them so compelling to me, it was the vehemence of their testimony to his recognition that what's out there in the immediate world around me is quite amazing and, at some moments, utterly compelling. I loved how those gargantuan paintings bespoke his awe at a world so different from the world around Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he and his family lived.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ed Kellogg showed me how to go speechless at the world around me. That gift was a treasure. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For years, I've taken a camera along wherever I go (a good bit easier these days with a phone). For years, I've jumped in the car or truck and just left early morning to see what I could see. Thusly, shots like this.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7x2Bntlg2KvL4W1EpKpj9xfvLkWSRgRLdvnQ-ptUpLfUJIssWTbAe4kVyjABJmqdexUGpAYMiDNCLhNYGGQ1oEVQD6j00kJkTsihzSKLL19ju4T23w3YNN5VVin9pt4NHioJu_xqoNvx8UjTkFWW3umal-M3RfoZawNEIG5X6bkU-9DrfKkpc/s2832/12%20ed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2128" data-original-width="2832" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7x2Bntlg2KvL4W1EpKpj9xfvLkWSRgRLdvnQ-ptUpLfUJIssWTbAe4kVyjABJmqdexUGpAYMiDNCLhNYGGQ1oEVQD6j00kJkTsihzSKLL19ju4T23w3YNN5VVin9pt4NHioJu_xqoNvx8UjTkFWW3umal-M3RfoZawNEIG5X6bkU-9DrfKkpc/w640-h480/12%20ed.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've got more. Like this from outer space.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOmviXeA8oa3KcTD2GqqxBGoRAWrnopqqENBqx4v4Fmr4yEiOc3KJAgvXUOtyWr70OVSllmtmc3VGj4BbUlrEP50-tOncADinjUcqE7dBlf474iH_Njzq-qnTXgSnnyQl2rYXRVEolBilIs3S_-oYLVlsF5fl7pxd5Z56Aycsfx0VqWlAZDG16/s3779/P2100026.2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3779" data-original-width="3456" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOmviXeA8oa3KcTD2GqqxBGoRAWrnopqqENBqx4v4Fmr4yEiOc3KJAgvXUOtyWr70OVSllmtmc3VGj4BbUlrEP50-tOncADinjUcqE7dBlf474iH_Njzq-qnTXgSnnyQl2rYXRVEolBilIs3S_-oYLVlsF5fl7pxd5Z56Aycsfx0VqWlAZDG16/w586-h640/P2100026.2.JPG" width="586" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">And I'm thinking, "Ed Kellogg really ought to see this."</span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbhaS1m-B08KlI3cIjFkgxOkcYV6BQvX1I3OND3SblCnRX7uRFHJhRObgXwOQpfMSfH94wqq91hUQ1IQfj9pqVdfqhYcj4mnYodipy-AhMRgP8WZ_mZn3TIw3XfWAMT4-592-3c9oiaubO_aVcudJbEAIXB7hdEHo_LX-wmWmBobRu5gfVZE0Z/s4608/P2100031.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbhaS1m-B08KlI3cIjFkgxOkcYV6BQvX1I3OND3SblCnRX7uRFHJhRObgXwOQpfMSfH94wqq91hUQ1IQfj9pqVdfqhYcj4mnYodipy-AhMRgP8WZ_mZn3TIw3XfWAMT4-592-3c9oiaubO_aVcudJbEAIXB7hdEHo_LX-wmWmBobRu5gfVZE0Z/w640-h480/P2100031.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div>A couple from a year ago, on a little cold trip out to the Santee Reservation in Nebraska. That's where I shot these. Stunning, isn't it?--all that azure slung in a wardrobe that seems plaid, almost Irish. <p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The jet trails story goes this way. It seems impossible now, but I couldn't help think that artist Kellogg was overdoing them. "You've got jet trails in every landscape you paint," I told him. "Is there a reason?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He looked at me with a gritty smile. "It seems they're always there."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don't know that he's right about that, but I believe him--that they were always there when he was out in the country, measuring the beauty of a landscape he was right then beginning to envision on canvas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I think of Ed Kellogg on mornings like yesterday, when the sky is ribboned. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ed Kellogg helped me to see. He did.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This morning's thanks is for occasional jet trails over a big prairie sky, and for an Artist named Ed Kellogg who helped me see.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-12155753245771860752024-02-20T07:07:00.000-06:002024-02-20T07:07:28.083-06:00I'm good--I really am<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiOdXUOGTrj5w6TxACXADN0ciZw8U8P6n1n2fMlA-wAIDGS1JcS-8G91I4W63uWCLZCSxgbYDyd0izctxxcR9KB3-zZVr9qlQ5hY3-Dq1Aream40Pl4oHhEwCSV91Xvm77bSNOndXNsLZwG5pAcVlUJ91Y_LjMue0SfcYioB0CmZnW1BXNWVWui" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1134" data-original-width="2016" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiOdXUOGTrj5w6TxACXADN0ciZw8U8P6n1n2fMlA-wAIDGS1JcS-8G91I4W63uWCLZCSxgbYDyd0izctxxcR9KB3-zZVr9qlQ5hY3-Dq1Aream40Pl4oHhEwCSV91Xvm77bSNOndXNsLZwG5pAcVlUJ91Y_LjMue0SfcYioB0CmZnW1BXNWVWui=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm not revealing some precious secret here, but neither do I believe I've ever admitted it publicly on this media. I'm not particularly up tight about it either, although I do hope that I'm finally finished growing when it comes to my feet. I'm told I may not be since most two-legged's feet, like ear lobes and fingernails, just keep on growing when nothing else seems to. Sorry, that sounds a lot like Poe. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What I want to say is that my feet are big, terribly big, terrifyingly big--size 16, which is way, way beyond what one might think normal on a man who is about 6'2". It's been difficult, throughout my life: I want to bowl and there's no shoes big enough. I want to roller skate or ice skate, and I'm forced to the bleachers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Little known fact: most stairs are not made for people with size 16 shoes. Especially now, in my dotage, stairs are dangerous because one has to position one's<i> klompen</i> sideways before reaching for the handrail or else risk tripping and sprawling out in some unseemly fashion down the stairway. Daily, I risk death on stairs. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What's more, potential horror is about ten times worse since back trouble came up like some monster unseen. I need to breathe deeply when descending a stairway--I am, after all, already bathed in butt-to-toe pain. Given my condition, I've found out that going barefoot is no option; I have to wear shoes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So what's atop the page there is a pair of sneakers that have proved about as good as any pair I own, especially during these weeks of my handicap. They're New Balance, and I got them years ago from Ebay, which is my Walmart, the very best place to shop for Big Foot shoes. Hardly any ordinary shoe store carries size 16. I can shop all afternoon on Ebay.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This old pair is used, which I like because it means that some other bloke broke them in. My NB therapeutics got some miles on them. Trust me, no one my age wears out shoes in such ordinary ways. These belonged to a runner, which is why these soles got some wear on 'em (a line I'm not going to touch even though my Calvinist instincts want badly to do so and Fred Buechner absolutely couldn't have left it alone).</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEguFcNlWp39rxAbHJIi8U90N-H1S-gWCOMzE2lMf8QKPmk6bZomaFkd4ycNwpoF_niwn2zgSvKg1WSsV1QOX2ve3N3AWfnxENV46QQ05l1FYRBe-2QwplfMzAIyXprb9qouyBd7CdLFS1SPqgvQ9yTwrcChHJOSs9evkmBBpDZA2JVyPk1L5QZJ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1134" data-original-width="2016" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEguFcNlWp39rxAbHJIi8U90N-H1S-gWCOMzE2lMf8QKPmk6bZomaFkd4ycNwpoF_niwn2zgSvKg1WSsV1QOX2ve3N3AWfnxENV46QQ05l1FYRBe-2QwplfMzAIyXprb9qouyBd7CdLFS1SPqgvQ9yTwrcChHJOSs9evkmBBpDZA2JVyPk1L5QZJ=w640-h360" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Because they're the feel-good shoes in my closet right now, I thought I'd make sure I to get another pair of New Balance sneakers, another pair that dispense similar grace. Back to Ebay.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFVhM96QEvtFU4dl9ftnLWABCIMQJZzAooANvMFi5tMwkJH9ggQk9Ot3wsWZ2WFjt7dXCmQJOz8iV65Xdsl-ks-Zn5evLdgz3NsjXCC9sONaqo6RuicuAWBxEIXGbm_gEGdePvGhd0GYoILafScQ53xbWr5Z7w8YIfs2wa7WdwDGrHkexTovVf" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1134" data-original-width="2016" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFVhM96QEvtFU4dl9ftnLWABCIMQJZzAooANvMFi5tMwkJH9ggQk9Ot3wsWZ2WFjt7dXCmQJOz8iV65Xdsl-ks-Zn5evLdgz3NsjXCC9sONaqo6RuicuAWBxEIXGbm_gEGdePvGhd0GYoILafScQ53xbWr5Z7w8YIfs2wa7WdwDGrHkexTovVf=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">In all honesty, what I got is a majorly good buy (not all Ebay buys are). This pair of New Balance sneakers have barely been worn, and I got them for $25. That's the stuff of legends. New, they'd be four or five times that. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Okay, the downside is they turned out to be not quite so sweet on my feet as the old NBers, but I've got them in my closet anyway, in case I feel up to a half-marathon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In other words, I'm okay with shoes right now. What's more, I've now had two really great mornings, pain-wise. I don't know if my back is creating its own miracle, or if, later on today, ye olde sciatica will simply unleash its fiery fury once more. Either way--healthy or hurtin'--not to worry. What I want to say is, I'm well-heeled, well-shod. And therefore in no need of more or better footwear. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I say that just in case someone out there, having heard my lament, thought they'd satisfy my longing by buying me yet another pair, a deeply patriotic pair of these.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh32Z7SLNNkXTEHMneUsI3N7kZ_g9hTBgeXt433gf5cqTr_PIQOKFQLSlrv3qehwDnhDHOuxAsd8HgpdnVJ9MAdqNaBVeO4453muxDTO4Br2934ororkz3FA2LecwsZo08rM-aOuLGHlTWSHsekep4oxR3iugipauivIVPflmOU4OzUqrDLFY5d" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img alt="" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="800" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh32Z7SLNNkXTEHMneUsI3N7kZ_g9hTBgeXt433gf5cqTr_PIQOKFQLSlrv3qehwDnhDHOuxAsd8HgpdnVJ9MAdqNaBVeO4453muxDTO4Br2934ororkz3FA2LecwsZo08rM-aOuLGHlTWSHsekep4oxR3iugipauivIVPflmOU4OzUqrDLFY5d=w640-h426" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Honestly, I appreciate your thinking of me, but I'm good. I really am--I'm good. </span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29648991.post-41563312556986655702024-02-19T07:02:00.000-06:002024-02-19T07:02:55.752-06:00Righteous warfare, circa 1980<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNUIqlz-NlEhNUTKPUSYbNmggyf1cYscaxKeDKB-sxFJ5v-aKPx48IEW_vYsCTPIhFW7fL4QPfz19tFneQUCijHmxhBIldMMIDLdKrq8pa8_yqJpXLNbWtHelenvpXBn_JvVDMvCbT4PBcENrGo1jd43WDc_suXpVTvF2783Dz-BaWqruicQ8y/s478/Screenshot%202024-02-19%20064652.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="393" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNUIqlz-NlEhNUTKPUSYbNmggyf1cYscaxKeDKB-sxFJ5v-aKPx48IEW_vYsCTPIhFW7fL4QPfz19tFneQUCijHmxhBIldMMIDLdKrq8pa8_yqJpXLNbWtHelenvpXBn_JvVDMvCbT4PBcENrGo1jd43WDc_suXpVTvF2783Dz-BaWqruicQ8y/w526-h640/Screenshot%202024-02-19%20064652.png" width="526" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You may remember, if you're old enough, that it was Jimmy Carter, then President of these United States, who helped fashion what became known as the Camp David Accords, an attempt at creating peace in the Middle East. It was September of 1978. The Schaap family happily welcomed its second child, David Michael, that year, and I'd just begun my third year of teaching at a college I didn't leave until retirement, thirty-some years later. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'd been a liberal since 1970 or so, when it seemed to me that the Republican view of the Vietnam War--"we're fighting communism so keep shooting"--seemed long-since ridiculous. It was costing us far too much. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Chances are, if you can remember that time, you likely remember even more clearly the bitterness with which the nation viewed the hostages being held by Iran and our inability to get them freed--either by force or by negotiation. The hostage horrors bedeviled Carter's Presidency, so much so that anyone who remembers those years likely has an image--as I do--of a rather feckless President, who lacked the courage or the guile or the testosterone to get those 60 hostages home. Their captivity went on for 444 days.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What I couldn't have known was that Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate for President in 1980, long before the election that November, let the Iranians know, by way of a special, secret envoy, that if the Iranians would hold on to the hostages, the Reagan administration would give them a better deal. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Iran hostage crisis could well have doomed the Carter Presidency. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 489 electoral college votes to Jimmy Carter's 49. In 1980, I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where a pall fell over the English department I'd just entered. Among the libs, Reagan was not well-thought of.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have no idea how much I knew about Jerry Falwell back then. I knew there was a Liberty University, an institution the then mega-church showman started on the basis of his popularity, and I knew that he was dipping his righteous fingers in American politics; but he wasn't really my concern. I'd voted for Carter, but I wasn't among those who believed that a Reagan Presidency would be a horror. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What I didn't know is that this Jerry Falwell was brokering a marriage between politics and Christianity that was not only new, but scary. To do that, Falwell had to take on Jimmy Carter, one Southern Baptist shafting another. So he did. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's how Tim Alberta describes that moment in time in <i>The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory</i>, a book that every believer should read: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1980, Falwell assembled a new coalition of voters--fundamentalist, evangelicals, Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, and all manner of vagrant Christians, plus, thanks to the emphasis on abortion, Catholics--around the message that traditional values were being extinguished by Carter and his godless government.</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> What Alberda doesn't say--maybe because he doesn't need to--is that it wasn't just ideas that Falwell was peddling in order to bring down Jimmy Carter, it was also heartfelt prayer. He'd beseech the throne of the Lord, asking him to make American strong again and bring on Ronny Reagan as someone who would bring decency and truth to the world we lived in.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Is it just me, or do others see all of this, today, as despicable, as sin? Jimmy Carter is in hospice--he may well leave this world today or this week. His family says he appears to respond to things, even though most of what he was is gone. Any decided look at his legacy today has to include the abundant measure of mercy and grace he left in our world. He was a man who lived love, just didn't talk about it in the Sunday School class he taught in Plains, Georgia.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jerry Falwell is gone. His legacy includes Liberty University, but it also include graft and mayhem. To think that Falwell prayed fervently for the destruction of the Jimmy Carter's presidency, in the name of politics, seems impossible. Alberta says,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;">Having already spent millions of dollars pummeling the president on radio stations nationwide, he poured an additional $10 million that fall into ads portraying Carter, as he himself would later recall, as "a traitor to the South and no longer a Christian.'"</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Is that amazing or just awful--or some combination of the two. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Falwell is gone, but similar prayers still arise--<i>and</i> in abundance.</span></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3