The Great Harvard fire of 1764

If you promise not to tell a soul, I've got a book out from the local library, a book that's painfully overdue. It's a wonderful book, full of the obscure histories I wanted it to be, a great deal about the battles, the warfare, that went on here in the region before the white man showed up or started to care about the Indigenous. Native American history is a rare bird anyway, but the history that went on before colonizers slogged out by the thousands, has been left pretty much unrecorded, in large part because Native historians wrote their history in pictures that aren't always easy to interpret.

Besides, who cares before we got here?--right?

Anyway, this very good book is already a month or so overdue, and it grieves me to see it lying here on the steps, where I placed it specifically to remind me to get it out of the house and back to the library. 

This morning I ran into a story that relieved me somewhat, the story of a single volume of history borrowed from the Library at Harvard. The story, in short, is that this volume,“The Christian Warfare Against the Devil World and Flesh,” by John Downame, long overdue, has made it back to the Harvard Library, where officials indicated that, oddly enough, there hadn't been much of a waiting list, given the length of its absence from their shelves. 

The story lies elsewhere, and it's quite a story.

Harvard College was not in session on the night of January 25, 1764, so there was no one around. That no one was strolling the grounds meant that, quite unnoted, a fire of unknown origin proceeded to burn the entire place down--along with about 5000 books. If that were to happen today, chances are those fiery volumes could be replaced; but back then, there were few additional copies. The man who gave his name to the college, John Harvard, was no shipping magnate with a satchel full of money. He was only in New England for a couple of years before dying, but he gifted the new college with his beloved library, a gift so greatly appreciated that someone determined to remember his largesse by naming the place after him.

Alas, most of the Harvard collection, almost priceless back then, went up in the fire, save 250 books that were set away just then and 144 checked out. Eighty of those checked out were eventually returned, most the others simply assumed lost. 

Miraculously, one of those checked out-but-not-returned volumes appeared about twenty years ago. A rare book dealer showed Christian Warfare to a Harvard prof, who recognized its origins--or at least theorized that not only was it ancient property of the college library, but in fact one of those volumes originally bequeathed by John Harvard's estate. 

My book is about a month overdue; Christian Warfare's due date was approximately 233 years ago. Such grievance might well mean a hanging if the original thief could ever be known. By this time, the scoundrel has no fear of a rope. 

I'm not a serious library patron. I tend to buy books I really want to read--it's an exasperating habit and leads to unending problems late in life. Trust me on that. What the heck are we going to do with all these books?--that question is voiced almost daily in my conscience. 

Yes, I have a conscience, and I intend--intend--to return that great book on inter-tribal warfare today. Honestly. 

In 1764, books were far, far more precious than they are today, and 5000 of them, going up in flames, had to make some of those Harvard scholars bawl. No matter how you think of it, a dozen years before the American Revolution, that January fire was a disaster.

Then again, given a handy-dandy scanner and a half-dozen work study students, you could put most all of that collection on-line and available to millions at the stroke of a key. Or, how about this? You could take the entire John Harvard library and download it into a thumb drive.

Seriously, that's the state of the world or at least the state of the library today. 

Amazing.

The horrors of Holy Week

In case you missed it, last week was a textbook in the great American divides. If as a nation, we're coming apart, our stretched-to-breaking seams were on proud display as huge news stories just kept on breaking.

First, the most historic. In a courtroom in Manhattan, ex-Pres Donald J. Trump, the least fit President of all time, pled "not guilty" to multiple charges of cooking the books to hide a dalliance with a porn star, keep the affair from a public who likely would have let him go anyway, as they repeatedly have done. Republicans rallied around their kingpin, claiming the charge was pure politics. Democrats loved watching a servile orange man sitting in silent humility before the law while, at the same moment, turning out fake mugshot t-shirts to sell to his dutiful minions--the Donald as his worst/best. 

Strangely enough, we have another President these days, but Trump, the most venerated of all time, was doing the work at which he's shown himself to be an expert, taking up all the oxygen in the room, racking up total news coverage, filling endless column inches in the nation's news systems.

Are we divided as a country? Sure. Two words: Donald Trump.

It looks right now as if he will run away with the Republic nomination for President, even though none but his most starry-eyed believe he can win a general election.

And then there's this. In Nashville, Tennessee, just a few days after yet another mass shooting, this one at a Christian school, this one killing three nine-year-olds and three staff, three Tennessee Democrats broke Statehouse rules by using a bullhorn and thereby igniting the hatred of white Second-amendment types, who chose to rid themselves of the thorny problem (there were hundreds, even thousands outside demanding some kind of action against guns) via nothing less than capital punishment--tossing "the Tennessee three" out of their seats. 

Except, one rep voted to let the white woman stay, which made the whole incident feel like a replay of Jim Crow. Because the "Tennessee Three" looked like martyrs, those lily-white Tennessee Republican could not have looked less medieval.

Then, in a courtroom in Texas, came the Saturday Night Massacre, when a magistrate judge ruled on a lawsuit concerning the granddaddy of all ruptures, the whole question of abortion. A sweet, thoughtful, and well-meaning federal judge in Texas, specially chosen for his life-long religious/political views, determined the FDA was dead wrong in declaring the abortion-in-a-bottle drug to be safe for use, even though tests run endlessly long ago has shown the drug's enormously healthy record through 20 years of use. 

Oddly enough, ever since the Supremes destroyed Roe v. Wade, abortion has been a hornet's nest for conservatives, who suddenly find themselves looking draconian for what seems the witless ways it is moving to deal with a societal issue that was always and forever a more complex problem than they could be forced to admit. Trump's Supremes handed over a ruling that had and still has the pro-life crowd dancing, but while they're thrilled with the new rights of the unborn, they'd still have not determined how to deal with the rights of women. 

Compounding the dilemma was yet another ruling in a federal court in Washington, where a far less conservative judge ruled that the very drug the Texas magistrate claimed was not safe, said it was--and that furthermore the states that had acted to declare the drug such should be allowed to peddle it together (or something like that). Two totally opposite rulings laid down just an hour apart--what a week.

Want to see the royal gorge that keep the nation divided? Last week it was on display in reds and blues so bright you had to look away--last week, passion week? maybe, but not Holy Week.  

"They love me"

I can't help but wonder how she'd look in the old habit, a wardrobe she dropped decades ago already, some solidly starched cap-and-gown that would have made her--and her fellow "religious" look like penguins to a bunch of Protestant boys more than a half century ago. I wonder how she'd look in a wide-brimmed sail of a hat and flowing black robe. Truth be told, I'd like to see it--I really would. 

I don't doubt that she retains something of that gear in the house where she and the only other two members of the Oblate Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (there are only three at St. Pauls). Wouldn't be impossible, and she might just be game to pull on the old gear and be so traditionally attired next time I bring a group around. 

Greenwood, SD, holds more stories than I could hope to uncover or, most certainly, tell, and it's a ghost town. Strictly speaking, that's a call that's not really mine to make. People still live in Greenwood--not many, but a few. That there was once was a bigger, more populace little burg is almost immediately visible. There are open lots where it seems clear houses, maybe barns, used to be. Two churches--Episcopal and Presbyterian--both of them barred and shuttered these days, one of them barely upright, are visual, painful proof that, once upon a time more people lived here.

A treaty monument stands proudly atop a hill an eighth of a mile off the road. If you take the time to read the thing, you'll find the names of those Yanktons who, in 1858, signed the treaty giving them 1.8 million dollars over the next 50 years if they'd give up their land--11 million acres of it--to be homesteaded by millions of white folks, including my own great-grandparents, men and women hungrily lured west by the promise of free land.

One of the signers, a headman named Struck by the Ree, may well have done more than any of the other Yanktons to bring about the reservation. There's a myth that he was baptized into that peace-making position by none other than Lewis and Clark, when they came up the river looking for the west coast of the nation. If you stop by the cemetery just a bit up the road, you can't miss Struck by the Ree's stone--it's huge.

Sister Pat, who'll greet you in jeans and a sweatshirt, came to South Dakota as a devout young girl who'd read a biography of Crazy Horse and determined that she'd give her heart and soul to Christian mission to Native people. Today, she's 80+ years old. She likes to travel, but she's been here ever since she left Youngstown, Ohio, on a train for Marty, South Dakota. 

I love bringing people to St. Paul's Church, love the building for what it says about those who brought it here and put it here and sustain it out here on the reservation. But the real reason a visit to St. Paul's works is because Sister Pat, whose been here forever, loves to talk to the guests I bring around, most of whom are stunned--as I was--with this massive cathedral, honestly, in the middle of an endless backdrop of nothing more than empty Great Plains.

Last week, she had a little portable PA, with a mike that hangs around her neck and runs to a speaker--a great improvement. Sister Pat's voice box is nowhere near as stout as her heart and soul.

Last week, when I was at St. Paul's, she told the group of her devotion to the people of the community, pure as the driven snow--really! "I've had a wonderful life here," she told us, then supplied some specifics and ended with a line that I'll not forget soon: "They love me," she told us.

What she said could easily have been taken wrong, were Sister Pat, one of only three Oblate Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, anyone else under the sun. She didn't mean to say that others don't love her. Nor did she most suddenly put on a show. She meant that line to say what she might have said about precious Jesus--"He loves me." 

Even after all those years and all those tears. Long, long ago, her parents were bawling just as heavily as she was when the train left the station. But it was her calling to go. Her Jesus wanted his devout on the reservation, an Oblate Sister of the Blessed Sacrament. Turning back was not a question.

It was something of a lesson from catechism really, those three words. I wasn't surprised, and I can't imagine any of the guests I brought along for even a moment thought less of her for saying what she did. "They love me," she told us. 

This visit, those are the words she left us with. Honestly, I think she could have worn the old habit--might have been fun. But I don't think the old way would have made a bit of a difference when, through that little portable PA,  she offered her testimony. "They love me," she said. Case closed.

What a blessing.

Sunday Morning Meds -- A prairie Easter

He wrote me a note that told me I really ought to go out to the Little Sioux River and take a hike up a hill because there was a garden of pasque flowers along a hill I really should see. It was time for a Saturday morning trip anyway, so I made it a pilgrimage because pasque flowers, he told me, are the prairie's very first blooms. 

I thought to get them in morning light, but when I found the hill he he was talking about the sun hadn't even shown up yet, so I puttered around in a gorgeous valley of prairie preserve on the husky shoulders of the Little Sioux, just outside Sutherland.

Old cottonwoods tell stories, but so do these ancient solitary oaks, snarling away, their crooked branches so thoroughly arthritic. But they're there. They're survivors in places they shouldn't be. Down in the valley below is where they should be, but here this old guy stands, making fists.  

It's not a cross, but it is. Maybe the fact that I was going after the prairie's first bit of color, a kind of Easter gift, put me in mind of Holy Week, but somehow this dead pine makes a point of the intersection of life and death, of heaven and earth. 

Maybe it's just me, but during Holy Week, in early morning, the sun just coming up over the hills to the east, everything is symbol. 

Here it is. This is the hill. Down at the bottom an old cement bridge sits. Once upon a time, a whole team of construction workers tried to get it just right, perfectly square. Once upon a time, it conveyed wagons and maybe even some cars and pickups over the draw at the foot of the hill. It's left behind now and useless, telling its own Ozymandias tale. 

All that dead brush along the ridge means someone is trying to hold on to the tall grass. The trees would take over otherwise, turn the valley into forest in no time.

It was a hike, not a beast but a hike, and, truth is, I didn't know exactly what I was looking for. All I knew was that the quarry here was a garden of prairie crocus, an Easter blessing, the very first bit of fragile color in the tall grass prairie, a darling hymn of praise. 

Truth is, I was ready to give up. But I hadn't climbed to the top, so I told myself if I was three quarters of the way up, I was going to at least finish, get all the way up and see what I could see over the valley, and there, finally--viola!  

Little tiny prairie crocuses. You had to look to see 'em, but once you spotted them they were everywhere. 

These little dancers are just plain gorgeous, exactly the kind of Easter blessing this friend of mine let me know should not be missed. Can you imagine the planning that's gone into myriad Easter worships all over Sioux County this week? The hours and hours and hours? Seriously, I think a pasque flower pilgrimage to the steep hills of the Little Sioux River this Sunday morning would outdo just about every imaginable liturgy. While we're up there, a hymn sing right there in the grass.

Have a blessed Easter!  

Good Friday at Zion Pres*

Somewhere in Nebraska. Somewhere south of here. Somewhere in the eastern part of the state--that's about it. I don't remember where exactly, not that it's the kind of attraction that would bring in the tourists. 

That's where I found it, standing there just off the road, on gravel, across from a cemetery, all the ingredients of a dead church once upon a time named Zion Pres. Not all of such ruins are Presbyterian out here. Many are Lutheran, some on the reservation are Episcopal; they come in all flavors, although size is fairly standard on the edge of the Plains.

They conjure a time when there were more people on the land, when every two or four miles a school with a bell stood out in a corner of cropland, a place with an outhouse and kids--maybe twenty--because far more families were around back then, far more kids in those old families. You needed kids to farm, to make it on the land. 

Finally, even all those kids weren't enough. Nor was 160 acres. Nor were the horses. And so, for more than a century already, Zion Presbyterian and churches like it withered away, not because of some dalliance with modernity or women preachers or death-like conservatism. Churches died because their people left the neighborhood. They died because the kids left, and what's an institution to do when it has no kids, no future? They died because people did, a couple hundred just across the road.

Birds flew in, and weeds grew through the cracks in the sidewalk. For a while, vandals did what vandals do. The people who own the place got told by an insurance man that the only way to protect themselves from lawsuit would be to make sure nobody got in the place anymore. "I don't care what you do really, but you've got to protect your interests--put some 2 by 12s up over the front door, you know? Do something," that friendly insurance man must have said.

You can cry for the church, but as long as you're at it, let a few tears fall for the whole neighborhood too--and the school, already long gone, I'm sure. It's life and death on the Plains.

As it was even before its demise, this old country church is a startling image. For some of us, believers, it's even a little scary. those demanding planks barring the door a symbol of repression, devout Christians who can't not choose to bake a cake for people whose marriage they cannot condone, or "Happy Holidays" taking the place of "Merry Christmas," a battle cry in the Trump crusade.

But at Zion Pres the story is different. No one is afraid. No one is persecuted. The sadness--although it's not profound--is not that Zion Pres did something wrong, but that most all of the residents of the area live across the street beneath granite stones in a graveyard that could use some cleaning up. Truth be known, they're all gone too. No one wants in anymore. 

The image is not only sad but foreboding. A locked wreck of a church makes fears grow in the hearts and souls of believers. Look again.

I can't help thinking this week that the barred doors of Zion Pres, way out in the country, suggest what the followers of Jesus felt late Thursday night, and all day Friday and Saturday: It's over. The whole five-loaves-and-two-fishes thing, the "blessed are the peacemakers,'' the flipped temple table, a bunch of suicidal pigs, Lazarus in a winding sheet, dinners with harlots and crooked pols, and that kid thing, too--you remember? "Go on and let them come sit in my lap," he said, "see if you can learn something." And then that wry smile.

It was done. Finished. Over. Time to go back to boats and nets and H and R Block. It was fun for a while, a real kick. Sometimes they thought the whole thing just might upset the whole Roman apple cart, you know? 

And then Golgatha.

It's over. The good times are behind us, the people long gone. 

It had to be something like that, something like Zion Pres, somewhere out on some lonesome gravel road, dying.

_______________ 

*first appeared here Good Friday, 2017

Missed my daily turn

 

Sorry I missed you, but last night and then again this morning, I spent some time in the emergency rooms in the Orange City Hospital. Pain--lots of it--triggered both trips, the second, this morning, when the pain hadn't relented.

Seems I have pleurisy, which sounds somewhat medieval, but, after two visits to emergency, I'm happy to say that pleurisy is the best case scenerio                                                                                                          after two visits to emergency.

It's now Thursday afternoon, and I'm sitting here feeling much better, although tired from missing sleep last night. The doctors say I'll be just fine once the virus becomes a victim of my immune system. 

Just thought I'd let you know. 

So hard to believe

It's just hard to believe, really. 

The Vann Mansion stands out there in the middle of the country, up high on a hill so the view all around is, well, comprehensive. People say James Vann wanted to be able to look all around to see if his help was doing what needed to be done on the plantation. He was that kind of guy.

James Vann was not to be toyed with. He was, in the early years of the 19th century, one of the wealthiest men in northwest Georgia, in the whole state for that matter. His plantations stretched out endlessly. But his business ventures were multi-faceted and included a series of trading posts and saloons. He lived, like his parents before him, in a region largely populated by the Cherokee Nation. 

The Vann Mansion--it's a Georgia State Historic Site--suggests that James--and his son Joseph, who inherited the place--were men of means, and they were. President James Madison stayed over once upon a time, a friendly visit. The Vanns cut a significant swath in Georgia politics. In the early years of the 19th century, they were among the most wealthy--and thus, most powerful--in the state. 

There's so much about the Vann Mansion that's just hard to believe. Try this: by the late 1830s, the Vanns lost control of the mansion and its lands, even though son Joseph was every bit the businessman his father was. James oversaw business ventures that kept family coffers overflowing until one day he committed a crime that led to the destruction of his family's legacy: he hired a white man. 

The Vanns had slaves; Georgia was a slave state, and the Vann's had money and work. But hiring a white man was clear violation of the law, according to recently passed Georgia legislation.

James Vann, who built the mansion, and his son Joseph, who lived in it for some years, were mixed-blood people. Their father and grandfather, James Clement, a Scotts-Irish immigrant, came to the region in the mid-1700s, before the War of Independence, when the whole mountainous area was Cherokee country. His wife, Native Cherokee, went by the anglicized name of Ruth Gamn. 

Joseph Vann owned slaves all right, about a hundred in fact. He was as rich as anyone in the state. A President stopped by for a visit. His land stretched out for miles in every direction. They'd built a Christian mission for Native people, a Moravian mission whose German-born carpenters built the doors for the Vann Mansion and whose dedicated staff brought Jesus to the neighborhood.

But in the late 1830s, the most salient fact about son Joseph Vann was the fact that he was  mixed-blood Cherokee. On May 28, 1930, President Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act, which instituted a land grab: Georgia land for a plot in Indian Territory, which would become Oklahoma. 

States were given the go-ahead, but had to create their own ways of grabbing land from the Indigenous, the truly "Native" Americans. In Georgia one new law was simple: a person guilty of a crime--any "criminal"-- was subject to lose his or her property. The law made it illegal for a white man to work "under" a person of color. 

Now piece things together. Joseph Vann had hired a white overseer, making that white man an employee of an Indian. Case closed. Land for sale. Cheap. 

See that deep scar, a burn, in the floor just up the stairs in the Vann Mansion? Almost 200 years ago now, some madman, brandishing a torch and a despicable, drudged-up law, came right up the stairs after Joseph Vann and everything he had, and he could do it because Joseph was an Indian. 

It's just hard to believe, the whole mess, not to mention the horror of  the Trail of  Tears--3000 Native people dead as the First Nations were pushed out west. It's enough to make you sick.

I don't know how that story can be told in a way that allows white kids comfort, that doesn't challenge an understanding of justice and injustice, that doesn't make white kids look away, even just a little. 

Maybe the Vann Mansion story is what the MAGA folks call CRT--"critical race theory." It must be because it's impossible for me, a white man, to tell that story without wincing.

Impossible.

So much about it is so hard to believe.

Marked down

No matter how you mark it, today is a big day. Never before in the history of this nation has the law arraigned a President, sitting or not sitting. Today, Donald J. Trump will go through at least some of the ritual arrested men and women regularly do when the law gets them in their hands. Some normal features have been suspended, given the momentous nature of what's going down in New York City.

With Republicans, almost to a man/woman, claiming "witch hunt," the stakes are high, but nowhere near as high as those stakes going to get. In many ways, today's hoopla is more hoopla than substance, given that, according to all kinds of news sources, new information has been uncovered on yet another almost-certain-to come indictment, this one having to do with the manner by which the ex-President handled materials considered to be "top secret." What is perfectly clear is that significant resistance was given to laws and those who serve those laws, and lies were proffered when the government requested documents that should not have been removed from the White House.

That case, or so goes the speculation, is more likely to draw blood, and end--if it ever can or does--with solid conviction. Trump may giggle his way through today's Stormy mess, may well pronounce himself a victim of the deep state--as he always does--with some big-mouth Trumpisms. His minions are already in line, claiming the indictment is politics. Getting them to sing his praises today won't take prodding.

But three others cases hang out there, and today's arraignment is only a five-minute task that, ultimately, won't amount to much, at least when contrasted with the inept phone call he made to Georgia election officials asking them to find him 11,000 votes or whatever, or the investigation into his role before the insurrection on January 6th. Stormy Daniels is a hot topic today, but while she'll most certainly make the history books, she'll soon enough be back on porn hub.

In fact, there's a good chance, experts say, that a trial will open in one of the other cases of his malfeasance before this one even gets to opening arguments. In other words, Donald J. Trump may have a leading role in another court room before he ever faces off against his old flame Stormy.

If it hasn't already begun, the story of Donald J. Trump will churn out more doctoral theses than any other so far in the cavalcade of American Presidencies because just exactly why and how the man was able to grab the cultural sympathies of so incredibly many people, millions of them evangelical Christians, remains the central mystery of, at least, the last two decades.

His numbers are decreasing. Just exactly how many passionate supporters come out today with Marjorie Taylor Green will offer a barometer of the pressures of his continuing saga, but the tea leaves are not looking good for Mister Trump. He may well be able to use this whole Alvin Bragg deal to cement his base, but he's also, for sure, lowering his already oppressive ceiling, which makes his ever winning another Presidential election a pipe dream. A majority of the American public, a brand-new CNN poll makes clear, actually favor this indictment. 

People love him or hate him. They'll either vote for him alone, or anyone but him--and the numbers of those who are just plain sick to death of his bellowing would just as soon park him forever in Mara Logo, sentence him to a trotting him out to say a few nice things at weddings.

He may well win some today--at least file enough lawsuits to put off the mess forever; but the bell is tolling. The love and affection of his disciples may never wain, but the numbers are going down. He's not gaining any friends and admirers. Most of us, love him or hate him, are just plain beat.

He'll go. It may not be today, but all things must pass--even DJT. 

Asa in 2024

Seems to me that we should start here: he calls himself an evangelical Christian, is a graduate of Bob Jones University, and each Sunday morning tweets out a Bible verse, no invective, no bloody criticism of libs, no fisticuffs, just a Bible verse.

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has a kind of "aw, shucks" demeanor totally unlike the current headliner in Republican Presidential politics--you may have heard of him?--Donald Trump. Hutchinson scorches no one, scrambles for middle roads, and doesn't toss raw meat, willy-nilly, to crowds waiting to engorge it. My guess is that he doesn't think of himself as a victim of anything other than grace itself and therefore doesn't spout the nonsense that energizes weird patriotism.

Tomorrow morning, when Trump gets himself finger-printed, booked for the first time (more's a'comin'), Asa Hutchinson won't be running off to the nearest microphone to talk about how criminal it is for a State's Attorney to go after such an innocent man. Won't happen because Asa Hutchinson is a moderate, the kind of voice and soul that the Donald calls a RINO. If Trump dislikes the guy, he's got to be worth a second look. 

Asa Hutchinson's entrance into the 2024 Presidential sweepstakes is a wonderful thing because he's never been a Trump lapdog, always been critical, not meanly so either. He's always been wary of the entire package of Trump's messy belligerence and never been particularly secretive about it.

Does Asa Hutchinson stand a chance? Probably not. He's the kind of quiet guy the Big Bad Wolf devours before breakfast (remember what he did to "low-energy" Jeb). To Donald, he's just another comb-over with a drawl. The afternoon the Asa profile appears on his radar screen, the Orange Man will baptize a nickname in the shaking of a lamb's tail. Just wait. 

But what the Republican party so sorely needs is not another xerox copy, like De Santos, another lib-smashing hero who says the United States is going communist at the whims of some world Jewry cabal or because trans people even exist. What the Republicans need is someone to stand up to Trump and tell him he's sorely unworthy of the most powerful political office in the world. What the Republicans need is someone whose conservative credentials are everything Trump's ever were, but loose-tongued, a conservative who's not a creep. It's time the Republicans face the fact that Trump is mad-crazy.

Would I vote for Asa Hutchinson? I doubt it. He's that conservative. 

But is he good man? Yes. And he may not brag about it; but, as a Republican at this point in time, like few others, Asa's got guts.

Tomorrow Trump gets himself arraigned in a New York court. Just about every Republican near a mike thinks it's a travesty. Maybe it is. But I'm guessing no one in that bunch of sweethearts really believes that Trump didn't dance with a porn star, then pay her off royally to keep her big mouth shut before the 2018 election. No one doubts he did it because, well, he's Donald J. Trump. Of course, he did.

The vast majority of conservatives, like Asa Hutchinson, went full bore after Bill Clinton for his infidelities. Today, they think of their Savior as a victim. Poor guy.

Asa Hutchinson is among those few Republicans who've said that Trump shouldn't be President, and his conservative credentials are sterling. I hope his candidacy goes and goes and goes. He'd be a good for America. 

Sunday Morning Meds -- from Psalm 90

 

“Who knows the power of your anger? 

For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.”       

I’m going to go to make a generalization I’ve no right to. One of the good things about getting old is that, through the years, we simply grow less angry—Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Grumpy Old Men notwithstanding. Old bucks like me simply have less testosterone to work with, less dignity to protect, less turf to maintain—thus, fewer reasons to boil over.

When so many things recede the way they do as we get older, quarrelsomeness is a possibility—I’ll grant you that. Our aging means fewer people notice us—again, my perception. But that doesn’t make me mad, just bad-tempered. Being peevish isn’t necessarily being wrathful.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Last night I was mad. Last night, I used language I shouldn’t have, even to my daughter, who didn’t have it coming, who had nothing to do with why I was boiling over. Last night—memorably, I might add—I was spitting fire.

This morning I could still throw flames; in fact, I just sent out an e-mail I probably shouldn’t have. But I’ve calmed down a bit now, a bit; and having that rare chunk of rage at arm’s length this morning is helpful when reading this strange verse from Psalm 90. It’s helpful because normally it’s easy for me to get a little embarrassed by the OT’s occasionally draconian Jehovah. I find it hard to know him, maybe in part because, at my age, I don’t know all that much anymore about rage. Wrath isn’t the deadly sin I register all that often.

But I did last night. And the provocation, basically, was injured pride—I was convinced that certain people didn’t respect me. But even that explanation is subterfuge, half truth. What blew my cork was that I didn’t get my way. We’d worked our duffs off, but the whole project shipwrecked because someone in authority thought maybe someone else might be hurt. Honestly, the whole story is not worth a story.

But my wrath is worth a story when I think about this line from the venerable 90th Psalm. Here’s what I’m thinking: maybe the OT God isn’t a far cry from who I am. If I read the whole Exodus narrative, it seems that what God wants more than anything is not to be an also-ran. In the panoply of gods available to the Israelites, he doesn’t want to be just another silly graven image.

“Who should I say this God is?” Moses—the writer here—asks of this God. “I am the always,” he says. End of story.

And if he isn’t respected—when people create golden calves of whatever size and extremity—this God, Jehovah, spits and fumes and, often enough, people die. He’s like me that way. Sort of. But nobody died last night.

Oddly enough, maybe I don’t think of God as human enough. If I were him and people didn’t really give me the dignity I’d deserved, I’d be mad—like I was last night. Maybe all that anger—it’s behind me now—maybe even all that blasted wrath is helpful. You think you got dissed?—just think of Him. And on a daily basis. Shoot, hourly.

That’s scary. And that’s only half of it, this verse says. That’s not even the whole story. Your wrath is everything we can imagine, Lord—that’s what Moses says. And a great deal more. Yup, that’s scary.

The Big Days

 If I'm not mistaken--and I could be--it was a civics class, fifth hour, just after lunch when the announcement came over the squawk box that hung from the wall over the teacher's head, a man named Ruesink--could that be?--a soft-spoken, handsome guy, not a fireball. It was his class I was in when the announcement came. 

Strangely enough, it wasn't a total surprise. What seemed a rumor had slipped out during lunch because I remember thinking that the whole idea had something to do with "initiation day," the day the new lettermen were being hazed into the club of athletic letter winners. Weird things happened on "initiation day." A not-to-be-believed rumor sounded somehow fitting.

But when the announcement came over the system and it was the familiar voice of the school principal telling the story, I had no doubts: The President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, had been shot in Dallas, Texas. He was dead or dying. I don't remember the words exactly.

We didn't go home, but I don't remember what happened after that, not at all. What I'll never forget is the moment the news broke. That's with me as long as I live.

Amazingly, on 9/11 our neighbor's garage was on fire when, that morning, I walked to school. There was no way around it really. The local fire department was there trying to stanch the flames, but it was clear that the neighbor wasn't going to lose the whole structure, just what appeared to be some thing of an attic. 

I was taking my writing classes out to an old cemetery that morning, and while I was out there with them, the jets the hijackers commandeered took out the World Trade Center. We'd been gone, but the moment we returned, the whole campus knew the story.

I don't remember thinking about whether or not to take the next bunch of kids out to the cemetery. Strangely enough, a little road trip was much anticipated, and the weather that day, early September, was gracious. We went, but the difference between the two sections of Advanced Comp were unmistakable. 

That afternoon I taught a section of American literature--Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter. I was prepared, but everyone was watching tv then, the unfolding story on every channel. When I came to class, the students were there, as if there'd been no major tragedy, although they looked deadly serious. I told them I honestly didn't know what to do, whether or not to have class. When I gave them the option of leaving, none did. 

My classroom had no tv, so watching wasn't an option. Finally, I just started in on Scarlet Letter, as if there was nothing left to do but go on. What I remember best about that class was that it was particularly good. Strange. 

I don't know that I'll remember exactly where I was when last night's breaking news aired. I doubt I'll have memories. I'm much older now. When JFK was assassinated, I was a sophomore in high school. On 9/11, I was a veteran teacher, 53 years old. Not long ago, I turned 75.

But age doesn't account for the difference. What does is the fact that one didn't have to be a genius or a witch to conjure what happened last night. With four major investigations going on, Trump's oranging-around with the porn star was literally the least of his worries. That he'd be arrested seemed to me inevitable. 

Still, when it happened, it was momentous. The man who famously told a beloved audience in Sioux Center, Iowa, that he could gun down people on Main and not lose a voter got himself humbled. He'll turn a trick on it, rake in millions from people who see him as savior, but yesterday's striking news is only the beginning of his dance with iron bars. 

And no one was surprised. Even his impassioned followers, people sure the New York DA wants only to win the next election weren't shocked. The victim story Trump so loves had it in the tarot cards: he'd go down because the deep state, the Evil One, wants him gone, done, out of the picture. 

No one was surprised. Not me either.

But the warrant for his arrest is no less huge and historic. Never before has an American President been told to come in to be fingerprinted, to stand for a mug shot. Never before.

I'm guessing the moment won't have the sticking power of other major national events because the man has immunized us with his brutish behavior (a baseball bat over the head of the New York DA, calling the guy "an animal") that we've long ago grown accustomed to his vulgar bullying, his "American carnage," mean-spirited mission work. He's a man without shame. 

Last night, about five o'clock, will pass away soon because more will follow Be assured, Donald J. Trump is still alive and kicking.

Yesterday, on a quick-sale table in a grocery store I frequent, a whole bunch of baseball caps were strewn, bargain price. I've been telling myself to wear caps lately. I've got nothing up there to block the sun . I picked one up one of those caps, good-looking caps, brightly colored winter hats maybe. I didn't try one on because it suddenly occurred to me that all of them were imprinted with "45," nothing else, just "45."

You could pick one up cheap yesterday afternoon, but if you head over this morning I'm sure they'll still be some there, a real deal.

The cruelest month

Doesn't have to be. It was T. S. Eliot who sounded the alarm: "April is the cruelest month," and he had his reasons--not quite winter and not quite spring. But those of us who live in the cold so look forward to its promise. Eliot's not the last word. 

This morning I thought I'd look for proof that we need not heed old Tom. That shot above is Easter morning, 2004, somewhere west of town, a good place to start.

2005, on the way to Broken Kettle.

A whisper of green near Oak Grove, 2006.

Ye olde icon, somewhere west, 2007.

On our clothesline, backyard, 2008.

Big Sioux River, 2009

Read through this last night from Psalm 65:

Even during the cruelest month, 

The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders;

    where morning dawns, where evening fades,

    you call forth songs of joy.

Somewhere near Canton, 2010.

Rock River flood, Doon, 2011.

Somewhere south in Plymouth County, 2012.

Abandoned farm, Germantown, 2013.

Easter morning, near Hospers, 2014.

Little Sioux River valley, 2015.

 Holy Week, Sioux Center, 2016.

Spirit Mound, 2019.

Missouri River, 2018. 

Yesterday I walked out around the South Pond, the whole world in the same old persistent tawniness its worn since the snow left. Right now, the world's finery is barely worth a second look.

Eliot had his own reasons for despondency. I'll give him that. But April is  resurrection month. There's always room for hope. 

 

Iowa's first feminist writer

Iowa writer, Ruth Suckow

Last night, Stephanie Ruhle led off news commentary on The 11th Hour with three guests, two reporters and a veteran law school prof, each of them experts in their fields and able communicators, a formidable bunch and all women--across the screen, just women, only women.

That wouldn't have happened ten years ago, and Ruhle couldn't help but note that as well. When she signed off the segment, she told her cable news audience that there was nothing she liked better than starting her show with three thoughtful and experienced women.

I'd just come from a book club meeting where the writer of the month was a once-upon-a-time famous and prolific Iowa novelist named Ruth Suckow, who, during the first half of the 20th century, made a name for herself by uncovering endless fascinating levels of motivation and hesitation in the lives of women of her era. Suckow, as a writer, is not particularly charming, in part because she is adept at finding the ceilings that thwart possibilities women might otherwise experience. 

All too often, her characters struggle beneath oppression wrought by others but also by themselves. They don't achieve like men, she suggests, in part because they don't have friends, even other women, urging them to look past traditional commitments (as mother and daughter, wife and sister) to a kind of self-fulfillment which may not have existed during her time. 

No one in our group had ever heard of Ruth Suckow, the novelist, even though she was born (1892) in Hawarden and had grown up in several neighboring towns. Her father was a preacher, Congregationalist, who Suckow venerates in a memoir she wrote of her early life--and his. She treasured him, loved his gracious accepting ways and texts, with the kind of expansiveness he and Jesus offered to others. He took theological positions undoubtedly contrary to dominies down the road in Sioux County, the Calvinists who would have nothing of that "Jesus Loves Me" philandering. Ecumenicity would have been a pipe dream.

I'm not an expert, but Ruth Suckow, the preacher's daughter, may well have been the first feminist Iowa writer, in great part because nearly every one of her close to fifty stories has a woman protagonist. Exceptions are few. When I walked in the museum last night, three women were setting the table for our discussion. In just a few seconds, they made it clear that they loved the stuff they'd read, loved this writer, loved the way she peeled back layer after layer of motivation, examining each of those levels in the lives of her often belabored protagonists. 

a bit more sporty Suckow

I had been greatly worried--I'm serious. Reading Suckow, the third entry in our "local" writers discussions (Josephine Donovan, Frederick Manfred, and Ruth Suckow) was all my idea. None of them had ever turned a page of hers, and I was just plain sure the group would tell me that Suckow was interesting but tedious, because it's true, as someone said, "nothing really happens in a Suckow story." Don't look for her on the action/adventure shelf. Things do happen in Suckow, that reader said, but it's all inside. The real stories take place in the mind and heart, where there's always great drama, not to mention action and adventure. 

In a tomboy story titled "A Great Mollie," an effervescent young woman who not only loves "men's work" but is darn good at it, finds a niche in her small town in spite of her preferences. She earns her place by getting down and dirty under the hood, and insisting on cranking her own sputtering vehicle. 

In the very telling end to the story, a woman named Mate says with a kind of calculated assurance that "great Mollie" won't leave town and take off for Chicago, won't try to be something other than she is right there, right then.  "I know she won't," Mate says. 

Frank, her husband, is less sure. He thinks a bit, remembers tears in Mollie's eyes and tells himself Mate is right. "Yes sir, Mollie was a woman! After all, she was unaccountable. She's could do anything for anybody but herself."

Mate knows the truth and wins the argument with a look of "small, calm, satisfied wisdom." Mate knows Mollie, a woman, is powerless in the world of traditional commitments that can petrify caregivers, who, like Mollie, are almost always women. 

Mollie is not free to go to Chicago, as Frank would so much like to think. Mate knows there's no chance of escape.

Or does she? Or is she simply another barrier--and a woman!--between Mollie and an her own chosen destiny? 

Stephanie Ruhle started her show last night with three women, no men, as experts. Times have changed. When Ruth Suckow's stories take on what seems predetermined and often unappealing ends--they don't end sweetly!--it may well be that Suckow understood her characters lived in a world with very low ceilings. 

But then, Ruth Suckow might say, that's life. 

Interesting stuff, finely wrought.