Poe in the Loess Hills

Here's a stumper: what has Monona County, Iowa, to do with Edgar Allen Poe, the nightmare poet lurking in dusty old lit books? 

"Poe--Onawa?" you ask. "Why, nothing," you say.

Go to the head of the class.

Poe the brooder never came any closer than West Point, NY, but his ideas--one shady one at least--made it all the way out here, even if he never darkened a Siouxland doorway. 

Answer me this: what has Winona to do with Monona, just a quick trip south? 

"Ah," you say, "Both have Indian names--indigenous females, in fact."

Well done. We're on a roll.

Now, what has the character "Minnehaha," in Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha," have to do with Winona and Monona?

"All three are sweet Indian maidens," you say?

Yes, and, well, they all die. 

Because no one knows ye' ancient legend that gave rise to a story about this 'Monona,' most history nerds guess--yes, guess--that the story behind Monona county's name was told around the campfires of pioneer white folks, not the Omaha. White folks made up the story, including Monona's death when, heartsick, she tosses herself from the towering banks of the Missouri. White folks made up the whole thing.

Twenty years ago Pipestone, Minnesota, stopped putting on "The Song of Hiawatha," a love story that ends when death strikes the sweet Minnehaha, another beautiful young Indian maiden. Ms. Minnehaha takes no leaps, however. Fever and hunger does her beleaguered heart in. 

Pipestone had been staging the Hiawatha pageant for sixty summers, when, in 2008, they hung up the headdress. Why? A bunch of reasons, but one of them was that the Hiawatha saga--so popular a century before--seemed corny and condescending when acted out by white-faces. In 1855 "The Song of Hiawatha" was not only a best seller, but a cultural sensation. Everyone knew the story, everyone. Wasn't that way 150 years later.

Three legends of the American West, three places and three names--all ending with death, sweet and beautiful women dying.

What has this to do with Mr. E. A. Poe? Poe preached this horrifying idea that if a poem wanted to be beautiful, then it had to have death, because death makes a poem or story beautiful, especially the death of a  young woman. Hence, his own poems, like that prophetic raven repeating "Nevermore" on and on and on.

In a neighborhood that would be called "Monona County," white folks were still arriving decades after The Trail of Tears, but those rough-and-tumble pioneers somehow preferred sad stories of lost love, of heartache and grief amid the huge stretch of their wilderness home. There was plenty of horrors in Minnesota and the Dakotas back then, but for their stories, it seems they preferred Hiawatha to Red Cloud's War, fantasy to real life. 

We still may.   

Quoth the Raven, "Evermore."

from the Native world

All things are the work of the Great Spirit. 

We should know that he is in all things: 

the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, 

and all the four-legged animals, and even the winged people. 

And we should also know 

that He is above all things and all peoples. 

Black Elk, Ogallala Sioux

~   *   ~   *   ~

Black Elk, who witnessed some of the most significant moments of 19th century history--Wounded Knee and Little Big Horn--was a Lakota visionary and holy man known for his explanation of Lakota religion in John Neihardt's telling in Black Elk Speaks, perhaps the most widely known text on Native religion. 

Seriously, in Sioux Center

 

And all of what's here is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Lou Van Dyk, a former teacher and colleague who was just about the lone Democrat in Sioux Center, Iowa, forty years, or so, ago. He used to say that Dems met for their caucuses in a phone booth. Lots of people don't even know what a phone booth is anymore. Be advised, it's tiny.

Yesterday on our way to the Sioux Center Library for a meeting of the Dems, I asked Barb to take a shot at how many protestors would be there for a march--RIGHT HERE IN SIOUX CENTER. She chose not to answer. I told her, honestly, I thought the march against Trump and Ice and Evil itself might be 25-people big. 

Imagine our shock when we drove up and saw a crowd my son-in-law (and others) estimated at 375-400. That's not a figment of my imagination. And while it may not have been last week in Minnesota, it was bone-chilling cold out there. It warn't no picnic, is what I'm saying. But there were literally hundreds-strong.

What followed was the biggest, wildest Dem caucus I can remember.

So there, Lou. Thanks. 

And just in case some can't identify the subjects in the photo above, they're seniors and have been seniors for a long, long time, even residents these days of senior housing. 

Yup, we were there. What a joy.

My home church

Fred and Audrey weren't there. As long as I remember, they lived first door west of us and walked to church like we did, coming in through the north door rather than the main entrance to the south. Fred wore a cigar or a cigar butt between his lips, learned to talk with the dumb thing stuck in the corner. Like so many men in our church, he was a builder of some sort. When I-43 came in, linking Milwaukee and Green Bay with four-lanes, that highway changed the village, making us a bedroom community of descendants of the Dutch immigrant people who'd come more than  a century before, the people who started the church, way back when.

This time, we came in through the south entrance--now substantially larger with a kind of coffee room for chatting after worship. We sat 3/4 of the way back, enough for me to see almost immediately how many souls were no longer there. 

Art and Nell weren't there either. They lived just across the alley, where a couple of apple trees graced a back yard that included the biggest garden on the block. Their son and I got caught smoking upstairs in their garage which became thereafter the greatest crisis of my childhood. Art is at the heart of my first novel, or at least a man much like him. But, like I was saying, he and Nel weren't there either. 

The Smieses weren't there either, nor were the Bloks or Uncle Allie and Aunt Dorothy, nor Trudy, their daughter, although she's still a member, I'm told. Turkey Den Hollander wasn't there, nor was Glen, his son, my age, and Glenn's wife Sally, who was always someone my mom proudly referred to as a relative--just exactly how, I don't know.

There were a couple of Gabrielses and Hendrickses and Veldbooms I recognized, some of whom recognized me as a former son of the congregation. Everyone wasn't new. If I'd dream a head of hair on some of those shiny pates, I could make out one or two faces from my childhood, but let me just tell it straight here: a whole lot of people in the Oostburg CRC weren't there. The souls who were--many of them at least--were not people I knew or remembered.

Maybe ten rows of chairs stood up in front of what pews are left in the sanctuary. I suppose those chairs marked some kind of compromise in worship design. The old blonde benches--padded way back when--still marched from the chairs to the back. When I was a kid, someone carved their initials on the arms at the far end. My dad was livid. I had my suspicions about who vandalized them--those benches were new when I was in grade school--but I don't remember if the powers-that-be ever determined the criminal culprit.

So yesterday, by choice, my wife and daughter and I, home on the lakeshore for a family gathering, worshipped in the church of my childhood, which is what it was, and is, and always will be, I guess, even though by all the empty spaces where people I knew and loved should have been, it was perfectly clear that it wasn't home anymore; even though I'll never forget playing in its empty walls, running upstairs to look out over the unfinished sanctuary from two little closets way up high; even though my Grandpa Dirkse was the chair of the building committee when the place was being sculpted; even though the great, looming cross at the front of the sanctuary was donated by Grandma Dirkse, donated after grandpa's heart attack. It was no longer still my home church, even though I still am suspicious about the kid (he's just about 80 today) who carved his initial in a whole row of brand new pews, even though I remember Glenn Den Hollander or Bob De Smith (Bob senior) cracking open those fancy windows on the west side to let the air circulate through a bit (it could get mighty hot back then on the lakeshore. It would take some wrangling before air conditioning.)

It's no longer my home church, but it's still a church, still home to many others, most of whom I didn't know. 

Some years ago, my home church asked me to speak at their birthday celebration--150 years. I did, a little fearfully for I was never a preacher, always a story-teller. I wrote a rambling narrative about the marriage between my own history and the church's story and hoped it would be okay.

I think it was. I felt good about it that night at their birthday celebration. The audience was likely made up of the same people that were, yesterday, to me at least, strangers, but what I'd told them seemed to me to please them.

Maybe I should have gone to church elsewhere yesterday--we could have. Maybe I should have considered that birthday party my last tango in the church where I grew up. 

Maybe. 

We sat in front of a guy a decade younger than I am, a Gabrielse, who appreciatively shook my hand when worship ceased. "How old were you when you baled hay for my dad?" he asked me. 

Baling hay for his dad was a joy. His dad was a wonderful boss, I remembered. So did he.

Then again, maybe it was a good choice. The absences hurt, but our Sunday morning in the church where I grew up wasn't without its moments, like baling hay for John Gabrielse. "I was just a kid," his son, also retired, told me, "but I remember."

You can't believe everything a writer says, of course, but I think it was Thomas Wolff who titled one of his novels with a phrase that's had a much longer after life than the novel itself--"you can't go home again."

Let me just say, after yesterday, "Yes, you can." It may be a little painful, but yes, you can.

from the Native world

 A bit of wisdom from the Native world.

All things in the world are two. 

In our minds we are two--good and evil. 

With our eyes we see two things, 

things that are fair and things that are ugly. . .

We have the right hand that strikes and makes for evil, 

and we have the left hand, full of kindness and close to the heart. 

One foot may lead us to an evil way; 

the other may lead us to good. 

So are all things two, all two.

Letakota-Lesa, Pawnee, 19th century

~   *   ~   *   ~

Pawnee people (also Paneassa, Pari, Pariki) are a Caddoan-speaking Native American tribe. They are federally recognized as the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma.

Historically, the Pawnee lived along outlying tributaries of the Missouri River: the Platte, Loup and Republican rivers in present-day Nebraska and in northern Kansas. They lived in permanent earth lodge villages where they farmed. They left the villages on seasonal buffalo hunts, using tipis while traveling.

In the 1830s, the Pawnee numbered about 2,000 people, as they had escaped some of the depredations of exposure to Eurasian infectious diseases. By 1859, their numbers were reduced to about 1,400; however, by 1874 they were back up to 2,000. Still subject to encroachment by the Lakota and European Americans, finally most accepted relocation to a reservation in Indian Territory. This is where most of the enrolled members of the nation live today. Their autonym is Chatickas-si-Chaticks, meaning "men of men".

https://www.crystalinks.com/pawnee.html

Lake Michigan, 17 years ago

That shiny imminence beneath the cloudbank out there is Lake Michigan. This battered and solitary pine stands prophetically just off the beach at a state park not all that far from where I grew up, a park where I worked for three summers long, long ago. Seventeen years ago, we were visiting "back home" when I snuck out at dawn to see if there was any kind of beauty to take home in my camera. 

It was January, no wind particularly, but a level of humidity that made five degrees of cold enough to make you keep most everything covered, including trigger finger.

The cloudbank is advancing here, but it's still there above the water you'll have to believe is still there. I'm trying to be cute--using the beach grass and the overhang to frame the wonderful gray cloud of lake moisture as it readies to come ashore.

Why?--I don't know, but I find this shot more attractive that either of the other two, even though the significant characters are rather clearly defined. The beach grasses are beginning to catch the dawn's Midas touch, just enough to make them seem burnished. They're up close and personal, but there's enough of the landscape--or lake-scape--behind them so as not to be forgotten. 

It's early January, by the way.

Yet another--same characters, same morning, same January cold. I must admit to liking this one too, although who on earth would like to hang it on their walls--it's too blame cold! This one, for reasons I can't begin to list, bespeaks early January.

I've always liked this one too, as if the roots of these trees are holding up a handful of cards. 

Not much to this one, but that's its strength. To find some kind of conch shell would require a hike of a thousand miles from this sandy spot, but I swear if you look at this one for a while, you'll hear the gentle sound of surf rolling ice chunks up to an expanding shore. 

We're off to Wisconsin on Friday, but I'm not as agile as I was 17 years ago, when these were taken. Don't look for a new batch--sad to say.

I wish.

He blinked

He blinked.

You  have to have seen it because it was all over the news. He blinked.

He called both the guv in Minnesota, as well as the mayor of Minneapolis, two men he'd just recently called every blasted name in the book, and together, according to all three, the call was constructive. It wasn't just the would-be king, flailing away as if he was wielding a cat-o'-nine-tails. He blinked. He backed down. Honestly, he did. He's not my hero, but who would have guessed the guy had reverse in his transmission.

He blinked. Greg Blovino, became a flash in the pan. His onstage debut on Sunday talk shows was a miserable failure, as was his intent to make the Alex Pretti's murderers "the victims." Sorry. Just didn't make with a dozen videos of the moment. Today he's back in California where he can do less harm. For a moment, he looked like he might be aiming to get the coveted Hegseth, Jr. award, given to the alpha male in this administration who looks and talks toughest--not as tough as the Big Guy, of course. What I'm saying is, he blinked. Did he ever.

Speaking of alphas, an old tough guy named Corey Lewandowski, who's been coaching Kristi Noem how to be a real alpha male, is rumored to be gone as well, gone to wherever Trump may well shelf others who couldn't live up to the promise of their own lateral deltoids, more of the "might-makes-right" crowd.

He blinked. And why? Because tens of thousands of Minnesotans took to the streets in record cold temps, even for the North Star State, because of what they'd seen with their own eyes, what they could not have missed. Tens of thousands, even some of his friends, didn't buy what he was doing on the streets.

And more. Because two of their own were dead, beloved by family and friends, cherished as good people, slain, both of them, at point blank range in a fashion that was so unmistakable that even Republicans turned their heads.

Two people died in a gestapo-like movement that was, from the get-go, political: Trump hated the Guv and the mayor and the whole blame state for rejecting him three times. So he sent in his goon squad to crack some heads, and they did.

And the state, the whole state, came out on the street to demand they leave.

And he blinked. You know who I mean.

Write it down somewhere on a sticky note. Don't lose it. Get it out when he acts like the tough guy, the guy with bone spurs. 

Yesterday, the mighty one blinked.