Morning Thanks--Handel's "Messiah"

On Saturday night, I couldn't help but realize that I know almost the entirety of George Frederick Handel's oratorio The Messiah by heart. Don't tell anyone, but for most of the night I hummed along--not loud enough to be heard, but loud enough to for my heart to adore its familiarity.

It would be impossible to guess at how many times I've listened in, although I'm confident that the number of live performances reach nowhere near the times I've tapped into recordings. In fact, I dare to bet that with a little time I could scare up a recording or two on a long ago forsaken disk hidden away somewhere. 

I've sung along with our congregation's ritual recital of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" at Christmas, although I'm not a regular, less sure as I am of my abilities than I am of a hundred others.

What's more, I've heard dozens of choirs move through big chunks of the oratorio, including, forty years ago, a grade school bunch I've never forgotten, perhaps because of their insistent conductor who, I'm sure, wanted each of those kids to have a real experience with real music. It was an oddity, a painful experience and a thrill I've never quite been able to forget.

Mostly George Frederick Handel rings through my memories of houses we've lived in for the last fifty years. It wouldn't be a Christmas or Easter season if, on a Sunday morning, Handel wasn't coming up through living room speakers. We Protestants have winnowed down the number of legitimate sacraments to two--baptism and the Lord's Supper. But Handel's Messiah has a long and sacred reach. Voluntarily and of a sudden, we simply stand--all of us do--for "The Hallelujah Chorus."

Saturday night was a wonder. A mass choir of locals, with orchestra, did it all, even the arias I don't know, stem to stern. It was wonderful, as it always is, even when there's no in the chorus older than 12. It's always wonderful, and it will be again next December when I tease Alexa into finding a performance for me somewhere on line. 

A few years ago, I would have put singing through Handel's Messiah with a really good choir as a top choice on my bucket list. But Saturday night, listening in once more, I told myself that the likelihood of music coming from this aging vessel is no more likely than this ex-catcher getting behind the plate and throwing out some speedster trying to steal second. It ain't gonna happen. I'm having trouble enough just getting to my feet when the first chords of "Hallelujah" fill the place.

Every minute last Saturday night was precious, every note a blessing. 

This morning's thanks are for a big, wonderful choir, the Sioux County Oratorio, and, once again, George Frederick Handel's perfectly wondrous baroque masterpiece, The Messiah.   

Morning Thanks--BHHS '72

 

They met yesterday. I wasn't among 'em. I was invited, but the invitation came so late that I  had  no time to plan to get there; at my age, just taking off cold is something you remember achingly like The Dave Clark Five or Gunsmoke. Sixteen old folks showed up here at the restaurant in Darlington, Wisconsin yesterday, 16 members of the 1972 graduating class of Blackhawk High, my first teaching job. They had a reunion, and I didn't get my invite until late last week.

But honestly, who knows if I would have taken a day's travel if I'd have received that invite earlier. Wishful thinking on my part, although when I texted the Jeff (third from the left, back row) he told me there's another reunion planned for August. I may try. Try.

Some of these faces I remember, but certainly not all. Blessedly, Jeff named the Class of '72ers, or I'd have spent unforgiveable amounts of time trying to determine who looked like this all these years later because for me, their fresh-out-of-college English teacher, they will forever be 18 years old. 

Strangely enough I remember thinking, back then, there would come a time when I'd be 65, and they would be 60, the years between us largely indistinguishable. We'll, we're there, and have been for a couple of decades already. If I'd walk into a bait store with these gents, nobody would wonder who is the old fart with 'em.

But this morning I'm greatly thankful for them--I really am. Let me count the ways.

1-They taught me who I was and who I would be--a good teacher, a not so good coach.

2-They let me be a friend without being a sidekick.

3-They taught me that my wooden shoes were a fashion accessory.

4-They made faith bigger than I'd known it to be, not smaller.

5-They were friends when I had few. 

6-They taught me how to teach; they taught me the beauty of literature.

7-They helped me understand that they--each of them--were real people, not just faces in those classroom chairs. 

There's more too, I'm sure. The fact is, they're forever in me, in memories that rise unbidden from wherever the soul keeps them, a thousand comic operas that emerge every once in a while to be dusted off and restored.

This morning after a reunion I missed, I'm thankful for Blackhawk High School's Class of 1972, the kids that brought me to school. 

______________________________ 

The old BHHS Yearbooks are long gone in the flood that took out the goods in our bottom floor, but this old award plaque somehow made it through the mess, even though what it says is barely visible: "James C. Schaap," it says, up top, then "To the greatest play director, teacher & friend we could ever have. Blackhawk High School, "Up the Down Staircase" Cast, 1971.

Must have got in the water somehow--the wood around the tacks is shaded if you look close, but it's still readable.  

Sunday Morning Meds -- Psalm 121

“My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

When the ex-wrestler Jesse Ventura was Governor of Minnesota, the state of Iowa took a well-deserved rest from the endless mockery tossed our way by supposedly more sophisticated Minnesotans. After all, for a few interesting years, they had enough to laugh about up north.

Ventura was buff, built like a steel nail. I remember spotting a t-shirt in the Twin Cities Airport that said, “My governor can beat up your governor.”

Funny. But if I read this verse with an emphasis on my, it’s not hard to hear a similar kind of bravado. “My help from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. You can’t say that. My god can beat up your god.”

Because this is holy scripture, I’ll ease up on the writer: “Maker of heaven and earth” is a classic appositive, nothing more than an adjectival phrase, a one-line vitae; the poet is interested simply in making sure everyone knows that his sacred trust is not invested foolishly.

Fine. Years before Donald Trump was anything more than a real estate mogul, Rev. Jerry Falwell, who back then had more problems with hoof-and-mouth than all the feedlots in Nebraska, told a group of “his people” that a Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign would mobilize Christians to get out and vote like no one else. “If Lucifer ran,” he said, “he wouldn’t.”

Rev. Falwell meant well and prayed hard, but it’s almost impossible not to see that a similar sentiment (“I meant it tongue-in-cheek,” he told folks later) has created divisiveness in this culture, a political and social world of “us vs. them.” To many of “his people,” Lucifer would be preferable to Hillary.

It seems impossible not to see that a species of fundamentalism (what I think!) is fomenting death and destruction throughout the world, including a baseball diamond in Arlington, Virginia, where a crazed Bernie supporter carried a semi-automatic up to the infield and started firing at Republicans. Whenever and wherever people believe they have sole ownership of the truth—of whatever kind--the opposition grows horns, a pointed tail, and cloven feet. And madmen load carbines.

When praying people read a verse like this with a swelling overemphasis on my, things can get dangerous. “My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. Where do you get yours, loser?”

That it can be misread doesn’t make the Bible any less “the Word of God.” Holy Writ is full of paradox and preposterous notions, marvelous tales, bloody battlefields, beautiful poetry, and eternal wisdom. It’s as powerful as it is dangerous.

Psalm 121 is pure praise, a tested testimony to an ever-vigilant God who neither slumbers nor sleeps, whose eye is on every last sparrow and humanoid, who is his people’s shepherd.

That divine assurance needs to be bound tightly in my heart, not in my fist.

Hageman's Hadestown

 

Hadestown is a love story. Mostly. It's also a reprise of a Greek myth, the story of Eurydice and Orpheus, whose tragic tale is told on a stage packed full of singers and dancers. Hadestown is a Broadway musical with a story that's nowhere near the age of its source material. The present Broadway version of the story--more spoken lines, I'm told, and more theatrics--opened in 2019 and immediately lit the world of the Broadway musical up with fervent praise. 

Explaining the plot line would take forever and not do the show justice. If you have any kind of heart for the American musical, you should see it because, good night!, it's really, really a show.

We saw it in Omaha a couple years ago, and while I'm not a fanatic, it warmed my soul by following a sad story that nonetheless leads to understanding and wisdom. It's a tragedy. Sadly, Orpheus, who's given a deal by which to get Euridice home with him--all he has to do on the road home is not look back to see her--fails when he does what he was told he couldn't do.  He does, and the sweet success of the story is smitten. It ends in misery.

Which is then celebrated by the narrative voice of the show, Hermes, yet another Greek feature, who lets us all know that even though the story ends in sadness, by continuing to tell it, we somehow keep hope alive. It's a simple ending, but profoundly important for any and all of us. The great literature of the world may not be sweet and endearing, but it's what we have, so we tell it, over and over again--and in that act renew our own hope. It's really quite beautiful--and includes a kind of sacramental ritual when even the audience raises its cups to the story itself--and the story of the story.

We went to Sioux City to see it because Siouxland Christian High School was putting it on--and will through this weekend. The idea of a Christian high school putting on a contemporary American musical (even though this was a "teen" edition) was almost impossible to imagine--and this one. Let me remind you, the story is set in hell. 

What's more, it's a full-blown Broadway musical that requires a compact little orchestra right on stage, as well as a cast of hundreds, it seems. It just seem impossible to believe that this little Christian school could do it.

But they did. It was wonderful, a great night, even though we didn't know a single kid from the cast. We weren't watching grandchildren, we were watching a show.

But we had another reason to bear witness--the director, a young woman who'd graduated from Dordt several years ago. I wrote a story about her in Dordt's Voice, and was impressed with her as a teacher and drama coach. It's always a joy to be in the presence of people who are not only good at what they do, but also love it. In Ms. Emily Hageman's case, her love for what she's teaching and who she's teaching is just real and actual, as is her students' deep appreciation for her.

We went to Siouxland Christian High School's production of the Broadway musical Hadestown because we couldn't believe it could be done but knew, at the same time, that if anyone was going to do it, it would be Emily Hageman. And she did.

Did she ever.

_______________________

You can read the story I wrote about Ms. Hegeman here. 

Lakeview, SD

I don't remember exactly how I found this place, and if I say that I stumbled over it, that wouldn't be totally true. I knew it was there---somewhere in the vicinity, an old Christian Reformed Church set down right in the middle of the Rosebud Reservation of South Dakota. Because its street address is Valentine, NE, some dozen or so miles away, I thought Valentine, NE, was where I would find it. A wonderful old saint I once knew, a pastor named Leonard Verduin told me stories about his growing up there, how unique it was--directly on the Rosebud Reservation.

In Valentine, I looked for Dutch names in the little phone book the young lady let me use in the Casey's in town, then asked the young man who picked up the phone if he could recommend someone in the community for me to talk to in order to get some sense of history--"Mrs. Logterman," he said, unhesitatingly. Then I asked him where I might find this Mrs. Logterman, and he explained where, "from the church." 

"And where is the church again?" I asked, or something as facile, trying to hide my ignorance. 

He told me--maybe a half hour north of town, said I couldn't miss it.

He was right.  I knew I was getting close when suddenly the natural world turned green and not dusty, and where for the first time, a mailbox held a Dutch name. Suddenly, in the middle of the desolation of the reservation, there was an island of emerald where the Dutch had laid claim to reservation land.

I'm not proud to say that it would take me some years to discover the roots of this whole odd phenomenon--how it is that an entire colony of Dutch Reformed people ended up in a place named after something totally unseen--"lakeview." It would take me that long because I'd never heard of the Dawes Act, or certainly hadn't heard of it before that very first visit to the church and the neighborhood. 

The General Allotment Act or Dawes Severalty Act went into effect in 1887, when Washington decided that the best way to deal with the Indian problem--how to get them out of the way--was to give each and every one of them a plot of land, then give or sell what land remained to whatever white folks wanted it. 

The Dawes Act was a disaster for Native America. Free land was a clarion call in the late 19th century, so some Dutchman--and many others--figured it was too good a deal to pass up and took what was offered. A community grew up around it, both a CRC and a RCA, as well as a Christian school, all the rudiments of a Dutch Calvinist colony, even the infighting.

All of which means that that little church in the photograph at the top of the page remains, to this day, the heart of a community of almost totally white people, in the middle of the Rosebud Reservation, just up the road from St. Francis Mission.

There was still so much for me to learn, but I can't really easily explain how thrilled I was with discovering what I did. There I was in the parking lot of the Lakeview CRC, Lakeview, South Dakota, in the middle of American history.

There's more.

 

The Rendezvous (3) - Hugh Glass

Clear as a friend's heart, 'twas, and seeming cool--
A crystal bowl whence skyey deeps looked up.
So might a god set down his drinking cup
Charged with a distillation of haut skies.
As famished horses, thrusting to the eyes
Parched muzzles, take a long-south water-hole,
Hugh plunged his head into the brimming bowl
as though to share the joy with every sense.
And lo, the tang of that wide insolence
Of sky and plain was acrid in the draught!
How ripplingly the lying water laughed!
How like fine sentiment the mirrored sky
Won credence for a sin of alkali!
So with false friends.

Pretend this is Lit 101. Okay, what on earth is going on in what you just read?

If you know some history you might have a leg up. This parched soul is named Hugh, and he's alone and in tough shape. If you remember the violence of The Revenant (2015), your nightmares might just lead you to think "Hugh" is the bear-torn hero of that movie. He is.

But the rest of the class may need some background.

Hugh Glass has been left for dead. If you saw The Revenant or read the novel or read Lord Grizzly, by Frederick Manfred, you know the story of Hugh Glass, beaver trapper, circa 1830, left for dead after being mauled by a she-bear.

In the odd poem I just read, Hugh Glass is really thirsty; but what's with those "parched muzzles. . .thrusting"? And what kind of "lying water laughed" anyway?--and "ripplingly"? Seriously? "The sin of alkali" does a ton more than suggest that the crystal bowl so long-sought (Oh my goodness, I'm picking it up myself) turns out to be "acrid in the draught!" It ain't good--that's for sure. But isn't the whole thing a little ridiculous?

"The Song of Hugh Glass" is an ancestor to Manfred's Hugh, as well as Punke's and Leonardo DiCaprio's. What we're reading is the verse of John Neihardt, himself a legend in Nebraska, and subject of a state monument in Bancroft. Neihardt penned his version of the Hugh Glass saga in an epic poem that sounds for all the world like Shakespeare or John Milton. That sound is a long haul from Bancroft.

When Neihardt took Lit 101 right here at Wayne State, what he learned was that true literary stardom, a readership across the ages, needed to be penned in something called "epic poetry." Think Homer--The Iliad and Odyssey. Maybe Beowulf?

So right out here in our backyard, John Neihardt figured the Hugh Glass story was just as great as any ancient Greek legend—and just as central to a nation's identity.

"Why not?" Neihardt must have told himself. "What America needs is its own Epic of Gilgamesh or Divine Comedy. Why not start with a wilderness man like our own indomitable Hugh Glass?

You got to love the aspiration, don't you? John Neihardt argued for world-class heroism right here on the Plains.

Plunged deeper than the seats of hate and grief,
He gazed about for aught that might deny
Such baseness: saw the non-committal sky,
The prairie apathetic in a shroud,
The bland complacence of a vagrant cloud--
World-wide connivance.

Amazing. Amid his hunger and thirst, Glass looks to nature for sweet solace and gets "the prairie apathetic" and a "vagrant cloud” because, dang it!—it seems to him that no one cares.

Okay, let's be blunt. A full century after Neihardt wrote the Hugh Glass story in Shakespearean English, it somehow seems dead wrong, doesn't it?

Maybe. But you got to love Neihardt the bard. What he was doing was something we may well need more of--cheerleading. Neihardt believed our stories ranked with anyone's anywhere in time and space.

And he was right. A decade ago now, The Revenant was awarded three Oscars. Wasn't the same Hugh Glass saga that Neihardt loved, wasn't even set in Siouxland; but Neihardt was, without a doubt, on to something when he sang "The Song of Hugh Glass," something that began here, a story first written in Siouxland.

Catherland

It was a long, long trip, but I don't remember once thinking it wasn't worth my time. What's more, I don't remember ever feeling boredom in my students or seeing it in their faces. Once we'd get there, it seemed the topography had changed--and it had. We live, here, on the emerald edge of the Great Plains; northwest Iowa is not the Great Plains. Willa Cather's Red Cloud, Nebraska, is. At the right time of year, the grasses around the region seemed red, just as she says in My Antonia so beautifully. 

It was My Antonia that drew us out there. Maybe ten years after I'd begun teaching at Dordt, I inherited the American Novels course that had been on the books ever since I'd been a student. I don't know how I ever noticed it, but somewhere along the line Ms. Cather's Great Plains started to feel something of a cousin to what we could see around as the eastern edge of all that open space. 

When I did, I probably looked on line for a place called Red Cloud, thinking it might be worthwhile just to check. Even then--35 years ago--what's left of Red Cloud, Nebraska, was just about a full-time chamber of commerce for Nebraska's most favorit-est writer, Willa Cather. I was sure that if anyone in town could prove that young Cather had visited there house or lot, they'd get a commemorative marker to put in the ground. Back then, Red Cloud, Nebraska could have been Cathertown, maybe should have been.

We'd meet at the old Cather Center--books, coffee cups, t-shirts, you know--where we'd meet our assigned tour guide. In the old bank museum, we'd get our first-hand bio of Willa Cather. Then, it was on to the old railroad station (now redone), the Catholic church up the block, the Episcopalian church (Cather's), a little spin around town, and finally the Cather home, just off Main. 

We'd have lunch in one of the town's greasy spoons (there were only two, only one choice), making quite a show of ourselves, the old guy--me--with at least a half-dozen coeds (all blonde), and, one year, just two guys, both of whom happened to be African-American. Strange combo we figured those Red Cloud-ians up at the counter must have whispered. 

There was more, too, lots more, especially if the tour guide--always a local woman-- was good, best if she didn't just follow the straight-and-narrow. Inevitably, and with maybe a little coaxing the $64,000 question would emerge. "So, tell us--what do people in Red Cloud say?--was Willa Cather gay?"

Generally, back then, my students were squeamish about it--I doubt they would be so guarded today. Being gay--in those first years out there--was still not something to be bantered about lightly. Sometimes, our hosts would mutter some line to get the class off the subject, but once in a while our genial host would sit up in front of the van we'd be in and wind a story that would often satisfy me, at least, the guy in charge.

One year, she drew the answer from a discussion she must have had years before, with her grandfather who was old enough to remember an adult Cather, who lived in New York City, not Red Cloud, but came back home often enough for her visits to be remembered.

That guide's Grandpa had once told her that long, long ago, his father before him had told him that when he was a boy, his Red Cloud father (three generations back), had set the kids down formally. Cather went on to Lincoln, to the University of Nebraska, after graduating as valedictorian of her high school class--just three in the class; but her graduation picture caught her in the way she wanted to be seen at that time in her life--not as a girl, but short-haired as a boy who signed her name "William."

With Willa Cather, the most famous of the Great Plains novelists, there were some gender issues throughout her life. The guide's grandfather claimed that his father had told them not ever to make fun of Willa because, she said, her great-grandfather had told his kids that Willa, unlike the other kids, was very, very special.

I'll never forget that answer, that story, because it so wonderfully handled every last comment. She's not weird; she's special--small towns, early 20th century, at their best. I left, proud.

Besides, who cares, really? What we had, in hand, was a wonderful novel, a beautiful tale of life on the open prairie, always the students' semester favorite. Somewhere here I've got a brick I dug from the ground her grandparents homesteaded. 

And I've got that story. "She's 'special.'" 

Six hours out, six hours back home. Twelve hours together in a van, me driving.

Worth every minute.