"Sing, O Sing"

Just one more day on the tabloids. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the Likes of David Pecker -- ii

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

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

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

That's their art.

Duck Hunters Shoot Angel (second half)

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

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

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

For the likes of David Pecker

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Duck Hunters Shoot Angel

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

Harold, my partner, nearly blind himself

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

Big as she was, she weighed nothing.

I dumped her on Harold's feet.

He stood there, slack-jawed and dumb,

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

I lifted a wing, and damn, there underneath

it was an arm muscled like Hulk Hogan.

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

mostly to myself, and dropped the wing,

But Harold had seen. "Sonabitch," 

he pointed, "You killed yourself

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

"Angels ain't neither male nor female.

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

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

"This one weren't," Harold said,

and he was right. It was dead.

"Then the dog come alongside and begun

sniffing and then licking about it. 

I pulled it away. It didn't seem right

even though the dog seemed somehow

to be affectionate-like and worshipful.

Harold realized the thing was flopped

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

getting aside from it, and it rolled over part

way coming to rest on those rough wings.

That's when I saw the face. It was

human-like and not very pretty, without

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

looking up like I was the one dead, like it

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

_________________

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

Mea culpa on Big Mike

When baby-faced Mike Johnson came on board to direct heavy traffic in the Republican party, I winced. He seemed so much a nobody, an  Alfred E. Neuman type whose record on the whole MAGA agenda certified, at least to me, that he was going to be trouble. 

Never forget that the Speaker of the House isn't a throwaway a job, no matter how many Marjorie Taylor Greens inhabit the place. The Speaker is third-in-line to run the whole show, which is more than a little scary in an age of geriatric Presidents. Who knew this guy? Nobody really. After a few of the Republican firebrands went down in flames, this guy, picked out of obscurity, ascends to the difficult but powerful position. Most people said "Who?"

"Look, I'm a Southern Baptist," this new kid said. "I don't wanna get too spooky on you. But you know, the Lord speaks to your heart. He had been speaking to me about this, and the Lord told me very clearly to prepare and be ready. Be ready for what? I don't know. We're coming to a Red Sea moment. What does that mean, Lord?"

Okay, I'm spooked, and I said as much--or thought I did soon after he took the chair. When I went back and read what I said, I was thrilled because I hadn't unloaded on the guy as I might well have liked to. I'm embarrassed, but not too embarrassed. I just don't know if you can trust someone who appears to have the Lord God almighty on speed dial (as we used to say). I was skeptical, especially when the my favorite pundits claimed he was on the front line of the "Stop the Steal" madness, which he was.

If you look over my skepticism that morning, you'll see a mess of options, including "Buckle up! This ought too be a ride!" 

Well, as of last weekend, it has been a ride. Call me Doubting Thomas, and let it be known far and wide that my doubt is gone, at least for the moment. What little Mike did last weekend was absolutely heroic. He did something akin to honest-to-goodness patriotism. He looked over and beyond Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz and the rest of the MAGA minions, and allowed three separate bills to come up for House vote, after determining initially that none of them would--AND, most specifically, after a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and the grand opportunity to kiss whatever was available of the King. No matter. He said no to all of them, for what he'd come to see as the good of the country.

We can argue whether continuing to fund the Ukrainians is good (I think it is), or whether military aid for Israel is right or wrong (I'm skeptical), or whether or not to hang everything on a border bill is a worthy move (I think not after the Republicans listened to the mobster and said no to a bill one of their own had written). These issues aren't slam dunks, but as issues they deserve a vote, and that's exactly what Mike Johnson determined right sometime last weekend, after prayer and, I'm guessing, once more listening to the Lord.

Amen, I say. 

Who knows what tomorrow might bring, but right now Rep. Mike Johnson, R-LA, Speaker of the House, deserves a badge of courage for taking on the forces of sheer chaos in his own blessed party. He's recognized the need of compromise, of working across the aisle to get things done.

Back in December, I dumped my skepticism on him. Last weekend, he heartily proved me wrong. I'd be more embarrassed if I weren't so happy. 

________________________ 

You may have noticed that I used the same photograph on both posts. This time, I grew it much bigger.

Sabbath Wanderings

For the record, the down quilt was in place from last week, and Mom and Dad were still around. But when I came up on the nest, they decided to go over to the other side of the pond and sit and watch. In fact, they stayed there for awhile quite a distance away. So I did too, spittin' distance from the nest. 

Nothing moved. Not in the nest, not on the other shore, and not me. I can wait, I thought. They'll do a little familiarity thing again, like last Sunday. When finally the two of them took to the water, they paddled on by as if there were no nest at all, a goodly distance out in the pond too. It seemed almost as if they weren't bothered at all. They didn't hover, didn't dawdle, didn't restrain themselves one bit, just made their way up on shore a hundred yards in the other direction--I could barely see them, a mile away.

It was perfectly disappointing. But I told myself I could wait because I fully expected them to circle back before coming closer and closer until, like last week's Sabbath visit, they'd hike up on shore right there beside me to tend the troops. 

They didn't. They stayed afar, almost as if I could have a look beneath the pile of goose down for myself, inviting me almost. I didn't. Somewhere within my psyche is the promise that if you even look ai a bird's  nest, the mother will not return--it's a promise.

So I left, walked all the way around the pond (which is still quite a feat for a half-crippled me), and sat down on a bench. Last week, I counted six expectant families who have taken up residence on Alton's South Pond, one of them, the closest to the parking lot, already caring for little fluff balls. Yesterday, the whole bunch were gone--greener pastures, I'm thinking, since the top of the island, where they and another couple haven taken up residence, looked half-bald, denuded.

Another pair weren't showing themselves, but all else seemed in order. 

It was not cold out, but not warm either yesterday afternoon, but sitting there on a bench at the water's edge was a ball. People came--all of them Ukrainian--and I chatted with both crews. 

It was a fine Sabbath day excursion, but I'll admit it--I was disappointed. Not only was there no family life whatsoever at the big rock nest, the only show in town last week had apparently pulled up stakes.

Sad. Then suddenly and totally unannounced and unexpected, the Mom and Dad from the long grass appeared out of nowhere and took to the water--Mom, Dad, both peacock-like in their showy pride, and three yellow puff balls merrily paddling along right there at mom's side.

They were a ways away, but I reached out with my lens and took this shot and one other before they disappeared somewhere behind the island. I was shaking, thrilled at the obvious new littl'uns--I'm tempted to say cute as toys. But they're not. Rubber Duckies are meant to look like these. It's not a great shot, and I do so wish it was.

I'm embarrassed to say how thrilled I was to witness pre-K swimming lessons, but then, I suppose, I'd invested some time in watching the goings-on, and had been disappointed at the way on the other side of the pond where I'd anticipated some real action. This family came out of nowhere like an answer to prayer, right out of the long grass on the west side, and in perfect silence took to the water, showing no fear, parents or kids.

 I told the Ukrainian family about them, and they took off, hoping to spot the kids. Then I went up the hill, back to the truck, remembering how toddlers coming into the old folks home where Dad was spending his last years, remembering how powerlessly those little stinkers instantly lit the place up, even--and maybe especially--those residents with forms of dementia. Made their day. I'm embarrassed to say his old man jumped into the truck, just that silly-excited. 

And then I remembered this:

That's my granddaughter. The handsome tall guy beside her is her husband. What she has in her hand is a series of photos of a tiny little who that's somewhere marking time inside her. They're holding a pink onesie to say just about all that can or needs to be said. 

They're going to be parents, those kids, and we're going to be great-grandparents. Just thought I'd mention it, along with a flotilla of goslings on a nearly perfect Sabbath afternoon.

 Not  a bit cold really.

Sunday Morning Meds -- from Psalm 84

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty!”

 It’s silly to make the argument—there were countless other factors—but historians who know the Sioux Indian wars often point at a Mormon cow as the cause for a half-century of horror on the Great Plains. It was August, 1854, when that cow, belonging to a Mormon party moving west, wandered into a Brule camp and was killed.

 The owner demanded restitution. Lt. John L. Grattan, who had little to no experience with Native tribes, insisted on arresting the killers and led a group of 30 infantrymen to the Brule village. When the culprit refused to turn himself in, Grattan turned his howitzers on the people. Chief Conquering Bear was killed with the first volley, but the what seemed impossible happened—the Brules wiped out the entire detachment and the Sioux Indian wars began.

 Nonetheless, when I read this all-time favorite psalm, strangely enough, it’s the Mormons who come to mind because when I consider their grand narrative—the long overland trek from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the basin of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, a pilgrimage that began in 1846, eight years before that wandering cow—I think I feel at least something of the exuberance that marks this very precious psalm.

The story of the Mormon exodus is a purely American story, just as Mormonism may well be the first truly American religion. From 1846 to 1869, 70,000 Mormons traveled west to a place where they believed—and they were right—they could live in peace and freedom, protected from persecution they’d suffered wherever they’d lived before. Hundreds, even thousands, pulled handcarts, walking the entire 1300 miles.

 But they had a goal, a destiny. They wanted a place to worship, a place to live their own pious vision. That shared goal, I’d guess, gave them the strength and dedication, the sheer will to endure every last horror the plains and mountain passes could throw. Along the way, they even improved the trail, knowing others would follow.

 Daily life was strictly regimented; chaos and in-fighting would be the death of them and the enterprise. Each day they read scripture, prayed, and sang together. It was a massive, dangerous, difficult pilgrimage, and it was unbelievably successful. Once safe in Salt Lake City, their incredible journey became a story they could tell—and do--for generations.

 The incredible joy that rises from Psalm 84 does so, I think, from similar long and difficult pilgrimages, exacting journeys of faithful believers to beloved places that are both “of this world” and of the next, a wagon train of worshippers on their way to a city that is, in a way, celestial.

 “How lovely is your dwelling place,” the psalmist writes, almost as if he were, in effect, wordless. Sometimes I wish I could feel that kind of ecstasy about the weekly worship I attend, but I don’t believe we’re talking about similar rituals. What evokes the delight that makes this hymn ring through the ages is pilgrimage, in the oldest sense of that word’s usage, a vivid and exacting spiritual journey.

 A dead cow is even part of that pilgrimage, an altogether too human story of religious aspiration and, gloriously, finally, of arriving. That’s why I think, somewhat enviously, of the Mormons.

 If it’s difficult to find yourself in the triumphant joy of the singer in Psalm 84, consider the Mormons. Imagine their joy.

 Then try this. Consider this vale of tears—consider the depth of human sadness--and then imagine the loveliness of a dwelling place in a warm eternal sun. That too can make us sing.   

Listening in to who tells the story

Most people likely guessed that when Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun and Josephine Waggoner got together, they were, once again, going over old times, just two residents of a Hot Springs retirement home bringing back a little nostalgia. They were both mixed-bloods who'd seen more than their share of living through the years. 

It was Waggoner who had the bright idea to write it all down, to make a record of what the two of them and many others of their era could remember, could say, could explain. They'd seen it all, from the nomadic life on the Plains, through the whole reservation era. They'd been there, eye-witnesses. Mrs. Waggoner used to read Sitting Bull's mail for him--and there were lots of letters and notes because Sitting Bull was the most well-known Indian of them all. She'd been there when he died, when he was shot and killed.

So it must have happened a lot, the two of them sitting together in the Home, Josephine with her pen and ink and tablet, Susan wholly willing to go on and on about the old days. Together, the two of them created their own history of the Plains Indians, bringing in others of the old ones to testify as to what they saw and did and remembered.

Witness, Josephine Waggoner named it, and a subtitle, A Hunkpapa Historian's Strong-Hearts Song of the Lakotas, and it didn't get published until long after Josephine Waggoner had passed away, as her friend Susan Bettelyoun had passed before her. Why so long? Because there were no footnotes. All Mrs. Waggoner had was what people told her, and some people told her different accounts of the same stories others told. Witness, was a witness all right, but who could believe it, who could really rely on what was there on paper, if there was no proof.

So what they created was what one might call "Indian history," the story of a time on the plains when everything was in flux, that history told--remembered--by the Native people themselves, with no verification because, simply there was none. 

Years after the two of them were gone, the manuscript was published by the University of Nebraska Press, its fine narrative history available for anyone to read.

Here's a good sample, from With My Own Eyes: a Lakota Woman Tells Her People's History (1998), a kind of companion volume.

Is it true? Is it factual? It's quite fair to say that no one will ever know.

What's perfectly clear, however, is that,here as elsewhere, who tells the story makes a difference. It's helpful to remember that the Oregon Trail, in some places, was a mile wide. Here, Susan Bordeaux Bettlyoun is doing the remembering.

~.  *.  ~.  *.  ~.  *.  ~

My uncle Swift Bear and many others tried their best to clear the country of the invaders. They allied with the Cheyennes and Arapahos for this cause. They watched the traveled ways to make attacks to intimidate the travelers but there seemed to be no end to the emigrants. Down in Kansas, below the Republican River, my uncle Swift Bear and some of the foremost braves were sent down to make raids and cripple as many of the emigrants as possible. They spent the whole summer up and down along the Republican River and its tributaries to head off the oncoming emigrants. They made attacks and raids, they ran off stock such as oxen, mules, and horses. At one place, my uncle said they surrounded an immigrant train and besieged them till they used up all their ammunition and as they drew in closer on them, these white people all fell on their knees within the circle of wagons with their heads bowed without any resistance. Everyone was killed and the wagons were all burned. This was the days before they knew or heard of religion. The Indians wondered why they went down on their knees with bowed heads. They did not understand because their form of prayer was different.

Revisiting (myself)

It's not often I turn back the pages, but I did this morning. For no good reason, I turned up this old post from December of 2015, forever-ago, at the outset of the Reign of Trump, although I didn't recognize back then how dominating it would become.

Sort of scary. He's only gotten worse. 

How Time chose Andrea Merkel for the 2015 Person of the Year is understandable (quick, who was Andrea Merkel again?). Keeping the European Union afloat was a task that required superhuman skills (well, requires because dissolution is still a possibility). What's more, in a year of massive displacement of populations, her determination to admit thousands upon thousands of Syrian refugees must seem to most Americans, most Republicans at least, and, post-San Bernadino, all Republican Presidential aspirants, perfectly insane. (dissolution, immigration--the more things change. . .well you know the adage).

Truth be told, to homebody Americans, Person-of-the-Year Merkel couldn't hold a candle to the U. S. of A's ace noisemaker (colossal understatement), Donald Trump, who single-handedly sucked the oxygen out of newsrooms all year long. When the Donald declared his candidacy, Jon Stewart turned green right there before our eyes because The Daily Show's veteran host had already announced his retirement. The opportunity to skewer Trump made Stewart wilt in envy. (Stewart retired, threw in the towel, but couldn't help himself and returned, part-time)

Of course, at that moment, no one believed Trump would triumph as he has. Right  now, most polls have him at double the strength of any one else. In fact, Texas's Ted Cruz is in second, a man who reportedly is disliked by most of the people who know him well and has basically been drafting behind the Trump phenom. (Cruz? Can't place him right off. Wasn't his father involved in the Kennedy assassination?)

Trump has destroyed Jeb Bush, just as he destroyed Wisconsin's Scott Walker, both of whom pundits with significant Washington cred once upon a time simply assumed would be front-runners. (Talk about a footnote--Scott Walker?)

The fact is, no one totally understands how the Donald has done what he has (no change there), and these very words are proof of the fact that people--me too!--can't stop talking about him (yup). The accepted wisdom is simply that the Donald Trump has tapped into something that no one else has, some vein of something almost radio-active in the electorate. (yup)

If the common wisdom is accurate, then living in American democracy is far more precarious than I would have guessed a year ago. (yup) After two long years of almost total government inaction and hostile bickering  that most claim to be more acidic than it's ever been (are you kidding? back then, too?), it's no surprise that people are sick to death of the way things are (nope).

Still, the numbers are daunting. A new CNN poll, just released, claims 75% of Americans are "dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed," while 69% claim to be "at least somewhat angry." (little change there)

Trump's base is with those angry people, and especially with those people. Among Trump's millions, 97% are dissatisfied. That's huge.  And he's scoring at what?--40% of the Republican electorate. 

(That's really incredible, but it's not new. Those percentages are similar to what they were at the end of 2014. Check out these numbers:

So the vein of radio-active sentiment Trump has discovered and so successfully tapped into, something no one else had as efficiently, is simply downright angry Americans, people totally at odds with the system, the culture, the entire American pageant as we know it today. Let me just repeat that one more time. Among Trump's loyal followers, 97% believe are "dissatisfied" with life as we know it in America. (Not much has changed, although perhaps the true believers are somewhat fewer.)

Maybe it's a good thing that Mr. Trump has uncovered this seething mess, but it's greatly unsettling to have to believe so many Americans really despise "how things are." That's immense disenchantment. (I  haven't seen it, but apparently the movie Civil War scares the bejeebees out of most of those who've seen it.)

"Democracy is the worst form of government," said Winston Churchill, "except for all the others."

What Trump has discovered and exposed and nurtured is something apparently no one else has--real palpable dissatisfaction with the way things are. It's there. In spades. (Once, this may have been news; today, cliche.)

I don't care what anyone says, that it is, is scary. They're following a man who once told reporters he could not remember ever asking forgiveness. That's really scary. (Nope--nothing's changed.)

I'm not among that 97%. I greatly prefer Andrea Merkel. (Ha! ha! very funny.)

Banned books

You've heard, of course, the oddities, like the dictionary and the Bible, but what made the news this week was that Pen America, who tallies such things, reported that more books were banned here in the second half of last year (2023) than in the entire year before, twice that number in fact. Among the states in the running, Florida holds a commanding lead, which should surprise no one since their governor's failed bid for the Presidency made cleaning up the shelves a campaign issue. By the way, Escambia County, Florida, not to be out scrubbed, presently has the lead by including not just one dictionary, but--count 'em--five!

These days, Florida is, I'm sure, a much better place to raise kids, having swept a grand total of 3,135 books off the shelves. 

Here's my story.

A gang of guys are playing cards in the dorm. I'm among 'em. The jabbering makes the game secondary. Mostly they're just talking.

It's fall, 1966, and I'm a freshman at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa, far, far from home. But friends aren't hard to come by when they all have similarly unreadable last names like Schaap and could sing more than one verse of "The Ninety-and-Nine." And, like I said, we're playing rook when some local guy mentions a name I'd never heard, "Feikema," but it sounds pretty much like everyone else's.

"He's a writer," some other local kid says, "big guy--huge--writes dirty books." There's noting doleful about the way he says it. He was marketing."Naah," I say,  or something similar. "Gi'mee a break. Guy writes book, and he's from here?"

"Not right here--Doon," somebody says. I had no idea what a Doon was.

Some weeks later, in a bookstore in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, I spot a paperback with the name that came up that night, "Frederick Manfred." If I hadn't had 75 cents along, I would have walked out of the store with the skinny thing stuck in my pants. This was the local guy, the one who writes dirty books.

I read The Secret Place cover to cover (175 pp), a rarity. I wasn't a reader, never was; and, sure, the story had more than its share of sexual hijinks. The kid at the heart of the novel gets two girls pregnant, both out of wedlock, and this Manfred/Feikema guy brings us out into the country to watch.

But something happens. I get lost in the story, especially when the kid in the story gets brought before the consistory--something in that scene especially smells familiar. He's writing on my ground somehow. Something I'd never, ever imagined happened before--I recognized the characters, recognized the world of The Secret Place (1965).

In point of fact, I was so moved by what I only vaguely understood--finding myself in what some call the "felt life" of the novel--that I went to my English prof to ask her if I could write my Freshman English paper on a novel by this guy, Frederick Manfred. I had to tread lightly, I knew, because those guys playing cards had said--and they seemed to know what they were saying--that somehow that the fiesty little college president had seen to it that no one could check out Feike Feikema's books from the college library, unless they had some kind of special permission.

I told her I owned my own copy of The Secret Place, and my prof, something of a lib, said yes, so I did, wrote my term paper on Manfred's The Secret Place. That excursion into strange, felt life made me think I could write too, tell stories. That contraband novel set me off on a lifelong commitment to watching newly formed letters march over a page or screen. I've been at it pretty much ever since, devotionals for kids, novels, short stories, denominational books, family albums for the Back to God Hour, the CRC, and Rehoboth Christian Schools, innumerable personal essays, and now, radio productions.

In truth, it wasn't just The Secret Place that set me off on a journey, but when I look back at a half-century of sitting here at the desk as I am right now--early, first light just now opening the sky--and this morning, like always, trying to get the words right, to create something somehow worth my time and yours, the first book I remember as central to that long story is a skinny one, by a local n ovelist, a dirty book, I guess, banned back then in the college library. 

All buffalo

Let this image stand for what we all know, that Indians (what we've called them, erroneously for centuries) used just about every square inch of the buffalo they hunted and killed. It's third-grade stuff, and it's important, and furthermore, it's true. Thank goodness for our wonderful third-grade (or whatever) teachers.

Just for the record, those sticky notes all over this poor girl make all of that perfectly clear. Even that grimy tail get used for a broom, the note in the center, top, says robes had a multitude of uses; buffalo wool was used for stuffing things, like pillows; bladders were used to lug water--it just goes on and on. The wide range of uses--look at them all--suggest the rich importance Plains Indians placed on the buffalo and begins to explain how it was that some noteworthy figures, not unfamiliar names in 19th century American history believed and said aloud that killing the buffalo would kill the Indian.

All that is fairly well known, but once in a while I stumble on some explorer's description of what he (or she too) saw when first discovering herds of bison. In this case, it's someone who's becoming a first-rate hero to me, as he has been to Native plainsmen and women for close to two centuries: Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, who some call a Dutchman, but may be better described as Flemish. De Smet, a Jesuit, was as awed by this country as was Meriweather Lewis. De Smet held to a different mission, to save souls, which sounds almost like an indictment. De Smet was a great man, a peace-maker. Here's how he noted his first sighting of bison.

After marching for seven days alongside the Platte, we reached the plains inhabited by the buffalo. I left the camp alone, very early one morning, to see them more at my ease; I approached them by way of the ravines, without showing myself or allowing them to get the wind of me. This is the most keen-scented of animals; he will detect the presence of a man at a distance of four miles, and take flight at once, since that odor is insupportable to him. I gained, without being perceived, a high bluff, resembling in shape the Waterloo monument; from it I enjoyed a view of perhaps a dozen miles. This vast plain was so covered with animals, that the markets or fairs of Europe could give you only the feeblest idea of it. It was indeed like a fair of the whole world assembled in one of its loveliest plains. I looked with wonder upon the slow and majestic walk of these heavy wild cattle, marching silently in single file, while others cropped with avidity the rich pasturage, which is called the short buffalo grass. Whole bands were lying amidst flowers on the grass; the scene altogether realized in some sort the ancient tradition of the holy scriptures, speaking of the vast pastoral countries of the Orient, and of the cattle upon a thousand hills.

You got to love him. He just couldn't stop himself. 

I could not weary of gazing upon this delightful scene, and for two hours I watched these moving masses in the same state of astonishment. Suddenly the immense army seemed startled ; one battalion gave the panic to another, and the whole multitude was in flight, running in every direction. The buffalo had caught the scent of their common enemy; the hunters had rushed among them on the gallop. The earth seemed to tremble under their steps, and the dull sounds that came back were like the mutterings of distant thunder. 

Father De Smet, a man of the cloth, a Black Robe, in fact, the most famous and most beloved Black Robe of them all, was astonished, stunned, blown away, awed, as if--and he would never have said it t his way--as if he had actually witnessed deity before him. He wouldn't, and it's likely none of the Native folks back in camp would either.

But historians make the case that the awe or reverence in which Plains Indians held the buffalo was a kind of religion. Father De Smet himself grew weary of attempting to create a Christian society among the Flatheads because it became perfectly obvious to him that his faith--Catholic Christianity--simply could not compete with the devotion, the ardor, the Flatheads--and most Plains Indians--held the hunt, the traditional time when everyone--men, women, and children--would go out to specially regarded hunting grounds to "harvest" all of what they needed--hooves, ribs, bladders, and hides--from and in the great American bison.  

In all my travels I have never wearied of watching with admiration these truly majestic animals, with their rugged necks, shoulders and heads. If their peaceable nature was not known, their aspect alone would terrify one. But they are timid and without malice, and never offer to do any harm, except in their own defense, when they are wounded and hard pressed. Their strength is extraordinary, and though they appear clumsy, they run notwithstanding with great speed; it takes a good horse to follow them very far.

Sometimes it took three-horses, that is, to try to run them down.

Amazing, awe-inspiring, even to imagine. You can't help but love 'em. 

The baby-killer fallacy

It may have been the cap. It was displayed on the shelf when the grandkids came over. I don't remember the provocation exactly, and whatever it was doesn't matter. 

My family hates it when I tell this story, but I'm not blaming him. I'm sitting downstairs in front of the keyboard, when my grandson, age five, comes bounding in and jumps in my lap. That part is wonderful. 

Somehow he sees something--maybe it was the cap, who knows what it was exactly he saw? He doesn't really bother to look at me, so what he delivers is not a lecture but a mantra: "Obama is a baby killer."

He's five years old. He goes to kindergarten in a Christian school, but I honestly cannot believe his teacher would dish that out to a room full of kids. I'm guessing--still do--that one of his little friends passed it along as God's truth. 

If my five-year-old grandson could deliver the goods that simply, it didn't take a genius to know that to some at least, "Obama is a baby killer" was gospel truth.

Some years later, President Trump, who campaigned on tossing Rowe, gets a spectacular (some would say providential) break when three justices require replacement in his only four-year term. He goes to a conservative judicial think tank for potential justices, sails all three through a Republican-majority Congress, and, sure enough, the new Supremes dump Roe like a bad habit. 

Trump is, of course, transactional. Nobody really believes he reads USA bibles he hawks. He's not really pro-life; even evangelicals know he just wants their votes. He just made a deal. "Biden's a baby-killer."

But things don't turn out well. Most Americans--for good or ill--don't believe that abortion law should call an end to "test-tube babies" or force women to carry to term pregnancies that endanger their lives. Kansas says no BY A TON. Ohio says likewise, both of them bright red states. 

Now Trump's got a hot potato (more than one actually). "Listen," he says last week, "the best way around this problem is for states to determine what the law should be." 

Anti-abortionists are either confused or furious. They're now clearly out of the will, and it's a mess, a horrible mess all over. The dog finally caught the car, as they say; and as if it's not bloody enough, the Arizona Supremes vote to hold on to a Civil-War era law that was part of a wild west code written long before Arizona was even a state and aimed, really, at men who wear the pants, rule the roost, whatever. The 1864 law is lots more than antique. It's loony, and even Kerri Lake says so.

So what we've got is a horrible mess, a handsome majority of the American people convinced that getting rid of Row was a bad deal, period. 

Pro-lifers finally won big--and then lost even bigger.

All I'm saying is that if a five-year-old can stop an argument cold with a single sentence--"Obama is a baby-killer," don't trust the line. It's textbook proof of ye olde either/or fallacy; things are rarely either/or. 

Sunday Morning Meds--"Heart and Flesh" (from Psalm 84)

“My soul yearns, even faints, 

for the courts of the LORD; 

my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” (84:1)

 

Today, in southern Africa, nearly five million believers belong to a unique movement that is peculiarly Christian in theology and doctrine, and almost indigenous in polity. They call themselves the Masowe Apostolic movement, and they gather to worship outdoors, exclusively. They own no churches, but they are one.

 

They believe in Christ, in the Trinity, in the resurrection, and eternal life; they are Christians. But they also believe that the Holy Spirit rides on the wind, that the unspoiled earth is sacred, that true worship is best offered to God in open land, in fields and small farms; when they live in cities, they often worship in abandoned lots or parks.

 

Sociologists like to assert that the preferences of the Masowe Wilderness Apostles are occasioned by their firm rejection of colonialism and the European Christianity that came with it, a cultural faith which simply assumed that proper and faithful worship could occur only in a sanctuary, a place with walls and a roof. In very obvious ways, the Masowe have returned to something of their native faith by placing emphasis instead on the wind and the earth. Their sanctuary is open space.

 

Their services of prayer and thanksgiving frequently go four hours or more. I don’t know that I could handle four hours, but I have my sympathies with their visions.

 

For most of my life, I would have immediately assumed that this verse—and this psalm—refers specifically to a particular building designated by some family of believers as a church, a “house of God” that held my membership papers, a place where each week a community of believers came together for worship.

 

I’m not sure I believe that anymore, in part because my soul doesn’t really yearn or faint for Sunday worship. If I try to find within myself the compelling thirst the psalmist obviously feels in this beautiful song, I don’t necessarily envision the church down the block, no matter how gorgeous. My soul doesn’t yearn for that for that building or Sabbath worship that happens within. I go—and I’ll continue to, as I have for all of my years. But my heart and soul are not ready to faint to return.

 

On the other hand, if I don’t go out and greet the dawn every once in a while, I get owly. Seriously. If I don’t go out and look for beauty, I feel bereft. That picture up top—that’s what my camera could hold of the masterpiece painted up on yesterday’s sky, lumpy marshmallows romping along in an azure sky. That’s what was there to be seen, no admission.

 

When I think about the Masowe Wilderness Apostles, my heart sings. Really.

 

Who is to say what God means by the psalmist’s reference to “the courts of the Lord”? Why couldn’t those courts be the wide-open spaces just outside of town? Why couldn’t they be the big-shouldered, rolling hills that define the twisting course of the hidden river beneath? Why couldn’t the “courts of the Lord” be a translucent morning sky that spreads east to west, north to south?

 

Are the Masowe wrong? Are they apostate because they believe the Holy Spirit actually rides the wind? Are they pagan to respect the earth?

 

And what about me? Am I somehow less of a believer if I long to see his glory detailed on the canvas of the sky?—if I want to go back again and again?

 

“My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord.” 

 

Welcome to the morning.

How I spent my retirement

The day before, I'd spotted a nest just up from the water, three bright, white eggs--there may have been more--in an organized heap amid a bed of goose down. Like an idiot, I'd not taken my phone, couldn't get a picture. Yesterday, I went back, phone and camera. I'm quite sure that somewhere beneath this pile, the eggs were still there. 

How do I know? Mom and Dad wouldn't let me be. 

Yesterday, it seemed to me, was the very first day of my retirement, despite my having left the classroom 12 years ago--well, 13 to be exact. I fudged away the afternoon, all by my lonesome, at Alton's South Pond, nary another humanoid in sight, while Mom and Dad Goose hung around lest this old guy who walked funny would pull some shenanigans.

There I sat, twenty feet-max from that nest, hoping some of the fuzz would blow off and reveal its treasures. Didn't happen. I sat there close enough to be real trouble the parents, while the two of them ritually and warily swam back and forth.

The nest, you will note, is in a line with the corner of the quartzite throne on which I'm half-sitting, a line that leads right out to the two of them. 

I hardly dare say how much time I spent there just waiting for them to come closer, which they did, in an odd gesture that seemed to test the threat of this stranger by the amount of time he (I) could spend just sitting there. 

Now all of this is being done in perfect silence. As you're likely aware, Canada geese are known for the tumult they raise with their incessant honking. This time, not a sound. Not. A. Sound. They were utterly aware of my presence, but they didn't say a thing, just pushed back and forth through the water, coming ever closer to that treasured nest when they'd sweep by, in perfect silence.

It was just the three of us, me with my camera and phone, hoping for a real treasure, hoping that one of them, eventually, would come up close and primp the nest so I could get a mother-and-child portrait. Eventually--honestly, a good half-hour after I got to that hunk of Sioux quartzite--she (I assume it was Mom--I didn't ask) ever so slowly got out of the water. Now these are wild geese, not the homeys that leave their doo over city sidewalks. I'm thinking it's a joy just to have them so close and so shockingly quiet. 

I'm fifteen feet away, that feather nest is twelve, and I'm sure I'm going to get a wonderful National Geographic shot here: Mom and her calcium-ed brood. On the other side of the pond, a Canada twosome have already hatched a family--saw them yesterday (without a camera). Who know what kind of joy this young (?) mom will uncover when she gets up there and primps--or whatever.

And now, let me just deal with the gender thing. If I'm right, if Mom is the one who came up on shore, you shouldn't go away thinking the old man just sat back somewhere and sucked seaweed. No, ma'am. He was there too, if in fact he was he and not she. It's almost enough to make me up the ante to plural pronouns, but that would be far more confusing. 

Let's just assume that once upon a time it took two to tango here, and one of them is a boy goose and the other is a girl goose. Is it sexist for me to think that it's the girl goose, the Mom, who came up out of the water? All right then, call me a pig and stop reading, but I can't help thinking how sweet it is that I don't know, that they're both here so that should this dangerous old man sitting on the big rock come after the kids, I'd be in trouble.

And now, trust me, I'd love to unveil the National Geographic shot I waited for more than an  hour to take; but I didn't get it--not because I didn't wait (I'm retired, remember), but because she (I think) seemingly had no intention to tend whatever treasures existed beneath all that goose down. What she (or he) intended to do was simply stand there and wait, stand there to defend her beloveds until that pond, in gorgeous 70-degree weather, would freeze over. She wasn't about to move.

And I waited. And waited. And waited. She kept her back to me the whole time.

Finally, I picked up my gear and left. These two--and how many more beneath the down I don't know--had taken a chunk of my afternoon that only a retiree could burn. What's worse, I didn't get the shot I wanted. All she'd do is show me the elegant designs on her backside. 

I guess she just wanted to be there. Well, let me rephrase that, "she just needed to be there." I waited and waited, but she just wanted to be there, I guess. She never touched the nest.

Way too much time passed, so I left. She won. I went home without the stunning shot, but once I took off it's fair to say we both were happy.

Five minutes later, I took another shot, this one from afar. That quartzite rock--a true glacial erratic, where I'd been sitting--stands to the right of a dark jumble of feathers in the bottom corner--see her (or him)? She's primping the nest. Meanwhile, Dad stands guard up in the corner, opposite side of the  picture. (To heck with it, I'll just be a sexist.)

Immortal Beloved

Josephine Brunsvik, Giulietta Guicciardi, Therese Brunsvik, Amalie Sebald, Dorothea van Ertman, Therese Malfatti, Anna Maria Erdodty, and Bettina von Arnim. Choose your honey. Could have been any one of them. 

A pianist from Vienna named Daniel Adam Maltz--my goodness, he was marvelous--entertained us, amid his evening's performance, with a quickly told love story that most anyone who's read anything about Ludwig van Beethoven, a deaf composer like no other, likely knows and certainly relishes*. It seems among Beethoven's papers, discovered after his death, was a letter addressed only to a "Unsterbliche Geliebte," which, I'm told, is blessedly high-brow German for something akin to "Immortal Beloved," a love letter deliciously composed but, maddingly recipient-less. Now to those who appreciate such mysteries, it seems that, by golly by gum, dear Ludwig had more than a few paramours. If we want to keep this darling story up and out of the mud, let it be said that a goodly number of those storied ladies' relationships may well have been, in composition, little more than platonic.

What's more, all of the above were of a societal rank higher than the young composer, which would have made marriage, for the ladies, quite unthinkable. Apparently, it's just as safe to say that not all of the paramours listed above were only platonic. A bachelor for all his years, Ludwig van apparently didn't suffer, so you needn't be sad for his alone-ness. It may be assumed that he wasn't.

Some scholars who passionately pursue such stories have settled on one of those fore-mentioned upper-class options, Josephine Brunsvick (she and her sister were his students), who, by the way, was widowed, and then suffered a second marriage that didn't turn out to be all that the relationship once promised. And there is, on record, a baby. Well, you know what some suggest: "maybe," "by chance,"  "it's altogether possible," "we can't be sure"--all of those apply. But if you line up certain dates with certain others, you could make a case. . . That sort of thing.

Now this Viennese pianist we'd come to hear simply mentioned this paramour business, an outline, however sketchy, of this "immortal beloved" story. He didn't make a night of it. Mostly what he did is offer us exquisite works by this man, Beethoven, as well as Chopin and Haydn, the kind of music only a blessed few can master. What's more, he played, that evening, on his own traveling companion, a little tiny piano (just 200 pounds, he said) that produced gorgeous and evocative notes that cast their own unique spell in haunting half-silence. What he played was a fortepiano, a word and an instrument new to me. 

Now my mother, a pianist, would scold me, I'm sure, tell me I'm spotten, an old Dutch word that signified the sin of irreverence (spotten is singing "Jesus Loves Me" with a clothespin on your nose). She'd be disgusted--I'm making fun of a man she revered. 

She's probably right. The truth is, we can be grateful to whoever he means to honor by naming her only what he does--his "Immortal Beloved"--because what we've all inherited from his passions, well-earned or well-suffered, is a gift of grace, and,well, itself "immortally beloved," that being, after all, exactly what we heard last weekend from that fascinating instrument played by a impossibly gifted pianist.

Go ahead and listen to "Moonlight Sonata" and think of a deaf man in love saying what he could to his "Immortal Beloved."

And saying that, I'm sure, would bring me back into my mother's graces.

____________________ 

*I'm told--I haven't seen it--there's a film about all of this. 

 

Alberta's KPG

From Tim Alberta's very first interview on Morning Joe, it was clear that a major concern in selling this new book of his, his second, was the verifiable fact that not only had he been raised "evangelical," he still considered himself one, practicing his faith on Sunday, and thus following in the footsteps of his father, who was, until the day he died, an upstanding American evangelical. 

Every subsequent interview stressed Alberta's faith, in a fashion, some might say, that made it a selling point. It almost was as if Tim Alberta's agent had told him that if he wanted to sell books, he had to make his being an evangelical perfectly clear. Want to be crass?--it could be construed that Tim Alberta was using his faith to sell books. If I were a Fox News person, I'd say as much. 

But let's just stop for a minute and think what I've just said. If Tim Alberta sells more books because he's a believer, then mark the date on your calendars because if you listen to Trump and his evangelical disciples, the voices of evangelicals are not heard, they are not heard because of their faith. Christians are prayed upon by the fake news media, you know, the Godless elite. It's an article of faith to be thus persecuted.

Trump's popularity makes clear he gets that particular doctrine and trumpets it widely himself, telling American evangelicals (80% of whom support him) that they're getting a raw deal in the secular press, from the commies, the Godless ones. That's why he says, "I am your 'retribution,'" and it explains why they buy it. If I go to jail--his latest con--think of me as MLK or Nelson Mandela--you know, even the apostle Paul suffered jail-time. 

The fact that Tim Alberta could confess Jesus's name before the Morning Joe listening audience means there is no such binary. Tim Alberta sat right there in the seat of the scornful and told Joe and Mika he was a Christian, a faithful one too, a believer. 

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory (KPG) is an amazing book. What Alberta couldn't keep still about in those interviews is a key to understanding why the book is unique. It's journalism, feature journalism with significant asides that connect it to something very personal, a personal narrative. Kristin Kobes DuMez is a historian, someone who seeks out the facts as they exist, and reports them. What she didn't do--at least not as forcefully--is confess her own Christian faith; but then she didn't need to. She is a historian.

Alberta didn't have to either, but he chose a different genre--the personal narrative, some creative non-fiction, a structure that includes both the facts and one's own story, a bit of memoir. What makes KPG unique and fascinating is the fact that there are, throughout the study, all kinds of moments when Alberta offers what some (like me) might see as considerably "Christian" critiques. The criticism of contemporary evangelicalism is enough to make you really tired, but it's wielded by someone who clearly believes.  That's as amazing as it is unique.

It's all tossed into the mosh pit that is contemporary politics. What Alberta does in KPG is line up one evangelical leader after another and display just exactly how they've sold out to mammon. It's not pretty, but the times are not particularly rosy for all evangelical Christians, Trumpers or no-Trumpers.

Mostly, today, that binary has no sliding scale; you're on one side, fists up, or the other, ducking punches. Alberta is clearly a no-Trumper; but, if you believe him, he remains a believer--maybe not an "American evangelical" like Marjorie Taylor Green or the orange man now hawking $60-dollar Bibles, but a believer nonetheless.

And it's as good to hear his confession of faith as it is to tune in to his critique. As a Christian believer of his ilk, I'm proud of him. If he had been a student of mine some years ago, a graduate of Dordt College, I'd be busting my buttons* because in The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, Tim Alberta isn't shy either about his faith or his criticism of those who abuse it.

____________________ 

*For the record, Kristin Kobes DuMez is a former student. Consider my buttons busted.