Ashley's Prudence

William Ashley

Prudence is no fun. It's girl scout stuff really. Making sure that things are done right, done thoughtfully, prudence clears the room of wild exuberance and joy. But then learning prudence almost always is worth it.

As it was for a man named William Ashley. History has almost totally forgotten him, but once upon a time in the colonization of North America, Ashley played a significant role. It was his idea to alter the course of human events by hiring 100 adventurers to become trappers through the land Jefferson had acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Ashley put together one hundred men he thought he could trust and brought them up here into America's frontier.

William Ashley was a point man for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, who'd done what most other traders had been doing to trade with Native bands. Pots and pans were a hot item, as were beads, as well as other commodities were similarly beloved--guns and liquor.

Ashley learned quickly that guns could pull a good price, but a year or so after unloading rifles on the Arikara, he also learned he had to exercise some prudence in trading. A year after watching those rifles pass into Native bands, those very same rifles most definitely came back to haunt him. Twenty of his husky mountain men were killed in a rightly famous fight that took place just upriver from Mobridge, South Dakota, the first big fight between white men and red men west of the Mississippi. 

Why?--a perfect storm of reasons. First, the Arikara had already been mistreated by the legions of white men streaming into what had been their neighborhood; second, the chief's own son came back dead from hunting with the enemy, the story of his death simply unconvincing; third, some of Ashley's men had flagrantly abused some of the Arikara women; and finally, the Rees attacked because they had rifles and ammo they got from none other than Ashley himself. 

Did he learn? Yes. In his journal, he wrote, "“Trade what you can afford to lose; never trade what can be turned against you.” That's prudence, "the ability  to govern or discipline oneself by reason." Not fun, but good, smart stuff like cod liver oil. 

The Arikara were up high on the banks of the river, in a perfect position to pick off the aliens, and they did, Ashley's men taking to the river, where some drowned while others took the current downstream until they dared take cover in the bushes lining the Missouri, sometimes weeks later, or so the story goes.

Sometime later, one of those survivors, a man named Hugh Glass got in a fight with a bear, got himself sliced up like a tomato but somehow lived to tell about it. Jim Bridger's map-like memory helped him find his way around country that had to have seemed as wide and eternal as anything anyone had ever seen. Jedidiah Smith offered up a public prayer some claim to have been uttered in the very first Christian service west of the Mississippi, which happened to be a funeral.

Sometime later--not long--the stories continued to pile up. How the west was won is a book with a multitude of chapters, big as the west itself, all of which add up, for better and for worse, to our story.

 “He will not let your foot slip—

he who watches over you will not slumber; 

indeed, he who watches over Israel 

will neither slumber nor sleep.”

 

About couple of decades ago, when my family and I were being shown around the old central city of Leiden, Holland, we were taken up on some kind of ancient battlement that has stood there for centuries. 

 

Hundreds of people were about, as they say.  Our guide, a historian, was narrating the story of the ancient city from atop the battlements, which, as I remember it, was a huge concrete angel food cake.  Dozens of people were strolling on it, enjoying the sun and the Sabbath. 

 

I couldn’t help thinking about the fall one might take if one lost his or her balance or was somehow nudged off the edge.  There were no fences, no wires, no plexi-glass, and no warning signs.  If you would fall, you’d simply splat on the ground beneath it, maybe eight or ten feet, as I remember.

           

“So I’m amazed,” I told our guide at Leiden, “that there’s no wall.  What happens if people fall?  I mean, someone could sue.”

 

He laughed. “The court would say, ‘You’re a fool for falling off the edge.’”

 

I found that answer really strange because it wouldn’t happen here, and certainly wouldn’t be said. In fact, it’s possible that someone might stage a fall just to reap the dividends. We are a litigious society.

 

I don’t need to go back farther than fifty years or so in my own ethnic tribe to locate theological arguments that questioned the righteousness of insurance.  I mean, what God appointed to happen, happens, or so the tenet runs. Insurance, theological purists argued, weakens dependency on God by pushing the insured to take comfort instead in a financial portfolio.

 

Today that argument is dead in the water.  It would be impossible to live without insurance these days, a high-wire act without safety nets.

 

But Psalm 121 minces no words.  In its eight short verses, it insists five times—count ‘em yourself—that God watches over us, and he does so without blinking.  He neither slumbers nor sleeps.  He’s always there.

 

Affluence is a buffer, keeping us from need.  From when comes my help? —from my 401Ks, my retirement fund, my nest egg.  It’s probably fair to say that in terms of heat, clothing, fuel, and food, in the west at least, we’re warmly taken care of.  That God watches over us is nice, but get real and keep your eyes on the Dow Jones.

 

All of which would be true, if it weren’t for the tortures of the soul, the pain that comes from wounds within.  Far be it from me—a citizen of one of the richest countries in the world—to say that those hurts, sorrows of the heart, are more crippling than the sorrows of the flesh.  I’m in no position to judge. We’ve got food in our new refrigerator.

 

But I know something about heartache, as does everyone who’s ever lived, including the only one of us who was sinless.

 

Fat or thin, rich or poor, what remains the greatest comfort is not a good lawyer or a bountiful insurance payoff. What Psalm 121 won’t allow us to forget is that our God is always there, vigilant, caring, protective.

 

The poet can’t say it often enough. He’s there, he’s there, he’s there—and he won’t fall asleep on the job. You can’t buy that kind of insurance. The sinless one already did.

Morning Thanks--spring green

It's a whisper you can miss if you pass too quickly. Suddenly there's a long patch of emerald along the road, as if someone had forgotten to pack it away. Early April it begins to show itself because it's not fiction. It'll come if you just give it time, and its first slight promises are a themselves a blessing. See it here in the short grasses? Won't be long and they'll be challenging last year's stiffened monsters. It's coming--spring I mean. That's a promise.

It'll be awhile before the long grasses atop Spirit Mound give up to the relentless growth of new spring grasses, but if you look closely you can't miss the story. Won't be long either--

--because have no doubt! spring is on the way. It's begun it's' relentless assault on all things old and gold and lifeless, and soon enough its annual revolution will be over. But right now, it's only just begun.

Today already, it's there, but you have to look closely. It will take awhile before all that green new life secures its reign, but it will. Soon enough the whole site will be emerald.

Have no doubt--it'll happen. Always does, mercifully. Suddenly, you turn around and there's new life for as far as you can see. 

But not quite yet. It's as if no one has let last year's grasses know that it'll just be a matter of time--

But it'll happen. Always does. This morning's thanks are for a marvelous event that can't be missed--the advent of spring, a bright and colorful remedy to winter's aching cold. 

Once more, it's a'comin'.

Things are looking up. 

Morning Thanks--Copilot

Grandpa Schaap, the preacher and the little guy right there at the horse's snoot, didn't take Abraham Kuyper, the preacher/politician with him when he immigrated. In fact, he didn't even immigrate--his parents did, in 1868, left the Frisian island of Terschelling and made their way to America soon after the America's Civil War. 

Grandpa, the little guy, was born here. Abraham Kuyper was growing in prominence about then, but he hadn't achieved the stardom that he did when he became the Dutch Prime Minister in 1901.

When I found Kuyper's book of meditations, To Be Near Unto God, in English, in his library, I was greatly taken by my find because that's the book I'd  heard was so frequently lugged along with Dutch immigrants from the turn of the century--1900-1917, much beloved by those who suddenly found themselves here, aliens in a land as strange as it was huge.

One of the meditations began with the wonder of this new technology then sweeping Holland (and elsewhere too, I'm sure). Pastor Kuyper thought to reassure the flock that the telephone would not alter how the people lived, and that, in fact, the phone offered remarkable attributes ordinary people like those who read his meditations in the  newspaper should not be afraid because the Lord God of Hosts gave us blessings like the telephone for our good usage.

It would take me awhile to find that meditation, but you get my drift. Kuyper was being Kuyper, telling believers they should not be afraid of the world.

Yesterday, I asked MS Copilot to draw me a map to explain where, in 1823, the Arikara fought Ashley's band of mountain men--ninety-strong--out west on the Missouri River. I didn't realize until yesterday that that bloody fight took place close to Mobridge, SD, a place I've been often enough to know its look. MSCopilot is MS's AI. I was asking AI to do something elementary, but something I'd never asked before, to create a map.

Now let me be clear here. President Trump, who so regularly shows himself to be a fool, knows how to ask AI to do things--like that wicked cartoon of him in a red shawl looking for all the world like deity, and helping someone bedridden. You remember. I'm saying  that, regrettably, Donald Trump, who is older than I am, knows more about AI than yours truly. But yesterday I accomplished the creation of a map--supposedly accurate--of exactly where on the Missouri River that famous attack took place, and, as predicted, it did. Here 'tis.

For the record, you will not find that map anywhere else. I created it--with the strong armed help of AI. 

Kuyper was talking about the telephone, but he wasn't wrong. Innovations in technology have to be studied to be sure that the benefits they give us exceed the problems that accompany them. 

This morning this old Kuyperian is thankful for AI--wary but thankful.

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.

Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 121

 

“I lift up my eyes to the hills—

where does my help come from?” Psalm 121:1 

I wasn’t sure where my daughter’s question came from, and I was busy thinking of something else at the time.  That’s why I didn’t give her a very good answer, not a fatherly answer anyway. 

 “When you were my age,” she said, sort of laughing, “did you ever think that the world was just going to come to an end?” 

 My daughter was 30 at the time, the age I was when my wife and I had her. Truth be told, right then I couldn’t remember ever thinking the world was in imminent danger of coming to an end.  I smiled and said no, rolled my eyes, and turned back to the computer screen.

 Later, I couldn’t sleep.

 I was a kid, but I remember learning to crawl under my school desk should nuclear holocaust come to Oostburg, Wisconsin.  I grew up in the Cold War, when the Soviets were capable of pushing the wrong button or pushing the right one wrongly. 

 I remember walking on a football field during the Cuban missle crisis and having a profound talk with a kid about whether or not we’d ever play a game.  We both knew football was a metaphor; we were talking about the end of the world.

 I remember the comet Kahoteck and Y2K.  I remember a number of primitive eschatologies—Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth, for instance—that numbered our days by manipulating ancient calendars vaguely suggested in the odd visions of minor prophets.  End-times theology does well often. Not long ago, everyone and their pet hamster wanted not to be Left Behind.

 If you ask me—and she once did--I believe her generation lives in more fear than mine did. I was reared with more freedom than her kids will ever see.  When I was ten, my friends and I took our bikes down to Lake Michigan and lost ourselves and our inhibitions in endless lakeshort woods. Today all that land is private property; but today, no parent would allow a ten-year-old kid that kind of freedom. 

 The change in parents’ attitudes toward their children was immense in the years I was a teacher. Loving, helicopter parents, moms and dads who ask more questions about college than their children do, visited campuses every spring for the last two decades already, lugging their children with, most of them far less interested than they were. I never visited the college where I enrolled. Come September, my parents drove me there—500 miles—then left. That was it.

As I write, the Brits have suffered several vicious attacks of terrorism. Our President uses their tragedy to urge the implementation of his orders to shut the door to immigrants from certain Muslim countries. Some object, but fear is a motivator, and a political motivator too, to be sure. Fear sells.

 So, my daughter, this is a better answer than my eye-rolling:  yes, I’ve felt as if the world was about to end. I’m guessing we all have. We’ve all been afraid.  Even the psalmist. 

 While the psalms tell us bountifully about God, they’re even better at telling us about ourselves. “I will lift up my eyes to the hills,” he says in verse one of this faith-heavy psalm, “—where does my help come from?” There are times we all feel there’s no one out there to hold back the horror.

 You’re not alone. But that’s divinely true, isn’t it? It’s a joy to know you’re not alone.

The Rendezvous (2) -- James Beckwourth

That famous ad William Ashley in Saint Louie used to fish for recruits for his Rocky Mountain Fur Trade brought in men, even young men, who weren't choir boys or  ever would be. Hard as it is to believe in 1824,  Ashley was an equal opportunity employer. How can we know that? Because we know one of his recruits, at least, was African-American. 

James Beckwourth's father, using an old English family title, went by name of Sir Jennings Beckwith. Sir Jennings coupled with one of his slaves who gave birth to James Beckwourth, a multi-racial kid who was treated by his father, the old sources say, like a son, not a slave--which is to say educated and, in general, pampered.

Okay, but then how on earth did a Black man fare with a cast of mountain men, rough-an- tough hooligans who held less-than-charming prejudices? James the Black man didn't get drummed out of the corps. 

Why not? Sir Jennings' son James carried along a deed of emancipation that declared his freedom. He couldn't be cashed in like some runaway. So here's a word that's fallen out of use--manumission. One word, manumission, a word used to describe how freed slaves were granted, by their owners, their freedom. Once manumitted, we might say, James Beckwourth was free as a bird.

And he flew--did he ever. Once freed from his apprenticeship to an ornery  St. Louis  blacksmith, Beckwourth read the ad and signed up to be one of Ashley's rugged wilderness crew, where he spent most of the next decade as one of the original mountain men, taking a wife or two or three from the Crows, where he became the chief's adopted son and lived, quite comfortably in fact, while fighting the Crow's traditional enemies, the Blackfeet. 

There's oh-so-much more. He left the Crow people and became a commodities trader at places like Bent's Fort,  Sante Fe, and Taos, and in 1842 put up his own business at a lonesome place that would someday be named Pueblo, Colorado.

During the Gold Rush era, he went to the bank with his what he knew about the untraveled west, leading wild-eyed fortune seekers to the places they thought to make a fortune. 

And everywhere he went he fought Indians--Seminoles in Florda, renegade bands in California, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho back on the plains. When finally he grew old, he met a man named Thomas Bonner at Beckwourth's own country hotel. Bonner listened to Jim Beckwouth tales and wrote them down into a book, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth: Mountaineer, Scout and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians (1856).

Beckwourth didn't have to lie about the happenings in his life, but he did--or so say some historians. Sometimes it's hard to measure tall tales.

Late in life, he went back to the Crow, where he'd come son of the chief way back in the ancient past. No one knows how he died, or at least no one's talking about it. A rumor claims one of his ex-wives found a way to get back at him. 

Not nice, but it sort of fits, don't you think?

Was he here? Had to be. He was, in short, almost everywhere else. 

  

A Rendezvous (i)

 

When William Ashley, THE William Ashley of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, came back up to St. Louis from far up the Missouri, all the way to the Bighorn River that first time, the load of furs he took back with him was enough to blow out his pretty substantial pockets. It was 1824, and what Ashley had attended—he never trapped a beaver himself—was a celebration/festival/sales meeting of a hundred or more mountain men, his men, his employees, who had, like never before, gathered together near a fork in the Green River, somewhere close to where a town named McKinnon, Wyoming lies today.

It was Ashley’s idea to substantially alter the commonly held way in which fur companies gathered in the bounty. Instead of waiting for the trappers to get to St. Louis to bring in the county, it was Ashley’s idea to go get the furs himself, venture up the Missouri River to get to a place agreed upon for a “rendezvous,” the first of the famous rendezvous, rowdy celebrations, get-togethers of men who’d hardly seen other human beings for something close to a year.

William Ashley might have been a little scared of handling all that bounty, $50,000 worth, in fact, 1.5 million in pelts in today's cash, but then what he knew was that as long as he kept his head down, he wasn’t in imminent danger of being robbed. It’s not as if swash-buckling pirates roamed the Missouri back then. Few people were likely capable of imagining the wealth of what he had in the boat.

He must have worn a smile because his “rendezvous” idea was a winner he wasn’t about to abandon. All the way down the river, right here where the Big Sioux flows into the Missouri, he had to be thinking of what manner of vice and malefaction next year’s wilderness jamboree was going to entertain. If you stand up on the South Sioux City bridge, you can almost hear him cackle.

What he’d done, almost blindly, is hired some real ringers with an ad that ran, famously in an 1822 St. Louie newspaper: “One hundred enterprising young men… to ascend the Missouri River to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years,” which means, of course, that the winners all had to pass by our place at least once on their way up the Missouri River.

Who were the ringers? Well, Jim Bridger for one, who was 18 when he answered Ashley’s ad. He’d never been any further west than St. Louis. He spent the next 20 years wandering from the Canadian border to the Spanish forts of New Mexico, from Missouri to Utah. When he stumbled on the Great Salt Lake, he thought it was the Pacific Ocean. In fact, he may have been the first white man to Old Faithful blow its top.

Then there was Jedidiah Smith, the parson of the bunch, often credited with discovering overland routes that became major highways during the Gold Rush. Smith lost a scalp to a grizzly, but got it back when his buddies sewed it back on.

And who can forget Hugh Glass, mauled by a bear and left for dead, a man whose will to revenge kept him alive but sense of humanity finally conquered all those troubled demons in his memory, a legendary character still alive in the works of John Niehardt and Frederick Manfred.

How about James Beckwourth, an African-American who shows up almost everywhere across the continent, including a significant tour of duty with the Crows, serving, some say, as their head man.

Ashley’s home base was St. Louis, but when he went afield to pick up the good, he, like the others, passed right by the confluence of three river which became Sioux City. We can’t call them residents, but they were here, if not on the river then on the great river road you can still note with its brand new sign up on our Old Missouri River Trail.

Just go stand there sometime and imagine, with Ashley and his crew gracing our hills. Just imagining all those tough-as-leather mountain men, their wives, their donkeys, their furs—just imagining our story makes our world a bigger place.

Let's say, just for kicks, that our President suddenly gets the message that unless something changes, unless something makes an 180-degree shift, it's going to be lights out for him and his precious cargo-carrying administration come November. Let's just say, for sake of argument that reality looks him right in the eye, as Nathan did David, and says "you're the man," you're the cause of the absolute mess we're in.  You done it, not fake news or those lousy commie dems.

Let's just say, again, for sake of argument, that all of a sudden he gets it, maybe even gets real, honest-to-goodness faith, begins to understand that we all stand in need of grace, even him, that his hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I'm bringing up religious madness only because he seems to deal in it, criticizing the pope, running an AI pic that makes him into a savior, Trump bibles for sale--you know. 

But, just for kicks, let's try to get our minds around Donald Trump becoming a saint in any of the great world's religions--a Buddhist monk, a Native medicine man, a Muslim cleric. Let's just assume that suddenly he comes to an understanding of the fact that he's not his people's "retribution" (remember that speech?), but his people's humble servant.

Let's just assume that he is the blessed recipient of some kind of Damascus Road experience that leaves him mute, in furlongs of abject humiliation that he can't Truth Social his way out of.

Let's assume it happened, okay?

How does he communicate his redeemed soul? How does he comport himself for what's left of a largely ruined second term? How does he express that the dominating word in his vocabulary will from that day forward be love and not graft? 

How on earth could he proceed?

Well, easy, really. He'd have to make clear, in word and deed, that he is reversing course on EVERYTHING his agenda had formulated and acted upon. He'd have to start by being human, by hurting for and with the hurting. He'd have to reinstate USAID programs he cut with such relish. He'd have to back off his war in the Persian Gulf, call Putin the murderer he is, tell each and every one of his billionaire buddies to use their bounty to help rebuild medical care for all. He'd have to call of the uniforms and tell the nation that what we really need is a standardized program of immigration, then, with Congress, build it.

He'd have to either shut down Truth Social or else use it to broadcast meditations on the sacred words of whatever world religion has grabbed his attention. 

In short, he'd have to be something, someone he isn't. 

Could that happen? Even if he really wanted to, even if he came to see how perilous his rule is right now? Even if the impossible became possible?

Could that happen? Seriously, could that happen?

If you're a true believer in whatever world religion you or he might choose, the answer to that question is "Of course it could happen. The Almighty is all-powerful--nothing, no one stands beyond his love and rule. 

So could he?

"Lord, I believe," both me and the man with the possessed daughter said. "Help thou my unbelief."

The West

 

The West can still take your breath away, as millions of vacationers know when they head out every summer. There are untolled places in the American West that are just as untrammeled as they were in the late 18th century, when the only human residents were indigenous. 

One can only imagine the abject astonishment when any Easterner would arrive at vistas so wide open they seemed to swallow you.

There are some records, of course, like this passage from Thomas James, Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans.

On the third day we issued from very high and desolate mountains on both sides of us, whose tops are covered with snow throughout the year, and came upon a scene of beauty and magnificence combined, unequalled by any other view of nature that I ever beheld. It really realized all my conceptions of the Garden of Eden. 

In the west the peaks and pinnacles of the Rocky Mountains shone resplendent in the sun. The snow on their tops sent back a beautiful reflection of the rays of the morning sun. From the sides of the dividing ridge between the waters of the Missouri and Columbia there sloped gradually down to the bank of the river we were on, a plain, then covered with every variety of wild animals peculiar to this region, while on the east an­other plain arose by a very gradual ascent and extended as far as the eye could reach. 

These and the mountain sides were dark with buffa­loes, elk, deer, moose, wild goats, and wild sheep; some grazing, some lying down under the trees, and all enjoying a perfect millennium of peace and quiet. On the margin the swans, geese, and pelicans cropped the grass or floated on the surface of the water. The cottonwood trees seemed to have been planted by the hand of man on the bank of the river to shade our way, and the pines and cedars waved their tall majestic heads along the base and on the sides of the mountains.

 The whole landscape was that of the most splendid English park. The stillness, beauty, and loveliness of this scene struck us all with indescribable emotions. We rested on the oars and enjoyed the whole view in silent astonishment and admiration. Nature seemed to have rested here, after creating the wild mountains and chasms among which we had voyaged for two days. Dougherty, as if inspired by the scene with the spirit of poetry and song, broke forth in one of Burns noblest lyrics, which found a deep echo in our hearts. 

"a vast expanse of moving, plunging, rolling, rush­ing life"

Maybe gas prices will open up Yellowstone this summer. Otherwise, it's as busy as a downtown intersection. Lots of attractions, of course, but one of the majors is the buffalo. Every year some clown gets mashed by some angry bull, but it doesn't stop dozens of others from getting out of the car and risking the ire of these wonderful mammoth beasts, of whom all of us can be proud.

This is part of the herd belonging to the Yankton Sioux, on their reservation land. They're a wonder to see because, rare as they are, they remind all of us of our world once was. 

They bestow a reverence that downright spiritual.

This passage from Warren Angus Ferris' Life in the Rocky Mountains (1843), describes a scene thousands witnessed 200 years ago but is almost unimaginable today. 

But, go ahead and imagine--

On the fourteenth, hurrah, boys! we saw a buffalo; a solitary, stately old chap, who did not wait an invitation to dinner, but toddled off with his tail in the air. We saw on the sixteenth a small herd of ten or twelve, and had the luck to kill one of them. It was a patriarchal allow, poor and tough, but what of that? we had a roast presently, and hamped the gristle with a zest. Hunger is said to be a capital sauce, and if so our meal was well seasoned, for we had been living for some days on boiled corn alone, and had the grace to thank heaven for meat of any quality. Our hunters killed also several antelopes, but they were equally poor, and on the whole we rather preferred the balance of the buffalo for supper. 

People soon learn to be dainty, when they have a choice of viands. Next day, oh, there they were, thousands and thou­sands of them! Far as the eye could reach the prairie was literally cov­ered, and not only covered but crowded with them. 

In very sooth it was a gallant show; a vast expanse of moving, plunging, rolling, rush­ing life--a literal sea of dark forms, with still pools, sweeping currents, and heaving billows, and all the grades of movement from calm repose to wild agitation. 

The air was filled with dust and bellowings, the prairie was alive with animation. I never realized before the majesty and power of the mighty tides of life that heave and surge in all great gatherings of human or brute creation. 

The scene had here a wild sublimity of aspect, that charmed the eye with a spell of power, while the natural sympathy of life with life made the pulse bound and almost madden with excitement. Jove but it was glorious! and the next day too, the dense masses pressed on in such vast numbers, that we were compelled to halt, and let them pass to avoid being overrun by them in a literal sense. 

On the following day also, the number seemed if possible more countless than before, surpassing even the prairie-black­ening accounts of those who had been here before us, and whose strange tales it had been our wont to believe the natural extravagance of a mere travelers' turn for romancing, but they must have been true, for such a scene as this our language wants words to describe, much less to exaggerate. On, on, still on, the black masses come and thicken--an ebless deluge of life is moving and swelling around us!

Buffalo rank high on vacation destinations because somehow even a couple of hundred create visions of what once was the world where we live.

Sunday Morning Meds (Psalm 121)

 

“The LORD watches over you—

the LORD is your shade at your right hand. . .”

 

            What he told the world is that since 1895, American news sources have alternated warnings about our changing climate.  For almost forty years prior to the Great Depression, most opinion-makers touted the present danger of a returning ice age.

            And that’s not all.  What he said is that arch-political scientists and their friends in the news media have beating the drum about global warming for years now, when there is no such phenomena—or, if there is, it’s nothing more than a temporary shift, our climate and planet far more dynamic than some would think.

            What he claimed has been proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that the so-called “hockey stick,” the heavily reported spike in climate temperatures throughout the 20^th century after thousands of years of constancy, has been proven totally false by Canadian researchers who simply tore it apart.  That spike is phony baloney. 

            What he told all of us is that the National Academy of Science has shown conclusively that humanity has suffered through minor climate changes before, that what is called “the Medieval Warm Period” (900 A.D. to 1500 A.D.) and “the Little Ice Age” (1500 to 1850) are bona fide proof of natural and sustainable climate variations—and that therefore the propaganda about “global warming” today is just hype and hooey.

            What he said is that the Arctic isn’t warming but cooling.  He’s reminded us all that sixty prominent Canadian scientists sent a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister, saying that “'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes occur all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise.'"

            He claimed that restraining so-called greenhouse gases has real economic costs, stifling business activity and a bustling economy, and therefore hindering progress in dealing with world poor.  He quoted this headline, "Climate Changes Endanger World's Food Output," called alarmist and dangerous, and then pointed out that it ran in the New York Times in 1975, thirty years ago.

            He is a senator, and the speech he delivered, years ago already, is much longer, full of facts and documented anecdotes and references to studies.

            I have neither the time nor the competence to study the issue of global warming thoroughly, and whether the Senator is even partially right, scientists themselves appear to disagree.  So the nature of the question changes in my circumstance:  it’s not “what do you believe about global warming?”  Instead, it’s “who do you believe?”

            And I choose not to believe the Senator. I choose to believe instead a list as long as my arm of people who radically disagree with his claims. I may be wrong.

            But I also choose to believe the psalmist when he says—with nary a hint of global warming—that this God of his (who’s apparently at his right hand armed with a parasol) is watching over all of us—polar meltdown or coming ice age, and that this God, my God, is my shade from all kinds of heat. That truth is transcendent. 

            He is my only comfort—in both deathly cold January and the dog days of mid-July. He is my only comfort. That I know by faith.