Christmas white, winter cold and the spirit of place

I’ve been re-reading two books by Rick Bass as Christmastide settles in --- “Winter,” published in 1991, and the slightly more recent “Book of Yaak,” published in 1996. Both include meditations on this season of lengthening days and deepening cold as well as passionate pleas for conservation of the land and its resources, necessary according to Bass (and to me) to nourish the spirit of a place, or genius loci.

For Bass, the setting is his home, Montana’s Yaak Valley, located in the far northwest corner of that state adjoining Idaho on the west and Canada to the north --- a place of rare natural survivals and increasing manmade threats (notably clearcutting of timber in unprotected wilderness) but few of the man-made amenities most of us are accustomed to (electricity and telephones among them).

“Winter” settles my mind when I am tempted to complain about mornings like yesterday’s, when the sun rose pale yellow and cold from the southeast over a landscape covered in snow and ice and the temperature at dawn was zero. Or this morning, when light snow was falling again.

Spirit of place was a recurring theme as I moved from place to place and among various groups of people in the opening days of a Christmas season rich in nature’s challenges but overflowing with good will and good company.

So this is less about the former, “Winter” and “Book of Yaak” (everyone should read both, seriously), and more about the latter, although they are interconnected.

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Christmas Eve dawned here wet as the first major storm of winter closed in (the blizzard of 2009, memorable a couple of weeks ago, actually occurred in late fall). It was clear that the ice and snow would come --- creeping toward us from the west; the question was, when?

On that question hinged many Christmas travel plans as well as the future of evening services at many churches, including my own.

We had something moderately grand in mind at St. Andrew’s, since Christmas Eve is one of few occasions when Episcopalians are generally comfortable with dusting off the word “Mass,” polishing up the censer and finding the incense, planning a processional --- going the whole liturgical nine yards.

But after a morning of e-mail and telephone exchanges, it became evident this would not happen. The vicar, who lives in Albia and who had surgery a couple of weeks ago, wisely decided it was not a good idea to venture out as late afternoon turned to night with no assurance that slush-covered highways would not abruptly turn to solid ice. Beyond that, our members are scattered geographically from Russell to Lucas and down to Corydon and faced similar travel dilemmas.

Finally, the three of us who live closest to the church decided to proceed --- even if we were the only ones able to make it.

As it turned out, that was the best possible decision. The cold held off and as 5 p.m. approached more and more people appeared --- our scattered parishioners, others who appear infrequently but always at Christmas and a good number of welcome visitors. Denominationally, we ranged from Roman Catholic to Unitarian Universalist.

The service was simple, candles and carols, a blend of two liturgies from the Book of Common Prayer into something that actually seemed as if we’d planned to do it that way in the first place, and after coffee and some good food we all made it home safely, feeling as if Christmas had begun as it should.

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By Christmas morning, the cold had arrived, snow was falling and roads had developed an impenetrable coat of ice. Not an ideal situation for those who had planned to travel elsewhere for Christmas dinner.

I had been invited to tag along with friends to dinner at the home of Martha, an indefatigable 80-something-year-old, who with her own family absent had decided to create one. She also had been our organist at St. Andrew’s Thursday evening, leaving after our service to attend her own, at First Lutheran.

The short trip to Martha’s involved creeping along the squirrel road’s ice-covered pavement, then navigating the left turn onto Martha’s long and icy lane to arrive finally at her rambling old farm house at the edge of the woods.

As the morning had progressed, what Martha had planned as dinner for six expanded to include a dozen as friends’ travel plans were canceled. I believe she said she had reset the dining room table three times, adding a leaf to the table each time someone else called. Like the loaves and fishes, however, the food supply expanded and we all were wonderfully well fed.

My friend Mary Ellen and I sometimes have conversations based on the premise that Iowa is not only the land between two rivers but also in effect a relatively small village between two rivers --- that it is remarkably easy still for us to connect with one another.

When Paula, the Lutheran pastor’s wife --- headed for a southern Illinois Christmas that morning but dissuaded a few miles east of town on ice --- walked through Martha’s kitchen door with her husband and a plate of krumkakke, the connection was made.

I am in part Norwegian, not by blood but by osmosis, something that happens when you live for many years among Norwegians-by-descent in small towns centered on Lutheran churches and where the alternative to cussing up and down Main Street is liberal use of “Uff da!”

So I am mildly homesick at times for the spirit of place that a tightly gathered Norwegian community fosters at Christmas and mildly distressed that after one passes the midpoint of Iowa headed south on Interstate 35 it is no longer possible to purchase homemade lefse and commercially-produced kringla in most grocery stores as the holidays approach.

Of course, as someone pointed out, neither are Dutch letters quite so readily available north of that point, diminishing in frequency as distance from Pella increases. So the south has its culinary advantages, too.

Paula, of German descent, also is part Norwegian by osmosis --- a graduate of Luther College. And while studying at Decorah she had learned among other things the fine arts of krumkakke, lefse and rosettes.

The connections multiplied a few minutes later when other potential Christmas travelers frustrated by ice appeared to gather around Martha’s table. This couple was native to Manly, just up the pike in Worth County from Mason City, and more than familiar with Grace Lutheran in Hanlontown, where some of my favorite holiday bazaar food memories are based.

Going on 20 years ago, after a son had accepted a job at the Corydon hospital, they had come south to visit and came to feel increasingly at home in these southern hills. Eventually, they moved to Chariton, leaving north Iowa behind, even though their son no longer lived in the area. That is genius loci at work, a place snaring people simply because it feels and looks like home.

As we ate, then retired to the living room to sit and talk, the snow continued, the cold deepened and the wind rose until finally it was time to go home laden as usually happens on occasions like this with more food than we’d arrived with. Had I slid through the curve and landed in Calvary Cemetery rather than negotiating the turn to creep along its north boundary, I’d have had a big box of fudge to sustain me.

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Saturday was a good day to stay at home and so I mostly did, but set out after church on Sunday morning for Mary Ellen’s Christmas gathering over the river and through the woods perhaps 45 minutes southwest of here.

A few miles south into Wayne County on slush-covered Highway 14, a few white-knuckle miles west on the ice-covered Cambria blacktop and then, having slowed gradually to a complete stop in order to negotiate the turn, onto the security of gravel at the Cambria Cemetery. This narrow road takes you up hill and down, then having crested the far side of the South Chariton valley snakes south along the ridge. Finally, a right turn, a sudden plunge into the woods and back into the South Chariton valley, then up and out and around a curve and there you are.

It’s a lovely place, but if I lived there I’d probably get nothing done in winter other than sit in front of the bank of windows on the south wall of the living room watching the multitude of birds that utilize a half dozen or more feeders in the small trees and shrubs just outside.

As I’ve probably written before, Mary Ellen arrived here to live full-time serendipitously from Mason City at about the time I finished my move to Chariton. Her late brother bought the place as his idea retirement home --- privacy, lots of trees and wildlife, hills, a pond --- and then became critically ill. Mary Ellen became his caretaker, moving him at last to Mason City to die. Inheriting the acreage, she came south to prepare it for sale, fell in love with it, put her big house in Mason City on the market instead and moved. Genius loci again.

And more of that was at work around Mary Ellen’s table Sunday. One guest was descended from the first pioneers to settle permanently here in the 1850s and still lived across and down the road; another had grown up in the old farmhouse just across the drive now used for storage, had moved away, then returned to live a couple of miles northwest.

Another at the table was by her own account a newcomer, drawn to Wayne County by friends, circumstance and the fact it had seemed like home from the start. As the story was told, the woman’s closest friends operated a family farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia --- a beautiful area endangered by its desirability. She, divorced with two adult children, lived on a smaller farm nearby and had always handled the accounting end of her friends’ farming operation.

The time came when one of the other owners of her friends’ farm wanted cash for her share and the only option was to sell the entire operation, easy to do as developers always were more than willing to pay premium prices for farmland that could be subdivided and sold in small tracts to the affluent.

But her friends had no interest in any way of life other than farming and sale of the land in Chester County, where a per-acre price of $35,000 is not unusual, meant that they had no future there --- they could not afford to buy land. As a result, they decided to move west and settled on an area near Allerton --- land was affordable, the surroundings were beautiful and it felt like home. Their friend, our dinner companion, with little to hold her in Pennsylvania, sold her own small farm, bought a small farm in Wayne County and came along.

It was a fascinating group around that dining room table Sunday, Wayne Countyans old, new and honorary, all of whom could have been elsewhere had they chosen differently, but drawn together and held by the spirit of a place.

You may live in southern Iowa if ...

My friend Nancee, a great forwarder of whatever she finds interesting, sent along a list this morning patterned after Jeff Foxworthy's shtick, "you know you're a redneck if ...." Modified a little, it becomes "you may live in southern Iowa if ...." And for the most part they're true. The nice thing about the list is that you're free to make up a few of your own.

If your suntan stops at a line curving around the middle of your forehead, you may live near Promise City.

If you know where Bunch (Paris) is, you definately live near Drakesville.

If your town has an equal number of bars and churches, you may live in Russell.

If you have regular long telephone conversations with people who dial wrong numbers, you may live in Leon.

If you measure distance in minutes and hours ("it's bout a half-hour drive) rather than miles, you may live in Corydon.

If, while driving, you wave at everyone you meet whether you know them or not you may live at Attica.

If you know several people who have hit deer with their vehicles several times, you may live at Chariton.

If you see people wearing camouflage at social events (including weddings), you might live in Garden Grove.

If you're not surprised at visitation for a deceased neighbor to observe that his remains are dressed in bib overalls, you may live at Allerton.

If you install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked, you might live near Grand River.

If you carry jumper cables in your car and your wife or girlfriend knows how to use them, you might live in Osceola

If your idea of creative landscaping is a statue of a deer next to your blue spruce, you might live in Humeston.

If going "down south" means Missouri, you might live in Mystic.

If your neighbor throws a party to celebrate his new pole shed you may live near Confidence.

If you think people north of Indianola talk funny, you may live at Lineville.

If you know what Missouri crossings and grader ditches are, you may live in Clio.

If your tree stand has a 911 address, you may live at Norwood.

If you have three pickups but no car, you may live at Melrose.

If ironed jeans and polished boots are Sunday-go-to-meeting gear, you may live at Millerton.

If you know where New York is, you either live at Bethlehem or Millerton.

If you and your date went to the junior-senior prom on a tractor, you may live at Albia.

If you think a traffic jam involves five pickups and two cars waiting to pass a tractor on Highway 2, you may live at Seymour.

If you know where all the Yoders live, you may live at Bloomfield.

If you actually understand these jokes, you do live in southern Iowa.

Solstice

Here we sit four days before Christmas poised on the edge of another developing winter storm, bad news for those whose holiday plans include travel (mine don’t for the first time in many years and I’m grateful for that). The current track would put the heaviest snow beginning Wednesday --- up to a foot --- in north Iowa and deliver heavy rain to south and southeast Iowa, turning to snow early Christmas morn. The trick here will be to make the transition from rain to snow without excessive ice. And then again everything could change by Thursday, so we’ll see.



Whatever the case, I’m warm and dry and celebrating (in a modest way) the winter solstice, the second of my new years (the first was the beginning of Advent). In case you missed it, the solar year turned at 11:47 this morning Iowa time. This has been the shortest day of the year for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere; and this night, the longest. Very gradually now the days will begin to lengthen and, for a time, the cold to deepen. This also is the official beginning of winter in our culture, but also called midwinter since beginnings and ends vary from time to time and culture to culture.

So I have lighted the four candle lanterns on the front steps against the darkness, and will continue to do that until Epiphany; and am surrounded inside by the lights and colors of Christmas, many of which carry forward traditions and symbols that predate the birth of Christ by millennia.

The church has never been shy about recognizing a good thing and turning it to its own purposes and it surely is no accident, since the historic date of Christ’s birth is unknown, that the early fathers and mothers planted Christmas, the Christ Mass, on Dec. 25, which under the Julian calendar (established 47 B.C.) was the date of the solstice.

As the photos indicate, I have a few too many signs and symbols of the season around me here and there are more --- but some of those have been farmed out elsewhere for a few weeks to brighten things up for others. This is a small house, after all.


Everything here has a story and reminds me of someone --- each ornament on the tree, that hot pink ca. 1970 “Feliz Navidad” card sent by an Army buddy who declined to allow the fact he was in the middle of a war in Vietnam prevent him from sending out personally designed and custom-made creations, other cards, also framed, that were circulating in my family as early as the 1880s. And so it goes.

It’s a good night to sit here by the fire (actually, a furnace) and remember absent friends, think fondly of those still present, count blessings and look ahead to the new year now dawning with faith and hope.

UFOs and Mountain Lions

Some Iowans down here in the southern hills believe in unidentified flying objects, others in mountain lions. The UFOs I doubt, but so far as mountain lions are concerned --- I’m a believer.

So it was a mixed blessing to read in this morning’s Des Moines Register that the Department of Natural Resources, always nervous when a natural resource presents itself, has acknowledged the presence on Monday of a 125-pound male mountain lion near Marengo. That’s the good news.

The bad news, as you might expect, is that the deer hunter who spotted it, 48-year-old Raymond Goebel of Cedar Rapids, after thinking about it and going so far as to investigate the legality of it all, shot that sucker dead --- just because he could (it’s not illegal to kill a mountain lion in Iowa in large part because the DNR insists there are none, or at the most one or two).

Same thing happened down on the South Chariton near Promise City in January 2004 when a hunter spotted another mountain lion lunching on a deer carcass. I happened to be in the general neighborhood at the time, saw the pictures, heard the stories.

When in doubt about what it is, kill it --- that seems to be the prevailing approach.

After that 2004 sighting, and shooting, there were and continue to be a good number of mountain lion reports in Lucas County. I generally take the fleeting glimpse and big paw print stories with a grain of salt, but there’s really no reason to believe we do not have mountain lions here. There are, after all, those thousands of acres of state forest; more thousands of acres in the Conservation Reserve Program; plenty of wooded and wild river and creek valleys --- Chariton, South Chariton, Whitebreast, Otter, Cedar and more --- to serve as wildlife highways; and plenty of game come supper time.

Nor do I have reason to doubt my friend Suzy, for example, who lives out in the hills near Lucas and whose daily commute takes her into the hills as evening settles in. Driving home this fall, her path was crossed by a big cat --- bigger than a bobcat and without its distinctive look. Most likely, she thinks --- your guessed it --- a mountain lion.

So like I said, I think the big cats are living among us although very quietly, sparse in numbers, causing little fuss. They were native to Iowa, you know, until killed out and chased out during the 19th century. So it’s kind of like a homecoming, although the welcome so far hasn’t been very warm.

I like the idea, even though it does give me pause when several miles down the Cinder Path and fairly deep in the woods near or after sunset or on the trails through the woods elsewhere in the evening. And I’m willing to live with uncertainty. Surely it isn’t necessary to shoot the critters just to prove a point.

"Bracing," you might call it ...

The temperature was a crisp minus-1 according to bank signs when I circled the square a few minutes ago while exercising the pickup as we headed for the grocery store (grapes, bananas and a big bag of Pillsbury frozen "Grands" biscuits in case you're interested). But it's a spectacularly beautiful clear day after two days of storm, as the photo looking south down the street in front of the house will testify, so who can complain? Unless, of course, you're still snowed in.

I suppose we had about a foot of snow in Chariton commencing overnight Sunday-Monday and bitter winds Wednesday that redistributed all that had fallen. We dodged many of the storm-related bullets here, the streets were cleared promptly and I could have been out and about yesterday afternoon had it not taken so long to clear the driveway.

The drive had vanished under a consistent foot to foot and a half of snow from
house to street so a good percentage of Wednesday was devoted to clearing that away. My snow strategy involves shoveling for 10-15 minutes then coming inside for 10-15 minutes to read and drink coffee.

I put a Dutch oven full of soup on the stove in the morning to simmer all day, had plenty of frest fruit and biscuits on hand --- who could ask for anything more?

I was rereading one of Edward Abbey's later collections of essays, "One Life at at Time, Please," the ideal sort of thing on a day when each chapter could be punctuated with a round of shoveling.

Many know Edward Abbey's work; other's don't. To my mind he was one of the finest writers the 20th century produced on the topic of living as an equal rather than dominant species in the natural world. Every new "nature writer" still is compared to Abbey, the "new" Edward Abbey if male; the "female Edward Abbey" if not --- including the wonderfully talented Terry Tempest Williams. Everyone should read, at the least, his lyrical "Desert Solitaire."

But Abbey's been dead for several years now, his body secured in a sleeping bag by friends and driven deep into the desert for a secret burial so that his physical remains might truly blend with the landscape of the Southwest that he loved. And I keep wondering what he'd write about, say, the last 10 years, dubbed by one major news magazine "the decade from hell."

I can guess, since Abbey left no sacred cow existing up until the time of his death ungored, but I suppose we'll never know for sure.

Walking in a winter ...

...well, you know the rest. We are poised here on the fine edge of what is forecast to be the biggest and most widespread winter storm in a decade, winter storm warning today; blizzard warning overnight and Wednesday. So far, the storm seems to be tracking a little to the west of Lucas County so perhaps we'll be spared some of it. At least, I hope, the projected 8-to-10-foot drifts.

I've shoveled the driveway twice now, but that will all be for naught if the wind picks up as predicted and redistributes what has fallen. Still, it's not been an unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours. We awoke Monday to perhaps three inches of snow and about that amount fell overnight Monday-Tuesday and has fallen since.

I made it out to Ellis Greenhouse at Lucas Monday afternoon for a poinsettia (purveyors of southern Iowa's finest and most durable poinsettias), but didn't get out to Hunter Tree Farm (purveyors of ditto regarding Christmas trees, greenery and intesting Christmas accessories offered in the old, moved and restored May schoolhouse). That trip will come when the storm is over.

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My 9 a.m. meeting was canceled at 8:45 a.m. this morning, when I was already on the way to the museum, but as several had missed the cancellation calls, including cousins Ilene and the alternate Frank, those of us who appeared had a good time just talking.

I also waded through the snow with a camera since I thought it would be fun to take photos of some of the buildings on the museum campus in the snow. The A.J. Stephens house, the first home of the Lucas County Historical Society, is up top.

Andrew Jackson Stephens was a turn-of-the-century contractor who presumably built this house both to show off and to showcase a new-fangled building material --- a form of sand-colored hollow cast tile that when paired with blonde brick looks quite a bit like stone (Chariton's First Presbyterian Church also is built of this tile). For better or worse, it didn't catch on so homes of this scale built of that material are relatively rare.

It's really quite a nice house inside with double parlors separated by columns, a big stair hall, pleasant paneled dining room and vast kitchen downstairs; three large bedrooms, two small bedrooms, a bathroom and a surprising numbers of closets and storage areas upstairs.

It must have seemed a good idea at the time to stick a classical portico on the asymmetrical front of a turn-of-the-century house, but it looks a bit odd today. A classical facade demands symmetrically arranged window and door openings and those here are of all sizes and shapes and manage to look as if they were thrown at the front of the house and allowed to stay where they stuck.

The late Elizabeth Tuttle in her characteristic Elizabethan way insisted that A.J. patterned his house after Andrew Jackson's Tennessee home, Hermitage. Beyond the fact both have columns (the Hermitage has far more), there is no similarity whatsoever.

My great-aunt Mary (Stephens) Myers was one of A.J.'s daughters, so there were family stories about his financial ruin, reportedly caused by a major miscalculation when bidding on the building that still serves as Lucas County's jail and law enforcement center. Badly outdated, many wish that old fort hadn't been built quite so well (it declines to fall down, an act that would demand a replacement).


Puckerbrush School was the first building moved to the museum grounds --- from the northwest part of the county. It also was the first school my Grandfather Miller taught after he was licensed to teach in the 1890s.


Otterbein Church, originally located a few miles south of Chariton, was moved into town in 1976 as a Bicentennial project. My Redlingshafer great-great-grandparents, John and Isabelle, were among Otterbein's founders in 1866.


The log cabin, disassembled at its original location along Whitebreast Creek in northwest Lucas County and moved log by log into Chariton, is the most recent vintage building on the grounds. The main John L. Lewis Building, the barn and a blacksmith shop/storage building now under construction also are located on the museum campus. So if you plan to visit, wear sensible shoes. Lots of walking around.

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Frustrated with decorating my own Christmas tree --- the most overdecorated small tree in Lucas county --- on Saturday afternoon, I headed down to Corydon to view the results of Wayne County's Christmas tree and gingerbread house decorating contests, beautifully displayed in a commons area of the Pioneer Trails Museum.

That was fun and there were lots of beautiful trees (and interesting gingerbread houses) to look at (and vote for). The fact that my friend Bill was manning the welcome table had nothing to do with the fact that I voted for his tree, all decked out in Iowa State University cardinal red, in the "theme" category. Haven't heard who won, but no doubt will. I left in awe at the imagination and effort invested in many of those trees.

Pioneer Trails Museum, by the way, is I strongly suspect Iowa's finest county museum. It is just spectacular. I always get a kick out of "Amy's House," a cottage built inside the west wing where the Christmas trees and gingerbread houses were displayed.

Amy was Amy Robertson, of Promise City, both a great character and a great benefactor of all things Wayne County (and of Simpson College at Indianola). One of her final acts was to commemorate herself by commissioning this cottage inside the museum where the choice contens of her home were moved upon her death. I always enjoy this very Amyish display.

Originally, you entered the cottage and found youself in a sort of plexiglass box with views in various directions into all of the "rooms." I always wondered if this was an Amy design, intended to prevent the masses from breathing on her stuff. Now that Amy's been dead a good many years, the plexiglass has been removed and a vist is substantially less claustrophobic.

From the museum it was onward to First United Methodist church where I with uncharacteristic diplomacy did not mention the great battle involved in demolition during the 1960s of a wonderful old brick church and construction of this wonderful new (and far move convenient) structure.

The attraction here was the annual display of nativity sets (could there have been 100 or more of them?) that filled the parish hall. The nativities were fascinating in themselves, but the display was so wonderfully arranged and accessorized that just looking at that would have been worth the price of admission. Actually, come to think of it, admission was free, but you were invited to make a donation to the empty stocking fund, which the tree and gingerbread contests also benefitted. That donation was offset by the fact all comers were offered hot cider, cookies and a Christmas tree decoration --- in my case a small crocheted snowflake.

There was also a musical program at the Corydon theater Sunday afternoon, but I had another commitment, so couldn't make it down for that.

I wish I could figure out exactly why it is Wayne Countyans do so many things well, including holiday presentations like this. If I could, I'd bottle some of it and spike Lucas County's water supply. I'm just glad I grew up on the Lucas-Wayne County line, so can claim both.

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The "another commitment" Sunday was a great noon potluck at Grace Church in Albia --- good company, good conversation and good food; a combination that's hard to beat. As usual there was too much food, so I came home with enough of Lynn's and Kim's baked ham for two meals --- a treat unto itself.

It's not that I do not enjoy cooking; I do. And while I brought home ham, I made a fair trade by sending some of my cinnamon-streusel bread home with Tim. But I hate washing dishes. Part of the problem can be traced through my mother, from whom I learned to cook, to Verna, the cousin and permanent fixture of her childhood household from whom she learned to cook. It has been said of all of us that in the process of producing one fairly simple albeit tasty meal we manage to dirty every dish in the house. There's an element of truth to that, and lots of dish washing.

The photo below is of the interior of St. Andrew's on Sunday while I was trying unsuccessfully to take a photo I liked of the altar, which kept reflecting the flash back at me, dratted marble that it is. I should have used a tripod and natural light, but was in a hurry.

Like many Episcopal churches, St. Andrew's usually is not "greened" until shortly before Christmas Eve, so the Advent candle wreath at right and the stable on the side altar to the left are so far our principal decorations. Note the eagle lectern, something I think especially cool. On Christmas Eve, the altar will be ablaze with poinsettias. Maybe I'll remember to take the camera along then and have better luck.

War, Tiger Woods and World AIDS Day

We have moved abruptly this week into winter and plants still blooming beside the front door last week, uncharacteristically late in the season, are now decisively dead. A few flurries have fallen here; more to the north. I’ve wrapped a garland around the porch rail and after one false start, pulled a Christmas tree down from the rafters and put it up, bedecked with lights. More to come. The Advent candle lighted last Sunday in many churches, including mine, is called “Hope” by many. There still is some of that.

Rising before dawn and tuning in for a forecast and brief dose of the world’s news, the top headlines were aligned in this order: President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, the minor accident and apparent major infidelities of a golfer named Tiger Woods and White House gate-crashing on the part of a couple with no apparent justification for existence named Salahi. More than a little cause for despair here on several fronts.

World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, was for the most part overlooked despite the fact more than 30 million adults worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS as well as more than 2 million children, that an estimated 2 million died of AIDS-related disease in 2008 and that the number of those newly infected exceeds 2.5 million annually. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the HIV/AIDS hot zone.

It remains tricky to track AIDS in the United States because of inconsistent reporting practices, but by some estimates 1,200,000 are living with HIV/AIDS here, and the cumulative death toll in the pandemic to date is somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000. The majority of those who have died were gay men and gay sex continues to be the most frequent mode of transmission, followed by heterosexual sex and needle-sharing, suggesting that younger gay males in this age when HIV no longer inevitably kills are ignoring or forgetting lessons my generation learned the hard way.

There’s really no mystery as to why we are as a society disinterested in the expanding world AIDS pandemic. A newspaper editor I once worked with put it this way during a discussion about which disaster should and which shouldn’t be on the front page: Americans, he said, are just not interested in dead Africans, Asians and Hispanics. Not far from the truth, I’d guess, in a society where racism is entwined with many of our positive traits.

There’s also a lingering conviction I would guess, especially among self-professed sex-obsessed Christians, that HIV/AIDS is somehow a judgment from God against gay men and/or sexual transgressors.

I was lucky enough to avoid HIV infection. Iowa was and remains a safer place on many fronts. So I merely watched friends and former lovers and people admired from a distance die of AIDS. Lessons carried forward from that sorry time when AIDS equaled death remain, however: Never trust a heterosexual too far, place your faith in God and never in institutional Christianity.

Interesting times, these. I’ve gotten careless about wearing my well-worn AIDS ribbon, but have dusted it off and will do better.

Meditation upon setting forth to buy a desk

Several of us our setting forth after lunch to buy a new desk for the church office, which called to to mind the question, "How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?" Here are a few of the answers, arranged by number. We're about to find out which, if any, apply:

What? Change the light bulb? My grandmother donated that light bulb!

What? A new light bulb? What’s wrong with the old one?

What? A new light bulb? Remember the light bulb we used to have? Can’t we get that one back?

What? Episcopalians use candles. Always have. Always will. Since when do we need light bulbs?

What? If God had intended Episcopalians to use light bulbs, He would not have created the sun and the moon.

None. Darkness is in the nature of the bulb. It would be harmful and disrespectful to violate its nature and natural dignity.

One, providing the light bulb wants to change.

Two. One to pour the sherry and one to call the electrician.

Three. One to change the bulb. two to form a committee to select a proper memorial to commemorate the old bulb.

Four. One to change the bulb, one to bless the elements, one to mix the martinis and one to compose a toast to the old light bulb.

Five. One to change it; four to discuss how much better they liked the old one.

Six: One to clear it with the vestry, two to debate Rite I (incandescent) vs. Rite II (fluorescent), two to notify all communicants of the proposed change, one to call the electrician.

The entire congregation: One to clear it with the rector, one to clear it with the vestry, one to clear it with the bishop, two to select a bulb in harmony with the architectural integrity of the building, three to debate whether the cost should be covered by the memorial or capital improvement fund, four to select and call a contractor, the remainder to discuss how much more aesthetically satisfying the light cast by the old bulb was.