Front porch sitting

Well, if I had a front porch I'd be sitting on it right now instead of buried deep inside the house typing. But I don't. Newer houses tend not to have them and that's too bad. It's been front-porch weather this week and cutting the grass without worrying about the next thunderstorm is on today's agenda.

I'm cheating a little by including here a photo from the Lucas County Historical Society collection of Chariton's old Elijah Copeland house --- with a front porch. You can read a little more about the house and its former location by clicking here, as well as take a look if you like at photos from the society's June 18 arts and crafts fair.

As mentioned earlier, I had an invite Monday morning to a front porch party --- when was the last time you've been to one of those? It was a great event involving a dozen people or more on the porch of a grand old home that could have accommodated a couple of dozen more. Meg brought in raspberries picked that morning down on the old home place, now hers --- and I really appreciated that.

It was so pleasant, in fact --- sitting there visiting, eating and watching the world go by --- that the noon whistle sneaked up on us.

We got to talking Monday about how few people you see outside just sitting these days. Working, sure. But most of the time we're inside even when allocated time to relax --- watching television, playing with our computers, totally air-conditioned, cut off from our surroundings.

That grand old house offered some other lessons about how we once lived in the summer (although certainly not in most instances on that scale) --- The 11 main rooms have extremely high ceilings, the building is surrounded by trees and porches and that combination means little artificial cooling is required (the same cannot be said for winter heat, however).

The other thing about front porch sitting was that neighborliness was encouraged --- it just seems natural to wander over and sit and visit for a while if your neighbors are sitting outside just sitting, too.

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The other question of the day is, where the heck did June go to? They'll begin blocking off parts of the square fairly soon for July 4th celebration --- not quite on the scale it used to be when I was a kid, but still nice. For some reason, we always seemed to be putting up hay on the 4th, but always managed to get cleaned up, organized and into town for an hour or so of carnival rides and greasy food before the fireworks. This always was especially interesting to me as a very little kid because carnival rides always made my dad sick, so it was never a question of if, but when ...

The down side to all of that, however, was that summer seemed to be on the wane after the 4th --- and sill does. And we've barely begun to enjoy it.

The Sunday morning church service on the courthouse lawn is another thing I enjoy, but even that has its perils. There are congregations that won't participate because they're afraid they'll miss out when the collection plate is passed (although those who attend are invited to designate a recipient for their offerings) and others who firmly believe they'll go straight to hell if caught worshipping with Methodists, ELCA Lutherans, Episcopalians and the like. But it all works out.

I suppose it's always been that way up to a point. My granddaddy always used to say he'd just as leave not go if he seriously throught there'd be Methodists in heaven, but still ....

Sunshine and allergy cures

The National Weather Service map always displays nine little squares to report in brief what the forecast is for five consecutive days separated by four nights. This morning, the days were all "sunshine" and the nights all "mostly clear" when I clicked on Chariton's approximate location along Highway 34. Wow. It's been weeks ... It's a miracle! Well, probably not --- just seems like one.

At least we've all had something to talk about all the time down here where the weather always is a topic of conversation. Visiting over supper down in the country last night, we decided two inches of rain had fallen early Sunday at Chariton, about an inch and a half several miles south and even less in the Corydon area. I managed to sleep through that one, but did notice the squish factor when setting out across the back yard to collect altar flowers about 7.

As a rule, Chariton doesn't flood --- a factor of its location on a collection of small ridges adding up to one big one that separates the Missouri and Mississippi river drainages. There were a couple of modest exceptions last weekend. West Court Avenue cuts west from the southwest corner of the square down what once obviously was a stream bed with hills on either side before catching a stream that still runs down to the river. Traffic was disrupted briefly there. And the apartments a block south of here were built in a hollow designed to hold water --- which it did again. Minor damage there.

But for now it looks as if we'll all have a chance to dry out a little. Maybe I'll celebrate by waiting until say Thursday and mowing the lawn all at once instead of daily in small segments based upon how fast its components dry out.

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Chasing dust yesterday afternoon, and sneezing, I got to thinking about friends some years back who developed allergies. A helpful physician suggested that they had suddenly become overly sensitive to their environment, but because this was just at the dawn of the pills-for-every-purpose era --- action rather than medication was required.

Carpets were pulled up to reveal hardwood floors, lavishly upholstered furniture retired, mattresses, pillows and the like encased to prevent whatever it was they contained from escaping and super filters installed on everything that had a blower. It didn't work that well, but my friends did feel righteous in their simplified surroundings and there's always a degree of solace in self-righteousness.

In a year or two, he unexpectedly (to the rest of us at least) sold at clearance-sale prices all the stock of the business he had operated as a family obligation for many years and auctioned off the building. She quit her teaching job --- and off they went leaving behind a disgruntled mother and three college-age kids miffed because home no longer was where they had expected it to always be.

In their new life, they managed jointly a series of venues owned by a corporation, moving regularly based partly on whim and partly on available venues. All venues were heavily carpeted, lavishly upholstered and not equipped with anti-allergenic filters. But their allergies had disappeared that morning they pulled out of the old hometown headed elsewhere.

So there's something to be said sometimes for running away from home. It's on my mind every time I'm confronted by the need for serious house work.

On the other hand, the sun's shining this morning, the week started last night with good food and good music out there half an hour from everwhere and I've got a morning invite to a porch party planned by the owners of one of Chariton's grand old homes to humor snoopy friends and acquaintances. So I'll give it another day.

On Eagle's Wings

St. Andrew’s jumped feet-first into the digital age this week when the computer in the parish office gained a DSL (digital subscriber line; don’t feel bad, I didn’t know what DSL stood for either) hookup and access to the Internet. That was a little more complicated than it might have been because the church mouse had eaten through the phone line into the office (not noted earlier because the phone in there is wireless). The church mouse also apparently has stolen the church hammer, which I needed yesterday and couldn’t find --- but that’s another story.

Anyhow, the Internet hookup is part of a diocesan drive to connect its parishes scattered across Iowa digitally, but one thing does lead to another. In my case, to a remodel of the parish Web site, actually a blog (blogs are free; Web sites as a rule aren’t) so that it could be parked on the church computer and updated from there. Besides, it was looking a little sad and needed refreshing.

That meant I needed to find the photos that were part of the blog and take a few more (the cross on the front of our building was still white on the blog, for example, but now is red). And as you might expect, I couldn’t find them. That’s because all the contents of all the hard drives that I have access to are as disorganized due to my nature and various computer disasters as the contents of my head are.

So I spent Thursday evening, all of it, gathering photo files --- and thousands of these have accumulated since the arrival of the digital camera in 2005 --- into one place. Now I need to do some severe editing --- eliminating the poorly exposed, clumsily framed and just plain silly (we should probably do that with our heads, too, now and then).

But I did come up with a decent although not exceptional photo of the eagle lectern at St. Andrew’s, part of the furniture brought from the 1900 church after its not-too-firm-a-foundation gave way 50 years ago and demolition followed. It’s a wonderful piece of work, carved from oak, and now serves us both as pulpit and lectern.

Many churches have these --- in wood, brass and other materials --- but some who should know better are confused about the symbolism involved. A clergyman who certainly should have known better once informed the assembled faithful, making a badly flawed sermon allusion, that our big oak bird was a phoenix --- that mythological critter that rose from the ashes.

Actually, the eagle is a symbol of St. John the Evangelist, one of the twelve and author by tradition of the fourth Gospel. So that’s why lecterns like ours are around and why it’s appropriate that our big bird’s wings support the lectionary book during the lessons and sermon notes at other times.

There’s also a lovely contemporary hymn, “On Eagle’s Wings,” composed by a priest named Michael Joncas in 1979, still those heady days after Vatican II when Roman Catholics were encouraged to open their mouths for the first time in centuries and sing during Mass. The refrain:

“And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun,

And hold you in the palm of His Hand.”

Marooned at the museum yesterday afternoon when both the chief guide and her volunteer associate were involved in the same funeral, I spent a little time --- not too successfully --- trying to pick it out on the big old square grand in the commons room. That old piano is a wonderful piece of furniture, but apparently a beast to tune --- the last tuner swore he’d never touch it again. Here’s a far better version:

Is that Mount Ararat ...

... in the distance? Are our 40 days and 40 nights done with yet? A few days of sunshine are in the forecast, according to this morning's National Weather Service forecast, but the weather map --- hanging on until 7 a.m. from overnight --- had Iowa as fully covered in as big a patchwork quilt of bad weather as I've seen: Severe thunderstorm watches (down here), tornado watches farther north, flash flood warnings, flash flood watches and flood warnings over at least 80 percent of the state and "hazardous weather outlooks" elsewhere.

With temperatures in the 90s and humidity levels at dizzying heights I finally holed up inside late yesterday afternoon with the air conditioning running full blast --- and didn't enjoy the experience. It'll be good to be out under the sun again.

While farmers have a good deal to legitimately complain about, the rest of us really don't. So what if the lawn is out of control and the weeds are running rampant? That can be dealt with in fairly short order. Others elsewhere haven't been so lucky. I've been looking at some photos forwarded by a cousin who is a native of Billings, Montana, hit by a tornado Sunday. Montana has been experiencing summer storms of an intensity unusual there, so it's just an odd year all over.

Riding west as a passenger Monday evening in a downpour after a South Central Chapter meeting at Trinity Church in Ottumwa, we watched the rolling black western clouds part in second-coming style over the hills beyond and sun backed by bright blue edged in white break through. Quite a sight. But I didn't see a dove with an olive leaf in its beak fly through the gap, so guess we'll just have to wait and see.

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I've for the most part finished the roster of Lucas County's World War II dead, started a couple of months ago, and will be updating fairly soon the post that contains that information, then rechecking the data and eventually putting it in final form here and elsewhere The final toll right now stands at 50, although not all of these soldiers, sailors and Marines died in combat. A few died in accidents or other non-combat causes --- one at Coney Island amusement park the day before he was to begin advanced training; another of appendicitis at Yocom Hospital here in Chariton while home on furlough just after basic. 

But in those days more than 60 years ago of gold stars and daily reckoning, any death while in military service was honored, so this new list follows that precedent. There also are others who could be added to the list because they were born here or attended school here and I'm still thinking about some of those.

I'll move on from here gradually through World War I, where the total loss was not as great, and to the Civil War, where the losses were far greater.

The remains of the latest Iowan to die in Afghanistan, in this case of non-combat causes, came home to Cresco earlier this week. Altogether more than 70 young Iowans have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001, but none so far from Lucas County. I wish I could come up with something wise and perceptive to say about all of this, but I can't.

Stranger in a familiar land

Merv Gibbany's Johnson County (Wyoming) High School graduation photo.

I’ve been trying lately to organize a variety of photographs and documents related to a family that has simply vanished --- My aunt, Mae (Miller) Gibbany, Uncle Elmer Gibbany, and their son, Merv. What little was left behind, especially of Merv --- none of it of financial value --- is in my care, scattered here and there since 1998, when my aunt died, while I thought now and then about what to do with it. Now I’m trying to pull it together. It will go into notebooks for now --- and that’s the best I can do. It’s not likely anyone will want those notebooks when I’m done, but it seems like the thing to do.

Elmer and Mae (Miller) Gibbany at the time of their marriage in 1947.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Merv lately, puzzling things out. In some ways we were mirror images of each other --- both only children, close to each other in age, sons of sisters, both gay, something we recognized in each other when we were kids and always acknowledged, both Vietnam veterans --- but actually quite different. At times we were very close and at others, distant --- no hostility involved, but rather geography, temperment and culture.

Merv was a Wyoming boy. If you’ve ever seen the film “Brokeback Mountain,” well, that’s the way it was out there when we were growing up, turning into young men. And still was as late as 1998 when Matthew Shepherd was tied to a fence outside Laramie and left to die. Having said that, we both loved Wyoming --- and I still do. But he lived there and I only visited. Eventually, after Vietnam and a stint wrangling dudes, he got out and lived the last and best years of his life in Denver. Finding it harder and harder to go home again, eventually he didn’t.

Merv Gibbany at about age three

He was not estranged from his parents, but there were tensions. My aunt felt very strongly that marriage and children would both cure Merv and provide her with the daughter-in-law and grandchildren she wanted. Aunt Mae knew exactly who that daughter-in-law should be and remained close to her until she died, considering her children by the man she did marry her surrogate grandchildren. Awkward.

As a student at Lower Johnson Creek School, Johnson County, Wyoming.

He would not come to Iowa, where at that time (now long past) the Miller mafia was still going strong, whispering among themselves when “poor Mae’s” name came up about that wicked son. There were similar tensions within the Wyoming end of the family and a few in Colorado, although he always was willing to come to family gatherings there.

But it was a good rich life in Denver filled with work he enjoyed, friends, travel, adventures, lovers and the sort of freedom only a city offered gay men and lesbians then, but with family always at arm’s length. I was reading his old Christmas form letters sent to all the kinfolk the other day. I’d forgotten how he ended them --- “Yes, I’m still single; no, I’m not dating anyone; yes, I’m happy.” Laugh or cry?

Then he developed AIDS and as he grew sicker the whispers intensified. This was not something, keep in mind, that was talked about back then --- in the early 1990s when AIDS was a death sentence. Merv being Merv, he loaded a gun, went out into a field and ended it on his own terms, dying at St. Anthony’s Hospital a few hours later. I wish I’d been nearer, able to do more, but it all happened so fast. How’s that for rationalization?

It all was his fault, of course --- that he was gay, that he didn’t marry and produce children, that he got sick, that he died, that he broke his mother’s heart, and that in the process of dying he used up all his resources so that nothing was left for her. There isn’t even a grave. His ashes were scattered in the Rockies. That was his fault, too. Always blame.

My Aunt Mae and Uncle Elmer are buried on the highest point in Willow Grove Cemetery in Buffalo, Wyoming, with a clear view of the Big Horns. My uncle picked the spot out, he said, because everyone always had looked down on him in life and he wanted to go through eternity looking down on them.

He was mistaken about that. A few did, including his father-in-law, my grandfather, who although a remarkable man could be remarkably mean. Although Elmer began his working life as a ranch hand and ended it a janitor, nearly everyone who really knew him loved him. He was a giant of a man, very gentle, very kind, a dreamer who could not stand to be long without a view of the mountains. There were elements of all that in Merv, too.

Most of the whisperers are dead now and the whispers have for the most part stopped. Oh now and then his name comes up and someone asks how he died. “Well he was, you know (wave of a limp wrist here; Merv was a big strong guy who worked outdoors and didn't have limp wrists) and he died of, well, you know what.” But not often.

AIDS is no longer a death sentence. Merv will have been dead 18 years come the 6th of July. He was a fine man who lived and died bravely. His mother will have been dead 12 years later this month. She did her best. There aren’t that many of us who still remember that, but I want you to know those things about them both.

Merv and Mae Gibbany about 1985.

The real and present Dry Flat world

Pauline Barker Vincent (right), visiting here with Jo Shrader, is at age 97 Dry Flat’s senior former student and senior former teacher.

Up at 5 Friday to turn the oven on and bake, part of a commitment to the Dry Flat country school reunion, I got to thinking about thunderstorms four ovenloads later --- about 7. Sun was streaming through the east kitchen window, but these are unsettled times weatherwise down here and I wanted a little reassurance.

NBC’s “Today” show, when I turned the TV on to check the forecast, was broadcasting live from the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter amusement park in Orlando --- a Universal Studios bid to capture tourist dollars by recreating the Harry Potter movie sets, actualizing a fictional world in which refugees from the real world can with the swipe of a credit card find diversion, maybe even fleeting solace, in something that has never been, is not now and never will be.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against the Harry Potter books (sorry, but I’ve not read them) or Wizarding World exactly --- and I have watched a couple of the movies. They came my way last winter in a temporary DVD swap with friends.

But aren’t we’re increasingly overlooking the real magic --- sitting across the room, just outside the door or a short walk or drive away --- and becoming too reliant for solace on the illusion of magic in places like Orlando or inside the boxes that house our computers, televisions and other purveyors of stuff that looks real and sometimes seems that way, but isn’t? I suppose that’s better than drugs or strong drink, however ….

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I see as much with my mind’s eye rather than through my glasses these days when driving east out of Chariton for a couple of miles on U.S. 34, then south on the Transformer Road across the Chariton River bottoms to the Lucas-Wayne county line: Places that used to be and people who used to live in places that still are. I know where at least two of the houses still standing along that road, built elsewhere to house members of my own family and then moved over here, came from; and see clear as day the old May place --- a mansion on the prairie that marched in tandem with one of southern Iowa’s biggest barns. Both now gone entirely.

Turn left a little beyond the county line and into the driveway at Dianne (Vincent) and Harold Mitchell’s place. If you think Sunnyslope Church of Christ when you read “Dianne and Harold” you’re on the right track.

Their house was built by Dianne’s father, Howard, for Wayne and Ethyle Cummins and their daughters, Karen and Sharon. Sharon is the only Cummins left now and it is real magic when she walks through the door because she looks exactly like her mother, my first and one of my best teachers --- at Dry Flat. We’ve all been stumbling while matching names to the faces of the 50 or so assembled just because we don’t see each other frequently and the years remold us. But not with Sharon. No confusion there.

Pauline Barker Vincent, at 97 Dry Flat’s senior student and senior former teacher, has not changed a bit in my eyes or to my ears either, although her son, Jacob, with more  stomach than I'd anticipated and an unfamiliar white beard, confused me momentarily. He preaches way down in Harlingen, Texas, however --- about as far south as you can get and still be in Texas --- so I hadn’t seen him in years.

Pauline still lives where she grew up and where she raised her children up the road from Dry Flat. I don’t want to overdo this because I know it will get back to her, but she is one of the few people I’ve known who embody grace plain and simple. And I’m not sure she realizes just how much that means to those of us who are not related to her but remember and/or know her.

She also is one of the few people left around here with whom I can talk meaningfully about my late Aunt Mary, her high school friend, and my late mother, who although a little younger shared room-and-board with Pauline in Chariton back in the days of the late 1920s and early 1930s when kids from the deep country quite often boarded in town during the high school week before the days of fast cars, good roads and school buses capable of covering lots of miles quickly.

Ron Christiansen prepares to head out with the second of two hayrack full of Dry Flatters. Harold Mitchell, driver for the first hayrack, is at left in the background.

Since I didn’t mean to go on and on here, I’d better pick up speed just as Friday did. After we’d gathered Friday morning, many of us piled onto two hayracks (ok, some of us didn’t pile, we carefully ascended portable steps) for the trip behind vintage John Deere and Allis Chalmers tractors piloted by Harold Mitchell and Ron Christensen a mile down the road to see the remains of old Dry Flat, converted to a hay shed after the school closed in 1958 and it and the acre that surrounded it reverted by deed covenant to the Vincent farm. In deference to my dad, who didn’t think much of green, I rode behind orange.

Jacob Vincent acted as tour guide on our hayrack as we headed toward Dry Flat. Note the beard. When did that white happen?

The sky was the amazing part of that trip as clouds gathered in the west and northwest. There were those who thought we wouldn’t make it without getting very wet and others who made insensitive jokes about the headlines we would generate if accurately-aimed bolts of lightning picked us off, but we made it. Headed back, the wind shifted abruptly and a hot morning turned almost chilly as we watched the clouds circle away leaving us dry and safe and windblown, awed by the spectacle out there under that big sky.

Dry Flat, converted to a hay shed, doesn't look like much now, but those of us who attended school there see it from an entirely different perspective.

After that an old-fashioned potluck lunch (official because both Jello and olive-and-pimento loaf were among the offerings), more visiting and a program before we scattered at 2 p.m.

Jake gives the Cox brothers, who had to head back into Corydon, a preview of the slide show that will be a part of the afternoon program as Dale Cottrell looks on.

At an event like this, tears can be a sign of success --- and there were some of those. Sharon generated a few just by looking so much like her mother and being so gracious about whose daughter she was. Memories of absent friends did, too. My goodness. My classmate Marilyn (Nickell) Gibbs should and would have been here had death not intervened; so would Linda Mae Allard, neighbor and friend. And many others.

But the thing about it was that it all was real, happening in the here and now in a real place in the real world. And I’ll bet there are those who would have paid the price of a Wizarding World ride to cruise down gravel with us on a hayrack behind a vintage tractor chased by that gathering storm.

The memories may have been just memories, but they were of real people and real places and real events that helped shape real lives in what sometimes seems almost another world, although it was real, too. When in less hurried and troubled times innocence lasted longer and children could, if circumstances were right, be shielded lovingly from many of the world’s woes until they had gained the strength needed to go out into it. It was real magic. I’m amazed at how fortunate we were to live it.

Just visiting was a major part of Friday’s Dry Flat country school reunion.

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Later in the day with clouds gathering in the west and north again we opened the imaginary gates at 6 for the historical society’s arts and crafts fair on our hilltop in west Chariton --- nothing magical about the event either really, but unfolding magic none-the-less for those of us involved in organizing it and watching now.

The exhibitors were enthusiastic, the crowd steady, the food good and the music outstanding. I’d never expected to see fully-grown adults dance down the driveway toward the patio, but there it was live and in living color to music by Adam Barr on trumpet with his small ensemble of Nancy Courter on keyboard and Steve Scott on drums. The barbershop quartet Boys Night Out was just as good.

The nature of the crowd was the exceptional thing because historical societies have troubles attracting younger people. But here were whole families just roaming around enjoying themselves --- even a few bands of kids on their own just like in the good old less dangerous days. I got a kick out of hearing the ringleader of one of these groups, all of 8, reminding her four or five younger charges as they made their way down the path toward the log cabin laden with hot dogs, chips and lemonade --- “now remember we can’t go in there with food.” Our chief distributor of programs, age 7 perhaps and the grandson of the board secretary and one of the exhibitors, did his job far more effectively than any of us several times his age would have done.

We closed at 7:30 and just after the last guests had reached their cars parked for blocks in all directions and all but a couple of the exhibitors had packed up and driven away, the skies opened and then the fireworks started as we stood high up just inside the front doors of the Lewis Building and watched --- incredible bolts of lightning, tremendous claps of thunder, giant punctuation marks to remarkable day.

Now you’ll think I’m funning you when I say that I knew at the start, while baking those muffins, that the day was going to turn out this way, but I did. Wasn’t really worried at all (although I did check computer radar a couple of times just to make sure). I attribute it all to grace, which has the capacity just to roll over and enfold us --- sometimes when we expect it, other times when we just allow it and now and then flat out of the blue. I call it real magic. But you can call it whatever you want --- even wizardry.

A Dachenbach by any other name

My great-uncle and great-aunt, Orie and Addie (Miller) Dachenbach. They pronounced in the right way, DOFF-un-baw.

Now this is serious. Although tempted many times to address a distressing situation in Lucas County among the Pierschbachers, Steinbachs, Dachenbachs and perhaps members of other old and honorable families of German descent, I have demurred in the interests of family and community solidarity.

While no Pierschbacher, Steinbach or Dachenbach blood flows in my veins, several members of my family have married into these families, fulfillment of a Lucas County truism --- if one is not related to everyone, one is related to someone who is --- so be darned careful about whom you talk and what you say because while that Duckworth may not be somebody’s mother, he or she is most likely somebody’s cousin.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back and pushed me over the edge came this morning when I learned during a meeting that John Pierschbacher, of the Pierschbacher funeral homes, has taken to pronouncing the tail end of his name BOKER --- as in bok choy, with a short “o.” The nerve of some people --- trying to tell us how to pronounce their names, especially when they’re now pronouncing them a little more like the way it looks like they should be pronounced.

We’ve had so much fun over the years watching non-Lucas Countyans struggle with that name, enjoying the tension that builds as they experiment with various mispronunciations, then saying with a patronizing smile, “Oh you mean PIERCE-baker.”

This is an especially insidious development because there now are Pierschbacher funeral homes scattered all across southern Iowa spreading this novel although admittedly somewhat more sensible pronunciation among the masses, spoiling our fun.

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The situation among the Steinbachs and the Dachenbachs is similar, although the Steinbachs, with only two syllables, one of them a straightforward “Stein,” isn’t quite as complex. We’ve always pronounced that one “STEIN-baw.” But an increasing number of Steinbachs are now pronouncing it “STEIN-bok,” the bok choy factor again.

Dachenbach, in Lucas-County-speak, is “DOFF-un-baw,” but more and more Dachenbachs now are pronouncing it “DOK-un-bok,” doubling the bok choy factor.

Why is this happening? Personally, I blame in-laws --- some of whom I am related to. Take my late cousin Rose Marie for example. A double cousin on my dad’s side of the house, she married the son of a Dachenbach first-cousin of my mother producing children who are my triple cousins, at the least, in a distant sort of way. Rose Marie, it should be pointed out, was among the kindest, most delightful, warm-hearted and generous people on earth and we all miss her tremendously. But it was from her lips that I first heard the suggestion that the family she had married into did not know how to pronounce its name correctly.

Another cousin may be implicated in the Steinbach shift, but I’m less certain of that and so disinclined to name her. Besides, she knows where to find me if this should by some mischance be called to her attention.

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I’m sure the difficulty involved in these pronunciational misunderstandings can be traced to the challenges involved in moving from one language to another during the 19th century.

The Pierschbachers all the way back to Adam (Pierschbacher) pronounced it PIERCE-baker, but Adam’s father, Michael, who brought the family from Germany to Lucas County via Illinois, probably pronounced it a little more like some of his present-day descendants have taken to doing.

The difficulty is that the “ch” at the end of a word in German (this is about all I remember after four semesters of college-level German) is not pronounced as a hard “k,” as we’ve become accustomed to hearing in this country every time that composer guy, J.S. Bach/Bok, is mentioned. Instead it’s a very soft “ch,” almost as in “loch,” occasionally almost inaudible.

It’s just not a sound us speakers of English are accustomed to making, so by the second generation in this country, English-speaking children of emigrants had modified the original pronunciations of all these names in varying ways.

And in the long run, I guess it really doesn’t make any difference but I sure am glad my German ancestors had a simple name like Redlingshafer to deal with. No problem there.

As for me, however, my daddy pronounced it STEIN-baw, my granddaddy pronounced it DOFF-un-baw and my great-granddaddy pronounced it PIERCE-baker --- so I’m not giving an inch.

They also served ...

Eleanor (Mason) Gabbard

One of items on my list of things to do is a visit to the museum now operating within the remains of Fort Des Moines on Des Moines' south side --- and I'm not sure why I haven't gotten there. Laziness probably. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact I remember the fort primarily as the spot where pre-induction physicals were conducted for those of us headed to Vietnam during the 1960s and as the point of departure for that early-morning flight many years ago that took a plane-load of us scared kids --- and many others flights ---  off via Dallas-Fort Worth to beautiful Fort Polk, Louisiana, and basic training.

The museum's focus is, however, on other matters --- the fact it was in 1917 the site of the first officer candidate class for African-Americans in U.S. history and also the site, beginning in 1942, of the first and largest Women's Army Auxiliary Corps/Women's Army Corps training site in the United States.

It seems odd now that both blacks and women had to fight and fight hard to serve in the U.S. military, to earn the right to put their lives on the line and in many cases lay them down for the rest of us --- until you think a little about the fact that we've still not resolved the right to do so of gay men and lesbians who wish to serve.

Sorting old photos last night, looking for something else, I came across, side by side, portraits of two of my mother's first-cousins who trained at Fort Des Moines, then went on to serve in distinguished manners as Army nurses during World War II.

The first is Eleanor Pearl Mason (top), born Aug. 17, 1909, in Benton Township to my great-aunt and great-uncle, Elizabeth Mary (Miller) and Albert Ray Mason. Eleanor met her husband, Henry C. Gabbard, while in the service and because they lived elsewhere I didn't know her. She died March 29, 1997, in Phoenix, Arizona, after a long career as a registered nurse. A note on the back of this photograph states that it was taken in Liege, Belgium, during May of 1945.

Velma (Miller) Jess

The other cousin is Velma Irene Miller, daughter of Jeremiah and Fern (Griffis) Miller, born July 11, 1920, on the old Miller farm in English Township. Velma, too, met her husband, Leonard Jess, while serving; but I knew them both because they visited often. Velma may have been my mother's favorite among her many cousins because in a way she helped raise her. Velma's mother died of breast cancer in 1933 leaving four children ranging in age from Velma, the oldest at age 13, to Elizabeth, the youngest, only 3. Since Uncle Jerry chose to raise his children as a single parent, the Miller girls (my mother and her sisters, Mae and Mary), just up the road, often helped out. Velma died June 29, 2000, at her home in Clinton less than a year after my mother died.

But here they both are, young and full of hope, in what despite the horrors of World War II was a hopeful time for the United States, uncharacteristically united in a single cause.

The Wet ...

The back-40 early Tuesday, where seldom is heard a discouraging word but the rain just keeps falling and the grass just keeps growing all day.

... Or deep green, and getting deeper.

One of the first things I’ve done early mornings of late is fire up the computer and check the forecast since the shape various events will take depends on what appears in those little at-a-glance boxes describing what the next few days will bring. Much of the time, they’ve been filled with flashes of lightning and falling rain and the Iowa map has been splotched with green --- flood warnings.

Golly, it’s wet.

The St. Andrew/Grace picnic Sunday, scheduled for a shelter at Corydon Lake Park, was rained instead into Bill’s house --- and that was fine. It’s a spacious house and it was peaceful to sit in the sun room and watch the rain fall as the simplified liturgy advanced --- a dinner plate for the bread, a big green plastic tumbler rather than sterling silver for the wine.

Several of us went from there after lunch to Prairie Trails Museum, which we probably wouldn’t have done if we’d been sitting down at the park high above the water enjoying the breeze and stupefied by too hearty a potluck, and admired the hollyhocks in Bill’s museum garden and took a quick tour. A good day in spite of it all.

If this keeps up, and it looks like it will, there may not be hayrack tours of the Dry Flat neighborhood during our country school reunion Friday; and at the Lucas County museum, artists, crafters and musicians will have to take shelter on porches and inside buildings Friday evening instead of utilizing the lawn and patio as we’d hoped --- and the crowd will be diminished.

Neither event will be ruined, just changed --- but we’d all appreciate a little more sunshine about now. My life is revolving too much around the imperative to cut the grass during every brief dry spell lest it grow out of control and require a flock of sheep --- a rare commodity these days --- to restore order.

And any weather-related woes I may be experiencing are minor when compared to those of farmers, frustrated by way too much of a good thing --- crops planted, washed out, replanted and drowning again.

It rained so heavily here on Saturday morning that city equipment had to be called out to clear gravel that had washed off shoulders and down hills onto West Court Avenue, which follows the course of a long-buried stream from the southwest corner of the square to the Chariton River --- if you could follow its natural course these days.

Makes you wonder what the good Lord is trying to wash away.

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I watched “Austrailia” again the other night, a film that I like despite Nicole Kidman’s somewhat overwrought performance. The star of the show once you move beyond Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Brandon Walters as Nulla, the “creamy” (half aboriginal, half white) kid who steals much of the show, is Australia itself. Especially a region in the North where the seasons are divided into “the dry” and “the wet.”

Despite a good deal of murder and general mayhem set in days immediately before World War II, concluding with the Japanese attack on Darwin of 19 February 1942, the producers managed to wrangle a hopeful ending. All films should have hopeful endings. There are quite enough unhappy endings on the real end of life.

The hopeful ending here would be sunshine, a little more of “the dry” and a little less of “the wet.” Of course we’d prefer a little less humidity, too.

Paved roads to heaven

This photo, not mine but swiped from elsewhere on the Internet, is an exercise in personal hypocrisy. I don’t take pictures of our Old Order Amish neighbors in Lucas and Wayne counties or elsewhere because I know of their aversion to being photographed --- based partly on the Biblical injunction against graven images and also on a belief that to willingly become the subject of a photographer is an exercise in self-pride.

On the other hand, in need of an illustration, I went straight to “Google Image” and downloaded this one, taken elsewhere by someone else. It’s his fault that it’s here, not mine.

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I’ve been following a modest controversy in Mitchell County (far north central Iowa; Osage is the county seat) where a county ordinance enacted last year has banned from hard-surfaced roads the steel-cleated (apparently cushioned with rubber bands) tractor tires used there by members of Groffdale Conference Mennonite church districts.

Mennonites, like the Amish, are Anabaptist. But unlike the Amish, the range of belief and practice among Mennonites is broader. Groffdale Mennonites are old order --- they travel by horse and carriage and avoid many of what the rest of us consider modern conveniences, but allow some. Most Groffdale Mennonites have electricity and land-line telephones in their homes, for example, but no computers, televisions, radios or sound systems. Cell phone use also is unlikely.

While the Amish depend upon horse power supplemented sometimes by gasoline engines to get the farm work done, Groffdale Mennonites allow horsepower-powered tractors and the like in farming operations. The point of insisting that conventional rubber tires be removed from these vehicles and rubber-band-backed steel cleats installed is to slow them down down --- to prevent tractors from becoming quick and comfortable transport to town or from being used to facilitate the development of farms larger than those that can be operated by a family with cooperative assistance at harvest or other times from neighbors.

But with many miles of recently resurfaced county roads, the Mitchell County Supervisors decided that those steel-cleated tractor tires --- used to transport items to market or to get from field to field --- were causing undue damage to road surfaces. So they banned them from hard-surfaced roads, even from crossing those surfaces. Fines have been imposed, appealed and the situation has the potential to end up before the Iowa Supreme Court or elsewhere since Mitchell County courts have upheld the ban’s constitutionality.

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Like too many things these days, the situation takes me back to the good old days, Iowa in the 1960s, when Amish schools were the issue. Anyone else remember that?

Prior to the great school consolidation movement of the 1960s, most Amish and “English” children attended the same rural schools, the Amish leaving after eighth-grade graduation, the English, going off to high school in town.

When it became clear that those rural schools would be closed down and all children bused off to town, the Amish objected. Buchanan County became the focal point as school officials declared non-cooperating Amish children truant and tried to force them --- in the nicest possible way --- onto school buses.

That generated one of the iconic photos of the 1960s --- Amish children fleeing a one-room country school in Buchanan County and heading into the cornfields after a teacher or parent yelled “run” during one of those confrontations between belief, practice and officialdom.

The situation was resolved in 1966-67 after much dispute when Amish schools were exempted from some state education standards and a parallel parochial system allowed to develop. Those exemptions continue and Iowa’s Amish and Mennonite communities still are dotted with one-room schools. I like that.

Hopefully, the situation in Mitchell County can be resolved without as much fuss. It doesn’t look like Mitchell County actually has proved that the steel cleats cause more damage to pavement than, for example, the far larger and heavier farm equipment piloted by non-Mennonite farmers, semi trailers with extremely heavy loads or snow plows that pour on toxic de-icers before scraping ice and snow off paved surfaces. Photos of alleged damage probably aren’t going to carry too much weight in higher courts without objective study-based testimony to back them up. There’s probably wiggle room on both sides of the issue; hopefully it’ll be utilized.

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One of the great pleasures of life in Iowa in this 21st century from my point of view at least is having around an increasing number of Anabaptists who still live in some respects as if it were the 19th. I’m not a good enough Christian to be one of them, but appreciate the benchmarks amid increasing complexity that they’re trying to set and maintain for themselves to conserve their ways of life and faith and, by doing that, offer others for comparison.

There certainly are misunderstandings among the rest of us about the Anabaptists, and perhaps vice versa. Although their practice often is considerably different than ours, their theology isn’t. Apparent simplicity quite often isn’t, and an old order lifestyle is not insurance against trial and tribulation. Their practices are designed, church district to church district, to nurture and protect the community --- not just to keep technology out; and by protecting their communities, to nurture faith.

Glancing through comments on various stories about the Mitchell County controversy, I came across a few scolding the Mennonites about the inefficiencies of fuel and time involved in farming with steel-wheeled equipment. Somehow the commentators missed the point that the purpose of those steel-wheeled vehicles is inefficiency --- to slow things down; control farm expansion; to foster the community needed to support a way of life not based on technology.

I like the conservative Anabaptist practice of looking carefully at each new innovation in a culture that has canonized technology, then deciding consciously rather than instinctively whether to accept it, reject it or develop a workable compromise. We should all do more of that.

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Here’s another example of personal hypocrisy. After complaining about and self-justifying the reasons for it, I’ve been admiring my front and side yards lately, doused regularly in poison to keep out vegetative undesirables. It’s beautiful --- just like Astroturf that grows. It mows well, since the grass is thin, and never clumps. And when I’m done, that green surface looks as if it’s been painted on rather than grown.

The back yard, sill wild and free, is lush and unruly, overrun here and there by clumps of clover and marjoram that escaped an herb garden once. Even when kept in check with a mower, it clumps when cut and sometimes looks like a hay field ripe for baling.

It only takes a couple of hundred bucks a year to preserve that Astroturf look. Ain’t progress grand?

That Evans Cemetery monument

I wrote the other day about the sadness and frustration involved in learning of the death of Jack Byrkit of Clay Center, Nebraska, whose ancestor carved one of the more unique Civil War memorials in these southern hills, located just over the Lucas-Monroe county line in Jackson Township, Monroe County. This is it, depicted in photographs taken for Jack one fall several years ago. Sadly, I can’t tell you who the stone carver was because Jack’s no longer around to ask. I’m hoping something turns up in my notes someday to tell me, but there are an awful lot of those notes and they’re not especially well organized.

Fall, after the leaves have fallen, actually is the best time to photograph the monument because Evans Cemetery is heavily timbered and both the carved marble base and the copper cap that now protects the obelisk atop it are difficult to decipher in shade. Even in the fall, a couple of visits, one in the morning and another in the afternoon, would be necessary to photograph all of it.

I first visited the cemetery years ago as a kid with my parents when the landscape was far different because the Rathbun Dam had not been built and Lake Rathbun had not backed up for miles behind it. But for the life of me I can’t remember why my dad knew it was there.

I do recall finding the right entrance to the right pasture, driving down through it, then through another gate and coming up beside the cemetery, then abandoned and overgrown. I’ve almost convinced myself that only the base of the monument was standing --- that the obelisk had fallen or been knocked off.

Anyhow, to get there today from here drive south out of Russell on the pavement, following its curve east a mile and a half south of town, then instead of curving south with the pavement after a mile at Kells/McKinley corner keep driving east on gravel for four miles to the county line. Turn right (south) on the county line and drive south until you have the options of stopping or driving into Lake Rathbun. I’d advise the former. Since this is a wildlife area, there’s a little parking area and turn-around here.

About a quarter of a mile before you got to this point, you should have taken a left turn (east) onto a gated private road that once was public (the gate’s usually open these days). Turn there and after less than a quarter mile the cemetery entrance will be on your right. The lane back to it now leads straight down the middle of a long fenced clearing to the cemetery gates.

The guy we have to thank for salvaging the cemetery and monument and restoring both to their current pristine state is Bernard Casebolt, who grew up nearby and was distressed in 1988 to discover the deplorable state of the cemetery. He spent more than 10 years with a little help from his friends, clearing timber and brush, resetting tombstones (no one has been buried at Evans since 1905) and repairing the monument.

Although the carving on the base is in very good shape, the names inscribed on the obelisk above it had become virtually indecipherable because of weathering. With some assistance from researchers, he figured out most of the names, crafted a copper cap to slide down over the obelisk to protect what remained of the original inscriptions and had those inscriptions inscribed on the exterior of the cap. In addition, a stretch of land as wide as the cemetery was cleared of trees and brush out to the main road, a new lane built down the middle of it, a new flag pole installed --- and Casebolt even repaired the unique metal turnstile that still can be used to enter the cemetery. The result was dedicated on Memorial Day 2000.

There is absolutely nothing or no one left to tell the story of the monument other than the monument itself. The inscription on its east face reads, “Erected July 19th, 1866, By the Citizens of Jackson Township, Monroe County, Iowa, in commemoration of their gallant dead.”

There are 34 or 35 names on the monument, however, and by no means were all of them residents of Jackson Township. Evans Cemetery, also called “Four Corners” now and then, is very close to the point where Monroe, Lucas, Wayne and Appanoose counties join. So the monument appears to honor of the Civil War dead from a neighborhood centered on the cemetery and encompassing parts of all four counties. A considerable number of those named were residents of Washington Township, Lucas County.

There are inscriptions honoring seven soldiers on the base of the stone. James P. Evans is honored under the dedicatory inscription on the east face. Six others are named on the south face: John E. Evans, Jacob Easter, Cal. W. Holder, Geo. G. Duncan (or Dungan), H.C. Christie and H.J. Schuler. The remaining names are carved on the four faces of the obelisk, now inscribed on its cap.

The north face of the base is a beautifully carved shield featuring an eagle holding a banner inscribed “E Pluribus Unum” draped over a flag.

The west faceof the base contains two memorial inscriptions, but no additional names.

According to a list of inscriptions put together by the Monroe County Genealogical Society, names inscribed on the north face of the obelisk include one that is illegible, ( ) Patt, W.P. Smith, ( ) M. Daniel, James R. Buckman and Wesley Price; (west face) Sephus Hays, Albert Gilbert, Jennings Hays, ( ) Gilbert, Martin Prather, Joseph Owen and William A. Glass; (east face) John W. May, John McCullough, Alex Z. Sheeks, James C. Evans, George W. Bratt, David J. Hays and William H. Swney; and (south face) M.W. Kemper, James A. Hickcox, H.L. Kells, Walter Smith, Thomas B. Baker, John W. DeLay and James S. Swift.

  

Remember that larger versions of these photos will open if you right-click on a photo and tell your computer to open it in a new window,

Garage sales, computeritis, life in general

My goodness it's been busy. When last heard from, I was licking my wounds after computer security problems. The situation went from bad to worse when an online technician, attempting to figure out why a program wouldn't load, inadvertently deleted the wrong things and killed the old Gateway laptop. There's not much that can be done about this and absolutely no point in getting mad. Computer technicians do not carry malpractice insurance, so lawsuits are unlikely to be profitable for anyone involved.

Actually, the laptop possibly could be fixed --- at considerable expense. However, since no data was lost (only a couple of photo processing and design programs I was fond of that no longer link to the devices that make them useful) and the laptop was old, it's not worth it. I'll extract what I want from it, then give it a decent burial.

I spent far too much weekend time on the phone, however, with technicians and getting the backup computer (only a year old) ready to go --- then learning how to run a new design program. Since I had a newsletter due at the printers today, that was the top priority.

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Our garage sale at the church went well on Saturday, despite the fact it was raining buckets as the day began and that discouraged customers all over town (it was city-wide garage sale day). But by mid-morning, the rain had let up and we had a good run of customers until closing down about 1:30 and I had to haul home only five of the several items I'd taken out.

We were raising money to buy bicycles for Anglican priests in a new parish in one of our two companion dioceses, Swaziland (the other is Brechen, Scotland). And we did just what we set out to do. Can't complain about that.

Most of Monday was spent at the museum dealing with the great storeroom crisis --- a crisis I inflicted upon myself, by the way. In order to make room in the museum office for a work station and new equipment (grant-funded) we'll be using for a new "living history" project, a hulking storage unit had to go somewhere. That somewhere was the store room off a gallery some distance away, already piled to the ceiling. The theory here is that if the office storage unit is in the store room it will become easier to shelve and actually find the contents of the storeroom. (These are not precious artifacts in storage, by the way, but items needed to run the joint as well as worn out or wounded display accessories and other junk --- mannequins with severe head injuries or puncture wounds, for example).

The storage unit is now where it's supposed to be and the task of hauling hopeless stuff across the driveway to the basement of the Stephens House (the last ray of hope before the landfill for such items as hopelessly wounded mannequins) has begin.

After a productive board meeting this morning and with many strong backs on hand, we moved Walt Thorne's wonderful wooden clock out of a corner behind the counter in the entry area  and into a position of honor near the registration desk (actually the old pulpit from the Lucas Methodist Church). This clock, well over six feet tall and entirely hand-made (Walt even made the tools used to make the wooden gears that run it) is not only remarkably ingenious but also a spectacular piece of folk art. Now it needs to be leveled, fiddled with, dusted and cajoled and perhaps it will start running again as well as it was Monday afternoon before the move.

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Our annual parish picnic (including Grace Church in Albia) will be this Sunday at West Lake Park in Corydon --- unless it's raining buckets again, which it very well may be. In that case, poor Bill is going to have a houseful. I'm taking green magic salad again, based upon the philosophy that it isn't a church picnic without something that contains Jello.

Both the Dry Flat Reunion and the museum Arts Fair are the following Friday, June 18, a kind of double whammy that should be lots of fun.

And then there's the lawn --- that blessed grass just keeps growing and growing and growing with all this rain. Since the lawn dries in varying parts at differing rates, I've divided it into three segments and try to do one each day that it doesn't rain or at least doesn't rain for a few hours --- the front, side and immediate back yards first (they drain fast), the upper back-40 second and finally the lower back-40, which remains squishy after all else as solidified.

Now I'm going to go finish watching my movie. My brain needs a rest.

The Stone sisters

Just for the record, here is another photo of the Stone sisters --- Anna at left and her sister, Della. But having found the photo I still can't be sure which is which in the photo in the previous post. Anna married my great-uncle (my grandmother, Jessie Brown Miller's, only full brother --- the others were half-broters), Joseph Ellis Brown, who died sadly young. Anna, however, lived a long and productive life, dying at age 86 in Seattle on May 20, 1959. How about those corsages?

Transcendental Lawnmoweratation

That's my grandmother, Jessie (Brown) Miller, at left in the top photo, with her friend Cora Bingaman. Jessie (right) is posing in the lower photo for Uncle Al Love with her sister-in-law, Anna (Stone) Brown, and Anna's sister, Della.

I’ve got an acquaintance who does Transcendental Meditation. Honest. Does she levitate? I’m too shy to ask. Another guy I know engages in yoga --- daily in a peaceful room set aside for meditation; a few days a week with a small group.

Me? I’m still mowing lawn and eating ice cream. Seems to work about as well.

Got bucked off in the Internet security corral this afternoon so I limped into the living room after supper feeling like I’d been rode hard and put away wet.

Went out and mowed a patch of lawn, then down to HyVee for two cartons (two for six bucks this week; great deal) of my favorite ice cream --- Blue Bunny Toasted Almond Fudge. Came home, had a big dish and now I’m just as mellow as all gitout.

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Internet security first. I’ve been having trouble lately with something or another that is redirecting Google (and other engine) searches to places I don’t want to go --- nothing nasty, mind you, just a bunch of advertising sites. Really ticks me off.

All of my security, anti-spyware and anti-malware programs kept insisting nothing was wrong.

Then I began having problems with my security provider. Darned thing wouldn’t update, and goodness knows we all need the latest virus definitions these days. So I fired the sucker.

Then I took a deep breath and called Iowa Telecom --- now Windstream. Jeez. What the heck is Windstream? A communications company that needs Gas-X? Any relation to Airstream? Bet they paid somebody big bucks to come up with that flatulent moniker. Bunch of furriners from down south somewhere I think. Another Iowa firm sold off --- at least you could understand what “Iowa Telecom” was all about.

Anyhow, if I’d held my breath while wading through the Iowa Telecom/Windstream voice mail system on the way to "customer service," I’d have turned blue and passed out.

Finally got there after listening to three complete performances of the same elevator music interspersed with handy hints about what I could do to stop bothering customer service because it was busy.

Signed up for top of the line --- Internet security with technical support, online backup and spam filtering. We’ll see.

So the tech guy, who isn’t Iowa Telecom/Windstream at all but part of a subcontracting operation, installed the system and checked my old laptop out. Told me he’d fixed it. Nice guy, but he hadn’t. Yet. We’ll talk again tomorrow.

Couldn’t download the online backup software because the program wouldn’t let me. I’ll listen to some more elevator music tomorrow and see what that program's tech support (a different operation) has to say about it. At least I’ve got spam control. But then I already had that.

But like I say, after that lawn mowing and ice cream I’m as mellow as can be --- despite the fact I’ll never get back the four hours or so I spent today babysitting the computer while the tech guy played with its innards by remote control and otherwise fiddling with the darned thing.

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Which brings me to the photos at the top of this post. The first one is of my grandmother, Jessie (Brown) Miller, left, and her friend, Cora Bingaman, in front of the Brown family home in Columbia, just across the Lucas County line in Marion County northeast of here. The second, taken at another time, is of Jessie (right), her sister-in-law Anna (Stone) Brown, and Anna’s sister, Della. I can’t tell Anna from Della without looking for other pictures and am not in the mood for that right now.

The photographer was my great-uncle, Al Love (see an earlier post entitled “A Tombstone for Nathan Love” for more about the Loves), and the dates --- sometime in the 1890s. If anyone out there is familiar with Columbia, the Brown home was located on a huge lot in the southeast corner of what now is the Columbia crossroads. Part of the lot was sold off for a store, right at the intersection; now gone, and after my grandmother sold the property, her old home was moved elsewhere and the far grander Caruthers house, which still stands, was built a little east of where it stood.

Now just look at that shaggy lawn. Obviously my grandmother did not mellow out by cutting the grass --- very often at least. What did she do? Iron? Can you imagine taking care of those white dresses both she and Cora are wearing in the first photograph? Maybe they just ate ice cream.

I speculate sometimes about whether or not her life and those of her contemporaries were simpler than ours, if there really were fewer complications. She had no fewer sorrows that we do these days I know --- I’ve written about some of those here over the years. And less technology did not necessarily mean more serenity.

But surely we complicate our lives more unnecessarily these days, bring it on ourselves. Consider computers, the Internet and Internet security. There’s gotta be a better way.