Derailed at Chariton

Wouldn't you know that most of us in the neighborhood slept right through the most excitement we've had for some time, a derailment involving the last nine cars and rear engine of an east-bound Burlington Northern & Santa Fe coal train at about 3 a.m. today. Of course we're so used to trains here that we don't think much about them, but I'm told I missed a mighty bang.

I live something more than a block west of the tracks --- Iowa's busiest --- and for better or worse didn't realize anything was wrong until I noticed far more traffic than usually goes up and down this street on a Saturday morning. Then I investigated and after walking down the alley a ways noticed two trains stalled side by side, one east- and one west-bound, a blocked street and dozens of people and pieces of large equipment.

Of course it's too early to know exactly what happened --- this is the first derailment in town that I can remember. The tracks curve tightly among houses and businesses and so it's impossible to view the entire scene except from above, I suppose. The engine was off the tracks, but not tipped over, two and a half blocks north, right beside the new hardware store that just opened last fall. I had to stop in and kid about that as I'm sure half Chariton already had --- move your store off the square (actually just across the alley but right beside the tracks) and that's what you get --- a train in "lawn and garden." Actually there was no damage and no injuries.

At least one coal car was off the tracks south of the Court Avenue overpass, but fortunately none of the cars went off the overpass and down onto the street.

Now of course there are hundreds of repair personnel swarming along the tracks picking up coal first, clearing damaged cars second and finally repairing the line. The cars and engine tipped off the east-bound tracks across the west-bound tracks, so both were damaged. Three semi loads of ties are parked a half block north. The BN&SF guestimate is that one-way traffic will resume at about 5 p.m. but I wonder about that.

So it's an interesting day down south and a bad one for rail traffic, since this will disrupt east-west travel nationwide on the BN&SF. Somewhere out there are frustrated Amtrak passengers since it doesn't look like either east-bound or west-bound is going to make it through Iowa today.

Brokeback pickup

The neighbor who insists all things LGBT shock and appall him tells me (regularly) that I've ruined his appreciation of the aesthetics of our neighborhood by pointing out that another neighbor's newest lawn ornament is the spitting image of the truck Jack Twist was driving as the 2005 film "Brokeback Mountain" opened. Now, he says, He can't look up the street without being reminded of that film.

Actually, the match is not that close. The Brokeback pickup was black; the neighborhood model, an interesting mix of red and gray (but no rust). And it runs. It took a Christmas tree to the community brush pile and now is loaded with downed limbs dating from the ice storm a week ago during which this photo was taken.

Nash acquires vintage vehicles now and then; tinkers with them for a while in the best shade tree mechanic tradition and then they go away. My favorite was a 1952 Chevrolet in two shades of blue that was a spitting image, too --- of the first family car I remember. Only difference: ours was four-door; his, two-door. That vehicle has long since moved on.

The Brokeback pickup, however, gives me a chance to cause minor trouble and get the neighbor's blood circulating. So that's good. We all need ways to entertain ourselves on these winter days. And it's too darned cold!

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The bishop's visit Sunday went off without a hitch, as did the baptism that occurred during it --- on a crisp clear day that followed a major melt that turned the church drive into a swamp and preceded Monday's surprise blizzard that for the most part closed the whole state down. An inspiring late-afternoon service followed by lots of good food and fellowship.

It's bitter again this morning and we're getting clouds related to the big storm moving through farther south --- but no precipitation and that's a good thing.

I'm off to a good start, too, remembering that it is Friday and that this is garbage pick-up day --- something I forgot last week. That involves rolling the garbage can out to the curb before 9 a.m., not a big deal but something I sometimes overlook unless I look out the front windows and remember the significance of those other garbage cans marching up and down the street in brown plastic formation.

Fortunately, we have the best refuse removal company in the whole world at work here --- always on time shortly after 9 a.m., always pick up what spills and when I forget, one of the guys comes up the drive, grabs the bags out of the can and takes them away any way. Can't beat that!

The winter of our discontent

It's been a great year so far to complain about the weather, keeping in mind that the continuing tribulations in Haiti make us seem remarkably self-obsessed for doing so.

Ice here early Wednesday added icing to the cake, but caused little damage because there was no wind to speak of. The trees still are coated this morning, the big pines across the street groaning under the loads. Everything other than the streets remain slippery, so it’s another good day to stay close to home or move as carefully and safely as possible from home to work and back again.


I poked my nose out long enough yesterday to go uptown and get a haircut, long overdue. As Margie clipped, we tried to figure out just how long it had been --- months --- but couldn’t.

So now I’ve carried out one of my two new year resolutions and will be neatly cropped on Sunday when the bishop visits St. Andrew’s, another nail-biter of an event, especially so because a baptism is part of the equation, dependent on the weather.

The current plan calls for Bishop Alan Scarfe (Episcopal Diocese of Iowa) to be at St. Paul’s in Creston for a morning service and lunch, then drive the hour over here for a 3 p.m. service and light supper before returning to Des Moines. We’ll see.

Few things are simple in bad weather in a parish as scattered as this one --- the bishop and our vicar emeritus (the Rev. Canon Richard Lintner) from Des Moines, our vicar (the Rev. Suzanne Palmer) from Albia, altar flowers from Indianola via Lucas with Suzie, soup from Corydon with Bill, and so on. Hopefully, it will all work out.

After the haircut, I came home to deal with a computer virus --- one of those aggravating ones that pretends to be a security system as it disables all your programs and tries to convince you to purchase something that does not exist. This arrived when I followed a search thread to BeliefNet (can’t remember what I was looking for) and if I’m not mistaken a similar visit from a similar virus early last summer came from the same source. Fortunately, the anti-malware program dealt with it, but running it (which I did twice to be on the safe side) takes an hour each time, followed up by an anti-spyware program, another hour. Lots of time babysitting a computer.

Evenings lately, due to a temporary trade of DVDs with friends, I’ve held my own Harry Potter festival, watching all the films available (lots of fun), followed up by the BBC “Planet Earth” series, still in progress. I'm really enjoying that even thought it does go on and on and on.

So it’s been a pretty slow January so far. I don’t mind. I like slow. On the other hand, it’s been fairly lively elsewhere and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

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This morning, for example, former Democratic presidential hopeful and ex-senator John Edwards got around to acknowledging paternity of the 2-year-old girl he sired by a mistress while on the campaign trial soon after his wife, Elizabeth, announced that her cancer had recurred and that there would be no cure. What a piece of work. Sadly, at one point I thought he might make a good president.

It’s been made evident since that Elizabeth would have been fully justified in just shooting the bastard, not necessarily fatally but at least memorably, and that most jurors probably would have agreed. Of course there would have been the inconvenience of a trial amid all her other sorrows, so she wisely took the high road. Fact is, Elizabeth Edwards probably would have made a better president than her spouse, often the case among potential and actual first ladies.

And then there were those photos, also early this morning, of Tiger Woods at a rehabilitation center for sex addicts somewhere in Mississippi. Now I can empathize with addiction --- faced with a package of chocolate-covered caramel peanut clusters I will be unfaithful to lettuce every time. But really. Wasn’t this just infidelity on a grand scale?

At least here in Iowa we can be reasonably confident that neither Chet Culver nor Terry Branstad has a mystery love child out there somewhere or practices big-league adultery.

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But what is this Terry Branstad business? For those who have forgotten, he was a four-term Iowa governor in the distant past, riding into office on the crest of a wave of good feeling generated by the admirable Robert D. Ray, his former boss, the last of the classic Republicans --- a case of froth rising to the top and staying there for a prolonged period of time.

It appears he still has no particular ideas for actually governing a state, relying instead on the fact that he is Terry Brandstad and isn’t Chet Culver.

Besides, the poor guy now looks like the dowager dutchess of Des Moines, a vaguely pear-shaped figure perambulating on tiny feet with glasses suspended around his neck on a shoestring (a practice image-makers apparently have advised him to discontinue). Oh well.

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And my goodness isn’t it good news that Conan O’Brien has been bought out by NBC for $32 million or so and that we’ll no longer have to listen to his incessant whining.

Jay Leno has never seemed amusing to me, so I’m glad to get rid of him at 9 p.m. on the only network affiliate I have access to. On the other hand, my major reason for turning the TV on at 9 p.m. was to help put me to sleep --- and goodness knows Leno did that. Which is the obvious reason why he’s being booted back to 10:30.

So good for NBC for a smart business decision. Now, can we just move on? There’s nothing quite as uplifting as millionaires complaining about their misfortunes.

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I blame the absence of sunshine so far during an unusually gloomy January for driving me to the coutch Sunday night for the Golden Globes’ complete broadcast, red carpet pre-show to the bitter end. Actually, I enjoyed it.

It was fun to see Drew Barrymore and Robert Downey Jr., both of whom have had their share of troubles, receive major awards. Redemption in Hollywood? Well maybe. And how about nice guy Jeff Bridges finally getting a nice award. “Glee” took home the top prize in the best comedy-or-musical category. Good!

Downey won the top award for best acceptance speech, I thought; Mo’Nique, a close second.


Penelope Cruz in vintage Armani was best dressed, but Sigourney Weaver has grown too old and stout for form-fitting green. I know Chloe Sevigny was admired in ruffles, but it looked to me as if she’d been attacked by some sort of fluffy fungus. Plus somebody stepped on her train, poor child. Eeek!

There seemed to be fewer breasts flopping around this year, something I was grateful for (obviously, if I were interested in breasts I’d probably feel differently). Mariah Carey was a notable exception, of course. What is it with these dresses with picture-window fronts?

And who in the world is Ricky Gervais and why was he host? I hadn’t thought it possible to find on air anyone less amusing than Jay Leno, but there he was. You know there’s going to be a rocky road ahead when the opening monologue deals extensively with the host’s penis.

And I’ve added “Crazy Hearts” and “Sherlock Holmes” to my list of must-see movies --- when they reach the $7-$9 DVD shelf at WalMart.

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And that’s today’s report from the southern hills.

About suffering ...

It seems odd to be here in Iowa’s southern hills enjoying this beautiful day --- sunshine, snwmelt, temperatures well above 30 degrees --- but uneasy as what possiby, quite probably, will turn out to be the Western Hemisphere’s greatest natural disaster in terms of human lives lost develops in Haiti.

I got to thinking a while ago about a W.H. Auden poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” that begins:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along ….

And then geography. How many Americans actually know where Haiti is? I was a little uncertain myself, sorry to say, despite geography courses at four levels, elementary, high school, college and military. Just a few miles off the southeastern tip of Cuba, I did know, but what was the name of that island? Hispaniola --- of course. Haiti shares it with, now let me think, the Dominican Republic. Of course again. But which is at what end? And were exactly in Haiti is Port-au-Prince? Finally looked at a map. Is geography still mandatory in public schools? Should be, but I just don’t know.

I watched the noon news on WHO after playing morning news junkie, moving from Web site to Web site looking for additional details. The state of Iowa’s judiciary and the weather, extensively covered and big news in a small puddle any other day, seemed irrelevant; the cheery chirpiness of noon anchors Megan and Patrick, downright annoying.

So I thought for a while about Jim Santori, a newspaper editor of sorts who I worked for back in the day when the newspaper business was hopeful and even modest dailies attempted to cover the broadest range of news possible. We would sit around the afternoon front page meeting discussing how the news of the day should be played.

If thousands of deaths anywhere in the world were involved in a natural or man-made disaster, most of us would argue the story demanded to be on front page. Jim, however, contended that placement and story length were factors of the color of the bodies. People were interested in white bodies, he said, but didn’t care about brown ones. So no matter how great the toll in Asia or South America, a news brief somewhere inside was sufficient. So much for the holocausts in Cambodia, Rwanda.

Quite frankly, I don’t remember much else about Santori but I do remember that. And the fact his star continued to rise in newspapering at least for a time.

So I wonder now if skin color really is a factor in how white folks perceive disaster, or if we’ve moved beyond that. Will the fact that Haiti’s population is overwhelmingly black and very poor make a difference in how most of us attend to the news, bother to pray, send aid as best we can when the death toll is estimated at 100,000 and rising? What if it had been the New Madrid fault that let loose; St. Louis, the scene of the carnage?

And what about faith? Each time I read someone’s explanation of why he or she has lost his or her faith and no longer believes, a disaster like that in Haiti seems to be cited --- “How could a loving God allow such a thing to occur?” That’s a logical question when we have created God in our own image and are offended if He fails to behave as we would; of course we’d never allow such a thing to happen if we were in control, we would have quelled the quake and spared the multitudes. But reminders that we are not God are disconcerting, challenging to deal with.

And so to prayer, but what and who to pray for? For the dead and dying, I think, that light perpetual may shine upon them; for the bereaved, that they may be comforted; for the injured, that they may be healed; and for us, that we may find and share the resources needed to feed the hungry, tend the stricken and house the homeless.

Snowdrifts revisited

I had thought to move inside quickly, grab a camera and capture an image of my good Samaritan neighbor, Lee, aboard his snowblower in either my driveway or his. But he was too quick for me, had finished the job and was gone before I got outside again Thursday morning.

So the photo shows Lee’s neatly cleared drive and the view southwest across it from my front steps as the wind kicked up to blow our newest four inches of snow around, heading us well below zero overnight and toward the coldest night of the year so far tonight.

Travel still isn’t recommended (clear ice on highways), there are a few flakes of snow in the air, it’s darned cold and dragging the garbage container out to the end of the driveway for pickup this morning involved forcing it through overnight drifts --- more shoveling.
The long stretch of cabin-fever days continues, since it’s just too darned cold to be outside.

I am a willing although not overly aggressive shoveler of snow, preferring to break the job down into 15-minute sessions --- until the cold begins to creep through boots and two layers of socks and into my toes, then coming inside to warm up. Using that strategy, I’d finished the sidewalk and roughly a third of the drive before Lee came along yesterday.

Lee is in his 80s and I, in my lower 60s. Our younger neighbors across the street are more aggressive. Darrin bundles up and clears his broad and steep drive in one operation. Nash, head insulated by shoulder-length hair and a beard, rushes out without a hat and makes quick work of his sidewalks in a few minutes of energetic shoveling. If I tried that, I’d drop dead.

All in all, it’s not bad here for those of us who have places to go but are in no hurry to get there. For those who have to be (or think they have to be) in specific places at specific times it’s a challenge and promises to remain that way into Saturday when a warming trend is promised.

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I finished watching the 1980s Granada/BBC production of Evelyn Waugh’s (left) “Brideshead Revisited” last night --- all 13 hours of it spread over several evenings. To do this is a little like taking a leisurely walk through the woods, admiring the flora and fauna, while just over the hill everyone else drives by at top speed. I’m not sure how many people 30 years after its premiere have that much patience --- or time.

But it’s worthwhile. The production is beautiful, the locations stunning and the performances wonderful.

The novel on which it is based regularly ends up on lists of the hundred best novels of the 20th century primarily because of the beautiful way it is written. Maybe I’ll reread it --- once I find it.

There’s a much newer and far shorter “Brideshead Revisited” production out there, also with Castle Howard standing in for Brideshead Castle, but I’m having trouble convincing myself I want to see it. “Brideshead” is a complex novel to which the 1980s production was remarkably true in its 13-hour run. Reviews suggest two-plus hours wasn’t enough time to do it justice.

There are all sorts of interesting subtexts in the novel, and the 1980s production, if you’re paying attention --- most involving autobiographical themes incorporated by Waugh.

Not born into the upper echelons of British society, Waugh had aspirations and by many accounts was a terrible snob. So one of the themes certainly is nostalgia for the good old days when the aristocracy had free rein --- something Waugh sensed was passing as World War II ended. He can be remarkably patronizing to lesser folks like us.

Waugh also was a convert to Roman Catholicism and there are many tortured Catholics running around here, including all members of the central Marchmain family. There’s a morality tale at the heart of “Brideshead,” the workings of grace and the possibilities of redemption. Redemption takes a form that grates a little 60 or more years after the novel was written, but nonetheless is there --- Lord Marchmain, Anglican turned Roman Catholic in order to marry but estranged from the church and his wife, returns to God on his deathbed; the drunk and dissolute Sebastian ends up as one of God’s fools, with one foot in and another out of a monastery; the adulterous Lady Julia vows to mend her ways even though it means ending the most meaningful human relationship of her life; and even the agnostic/atheist narrator, Charles Ryder, spurned as Julia accedes to grace, is brought into the fold as the novel and production near their ends with him on his knees in the Brideshead chapel, praying,

“Brideshead” also has some basis in adapted fact --- a great scandal of the 1930s involving the Lygon (earls of Beauchamp) family and their home, Madresfield Court, thought to be the model for the far grander Castle Howard version of Brideshead Castle. Waugh was intimately familiar with both the family and the house.

William, the 7th earl Beauchamp, was a noted homosexual (despite wife and seven children) whose fondness for footmen and virtually everyone else youthful and wearing pants was well known in English society --- but not officially so. After going a bit too public during a visit to Australia, he was outed by his brother-in-law, the immensely rich and powerful Duke of Westminster (Beauchamp’s wife and Westminster’s sister, Lettice, became the model some say for the devout Lady Marchmain).

The 7th earl, with a switch in sexual affinity, generally is considered to be the model for Lord Marchmain, in exile in “Brideshead” in Venice with his mistress. The British royal family, it is said, participated actively in Beauchamp’s fall from grace and exile to the Continent in part to protect the reputations of two royal sons, the stolid Henry (duke of Gloucester) and bisexual George (duke of Kent), who were members of the Madresfield/Lygon circle.

A younger Beauchamp son, Hugh Lygon --- one of three young men Waugh reportedly was involved with romantically and sexually while studying at Oxford --- like his father gay, seems to have been the primary inspiration for the central “Brideshead” character, Sebastian Flyte. (Waugh “outgrew” his homosexual phase, married twice and fathered seven children, but valued throughout his life his Oxford affairs).

But this is probably enough about “Brideshead Revisited” for now, since it’s time to bundle up and go shovel snow again.

Escapism

If you were expecting photos of the U.S. Bank time-and-temperature sign registering lows that have ranged from zero to minus-14 in this cold new year, think again. It’s too cold for me and for the delicate innards of the digital camera.

I don’t remember a longer stretch of snow and intense cold in southern Iowa, although up north it’s nothing too unusual --- so I’m trying not to whine about it. The house is warm and there’s plenty of food, after all. So far the only inconvenience has been the garage door opener, which declines to open the door fully unless I stand inside with my thumb on the switch. The trick here for someone accustomed to coming and going through the garage is to remember that I won’t be able to get back into the house unless I leave a storm door unlocked or am prepared to slide on my stomach through a narrow opening to reach the switch inside.

Delivering food collected at church to the ministries council food bank yesterday morning reminded me of others not so fortunate. Heating bills are soaring and that will be a challenge for many, too. Like many other churches, we have a modest discretionary fund intended to offer kindness to strangers who fall through financial cracks. As the cold deepens, the recession continues and sources of government funds dry up, it’s coming under increasing pressure.

I’ve been thinking about the challenges of caring for livestock in weather like this, too. Friends who raise horses have 14 stabled, but a few times that number outside --- and neither they nor those who care for them are happy campers right now.

We are anticipating more snow from late Wednesday into Thursday and a day of even colder temperatures before a weekend warmup finally begins. Whew!

I’ve made two new year resolutions I should be able to keep --- get a haircut (I’ve been using the cold as an excuse to put that off, however) and have breakfast, dinner or supper at the new Honey Creek Resort, a half hour to 45 minutes away. The food there, as well as all the other amenities, are getting good reviews and I really don’t have a good excuse, other than perhaps it’s too close to home, for not getting there more often.

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it’s been so far a good year for escapism. I’ve been re-reading John Berendt’s “The City of Falling Angels,” a book that followed by several years his “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” That book was about Savannah; this one, about Venice. Both places are quite a bit warmer than Iowa right now.

The centerpiece of Berendt’s newer book is a great fire that destroyed the Fenice, Venice’s opera house, but there are many other skillfully written and gossipy side trips down other Venetian canals involved. Berendt is a masterful storyteller, and this is a wonderfully entertaining read even through it has no deep redeeming social value --- but who needs redeeming social value when it’s this cold.

Evenings, I’ve taken to the sofa to watch (finally) all 13-plus hours of the 25th anniversary “collector’s edition” of “Brideshead Revisited.” I bought this a couple of years ago, but have never taken the time to see it through from beginning to end.

Anyone else remember this ground-breaking “mini-series” that premiered in the early 1980s, based the best-known novel by Evelyn Waugh --- a thoroughly nasty little man who could write like an angel?

This was ground-breaking for several reason including its extreme attention to detail (13 hours, after all), the fact much of it was shot on location (Castle Howard, above, in North Yorkshire depicting Brideshead Castle, Oxford, London, Venice, Morocco and more) and its superb cast and performances.

It’s a pleasure to watch Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder, whose narration unites the film; Anthony Andrews as Sebastian Flyte, his doomed friend and lover; and Diana Quick as Julia Flyte, Sebastian’s sister, and equally doomed although somewhat less decisively so friend and lover of Charles.

The show-stealers, however, are John Gielgud as Edward Ryder, Charles’s delightfully twisted father; Lawrence Olivier as Lord Marchmain, father of Sebastian and Julia; and Claire Bloom as Lady Marchmain, their mother.

I remember the difficulties involved in trying to watch all of the many episodes when this first was broadcast in the 1980s --- millions of others in both the U.S. and U.K. were equally mesmerized (and mildly frustrated) during that initial broadcast. So it’s lots of fun just to drift through it at leisure, enjoying every frame.

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I’ve also watched again in recent days “Brokeback Mountain,” inspired by the fact my neighbor, who acquires vintage vehicles now and then, currently has parked in his front yard a 1950s pickup that is the twin (other than the fact its gray and rust in color rather than black) of the pickup Jack Twist was driving as Ang Lee’s production opened.

It’s always a pleasure to watch this beautifully done film and interesting to notice how much more evident the skills of the director and actors, as well as the universality of the story, are once you’ve gotten used to the ground-breaking depiction of love uniting two ranch hands.

And then “Milk,” featuring Sean Penn’s award-winning portrayal of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, something of a patron saint for those of us who are LGBT, assassinated in 1978 with Mayor George Moscone by ex-Supervisor Dan White.

It’s somewhat refreshing to think as 2010 dawns how much has changed in the last 30 years --- that even good Christians have for the most part stopped suggesting we should be imprisoned or killed and are preoccupied now with debating whether or not our right to marry in Iowa (who would have thunk it?) should be continued.