Incredible, still edible, but cook it!

There seems to be some dismay among food safety experts and advocates because egg producers in the wake of the DeCoster farms-related salmonella scare are advising consumers to cook eggs thoroughly. I suppose that's understandable. We've all been led to believe --- along the same lines as Santa Claus --- that an egg shell protects its contents and that it is therefore safe, although unappetizing to many, to eat the things virtually raw.

On the other hand, we've known for years that raw chicken can carry salmonella. That's why we're advised to handle chicken carefully, cook it thoroughly and clean up well after. So it's not really surprising that a hen contaminated by salmonella can lay contaminated eggs.

This of course does not excuse producers who by ignoring basic safety measures actively encouraged contamination.

Except when eating at restaurants where heaven only knows what goes on in the kitchen, none of this has been a problem in my family, where grave suspicion always has surrounded anything undercooked or not cooked.

I'll have nothing to do under any circumstances with eggnog, including the storebought pasturized variety. Same goes for homemade mayonnaise. If confronted by a fried egg, I want to be assured that it has been thoroughly smacked down with a spatula and cooked for a prolonged period so that there is no possibility anything yellow and runny will issue from it.

The same principle applies to red meat. Before it goes into my mouth, it must be brown --- not the slightest  hint of pink. I know that such an approach is considered heresy by many carnivorous foodies, but it tastes just fine to me.

Yet more historic real estate

No. No. No. The Iowa governor's mansion is not for sale. But Terrace Hill is one of the state's grandest homes and I like it --- a spectacular and extremely harmonious example of the highest Second Empire style. The photo above belongs to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, not to me, by the way.

It came to mind today when I happened upon the photo below, taken I believe by Ben Carter (although I'm not sure of that) during January of 1983 when Terry and Chris Brandstad moved in --- loading the contents of their Lake Mills home into one of Jim Siddall's big trucks and heading south.

That's interesting now because it's entirely possible that Terry and Chris will move back in next year --- providing he is elected governor again. Terry is a Republican, so of course I deplore that possibility. But poor Chet Culver, one of my beloved Democrats, has proved to be remarkably inept in several instances and is trailing badly in the polls. The big lug probably hasn't been that bad a governor as governors go --- just inept.

That of course has allowed Terry to run on a two-plank platform --- "I used to be governor" and "I'm not Chet Culver." Like death and taxes, Republicans always will be with us. So it may be necessary to adapt.

The moving-in photo was taken for The Forest City Summit, in Terry's home county of Winnebago, and since I was interested in Terrace Hill I took it after publication, stuck it into one of my Terrace Hill books and have held onto it ever since.

The governor and his family do not live in the whole house by the way. They occupy a very nice --- and spacious --- three-bedroom apartment on the third floor, inserted into an area formerly occupied by servants' rooms, storerooms and rooms for overflow guests. And no, they don't have to climb a lot of steps, unless they want to. There's a private entrance, lobby and elevator on the west side of the House, underneath and behind the porch roof railing that's just showing above the moving van.

 The first floor contains five exceedingly grand state rooms, a smaller but equally grand music room and an amazing amount of hall and cross-hall plus a very grand stair hall and staircase. Home offices for the governor and his wife, meeting rooms, VIP guest rooms and the like occupy the second floor.

The house was built for Benjamin Franklin Allen in 1866 and 1867 on a wooded hill south of Grand Avenue west of downtown Des Moines and was ready for occupancy in the spring of 1868. He spent about $250,000 on it --- imagine how much that would be now --- and then proceeded to prove the accuracy of the old adage, "fools build big houses for others to live in." In other words, he went bust.

The house and its surrounding grounds were tied up in litigation for years until finally, in 1884, Frederick M. Hubbell bought the whole shebang for $60,000. He died there in 1930 and his heirs --- some of whom still are alive and kicking and influential in Des Moines --- gave it to the state in 1971. Gov. Robert D. Ray and his family moved in during 1976. The Branstads were the second official occupants.

It has cost millions over the years to restore, remodel and maintain the house --- and there used to be quite a bit of grumbling about that. It seems to have died down, at least for now. But no matter how folks feel about the cost of upkeep, few deny that Terrace Hill is one of the state's treasures.

Burrs and saddles

This has not been a good summer for those of us who walk our troubles away --- too wet, too much mud. It’s no fun to hit the trail wearing hip boots and carrying an umbrella.

But the weather has turned this week, lots of sunshine, reasonable humidity, cool breezes. The highland trail at Red Haw --- dipping low enough in only one place to get muddy --- was so dry late yesterday afternoon it didn’t matter that I forgot to change out of “good” shoes before heading down it.

The key to walking troubles away is to stop fussing about what ails you as you walk, and concentrate instead on what’s around you. And to be grateful that you can still walk.

One thing that’s been ailing all of us down here I think is death --- too many young people (50 is young) in too short a time --- car crashes, cancer, inexplicable accidents. For some families, these tragedies are the latest in strings. It’s like a cloud over a small place where everyone is interconnected.

It’s disconcerting for those of us on the sidelines to realize while thinking about it all that it took someone else’s tragedy to make us appreciate for the first time lately how lucky we are to be alive and kicking. That’s just wrong.

What happened to the practice of gratefulness on a daily basis? Why so darned preoccupied with a litany of imagined woes that joy has to sneak up and surprise us?

God doesn’t have hands, I’ve been told --- other than those He gave us. And they’re not very useful when we’re sitting on them or wringing them. So I’ll try to wring my hands less and use them more.

School started here Wednesday, and that can be looked upon in two ways --- As the beginning of the end (of summer) or as a beginning. I live half a block from an elementary school and had forgotten yesterday that if I’m away from home during the half hour on either side of 3 p.m. there’s a good chance I won’t be able to get home and into the driveway because of the school bus procession and erratically driving (and parking) parents. Really ticked me off. For no good reason. It’s like migrating birds --- happens every year.

And then there’s politics --- and more politics. Here’s the problem I’m having. Democrats did not get us into the fix we’re in all by themselves. Republicans did not get us into the fix we’re in all by themselves. We did it together, bless our hearts, and none of the ideological tools embedded in our respective mindsets are working especially well.

But few of us are anxious to move beyond our mindsets together and develop a fresh idea or two. What we really want to do is exchange places every four years, grab the same old shovel s, dig the hole a little deeper and then complain about it --- loudly.

And what the heck is this Ground Zero-Mosque business? So we really believe Muslims, just because they’re Muslims, don’t have the constitutional right to build an Islamic Center wherever they want to (in this case two blocks from Ground Zero) so long as all the regulations that govern the religious buildings of all faiths are observed. Well fine.

But the next time gun control legislation is proposed, I don’t want to hear a word from those who believe they have a constitutional right to bear arms or all those other yahoos who allege they have a right to speak freely, assemble freely or maybe plant a church of their own denomination in a place where the neighbors of another denomination don’t want it.

And finally, this vast Islamic conspiracy thing. Well, you’re right --- there is a vast Islamic conspiracy. It’s called birth rate. Just by reproducing more enthusiastically than Christians, the best guess is that sometime during the 21st century the number of Muslims in the world will meet, then exceed, the number of Christians.

So do you really want to kill large numbers of Muslims in order to restore the Christian edge? Or go back to standard 12-child Christian families and try to out-reproduce them?

This doesn’t mean there are not extremely dangerous Muslims --- and more than a few Christians, too --- out there on the lunatic fringe in need of defusing. But neither Muslims demonizing Christians nor Christians demonizing Muslims is going to work. Never has. Never will. And it doesn’t make any difference which side started the fight.

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So those were a few of things I could have thought about while walking yesterday evening. But I didn’t. I just took pictures. And then had to come home and write about all the burrs that had gotten stuck under my saddle to remind myself of why I needed to take that walk in the first place.

More historic real estate

Bentonsport, down along the river in Van Buren County, is another favorite place and because of that I've been checking in now and then on the sales progress of two prime pieces of historic real estate that have been on the market there for quite a while --- the old Methodist church and the Cowles house.

I took the snapshot that includes the Methodist church many years ago, in shaggier times. It really hasn't changed on the outside, although pleasant living quarters have been inserted inside. According to a little self-guided tour brochure available at the Bentonsport visitor center, it was built in 1857 and remained in use until 1988, when the congregation was disbanded --- then was sold.

The old Presbyterian church, some distance south of this building, remains in use during the summer and is a better building in terms of design and all-around preservation. Bentonsport's old Congregational church and the brick Methodist church across the river in Vernon both have long since vanished.

Extensive restoration has been undertaken since this photo was taken on the Sanford House, just across the road to the west and looking kind of bedragled here.

Here's the official listing for the church, which you'll note is priced at $165,000. While the church is a one-of-a-kind property in a lovely and historic place, that's still a mighty price for a building in rural iowa.

And here's the listing for the Cowles house, which occupies an entire block and includes other buildings including a guest cottage and a small stone structure that once was a blacksmith shop. The asking price here is $225,000. This house dates from the 1840s and probably was among those built by Mormon craftsmen who stopped here in flight from Nauvoo to Utah to earn money for that journey.

I hope someone with deep pockets willing to love and maintain these buildings comes along --- and that their owners recoup their investments. The fact for better or worse about investing in restoration of historic properties, however, is that it turns out in many cases to be a charitable donation to our collective heritage rather than a way to make money.

Eggscuse us, please

On behalf of Iowa’s old hens, let me be among the first to apologize. At last count some 500 million Iowa-produced eggs have been recalled in recent days, some from as far away as exotic California.

One of my favorite footnotes to this story was the accusation made in the “comments” forum attached to a Des Moines Register story last week that the media were sensationalizing the issue by counting eggs individually rather than by the dozen. I’ve not bothered to divide 500 million by 12, but however you look at it that’s a lot of eggnog.

It’s not the old hens’ fault you know. They just sit cramped into cages by the hundreds of thousands eating and drinking what’s giving them --- and laying eggs. When egg production declines, they’re sent off to become chicken soup (or at least it used to work that way; maybe they’re just killed now).

It’s not an attractive business. It’s why a lot of people don’t like factory farms. But most people probably don’t think --- or haven’t until now --- where those eggs in the grocery cooler come from. It’s also been suggested previously that if more people thought carefully about exactly where an egg does come from fewer would be consumed. But I’ve watched the process and still like eggs --- in moderation.

The leading Food and Drug Administration theory at the moment seems to be that the hens’ food supply was contaminated, possibly by rodents, and that caused them to lay contaminated eggs.

If something like this was going to happen, folks in Iowa and Maine could have told you beforehand with 90 percent probable accuracy who would be behind it --- the DeCosters, bless their hearts. Maine, because that was where they came from; Iowa, because this is where they expanded to maybe 20 years ago, launching a network of both hog confinement operations and egg factories centered in Wright County, way up north. The old man is Austin “Jack” DeCoster. In part because the Iowa Department of Natural Resources declared him an habitual offender 10 years ago and barred him from launching more operations himself, his son, Peter, now runs DeCoster in Iowa.

Wright County Egg, owned by the DeCosters and headquartered at Clarion, made the initial 380-million egg recall when salmonella was detected. Hillandale Farms recalled 170 million more just lately. It’s not clear if the DeCosters are partners in the Hillandale operation, but both Wright County Egg and Hillandale get their birds and feed from another DeCoster operation, Quality Egg.

I remember the first time the DeCosters made the front pages in Iowa during the 1990s --- after manure from their hog confinement operations began to flow too frequently into state waterways. Those were the violations that earned Jack habitual offender status. In 1997, he was fined $2 million for health and safety violations at his Maine farms. Just this year, he’s been fined in Maine for animal cruelty.

The DeCosters also have made it a practice to employ illegal immigrants. In 2002, they paid $1.5 million to settle sexual harassment charges involving supervisors and female Mexican employees of their Iowa operations. A raid in 2007 netted 51 illegal immigrants at DeCoster egg operations in Wright County. A million here, a million there, this violation, that violation --- but like the Energizer bunny, they just keep going.

Beyond the “whoops-we-poisoned you” factor, this is a sad situation for other Iowa egg producers, most of whom try to operate ethically --- at least so far as their human customers are concerned. I’m still not happy about those caged layers, however.

Chickens are our friends, you know. When I was growing up, our neighbor and friend Alice Hawkins had a pet hen --- spared for years as declining layers were culled and shipped off to soup cans. Alice could walk to the door of the henhouse, call that old hen and there she’d come running out of a sea of white to have her head scratched. So old hens have feelings, too, and I still think fondly of that bird --- and for the most part of those we raised, too, although our bantams were my favorites.

In fact I’ve been eyeing the back yard this week. A little chicken wire there, a little garden shed there, a little corn and some chicken feed, a few leghorns --- instant eggs. Maybe I could even cash in on what’s bound to be increased interest in free-range hens producing closer to home. Naaa. The neighbors would never stand for it. Besides, their yapping dogs would keep the old hens awake nights and cut production.

Downriver to Keokuk

OK, so I didn't really head downriver to Keokuk this afternoon, but I got so enthused about the idea I may have to do just that sometime again this fall. I don't think it's a secret that Iowa's three southern-most Mississippi River cities --- Burlington, Fort Madison and Keokuk --- are three of my favorite places. I just like being along the river, period. And Nauvoo, another favorite place, is just across the Mississippi downstream from Fort Madison and upstream from Keokuk. The river road drive down from Nauvoo on the Illinois side to the bridge back across to Keokuk is one of the prettiest in the country. Who could ask for more?

What got me going this time was a little Web surfing. I'm interested in old houses, so now and then plug "for sale," "historic" and "Iowa" into Google and see what turns up. What turned up this time was a wonderful Web site developed for Birdwood (above), one of Keokuk's grand old homes and one I've driven by several times without being aware of its name. Kids, grandkids and aging parents are calling the owners home to Utah, so they want, reluctantly, to sell the house. This Web site, which you'll find here, is one of the tools they're using.

Be warned, however, to take the tour now if you're interested. My guess would be that when the house sells the Web site will come down and this link will be broken. Scroll down a ways and "Click to see the Birdwood Estate Slide Show." And while you're about it, don't miss "New! Slideshow of Neighborhood" linked a little farther down. You'll get some idea of what the neighborhood on the bluffs northeast of downtown and west of the river is like. I stole the photo of the house, by the way, from the site --- thanks!

Once you've passed Birdwood at the intersection of North 4th and Fulton streets, keep going northeast for two more blocks (until you can't go any farther) and hang a left onto Park Place. After a block, turn right onto Grand Avenue and just keep going north past more spectacular river-bluff homes and you'll come eventually to Rand Park, dedicated on the 4th of July 1883, 50 rolling and shaded acres with some fairly spectacular views of the Mississippi below (like the one just above --- and I took that photo rather than swiping it).

Beyond the view, my favorite part of Rand Park is the gravesite and statue of Chief Keokuk, the city's namesake, gazing in a distinctly lifelike manner out across the river. Now Keokuk is not necessarily my favorite among the Sauk leaders (Black Hawk is). He was just a trifle to conciliatory in his dealings with invasive whitefolks for my taste --- but of course that conciliatory nature of his is why he was popular with the invaders.

Keokuk died during 1848 in Kansas after being dispatched there with his people and was buried in a tribal cemetery near Ottawa. But when Rand Park was dedicated on the 4th of July 1883, his family and other tribal officials were among the honored guests --- part of a plan to return the old chief's bones to this lovely place for burial.

That was accomplished with nearly everyone's blessing in October of 1883 when officials from Keokuk traveled to Kansas, exhumed his remains and brought both his bones and his tombstone home to Iowa. That tombstone is embedded in the base of the monument. The inscription reads, "Sacred to the memory of Keokuck, a distinguished Sac Chief, born at Rock Island, Ill., 1788, died in April 1848."

As you might expect, there is a south central Iowa link to this lovely statue of Keokuk. It's creator in 1912-1913 was was Nellie V. Walker, who grew up a stonecutter's daughter in Moulton, down southeast of Centerville in Appanoose County. A tiny woman, her father gave her a chunk of marble to play with when a child and her career as a sculptor was launched. After attending the Chicago Art Institute she operated from a Chicago studio for 35 years. She died in 1973 at age 99 at Colorado Springs, but is buried near her parents in the Oakland Cemetery at Moulton, just west of town on gravel.

Keokuk also is the site of Iowa's only national cemetery, situated in the southwest part of town just south of the muncipal cemetery, also called Oakland. It's a pretty place, another of my favorite spots in Keokuk. Because of Keokuk's location location along the river and the fact there was a medical school there, five military hospitals were operating here at the height of the Civil War. The city donated land south of the cemetery for the burial of those who died in those hospitals --- more than 600 during the course of the war --- and in 1862 Keokuk was among the first 14 national cemeteries designated by President Abraham Lincoln.

More land to the west and south was added later and the cemetery remains in use, although surrounded now and unlikely to be expanded once its filled. That was among the reasons for the creation of the Iowa Veterans Cemetery near Des Moines a couple of years ago.

More than 5,000 have been by now interred in the Keokuk National Cemetery, including several buried originally elsewhere. Among them are approximately 150 brought to Keokuk in 1948 when the Fort Des Moines post cemetery was destroyed. The Fort Des Moines cemetery was not especially old, related as it was to the "new" Fort Des Moines along Army Post Road in south Des Moines and not to the original Fort Des Moines, downtown near the confluence of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers.

Coming to Keokuk from considerably farther away were approximately 70 bodies brought here during 1908 from the Fort Yates post cemetery in North Dakota.

Now if you want to cause trouble in both North and South Dakota, try suggesting that when those bodies were brought to Iowa the remains of Sitting Bull, renowned Hunkpapa Lakota holy man, inadvertently (or advertently) were brought along.  

Sitting Bull was buried at Fort Yates after being shot to death by tribal police on Dec. 15, 1890. Many believe, however, that his grave was opened in 1953 and the remains removed and reburied near Mobridge, South Dakota, although some believe the remains that were moved were not his. Whatever the case, two states now claim his grave. Iowa might as well make it three, although it should be pointed out this is exceedingly unlikely if not impossible.

Finally, to come full circle, back to one of my favorite Iowa churches, St. John's Episcopal in Keokuk, three blocks southwest of Birdland at 208 North 4th Fourth (and the picture here is someone else's, shared freely  by its creator, "Smallbones," on Wikipedia Commons).

This really is one of Iowa's finest small churches (although it's quite large), but stained glass --- including three windows from the Tiffany Studios --- is its principal glory. You can find the church Web site here and please do take the "Church Tour."

Lost and found, scattered and expired

I don’t react well when something goes wrong with the truck and today it was a tire mostly interested in going flat rather than in going somewhere. Didn’t plan to stay mostly at home, but because of the aforementioned tire did it anyway.

Could have changed the tire and been on my way --- but changing tires is not a favorite thing to do, partly because of the frustration of getting the darned spare out from under the vehicle where it hangs suspended from a cable. Since the guy who fixes stuff efficiently and economically operates from a shop at the foot of the hill, I just drove down this morning, made an appointment to get it fixed, inflated the tire and then drove it back up the hill until the appointed time (it turned out to be a very small screw). It deflated; I relaxed.

My mind had been on orphans this week and with more computer time than usual, I plugged “orphan” into Google “Images” to see what turned up. The result was this advertisement from an unnoted publication, obviously from another time. Imagine being able to take in a child, if interested in adopting, on “90-day trial.” Of course this was the age of orphan trains, too --- considerably more relaxed days when it came to the welfare of parentless children.

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Orphans came up Monday over coffee when an older friend started talking about the fact she had no birth family that she knew of, relying instead on family acquired by marriage --- in-laws, spouse, grandchildren and the like.

She knew her parents’ names and remembered her father, who died when she was about 12, but had then been placed in an orphanage with her younger brother, from whom she soon was separated (a separation that lasted more than 30 years), and really hadn’t thought that much about her parents since. I offered to do a little research, since I’m reasonably good at that, and have turned up a few things in the days since.

It’s an interesting story --- hers to tell and not mine to play fast and loose with, so the characters are going to have to remain nameless here.

The father was a middle-aged U.S. military officer stationed in France during World War I where he met and became engaged to a much younger French woman. In 1919, he sent for her and she sailed to America, arriving at Ellis Island as all emigrants of that time did if they entered the United States through the port of New York.

I was able to locate the passenger manifest from the ship she arrived on and it provided some interesting information, including a physical description, that another researcher might carry forward if interested. Among the information was the exact address in France of her mother, who apparently was an English woman married to a French man.

They married soon after her arrival and although the family was not financially stressed, his profession required travel to project sites across the country. So one child was born in Pennsylvania and the other in Missouri. But in 1926, in Colorado, the mother died --- a little more than six years after emigration, leaving two young children and her husband behind.

He buried her in Colorado, then not long after took his children to a new project location --- deep in Texas. And there he died unexpectedly himself a few years later of natural causes leaving two youngsters stranded without parents and with no place to go home to.

Kind people and the Red Cross did their best to reunite the children with family, but there were many problems. The grandmother in France was located, but she did not have the resources needed to either retrieve from America or raise the two children.

Because the father was substantially older than the mother, his parents and at least one of his two siblings had been dead for several years when he died. Because no one could be found to take them in, the children were placed in an orphanage.

Now my friend certainly turned out well despite these difficulties early in life, but there’s a hole there where many if not most of us have memories of stable and loving homes to fall back on --- and that’s too bad.

It appears that neither the grave of the mother nor the father is marked, although cemetery records suggest both could be located without too much difficulty.

And that’s the extent of this story, so far as I know it.

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But research in cemetery records to find people buried far from home brought to mind another story, this one related to a time years ago when I lived in a small Winnebago County town named Thompson and often walked in its Rose Hill Cemetery.

During these walks, I kept noticing a small tombstone near the drive inscribed only “Henry Dodge and Sister” and finally took the time required to go first to cemetery records and then to newspaper files to track down their story.

As it turned out, Henry was a young Englishman who emigrated to the United States soon after the turn of the 20th century and somehow landed in Winnebago County, Iowa, where he went to work as a hand for a farmer of Norwegian descent named Tonnes Mortenson.

Eventually, Henry earned enough money to pay the way from England to America of his sister, Clara, who planned to become his housekeeper.

But Clara became ill aboard ship and died soon after arrival in New York --- suspended midway between her former home and her new home. With help from Tonnes, Henry came up with enough money to bring her body on to Iowa from New York for burial in a place she had never been.

Although he lived a long life, Henry never married. And when he died, he was buried at Rose Hill beside his sister. Tonnes, widely known for thrift but perhaps more generous than many thought, erected the small stone to mark both their graves. I used to think more about those two, buried together so far from home and family.

Cluttered rooms, cluttered heads

I’ve been thinking about the similarities between a store room and a head (that container for your brain, not as in sailor terms the bathroom). You begin by tucking away useful stuff there, then move on to filling its shelves with stuff that might come in handy sometime. Finally, when it becomes hopelessly cluttered and disorganized, you just start tossing stuff in and allowing it to fall where it may. Headaches may result.

My major accomplishment between showers yesterday (yes, more rain) was purchasing, assembling and installing a new set of metal shelving in the church store room, a cluttered place where clutter is complicated by the fact others who use the parish hall use it, too --- a group of yoga practitioners, a small artist collective, Girl Scouts and several Narcotics Anonymous groups (how’s that for a mix?).

We had it almost under control in the spring, but had failed to fight the good fight in the interim and the whole mess was out of control again (the cleaning lady quite wisely just never opens that particular door). The toy box had been pulled out and its contents scattered, several large boxes in which equipment had arrived had been tossed in at random, the dried up palm fronds from Palm Sunday still were there (we actually burn those to produce Ash Wednesday ashes, just haven’t gotten around to it yet) --- and then there was Christmas.

Christmas clutter should not be a problem in an Episcopal church, or so it seems. Church decorations are minimal --- the Advent wreath and nativity are put into place as the season begins, then greenery and flowers, for the most part biodegradable, are installed after the final Sunday in Advent but before Christmas Eve. Everything is packed away after (or has biodegraded before) Epiphany.

But it has been a practice to decorate the parish hall for various purposes for at least 50 Christmases in this building. The strategy apparently has been to bring decorations from home and tuck many of them away in the store room (or elsewhere), planning to use them again, then forget they’re there and bring in a new batch when Christmas comes the next year. Then repeat the process. The result had gotten to be kind of scary. So I’ve thrown away or recycled a lot of tattered Christmas past and feel better for it --- and the store room is beginning to look good again.

But like our heads, there’s this dark and scary area attached to the store room that’s full of heaven only knows what and every time I look in there I back out. We call it the hell hole --- a narrow area between the south wall of the church and the north wall of the restrooms entered through a waist-high door and extending several feet . As the years have passed stuff (including still more Christmas past) has been stuffed in, pushing earlier stuff farther back.

I felt downright positive about stuff after an hour or two in the store room yesterday, freshly resolved to reapply myself to similar situations at home, maybe even in my head. But that hell hole, and we’ve all got them, still scares me.

God is in the detail

Don't ever let 'em convince you it's that other guy. My back yard, by the way, on this beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Sunday skywatch

Heavenly sunshine, at last.

Gratuitous nudity (or naked ladies)

More heavy rain here last evening, but it's a glorious morning --- blue skies, a little cooler, the promise of a drying-out time next week (another chance of rain tonight, however).

We mostly call these spectacular pink lilies in bloom far and wide right now "naked ladies," but they have other more decorous names including sprprise, spider, magic and resurrection lilies. These are located on the museum grounds and I apologize for the framing of their portraits. But I was balanced on the retaining wall of the top tier of a terraced planter that drops about 12 feet to patio level and (a) while trying to avoid falling off I was (b) struggling with the "macro" mode of the camera, which means I can't use the view-finder because of the parallax factor, while facing into the sun.

I'm not sure if these are grown everywhere, but because they flourish so readily they probably are. Officially Lycoris squamigera (how's that for an ugly name?), their substantial bulbs send up generous foliage in the spring, which then yellows, dies down and disappears. About this time of year, as if by magic, two-foot stalks pop through the ground apparently overnight and burst like firecrackers into full bloom. It's quite a show. Since their stems are "naked," they really work best when incorporated into other plantings, but wherever they are they're surely pretty.

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Multi-culturalism is a wonderful thing, but while fiddling with the new camcorder yesterday afternoon I accidentally changed its language to Polish. Whoops. Faced with a series of menu options, all in Polish, I couldn't figure out how to get back to the one I needed to open in order to undo the damage. Finally, I just went through a couple of dozen options until the right one showed up. Ain't technology grand?

Here's a photo of Otterbein Church, also on the museum campus, also taken this morning. Isn't it great to see that blue sky among the pin oak leaves?

Excess heat and the grim reaper

It's too hot to mow the lawn, and while I don't mean to start sounding shrill about this, that means it's just too darned hot. Besides I look forward to mowing the lawn and the illusion it fosters of creating order amid chaos. It can also be a darned good form of walking/riding meditation --- providing you pay close enough attention to avoid running into a tree or falling off.

We're also due for more severe thunderstorms today and tonight. I'm tired of looking at weather radar --- including in the middle of the night when I fire up the computer to see if it's going to last and I need to launch lifeboats, even up here on the hilltop.

Foolishly, I watered planters at a couple of locations an hour ago --- a surefire invitation to the rain that now is falling.

But at least there's central air, for many of us at least. Remember the good old days when there wasn't any? I think about the summer my parents first decided some form of air conditioning was required. It was equally hot, but the rest of the problem involved drought rather than excess moisture. So a big unit was installed in the front window of the living room,. It made so much noise living there became impractical. Fortunately, it had power enough to cool the remoter areas of the first floor that we retired to.

That didn't solve the upstairs problem, but open windows and doors on all four sides of the house as well as open doors inside made that part of the house bearable at night. I can't remember the last time I've had a window open here.

Spared floods and tornados, our weather-related difficulties are kind of modest I guess. My paternal grandmother used to talk about the time as a teen-ager she sat up with others into a hot August evening with the remains of a deceased relative or neighbor, and I've forgotten which --- but think it was a friend about her own age.

This would have been some time after 1901, when shortly after her mother's death Grandmother was shipped to Lucas County to live with an aunt because an all-male household in the wild West was considered no place for a young female to be. This was before Great-grandfather Cash acquired his second wife, not much older than his only daughter, a match that as it turned out was not made in heaven.

Anyhow, the remains (awaiting the arrival of the undertaker) were laid out on planks across sawhorses surrounded by chucks of ice from the icehouse and covered with a damp sheet weighted with bricks. A stiff breeze sprang up and as it blew in through open windows and doors, Grandma said, threatened to disarrange the sheet, something those keeping watch viewed with horrified fascination.

At least that's a problem few of us have in this day and age.

High water & technobabble

Well, it's been an interesting week so far and in Lucas County, at least, we're grateful to be relatively high and dry.

Heavy rains overnight ranging from 3 to 6 inches are causing unprecedented flooding in Ames and severe flooding in Des Moines area has claimed at least one life. Three vehicles were washed off a road early this morning east of Altoona when a small creek turned mean. Ten people escaped; one didn't.

Earlier in the week, similar floods hit Oskaloosa --- our neighbor to the northeast. And it remains to be seen what will happen downstream in the Ottumwa area and beyond when all of this water heads southeast toward the Mississippi.

There are some fairly amazing aerial photographs and other flood-related footage on The Des Moines Register Web site as well as the sites of our principal TV sources, WHO and KCCI.

We had about two more inches here overnight (the commotion woke me up at about 3 a.m.) on top of a similar amount or more Sunday night, but no major problems have resulted.

And have I mentioned the heat? Poor Creston, two counties west, had heat index highs of 120 on two consecutive days and it sounds like we have at least one more day of that plus another round of storms to endure Thursday night into Friday before this weather system moves out.

This week's rainfall has officially moved Iowa into the wettest-year-on-record category --- and there's still a lot of year left.

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My only personal aggravation is tied to the fact we're midway through putting a new roof on the church, slow-going primarily because the ground is so saturated that if the heavy equipment needed to hoist shingles, people and tools is moved into place it immediately sinks into the earth. We already have one pond in the back yard created by that equipment last week and probably will have another on the north lawn before all is said and done.

The roofing crew is being careful to ensure everything has a roof over it all the time, but the seam between the roof of the main church and the sacristy-kitchen-office wing is troublesome and both of this week's rains have sent modest amounts of water into the sacristy, loaded with vestments, linen, paper, etc. So I spent part of Monday evacuating the sacristy, part of Tuesday salvaging bulletin inserts for the balance of the Pentecost season that had gotten wet and rearranging cupboards, and the fans and air conditioning are running again full-blast today to keep moisture levels down.

We'll all make it through I'm sure, but it certainly has been an aggravating season weatherwise. We've been lucky, but you feel awful about the young woman who lost her life and sad for the hundreds of people who have lost most of their belongings when homes flooded.

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Between water worries, I've been doing my best to become the historical society's personal geek squad.

Four of us went into Des Moines Saturday to buy grant-funded equipment for what we're calling the Living History Project, intended to collect history as it's happening (and record accounts of past events as remembered by people who won't be with us forever), convert some of the masses of paper artifacts in the collection into digital images, turn all of this into publicly-accessible formats and in some cases take the resulting shows on the road.

We were in the market for a laptop of sufficient power and capacity to serve as the command center for this project, a good camcorder, a new scanner-printer and a projector. Sounds easy, but it turned into kind of a complicated morning.

Actually, the product selection went well because one of us (not me) had done his homework and the personnel at both BestBuy and the big-box office supply store we patronized were extremely helpful. BestBuy proved to be everything anyone could hope for --- the staff dealt easily with our tax-exempt status (and we'd come prepared with the proper paperwork) and processed the society check with no problems.

The office supply store, however, just couldn't handle it. In the first place, they were having trouble with their computer system --- a bad sign on a busy Saturday morning. They crash-landed first when trying to deal with the tax-exempt nature of the society and the tax-exempt eligibility of items we were purchasing. That problem finally was solved by adjusting the price of one item down in the amount of the tax so that we in effect paid the tax but really didn't. That took a lot of time (and ours happened to be the only check-out station functioning --- sort of --- at the time because of those computer problems)

Then the computer system would not accept a society check, nor would it accept the society treasurer's personal check, so we finally put the whole thing on a credit card and got the heck out of Dodge. What a pain. I'll certainly think twice before shopping at a store of that particular brand again.

I've been gradually unpacking all the equipment and getting it going ever since, and there's a heck of bunch of hoops to jump through in the process. Aggravations include the fact the laptop runs Windows Seven rather than the version I'm used to and Hewlett Packard has developed and installed a mini operating system that keeps wanting to run on top of Windows when I don't want it to.

Then there's the fact you really can't efficiently launch a new computer or download software (from a disk) these days without being connected to the Internet --- and we don't have a wireless router yet, nor does our DSL modem have two ethernet ports. So a lot of disconnecting and reconnecting is required until we get that sorted out.

And finally, there's my disposition. If I stick with this sort of thing for much longer than say an hour and a half, my head will explode. And I want peace and quiet when I'm working on this stuff. So it's all getting done in small chunks.

It'll all be fine in the end --- providing we don't wash right off our hill and down the crick one if these nights. If that happens, I sure hope I have the camcorder at home and there's enough light to make recording it possible.

Not a bad way to start the day

The heat index, they tell us, was 120 degrees in Creston (two counties due west) yesterday, and that kind of heat can make us all a little testy.

The mid-term elections are drawing nearer and that's always an excuse for political and personal hostility as the two parties vie for the numerical (and ideological) edge.

 Friday, observed by many Christians as the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, also was the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima (and three days later, Nagasaki), events that ended the bloodshed of World War II --- but at the cost of a previously  unimagined number of human lives.

Iowa sent the last of its 2,800 troops off yesterday for final training before deployment to Afghanistan --- the largest single deployment involving Iowans since World War II --- the latest in a series of wars that previous wars to end all wars have failed to end.

And so we pray for peace, perhaps in the hope that it will be somehow imposed from above, overlooking the possibility that it really doesn't work that way --- and that peace is darned hard work that like many other things behings at home.

Which brought to mind the prayer attributed to St. Francis --- YouTube version above based upon a musical setting performed by Filipino musician Ryan Cayabyab and friends.

One of the interesting things about this prayer is that it is not connected in any way other than perhaps spirit to our friend St. Francis. The prayer seems to be about 100 years old and may have become associated with Francis when someone composed or selected it to be printed on the back of a prayer card bearing his likeness.

But none of that diminishes the power of its petitions. What do you suppose would happen if in increasing and finally overwhelming numbers we all arose each morning, prayed it --- then did our best to live it?

The buzzards are circling

This immature buzzard was minding its own business Sunday evening as I walked closer and closer.

It came to attention as I approached the base of the tree along the BN&SF tracks where it was perched.

We continued to survey each other for a minute, then it dropped into the cavity where its nest mate was waiting.

I've been watching the buzzards (or turkey vultures) circle the back yard all summer, swooping down from the roof of the big house mid-block to the northeast, then sailing off to the southeast. An omen? Well, probably not.

Out for a walk in the neighborhood with the camera Sunday evening chasing something else, I followed the stub of a street along the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe tracks that becomes the Ryuns' driveway and kind of accidentally ended up in their back yard.

John called me over and pointed to the remains of a once-mighty maple tree right along the tracks, one huge limb of which had fallen onto the roof of a garden shed during one of the multiple storms we've had this summer.

And there was the buzzard --- immature (it's head still is black rather than red) and it can't fly quite yet, although it's testing its wings daily, John said.

I surveyed the buzzard and walked closer. It surveyed me and came to attention. We looked at each other for a while and then it dropped into the nest cavity in the fallen limb, which the Ruyans had thoughtfully left in place on the roof of their shed until the family reached maturity. It's sibling was waiting inside.

Before long, the baby buzzards will fly away and the Ruyans can get on with the cleanup. But for now, it's interesting to have buzzards as neighbors. None of us could remember buzzards nesting in town before, odd we thought because of all the timber surrounding us. But wonders never cease.

At the office

The sun is edging up over the eastern horizon this morning --- high time. It’s been wet again here --- not dramatically so, but wet --- and hot (it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, you know). Tempted to do more complaining, I took a look at the morning reports from Pakistan --- by comparison nothing to complain about at all.

I’ve been running in circles this week, literally, museum to library to  church to home, and not accomplishing very much at any of those locations, or so it seems. The decision to move a piece of furniture in the museum library, located in a place that offended my sense of order, led to a back ache. Head deep in a sacristy cupboard at church yesterday, I rose up abruptly when a terrible commotion erupted out front --- and cracked my head. Whine, whine, whine.

The commotion turned out to be a giant dumpster being moved into place --- almost blocking the dry (paved) approaches to the front door. We’re due to get a new roof --- at great expense, although such things have to be done every 20-30 years. For the duration of that project we’ll have two bishops --- one of the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa; the other, bishop of the old-order church district south of town whose crew will do the reroofing. I doubt the Episcopal bishop will drive down to crawl around on our roof, however.

On a more positive note, I’ve been doing much better this summer on the Daily Office --- and that’s what the title refers to --- not that place we go to earn some money, volunteer our time or sort out tangled bookwork.

Episcopalians call this daily round of prayer Daily Office, based upon the Latin “officium divinium” or divine service/obligation. Roman Catholics tend to call by the more straightforward translation, “Divine Office,” or Liturgy of the Hours” or “Opus Dei” (work of God).

Everyone of faith does essentially the same thing --- pray at regular intervals; we just have more interesting titles for it. Many others, of course, don’t do it at all --- looking upon prayer as a foolish concept, something to do only in church or as a last desperate cry for help in a dire situation.

This is not a sermon, so I’m not necessarily promoting anything. I can only tell you that my day always goes better when I do it, or at least part of it --- although that’s not necessarily easy. I awake brain dead at about 5 most mornings, so coffee comes first and that artificial jolt some days leads to distractions. Evening prayers can be a little like the promise to yourself never to let the sun set on a sink full of dirty dishes. Whoops. Blew it again.

The illustration here divides the day into eight canonical hours --- Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. The number of hours has waxed and waned as the centuries have passed, but all can be traced to monastic traditions, a legacy all Christians share although some protestants can be cranky about acknowledging that and some Roman Catholics can be cranky about allowing it.

The Episcopal/Anglican tradition has condensed the hours (and the offices) to fourfold --- morning prayer, noonday prayer, evening prayer and compline. Episcopal clergy are required to pray at least morning and evening prayer --- although so far as I know there is no liturgical police force to enforce that. The rest of us do what we can or are led to do.

We follow forms set out in the Book of Common Prayer, a little (well actually there are 1,001 pages at last count but that includes the Psalter) book I recommend highly, if only (for those not interested in prayer) for use of the English language. Some of that ranks right up there with the beauty of the King James translation of the Bible.

I have favorites.

To hear that ancient hymn “Phos hilaron,” or “O Gracious Light,” part of Evening Prayer, chanted skillfully in a public service at day’s end is heavenly.

This Compline prayer stops me cold every time:

“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.”

I think we’re agreed by now that the Internet can be a source for wonderful stuff, or of previously unimagined but easily located evil.

One of my favorites under the “wonderful stuff” header is the Daily Office site maintained by the Mission of St. Clare, which will lead you step by step through morning and evening prayer in the Episcopal tradition, including text, musical accompaniment if you care to sing along with the hymns, canticles and psalms, even an increasing number of chants, including an especially beautiful version of “Phos Hilaron” under “Evening Prayer.”

The site’s been linked under “Episcopaliana” in the sidebar here for as long as this blog has been here. Or just go there directly by clicking here. Give it a try if you like. Can't hurt. And who knows, one thing might lead to another. And that "another" needs by no means to be Episcopalian. Noonday Prayer and Compline are there, too, as well as a bunch of other stuff.

Food for thought

Or moo-d for thought.