On the road at Dakota City

The Mill Farm House is the centerpiece of the Humboldt County Historical Museum along the East Fork of the Des Moines River at Dakota City.

The two forks of the northern Des Moines River embrace the twin towns of Humboldt and Dakota City in northwest Iowa’s Humboldt County. Five miles south, the forks join at Frank A. Gotch State Park. That park was named for a Humboldt County native who was the world champion heavyweight wrestler from 1908 to1913. And this is Iowa’s great river, continuing south through Fort Dodge and Des Moines before beginning its southeasterly sweep though southern Iowa to the Mississippi.

Another of Humboldt County’s native sons is the late CBS newsman and “60 Minutes” founder Harry Reasoner, born and raised at Dakota City. Like Gotch, he is buried in Humboldt’s Union Cemetery.

We visited the grave of neither Saturday, so will have to return another day for that. The Humboldt County Historical Association’s beautiful museum campus on Dakota City’s east edge kept us fully occupied from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. --- and then it was time to head home, arriving just in time to greet all those trick-or-treaters.

Four of us left Chariton before sunrise to drive north through a perfect late-October morning for the fall meeting of the Iowa Local History Museum Association --- LCHS curator Marilyn Johnson, curator emeritus Betty Cross and myself, joined for the trip for Jan Winslow of the Wayne County Historical Society (Prairie Trails Museum), who is association treasurer.

Of the two towns, Humboldt is by far the largest (perhaps 4,400 people), and a right turn off U.S. Highway 169 takes you down its broad and prosperous-looking main street. But Dakota City, with about 900 people, is the county seat and by continuing east on Humboldt’s main street you pass the invisible line dividing it from Dakota City’s main street, and the courthouse, before reaching the edge of town. Here, broad loops descend into the valley of the East Fork and just beyond the bridge over the river is the museum .

The attraction here along the river in the 1860s was the power of its water. Although the last mill here, a three-story two part structure, was destroyed by fire in 1943 and the dam across the river went out during the same year, the remains of the mill are on museum property (below) with the ruined dam visible beyond. The association's dream is to rebuild the mill. For now, a deck equipped with interpretive panels is planned.

The centerpiece of the museum complex is a grand rambling Italianate home southeast of the mill site known as the Mill Farm House. It was built in 1878 by Corydon Brown for his wife, Lucelia, and their family. Reportedly, she declined to move to Iowa until it was complete.

The house has many typical Italianate features, including the rambling roofline --- on three levels. The main block of the house contains seven rooms --- the “ballroom” occupying the full length of its western end with the bay-windowed parlor across the central hall to the east and a room used as the museum office behind it. The dining room wing, which projects to the east, is lower than the main block (creating the need for a mighty step up from the bedroom over the dining room to the bedroom over the parlor); and the kitchen wing, which projects to the north, even lower. A frame summer kitchen extends north from the kitchen block and a broad enclosed porch, now a gift shop, conceals the east fronts of both these section of the house.

The interior is welcoming and pleasant, but not especially grand. Large arched pocket doors open to join the parlor, central hall and ballroom, an area that reportedly was the location of many social gatherings during the home’s heyday. The central hallway is surprisingly narrow, however, and the stairway steep. Many expect fireplaces in a home of this age and type, but our ancestors were far smarter than we sometimes give them credit for and north Iowa winters were cold. So the home always was heated by far more efficient stoves.

Museum director Connie Overby told us that the house was in many ways a ruin when donated to the historical association in 1966. Divided into apartments after the Browns moved to Des Moines, it eventually was simply abandoned --- livestock and wildlife wandered in and out through open doors and broken windows, cows peered out of parlor windows at passers by.

After two years of exhaustive restoration carried out primarily by volunteers, the home opened as a museum in 1968. Everything else on the campus has been added since.

The log cabin, added during the 1970s, is a replica of a one-room pioneer home from Renwick that was moved to the museum grounds but proved to be too badly deteriorated to be salvaged. Immediately to the north is the Kettle Shed, built to house a vast kettle with built-in firebox once used to boil fresh water clams from the river for hog feed, make soap, heat wash water, scald hogs during the butchering process and for other purposes.

Willow School, built in 1883, was moved to the museum grounds in 1966 from Humboldt County’s Norway Township.

Since the current project at the Lucas County Historical Society Museum is a blacksmith shop, I was especially interested in the interior of the Humboldt County shop.

The Clancy Building, the latest addition to the museum campus, is about six years old --- and could well be the envy of any local history museum. It houses a variety of display areas in its west end, including a military room and a research library; and a huge gallery in its east end housing among other things a fantastic display of antique cars and a big red fire truck.

The projection to the south, originally an open porch, has now been enclosed and is nearing the end of the process of being converted into a classroom.

The Hardy Methodist Church, built in 1882, was moved to the museum grounds from Hardy in 1997. Although the shell of the building is old, no attempt has been made to restore it to its original form. The current interior is a nicely done adaption for modern church use by its original congregation. The stained glass is especially lovely and the building remains in use on a rental basis for church services and special occasions, such as weddings. The full basement complete with kitchen and restrooms looks and functions very much as church basements do. So the Hardy Church carries forward into the 21st century an example of how a late 20th century church building with deep roots functioned.

All of us involved with local history museums are justifiably proud of our own. But visits such as ours Saturday give us a chance to exchange ideas and dream up outlandish schemes guaranteed to scare the dickens out of our boards of directors when we get home. If you'd like to spend more time at the Humboldt County museum, visit the Historical Association's excellent Web site, which is here. You can plan a visit in person next spring when it reopens for the 2011 season.

Why I don't eat at the kitchen table

As you can see, it's still dark here (as it should be at 5:30 in the morning). When I opened the front door to test the temperature a few minutes ago, the street light seemed to be reflecting off a skim of ice on the birdbath. So it looks like the big freeze arrived.

This was predicted for Wednesday night, but then clouds moved in and the wind began to howl. Although it felt cold (the furnace now is up and running), that combination held off the frost. But last night was clear --- and cold.

It's kind of a relief --- I can never bear to begin clearing away summer until the frost arrives. Anticipating the cold Wednesday, I repotted and brought inside a few plants. It's not clear why I do this. They never do well inside, but for a few days at least will hold their colors.

I'm probably channeling my mother and maternal grandfather, who rarely considered buying bedding plants in the spring. Everything that could be held over was held over and replanted. Granddad was a master of the old way with sturdy geraniums --- uprooting them, binding them in bunches with twine, then hanging the results foliage-end-down in the basement. Somehow, in the spring, he revived them, repotted them and back outside they went.

My mother slipped everything during late summer, then potted the results to bloom through the winter in downstairs windows. The mother plants were dug up and jammed shoulder to shoulder into buckets that lined the upstairs hall, catching sun from the door the led onto the porch roof. Watered occasionally, they prospered in a ramshackle kind of way until spring repotting.

My salvaged summer will just drop their blossoms, grow leggy and turn ugly. But at least I've tried to uphold the family tradition.

The bowl of peppers presents another sort of problem --- I don't really like peppers, but plant them anyway because I feel that I should. Both peppers and tomatoes behaved oddly during the odd summer just past. Confronted with too much moisture, they produced one crop --- then stopped and sat around for a while. Then they began to produce again. I've already eaten the last of the late tomato crop --- small, perfect and very sweet. Now I'm in the market for a stuffed pepper recipe.

All of this results in a new crisis at the kitchen table, usually looked upon as a landing zone for stuff in transit rather than a place to actually sit down and eat. Eventually, the plants will be distributed, the peppers will be eaten (or refrigerated) and the orphaned wall decor will be put on a wall. Maybe then I'll be able to find a place for a plate or two again.

I started hacking away at the waist-high asters, goldenrod and other fall-browned vegetation in the bed along the south side of the house yesterday, hauling it by the pickup load down to the dump along the river. A friend, making a similar trek Saturday, spotted a huge prosperous asparagus fern that someone else had recently dumped cruely on top of a pile of limbs --- and brought it home for first aid and a warm winter inside.

She and her husband have a huge brick house capable of absorbing orphaned plants. There wouldn't have been room for both the fern and me in the little gray Quaker house, so they're welcome to it. Some days I envy them the space --- then remind myself that I don't need a bigger house; I need less stuff.

More of "It Gets Better"

I've been following for the last few weeks the "It Gets Better" campaign launched by Dan Savage, aimed at offering hope in the wake of widely publicized suicides to LGBT youngsters in hostile environments. Some amazing stories have been told and some transcendently hopeful postings made. Most are accessible through the "It Gets Better" Web site, which is here.

A story from another online project, "I'm From Driftwood," caught my eye because it involves a young man from Perry, Iowa, now a senior in nuclear engineering at Kansas State University, Manhattan. The draconian approach taken by Sam Brinton's parents possibly are the exception, rather than the rule, in Iowa and elsewhere --- but such things do happen and are among the reasons for the "It Gets Better" project.

There are very few safe places, or safe people to talk to, in much of Iowa for LBGT kids, including Lucas County. I'm told we were considered "brave" at St. Andrew's a couple of weeks ago when we screened the pro-LGBT documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So" and invited others in to watch it with us. That's amazing, but indicative.

Bullying and discrimination are not, of course, based exclusively on LGBT issues. The following "It Gets Better" posting from AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, although focused on LGBT issues, recalled his own experiences as a member of an ethnic minority working in Pennsylvania coal mines. That hits close to home in Lucas County, enriched (we've come to realize now) by mining families of many nationalities during the heydey (1880s through World War II) of the coal industry here.

I couldn't help but think, while watching it, of a first-cousin of my mother, descended from two of Lucas County's old, old farming families, who scandalized parts of those families by marrying the son of a mining family, immigrants from Scotland. It's hard to imagine anyone being scandalized in this day and age by anyone marrying a Scot, but it was the case then and the disconnect among descendants continues.

It never hurts to remember as well, that the Ku Klux Klan flourished here during mining's heyday, targeting in addition to black people, Roman Catholics and "those foreigners." Some of my relatives were involved in that, too. Hate, no matter at whom it is directed, including that now distilled and directed toward LGBT people, is an ugly thing.

Finally, and hopefully, an amazing performance of "True Colors" by the Gay Mens Chorus of Los Angeles, recorded Oct. 24 at Immanuel Presbyterian Church there.

Endgame

The pots of summer flowers still are blooming around the house this morning, but it is likely that their long season will end with a decisive frost Wednesday night. Although the look of autumn is unmistakable, we have continued to enjoy unseasonably mild and pleasant days. The furnace was cleaned and prepared for winter several weeks ago but has not yet been used.

I'm sure there will be complaints later on about cold and snow and ice, but I can't imagine living in a place where the seasons do not change decisively, making clearly evident the circle of life.

The last three tomatoes came in from the garden last night; I'll pick the rest of the peppers and rescue a plant or two to overwinter inside tomorrow, on Wednesday. Then, as frost and freeze continue, the great outdoor cleanup will begin. My fragile terra cotta planters, about 10 of them, all made in Vietnam, will not survive unless emptied and turned over.

Late Friday afternoon, I took to the four-mile trail around Red Haw lake --- taking advantage of the last sunshine (and dry trails) before predicted weekend rain. This is a beautiful hike at any time of the year, but I like it best when the heavy canopy has dissipated, leaves are turning or have fallen and the shapes of all the trees are evident.

I especially like these monster white birches near the boat-launching area on the lake's north shore. There are others at various places around Red Haw, but these are the largest.

At two spots, one at the end of the east shore inlet and another along a western inlet, I walked through vast congregations of birds of many varieties --- bluejays, finches, cardinals, robins, woodpeckers, blackbirds, etc. --- assembled for reasons that were not exactly clear to me. I've never seen so many birds of so many varieties together in one place; it was like walking through an aviary.

Most likely the robins, which seem to have vanished now, and blackbirds were grouping for the flight south. Most of others, however, are year-round residents.

The birds at home are congregating, too, around the feeders and birdbath --- goldfinches (now in drab winter feathers) and house finches fighting it out at thistle seed feeder; mourning doves, grackles and others elsewhere. Since the kitchen window looks out onto all this activity, I don't even mind washing dishes these days.

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The automated telephone calls are coming in, too, as Election Day nears. I always hang up --- but regret the expenditure of adrenaline wasted during the rush to the phone in the first place to pick it up. I'm not getting at the moment a clear television signal from any station and need to recalibrate --- but that can wait until mid-November when all the silly and divisive political advertising has gone away. For now, I'll rely on the Web to stay informed.

The minor spectacle in Iowa this week involves a statewide bus tour by allegedly Christian "pro-family" leaders to encourage votes on the retention ballot against three Iowa Supreme Court justices who had a part in the unanimous court decision that allows same-sex marriage here. It is a purely symbolic campaign into which these groups reportedly have poured roughly $700,000.

It's difficult to say what the outcome will be, but surely there can be few things more absurdly hypocritcal than a bunch of enraged heterosexuals running around the state bleating about the "sanctity" of marriage. These after all are the folks who turned infidelity into sport and divorce into a growth industry. Oh well.

As for me, I'm going to be busy watching the last of leaves burst into flame and fall.

God in America

Watching all six hours of the recent “God in America” series on PBS (jointly produced by “Frontline” and “American Experience”) is a little like experiencing first-hand the old canard about a talking dog --- what the dog says is considerably less remarkable than the fact it speaks at all.

Not necessarily remarkable for PBS, the most willing of all the mass media to jump head-first into long, thoughtful and relatively objective consideration of religious and other issues. But remarkable for communicators to the masses in general. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and the rest of the wired media never would have tried it.

“Get Religion,” a blog with right-wing funding and tendencies that devotes itself to media criticism, is correct at least about its basic premise --- the media just don’t get religion in large part because they don't try. Too bad, since nearly every issue of social importance in the United States is entangled with faith to one degree or another.

There seemed to be a fairly solid example of not-getting-it in Sunday’s Des Moines Register, for example --- a story about Brian Terrell, a radical peace activist home-based in Maloy, a tiny town over west of here in Ringgold County down southwest of Mount Ayr.

Although the story was interesting and offered insights into Terrell’s personal philosophy, it cut him off almost entirely from what probably is the most important source of that philosophy --- a long and active involvement in the Catholic Worker movement ( pacifist, radically activist, founded in the 1930s by Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, both devout Roman Catholics).

Because of that disconnect, the Register story creates the impression that Terrell, a radically peaceful man, has been dropped into southwest Iowa’s cornfields by a flying saucer. A little reporting about his long-term involvement with the Catholic Worker movement and how his faith-based commitment to pacifism developed would have exposed the logic of it all.

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One of the difficulties with the PBS series is its over-reaching title. “God in America” really isn’t about God, nor is it exactly about America. It’s more narrowly focused --- on various ideas about how God would behave if we were He, expressed and developed in large part by white protestant males, and the interaction of those ideas with public life in what has become the United States of America.

The series begins logically with the Christian separatists who arrived in Massachusetts in the 1620s in search of freedom to practice their faith without government interference and then proceeded to impose their vision of God’s will just as decisively as their English oppressors had. With equal logic, it concludes with the fairly recent discovery by my beloved Democrats of God as a vote-winning marketing tool.

An over-arching theme from beginning to end is recurring idea among us that God somehow has established a new covenant with what now is the United States, that we are intended to be that biblical (Matthew 5:14) “city that is set on a hill.”

The series moves smoothly through the Revolution, the frontier explosion of revivalism that produced the denominational diversity that still prevails among protestants, the Civil War, the 1925 Scopes trial that pitted biblical literalism against Darwin, the generic 1950s religiosity that developed during the Eisenhower administration, the re-entry as active political players during the 1970s of protestants often called fundamentalists, to the present --- when both Republicans and Democrats feel free to declare that God is on their side but not really on the other.

Given only 6 hours and despite its overly ambitious title, the series does a good job of telling the story it set out to tell without becoming truly offensive toward anyone among the nearly four centuries worth of players it features. So it’s worth watching, which you can still do online by going to the “God in America” Web site, which is here.

It does, however, vastly understate the feminine factor in U.S. religion --- with the exception of Anne Hutchinson, booted from the Massachusetts Bay colony for challenging the newly established order. Even the great majority of talking heads --- experts on religious issues who pop up frequently --- are male. So in one sense “God in America” is a patriarchal presentation of the U.S. religious patriarchy.

Although an interesting sideroad during the series travels through development of the uniquely U.S. expression of Judaism called Reform, Roman Catholics are largely absent. Much is made of the United States as a vast, lively and evolving religious marketplace --- but that theme is never really explored.

There is no consideration of the native United States upon which European ideas of God were imposed violently and destructively. Nor is there any serious exploration of the black United States --- slavery is seen always through white eyes --- although there is an interesting essay about the black church online at the series Web site. And there certainly is no exploration of the queer United States, currently the most active challenger to Christian assumptions.

The God in America of “God in America” is unequivocally white, protestant, heterosexual and male. Hopefully, if we stay tuned, PBS will get around to exploring some of those other threads of our national religious experience, too.

Eavesdropping on that Royal Telephone

Davidene McDonald considers her gift to be, well, a gift --- and for that reason plays only gospel although there’s little doubt that if she wanted to, she could play honky-tonk, too. This amazing woman, now in her 80s, carries hundreds of hymn tunes (at the least) in her head and needs only a request to loose the music and let it flow out through her fingers.

We invited her down to the museum on Saturday morning to confront our musical monster --- that vast old square grand in the commons room of the Lewis Building; play as many of the old songs as she cared to; and engage in a round or two of stump-the-pianist (none of us could) with our Appreciation Day open house guests.

The old grand is truly a beast. She weighs a ton. The last guy called in to tune her several years ago --- a professional accustomed to servicing instruments with elevated pedigrees at colleges and universities in the region --- took one look at her and donned a back brace. When he was done, after wrestling with strings and pegs for hours, he swore he’d never touch her again --- no matter how great the financial incentive. No amount of tuning could eliminate her persistent rattle.

The grand arrived in Chariton more than a century ago by rail --- we assume. Many years later, when a descendant of her original owners headed south to live in Louisiana, she went along. Some years later, the old girl was loaded into the back of a U-Haul truck by museum volunteers who had headed south to retrieve her and brought home.

A couple of us who fancy ourselves up to the task, sit down at her keyboard now and then to see what we can do. She usually takes one look at us, recognizes hopeless amateurs for what we are and bucks us right off.

Davidene, however, eyed the old girl affectionately, pushed the piano stool (made like the piano to last --- in this case of cast iron) aside, pulled up a chair and the piano, knowing it had met its match, surrendered. It was wonderful and I wish you-all could have been there to hear it.

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I figured I was in trouble right from the get-go when it came down to stumping Davidene and like I said none of us were able to, but pulled out an old favorite anyway --- “The Royal Telephone” --- just see. Should have known. “Oh yes, that’s an old one,” she said --- then turned to the piano and played it flawlessly. Darn.

“Southern Gospel,” a designation sometimes given to this old song, gripes me now and then, appropriating as it does in many cases what actually is Midwest Gospel. And “The Royal Telephone” is a good instance of that. It was written by an Iowa boy --- the Rev. Frederick M. Lehman --- back in 1919 and you can’t get more Midwest than that.

Although born in Germany during 1868, Lehman came to the United States with his family in 1872 and settled in Pottawattamie County over to the west. He was called to be a preacher and after the Church of the Nazarene emerged from the Wesleyan Holiness movement in 1907-1908 became affiliated with that denomination. He was actually living in Kansas City, where he’d gone to help organize the Nazarene Publishing House when it was written.

One of the odd things about “Royal Telephone” is that it may be better known in Australia than it is in the United States. It was recorded there by the legendary Aboriginal musician Jimmy Little in the 1960s and topped the charts, something it’s never managed to do in the United States.

Here’s a YouTube presentation of the old song by Billy Pollard, to whom I am devoted (his wife Willie, too). Although there are piano versions out there, Billy is accompanying himself on guitar here --- this gives you a chance to appreciate the words.

There are Philistines out there who do not appreciate “Royal Telephone” and I’m willing to admit that it does help to be able to remember those old hand-cranked wall-mounted telephones in universal use during 1919 when the song was written --- and for many years thereafter. Our number was “ought-four-on-nine.” That translates as a ring of four shorts on Line No. 9. Everyone on the party line knew everyone else’s ring, which made it easier to decide when you were going to pick up the receiver, put your hand over the mouthpiece and eavesdrop. When the line went down, the men of the neighborhood went out to fix it. And “central” was Jennie Haywood, an almost-cousin who wrangled the switchboard up in Russell.

No that has been a long time ago!

The shape of things

Bales of meadow hay harvested from a riverside field rest among bur oaks Sunday afternoon.

The shape of things becomes more evident here daily as leaves turn and fall. Hickories flame out in the woods and oak leaves turn less colorfully then fall at rates varying with variety.  Walnuts have been pared back to fans against the sky.

If I were to worship a tree (and this is unlikely, but the term for it is dendrolatry), it would be the bur oak, among the most sculptural of Iowa's many varieties, with the swamp white oak close behind.

I figure the big walnut below is about 100 years old --- although I could be wrong about that. It is on the edge of the old railroad right-of-way, graded about a century ago, overlooking the meadow within a loop of the Chariton River recently cut and baled as hay. Its many trunks may indicate that a first attempt to grow was cut short by an axe and this incarnation sprang from sprouts shot forth by the stump.

We continue to live on the edge here, dodging  a killing frost far into October, days that can't be wasted inside.

 I headed back to Bobwhite Wednesday afternoon and at a point where a short loop circles into oak woodland, came upon four or five deer that had been napping among the trees --- alert and fully aware. They eyed me briefly, then arose and vanished, white tails high in the air, over a fence into privately-owned woods. That was a safe thing to do Wednesday, but wouldn't have been by Saturday when muzzleloader season opened.

Thursday afternoon and again on Sunday, I made the six-mile trek down to the "b" road and back along the Cinder Path --- just to see how things were progressing. As leaves fall, the heavy canopy over much of the path is dissipating, something that lifts my spirits. I travel at a rate of roughtly two miles per hour with frequent stops to look and listen, so this hike takes three hours more or less --- and generally more.

A mile in on Thursday, hundreds of blackbirds were chattering in the treetops, planning their snowbird trek south.

Farther along, the landscape of bluffs, meadows and  hills west the trail is becoming more evident as leaves drop. I'll carry binoculars next time I pass this way.

The office of the State Archaeologist has investigated four sites along the far end of this three-mile stretch and this time of year I like to eye the bluffs and sheltered hollows and speculate about where our predecessors on this land might have made their camps.

I'm told these early Iowans knew their place in the landscape far better than we do and lived more cooperatively with their surroundings and their fellow critters. Sometimes here I can quiet the monkeys chattering in my head and get a little sense of what that must have been like.

Then this guy, butt condensed into blue spandex, ears plugged into recorded sounds he can't leave behind, eyes fixed straight ahead, rockets past on a bike apparently engaged in some sort of contest with himself. It takes a while after that for the silence to return.

There is a balm in Gilead

Monday skywatch

Daily dose of Lucas County: 3 p.m. Monday, Oct. 11, mixed clouds and sunshine with an occasional light shower, high in the upper 70s, walking north along the east levee at Pin Oak Marsh.

Monday seemed remarkable only because the mix of clouds and sunshine punctuated by sprinkles was the first break in our string of beautiful October days. That long stretch of sunshine after a summer of almost constant rain has been the remarkable thing.

The grassy trail connecting the paved trail at Pin Oak with the levee system has finally dried out enough to be navigated without boots and even was clipped Friday to make it more inviting. So I headed down it Saturday morning and again Monday to check out what has usually been the largest display of bottle gentians in the reemerging prairie.

What I found was amazing, at least to me --- dozens of these usually unobtrusive plants along the trail's edge glowing blue in the grass. Bottle gentians, so-called because their blooms are shaped like bottles, are not as showy as their prairie gentian kin but like prairie gentians are among the latest blooming of prairie species.  Perhaps our wet summer has been a factor in their prosperity.

The rest of the color scheme, other than the bright blue sky and its reflection on the water, has gradually shifted to muted gold and brown punctuated by mahogany as big bluestem matures and pin oak leaves turn.

I'm chafing a little at the need to actually do a few useful things, other than wander around outside --- a project in Albia that took most of Sunday afternoon, finally getting around Monday to preparing a program  presented Monday night, a board meeting this morning, another meeting tonight and bread to bake before it. But the forecast for the rest of the week is sunshine, highs in the 70s, lows in the 40s and still no frost. Wonderful!

We're planning a low-key appreciation day plus celebration of the windmill's rising from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at the museum and it looks like we'll be able to do it on the patio. Y'all come!

A walk in the park

Someone asked me the other day who Bob White was, assuming from a considerable distance that Wayne County’s state park, Bobwhite, had to be named for someone. Which is not the case.

Wouldn’t you think by now that everyone would know that a bobwhite is a quail so called because of its distinctive call, “bob-WHITE” or “bob-Bob-WHITE” depending upon circumstance. Geez.

They’re small birds, lots of fun to watch (my mother, on the farm, kept basins of water on the south porch for the benefit of wildlife that needed it and quite often the bobwhites would come in to drink --- great entertainment viewed through the dining room’s double south window). They’re also a popular game bird for reasons I don’t understand since there’s not much meat there. But some folks feel the need to shoot their fellow critters even when they’re not hungry. Go figure.

Anyhow, that’s the source of Bobwhite State Park’s name. The park, maintained by Wayne County Conservation although owned by the state, is located two miles west of Allerton. You can also approach it from the west, but expect frustration right now if you try to do that. The bridge that spans Bobwhite Lake is being replaced and if you drive in from the west you’ll discover that you can’t get here from there without a detour onto gravel --- not a bad thing, but some folks can be big sissies when it comes to gravel roads, especially folks from California who for some reason expect everything to be paved.

It’s a great park, divided into a unit north of the pavement and a unit south of the pavement. I like the south side better. But both sides benefit from county rather than state maintenance. Iowa’s DNR, facing budget cuts, has cut back on maintenance at many state parks --- including Chariton’s Red Haw --- which looks distinctly unkempt these days. At Bobwhite, areas that were intended to look like lawn still do.

As far as I’m concerned, the real treasure at Bobwhite is the trail system, about five miles of it, that twists and turns through undeveloped woodland and prairie south of the mown picnic area. The trails are perfect for a putzer like me --- well maintained, equipped with strategically placed benches and sparsely peppered with well-designed signs that tell you in many instances exactly what it is you’re looking at.

The signage can be credited to a Wayne High School graduate named Cody Morgan whose “A Walk in the Park” project involved raising the funds to finance and coordinating the placement of signs to replicate an earlier project by Lorena Blount, a legendary Wayne County educator.

This really is the time of year to fully appreciate native grasses and Bobwhite trails are one of the best places around to do that since substantial plantations of several varieties have been planted and nurtured and identified (including pampas grass, an import from South America that while pretty also is invasive and gives prairie purists the sniffles).

I managed most of trail system late Friday, but ran out of time before the final leg so will head back down soon --- before Oct. 16 when the early muzzleloader deer season opens. Not that you can hunt in Iowa’s state parks, because you can’t, but since all of our parks serve as refuges for deer some hunters’ strategies involve concealing themselves just outside park boundaries with their noses and their weapons pointed toward the fence waiting for Bambi to emerge. Some of these hunters are not the brightest bulbs in Mother Nature’s chandelier, finding it a challenge to differentiate four-legged critters from two, so it’s just as well to be on the safe side and aware of the seasons when poking around in the woods in the fall and winter. And for heaven’s sake, wear orange or red --- not camo.

 

The world through prairie grass

I’ve been looking at the world through prairie grass this week while spending as much time as possible outdoors. This patch of big bluestem (with part of Shelton Marsh in the distance) is at least eight feet tall --- amazing stuff, grass with character.

Pioneers left behind stories of early travel on Iowa’s prairies, especially farther to the north where the terrain is less diverse, telling of a time when men on horseback became disoriented in tallgrass prairie seas, engulfed by hat-high vegetation. It’s an amazing thing to think about; something we’re unlikely to see again.

Five of us spent a couple of hours Wednesday clearing invasive honeysuckle from prairie remnants east of Derby. Aren’t the berries pretty? Well, they are.

The shrubby plants (not native honeysuckle vines), however, imported first as ornamentals and then planted widely for a time by misguided conservationists looking for quick-fix windbreaks and wildlife cover, proved to be highly invasive --- crowding out native vegetation. Now you can’t take a step in the woods or along fencelines without falling over honeysuckle.

And remember multiflora rose --- a late 19th century import from Japan widely promoted in conservation circles for erosion control and “living” fences. Not a good idea --- and those pesky and invasive prickly vining messes still are with us, requiring deadly doses of poisonous herbicide to dispatch decisively.

There are a couple of lessons here, I guess. Among them, run up the warning flags when anyone, no matter how elevated his or her credentials, starts promoting non-native vegetation as a cure-all. The wonder of creation is that it works as created, not so well when pesky humans start messing around with it.

One of the reassuring things about the prairie is that when finally the invasive species human succeeds in destroying itself or is reduced to a less harmful shadow of its former self, the grass will come back, cover our bones, break up the parking lots and prairie seas will wave again.

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Speaking of invasive species, how about them politicians? Limited exposure to TV limits exposure to pre-election advertising, too --- and that’s a blessing.

My award for classy advertising goes to our incumbent U.S. senator, Chuck Grassley, who unfortunately is a Republican and so can’t in good conscience be voted for. Of course, he is under no serious threat from Democratic challenger Roxanne Conlin and so has no real need to get dirty.

On the other hand, we’re treated statewide to the silliness of Terry Branstad vs. Chet Culver for governor, advertising and campaigns based entirely on the assertion that one is not the other rather than any concrete competing plans to foster a more user-friendly Iowa.

Down here, Republican Brad Zaun, a Republican, is challenging incumbent Leonard Boswell, a Democrat, for U.S. representative. About all we’ve learned from their campaigns is that so far as misinformation and outright lies are concerned they’re evenly matched. Makes you just want to bang their heads together until unconsciousness results, then find someone else.

It’s going to be a fascinating election.

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Especially fascinating is the drive to unseat the three (of eight total) Iowa Supreme Court justices up for retention on this year’s ballot. The Iowa Supreme Court, during 2009, unanimously upheld lower court decisions that Iowa’s constitution did not forbid same-sex unions and that equal-rights provisions applied to everyone. As a result, Iowa became a state where same-sex marriage is legal.

Unseating the three justices has become a symbolic rallying point for what I guess you’d call the Christian right, distressed by the ruling, and a good deal of money has been invested in the effort.

Of course the justices were correct in their ruling --- the Iowa constitution is silent on the topic of marriage, leaving no constitutional barrier to same-sex unions. Nor is there any reason, if the cultural muddle of bias is swept aside, to rule that everyone should not be treated equally.

The remedy, for those in need of a remedy, is a constitutional amendment to build bias into the document --- a complex and time-consuming process.

A variety of interesting arguments have been put forth as to why the justices should have ruled the other way. One involves the thought that the framers of Iowa’s constitution could not have envisioned a time when same-sex couples would want to marry. Good point. Of course, the framers did not envision either a time when women would want to do such un-Biblical things as vote and hold public office.

Another argument, is that same-sex unions are un-Biblical and those blamed justices should have realized that.

Of course uppity women are un-Biblical, too, while slavery, polygamy and stoning people to death at the drop of a hat are entirely Biblical. The truth of the matter is that there is no general agreement about what the Bible says about a good many things nor is there likely to ever be.

So it’s all smoke and mirrors rather than substance --- not a very reassuring prospect during an election year in troubling times. But the election and the aftermath WILL be fascinating --- that’s guaranteed.

If it all gets to be too distressing --- go find some prairie grass and watch the world go by through it for a while. At least there, there’s hope of resolution: crumbling concrete.

Windmill rising

Daily dose of Lucas County: 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010, on the Lucas County Historical Society campus. About 43 degrees, clear and sunny --- clear sailing predicted into the weekend!

We're celebrating the rising of our windmill on Monday at the Lucas County Historical Society. Poor thing was badly damaged in a storm at a different location on the grounds two years ago, was disassembled and the tower taken to board member Ron Christensen's shop for first aid. While there, Ron crafted an innovative base that was mounted on the downslope west of the barn earlier this year and the refurbished tower hinged to it. Later, the windmill head was remounted and the whole assembly repainted.

Progress stalled there because of persistent summer rains that made the west slope of the campus too dangerous a place for heavy equipment to operate. Finally this week after several days of glorious weather the slope dried and yesterday Rick Hamilton lifted the windmill into place with one of his wreckers.

The windmill will be a focal point at our fall LCHS appreciation day program on Saturday, Oct. 16. Stay tuned for details.

The beast in the foreground is an earlier boiler from Old Betsy, the Chariton Volunteer Fire Department's treasured 1883 Silsby steam fire engine. It ended up on the museum patio a couple of years ago after Old Betsy was refurbished and has just been sitting there since waiting for us to figure out exactly what to do with it. You're looking down here onto Court Avenue and beyond it, the Shelton law offices with Shelton Marsh beyond.

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I spent a good share of yesterday on the prairie trail again, backtracking for a time from the Cinder Path's 13-mile marker through prairie remnants sandwiched between the path and Highway 65. Back on the trail tomorrow after to help with honeysuckle and other pest removal elsewhere along the path.

In between, a couple of newsletters to create, a Web site to update, a banquet to attend and most likely a few other things I've forgotten (but hopefully will remember).

Stalking the prairie gentian

Prairie gentians glow in the grass approximately eight and a half miles southwest of Chariton along the Cinder Path.

October in Iowa is the month of nature’s fireworks display, a final flourish of blazing color before she wraps the earth in the subtle hues of late fall and winter and settles down to rest. Among the prairie bloomers, sunflowers, goldenrod and a multitude of aster varieties blanket undisturbed roadsides and fields. Specimen hard maples and native sumac already have burst into full flame. Others deciduous trees and shrubs will follow rapidly now as autumn tracks from north to south.

Move beyond the spectacular displays, look down, focus on the details and you’ll discover small miracles ln the grass --- bottle gentians, prairie gentians and even, we discovered Sunday, a tiny perfect expression of the orchid variety Spiranthes, or lady’s tresses.

I crashed on Sunday afternoon an event sponsored by Region Six members of the Iowa Prairie Network --- the eighth annual Martha Skillman Birthday Hike and Pie Tasting. Martha, who lives not far north of here in Marion County, is a mother figure for prairie remnants in these southern hills. The network is a statewide organization dedicated to Iowa’s preservation, restoration and reconstruction efforts.

We began and ended with pie, as the event title suggests, at Pin Oak Lodge, but in between drove a couple of miles southwest to a spot near the Cinder Path’s eight-mile marker --- where it crosses the Derby Road just east of that tiny town --- and hiked south down the path to spots where prairie remnants of astonishing diversity climb gentle slopes on either side.

It is an amazing experience to walk for a while with people immersed in the prairie and skilled at spotting miracles in the grass --- and at naming nearly everything. Indira had the foresight to bring along a paper sack and collected a few seeds along the road. Ravi’s well-equipped cell phone included a compass ap so that we could check the compass plants for accuracy (they are accurate) and even position the tiny Spiranthes globally. We admired the autumn incarnations of plants now ending this season’s cycle in seed --- pale coneflowers, rattlesnake master, blazing star, Indian paintbrush and many more.

The forecast suggests we’ll have a continuing stretch of glorious early fall days this week. So for heaven’s sake throw off your burdens, get out from under those soul-deadening fluorescents, find a prairie patch or a timber path --- and take a walk, preferably several.

The Iowa Prairie Network group involved in Sunday afternoon's hike. Martha Stillman is second from right in the front row.

Prairie party

Daily dose of Lucas County: Just off the Derby Road near the entrance to the 8-mile leg of the Cinder Path at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010. Another spectacular Iowa day --- cool temperatures, sunny skies and (best of all) we dodged the overnight frost.

I crashed the eighth annual Martha Skillman Birthday Hike and Pie Tasting (a Region Six event of the Iowa Prairie Network; that's Martha second from right in the front row) this afternoon (crew above) at Pin Oak Lodge and along the Cinder Path. Great pie, great company, great hike. More about stalking the prairie gentian another day.

Prayers for Tyler Clementi

From the Gospel According to Matthew 25, Vs. 40 (KJV): And the King shall answer and say unto them, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Tyler Clemente, as many know, is the 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman who jumped to his death last week from the George Washington Bridge after his roommate, Dharun Ravi, abetted by a friend, Molly Wei, secretly recorded Clementi’s sexual encounter with another man in the dorm room the two men shared, then streamed it onto the Internet. Ravi apparently knew that Clemente was gay and was motivated in part or in full by a wish to humiliate him. Instead, he killed him.

“Prayers for” comes from the title of a 1996 book, “Prayers for Bobby,” and the 2009 television film adapted from it. The book, by Leroy F. Aarons, tells the story of Mary Griffith and her gay son, Bobby, who committed suicide in 1989. After his death, Mrs. Griffith, who among other things had told her son that unless he somehow became heterosexual God would “damn him to hell and eternal punishment,” experienced a change of heart, acknowledged her role in his death and became an advocate for tolerance and proactive inclusion.

Clemente’s death was the latest in a series of four or five widely publicized late-summer suicides involving teen-agers who had been bullied by their peers because they either were gay or were perceived to be.

Don’t be misled by the title. While it is a good thing to remember Tyler, Bobby and the others, as well as their families, in our prayers, those who know and affirm that God loves his gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children unconditionally know, too, that they are home now --- and safe. It is the rest of us who are standing in the need of prayer.

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Those of us who are LGBT and have grown in faith because of it sometimes get the cart before the horse when working with our gay brothers and sisters for social justice, acceptance, inclusion and --- at the least --- tolerance. We want to convince those who oppose us that they are wrong but do not do enough to spread the good news among ourselves that we are right --- loved unconditionally by God, not in need of repair because of sexual orientation, burdened only by the same capacity to do harm that is built into the human condition and that plagues us all, gay and straight. So many LGBT people have been driven away from communities of faith. So many are spiritually rootless. We have not done enough to heal that wound. Lord have mercy.

Nor do we acknowledge often enough that we, too, are bound by the great commandments, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Help us all, gay and straight, but gay especially, to look inward, then, and become instruments of love, not hate. Lead us to respond with compassion, not in kind. Lord have mercy.

God plants gay children in heterosexual homes for reasons known but to Himself. May he give all parents, especially those who cannot affirm the sexual orientation of their children, the ability to love unconditionally, to keep their families together in spite of differences, to affirm fully the worth of each child, to have faith that God is in charge of circumstances beyond parental control, and above all to avoid driving the children away or into death. Lord have mercy.

God gives us so many ways now to reach out to gay children isolated in hostile environments, to tell them when those closest to them don’t that they’re loved by God and OK just as they are, that we love them, too, even though we don’t know their names, and that if they can just hold on, “it gets better.” God is working right now through Dan Savage, who did not wait to be invited before launching the “It Gets Better” campaign via YouTube. Help us to realize that we, too, are God’s hands and feet and that He can speak through our lives, too. Lord have mercy.

Bullies exist, bullying continues and youngsters who are gay or who are perceived to be are not the only victims. Bullying is no more natural than shame. Both are learned at home. Instill in all families the values needed to foster love, not hate; compassion instead of intolerance; helping hands instead of clenched fists. Turn the hearts of those who already have started to act out the sins of their parents. Lord have mercy.

We share a small and beautiful and fragile place, each of us created for a specific purpose. Teach us to see the beauty in each other, including those with whom we disagree. Remind us that He who loved us first and is First dwells also in those we often are tempted to dismiss as the least. Lord have mercy.