Circle of these November days

This late November Sunday sunrise had an escort, marked at 7 a.m. by dramatically illuminated crossed contrails over the neighbor's roof. In the west (over the low roofs of Columbus School), soft pinks and blues marked the rising.

Saturday was a wonderfully mild day of muted sunshine and today is forecast to be another, a bridge between Thanksgiving cold and the chilly rain predicted for later in the new week.

The same gentle color scheme dominated early yesterday at the marsh, where shapes left behind by summer now dominate the prairie and marshland growth.

At the lake, later in the day, a few leaves still clinging optimistically to a branch along the shoreline and a skim of geese on the water.

And finally, not long before sunset while sitting on the bench inscribed "Emma Thomas Walked Here" this view to the west.

Who knows what horror lurks?

I once knew a relatively affluent couple who lived in a relatively nice house who lost control of their belongings. Driving by, you’d never know what horrors lurked inside --- cartons, grocery sacks and garbage bags full of items that might come in handy sometime stacked to the ceiling and buttressed by every issue of every newspaper and magazine that ever had arrived or been bought by lot (to look through someday).

A canyon-like trail led from the sofa-recliner-television clearing where they lived and ate to the kitchen and back porch where tin cans, bottles and Cool Whip containers carefully washed after use were stored, empty cereal boxes stacked. The trail continued to a bathroom where because the tub/shower recess, too, was stacked to the ceiling, the couple --- who valued cleanliness --- spit-bathed in the basin. Never saw the downstairs bedroom where they slept (upstairs was inaccessible).

Eventually, rather than scoop out the old house, they built a nice new one next door and moved in. Shortly after that I moved, too, so I don’t know what happened there.

But I do recognize that pathology operating in myself now and then and, without funds or space to build a new house, face the need to move everything here and clean behind it. I don’t like to do this. There are so many other more entertaining things to do with time.

So for inspiration, I go to YouTube and watch old episodes of the British television series “How Clean Is Your House?” featuring Kim and Aggie. The introduction to an episode above will give you an idea of how it goes --- and I think there’s an American version of this program out there but I’ve not seen it. By the time each program is done, the heroic Kim and Aggie and their helpers have restored immaculate order. I recommend it --- but not immediately after lunch.

Now I’m going to go launder the sheets --- Kim and Aggie say you should do that once a week.

Pilgrim's Progress

This card, postmarked Midland, S. Dak., Nov. 22, 1915, was sent to my grandmother, Jessie, by her best friend (and niece although actually a year older than Jessie), Ida (Brown) Rogers. The weather had been fine and mild out in the middle of South Dakota during November, Ida reported, but she'd been cooking daily for the six men involved in hauling hay on the Rogers farm/ranch.

I pulled out the family postcard album the other day --- a nicely-bound but battered scrapbook-size repository dating from about 1900 --- to look for Thanksgiving cards. And there were a couple tucked in among the Christmas, birthday and general greetings. But not many. That’s one of the beauties of Thanksgiving --- it isn’t Christmas. More relaxed (unless you’re the cook, but even the cooking end of it can be fun), certainly less commericial.

We had a church full at St. Andrew’s last evening for the Interchurch Council’s annual Thanksgiving service, which I think everyone who attended enjoyed. This year’s preacher was from the Community of Christ --- a lovely and low-key sermon. It’s always fun to watch the pastors from various denominations in action --- two had their preacher yells (do they teach that in seminary?) down pat; the others, more conversational. We chained our vicar to the organ since the regular organist was not available, a good reminder of the need to have a conversation about volume one of these days. With both “pipes” and “console” switched on, it is possible to blast those toward the back of our small church clean over into the next county if one isn’t careful with the foot on that particular pedal.

Some time was spent beforehand fussing about coming up with enough to feed the minor multitude afterwards. But have you ever noticed that any event in a church involving food turns into a loaves and fishes experience? As it turned out, we were at the epicenter of a cookie explosion with plenty left over. Gratifyingly, few of the blonde brownies or cinnamon streusel slices I spent part of Tuesday morning slaving over a hot stove to produce were left. Hardly enough to get a sugar high on today.

The Interchurch Council’s primary project is the Ministry Center where the community food pantry is located and various counseling services headquartered. Tuesday night’s collection, however, went to the council’s fuel fund --- intended to help those who have difficulty keeping up with heating bills during the winter (and it does get cold in Iowa in the deep midwinter).

Lots of other good stuff is going on elsewhere Chariton this Thanksgiving, too. If you’re in need of Thanksgiving dinner (or just others to share it with), First United Methodist, our biggest congregation, will be serving up one free on Thursday. The Assembly of God church, located next door to Autumn Park apartments, served an early holiday dinner to residents there Tuesday night as well. First Methodist, by the way, also serves free meals during the last week of every month --- a project designed to assist those on fixed incomes whose resources are running low as the months end. So we’re especially grateful for Methodists around here.

A cousin I can't identify (frustratingly) sent this card, postmarked Nov. 24, 1919, to Grandmother Jessie from Traverse, Minn. It's a little battered, but keep in mind that this postcard album was given to sick-abed children way back in the dark (pre-television) age to keep them amused.

Advent begins as Thanksgiving ends. The wreath (a big oak wheel atop a big oak stand) will have to be hauled out Friday and prepared for the approaching season of expectant waiting. Since the wreath requires candles of a size not easily findable in appropriate colors (three purple, one pink --- or rose), there’s a minor problem. We’ve solved it in the past with symbolic ribbon, but a parishioner who is a retired florist suggested spray paint last week. Hmm.

Thanksgiving, for better or worse, also marks the start of the season of extravagant spending, but that’s not especially threatening down here. So I’m looking forward to Friday night’s lighted Christmas parade around the square (starting at 7).

This is the only nighttime event I know of for the Chariton Volunteer Fire Department’s 1883 Silsby Steamer --- hitched to a team, fired up and paraded around the square spouting steam and throwing sparks. It’s a sight worth a trip up town for and the weather forecast is looking good.

The Hunter Tree Farm is open --- including Alyse’s wonderful Christmas shop in the old May schoolhouse, so it’s going to start looking a lot like, well you know what, very soon.

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My Quaker forebears on the paternal side most likely would have been a little cranky about Thanksgiving and the idea that one should set aside a specific day once a year to be especially thankful. Their eminently sensible concept was that it was more appropriate to practice gratefulness on a daily basis. So I like to think about that on Thanksgiving, too.

It’s also useful to remember that some Native American tribes not that long ago designated our EuroAmerican feast day, with a good deal of justification, a national day of mourning. Although that legendary first Thanksgiving during 1621 at Plymouth involved members of both the Wampanoag and Pilgrim tribes, we’ve given neither the Wampanoag nor other indigenous people much to be thankful for since then. Something else to think about as we thank God (and congratulate ourselves) for our good fortune.

I’m mentioning that now because I have two Thanksgiving invites, one Thursday and the other Sunday, and most likely will be so stuffed by the time all is said and done to think clearly.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is another card from Ida, but I can't make out the year. She was still feeding extra men involved in hauling hay and feed and asked Jessie, "Do you remember 13 years ago this year?" Wish I knew what that was about.

The Anglophilian vice

I've added new links under the sidebar header "Anglophilia" here that reflect for the most part an obsession with ancient buildings. That's not an easy obsession to deal with in Iowa because we have no ancient buildings. Euroamericans have been around this high up between the Mississippi and the Missouri since only the late 1830s. And we've been careless with what our forbears built, preferring to tear them down or let them fall down.

"Anglophilia" is a little misleading, since it implies a fondness for all things English. I couldn't care less about the royal family, don't especilly like tea and while devoted to the Book of Common Prayer am not at all devoted to what's called the Anglican Communion. "Anglobuildingophilia" would be more accurate, but bulky.

I especially like English Churches, even better when the person photographing and writing about them is obsessed. And that's certainly the case with Simon Knott's "Churches of East Anglia" --- accounts of visits to approximately 1,500 churches, mostly Anglican with inevitable Roman Catholic roots, in Suffolk and Norfolk.

Great Chalfield (above), in Wiltshire, is perhaps my favorite English house (wonderful gardens, too). Although owned by the National Trust it is lived in and managed for the British public by grandchildren of the couple who so sensitively restored it. "Ming at Great Chalfield" is a blog written by members of that family pretending to be their dog Ming. I know that seems a little odd, but then so do the Christmas letters from cousins of mine pretending to be one of their dogs or horses.

Owlpen Manor, in the Cotswolds, owned and occupied by members of the Manders family, is another small but extremely interesting building. The Web site they've developed for it is one of the best and most comprehensive around.

Craig Thomber has posted thousands of photos of villages, towns, churches and houses in Cheshire and Staffordshire as well as elsewhere in England on his various sites. Expecially good if you're interested in the settings and surroundings of interesting buildings.

And finally, Treasure Hunt, a blog written by National Trust staffers who track down, evaluate and write abound artifacts separated at some point from the hundreds of properties the trust owns and administers.

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Features related to our native forbears are about as ancient as anything human-related gets here in Iowa, so I was interested this morning to see a blogger, Lance Foster, linked as "The Sleeping Giant" under "Stuff I Read" quoted in a Des Moines Register story related to National Park Service shenanigans at Effigy Mounds National Monument way up in the northeast part of the state.

Lance, who lives in Montana but who was an Iowan while attending university, is a registered member of the Ioway tribe, our namesake, and author of the excellent "The Indians of Iowa" published recently by University of Iowa Press.

What happened at Effigy Mounds was fairly simple --- its National Park Service staff in the interests of public accessibility authorized and in part constructed a series of boardwalks without following Park Service procedure to ensure that the site modifications didn't damage site integrity. That cost in excess of $1 million.

Here's a link to The Des Moines Register, but you're on your own so far as finding the story is concerned. The Register moves stories around and eventually pops them into a for-a-price archive --- so links to specific stories don't last long. Look for the story headlined, "Outrage lingers among those who love Effigy Mounds."

The regrettable end of Uncle Quiller

Used to be, vintage photographs of persons unknown (or tangentially related) were consigned to bonfires when the accumulations of attics and dresser drawers were sorted out. That’s no longer the case --- partly because of increased interest in family history, but also because even the unknowns are worth a buck or two at auction or in an antique shop.

I like it better when families hold on to these images, but rarely complain when one lands in my lap as was the case last week when this photo of Uncle Quiller Davis was placed in my custody by Mary Lou, a Myers cousin.

Uncle Quiller (Aquilla Jones Davis) worked in three banks during a career cut short by death so I’m not sure which bank this is. It could be the Bank of Sewal, Allerton State Bank or the National Bank of Seymour (which he helped organize) --- all down the road south of here in Wayne County.

Uncle Quiller was a Russell boy, born 9 January 1865, two years before that town was founded, to Austin R. and Malinda Davis. He had one sister, Harriet. On 9 January 1887 in Benton Township he was married to Minnie Redlingshafer, younger sister of my paternal great-grandmother Mary Belle (Redlingshafer) Myers.

Quiller and Minnie went first to farming down near the Missouri line in southeast Wayne County and their first child, a daughter, was born and died there on 27 December 1887. She is buried in the Greer Cemetery, near their farm, in Clinton Township, Wayne County.

In 1900, he entered the Bank of Sewal as cashier and remained there until 1918, when he moved for a few months to the State Bank of Allerton. About 1919, he moved his family to Seymour and helped to organize the Seymour National Bank, which he served as cashier.

Quiller had become very active in Seymour, serving as school board president, city treasurer, Red Cross chairman, Community Club officer and Methodist Church lay preacher and by all accounts was widely liked and admired.

And then something went terribly wrong and it’s not clear what it was because financial shenanigans do not seem to have been involved.

On Monday, Nov. 14, 1921, Minnie and their daughter, Isabel, left Seymour by train to spend a few days in Des Moines with their son and brother, Earl, and his family. At 4 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 14, Quiller telephoned his friend and physician, Dr. A.J. Davis, and told him he was “alone and in trouble.” By the time Dr. Davis reached the house, Quiller had climbed into the bathtub and shot himself in the head with an automatic pistol that continued to fire into the wall of the room after he died.

According to newspaper reports, Quiller left a note behind “stating some of his troubles and some imaginary troubles.”

The third Davis child, Romney, came home from California and the funeral was held at the Seymour Methodist Church, followed by burial in South Lawn Cemetery. A polished black granite family stone and headstone mark his grave, but no other family members are buried there, so Quiller is quite alone on that large lot.

Minnie and her three children all moved to California not long after his death and she died in Los Angeles on 21 July 1943. Romney was the longest-surviving of their children, dying in Santa Monica on 12 March 1993, almost 97.

Aquilla J. and Minnie (Redlingshafer) Davis with their three children, Isabel, Romney (front) and Earl

Give the devil his due

The devil don’t get no respect these days, or so it seems --- and saying that doesn’t mean I’m about to head down a treacherous path into theology. Just saying that there’s a lot of truth in the old, old and almost universal concept that each of us is positioned here on a divide between pure evil at the extreme on one side, absolute grace on the other, pure darkness and pure light, and that forces we don’t understand and have trouble explaining always are pulling in both directions. All religions, lesser and great, struggle with this. Even those who maintain they’re not at all religious do, too.

I’m thinking about the smiling young man here, from what seems to be a “good” home in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park --- Michael Swanson, 17 --- who on Sunday stole his mother’s debit card and vehicle, drove north to the family cabin and helped himself to a rifle and then drove south again into Iowa. Monday night he walked into an Algona convenience store, robbed it, then killed without provocation the attendant, a 47-year-old mother of 11. After that, he drove 30 miles south to Humboldt and repeated the process, killing the 61-year-old farm wife attendant.

About all we know so far, based upon media reports, is that the little guy with the big smile has a history in his hometown of sociopathic behavior stretching back to age 9, but apparently no easily definable and treatable mental illness to explain it.

Sociopathic behavior can be defined as extreme disregard for the rights, feelings, personal space and even the lives of other --- profound self-absorption. The 1999 massacre at Columbine High School involving young men of similar age is another more deadly example of sociopathy.

So for that matter, on what so far has been a less deadly level, are the poster children of irrational behavior --- Fred Phelps and his merry band from Wichita, moving around the country and for inexplicable reasons focusing on military funerals. Their behavior has nothing to do with faith or morality, and perhaps never did --- it’s pure self-absorbed sociopathic behavior. The devil at play, if you like.

The recent pre-midterm election campaigns involved a good deal of sociopathic behavior on both sides of the partisan fence, nearly all involving words. Talk radio is full of it. Read the “comments” attached to media stories about hot-button issues and you’ll see, shielded by anonymity, sociopathy in full flower. Web blogs are full of it, too.

It’s tempting, sitting comfortably at home behind a computer screen in little danger of being confronted face-to-face by your targets, to pull out a 300 Winchester, load it with words and fire away.

The difficulty here is the sociopathy can’t be legislated, talked or preached away and there seem to be no over-the-counter drugs available to deal with it. Perhaps it’s time to give the devil his due again, acknowledge what’s going on inside our own heads and move one-by-one toward the light. At least that would be a start.

Smiles and Kansas twisters

I've already said, while posting this photo to a Facebook gallery yesterday, that it's one of my favorite vintage images because the two subjects seem to be enjoying themselves --- and that's rare in a photo taken ca. 1900 when this one was. My great-great-uncle, Alvin Erastus Clair, is at right and his friend, Arch (Archadell) Selby, on the left.

The difficulty with professional photography at that time was that although the images were of exceptional quality (this is a tiny image that I've enlarged substantially), the exposure time needed to produce them was lengthy. So subjects were told they had to remain very still. And it's hard to hold onto a smile. So most of our ancestors, focused on not moving, appear kind of grim in photographs although of course they were neither happier nor sadder than we are.

Alvin, born 23 November 1871 in Pleasant Township, Lucas County, was the ninth of 12 children of James Wayne and Elizabeth Rachel (Rhea) Clair. My great-grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Clair, who was the second of the 12 children, married Joseph Cyrus Miller and remained in Lucas County. The rest of the family moved in 1878 to Rooks County in north central Kansas where they settled near Codell.

Alvin, who never married and never quite managed to settle down, worked at whatever it took to make a living all his life --- farmhand, cowhand, store clerk, laborer. In 1900, he returned to Iowa to visit the Millers, found work as a hand for the Brownlee family and stuck around for a while.

This is how he looked "at his best" in a photo that may have been taken in Chariton at the same time the photo with Arch was taken.

Arch, three years younger than Alvin, also was unattached in 1900, working as a hand for his parents, Ephraim and Adaline Selby.

Not long after this photo was taken, Alvin returned to Kansas where he spent most of the remainder of his life, helping to care for his mother as her health declined after World War I, then living on his own or with kinfolk. He died 16 August 1942 in Alton, Osborne County, and was buried with his parents and other relatives in Shiloh Cemetery, near Codell and the original Clair homestead.

Arch, who married Stella Burns, lived until September of 1937 and both he and his wife are buried with her people in the Columbia Cemetery, just over the line in Marion County north of Lucas.

This is Alvin's tombstone in Shiloh Cemetery, which serves as a reminder if you're working on family history always to check the "Find a Grave" Web site where to date somewhere around 53 million tombstone inscriptions have been entered, many accompanied by photographs. All tombstones at Shiloh have been photographed and posted.

But if you're paying attention, you'll note an oddity here. An "e" has been added to the "Clair" surname to make it "Claire." The same is true for an identical stone marking the grave of Alvin's mother (his father has an older, larger stone). There are several other identical Clair tombstones at Shiloh, obviously commissioned and erected at the same time, and the name is inscribed "Clair" on all of them. So I'm not quite sure what was going on.

Kansas twisters have given Codell a unique place in the footnotes of U.S. history. Devastating tornadoes struck Codell and the area around it on May 20 in three consecutive years --- 1916, 1917 and 1918. The 1918 tornado, which killed 10, was by far the most serious and Codell, although it still exists as an unincorporated community, never recovered from it.

59, 93 and 77

For as long as there have been motor vehicles and license plates upon them, Iowans have had this thing about knowing exactly where the occupants of the next vehicle over are from. I’m not sure of all the implications of this, but it is a handy way to start a conversation in parking lots when you’re standing around waiting for someone else to finish shopping, in other states and so forth --- and at the dump.

My “Cerro Gordo” plates started a friendly exchange yesterday at the dump during the great leaf sweep. The neighbor had fired up that beast of his that in summer mows the lawn, in fall sweeps up fallen leaves and in winter blows snow. He sold his pickup a couple of years ago, figuring two were one vehicle too many. So he offered to sweep my lawn, too, if I’d haul the results (two overflowing truck loads) to the dump. We now share the cleanest quarter block in Chariton.

Now the dump is not exactly a dump, although it used to be before landfills were mandated. After that, it was tidied up and is now where we haul downed trees, limbs, branches and lawn and garden debris so that city workers can burn the accumulation periodically. The logic of this escapes me. I’d think it would make more sense to let us burn our own leaves rather than starting a huge fire every couple of weeks that covers the whole town with a pall of smoke. And I know I should mulch or compost instead --- don’t bother to tell me that. This is just the way it is.

Anyhow, two of us were backed up to the pile unloading leaves when the other guy suggested, based on my Cerro Gordo plates, that I’d driven an awful long way with those leaves. Actually, it was less than a quarter mile, I told him, but I’ve never bothered to order new “Lucas” plates (It doesn’t make any difference in Iowa where your plates say you’re from so long as your vehicle is registered in the right place). We use the same plates for years, moving them from vehicle to vehicle, updating them annually with stickers.

Turns out he was a veteran over-the-road trucker who had amused himself as the years passed by keeping track of license plate designations. Since there are 99 Iowa counties, most of us are challenged when it comes to remembering exactly where they’re all at and have to rely on the handy Department of Transportation map in the glove compartment when we really want to know. He knew the locations of them all, including Cerro Gordo, way up north in the arctic (or attic) of Iowa.

Then we got to talking about the way license plates used to be in the good old days.

A couple of examples of current Iowa plates are up top here, although these are specialty plates --- one bearing an eagle and the other Iowa’s state bird (goldfinch) and flower (wild rose). Pay a little extra for one of these and the Department of Natural Resources benefits. The basic plates like mine are that same plain cloudy sky blue with a combination of letters and numbers in the foreground, a vague design intended to suggest this is a state of both farms and cities in the background and the name of the county we’re from --- more or less --- at the bottom.

Back in those good old days we were talking about at the dump, the plates were simpler --- just numbers stamped onto a plain background. The big excitement used to be figuring out what color the background was going to be. And figuring out where folks were from was a little more complicated. That’s where “59, 93 and 77” come in.

At some point, a state official had alphabetized Iowa’s counties and assigned each a number in that sequence. Lucas was “59,” Wayne County, “93,” and Polk (where Des Moines is located), “77.” These numbers were always first --- over to the left --- in the numerical sequence on our license plates. If you saw “59” or “93,” you knew you were dealing with homefolks. If you saw “77,” well watch out! If you saw numbers you couldn’t quite place, they were listed on those DOT maps, too, and you could look them up.

When it became clear that there were getting to be too many of us for this numbering system to work, a combination of letters and numbers was introduced and the state tried to get away with dropping the county designation entirely. Well, you’d have thought the world was about to end.

So after a lot of fussing and yelling, the state agreed to print the county designation in small letters across the bottoms of the plates and it’s been that way since. So now, come the Rapture, we’ll all have useful plates to grab before we’re swept up to heaven to remind us of where, specifically, we came from.

Triumphant triumphalism

Ottumwa justifiably calls itself “the city of Bridges” because of the number of structures, some interesting and others not, that span the Des Moines River to connect its halves. I’d call it the city of churches, too, however --- to recognize the wonderful confections of many denominations that remain downtown.

St. Mary’s Roman Catholic, a dramatic and vast last gasp of pared down gothic revival dating from 1930, has pride of place in Ottumwa because of size and location. But Trinity Episcopal, looking down its more traditional gothic revival nose from the hilltop above, is by far the finest church building in the city --- absolutely stunning and virtually unaltered.

Several of us drove down Sunday after Morning Prayer at St. Andrew’s --- crammed in the interests of economy and companionability like so many pumpkin-pie-bearing sardines into Suzie’s and Mel’s super duper “King Ranch” Ford truck --- the worst nightmare of any Prius it might encounter along Highway 34. We’ve been talking about about working together more in the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa’s South Central Chapter --- parishes in Chariton, Ottumwa, Albia and Oskaloosa --- and Trinity stepped up to the plate first by inviting us all down for a Thanksgiving Eucharist followed by Thanksgiving dinner.

The service was great, as was the sermon (the Rev. Vincent Bete, transplanted to Iowa from the Philippines, has to be one of the most likable and enthusiastic of Iowa’s clergy). Same for the music --- including a vested choir. The food that followed in the parish hall was wonderful as was the fellowship, but I’m obsessed by buildings and can’t get over this one.

Trinity was completed in 1895 to a design by Davenport architect Edward Hammatt at the intersection of Fifth and Market streets in a triumphalist residential neighborhood just below the crest of the bluffs that soar above the Des Moines and edge downtown to the north and east. Built into the bluff, it gives the impression from Fifth Street of a rather low building dominated by a three-story tower, but from the southwest two full stories are exposed, giving the lower-level Parish Hall full-length windows.

Trinity's neighborhood, the Fifth Street Historic District, was and remains an entriely appropriate setting for the building. These are some of the houses across Fifth Street northeast of the church.

The design theory of church buildings can give you a headache if you start trying to figure out the principal motive behind their construction. In the higher church tradition, was it to the greater glory of God or was it to the greater glory of those who built it? In the end it doesn’t matter --- if the result is satisfying. I always blame ugly on the builders; credit God with the glorious ones like Trinity.

Everything here points up --- the roof lines, the peaked arches of windows and doors and that dramatic tower pointing like a forefinger to heaven. The front door --- massive and wood with strap hinges and, of course, painted Episcopalian red --- are exactly what you’d expect (and be disappointed not to find).

Inside, the building is very large but welcoming below its arched wood-paneled roof. Everything points toward the apsidal end of the chancel, the liturgical east, where curves embrace the altar.

The stained glass here is interesting and in some cases spectacular. Unlike many triumphalist churches where the glass was installed as a unit to create often beautiful but sometimes tedious uniformity, the glass here is of various dates and styles --- creating a gallery effect in which its necessary to approach each window separately.

The four large windows at the rear of the nave, all rather simple, probably were original equipment. The four windows flanking the front of the nave most likely were installed later as memorials or for other reasons, and are much more interesting. This is my favorite, a memorial depiction (I think) of the Archangel Gabriel. The colors are wonderful; the window glows no matter the quality of the light outside.

Its neighbor to the left may be the most elaborate of the nave windows and is quite beautiful --- although I still like Gabriel better (nothing personal).

Four smaller windows flank the altar, each I would say installed at different times. I was in a hurry and not too focused, so this was the only one of those windows that I took a marginally successful photo of. The others are darker and richer.

My favorite Gabriel window picks up the colors of the stunning and eminently Victorian arch in the northwest end of the nave, soaring over doors into the narthex.

It’s a wonderful church building. If you’re in Ottumwa look it up and walk around it. Better yet, show up on a Sunday morning, come inside and worship with the congregation. Holy Eucharist begins at 10:45 a.m.

If your interests are photography, keep in mind that this is a challenging church to photograph because of its location. It tends to be obscured by trees in the summer and to do this right, I’d have needed to go back several times at different hours of the day. Maybe someday!

We arrived back in Chariton just in time for friends to track me down and load me up so we could head to Pella for performances in Douwstra Audtorium of Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and Schubert’s “Symphony No. 9” by the College-Community Chorus and College-Community Orchestra at Central College.

Like the quality of the architecture and worship in Ottumwa, the quality of the performances in Pella was exceptional. All in all, it was a darned good day down here in the southern hills.

Honey Creek blues

So I’m sitting here, now that the elections are over and done with, waiting for the other shoe to drop in regard to southern Iowa’s Honey Creek Resort --- a $58 million extravaganza built with public funds by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (and administered by same) just down the road southeast of here alongside the Army Corps of Engineers’ Rathbun Lake (or reservoir if you’re a purist).

The first shoe dropped early this year when it became evident that Honey Creek had lost roughly $900,000 during its first operating year, plagued by weather-related construction delays and of course the economy. It’ll be interesting to see what the bottom line will be at the end of the year now winding down. Construction is for the most part complete, but the summer weather wasn’t especially cooperative --- nor was the economy. And places of this scale, no matter who builds them, take a while to get off the ground.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of Honey Creek. It’s beautiful. It was and remains a social and economic engineering project that poured a rare infusion of public funds into south central Iowa, a part of the state I care about, and is intended make the region a long-term destination for more people (and their credit cards). We need both.

But if the goal had been instant financial viability, the resort would have been built nearer major population centers --- say at the Red Rock or Saylorville reservoirs --- and probably would have included a casino license no matter where it was built.

There are those who argue it shouldn’t have been built with state funds at all. I could go along with that --- if it hadn’t been built down here. I’m nothing if not a regionalist.

On the other hand, politicians tend to differ not on the advisability of welfare programs just on to whom they’re directed. Republicans, including some damn fool ones who are poor as dirt, favor making the rich richer on the theory benefits will trickle down. Democrats tend to favor infusing resources farther down the food chain and hoping the benefits will inch up. Honey Creek falls into the latter category and I don’t see why, if money’s going to be pouring out, we shouldn’t get our share.

When last year’s financial report came out, there were screeches from partisans on both ends of the spectrum: Sell that sucker or lease it out. Privatize, privatize, privatize. But who in the world, given current economic conditions, would want it --- other than the state.

So I hope we keep it (actually I don’t think there will be much of a choice about that), bite the bullet and keep working it until it flies --- and there’s really no reason why it shouldn’t in the long term, perhaps very long term.

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But whatever happens, southern Iowans will have very little to say about the matter. The political clout rests in Iowa’s urban centers, not down here. We have few people, few jobs and most of our creative young people who aspire to get rich, enter fulfilling professions or just live more culturally fulfilling or liberal lives, high-tail it out of here once high school’s done. The scenery, friendly (albeit aging) people and more relaxed approaches to life seem to appeal more to people of my age.

That was fairly evident in the last election --- and forget about economic matters guaranteed when things are not going well to skewer the party in power, especially when its leaders give the impression of being inept.

Look instead at the vote to oust three of the Supreme Court justices who opened Iowa to same-sex marriage. The vote tipped the other way or was exceedingly close in our urban centers, but the rural Iowans who remain behind pulled together on this one with perhaps one or two narrow exceptions. Young people, finding little to inspire them in either party, apparently stayed home in droves. Out the justices went.

So rural Iowa still can pull together, in this instance negatively, when a hot-button issue is involved, pair up with urban residents similarly inclined and win. But most issues involving rural Iowa --- rural jobs creation, rural roads, small-town and rural viability and quality of life, etc. --- are not hot-button issues for the urban majority and likely to be of marginal interest to city folks of all political persuasions. That includes the relatively modest issue of Honey Creek Resort. And even in rural Iowa, who in Winnebago County, for example, is going to give a darn about ensuring the future of a pricey piece of economic and social engineering in Appanoose County? So that’s why I’ve got a case of the Honey Creek blues.

The Facebook challenge

This is the first image I posted to my new enthusiasm --- Facebook photo albums. It is a badly faded photo of my great-great-great-grandfather, William Miller II, who died during 1866 at Pleasant Corners in Monroe County, Iowa.

I've had an awful time adjusting to Facebook. Many months ago, my cousin, Audrey, invited me to join and so I did --- then forgot about it. When I remembered it, I'd forgotten how to get in. Resolved that and decided I should "feed" the blog there. Forgot about it again. Finally checked and discovered that the Facebook "feed" mechanism didn't work well. Cancelled feed. Remembered Facebook again and started manually "sharing" blog post links. That seems to work.

Now I've discovered how easy it is to post photos into widely-accessible albums on Facebook, solving at least in part a long-running problem --- how to share the hundreds of vintage images from multiple family lines that I'm the custodian of. Even posted a letter from 1918 and it worked out very well. So now I'm officially a fan of Facebook. It just took a while. Thanks Audrey!

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The seasons seem to be shifting here this morning --- cold rain after a string of mild and mostly sunny days. The weather map shows the cold blue of a winter storm warning moving into northwest Iowa. Although it's not supposed to reach down here that blue is a sign of what's to come most likely. Eight finches are clinging to the thistle seed feeder this morning, chowing down (and eating me out of house and home; thistle seed is darned expensive). Not sure what that's all about.

Just in time for winter, we received a beautifully preserved and quite old bobsled at the museum yesterday. It's a wonderful device although in order to make it fully functional we'd have to transfer to it the box or rack from a wagon as our ancestors did when snow covered roads and fields. Bobsleds are notoriously tippy, but still used occasionally, often with teams of horses, where it's necessary to feed livestock in open fields.

This is my morning to keep the museum office open, so it will be interesting to see what turns up today.

Veterans Day and Uncle Jerry

Since it is Veterans Day, a day of remembrance that originated with the armistice that ended World War I on Nov. 11, 1918, it's a good time to do a little celebrating of the life of my great-uncle, Jerry Miller --- buried out here on a hillside in the Chariton Cemetery. Jerry was the only member of his immediate family to serve during World War I and when he died just short of his 94th birthday in 1986, one of its longest-surviving veterans.

Jerry, whose official name was Jeremiah (inherited from his paternal grandfather), was born 30 April 1892 on the family farm in English Township, Lucas County. Although he had a younger brother who died in infancy, he was the youngest surviving child in a family of eight. His father, Joseph Cyrus Miller, died when he was 3, so he was raised by his mother and elder siblings.

His mother, Mary Elizabeth (Clair) Miller, was a powerful woman in many ways and she forged an extremely close-knit family out of her eight orphans. All married in Lucas County and all raised their large families here. The siblings squabbled now and then, but never fought, and even when quite old could drive their descendants nuts with their cohesiveness.

I'm thinking of the time when the survivors were quite old --- all in their 80s --- and mildly aggravated at their children, who had been making helpful suggestions about how they might best spend the balance of their years. They collectively hatched the idea of pooling their resources and moving back out to my grandfather's farm to live together --- with Uncle Jerry next door. That didn't happen and I think they may just have floated the idea to torture their kids, but the process was indicative.

This is a photo of Jerry as a young man taken from a larger family photograph.

Jerry enlisted in the U.S. Army when he was in his mid-20s and World War I was at its height, serving with the 30th Infantry Division in Belgium. I don't know much about his service --- and that's mostly my fault. All of his letters home used to reside under the bed of a guest room at my Uncle Owen's ranch in Wyoming and I never bothered to look at them. Now, scared of being considered pushy and intrusive, I've become to shy to ask what the heck became of them.

But he made it home safely and on the 4th of June 1919 at Chariton married Aunt Fern, Fern Alice Griffis, and they settled down to raise a family, farming at first his mother's share of the Miller family farm, then another farm, and finally returning to the homestead which he eventually acquired.

The original Miller farm was not especially large (I've forgotten exactly how many acres), but when divided between my grandfather, Uncle Jerry's eldest brother, and Uncle Jerry it allowed both to provide adequate although by no means extravagant livings for their families. That would not even be considered as a possibility today.

Uncle Jerry and Aunt Fern lived with his mother in the house she had built for her family after Great-grandfather died. My grandparents built a new house just up the road to the west for their family.

Jerry and Fern had become the parents of four children, Velma, Ernest, Warren and Elizabeth, when history repeated itself in a tragic sort of way. Aunt Fern developed breast cancer and died of it on 20 December 1933 when she was 34 and her youngest, Elizabeth, not yet 3.

Some men, finding themselves in a similar situation, might have farmed some of the children out or acquired another spouse, but Uncle Jerry chose not to. As his obituary puts it, he "fathered and mothered" them  himself, and did it well. My mother and her elder sister, Mae, who lived just up the road helped out, as did others. Daughter Velma served as an Army nurse during World War II; son Warren, during Korea.

After Korea, Warren came home to live with his father and the future seemed assured. But Warren, too, died unexpectedly and relatively young and so as Uncle Jerry grew older, he came increasingly to depend upon his grandson, Marvin Jess (son of Leonard and Velma Miller Jess). Finally, he died 2 February 1986 at Marvin's home near Albia, back down the road in Monroe County where the Millers had come from in the first place in 1867.

Veterans all tend to have tucked away somewhere papers confirming an "honorable" discharge from military service. Although there's no specific paperwork involved, most --- like Uncle Jerry --- have or will have honorable discharges from life, too. So there's something else to think about on Veterans Day. Which do you suppose is the most important?

The surviving Miller siblings about 1960. From left in the second row are Uncle Clair Miller, Aunt Easter (Miller) Brenaman and Uncle Jerry Miller. In the front row (from left) are William Ambrose Miller (my grandfather), Aunt Elizabeth (Miller) Mason and Aunt Cynthia (Miller) Abrahamson.

Artifacts and financial cataclysm

Halloween in Chariton also was the 103rd anniversary of the death by suicide of Frank R. Crocker and the cataclysmic collapse of First National Bank, which he managed for the Mallory family. I've posted images of four artifacts related to the Crocker family (including the photo above) over at the Lucas County Historical Society blog site, which is here. More information about the "remarkable self-destruction of Frank R. Crocker" may be found here.

Chopsticks and Veterans Day

My refuge after a busy day, which today involved hours of meetings --- all positive but some inflicting wear and tear --- is Chariton’s Chinese restaurant, the Panda Buffet. Panda is not on the menu, but the fare is very good (that’s something I know a little about).

An unusual thing about the Panda, owned and operated by nice people of Chinese descent, is that the wait staff and some of the kitchen help are of Russian descent. The result is an interesting mix of food, people and accents served up where those not familiar with Lucas County wouldn’t expect it.

Anyhow, I was minding my own business and well into my second (and final) plate this evening, when one of the owners sat down in the adjacent booth and just watched me eat. “How long did you practice with chopsticks?” she asked. “You eat like a Chinese.”

That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all week.

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Thursday is Veterans Day, one of those loaded occasions when some are inclined to say and write the most absurd things about veterans, war, peace and stuff in general while many veterans squirm and aren’t quite sure what to do with themselves --- or ignore the whole thing.

In Chariton, we can eat --- free breakfast at Hy-Vee, supper at the Legion Hall, and I’m considering breakfast this year. Dog tags on my keychain for 30 years; they’d probably get me in. It’s not the free breakfast but the principle of the thing I’m thinking about.

Monday evening, several of us visited for a while with the mother of a young man deployed during midsummer to Afghanistan. I watched him march proudly in the 4th of July parade here, Mom and Dad standing near me. Now he’s headed home for a week and a half of rest before returning to Afghanistan for the remainder of his tour of duty. He’s a combat engineer, not the safest occupation right now. His parents haven’t had a day of peace since he left. Another son is in the military, too, so there’s the possibility as combat continues of a double deployment whammy in a year or two. She works at the veterans hospital in Des Moines and perhaps has seen too much. “What’s a mother to do?” she asks.

All of us around Mom try to make affirming and reassuring noises, but it’s difficult. She muses about the uncertainty of life in the best of times and places, suggesting various ways her son might die unexpectedly here in Iowa were he not in Afghanistan. It’s a good thing they’re doing, though, she says. We agree. Breaks your heart.

Thousands have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, more will and the result is highly likely to be as pointless as the outcome of Vietnam. But no one says that; we hold our breaths; don’t let ourselves even think it. I’ve been down that road before here and don’t propose to go again right now. It’s too sad. I’m glad chopsticks turned my thoughts to food.

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As I’m quite sure I’ve written before, the group of people I worked with in Vietnam was for the most part on its own when it came to food. Our hotel had a “club” specializing in beer, frozen pizza, bad hamburgers, stale cigarettes and the occasional stripper. We could buy meals if we wanted to at a military mess hall a couple of blocks away, the Dakota I think, but few did. There was a canteen at our center, airy rooms filled mostly with Vietnamese civilians and military types sandwiched between cemeteries and an abandoned soccer field on two sides, Tan Son Nhut and the Vietnamese equivalent of the Pentagon on the others. I’ve rarely had better omelets than those prepared there and the french bread was wonderful --- but the Vietnamese version of an American lunch menu left much to be desired. Evening meals weren’t served.

So for the most part we patronized restaurants and sometimes street vendors, the neighborhood bakeries and quite often were welcomed into the homes of our hospitable Vietnamese friends noon and night. Sharing lunch with our Vietnamese military co-workers could be problematic --- that tended to involve grouping around a pot filled with chicken soup --- including the head and feet. I never adjusted to dead chicken eyes staring up at me from the soup kettle.

Every trip to the Chlon PX (and many other trips, too) involved a meal at the Fuji, a wonderful series of garden pavilions within the compound of an old colonial villa. There were Chinese restaurants of every shade and flavor from simple to spectacular and a Vietnamese restaurant that specialized in multi-course meals, each course from soup to dessert featuring beef.

On really special occasions, we ate at Le Cave, a French colonial relic offering incomparable onion soup, or the Italian café a block or two away. Our Korean friends, the fierce Kims, always insisted on accompanying us to Koream restaurants in part to protect us from the pure fire preferred by many of their countrymen and also to ensure that we weren’t served dog, looked upon by some as a special treat.

The long and the short of this all is that unless one wanted to eat with fingers, one learned quickly to eat with chopsticks. And once mastered, that is a skill not forgotten. It is a sensible way to eat and becomes as natural as breathing. So that is why, without even thinking about it, I can “eat like a Chinese.” And today, still, I enjoy eating out the most when chopsticks are involved. Every time I pick them up, I remember Vietnam, but food isn’t the only thing I think about.

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Veterans Day is not a convenient holiday, falling as it does (with the exception of 1971-1978) on a date that has significance --- the signing of the armistice that ended World War I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1919 --- rather than on the nearest Monday so that non-veterans can enjoy a three-day weekend. Few businesses close, school continues, many non-Federal offices remain open. To do otherwise is just too inconvenient, too costly. Few care. It’s all about the economy now. War, you say? What war?

But don’t worry too much about that. It’s OK. It’s not a day when you-all should feel obligated to hug a veteran or wave a flag. You can get over that.

Wouldn’t hurt to sit quietly for a while somewhere though and think about it for a while. Then maybe try giving peace a chance. Pray for it. Speak it. Practice it. Breathe, sleep and die it. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Live it. That’s the way you honor veterans. Remember that God damn it!

John Shelby Spong-ed

Whilst wandering around in the religious blogosphere on break between emptying flower pots and making enough vegetable-beef soup to last into the new week Sunday afternoon, I ended up here. And took Beliefnet's little "What kind of Christian are you?" quiz.

I had been thinking, while working, of one of my great-grandfathers, Joseph Brown, to whom work on the Christian Sabbath was an abomination --- a term that when approached from a biblical perspective implies violation of a holy law of a specific religious culture rather than a general breach of moral law, a distinction lost on many. Great-granddad, for example, forbade his wives (there were three of these, in succession imposed by untimely death) to cook on Sunday. Food prepared on Saturday could be reheated on the Sabbath, but not prepared.

"Not that kind of Christian," I was thinking.

The gratifying Beliefnet classification I ended up in was "John Shelby Spong Christian." Bishop Spong (retired, Episcopal Diocese of Newark) is a heritic and I'm fond of heretics. When John Shelby first went public, steam and smoke arose from clerical ears across Anglicanland and elsewhere as he was denounced from pulpits. In the years since, as Anglicanism has moved toward schism between left and right, schism fueled on the left by inclusiveness and on the right by continued determination to marginalize women and dispatch us queerfolk, he's picked up more friends. He's especially popular among (heaven help us) humanists.

It's not necessary to share every belief expressed by the bishop, but it is constructive to read or listen to Spong and be challenged by his assertions. The idea that organized religion tends to be more about power than faith, for example; or the suggestion that the directive to have child-like faith tends to be used as a tool by those in power to discourage independent thought and grown-up faith.

So I was satisfied, at roughly 3 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon in November between flower pot and soup kettle, to be a John Shelby Spong Christian. At other times, I may feel a little differently.

You know you want to take the quiz. Go ahead. Here's the link again. Just remember --- I've got a big mouth, but you don't have to tell anyone the result (unless you want to).

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Indian summer? Sure it is. Highs near 70 and sunshine are predicted through midweek. It can't, and won't, last --- but we can enjoy it while it's here.

I've got a program to present at the nursing home this morning --- on Mallory's Castle (aka the Ilion), not a new subject but the two DVDs I'm taking along are new and I'm not quite sure how they are going to work out; a board meeting Tuesday; more planters to empty and other yardwork that needs doing; and a heck of a lot of long-deferred houseowrk --- among other stuff. But outdoors takes priority.

The return to Central Standard Time continues to be a problem. The spirit is willing (I'd like to sleep until 4:30 a.m.) but the body isn't (it's ready to rise at 3:30 a.m.).

Clocks and corpses

We all would be well advised to set our clocks back an hour before retiring tonight as Daylight Saving Time ends and Central Standard Time returns. I still don't understand why we can't settle on one or the other and leave it alone --- but greater minds than mine have pondered this and all we can do is live with it.

The clock here, as you well know, is in the courthouse tower. As you also most likely know, it was brought home by Smith H. Mallory from the Colombian World Exposition of 1893 in Chicago and installed in our most siginficant and then new public building. Although gutted of its original mechanical works and electrified, it still functions --- sort of. But since the death some years ago of Quincy Robb, who loved and understood it, things have not been quite the same.

I always think fondly of my late maternal grandfather each time the time changes and I run around trying to remember how various digital mechanisms work. He declined to acknowledge Daylight Saving Time.

This caused some difficulties, of course, because he was rarely on time for anything during the summer saving months, but he persevered.

So far as I recall that caught up with him disastrously only once, when an old friend died and he decided to overcome his intense dislike for the late Sam Beardsley (dead then at least 20 years) and attend last rites at Beardsley Funeral Home. At that time, Edith Beardsley still lived upstairs and Keith Fielding, then running the establishment for her, was merely a pup. Naturally, Granddad was late.

At that time, one entered the funeral home from the southeast and came into a long "chapel" carved from rooms along the south side of the large old house it had once been. I recall lots of pastel green, a rather peculiar floral mural and rows of bentwood chairs, although I could be mistaken about the nature of the chairs.

Running late and preoccupied, he slipped into a chair at the rear of the chapel; and hard of hearing (a hearing aid was never considered) and with relatively little distance vision (he would have been in his mid-80s at the time and wore glasses, but never in public), settled down for the duration.

At that time, it was the practice of the assembled mourners to arise once the preacher was done and traipse forward to view the deceased one last time before exiting the building through a door off the southwest corner of the chapel. As he peered into the casket, it occurred to Grandpa that he did not recognize the corpse.

As it turned out, he should have been at a funeral beginning at about the time the last rites he had just attended ended but at Miley Funeral home, a block northeast. He decided to leave good enough alone --- and went home.

So something like this could happen to you if you neglect attend to your clocks tonight.

Beardsley Funeral Home also was the site of my maternal grandmother's last stand against the establishment.

To say that Grandma was determined would be putting it mildly. In this instance, feeling money could be far better spent on good works not involving her mortal remains, she left behind four-part orders: The least expensive coffin within the bounds of decency available, burial in her favorite print housedress, no viewing and no flowers. Such edicts at that time gave undertakers palpitations, and I believe Keith tried to talk my dad into increasing the stakes of perceived suitablity. But no one messed with my grandmother, in life or in death. Except Keith.

From somewhere, he dredged up large bouquets of plastic flowers placed in tall wicker flower stands that were flanking the casket as we walked in (I was 12 at the time). And some pour soul had not gotten the "no flowers" message and so one lonely, cheap and distinctly bedragled spray of something or other had been delivered, now positioned front and center. I remember very little about the funeral, but do remember just how odd that pathetic spray looked. We always referred to the funeral as Keith's revenge.