Bringing home the bacon

There's been a delay here while I had breakfast --- bacon, sourdough toast with butter and orange marmalade, orange juice and coffee. Since Bacon Week is almost upon us, this seemed like the right thing to do.

You can read more about this year's Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival here. Sadly, many events seem to be sold out.

The bacon variety I favor, which you really can't see here, is Hy-Vee bulk, sliced down where there's a helpful smile in every aisle --- even staff knocked cold when elements of the ongoing expansion and reconstruction project fall on their heads go down grinning.

What you can see instead is my favorite non-essential kitchen device, a cast iron bacon press bought some years ago at the Dutchman's Store in Cantril. It ensures perfecly flat and evenly cooked slices, ideal for seasonal bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwhiches and for breakfast --- when order is essential. You don't want floppy spottily-cooked bacon at 5 a.m.

The bacon was cooked on the family griddle for aesthetic reasons. If the process hadn't been having its photo taken, I'd have used a skillet. With the griddle, one has to keep paper-towling melted fat away in order to avoid stovetop disaster.

The griddle's looking a little used, I'm afraid, but it's been cooking pancakes and, when needed, other stuff for more than 60 years. Just soft-scrub the bacon residue away, scald (the major reason why I have a teakettle), then oil and it's good for next time.

If it were not for pork, I probably could be a vegetarian (at least part of the time). And I know most Iowa hogs are raised under inhumane factory-farm conditions. On the other hand, free-range hogs gave me a good deal of grief growing up and I've never much liked the smart-alecky critters. So I really don't mind eating them.

+++

Besides, it's winter --- when carnivores traditionally have chowed down on their fellow creatures. We had 5-6 inches of snow all together overnight Tuesday and into Wednesday, which has now been shoveled; and the temperatures are heading below zero tonight.

My friend Kay, who heads up gardening efforts at the museum, wrote yesterday --- "The snow is glorious and I am sure the green and growing things are grateful." I'm hanging onto that thought.

Let the application process begin ...

It's always fun to hear architectural historian Molly Myers Naumann, of Ottumwa, talk about her passion --- old buildings. Several of us had that opportunity early Tuesday evening during a public meeting that was a preliminary step in Chariton's application to have its town square added as an historic district to the National Register of Historic Places.

The application process is complex, is expected to take more than a year and success is not guaranteed, but Molly does not accept commissions of this type unless she expects to succeed, so we're hopeful. The application is a joint project of the city of Chariton and Chariton Area Chamber/Main Street. Obviously, Molly will be paid. Those of us who help out with research won't.

Molly's credentials run deep in Chariton because she has handled the individual application process for several  buildings already on the Register, including the Main Street District's Hotel Charitone, Chariton Newspapers Building, City Hall and American Legion Hall, all designed by hometown architect William Perkins. First United Methodist Church and the Lucas County Courthouse, also in the district, are on the Register, too. Molly also handled successful applications for the Chariton Cemetery Historic District and Fred and Sherry Steinbach's Crozier House (also a Perkins building).

There are a number of advantages to winning a place on the Register for the district, including the fact all "contributing" buildings within the district are automatically added to the Register (the application process for individual buildings is both time-consuming and costly). The designation also would recognize the historical importance of the square as a unit both in terms of architecture ---brick and mortar --- and in terms of how it has functioned since 1849 as the heart of a county seat town.

There's a major financial incentive, too. The owners of National Register buildings are eligible for state and federal historic preservation tax credits when restoring or renovating --- so long as Department of the Interior guidelines are followed. These credits potentially can pay up to 45 percent of a project's cost --- 25 percent from the state plus 20 percent from the federal government.

Molly spent a good deal of time Tuesday evening correcting common misunderstandings about what National Register status means. The most common misunderstanding, she said, is that a place on the register limits what an owner may do with a building. It does not, she said --- unless public funds are used to improve it. If you accept public funds, you play by government rules, Molly said. Otherwise, a building owner may do anything he or she wishes to do. Nor does National Register status mean a building must be open to the public, although most commercial structures already are.

A National Register application is developed in cooperation with the State Historic Preservation Office, then must clear the Iowa Advisory Committee before being forwarded to the U.S. Department of Interior for consideration. Molly anticipates an appearance before the state committee next April. If the application clears that committee, the Department of Interior most likely would approve it, too, and the status could go into effect mid-year 2014.

Confessions of a failed Cub Scout

Can't remember if I ate that potato --- foil-wrapped and baked in the embers of a barnyard bonfire --- or not. But the potato is about the only memory left of a brief and abortive pre-adolescent venture into scouting. The potato had something to do with survival and a badge, but was it wolf or weasel?

Don't remember why I dropped out either --- most likely minimal interest combined with my parents' willingness to forego trips to and from town at chore time unless the kid demonstrated considerable enthusiasm.

But scouting, both for boys and girls, has been and continues to be a fine program. And it sounds now like the national Boy Scout organization is preparing to drop its unilateral ban on gay scouts and leaders (this has not been an issue in Girl Scouting) --- sort of. Under the plan afloat this week, but not adopted yet, local chartering organizations would be able to set their own Boy Scout agendas, banning or not at will.

Still no word on God. In Boy Scouting (again, not Girl Scouting), non-theists need not apply, although in scouting as formerly in the military, there's probably a good deal of "don't-ask-don't-tell" afoot.

The Boy Scouts' apparent move is a little surprising, since just seven months ago leadership strongly reaffirmed the organization's anti-gay policy. It would be interesting to know who called the Come-to-Je$u$ meetings. Corporate sponsors most likely. Sometimes unbridled capitalism actually works.

I'm all for dropping the ban, but wonder if the unfortunate side effect of a wishy-washy retraction --- if the national deflecta-shield is removed --- will be to move local leaders and scouts into the spotlight as skirmishes in the cultural wars continue. Most of these guys probably don't have much if anything invested in discrimination; just want to get on with scouting.

But if the national organization slinks away, the ball will move into the court of chartering organizations and that has the potential to be painful. It's likely that some chartering organizations heavily invested in homophobia will stand and fight and others, wash their hands of scouting. Both, for the kids (potential  ammunition), would be unfortunate.

One of the interesting questions is why this all has been allowed to become a big deal in Boy Scouting, but not in Girl Scouting --- other than the obvious: women tend to be more sensible in some areas. Probably has something do do with the old and dying patriarchy --- little boys traditionally have been considered more important in the grand scheme of things; little girls, not so much. Gay men and not lesbians, for example, usually are perceived as the bigger threat by folks who worry. For some, the prospect of little gay Cub Scouts must be horrifying. At least I never gave any cause for worry.

Resurrection in Burlington

Photos (except one of the ruins) taken from the congregation's Web site.

I've written here twice before about the phoenix-like rise from the ashes of Burlington's wonderful old First United Methodist Church, gutted by an arson fire on April 29, 2007.

The photo (above, lifted from the church Web site) shows how the church looks today as restoration nears completion. My photo from October of 2007 (below), shows how it looked then, six months after the fire.

When I visited Burlington during 2007, only that shell --- which many had feared shortly after the blaze would collapse --- was standing and members of the congregation had just voted to spend more than $300,000 to stabilize them as the debate about how to proceed continued.

The congregation employed the Des Moines-based architectural firm of Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck (HLKB) to plan a new church on property elsewhere in the city --- and a plan for rebuilding within the surviving walls. Kirk Blunck, now of Knowles Blunck (KB) Architecture and lead planner for the Hotel Charitone project, was a major player in that process.

During 2009, the congregation voted narrowly (by five votes) to use roughly $8 million in insurance plus other funds to rebuild within the jasper granite walls of the old building. I wrote again about the project on June 1, 2011, just as reconstruction was beginning.

Also during 2009, the congregation voted to purchase a vacant four-story former department store known as the Stoermers or Boesch building across the alley south of the church to serve both the congregation and the community.

As the other photos here --- also lifted from the church Web site --- show, completion now is near. Stained glass has been replicated (only scraps preserved in small blocked windows had survived) and the sanctuary rebuilt as nearly as practical to original specifications. Even the original pew design was honored. A new pipe organ has been built and is being installed. And it won't be long now before the Burlington congregation is able to return to its old home.

This is an project reflecting the congregation's faith on a variety of fronts, including the future of downtown Burlington. As always, the congregation's Web site is the best place to follow progress of the project. Click on "The Fire" or "Construction" for more information and photographs.

The sporting life

Rain is banging against the window this morning, but whether or not it will start start to freeze and turn the south of Iowa into a skating rink remains to be seen. I'm betting "no" since it's 34 degrees at 5 a.m. --- but we'll see.

The forecast --- a day or two of rain --- motivited me to do something I've been threatening to do for a while late yesterday: Drive down south of Russell to take a look at the new Sportsman's Cabin.

This is a project of the Russell Sportsman's Club, an organization that's been around longer than I have, and replaces the original cabin --- a long, low wooden structure that had deteriorated beyond the point of redemption.

The original cabin had what I remember as a huge (it most likely wasn't that huge; 55 or so years ago I was considerably smaller) brick fireplace in its north wall. Since the cabin always was available for public use, I have many memories of gatherings there, especially of those in the fall when leaves had turned in the surrounding timber and a blazing fire looked and felt good.

So it's nice to know that there's still a Sportsmen's Cabin, even though this incarnation is considerably spiffier than the one I remember.

The club, always a strong supporter of boy scouting, still owns a long finger of timbered land along the south bluff of the Chariton River Valley. This was modestly developed for scouting activities, including popular winter encampments. There was even a "ski slope," more accurately described as a big sledding hill since it takes a good deal of optimism to propose that downhill skiing is an Iowa sport.

Anyhow, a lot of work has been done recently, the shooting range was in use when I drove in late Saturday afternoon --- and I like continuity (some of the time).

I also drove into both the west and east units of the adjoining DNR-managed Colyn Area, somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 acres that now form part of the Chariton River Greenbelt, but didn't linger long because it was threatening to get dark and there was a "this gate is locked at 3 p.m." sign on the entrance gate to the west unit --- probably an idle threat, since it still was wide open, but who knows?

This pretty area was developed when I was a kid, swallowing the farm of Isaac and Minnie Colyn --- hence the name. Draconian shifts in the landscape that probably wouldn't be used today were buldozed through the area then, and the old wildly meandering Chariton River was ditched between dikes, cutting off a couple of miles of northerly meanders to create two artificial marshes, one north of the river and the other south. We used to skate on the south marsh in the winter (I grew up just south of it), when there actually was water there.

Erosion infill and drought have dried the marshes now and the whole prospect is a little unsettling if you think about how it used to be. But I'll go back another day --- when the sun's shining and there's no possibility of getting locked in --- and do more looking around.

Stormy weather?

Western sky from deep inside the Colyn Area's East Unit, south of Russell, 4 p.m. Saturday, with an advisory for freezing rain in the forecast.

How to get from Swede Holler to Poverty Ridge

I got to worrying about this old bridge over the White Breast while headed to the grocery store Friday afternoon. You just never know.

There used to be lots of cast iron rustbuckets like this in Lucas County --- lots of cricks to cross. Compared to some, this is a minor example. But most are gone, so it's a rare survivial --- having prevaled against decay, indifferent maintenance, high water, 212-ton tractors, a perceived need for more than one lane of traffic and the occasional drunk.

So before picking up my frozen corn and peas, I drove the 12-mile-or-so circuit out northwest of town to check it out. So far, so good.

One key to bridge survival has been location --- on a road that's never been anything but dirt and now is classified "minimum maintenance --- Level B." That means the road's graded as often as the county boys get around to it.

It's a pretty place, too.

To get there, drive out 4-5 miles northwest of Chariton to the Swede Holler road (it's not marked, you've gotta know the territory), mostly gravel but part dirt. Then wind up the holler --- a narrow valley carved by a small tributary creek to the White Breast where enough Swedish immigrant families once lived to give it a name.

Rising out of the holler to the north, keep your eye out on the left for the bridge road, curving down hill to where the holler crick and the main crick converge.

Just beyond the bridge, you've got options. Take a right onto another dirt road headed upvalley to the north and you'll come out on the pavement west of Oakley. Keep going straight west, and you'll come out on the Poverty Ridge road.

If you decide not to keep going west at the "T" --- through a gate in the fence and back across a hayfield to Parr Cemetery --- you'll want to turn left here, cross the White Breast again and climb onto the ridge itself --- so-called because the soil is so thin and rocks so plentiful that anyone who tried to farm it was guaranteed poverty.

It's a pretty little drive, but since freezing rain is in the forecast --- I'd make it today.

Jesus wouldn't save us, but ACT UP did

David France's acclaimed How to Survive a Plague has been streaming since mid-January on Netflix and other venues, giving those of us who haven't been in the neighborhood of a live screening a chance finally to see the film --- nominated this year for a "best documentary" Oscar.

The experience is illuminating --- and a little eerie. I keep catching the eye in crowds in near-seamless archival footage of Keith Haring (1958-1990), artist and social activist --- although not a major player in the film --- whose work I admire.

The great value of the film is its documentation of the supremely important place ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and its Treatment Action Group (TAG) had in the drive to contain --- so far prevention and cure have proved elusive --- HIV/AIDS.

First detected in 1981 --- a mere 30 years ago --- and perceived at first as a disease affecting expendable gay men, perhaps deserving the judgement of Christianity's petty little god of that time, neither the medical nor research community seemed in any hurry to deal with it.

ACT UP --- organized in New York City in 1987 --- changed all of that through a combination of activism, street theater, anarchy --- and hard science.

Faced with public hostility, apparent government indifference reflected in funding levels and the stately, but exceedingly slow, processes then in place at the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control, ACT UP volunteers absorbed all there was to know about HIV/AIDS. They produced the first coherent treatment and research protocols for HIV/AIDS --- for the most part adopted later by both researchers and physicians --- and almost single-handedly forced a shift in research emphasis from the abstract to living (and dying) people.

All of this while focusing public attention on the disease and its victims in ways both polite and perceived by some as rude.

Finally, in 1996, with the introduction of protease inhibitors into antiretroviral combination therapies, it became possible to offer those afflicted with HIV/AIDS the potential of near-normal life spans and relatively good health, although drug therapies can have debilitating side effects and are not effective or have a limited span of effectiveness in some cases.

Larry Kramer --- an ACT UP organizer still alive, kicking and as irascible as ever --- maintains with a good deal of authority that today's therapeutic drugs and effective treatment and research protocols can be attributed directly to the organization he helped to found. He calls its work a shining example of how a community, once and in some cases still marginalized and despised, rose up and figured out for itself how to survive a plague.

This is not necessarily an easy film to watch, but it captures the essence of a decade of movement from death to hope better than anything else I've seen. It's even possible to laugh now and then --- at footage, for example, of activists wrapping Sen. Jesse Helms' Arlington, Virginia, home in a giant canvas condom as the old devil himself looks on, cradling his poodle. But humor is generally rare --- and dark.

The film also serves as a reminder of the perhaps 650,000 Americans who have died of AIDS and its complications, of the millions who have died in less-fortunate places, of the fact an estimated 1.1 million Americans currently are living with HIV/AIDS (roughly a fifth unaware because they haven't been tested) and many times that number in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, and that in the United States, an estimated 50,000 new cases of HIV infection occur annually.

Insight into ACT UP and its activists is accessible in Peter Staley's eulogy for Spencer Cox. The text of the eulogy is available here.

Hal Borland and January 24

Hal Borland (1900-1978) was writing about nature before writing about nature was cool, often as an outdoor editorialist in The New York Times, but also in more than 30 books. Hal Borland's Book of Days, published in 1978, dropped onto my left big toe this morning while I was dusting bookshelves in the bedroom. That seemed to be a sign. He was writing from his home beside the Housatonic River in the lower Berkshires in Connecticut. Here is his entry for January 24:

The weather has eased somewhat, though it wasn't really mild today --- the temperature at 2:00 P.M. was only twenty-eight degrees. But I found three ladybird beetles out and basking on a windowsill at the south side of the house. They had come from under the shingles on that wall, where they spend the winter with quite a few of their kindred. By late afternoon, when the sun had set behind the mountain, they crawled back into their hiding places. We never bother them. We encourage them, for they eat aphids and are an asset in our garden.

Most of us know the old rhyme:

"Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home;

Your house is on fire, your children will burn."

Sometimes another couplet was added:

"Except little Nan, who sits in a pan

Weaving gold laces as fast as she can."

Those verses go quite a way back into English rural history. Farmers grew hops, the hop vines were infested with aphids, the ladybird bettles came and ate the aphids. After the hop harvest the vines were burned, and if the little spotted ladybird beetles didn't get out in time they were burned too. As for little Nan, she was the pupa of the ladybird. She probably had left the hop vines by then and sheathed herself in a yellow cocoon elsewhere. The name ladybird, or lady-beetle as it sometimes occurs, goes back to the Middle Ages. These little beetles were common in monastery gardens, and even then were known to be enemies of garden crop pests. They were the gardeners' friends, and the monks dedicated them to the Virgin and called them "the Beetles of Our Lady."

Role models

Poet Richard Blanco (left) and his partner, Mark Neveu (right), live in Bethel, Maine.

After Monday's inaugural, my friend wrote --- "At 13, I went to the Chariton public library and looked up the word homosexual in the childrens dictionary. It told me if someone tried to touch me to run and tell an adult. Television told me I was a freak. Church told me I was an abomination. Police arrested people like me. I got ridiculed by my classmates. I learned how to hate myself."

That was the introduction to a paragraph explaining why the President's speech had moved him, as it did all of us in the LGBT universe. But I copied this part out because, golly, me too --- so far as that dictionary business was concerned. I wonder how many of the rest of us started to figure out who we were by looking ourselves up. There was no one safe to ask (you knew that instinctively), no one to look up to and the instruction manuals parents receive with heterosexual children weren't working.

Which is part of the reason I thought inaugural poet Richard Blanco's appearance on the inaugural stand Monday was important, too. I mean what mama could fail to see this guy --- confident, handsome, well-spoken, so damn "normal" --- and filled with poetry, too --- as ideal husband material for a son. And what gay son, not see something worthy of aspiring to.

We didn't have role models back in the old days. I'm glad today's gay kids have them in increasing numbers.

Lesbian daughters will have to speak for themselves because I can't. Sometimes straight folks fail to understand that, although generally congenial and supportive, gay men and gay women in relation to each other are like Iowa and Minnesota --- states with similar cultures and a common border, but  distinct.

Some of us had fairly good luck growing up, and others didn't. My parents were bemused and  confused by what had been delivered, but never seemed to feel threatened by it. I was not taunted by classmates and didn't go to church much. So I can still dance with the old lady, makeup running now and lesions showing through but still masquerading as the bride of Christ --- at arm's length, recognizing the snake oil she's selling for what it is. And I'm way too self-centered to engage in much self-loathing.

But poke around a little in the hearts and minds of gay people of all varieties, and I think you'll discover that most us are kind of cobbled together, self-created to a degree that many straight people aren't. Or at least that's what I think. But then heterosexuals always have been and remain mysterious to me --- the exotic other.

Self-creation has been a big factor in the life and work of that accomplished role model Ricardo De Jesus Blanco, too. You can learn more about that by reading here, a blog entry by longtime friend Nikki Moustaki, or here --- a self-revelatory excerpt from a 2012 book, "Who's Yer Daddy? Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners."

In the latter, you'll learn a little about how he was shaped by aversion therapy --- administered by a dreadful grandmother who tortured him as a child as she tried to turn the sissy kid he was into the instruction-manual little man she wanted. The result is another reason why the poet makes a good role model.

So far as the grandmother is concerned, well most of my generation comprises grandmothers (and fathers) now. I hope this is not how they'll be remembered as their gay offspring rise and shine. The parents and grandparents of all kids, gay and otherwise, need good role models, too.

Cold nights and cavatini

It's 12 degrees here this morning, which seems cold after a succession of mild winter days. But better than the 3 degrees a couple of nights ago --- and the 4 predicted tonight. Once a hardier north Iowan, I've gotten soft --- and didn't even go outside on MLK/Inauguration Day. That couldn't last.

I cooked cavatini Monday, while watching the inaugural parade off and on, part of the continuing strategy to fix stuff that freezes well and then (alternating with something else that freezes well) going several days running just reheating and adding salad and dessert (currently an orangy dark gingerbread cake with vanilla ice cream, but that's another recipe). If something doesn't turn out quite the way you'd hoped --- just drink a glass or two of wine with the meal and it begins to seem as if it did.

Wine isn't necessary (although still nice) with this recipe, assembled from several sources, although I pushed it close Monday by overcooking slightly. That happened because once every six months or so after preheating the oven, inserting what's to be baked and setting the timer I inadvertently turn the oven off. Don't know why this happens, but blame the location of controls on the stove --- not mental state. This confuses the timing issue. Anyhow, here's what you'll need:

1 pound ground beef

1 medium onion (chopped)

1 smallish green pepper (chopped)

3 cloves garlic (minced, pressed or smashed)

2-1/2 cups water

6-ounce can tomato paste

4-ounce can mushroom pieces

1 package sliced pepperoni

1 envelope spaghetti sauce mix

1 tablespoon Italian seasoning

2 cups dry pasta (I use penne), cooked

1 cup shredded mozzarella

Cook beef, onion, pepper and garlic in a dutch oven until the hamburger has browned. Add water, tomato paste, mushrooms, pepperoni, spaghetti sauce mix and Italian seasoning. Mix well, bring to a boil and then lower heat and simmer uncovered for an hour.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions and set aside (tossing with a little olive oil if there's going to be a delay).

After the simmering hour is up, add the pasta to the sauce and combine well, then pour into a buttered 9-by-13 baking dish and bake 30 minutes in a pre-heated 350-degree oven. After the half an hour, sprinkle the mozzarella over the top and continue cooking 15-20 minutes more.

 

The politics of hope

Still thinking about yesterday's inaugural, figuring out why this election cycle's version of that brief ceremony seemed the most siginificant of my time.

Part of the reason is obvious considering who and what I am --- the amazing, and first, acknowledgement by a sitting president of the place as fully enfranchised players that gay people must and will have in the future of America.

But I was almost as moved by the call for generous and positive immigration reform, moving toward a policy and procedures that acknowledge the place in our future of Latino-Americans. If you listened carefully, there were symbols of that woven into the ceremony: The subtle Spanish inflection in Cuban-American inaugural poet Richard Blanco's voice as he spoke the words "Sierra" and "Colorado"; the fact that the Rev. Luis Leon spoke a small portion of his benediction, first in Spanish --- his native language --- and then in English.

And the acknowledgement that women, in some circles and in some policies, still are not recognized as full and equal participants in what still is an evolving great experiment.

There was the immense significance of the inauguration on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday of a president with African roots, just elected decisively to a second term --- reinforced by the wonderful diversity of the inaugural crowd.

And other aspecits of an inaugural speech that set an unequivocal progressive agenda, acknowledging but not focused on virtues --- some actual but many imaginary --- of the past.

I am not at all a fan of public prayer, for the most part meaningless blather. But I was moved, too, by the entirety of the Rev. Mr. Leon's benediction, expressing as it did common aspirations that can be fulfilled --- not by cosmic intervention but by hard and cooperative human effort. I'm only sorry that I couldn't find a Spanish version of the passage spoken in that language. I'll keep looking.

Let us pray:

Gracious and eternal God, as we conclude the second inauguration of President Obama, we ask for your blessings as we seek to become, in the words of Martin Luther King, citizens of a beloved community, loving you and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

We pray that you will bless us with your continued presence because without it, hatred and arrogance will infect our hearts. But with your blessing we know that we can break down the walls that separate us. We pray for your blessing today because without it, distrust, prejudice and rancor will rule our hearts. But with the blessing of your presence, we know that we can renew the ties of mutual regard which can best form our civic life.

We pray for your blessing because without it suspicion, despair, and fear of those different from us will be our rule of life. But with your blessing, we can see each other created in your image, a unit of God’s grace, unprecedented, irrepeatable (sic) and irreplaceable.

We pray for your blessing because without it, we will see only what the eye can see. But with the blessing of your blessing we will see that we are created in your image, whether brown, black or white, male or female, first generation or immigrant American, or daughter of the American Revolution, gay or straight, rich or poor.

We pray for your blessing because without it, we will only see scarcity in the midst of abundance. But with your blessing we will recognize the abundance of the gifts of this good land with which you have endowed this nation.

We pray for your blessing. Bless all of us, privileged to be citizens and residents of this nation, with a spirit of gratitude and humility that we may become a blessing among the nations of this world. We pray that you will shower with your life-giving spirit, the elected leaders of this land, especially Barack our president and Joe our vice president. Fill them with a love of truth and righteousness, that they may serve this nation ably and be glad to do your will. Endow their hearts with wisdom and forbearance, so that peace may prevail with righteousness, justice with order, so that men and women throughout this nation can find with one another the fulfillment of our humanity.

We pray that the president, vice president and all in political authority will remember the words of the prophet Micah, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and always walk humbly with God?”

Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, may God bless you all your days. All this we pray, in your most holy name, amen.

Richard Blanco's stunning poem: One Today

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving across windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
the pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem for all of us today.

All of us, as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we all keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
each day for each other, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always, always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars.
Hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together

Sic transit gloria scrapbook

My late mother was the ultimate scrapbooking machine --- long before entire shops were devoted to scrapbooking supplies and there were classes in what now is classified as a craft (or, optimistically, an art).

During the course of a scrapbooking career that covered roughtly 60 of her 80-plus years, she produced hundreds --- many within commercial covers available at five-and-dimes. But no scrap of paper that was punched for a notebook, could be punched or was spiral-bound and could be pasted upon was spared.

These fell into categories --- recipes (thousands and thousands of recipes); contemporary history (every issue of the Chariton newspapers and, occasionally The Register, was processed); and "pretties" --- colorful pictures clipped from magazines, calendars and greeting cards supplemented by printed material that she found interesting or inspirational. There also were (and are) family scrapbooks, some filled with photographs, others with clipped obituaries and funeral folders dutifully brought home from a lifetime of last rites. I'll hold on to many of the latter for now.

But I've been recycling the last of the former lately as part of an effort to streamline and more will go. If that distresses you, just avert your eyes. These have been stashed in cardboard in the back of closets or in plastic in the garage. I've glanced at each, giving it a little of the respect it was due, then out the door it's gone.

In fairness to myself, my mother was not sentimental about these scrapbooks. One advantage to life in the country is the ability to burn at will and she had cremated many over the years. All of the contemporary history scrapbooks were burned when she decided everything in them was available on microfilm or digital formats or in official repositories. Her scrapbooks full of decorating ideas from the 1940s and 1950s disappeared during the 1970s and the 1980s.

Recipe scrapbooks were the most likely to survive, although the recipes she actually used were carefully copied onto cards and boxed or distilled into slim handwritten volumes identified as "recipes I use." But apparently she felt recipies for such dishes as concord grape compote with raspberry Jello and horseradish sauce might come in handy some day.

For her, scrapbooking was just a pastime --- something she did to relax, along with gardening, cooking, reading and fine needlework. She had a lot of time but little sentiment invested.

I think it's great that scrapbooking has been elevated to an art form --- and if you're engaged in it, wonderful. Enjoy the process. Just don't delude yourself into thinking that your kid is going to want his first report card (or a representational selection of kindergartin refrigerator art), no matter how prettily packaged. Or into believing that the local historical society or genealogical society will offer a home to scrapbooks your children spurn (none have sufficient room or staff to cope).

Truth be told, when you've passed to your reward and the big dumpster is parked in what once was your driveway, most of the scrapbooks, no matter how elaborate, will go. Sic transit gloria scrapbook.

Lift every voice and sing ...

The Obamas --- and the rest of us --- are four years older now, but this remains perhaps the most hopeful image of my generation, for America at least. Imagine that --- and it happened.

Today's official swearing-in of both President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden --- on Jan. 20 because of constitutional mandates --- will be low-key. The public version, and the celebrating, will be tomorrow --- on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. How about that?

The official inaugural program is more diverse than it's ever been. Myrlie Evers-Williams, activist and widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, will deliver the invocation --- the first layperson and the first woman to do so. Music will be by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson and Beyonce. Poet Richard Blanco --- an immigrant, Latino-American and gay --- will present the inaugural poem. And what better choice for the benediction than an Episcopal priest --- The Rev. Luis Leon, also Latino-American and an immigrant (from Cuba)?

Yes, I know. No Native Americans, no Asian-Americans. Maybe in four more years (are you listening, Hillary?). And I'm sure there will be a fair number of cranky old white guys sitting out there grousing about this vibrant reflection of what America's all about.

This is my song for the day, however, sometimes known as the black national anthem, written during 1899 and 1900 by brothers James Walden Johnson (lyrics) and John Rosamond Johnson (music). Everyone who ever has been maginalized, then transcended it, has a stake in it.

Polyphony in the snow in Sweden

I'm a big fan of the vocal ensemble New York Polyphony, comprising (from left) baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert, tenor Steven Caldicott Wilson, countertenor Geoffrey Williams and bass-baritone Craig Phillips. Plus I've been wondering where southern Iowa's winter allotment of snow has gotten itself to. And besides,  many Lucas Countyans are of Swedish descent.

These three YouTube "vlog" segments combine the seemingly disparate elements: New York Polyphony has been recording this week in the 14th century Lanna Kyrka, in Sweden, and it's been snowing there.

I'm not familiar enough with the Swedish landscape to describe meaningfully where Lanna Kyrka (there should be an umlaut over the first "a" in Lanna but I don't know how to put one there) is at, but if you drew lines southeast from Stockholm, southwest from Oslo and north from Copenhagen, they would intersect not far from the small ancient church.

New York Polyphony has recorded three CDs --- I Sing the Birth (2007), Tudor City (2010) and last year's endBeginning, also recorded at Lanna Kyrka, featuring selections from the Franco-Flemish Renaissance and generally considered one of the top classical releases of 2012.

The CD recorded this week will include John Plummer's Missa sine nomine, Thomas Tallus's Mass for Four Voice and William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices.

So here's your chance to experience snow vicariously, visit a tiny spot in Sweden and hear some bits and pieces of glorious vocalizing.

All members of New York Polyphony are acclaimed classical vocalists, but Christopher Herbert basks in the additional glory of being a nephew of domestic diva Martha Stewart. His September 2010 wedding to husband Timothy Long was, in fact, featured in the winter 2011 edition of Martha Stewart Weddings, just in case you want to look it up.

You can also "like" New York Polyphony on Facebook here.

An editor here, a columnist there ...

I see via my Facebook feed (thanks Tim) that The Gazette (formerly the newspaper Cedar Rapids depended upon) laid off nine newsroom types during mid-January --- as reported not in The Gazette but in Jim Romenesko's media blog. A reporter here, a nightside editor or two there, the usual stuff.

And elsewhere that Mary Junck, CEO of my former corporate master Lee Enterprises, has been rewarded with an 82 percent pay hike (up to $2.09 million) for successfully (via debt restructuring) leading that corporation out of the bankruptcy she successfully led it into several years ago. Nice work if you can get it.

The Gazette is interesting because it's the last of Iowa's locally-held major daily newspapers --- unless you count Lee properties because corporate headquarters are in Davenport. Or the almost-in-Iowa Omaha World-Herald, purchased (along with the Council Bluffs Nonpareil) during 2011 by hometown boy Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. It would be interesting to know if the Gazette's owners are positioning themselves for a brighter future --- or for a buyout.

Lee's successful debt restructureing provided a bonus for stockholders, too --- but not for newsroom types, unless they owned stock.

And some investment advisors now are recommending Lee Stock, as well as that of another major media player, the McClatchy Co. Not so much Gannett, owner of Iowa's flagship Des Moines Register.

One reason for mild optimism about newspapers is the fact that their reporters remain the base source of much of the news we get elsewhere. Most of my information is retrieved online, for example, but a good deal of it is just digested reports from somewhere else, including newspapers.

According to California reports, The Orange County Register --- purchased last July by businessman Aaron Kushner --- has added 75 journalist types to its operation and plans to add more, based on the premise that people are willing to pay for high-quality news. I'm not so sure of that.

I'll become more of a believer when operations like Lee begin investing in their newsrooms again instead of continuing to gut them to add a few pennies to the bonuses of CEOs skilled in financial sleights of hand.

Up to date on Downton

I'm now up to date on Downton Abbey after a mini-marathon last night. It was reassuring to see that Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, still is consistently inept (having this time lost his wife's American fortune); Lady Edith, still disappointed; Matthew Crawley, still annoying; and Violet, the dowager countess (Dame Maggie Smith) still capable to chewing up scenery when given an opportunity. I expected more from Shirley MacLaine as Martha Levinson, Lady Grantham's American mother. Too bad.

Thomas, the dastardly gay footman turned valet (Rob James-Collier) and his nemesis, the evil lady's maid Sarah (Siobhan Finneran), do not disappoint. Anxiously awaiting the next twist in that subplot. All in all, good fun.

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But I can't for the life of me locate my first-edition copy of Curtis Harnack's "Gentlemen on the Prairie" (Iowa State University Press, 1986; still available in paperback from University of Iowa Press). It's here somewhere, just not on the shelf where it's supposed to be; and Downton gives me the urge to re-read. Maybe this time I'll do it.

There's a U.S. link to Highclere Castle, the crumbling pile known as Downton Abbey in the series; and that link has an interesting (to me at least) but tenuous link to the northwest Iowa subject of Harnack's slim volume.

Highclere currently is owned and occupied by George Herbert, the eighth Earl of Carnarvon, and his family. His mother, the dowager countess, is a Wyoming girl, Jean Wallop, born and raised at Big Horn, southwest of Sheridan, where the Wallop family still operates Canyon Ranch and she has a home.

Jean (Wallop) Herbert's grandfather, Oliver Henry Wallop --- who died in Wyoming during 1943, was among that breed of English-Americans known as remittance men, younger sons of aristocratic families shipped off to the United States to give them something useful and out-of-the-way to do, supported by allowances (remittances) from Mother England. Due to a series of well-timed deaths in England, Oliver inadvertently ended up as the eighth earl of Portsmouth --- one of a limited number of British peers to have a titled tombstone in America (in the Sheridan Cemetery).

Anyhow, Henry Herbert (seventh Earl Carnarvon and Jean Wallop's husband) was Queen Elizabeth's racing manager and friend, which explains why the queen and her entourage visited Canyon Ranch during 1984. We were making a state visit (from Iowa) to aunts, uncles and cousins who lived in the Buffalo-Sheridan area along the Big Horns that year, and the considerably more memorable royal visit was quite the topic of conversation. Cousins who live across the road from the Sheridan Airport, where the royal plane landed, had a front-row seat for the comings and goings.

The tenuous link to Iowa comes because before the mountains of the West beckoned, northwest Iowa --- then considered the wild west --- was the site of a British colony for remittance men, led by the William B. Close and his brothers. That colony is what Harnack's book is all about.

It's a very entertaining account of a footnote to Iowa history and a colony that failed to endure for all sorts of reasons including climate, financial recession, the absense of an underclass to exploit and the lack of "suitable" material for marriages.

Those Wyoming remittance men fared much better. In Iowa, Harnack's book and St. George's Episcopal Church in Le Mars --- where regular prayers for Queen Victoria once were on the liturgical menu --- remain as the principal souvenirs. Wyoming still has the Wallops.

Alice the Amaryllis

This is Alice, the Amaryllis, blooming upstairs in my bedroom this week and named after my cousin, Alice (Krutsinger) Sims --- but only because "Alice" and "Amaryllis" seem to go together. Actually, until yesterday she didn't have a name.

I took custody of Alice and her nine bulbous offspring last fall from the neighbor whose project they are. He planned to be away for a time and didn't have the energy or inclination to pot the bulbs and water them through the winter. The offspring range in age from adolescent to toddler and none are going to bloom this year.

I has been his practice to plant Alice outside in the spring, which encourages reproduction --- so that's why the family developed. It's not clear to me what their future is. But so far, I've been doing my duty to them.

Alice also reminds me of my Grandmother Miller's legendary Amaryllis, that flourished under her careful cultivation for years during the 1930s and 1940s, dutifully blooming each year, according to my mother. I never actually saw that Amaryllis, or my grandmother for that matter, since both were dead before I was born. But I have seen snapshots.

I'm not sure where her bulb came from, but that was before the time of storebought houseplants. What one had generally had arrived in the form of slips or bulbs from friends, neighbors or relations and those plants were expected to go on for years. Most were expected to bloom.

Our current practices of changing houseplants to fit the decor, investing in morphed leafy shade-tolerant clumps of leaves for indoors because they can survive indifferent care and of investing in dozens of geraniums and other "outdoor" plants at a garden center in the spring and then allowing them to freeze in the fall would have been considered wildly improvident.

My friend who does the flowers for Sacred Heart and I --- flower guy at St. Andrew's --- were visiting Monday about our maltreatment of the seasonal Poinsettias --- most of which by now have been consigned to garbage bags. Grandmother would have considered this criminal.

Her plants lived on a big piece of walnut furniture that she had designed --- three broad steps --- that always sat in front of the big south window in the living room. My grandfather continued to cultivate her plants until he was no longer able some 20 years after her death.

The family Christmas cactus, which had belonged to his mother, lived in an enamel cooking pot that had rusted out resting on a cracked plate on a recycled piano stool in the east window of the downstairs bedroom --- nothing ever was wasted. It always bloomed and eventually went to my great-aunt, Easter (Miller) Brenaman (yes, she was born on Easter Sunday).

In homage to Alice and her offspring, I've been taking better care of my houseplants this winter. Haven't inadvertently killed one since November.

The uncomfortable coming out of Jodie Foster

No --- I didn't watch the Golden Globes. But I did watch clips of the odd and uncomfortable coming out --- sort of --- speech that Jodie Foster made while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement on Sunday. And read some of the commentary that followed.

The whole business probably is of more interest to LGBT people, closeted and otherwise, than it is to your  garden-variety hetersexual. We've all "come out" --- or not --- at one time or another, after all, and can see ourselves reflected at least a little in the apparent discomfort, resentment and fear of that talented and accomplished actor, director and producer.

What seemed especially odd was that she did it at all. Foster's sexual orientation has been apparent for decades to anyone interested in such things, as has been her reluctance to talk about her private life (although she has acknowledged her former long-time partner, Cydney Bernard, on previous occasions). No one was expecting anything quite so revealing.

But what you might call the Anderson Cooper effect seems to be operating nowadays --- celebrity types feeling a little sheepish about being in the closet after others have blazed the trail out developing the urge to join in. Cooper handled it more gracefully by just dropping his unsurprising revelation casually into the ongoing conversation.

There's certainly been justification --- and still is --- for fear. If Foster had exposed herself this way 27 years into her career, rather than 47, there most likely wouldn't have been much to base a lifetime achievement award upon. The same could be said for Cooper and his career as a journalist. In the entertainment field, it's taken brave souls like Ellen DeGeneres, Elton John, Ian McKellan and many others to start knocking down those barriers. 

Many gay people can tell you, too, about the peculiar don't-make-me-talk-about-it factor that operates when relating to straight folks on a one-to-one --- or considerably broader --- basis. "I'll love you or like you or watch your performances, but please don't make me acknowledge who you really are."

And of course every LGBT person --- every single one --- begins life with the gut-wrenching fear that if Mom and Dad realize or are forced to acknowledge they've produced a gay child they'll no longer be loved. So I couldn't help but wonder what role Foster's mother and former manager --- now living with dementia and so movingly acknowledged in her speech --- played in all of this.

Yes, I know she said she'd always been "out" to those she loved. Everyone says that. Except for some of the youngsters growing up today, it's rarely true. And sure, everyone deserves privacy. But if talent fuels a ship, celebrity keeps in afloat --- and those who rely on celebrity have to accept the fact there will be intense interest in their personal lives.

But I'm glad Jodie Foster finally came out, sort of. We still need all the positive role models we can get. And maybe, now that all of this has been said and done, even though a little clumsily, she'll be happier --- and "not so very lonely," too.

 

Let the drama, trauma & high comedy begin

Image Source: Blog For Iowa

Iowa's Legislature convenes today, ushering in several months of drama, trauma, high comedy and most likely minimal progress. Republicans saw their lead in the House narrowed to 53-46 during the recent elections; Democrats retain a narrow 26-24 lead in the Senate. This sort of situation generaly results in near gridlock and there's really no reason to expect much different this year. We'll see.

It's a whole new ballgame for Lucas Countyans. We'd gotten used to being represented by Chariton Sen. Paul McKinley and Russell Rep. Richard Arnold, both of whom retired after the last session, both Republicans --- conservative, of course, but without that glazed, crazed whackiness in their eyes that is a feature of so many GOP lawmakers these days.

Because of redistricting, Lucas County now falls in Senate District 14, made up of Lucas, Wayne, Clarke and Decatur counties, most of Marion County and a piece of Jasper. Our new senator seems to be of the glazed and crazed variety --- Amy Sinclair of Allerton. Or at least I'm assuming she is. That video of Sinclair rousing rabble among gun nuts still is featured prominently on her Web site. She might surprise us, but I'm calling her pistol-packing Amy until we see what develops.

Redistricting split Lucas County down the middle, more or less. Most of the west half --- and Chariton --- are now represented by Joel Fry of Osceola in House 27; the west half, House 28, by Greg Heartsill of Melcher-Dallas. Heartsill seems to be of the glazed and crazed school; Fry, perhaps a little saner.

The leadership of both parties seems to agree that in large part because of the Democrat edge in the Senate, such issues as constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and proposals to limit women's rights to choose will be non-starters and promise righteously that jobs, education and tax reform will be on the front burners. Wanna bet?

There most likely will be a GOP-proposed constitutional amendment to allow as many Iowans to shoot as many other Iowans as they please just in case the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution fails us --- but it's not likely to go far.

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So who is going to distill all this drama into thoughtful and concise reports for us? Well probably the Des Moines-based television stations, plus Iowa's public broadcasting outlets. The Register still offers the best political coverage, but that vanishes behind a pay wall after a few stories. A reporter named Rod Boshart seems to cover politics for most of the other larger papers in the state, including the Gazette (Cedar Rapids) and the Lees --- Sioux City, Mason City, Waterloo and the Quad Cities. The Associated Press also will have credible offerings. Other than The Register's, the reporting is free.

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Speaking of the newspaper Iowa once depended upon, Cityview has an interesting report on The Register's continuing decline, reflected in a seven percent drop in curculation during the past year. You can read it here. Sad.

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And if you're interested in the real movers and shakers at the Statehouse, here's a link tracked down on the Legislature's Web site by Michael Libbie to the official list of registered lobbyists.

Cold, dead fingers and gun control

Good gracious --- all this talk about gun control in the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School has my second-amendment friends in a lather. I get e-mails, photoshopped concoctions in the Facebook feed and the occasional face-to-face sermon. Plus rebuttal concoctions from godless liberal lefties like me.

This is my favorite --- thanks Katherine! I'm not that much of an extremist, however. Ask nicely and you've got my book lickety-split. I'll want it back when you're done, though. Just finished Josh Kilmer-Purcell's "Bucholic Plague," the biographical story of a retired drag performer once known as Aqua (because of the gold fish that swam in his plastic breasts) who transitioned with his partner, soon-to-be-husband, into an upstate New York goat farmer. Interested?

Nor do I think it's a good idea to take guns away from anyone who is relatively sane, acquired them legally and keeps them secured when not in use. I don't even particularly care if hobbyists have assault-style rifles and clips containing a gazillion rounds of ammunition. We all have our toys.

On the other hand, restoration of the assault weapons ban and imposition of high-capacity magazine bans and universal background checks wouldn't break my heart either.

So good luck on defending those second-amendment "rights." In the long run, you're going to need it. And in the short term, you really should stop doing stupid things.

Take the winners of dumb-ass of the week competition: 22-year-olds Warren Drouin and Steven Boyce who decided to strap assault-style weapons to their backs and walk through a Portland, Oregon, neighborhood to "educate the public about gun rights." When police asked, they said they just wanted to be approached and chatted up.

Sesible Oregonians did what anyone --- including fervent defenders of second-amendment rights ---would do when confronted with gun-toting yahoos: Called 911. Strapping an assault-style weapon to your back and strolling through a neighborhood also is a darned good way to get shot --- by another supporter of second-amendment rights. So don't do it.

The dumb ass runner-up prize goes to Tennessee's James Yeager, CEO of an outfit called Tactical Response, who said he would "start killing people" if President Obama took executive action on gun control. The state of Tennessee, hardly a bastion of liberality, promptly yanked his handgun carry permit. Lesson: Don't threaten to kill people.

And for heaven's sake stop announcing that there's going to be a revolution if gun control measures are adopted. There isn't. Many gun owners favor some degree of restriction, too. And most of those who don't are really just harmless pussycats --- if separated from their computer keyboards.

Here are a few other things to consider not doing:

1. Don't send out missives proclaiming that more Americans die of overeating in a year than as a result of gun violence. In the broadest sense, that's true. On the other, obese Americans rarely force their way into public schools and knife-and-fork children to death.

2. Don't send out missives proclaiming that so long as abortion is legal, gun law revisions shouldn't be considered. You really don't want to go there. We may disagree about abortion and about gun control --- but everyone wants to find ways to stop crazy people from using guns to kill innocent people.

3. Don't send out missives attributed to the Tea Party. Those people are loons. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to learn how to play with the grown-ups.

Here's the deal. The second amendment was not handed by God to Moses in the form of an eleventh commandment. There's nothing God-given about the privilege of keeping and bearing arms. And the National Rifle Association is for the most part now a huge well-financed bag of hot air, easily pricked and deflated if conditions are right. Suggesting that every school in America needs an armed police force didn't help.

Here's something to remember. Second amendment "rights" actually are conditional privileges because of that pesky introductory line, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state ...." It was written at a time before standing national military forces --- when well regulated local and state militias really were necessary.

Supreme court precedent currently holds that keeping and bearing arms need not be linked to service in a militia. That interpretation could change, however, as the makeup of the court changes, as it often has in other areas.

So be sensible, be logical, stop blustering, stop exaggerating, stop crying "wolf" and try preaching to someone other than the second-amendment choir and make your case. It's not about tyranny. It's about trying to prevent senseless killing. And it's complicated. Yelling doesn't help.