The Lucas Countyan

Fathers and sons

2012-02-13T06:47:00.000-06:00

Charles Dooley's Grave at Shiloh National Cemetery

Shuffling papers this morning, I did a quick preliminary count of Lucas County men who died in combat during the April 6-7, 1862, battle of Shiloh. The totals are based on preliminary notes for a roster of Lucas County's Civil War dead that I've been working on and are by no means definitive. I expect to find others.

But it's safe to say that at least 11 were killed in combat on those two days, buried hurriedly near where they fell and reinterred later at what now is Shiloh National Cemetery --- most in graves marked "unknown."

An additional 12 died in military hospitals during the month to six weeks following, roughtly half specifically of wounds sustained at Shiloh, the other half of disease that may or may not have been related to their service there.

It's difficult to put that into any sort of context that would be understood 150 years later --- in all, more than 200 Iowans died at Shiloh during those two days.

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Many of us have family memories of brothers lost during that and later wars. But the Civil War was perhaps the last time in our history when it was not uncommon for fathers and sons to serve together and in some cases die.

Jonathan Wesley Dooley, born during 1821 in Kanawha County, (West) Virginia, brought his family --- wife Mary and children Charles L., William M. and Rebecca --- west to Warren Township, Lucas County, during 1855. They became the parents of two additional chidlren, Sally and Hester, while living there. About 1859, the Dooleys relocated briefly to Iowa Point Township in Doniphan County, Kansas Territory, just across the river from St. Joseph, Missouri.

During the winter of 1860-1861, however, the Dooleys moved back to Lucas County and on Sept. 28, 1861, both Jonathan, then 40, and his eldest Son, Charles, then 19, enlisted together at Chariton as privates in Company C, 13th Iowa Volunteer Infantry.

Their unit was mustered on Oct. 28, 1861, at Burlington and shipped downriver for service in Missouri soon thereafter, arriving at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, during early April, 1862.

Charles was killed in combat on April 6, the first day of bloody Shiloh. Jonathan survived, but was hospitalized at Keokuk soon thereafter and died of dysentery there on the 28th or 29th of May.

Both have marked graves, also unusual, Charles at Shiloh and Jonathan, in what now is the Keokuk National Cemetery.

Jonathan Dooley's grave at Keokuk National Cemetery.

After the war, the family continued to move around --- Mary and her youngest daughter, Hester, were living near William M. and his family in Poweshiek County during 1870 but they all returned to Lucas County for a time not long after. According to family records, Mary died at Chariton on on Aug. 11, 1873, but there is no record of her burial here (reports that she was buried at Keokuk with Jonathan are in error).

After that, the family scattered westward and so far as I know no descendants remain in Lucas County.

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The practice of fathers and sons enlisting together continued throughout the Civil War.

Thomas S. Dawson brought his family west from Grant County, Indiana, to Iowa during 1853 and located in Whitebreast Township, just west of Chariton, during 1855. His wife was Elizabeth and there were seven children --- Zadock, William, Solomon, John, Henry, Austin and Rosanne.

Thomas, age 44, enlisted at Chariton as a private in Company K, 34th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, on July 30, 1862, and his son, Zadock, 19, a few days later --- on Aug. 9. They were mustered together on Oct. 15 and, again, shipped downriver.

Zadock soon became ill and was hospitalized at St. Louis, where he died of disease on Feb. 9, 1863, and was buried hurriedly. After the war, when Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery was established, his remains were gathered with those of many others who could not be specifically identified and moved there, records state, into a grave marked "unknown."

Thomas Dawson survived the war and ultimately was discharged on Aug. 17, 1865, at Houston, Texas. He had not been wounded, but had been injured so severely in a fall from a wagon at Helena, Arkansas, that he was partially disabled.

The Dawson marriage did not prosper and by 1880, Elizabeth had left him and moved into Chariton although it appears that they eventually reconciled. He worked at various jobs --- even serving for a time as sexton of the Chariton Cemetery.

Elizabeth died Sept. 19, 1890, and was buried in a now unmarked grave in the Chariton Cemetery. Thomas survived until Feb. 17, 1907, when he died at the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown.

Family researchers more than a century later acquired a copy of his application for admission to the Veterans Home. Then in his 80s with no place else to go, Thomas stated that he had no money, had no property and was unable to support himself. Nor could he read or write. Nor was there money for a tombstone and apparently no thought given to acquiring a government stone, so he too was buried in an unmarked grave in the Chariton Cemetery.

The grandest memorial of them all

2012-02-12T06:48:00.000-06:00

The Civil War, and we're now in the second year of its sesquicentennial, remains the most thoroughly memorialized event in Iowa --- tons of granite, bronze, marble and in some cases cast iron distributed across every county, most often in courthouse squares.

But the granddaddy of them all is that wonderful confection known as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, just south of the Capitol in Des Moines. Didn't have time to pay a personal visit last Tuesday, when we were at the Capitol for Main Street Iowa announcements, just gave it a nod.

The Capitol complex is an interesting place, if you look around --- a fair sampling of the good, the bad and the ugly in public architecture. The Capitol's spectacular; the old Historical Building (now Ola Babcock), fine; and I like (although some don't) the Wallace building with its walls of shimmering gold glass (which have caused so many problems the suggestion is made now and then that it would be cheaper to knock it down). The newest, the Judicial Building, is not bad nor actually is the lumpish Lucas Building; at least it manages not to be too offensive. The dregs are the butt-ugly Hoover and Grimes buildings, about the worst architects of the latter half of the 20th century could manage.

But Soldiers and Sailors, I think at least, is second only to the Capitol in drop-dead in-your-face glory.

It didn't come easy. Designed by Mount Pleasant's Harriet A. Ketcham, the monument was approved in 1888, the cornerstone placed in 1894 and the whole thing was completed two years later. Before, during and after, however, there were grand battles about funding, design and location. By the time it was completed, nearly everyone's nose was out of joint --- and formal dedication didn't take place until 1945.

Victory tops the 135-foot memorial and four of Iowa's Civil War generals (and their horses) --- Marcellus M. Crocker, Grenville M. Dodge, Samuel R. Curtis and John M. Corse --- lead charges in four directions atop the base. Four figures representing four branches of service --- Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery and Navy --- surround the lower base. The sailor here is Ensign William H.C. Michael. The others are Infantryman Shelby Norman, 18, the first Iowan killed in battle; artilleryman Capt. Henry H. Griffiths; and cavalryman Lt. James Horton, killed while leading a saber charge at the Battle of Lovejoy Station.

The bare-breasted maiden in front of the north face of the monument has generated the most scandalized fussing --- and the most snickers --- over the years. She represents a youthful Iowa offering sustenance to her people in a rather graphic way.

Anyhow, it's a glorious piece of work. Take a closer look the next time you're in the neighborhood. And if you've got a little spare time on a Sunday afternoon, you can take a look at nearly every Civil War memorial on the state by going to this site, maintained by Iowa's Sons of Union Veterans.

And while you're about it, remember that 80,000 Iowans served in the Civil War, the largest number per capita of any state in the Union. Of those, perhaps 800 were Lucas Countyans. And among the Lucas Countyans, more than 150 died.

Dr. Gibbon & the Shiloh reenactment

2012-02-11T06:43:00.001-06:00

Although it's been a few years since I've attended one, I've always been amazed at the dedication and attention to detail of those involved in Civil War reenactment, something I've experienced most often during annual encampments at Mason City's East Park.

So it's been interesting to send a little information this week regarding Chariton's Lt. Col. William H. Gibbon off to Thomas Federico, a Georgia-based reenactor who will be portraying the Lucas County physician during one of the major reenactments of the Civil War sesquicentennial during late March and early April in Tennessee.

This is the 150th anniversary year of the April 6-7, 1862, battle of Shiloh, in which many Lucas Countyans were involved and in which many gave up their lives. The Blue-Gray Alliance of Reenactors will observe the anniversary March 30-April 1 on 2,000 acres adjacent to the Shiloh National Military Park. Online information suggests that so far more than 3,000 re-enactors have registered for the event spearheaded by the First Federal Division and Cleburne's Division of reenactors plus the Battle of Shiloh Association.

Dr. Gibbon served, often heroically, as assistant surgeon, later surgeon, to the 15th Iowa Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. You can read more about Dr. Gibbon and his service on the following pages, lifted from the 1896 "Memorial and Biographical Record of Iowa." You'll need to right click on the images and open them in new windows in order to read them.

Dr. Gibbon's drug store still stands at the northeast corner of the Chariton Square --- you can see an image of it here; and the grand house he built shortly before he died still stands on South Grand Street. But the doctor himself has become a little obscure in the nearly 120 years since his death. He was not a self-promoter and never sought public office. He was a physician before the war, during the war and after the war and, for him, that was enough.

Dispatches from the Holy War: 02/10

2012-02-10T07:27:00.000-06:00

The pastor of Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, Michael Demastus, created a minor tempest in a teapot this week by posting his Sunday sermon title, “Gay is not OK,” on the church signboard. Somebody snapped a photo, posted it on Facebook and the rest is history --- sort of.

The Des Moines Register reported, the news spread, an anti-Fort Des Moines Church of Christ Facebook page appeared, the volume of rude comments on its own page caused the church to disable Facebook, etc., etc.

Now it appears there’s the potential for a Sunday standoff at the church door --- the “Gay is not OK” crowd inside, the “Gay is OK” crowd outside with, perhaps, a contingent of police to pass the peace. What fun.

I got to thinking about what would happen if the churches in Chariton started taking potshots at each other on their signboards --- and admittedly we’d have to level the playing field by ensuring that all churches had comparable signs; some currently are challenged in this department.

Let’s say Sacred Heart started the fight with, “Luther was a big crybaby.” A block south at the big stone church, “At least there’s a Method to our madness” could be posted in response.

Out at St. Andrew’s, we’d add, “Catholic lite’s best: Gay bishops, women priests and wine with meals, too.”

Then at First Lutheran, “No photo identification required at our communion rail,” and at First Christian, “We’re Disciples and you’re not. So there.”

“To hell with those other Baptists” would work for at least two congregations.

That’s as far as I could go on the spur of the moment this morning, but feel free to carry it farther (be nice, however).

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In the brave new world department, the Iowa Department of Public Health continues to struggle with the fact it’s probably going to have to acknowledge in its record-keeping both parents of children born to lesbian couples without forcing parents who do not actually give birth to adopt.

Polk County District Court Judge Eliza Ovrom ruled during January that the Department of Public Health must issue a new birth certificate to Melissa and Heather Gartner for their 2-year-old daughter, Mackenzie.

The state appealed that ruling last week, arguing that “it is a biological impossibility for a woman to ever establish legal paternity of a child,” which of course is true --- but then neither mother was seeking to establish paternity, just parenthood.

And male partners in heterosexual relationships who shoot blanks are routinely recognized as parents when donated sperm is used in the conception process.

In a sadder but related case, Lambda Legal has joined forces with a same-sex couple from Davenport, Jessica and Jennifer Buntemeyer, whose infant son was stillborn last September.

In this instance the Department of Public Health removed the name of the non-birth parent from the infant’s death certificate, using the same reasoning it applied in the birth certificate case.

The Buntemeyers have filed suit to have the names of both parents restored to the certificate.

It will be interesting, and I’d guess expensive, to see how these related situations are resolved.

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Finally, Washington Gov. Christine Gregorie will sign Monday legislation making her state the seventh (including the District of Columbia) to legalize same-sex marriage. The Washington House passed the measure 55-43 last Monday.

And, in California, a federal appeals court affirmed a lower court decision that the state’s voter-approved “Proposition 8” gay marriage ban was unconstitutional on the rather narrow grounds that it denied gay men and lesbians a pre-existing right.

It’s always possible that the decision will not stand, but if it does it certainly would have precedent implications in Iowa, where gay marriage is legal, if the Republicans managed shepherd into our Constitution an amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Here's perhaps the most moving statement that emerged from the same-sex marriage debate in the Washington House --- by Republican Rep. Maureen Walsh.

Mildred Carney's stitches

2012-02-09T07:38:00.000-06:00

At some point after his 80th birthday, which occurred during November 1955, Will Miller --- my grandfather --- decided to move to town. It's never been clear why, but I think he was bored, having retired from farming some years earlier, unretired after he lassoed a Wyoming son-in-law and hauled him back to Iowa for a year in partnership that did not end well, and then retired again.

The challenge that ended his farming career had more to do with equipment than age. He had never farmed with anything other than horses --- even the hay baler, powered by steam, was hauled around by horses. He did not believe in tractors. When my uncle high-tailed it back to Wyoming, Grandpa was left with a tractor he didn't know how to harness.

Lesser mortals would have bought a house and moved, but Grandpa was not especially ordinary. During the next couple of years, he bought two ramshackle houses at the south end of South 11th Street, then a fairly ramshackle neighborhood, tore them down (more or less single-handed) and built extremely solid but somewhat eccentric houses where they'd been. Eventually, he moved into one with his niece, who also was his housekeeper.

After that, the congregation of First Baptist Church kept Granddad amused by deciding to tear down its grand old brick church southwest of the post office. He signed up to help clean brick --- as much brick as possible from the old building was salvaged --- and that kept him busy for a while. He met his end during 1969, age 94, some months after falling off the ladder he had climbed in order to trim one of his prized apple trees out on the farm.

One aspect of his later adventures and misadventures that I've not been able to remember much about was the identity of the woman from whom he bought the first of his South 11th Street houses --- an unpainted wreck, two rooms up and two rooms down with a one-story dining room and kitchen extension to the rear. The back rooms were uninhabitable --- holes in the roof and holes in the floor, literally falling into the partial basement.

The woman, who I remember as very old (as it turns out she would have been in her 50s) and terribly, horribly shy, had retreated to the barely habitable part of the building --- with her piano. There was no plumbing, nor was there central heating. But I could not remember her name. It came back to me later, after Mary Ruth had jogged my memory, that she also had been an accomplished pianist in her day and was deaf. That may have explained what I thought was shyness.

Come to think of it, I'm fairly convinced now that she actually used an ear trumpet --- she apparently could hear if someone spoke decisively into it.

All I could really remember about her was that Grandpa hired her to repair a tattered family photo album (at the top here, falling apart again) and that, when she moved out so Granddad could tear her house down, she moved into the the former White Swan Cafe building, a small frame structure that had been moved from its original location on the south side of the square to the current north-side location of the Chariton Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

So I wandered into the genealogical society library the other day with this puzzle in my head, the book-repair story triggered Mary Ruth's memory and she was able to come up with a name --- Mildred Carney --- an obituary, and a memory or two of her own.

As it turns out, Mildred was someone Granddad would have known since she had been a little girl. Born May 10, 1902, in English Township, she was the only child of farmers Albertus and Carrie (Keen) Carney. Well-educated, she graduated, according to her obituary, from Drake University's Conservatory of Music in 1925, then returned to live with her parents on the farm, giving piano lessons and serving as pianist for Sunday school and church services at Central Christian Church in Williamson.

Although Grandpa was not exactly a believer, he always attended Central Christian (his mother had been a charter member) and made sure that his children did, too. When Central Christian folded, Granddad saw no need for further worship experiences and relied on Rent-A-Preacher thereafter. Shortly before the end came, he gave Chariton's First Christian Church a piano in return for the services of its pastor and lunch for the family --- but never attended services there.

In 1928, according to Mildred's obituary, she moved into Chariton with her parents, probably into the house Granddad purchased from her during the 1950s. Mildred's mother died in 1939 and her father, in 1940, and after that she was on her own. She apparently continued to give piano lessons as her hearing failed, and also mended books for the Chariton Public Library and for people like my grandfather.

Mildred's association in Chariton with First Christian Church is what sparked Mary Ruth's memory. She's a Disciple, too, and and was able to use my scant memory to come up with the name. Mary Ruth remembered, too, that Mildred was very poor, but still managed to put a nickel in the collection plate on Sundays. And that her bed, either in the White Swan building or after it was torn down to make way for the nursing home and she had to move, was a pile of storage cartons.

This, of course, was at a time when old age pensions were minimal and before rental assistance at apartment complexes like Autumn Park and Southgate was available.

It's not clear who wrote Mildred's obituary ("several" cousins were her only survivors), but they recorded in it the fact "she loved music and nature, especially birds and flowers."

And that "she was a quiet, modest person, of retiring nature and never complained although she had a physical handicap of impaired hearing."

Mildred died Sept. 24, 1975, age 73, and was buried with her parents in the Chariton Cemetery. If you look carefully at the lower left hand corner of the photo album here, you can see her stitches. I'm going to remember Mildred's name.

Remarkably well preserved for 110

2012-02-08T06:37:00.000-06:00

As it turns out, two of the best preserved buildings on Chariton's square celebrated their 110th birthdays last year, but we neglected to throw a party. Who knew that they dated from the same year?

Of the two "blocks" (generally, a building that contained two or more storefronts was referred to as a block), Ensley-Crocker on the west side is the most distinctive. It's stone facade and exuberant Richardson Romanesque design mirror the courthouse, built just a few years earlier.

Vacant since TrueValue Hardware moved to its new building just west of the square, this grand old building apparently has been sold recently and it will be interesting to see what develops.

The Blake block, for many years the home of Ben Franklin, is just as deserving of praise, but substantially more restrained.

Thanks to Darlene's newspaper index, I was able to track down an article in The Chariton Herald of May 9, 1901, published before construction had begun and headlined "New Business Houses."

The Ensley-Crocker block was a joint project of George W. Ensley, who had arrived in Chariton on the morning of Aug. 1, 1871, with his father-in-law Benjamin Goodrich, after traveling from Van Buren County aboard a wagon loaded with tinner's tools "and a lot of ambition," and Frank R. Crocker, then cashier of First National Bank and even more ambitious. Crocker's ambition would over-reach itself just a few years after 1901 when his financial misadventures destroyed the bank and he took his own life.

Here's how the Herald described the men's new building: "On the west side of the square two of the handsomest buildings in the city will go up, work to commence on them within six weeks. They are to be owned by G.W. Ensley and F.R. Crocker, and will consist of a double block just south of the alley on the west side. The frame buildings now occupying the ground will be torn down. The new buildings are to be two stories high, unless the K.P. (Knights of Pythias) Lodge decides to rent a proposed third story, in which case the building will be three stories high. A handsome brown stone front will add to the appearance of the structures, and the interior will be fitted up in modern style. The rooms will be 20 x 90 feet each. Mr. Ensley will occupy his building with his own stock of hardware and will also use most of the second story. He will rent the front rooms up stairs for office purposes. Mr. Crocker's lower room will be occupied by Dr. B.E. Dougherty with his drug store."

No mention of the architect who designed the building, but I keep wondering if it might not have been William Foster, of Des Moines, who with his then-partner, Henry F. Liebbe, had designed the courhouse upon which the Ensley-Crocker design was based. Foster & Liebbe dissolved their partnership during 1898, but each continued to work independently or with other partners and Foster had a long history of work in Chariton.

The Ensley half of the building seems always to have been a hardware store. George W. Ensley, also a plumbing and heating contractor who worked widely across Iowa, remained in business until 1926, when he retired and the business passed to his son, George B. Ensley, who continued to operate here until the 1950s. Although some of the links are missing, it then became Coast to Coast Hardware and finally, True Value.

The Crocker half of the block has had a more varied history and some of those links are missing. It eventually became a grocery store, operating as The Supply Store when Hy-Vee was organized and after that, for a time, was one of two Hy-Vee stores located on the square. When Hy-Vee built its first "supermarket" on North Main, this west-side building became the Regal Stamp Store (Regal was the brand of trading stamp distributed by Hy-Vee to all its customers). I seem to remember accompanying my mother into this store then when she traded her books of stamps in for something or another. Finally, it was incorporated into the hardware store to the south, an arrangement that continued until True Value moved out.

The photo here incorporates the Stanton building, immediately south of the Ensley-Crocker block, which also was linked to hardware operation at some point although it housed, and still does, an independent business. Although the Stanton building seems to be a piece with Ensley-Crocker, it really isn't. The Stanton family seems to have added that complementary stone facade to a pre-existing brick building not long after Ensley-Crocker was completed.

Although structural links between the west-side Ensley-Crocker block and the north-side Blake block aren't especially evident now, the Black building once had a ground floor facade of stone similar to that used for its west-side cousin. Here's what the Herald article had to say about the Blake block:

"A double store building will be built by the G.W. Blake estate on the north side of the square. The block will have a brown stone front adorned with stone pillars on the first story, with a brick front on the second story. The two store rooms will be the same size as the west side block, 20 x 90 feet each. The building will be a very handsome one, and will be located on Mr. Blake's lots, on the east half of the north side, where the old frame building has recently been torn away. The second story will be occupied with office rooms. Brewer & Paton, the one-price clothiers, have already arranged for a lease on one of the store rooms and will move their clothing stock into it as soon as the building is completed. The other store room is not yet rented."

George W. Blake, a pioneer Chariton merchant, had died during 1900 and his estate obviously considered a new building on the square a solid investment, as had the Daniel Eikenberry estate some years earlier when it built what most commonly is known as the Crozier building on the southeast corner of the square.

The occupancy history of the Blake block is substantially more varied than that of Ensley-Crocker. As designed, two store fronts were separated by a stairway that ascended to second-floor offices. All of that was swept away, along with many details of the original facade, when Ben Franklin expanded to occupy the entire first floor.

Main Street Iowa: We did it!

2012-02-07T18:03:00.000-06:00

Chariton is one of three Iowa cities selected to participate in the Main Street Iowa program, Gov. Terry E. Branstad announced during a special ceremony Tuesday afternoon at the Capitol in Des Moines. The others are Jefferson, comparable in size to Chariton and located west of Des Moines, and Lansing, a Mississippi River city of 1,000 in the extreme northeast corner of the state. Marion and Keosauqua also had participated in the competitive Main Street application process. There now are 48 Main Street cities in Iowa.

More than a dozen of us were in Des Moines for the ceremony, joined by our legislators, Rep. Richard Arnold of Russell and Sen. Paul McKinley of Chariton, already there because the Legislature is in session. Along with delegations from Jefferson and Lansing, we packed to near-overflowing the conference room adjacent to Branstad's working office on the Capitol's ground floor.

Participating in the application process has been tremendously rewarding for me and I'm reasonably sure equally rewarding for everyone else involved. The support from the community at large has been tremendous. I think we're all excited about Chariton's potential and the part this program can play in helping us rise to it. The really hard work will begin in little more than two weeks, when Main Street is launched here.

After the ceremony, Richard and Paul graciously showed several of us around the House and Senate chambers and we explored other areas of the jaw-dropingly beautiful building on our own --- many of us hadn't actually been inside the building in years. All in all, it was about as good a day as it gets!

The caffeinated road to hell

2012-02-07T06:45:00.002-06:00

When Bob Vander Plaats speaks, by God I listen. A gay guy couldn’t have a better friend, although my affection for that spawn of Satan did end up costing money yesterday --- had to go out and spend way too much ($9-plus) on this little bag of Starbucks coffee after old Bob issued a YouTube video of himself calling for a Starbucks boycott.

Ordinarily, I’m a Folgers kind of guy (or Hy-Vee generic when it’s cheaper). But you just know that when Vander Plaats says “do this” or “do that” it’s the Lord’s will that you do the opposite. So I figure God’s come down decisively on the side of caffeine from Seattle and I’d better jump aboard. Thank heavens for moral compasses.

Vander Plaats heads up the Family Leader, a loose affiliation of Iowa Christian whackadoodles who spend more time fantasizing about gay sex than gay people do. Starbucks attracted their attention when the Seattle-based coffee giant, along with Google, Microsoft and many others, issued a statement backing marriage equality legislation moving through the Washington statehouse en route to the governor’s pen. Starbucks has a 20-year record of extending benefits to the same-sex partners of employees who have them.

I would link to the video, but all you get today is a “removed by user.” Vander Plaats probably yanked it when it became obvious he’d used the video to demonstrate, too, something elses he’s darned good at --- lying (to hell with that pesky false-witness commandment).

As Vander Plaats spoke yesterday, alleged Starbucks quotes, complete with quote marks, flashed in the background --- “God’s design of marriage is bad for America” and “God’s design of marriage is bad for families.”

“Homosexual marriage is the core to who they (Starbucks) are,” Vander Plaats announced.

What Starbucks actually said was that “equal treatment of partners (the company calls its employees partners)” was “core to who we are and what we value as a company.” Not quite the same thing.

Besides, selling coffee actually is at the core of what Starbucks is all about. And if being fair to its LGBT employees is a sensible part of its strategy for doing that, then so much the better.

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The Starbucks fiasco was the second time in the last few days that Bob’s gotten himself tangled up when twisting the truth.

Last week, the Family Leader trumpeted the news that Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad had asked that his title be removed from the seventh annual “The Iowa Governors Conference on LGBTQ Youth,” upcoming March 8.

Turns out that wasn’t true either, although I’d guess the governor’s managers did talk about it.

But Branstad denied Vander Plaats allegation on Jan 30, then went so far as to write a letter to conference organizers extending his “very best wishes for a successful conference this year and in future years.”

Anti-bullying strategy is a major part of the annual conference.

On Monday, the Family Leader issued a statement castigating the governor for an “obvious change” in the position it had invented for him.

“It is greatly disappointing and, frankly, disturbing that Branstad and his administration have chosen to be puppets to a far-left agenda versus being effective educational leaders,” the Family Leader’s statement continued.

I’m loving this.

And so, I expect, are Iowa’s militant atheists. Vander Plaats is one scary dude. All he has to do is be himself and straying souls contemplating a return to church turn and run as fast as they can in the other direction.

To paraphrase Miss Piggy, who has been engaging in a little editorializing herself recently, to equate Bob Vander Plaats with truth is about as absurd as suggesting that Fox News actually reports news.

The resurrection of Creston's Iowana

2012-02-06T07:33:00.000-06:00

Our final stop on Friday in Creston was the Iowana, formerly Hotel Iowana, derelict as recently as two years ago but now restored and risen from the dead as a 24-unit senior living apartment complex.

The six-story building in downtown Creston, a city of some 7,500 people, dates from 1920 and in its heyday was the finest hotel between Ottumwa and Council Bluffs.

The hotel had been in decline for many years, but became derelict after an owner abandoned it, leaving the country (literally; he moved to China).

When glass began crashing from windows to the street, the city footed the bill for boarding windows on the street facades, leaving windows at the rear open to the elements (and pigeons). Three or four times a year, the basement filled with water and the Creston Fire Department pumped it out. The interior was vandalized.

Eventually, the city went to court to acquire the building after it was declared a public nuisance. Many, according to city officials, thought the only practical solution was to tear it down.

However, Minnesota-based MetroPlains LLC agreed to take on the building and redevelop it, funding the $5 million project largely with grants and tax credits. The project was completed slightly ahead of schedule last fall, a grand opening was held during December and as of Friday, 22 of the 24 units had been rented.

The main entrance to the building is the original lobby, a full floor plus mezzanine in height. Although the lobby had been vandalized and many of its fixtures had vanished, the developers were able to salvage the marble tile floor and recreate the rest. The original hotel counter and mailboxes survived, but the marble countertop had been shattered, the fragments now stored in the Iowana basement.

Elsewhere on the ground floor are computer, craft and exercise rooms as well as offices and a congregate meal site. The only ground-floor apartment is outfitted specifically for someone who is confined to a wheelchair. Apartments designed for the vision or hearing impaired are elsewhere in the building. The old bar, just behind the reception desk, houses resident storage units. Its original fixtures had long since disappeared.

In addition to several apartments and a view of the lobby, the mezzanine contains this original meeting/entertainment space, now fitted with a kitchen and available free but by reservation to Iowana residents who need a large gathering place. The stage is original.

The remaining five floors of the building, once filled with more than 100 hotel rooms, now contain apartments. There are 14 one-bedroom apartments in the Iowana and 10 two-bedroom apartments.

Because of its place on the National Register of Historic Places, the Iowana project was eligible for a variety of loans and credits. But because public money was involved, work had to conform with Department of the Interior guidelines for historic structures. That meant hotel room doors along the hallways had to remain in place even though most lead nowhere now so that the halls retained their original character. Support rails along both sides of the halls pass over these doors to lessen confusion.

We even got to tour the Iowana basement Friday, not a public use area. Now well-lighted, spotlessly clean and dry, there’s no indication the area once was filled with several feet of water on a regular basis.

This is the old furnace room, with an original floor level some nine feet below the main floor. Part of the strategy to control flooding was to fill this sunken area with concrete, leaving existing parts of the old heating plant in place. The arches in the distance covered the old coal store.

I wish I’d taken --- but didn’t --- a photo in the southeast corner of the basement of the colorful ceramic tile floor of the hotel’s original basement-level barber shop, now looking a little like it had been uncovered by archaeologists excavating a Roman villa who happen upon a surviving mosaic floor.

Anyhow, the restored Iowana is a grand asset now to downtown Creston and proof that historic structures that sometimes seem in a hopeless state in most instances probably aren’t.

Snow and another depot

2012-02-05T06:27:00.000-06:00

How much snow did we get? Well, maybe two or three inches --- heavy, wet, the most we've had so far this winter. To the west, there was lots more; to the north, quite a bit more. No problems here, other than those caused by how much you forget.

Wear boots! Because of the moisture content, walking in the white stuff was more like wading --- especially in busy slush-filled parking lots. Low-topped shoes were not a good idea.

Landmarks disappear! Even under just a little snow. I went out to the church to shovel a little late in the day. Getting in was fine --- the entrance to the church drive is shared with a busy apartment complex parking lot. Then the church drive half-circles off to the northeast. No problem getting to the church. Leaving was an issue --- no indication of where the driveway was or where it exited onto Highway 14. I'm not sure where I was driving, but it was not the right place.

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Driving on to Creston from Osceola Friday, we had a chance to visit briefly one of southern Iowa's grandest rail depots. Built in 1899 at the height of railroad power and influence, it was designed in a renaissance revival style by the Chicago firm of Burnham and Root, favorite archtects of the C.B.&Q.

Built of yellow-glazed pressed brick above a cut stone base and topped by a tile roof, it remains perhaps the most commanding building in Creston where railroading still, in a substantially diminished way, is at the heart of things. (The Union County Courthouse dates from the 1950s and lacks the presence courthouses tend to have in county seat towns).

The Burlington built a new headquarters and depot (Creston is Amtrak's next stop west after Osceola) during the latter half of the 20th century and, in 1974, ownership of the old depot was transferred to the city which restored and redeveloped it. Now, city offices occupy to the second floor (originally offices for rail officials) and part of the first. Congregate meals are headquartered in what once was the freight-handling east end.

The grand waiting room remains largely intact, used as a museum, a gathering space and display area for the Creston Model Railroad Club. It is a wonderful space with terazzo flooring, glazed tile walls and pillars and beautiful woodwork, including a magnificent coffered ceiling.

The building speaks more eloquently than any other I know in southern Iowa of the place railroading once held here --- so it's a great place to visit if you're in Creston.

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Some will remember my vagabond cousin Helen, now pushing 90 and grounded two years ago by children and grandchildren who felt she was getting a little old to be roaming the country (and sleeping) in a conversion van. She lives in Utah, but has been hanging out since last fall in Indiana.

Anyhow, Helen took off on her own yesterday from Chciago for a series of flights that took her to Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean to spend a few weeks with a nephew, who winters there. Just can't tie a compulsive traveler down.

A pied-a-terre in Osceola?

2012-02-04T06:52:00.001-06:00

So I’m sitting here this morning trying to decide if it’s practical to rent a pied-a-terre in Osceola, 25 miles to the west, while maintaining the principal residence here in Chariton.

It’s a tough question, but the absence of money and the fact I’m a less than enthusiastic housekeeper barely able to keep up with one set of rooms probably will be decisive.

Still, it’s tempting after taking a look early yesterday at the six soaring light-filled apartments in Osceola’s newly renovated Cornerstone Suites. Four of the six have been rented and tenants are due to start moving in later this month.

Four us had driven over to look first-hand at one of the best recent examples of preservation-based recycling of an historic building in southern Iowa. This is a building that during 2008 was placed on Preservation Iowa's list of most endangered buildings, keep in mind. It looked like this (source Wikipedia) then:

Known previously as the Masonic Building or Burrows Block, the three-story structure was built during 1872 at the northeast corner of Osceola's square by A.H. Burrows, a banker. Although an oriental restaurant now occupies both ground-floor store fronts, the north front traditionally was a bank and the south, a hardware store. Osceola Lodge No. 77 A.F.&A.M. owned the third floor, where its social and ceremonial rooms were located. The second was intended to house offices.

Although built of brick, a heavy coat of stucco was applied nearly a century ago and remains. The elegant cast caps on its 32 long second- and third-story windows may be the structure's most distinctive exterior feature.

I've driven by this building many times over the years thinking, wow --- that's almost a gonner. Many years ago, the second and third floors were abandoned, heat and utilities disconnected. Windows had broken and the northeast corner of the structure was threatening to fall into the street below. Pigeons were roosting on the cast iron chandeliers of the old Masonic rooms.

Determined Osceola residents, however, acquired the top two floors and arranged to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building currently has two owners --- top two floors in the hands of the Osceola Chamber-Main Street organization; the first-floor commercial area, a private party. The envelope of the building, exterior, roof, etc., is moving into a joint management covenant.

The restoration and redevelopment project was coordinated by Koester Preservation, headquartered in Grimes. Total cost: $2.2 million, funded almost entirely by grants and tax credits.

Our tour guide Friday morning was Lacey Nish, Chamber-Main Street director and this, the entrance we used --- stairs rising to the second floor from doubled street-level doors in their original location. A further flight of stairs leads on to the third floor. This is not the only entrance, however. The building shares an elevator with the three-story Clarke County-owned building to the south, so those who prefer not to climb stairs don't have to. This elevator entrance, leading into a foyer where mailboxes are located, faces the square.

Because the building's interior was reconfigured and restored within Department of Interior guidelines, as much of the original fabric of the building as possible was retained --- the floors and doors are original, as is most of the plasterwork. Windows are new because the originals were rotted beyond repair, but historically correct and acquired locally.

Each floor contains two one-bedroom apartments ($750 per month with utilities extra) and one two-bedroom apartment ($850 per month).

This is the main room of the second floor's two-bedroom apartment, located in the building's northwest corner. Each apartment has its own furnace and air conditioning unit (condenser on the roof) as well as fully-equipped kitchen and washer and dryer.

In this apartment, the two bedrooms (one of which, below) and bath are located off a long halway leading to the entrance door.

On the third floor, extremely high ceilings allowed for loft bedrooms, which add a good deal of interest to the living space. Here's the principal room in one of the third-floor one-bedroom apartments. The stair leads to the loft bedroom over the bathroom and a "bonus area" just inside the entrance door that could be used as a compact study. That's Lacey at right.

The most impressive apartment in Cornerstone is the two-bedroom on the third floor, which offers a bird's eye view of the Osceola square through six tall windows (all of the windows are equipped with roller shades) and has been fitted into the original Masonic ceremonial room. It is approached through this commons area which also offers access to the elevator, at left.

The grand stair leads to the loft bedroom over the first-floor bedroom as well as bathroom and storage closets.

Original cast iron chandeliers, once pigeon roosts, now light full-height areas within the apartment. Note, too, the original pressed tin cornice preserved throughout this apartment.This apartment was snapped up soon after it became available.

These are wonderful spaces, and I'm ready to move in --- but not your conventional apartments. Closet space is generous, but storage space isn't --- so living here would require a degree of discipline. Which is why I'd need to keep the house for all my junk.

Maybe just thinking about living here will inspire me to do something about all that aforementioned junk, however.

Saints & sinners among the Freels

2012-02-03T06:36:00.000-06:00

The most distinctive thing about the Freel family lot at Calvary Cemetery is Margaret's tombstone, concrete cast into the form of a tree stump,

Margaret, who succumbed to heart disease at age 35 in 1909, had never married and remained at home to care first for younger siblings and then for her parents --- but she had joined the Woodmen Circle, an auxiliary to the Omaha-based Modern Woodmen of the World, a fraternal insurance and benefits company organized in 1890.

The distinctive tombstone was a membership benefit, free to those who wished one (larger and more elaborate Woodmen tombstones were available at additional cost, but this was the basic model). Although scattered in cemeteries from coast to cost, they're rare in Lucas County.

The Woodmen, still based in Omaha and with roughly 800,000 members and the 30-story Woodmen Tower for headquarters, discontinued the free tombstone offer during the 1920s as increasing numbers of its members died and the cost accellerated.

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Five Freels are buried here, although the graves of Margaret's parents, Dennis and Elizabeth, are no longer marked (most likely the wood or metal crosses placed on their graves deteriorated and were removed and not replaced --- this family vanished from Lucas County nearly a century ago). The graves of her brother, Jimmy, and sister, Mollie, are marked.

Jimmy, James K., a troublesome young man who came to a bad end, was the first to die although it's not clear when his remains were moved here to consecrated ground from the Chariton Cemetery where they had rested for a time in the Stanton Vault.

Jimmy's final predicament came during May of 1898 when he was 28, got into an altercation on the levee and was jailed on charges of assault and attempted murder. The levee was a commercial district parallel to the C B & Q railroad tracks in northwest Chariton, known among other things for bars and bootlegging, that did not have an especially good reputation in polite society.

The Chariton Patriot of May 26, 1898, reported that "Jim Freel and Howard Boone, who were confined to the county jail on the charge of holding up and robbing on the levee some time ago a Mr. Bruffy, succeeded in breaking out Monday night, and as yet have not been recaptured. They escaped by digging through the brick wall of the Jail. Sheriff Manning at once telephoned all towns he could reach in that manner, and dispatched innumerable telegrams and some two-hundred postal cards, describing the men and offering $100 reward for their detention."

Jim's sad end was reported in The Patriot the week following: "James K. Freel, who escaped from the county jail Monday night a week ago, was run over by the south branch train south of St. Joseph, Wednesday, and killed. His remains were brought back to Chariton last Friday night. A short service was held at the Freel home on Saturday morning at 10 o'clock, and the remains were temporarily placed in the vault at the Chariton Cemetery."

His obituary followed a week later:

"James Freel was killed at Fairfield, Kansas, May 26, 1898, by a passenger train, the cars running over him, crushing his body out of alll semblance and form. He was brought home for burial and his body was placed in Stanton's vault where it will rest for the present.

"James was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Freel, and to those who had formed his intimate acquaintance he was known and well liked as being a kind, true hearted boy, and willing to do for those whatever came in his power.

"It is with sad hearts we record his terrible and untimely death and our heartfelt sympathy goes out to the sorrowing family.

"Those who conveneyed the body to its final resting place were, Thomas Sullivan, Wm. Sullivan, Mike Sexton, Tom McAlloon, of Ottumwa, Frank O'Connor and John Wilson."

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Five years later, Jimmy's father, Dennis, died at age 71, at was buried at Calvary, honored with an obituary published in the Herald of Oct. 29, 1903, and containing the sort of detail that gladdens the heart of a genealogist. It reads in part as follows:

"One of the best known men in Southern Iowa departed this life Tuesday evening after a busy career of 71 years and 12 days. Dennis Freel was the oldest son of Dennis Freel, born in Mullingar County, Westmeath, Ireland, October 15, 1832. At the age of 3 years, the deceased came to America. His father was the first on the boat to sight land and the point off the coast of Newfoundland where the boat anchored was named Freel's Cape in honor thereof. The family located in Montreal, Canada, and lived there five years, thence to Chicago for a few months, after which they took up their residence in Joliet, Ill. There, on the 22nd of November, 1854, Mr. Freel married his companion of almost a half century, Miss Elizabeth Coonan. In 1856, they came to Davenport, where Mr. Freel made his headquarters while he labored as a bridge contractor. He built the first bridge across the Mississippi River between Davenport and Rock Island, and was the first man to cross the same. Later he constructed the first bridge across the Des Moines River between Burlington and Des Moines, at Eddyville. In 1861, he entered the employ of the C.B.&Q., first as baggage man, then promoted to the position of conductor. In 1875, Mr. Freel ran the first train over the Albia and Des Moines branch. In 1879, the family came to Chariton, where they have ever since been esteemed citizens and where, until 1896, Mr. Freel served the company's best interests as road master for 17 years and in his office many prominent railroad men of today learned the first lessons in their chosen vocation.

"For the past seven years, Mr. Freel had a conductor's run on the south branch passenger train, until sickness overcame him during the latter part of this summer ...."

Later on, the obituary notes that Dennis was "the seventh Dennis Freel, it being the family custom for eight generations to give the first-born son his father's name, and all have been of a mechanical turn of mind."

Priests from Muscatine, Oskaloosa and Melrose were called upon to officiate at the funeral Mass, held at St. Mary's Church (now Sacred Heart) prior to burial in Calvary Cemetery.

There had been eight Freel children, but both James and another son had predeceased their father, The survivors, in 1903, were Edward of Memphis, Tenn., Dennis of Dunsmuir, California (who would be killed in a railroading accident during 1906), Abbie Snyder of Staples, Minn., Rose Muehe, also of Dunsmuir, Calif., and the Misses Margaret and Mollie, of Chariton.

The deceased, his obituary concludes, "was possessed of unusual intelligence ... and was the inventor of many conveniences in mechanics, and a tie plate and ditching machine originated by him are now in use on the Burlington road, constant reminders of the skill and industry of a well spent and useful life.

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Elizabeth Freel outlived her husband by 10 years, dying in 1913, which left Mollie as the last family member in the family home in west Chariton.

Mollie was born in Eddyville on Aug. 1, 1863, and came to Chariton with her family during 1879, graduating from Chariton High School with the class of 1883, then taught in country schools for five years.

In 1888, when the new Franklin School in northwest Chariton was completed, N.B. Gardner, then president of the school board, asked her to teach the primary class there and she continued to teach at Franklin for 27 years, until becoming suddently ill three weeks prior to her death on March 24, 1918.

"She loved the little children," according to her obituary, "and her greatest happiness came in caring for them and molding and shaping their lives so that they might become useful and good citizens."

"She was a woman of strong character," the obituary continues, "unselfish and sacrificing in her labors for her family and friends, and never lost an opportunity to brighten the lives of those with whom she came in contact. Being of a happy disposition, she was most delightful company, and loved to lighten the burdens and hearts of everyone about her."

Mollie also was a charter member of Chariton's P.E.O. chapter, established in February of 1887.

Mollie's funeral Mass was held, too, at St. Mary's with school Supt. I.L. Guernsey and Principal P.K. Williamson as chief pall bearers, assisted by Simon Oppenheimer, John Kenney, William Lyons and Mike Halpin.

Friends collected the money to erect her tombstone at Calvary, directing that the line "A tribute of love by friends" be inscribed upon it.

Crumbling castles and being gay in Iowa

2012-02-02T06:16:00.000-06:00

The current series of Downton Abbey finally roped and hogtied me this week so I sat down (reclined, actually) to wallow in the sudsy splendor of all four episodes broadcast on PBS to date. Kinda fun.

The problem had been seeing Christmas Special, which concludes this series, first --- so I know how it's going to end. Yes, William's going to die. No, evil footman Thomas and shrewish maid Sarah are not going to get their comeuppances. Will Matthew and Lady Mary find happiness? Wait and see (or do a little online research; there are plenty of spoilers out there).

The star of the show is Highclere Castle, the grand "Jacobethan" seat of the Earls Carnarvon. The place photographs beautifully, when masquerading as the Abbey, but as it turns out there's a good deal of keeping up appearances involved here, kind of a soap operaish subtext.

In reality, the current earl and his family live in another house on the estate and struggle to keep the castle from falling down. Large parts of it, out of public view, are uninhabitable.

You can read more about that aspect of things in this Two Nerdy History Girls blog post or in this lavishly illustrated 2009 article from The Mail. Appearances can be deceiving, as it turns out.

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Iowa Public Radio is midway now through a week-long series entitled Being Gay in Iowa which, like the dog that talked, is more remarkable because of the act than for the content. Actually, that's a little unfair to IPR, which does a more consistent job of covering gay-related issues that its televised counterpart, Iowa Public Television (where Lawrence Welk is still alive and well; this week's episode will feature the Lennon sisters boating down a Venetian canal singing "Sana Lucia" and Joe Feeney singing, "O Sole Mio.").

Monday's episode, Marriage, broke little fresh ground; nor did Tuesday's episode, Religion. Wednesday's installment, Coming Out, was better --- no need on this one to haul out in the interests of "balance" the evangelical Christians and Roman bishops to reprise "love the sinner (in a twisted kind of way) but hate the sin." Today's episode will be "Bullying" and Friday's, "Children."

Broadcast times are 5:50 a.m., 7:50 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. on, in central Iowa, 640 WOI-AM and 101.7 KUNI-FM. You can also listen via streaming content or by looking later under the "newsroom" tab at the Iowa Public Radio Web site.

So far, in two out of three, the series has been as much about being heterosexual and hostile in Iowa as it has been about being gay. We'll have to wait to see what the final score will be.

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On a more positive note, the Washington state Senate approved a marriage equality bill 28-21 last evening with crucial support from four Republican senators. The bill is likely to pass in the House within a few days and will go to Gov. Chris Gregoire for signature (she introduced the bill). When that happens, Washington will join Iowa, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia on the equality side of the equation.

Opponents are expected to launch a drive upon signature of the bill to put a measure rescinding it on the state's November ballot. If enough signatures are obtained, same-sex couples could not marry until after that election. Otherwise, marriages could begin during June.

Who treed the tiara?

2012-02-01T07:03:00.000-06:00

You never know what's going to turn up trailside, but the tiara suspended from a branch along Lake Ellis yesterday afternoon was something never encountered before. Was a hiker wearing her tiara while exercising, then tired of it? Did the tooth fairy, skimming over ice, miscalculate and get up tangled in a tree? Who can tell?

Whatever the case, it was another unnaturally spring-like day and I'd been wanting to see the recently renewed third-of-a-mile walking path now known as "Twin Reservoir" and formerly known as "Twin Lake" although it actually follows the west shoreline of Lake Ellis, one of two reservoirs at the head of the Little White Breast Creek valley built many years ago to provide Chariton with water.

The other reservoir, to the east and south, is called Lake Morris. They were named in the 1940s by the Chariton City Council to honor Roy Ellis of Williamson and Lyle Morris, of Derby, young Lucas Countyans then throught to have been the first among us to die in World War II. None of the signage along the lakes now, however, tells you that.

I think the trail was developed originally by Boy Scouts and has been renewed during the past year as an Eagle Scout project. It's now in fine shape --- the trail has been resurfaced, all the bridges repaired, picnic tables put back in good order and new sitting benches built.

It's a good walk, especially if you're not feeling up to the Cinder Path or the woodsy twists and turns of Red Haw --- and I enjoyed it.

But I never walk here without thinking of a friend, who some years ago while walking a dog, rounded one of these bends and happened upon a couple who had decided it was an appropriate afternoon for adultery with a view. That so traumatized the poor guy he's never been back.

Like I say, you just never know what's going to turn up along a trail, and I've had similar experiences twice in recent memory.

The first time, on a woodland trail at Pilot Knob State Park east of Forest City, I was actually paying attention to what was going on down the trail in front of me instead of looking up, down or sideways and was able to reverse course with minimal embarrassment.

The other time, along the Cinder Path, I was not so attentive and didn't realize the gravity of the situation until making eye contact with a couple in flagrante delicto on a blanket in the grass about a mile in. It's not clear who was the most surprised. Why they were there, just a few feet from the trail, I don't know.

Miss Manners never covered situations like this, so far as I know. I did the only obvious thing --- averted my eyes, began to whistle "Amazing Grace" and kept walking. By the time I came back from Barber Wood, a couple of miles south, the couple had departed.

In both cases, unlike my friend at Lake Ellis, I did not recognize the parties involved --- and that has been a blessing.

Thorny issues

2012-01-31T07:22:00.000-06:00

Although I'm all in favor of hugging trees, it's generally a good idea of steer clear of honey locusts --- in their original form (ornamental thornless varieties also are available). They're just not likely to return your affection.

This small locust grows along one of the Red Haw trails, where I was wandering around Monday afternoon, and with its companions elsewhere inside and outside the park is notable not just for thorns but also elaborate creamy spring-time blossoms and big flat seed pots in the fall (the sweet taste of the pulp inside the pods is responsible for the "honey" designation; native Americans reportedly used it for food and livestock continues to do so).

The trees grow fast, their wood is sturdy and slow to decay, and the thorns --- tough when mature --- even have been used as nails sometimes. So it's a multi-use plant that grew prickles, experts speculate, to protect itself against the browsing habits of long-vanished Pleistocene critters.

January, which departs today, has been kind of a thorny month --- so maybe the locust is a good symbol for it.

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Take the weather. The high yesterday was about 65, extraordinary for January in Iowa where the average high this month is in the 30s. It's been an unnaturally mild month with very little snow down here (there's more up north, so Iowa's not lacking entirely). Highs in the 50s are predicted through Thursday.

That's good walking weather, but it all seems wrong somehow --- no coat required. The woods were silent other than the sound of the wind and, in the distance, a small chain saw park workers were using to bring down dangling branches. A few silent birds fluttered from branch to branch. The only commotion came when eight white-tails emerged from their own path through the woods and high-tailed it ahead of me down mine.

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Funeral services were held Sunday at the high school gymnasium in Centerville for U.S. Marine Master Sgt. Travis W. Riddick, 40, one of six Hawaii-based Marines who died Jan. 19 when a Vietnam-era CH-53D helicopter crashed in Afghanistan. That's awfully close to home, but the only sign here over the weekend was the giant GAR pole at the courthouse where flags flew at half-staff Friday-Sunday.

Most of us --- including politicians --- seem to have forgotten that the war in Afghanistan is ongoing; we're mildly surprised when death occurs that someone hasn't already declared victory and ordered retreat. That's not the case for military families, of course, or for small towns when one of their own dies, hundreds of flags come out to line the streets and plans are made for the procession home from the nearest airport large enough to handle a charter jet.

We're still using the word "hero" every time someone is killed --- and that's fine, although it seems a little hollow now.

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Two youngsters in the Des Moines metro-area Johnston school district, 15-year-olds Cameron Carico and Spenser Nelson, killed themselves over the weekend, one on Saturday, the other on Sunday. Authorities are saying there is no apparent link and aren't speculating about motivation.

Those who deal with such tragedies are pointing out anew, however, that suicide is the third-leading cause of death among people ages 15-24. What gets into kids?

I was reading a piece about bullying over the weekend (and there's no indication bullying was involved here) that made an interesting point. The author's criticism was focused on those who suggest, when bullying is discussed, that kids are naturally cruel --- a contention often cited by those who attribute bullying to the boys-will-be-boys (girls, too) factor.

The author's point was that kids are not naturally cruel, just very likely because they lack maturity and depth of experience to mirror the attitudes and behavior of those around them. What's observed at home, among fellow students or in the media is reflected in their own behavior. That's scarier than speculation about naturally-occuring mean streaks.

There doesn't seem to be much hopefulness going around these days --- and that's an adult issue. We probably need to work on that, give the kids a few positive things to mirror. If we seem to be tangled up in anger and despair all the time is it really any surprise that the kids are, too?

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The ongoing battle for the GOP presidential nominations continues to be a less than hopeful process as both Gingrich and Romney have demonstrated in the days leading up to today's Floriday primary.

Our old Cuban friend Fidel Castro, now 85 but still writing for the state media, characterized the GOP circus pretty accurately: "the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that ever has been."

Both Romney and Gingrich have been focused on the substantial number of Florida voters of Cuban descent, few of whom are fond of Castro, and demonstrating their Christian credentials in the process.

Romney declared during a debate last week that he'd "thank heaven" when Castro "returned to his maker." Gingrich, taking it a step farther, declared his conviction that when the now-retired dictator goes to his final reward he'll be going "to the other place."

You've gotta wonder if an eternity in hell with Fidel wouldn't be preferable to a comparable amount of time with those assholes.

The Burlington Northern & Santa Fe

2012-01-30T06:57:00.001-06:00

Looking at what today appears because of the original brick to be an an uppity Morton Building, it’s almost impossible to detect Chariton’s 1940s “moderne” Burlington Northern & Santa Fe depot inside that metal siding shell, its flat roof topped by pitches and gables. I wish I had a photo of the original version, but haven’t located one yet.

This was quite the building in its time, erected in 1943 on the footprint of the old (and larger) 1870s depot and hotel at a cost of $30,000. State of the art.

Go around to trackside, however, and the tell-tale bay of the ticket window still extends eastward.

The new depot reflected changing times. Its predecessor’s second story was a hotel offering weary travelers about 30 rooms, but those rooms had been unused since 1923 when the Hotel Charitone opened on the square.

The original contained two waiting rooms --- one for women and one for men. By the 1940s, it had been decided that men and women could wait together.

There also was a large and elaborate restaurant in the old depot, needed in the days before passenger trains incorporated dining cars. Now all that was needed was a lunch counter at most.

I arrived at this depot once as a child, during the three years (primary through second grade) spent at Dry Flat School. Parents had driven all the Dry Flat scholars into and around Des Moines on an annual excursion. I don’t remember anything about that.

Then we were put aboard a south-bound passenger train in the evening for the return trip to Chariton. I can’t remember whether we left from Des Moines, or were driven down to the depot in Indianola (the 33-mile branch line connecting Chariton and Indianola was closed during 1961). Our chauffeurs then drove back to the depot in Chariton to pick us up. I vaguely remember the trip.

I do remember getting sick in Linden Allard’s car on the drive from Chariton to Russell --- he smoked, didn’t roll the window down and my stomach wasn’t up to it.

I think some of the paving around the current depot, now used entirely for administrative and maintenance purposes --- passenger trains don’t stop in Chariton any more --- must date from the 1870s depot.

The BN&SF tracks through Chariton are heavy-duty and need to be. Hundreds of cars roll through every day, hauling Wyoming reduced to chunks of coal eastward, headed west empty later on. Standard freight trains roar by at other times.

Amtrak’s California Zephyr passes through twice a day, west-bound and east-bound, but the nearest stops are Osceola and Ottumwa.

I don’t recommend standing for any length of time between the BN&SF tracks, but if you do and look southeast, the effect for a variety of reasons related to perspective is mildly surreal.

The courthouse (right), which appears to be some distance to the west of the steeple of First United Methodist Church (left), actually is due south and a short distance east. Which proves, I guess, that you can’t always believe what you see.

A multitude of images

2012-01-29T06:16:00.001-06:00

It is possible to raise wasting time to the level of art and I'm close. When you're good at something, you should share. So here's one of my favorite online time-wasting resources --- the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.

Type any word of combination of words into the search engine, sit back and spend as much time as you like browsing through the results from about 70 databases. If you're a hoarder, you can download these images in a variety of sizes and formats and add to the clutter on your hard drive.

Not much turns up when you do a "Chariton" search and much of what does is related to Chariton County, Missouri, but as it turns out a classic 1907 panoramic view of the Chariton, Iowa, square is the Library of Congress collection, included in the "Panoramic Photographs" database. I've clipped a portion of it out to use at the head of this post. Here is the entire image, but you'll have to right-click and hit "open in new window" to see the whole thing.

There still are several original versions of this image in and around Chariton, including two at the Lucas County Historical Society and one hanging on the wall at Piper's.

Cedar Rapids native Carl Van Vechten, author, photographer and patron of the Harlem Renaissance, has his own database of 1,395 photographs, many of them of celebrities, including the incomparable Josephine Baker (above).

There's a lot here, too, to keep those of us who obsess about old buildings amused. Here's a photograph of one of my favorite houses in the whole world, Shadows on the Teche (or the Weeks/Hall house) at New Iberia, Louisiana, from the "Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South" database. This incorporates photographs taken primarily during the 1930s by architectural photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston.

My favorite database, Historic American Buildings Survey, continues to grow since the collection consists of more than 500,000 images --- and that's a heck of a lot of digitalization. The survey (known has HABS) was a New Deal project, commenced during 1933, to employ architects, draftsmen and photographers left jobless by the Great Depression. The result is an amazing resource that, that had it not been for the Great Depression and New Deal, would not exist.

An "Iowa" search turns up nearly 5,000 images --- and, sadly, HABS workers worked less extensively in Iowa than they did elsewhere and apparently not at all in Lucas County. None-the-less this is an invaluable record, capturing in many instances buildings that have since vanished leaving little trace behind.

Here, for example, are two images from the HABS database of the octagonal Henry L. Russell house, near Bloomfield, that was collapsing when the photographs were taken and disappeared shortly thereafter.

So if you've got a little time to waste on a Sunday afternoon, dig into the database and have fun!

Good news for the Charitone

2012-01-28T06:34:00.000-06:00

I think it’s safe to say, since preliminary announcements are being made, that title to the Hotel Charitone has returned to Lucas County --- and that’s very good news.

Owned for years by someone from another state who acquired it to redevelop and then lost control of the situation, it’s been deteriorating for years --- roof failing, small portions of its brick facing peeling away, windows boarded to prevent glass from falling into the street. The structure, designed by Chariton architect William Perkins and on the National Register of Historic Places, remains structurally sound, however.

To settle a nuisance suit filed by the city, the owner now has transferred title to an outfit called Hotel Charitone LLC. Although details concerning the new arrangement still are being worked out and won't be announced for some time, the limited liability company is not associated with the city, the county or the Chariton Chamber of Commerce.

Long-term goals, I would imagine, are to stabilize the structure and then redevelop it into affordable housing --- a strategy used successfully by other cities faced with similar situations. The most recent example in southern Iowa is Creston’s Hotel Iowana, larger than the Charitone and abandoned for years but as of late last year fully restored, redeveloped and operating.

A frustration during recent years has been to watch projects elsewhere take advantage of financial incentives available for redevelopment projects like the Iowana while the Charitone’s owner dithered or took no action at all.

Another frustration has been to hear “just tear it down” sometimes from folks who really haven’t considered (a) what a blow that would be to the Chariton square and Chariton in general or (b) just how much demolition would cost. Anyhow, I think this is a really hopeful development.

The Charitone actually is the second hotel to be located on its site at the northeast corner of the square. Here’s the text of an article about the site published in The Herald Patriot during 1923 as the brand new Charitone was preparing to open its doors:

AN OLD HOTEL SITE

Charitone Corner Occupied by Early Hostelry

The new Hotel Charitone occupies one of the best building locations in Chariton. The corner site is especially desirable for hotel purposes as it is midway between the railway stations, affords outlet on the main highways and gives easy access to all local places of interest. However, the builders of Hotel Charitone were not the first to select this corner for a public stopping place. In the sixties (1860s) a man known as Jimmie Gallagher operated a popular tavern on the same site.

Jimmie Gallagher, a thoroughbred son of Ireland, came to Chariton from Rome, Iowa, a small town west of Mt. Pleasant on the Burlington line. It is said he followed the railroad west and on his arrival at Chariton, considered this a desirable place for residence and business, and accordingly launched the hotel enterprise. This was, it is believed, in about the year 1865. The building in which he opened was about 45x60 feet, with main entrance on the south as at Hotel Charitone, but nearer the corner. Gallagher’s House, as the place was known, was a two-story frame structure and had the reputation as one of the best inns in this part of the state. The hotel office was in the corner room, as in the present new structure, and the dining room joined the office on the east. In the basement was the bar, well equipped and stocked to serve incoming thirsty travelers who had come perhaps ten to 30 miles on horseback or in wagons. It is noted that the travelers from afar were, however, not the only ones who patronized the bar.

Local citizens are said to have often frequented the basement room for a wee drap from the cup.

After Gallagher had been in business for ten or twelve years, the house passed into the hands of Mrs. Eliza Crall. G.W. Parlin of Chariton also ran the house for some time and a man named Fridley was one of the operators of the early hotel. Mrs. Margaret Maloney was in charge of the establishment from 1879 to 1882. A man by the name of Peppers is said to have been the last person to engage in the hotel business on this corner. The house was built in the early sixties, say local early residents.

S.H. Mallory later came into possession of the corner lot which he owned for several years. The building was replaced by a wooden one-story structure of some length. This faced the west and was used by C.H. Palmer as a store. Here was a stock of notions and for some years the corner site was a part of the merchantile section of the town. This building burned and the corner lot has since been unoccupied except for temporary structures used for tabernacle meetings, entertainments, etc.

The early inn on the Charitone Hotel corner is identified as “Chariton House” on a generally accurate bird’s eye sketch of the town that appears in the 1875 Andreas Atlas. The Chariton House, to the right, has an “11” on its roof, keyed to an explainer elsewhere on the main page.

The Rock don't stop here any more

2012-01-27T05:48:00.000-06:00

It was possible, when my mother was growing up on a farm two miles northeast of Williamson, to drive into that coal mining boom town and catch a train to anywhere --- north to Des Moines, then Minneapolis-St. Paul. The first stop southbound was here, at Chariton's Rock Island Depot.

Continuing south on the Rock, the end of the line was Kansas City. At the C.B.&Q. Depot across town, four blocks or so northwest of the square, connections were offered to the east and west, southwest or northwest, on the Burlington's main line and its two lesser branches.

Miners who lived in Chariton could board special trains at the Rock Island depot and commute to and from the coal fields of northeast Lucas County.

Today, although the Rock has long since turned to dust, Union Pacific freights still rumble by every day, but none stop here any more. The fine vaguely Spanish revival depot, constructed of pressed brick, stone and terra cotta, sits largely unaltered along the tracks, windows boarded against vandals, gently crumbling, used as a maintenance shop.

Many newer Chariton residents may not even realize the depot is here. Although located just a little more than three blocks east of the square beyond Court Avenue's dead end, it's off the beaten path.

During the late 1990s, the Chariton Historic Preservation Commission and others attempted to work out a long-term lease agreement with the Union Pacific that would have returned the depot to public use, but they were unsuccessful and attention turned to the Freight House, now beautifully restored. The depot settled into obscurity again, its future uncertain.

The Rock Island was the final piece of the rail puzzle that turned Chariton for a time into a major railroading center. Construction commenced during the summer of 1911 on more than 60 miles of track to connect railheads at Carlisle to the north and Allerton to the south. The tracks were completed, behind schedule, during early summer 1913. The first regular train on the line rumbled through during early July of the latter year.

The main line of what now is the east-west Burlington Northern & Santa Fe had reached Chariton during 1867 and branch lines headed to Indianola with connections into Des Moines and to Leon with connections to St. Joe had been completed prior to 1900.

The Rock Island was built for two reasons. First, to provide a direct route from the Twin Cities to Kansas City, thus giving the Rock an advantage over the Great Western, then dominant. And second, to access the vast coal fields of northeast Lucas County and Marion County.

The legendary Central Iowa Fuel Co. mines beginning just northeast of Chariton and continuing to Tipperary and Olmitz were able to develop only after the Rock and its spur lines to the mines were completed. In Marion County, Melcher-Dallas also developed into a coal mining center after the Rock Island was completed.

Construction also changed Chariton's landscape substantially. More than 60 houses on or alongside what became railroad right-of-way in east Chariton were moved or demolished. About 1900, William B. and Kate Penick, who developed the Spring Lake residential addition in south Chariton, donated a tract of undeveloped land now south of Highway 34 to the city for a substantial park, also to be called Spring Lake. The new Rock Island line cut directly through it, ruining the area's park potential.

The depth of the cuts needed to take the rail line through Chariton also was a challenge, especially the cut need to take Rock Island trains under the east-west C.B.& Q. main line.

The depot was completed during June of 1913, just in time to serve the first trains arriving in July. Here's a portion of an article from the Chariton Herald Patriot of June 5, 1913, describing it:

ROCK ISLAND DEPOT ALMOST FINISHED

Work on the new Rock Island Depot

is Almost Finished and it is a

Very Handsome Structure

The Rock Island station is receiving its finishing touches and presents an appearance in which the people of Chariton can well take pride. Those who have visited the station and wondered how or why workmen can be so careless in the handling of material will note a vast difference now. Experts have been employed for several days in removing all traces of mortar and other disfiguring stuff and now the hard pressed brick of which the building is constructed is as clean as when first taken from the kiln.

Inside the building the rooms are finished with red brick of very handsome appearance, oiled and dressed to bring out the full beauty of the material. Tiled floors are finished in the waiting rooms, the ticket office is being prepared for business at an early date and indications are that the road will be ready for traffic by July 1st.

The station is more nearly fire proof than any structure in Chariton, the base board consists of stone, while window trimmings are constructed of stone also. All these materials go to make a handsome, sanitary and practically fire proof building, while a terra cotta roof adds greatly to the outside appearance.

The Rock Island has certainly treated Chariton to an excellent station and one which will impress people going through our city very favorably.

Chariton already was a prosperous town when the Rock Island came through. Commercial space on the square was so scarce that those in charge of developing a construction headquarters for the project could not find offices to rent and so leased a house instead. The new rail line was a cause for even more optimism.

As the mines northeast of Chariton developed, dozens of houses for miners were built in town --- the most accessible remaining examples are in a row along the east side of North 7th Street just north of Yocom Park. The area still known by some as White City in southeast Chariton was developed for miners.

And it is unlikely that the Hotel Charitone, which opened its doors with considerable fanfare during 1923, would have been built on the scale it was had the Rock Island not come to town. A major theme of its advertising, at a time when what became Highway 34 still was gravel at best, was the convenient location midway between the Burlington and Rock Island depots.

In the jailhouse now

2012-01-26T07:12:00.000-06:00

The reassuring thing about Lucas County’s old jail/sheriff’s residence, placed last week by Preservation Iowa on its top-ten list of endangered historic Iowa buildings, is that it’s in such good shape. Figuring out how to creatively recycle in trying economic times an obsolete jail built like a bunker is the challenge.

Four of us, including an engineer, did a walk-through Wednesday. None of us had been in jail before --- at least not this one --- so it seemed like a good idea to take a look at a building we’ll be talking about quite a bit this year.

The fact that the old jail is in the shape it’s in is a tribute both to the guy who built it in 1916, contractor Andrew Jackson Stephens, and to the county, which has maintained and reinvented it during the last century.

As designed, the south part of the building was intended to house the sheriff and his family --- the sheriff’s wife, back in the day, would have cooked for prisoners and supervised laundry, cleaning other tasks.

This area, two full stories above a high, dry and well-lighted partially-finished basement, has served for many years as the county law enforcement center, housing both the Lucas County Sheriff’s Department and Chariton Police Department.

These offices were moved to the new Law Enforcement Center last fall and, if the heat, water and power were turned back on, it looks as if another agency could move right in. A little cleaning would be needed, since furniture and equipment not needed in the new LEC, as well as a good deal of rubbish, was left behind. A good stairway, oak-railed from first to second, connects all three floors.

The north half of the building was designed as a jail, and still is --- although extensively adapted over the years. Here, a cast-iron open stair, caged at the top, climbs from basement to the second floor. The thickness of the reinforced concrete basement walls is extraordinary.

Originally, cells and holding areas in the jail would have been configured differently and lighted by barred windows. With a couple of exceptions on the stair, these windows have been bricked up over the years and so there is no natural light now in the main cellblock or cells intended for women and juveniles. The main first-floor cellblock, individual cells around a common area, is new when compared to the rest of the building, created within the original shell with concrete block and steel doors. The second-floor area above the cellblock is a large open day room.

This would be the most challenging area to recycle, considering all that concrete, cast iron and steel, but certainly could be done. As is, the jail would make an excellent secure storage facility. If some of the windows were re-opened, innovative workplaces might be possible.

While we didn’t probe and poke extensively, there were no signs of structural deterioration inside the building. The condition of the roof has been a topic of conversation and there are a few stains on second-floor ceilings to that indicate leaks have occurred. But there were no signs of catastrophic failure.

Walk around the outside of the building and you notice places where repairs to the brick work have been necessary over the years. The only major cause for concern right now, however, is at the northeast corner of the building where a drain pipe from the trough that drains the roof has vanished, allowing water to trickle down the side of the building. That can be disastrous for a brick structure, but also could be easily corrected.

Currently, all utilities have been disconnected and the building is not heated. One season of this should be OK, but after that deterioration will start, then accelerate.

It’s always entertaining to think about what you might do with a building of this sort. Location --- right along Iowa’s busiest rail line --- is a challenge. Rail traffic has not affected the structural integrity of the building nor is the sound of passing trains that intrusive. The train whistles at the crossing adjacent to the jail property, however, are very loud.

It would make a good courthouse annex, if such were needed, offering plenty of storage space to officials who need it.

And I keep thinking of two extraordinary examples of business-related creative recycling already in place in Chariton --- McKinley, Inc., headquartered in the former Garfield School, and Johnson Machine Works, which more recently has converted two attached rail-side buildings into highly innovative headquarters for its drafting department.

The great advantages of turning jail cells into offices, of course, would be that supervisors could ensure workers remained at their desks --- and each office would have its on executive toilet.

That’s probably the sort of thinking that’s needed. Now if I just had a spare million or two gathering dust …

Horse-whipped: A Disgraceful Affair

2012-01-25T07:01:00.000-06:00

Mallory's Castle

What with “Downton Abbey” and all, I’ve been thinking of producing a period soap entitled “Mallory’s Castle,” based upon the lives of the Mallorys, looked upon as Chariton’s first family from 1867 until 1909, and their legendary home, the Ilion (aka Mallory’s Castle).

The Mallorys generated enough enough sturm and drang during their tenure here to justify serialization, but the disappointing thing is that Chariton newspapers almost invariably enforced a code of silence around their routine scandals --- so details are lacking.

One partial exception to that is a report in The Chariton Herald of March 15, 1886, detailing an encounter between one of the lesser Mallorys --- Albert Douglas “Bert” Mallory, born 1861 and the youngest brother of family patriarch Smith H. Mallory; Bert’s wife, Susie (Kubitshek) Mallory; and a young Chariton attorney, Virgil G. Baker.

Although the encounter is described in great detail, the reporter chickened out and disappointingly did not provide comparable detail regarding what led up to it. So there’s plenty of room here for imagination.

A little background might be useful. Bert Mallory was not the brightest star in the Mallory constellation, taken in hand by his elder brother and placed in jobs over the years in Mallory banks in Chariton, Lucas, Creston and Kansas. It is possible that he was something of a brat. Bert had married in 1882 Chariton girl Susie Kubitshek. Although the marriage lasted about 10 years and produced two children, there are signs the balance of the Mallory family thought Bert had married beneath himself --- Susie’s father, Russian-born Henry Kubitshek, was a grocer and Jewish. The Kubitshek family, however, was widely respected in Lucas County. At the time this incident occurred, Bert and Susie were living in Lucas where he had been installed as manager of Farmers & Miners Bank, founded by his elder brother.

Bert and Susie left Lucas County soon after this incident and so did Virgil Baker, who moved to Santa Ana, California, where he died in 1894 at age 33. We’ll probably never know the juicy details, since nothing further was published and it is extremely challenging to penetrate court records of that era.

But this wonderful, gloriously self-righteous story made it into print, and we can be grateful for that.

DISGRACEFUL AFFAIR

Mrs. A.D. Mallory, Protected by Dave Ferris, Assaults V.G. Baker Esq.,

While Her Husband, From His Hiding Place Across the Street

Watches the Performance.

It becomes our duty this week to record one of the most disgraceful affairs that has ever occurred in our city. It appears all the more disgraceful when the social standing of the principals is taken into account. It wears still darker hue on account of the innocent people who are compelled to endure the humiliation and mental suffering consequent upon the reckless conduct of those who should have known better. Did we consult our feelings only in reference to those who, through no fault of their own, are made to suffer through the act of another, this article would not be written. But the sentiment of the community is a unit that these innocent people, who were in no manner responsible for the disgraceful proceedings, are in no manner disgraced thereby. They may feel humiliated, and no doubt do; they certainly feel hurt and heart-sore, but they can rest assured that they have the heartfelt sympathy of every man and woman in the entire community. But it is due the readers of the Herald that the facts, so far as we have been able to obtain them, should be given.

On last Saturday morning, between eight and nine o’clock, a boy was sent up to the office of Mr. Virgil Baker, to inform him that a lady wished to see him at the foot of the stairs. On reaching the street he was met by Mrs. A.D. Mallory, who, after saying: “So you won’t speak to me won’t you,” attempted to strike him with a whip. He seized the whip, when he was caught from behind by a man named Ferris, who attempted to hold him while Mrs. Mallory applied the whip. Virgil jerked loose from the fellow and informed him that if he laid his hands on him again he would kill him, at the same time making a motion for his pistol picket. The fellow backed off, and Virgil, to escape the disgrace, turned and walked up the stairway. At this time A.D. Mallory, who had been conveniently under cover on the opposite side of the street, ran across to the stairway, armed with a brick, and following up into the hallway, attacked Mr. Baker, attempting to strike him with the brick. The attack was soon ended by Virgil taking the brick from him, and choking him up against the wall. When he was released, he and his wife proceeded down the stair and out on the street.

The news of the attack quickly flew over town, and all sorts of rumors were afloat, while comments were heard on every hand. Mr. Baker at once filed an information against Mrs. Mallory and Dave Ferris, and another against A.D. Mallory, charging them with assault and battery. Warrants were issued and the parties arrested Saturday evening at Lucas. They gave bonds for their appearance before Mayor Davis on Monday. At the appointed time Ferris appeared and entered a plea of not guilty, but a short time afterwards T.M. Stuart Esq. appeared and entered a plea of guilty for the three. Mayor Davis assessed the fines as follows: David Ferris, $25.00 and costs; A.D. Mallory and Mrs. Mallory each $50.00 and costs. The fines and costs were paid a few minutes after they were imposed by A.D. Mallory, and the first chapter in the affair was ended.

Since the parties who were arrested for the assult have seen fit to enter a plea of guilty, and have paid up the fines and costs without attempting anything in the shape of justification, and without even making any showing in extenuation, we leave the matter of provocation just as they have left it, and our readers will have to draw on their imagination for conclusions. But so far as the assault itself is concerned there seems to be but one opinion prevalent, and that is that it was a most ill-advised affair, and one that the parties will regret as long as they live. Still another opinion seems to have taken deep root in the minds of our citizens and that is, that it was not the voluntary act of Mrs. Mallory. She has grown up from childhood in Chariton and has ever been held in the highest esteem by all who know her. She is the daughter of eminently respectable parents, and has been surrounded with home influences that could not fail to develop her into a perfect lady. Possessed of a modest and unassuming disposition, her host of friends feel assured that the act of Saturday morning is so utterly foreign to her nature that she must have been either coaxed, threatened or driven to it. That she should have voluntarily selected the man Ferris as an escort and protector is an idea that is utterly abhorrent to all who know her.

And closely following this opinion naturally comes another, that her husband, A.D. Mallory, has been wholly responsible for the entire business. Everything connected with the affair seems to point directly to him as the responsible party. That he knew the assault was to be made, there is not the shadow of a doubt. That he was conveniently near the location, and where he could watch the whole transaction is also beyond question. What was he doing there? Waiting for his wife to do the work that he himself was too cowardly to undertake? Skulking behind a wall and leaving his wife to the protection of Dave Ferris. Knowing that his wife was waiting to commit an act which would be certain to compromise her in the minds of the public, and raising neither his voice nor his arm to prevent it! Waiting and watching, from his secure position behind a wall, for the moment to arrive when the curtain should rise on the first act. It is not at all surprising that those who know these facts are unanimous in condemnation of his course. There is not a single redeeming feature in the entire transaction for him. There is not a single Palliating or mitigating circumstance for him. No matter what the provocation may have been, it would not, and never could justify A.D. Mallory in either driving or permitting his wife to enter an arena where her own native modesty and usuages of polite society forbade her entrance. If his motive was to bring disgrace upon Virgil Baker, by having it said that he was horse-whipped by a lady, he has ignominiously failed, for the reason that Virgil’s temporary humiliation is entirely lost sight of in the feeling of utter contempt that is felt for A.D. Mallory himself. He it is who must stand alone and bear every whit of the disgrace that results from the affair. The community will not permit any of his innocent friends to bear one iota of the burden of ignominy which he has brought upon himself.

The affair is not ended yet. Soon after the fines above named were assessed, Mr. Baker filed an information before Mayor Davis, in which he charged A.D. Mallory, Dave Ferris and Mrs. Mallory with the crime of conspiracy, and warrants were issued for their arrest. On this charge they waived a preliminary examination and were bound over on bonds of $500.00 for their appearance at the next term of the District Court, which convenes on Monday. As an investigation of this matter is to be made by the grand jury, we deem it proper to refrain from expressing any opinion until after that tribunal has acted on the information that will be brought before it.

Blogs and bathrooms

2012-01-24T06:59:00.000-06:00

Iowa's palatial toilet along eastbound I-80 near Iowa City.

The post counter attached to this blog clicked over the 1,000 mark the other day, something that may be worth noting --- only because I'm not very consistent and the fact this has been going on with varying degrees of regularity since May of 2005 is a source of personal amazement.

The count is a little misleading because I go back into the archives sometimes to combine posts written in installments or accompanied by multiple photographs. Back in 2005, multiple photographs could not be posted with text and had to be posted independently.

A surprising number of people are interested in earlier posts related to local history and genealogy, so I want related text and photos to come up together when someone does a Google or other search and the only way to insure that is to manually reconfigure the archives, incorporating photos into the posts where they belong and killing off the originals.

One of these days I'll go back in and do more of this, probably knocking the count under a thousand again. But for the time being, there it is.

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Just as I'm not very consistent, neither am I overly sentimental --- so it was a little disconcerting to be flooded with rest-stop recollections after reading in this morning's Register that the death sentences imposed by highway designers on four roadside toilets will not be rescinded. These are the north- and south-bound rest stops along Interstate 35 just north of Des Moines at Ankeny; and their east- and west-bound counterparts along Interstate 80 just west of Des Moines.

All four have been doomed by the need for new interchanges. There are vague plans to replace the I-35 stops, but apparently no one's considered the I-80 alternative. reinforcing the thought that engineers who design highways never travel on them.

All four are vintage rest stops (eligible for the National Register of Historic Toilets) dating from the earliest days of Iowa's Interstate system when the point was to offer travelers basic stools, urinals and sinks in simple buildings with picnic tables scattered on the grounds outside.

Iowa's newer rest stops are potty palaces, themed to convince travelers from out of state that a longer stay in Iowa has the potential to be as rewarding as use of our toilets --- Prairie School architecture near the Iowa-Missouri line; Civil War nostalgia up north; literary accomplishments (the photo up top here) over near Iowa City, and so on.

The I-35 southbound facility at Ankeny always was the place for those of us from up north to gather our thoughts, comb our hair and the like before meetings or social engagements in Des Moines. Once, many years ago, a carload of us actually got dressed at south-bound Ankeny for an elaborate wedding downtown at St. Paul's when it became clear there wasn't going to be time to check into the hotel first, as had been the plan.

I became most itimately involved with the I-35 rest stops during those years when, driving a new vehicle, I passed no-smoking rules and therefore had to stop at each for a cigarette.

The most interesting enounter occurred at Ankeny one south-bound Sunday afternoon (I was headed for church, honest) after smoke stops at Dows and Story City when I was confronted by a gentleman with Story County plates whose hobby it turned out was to cruise truck drivers for sex of an afternoon, commencing at Dows and then, depending upon what sort of luck he was having, continuing down to Ankeny, then back to Story City. Having spotted me (I was driving a distinctive two-door black Blazer at the time) at both Dows and Story City he concluded I was either an undercover cop or in the market, neither of which was the case --- but it was an interesting conversation.

I'll save it for my memoirs, however.

Wrestling with the issues

2012-01-23T06:46:00.000-06:00

It’s kind of hard for someone who is athletically inept and not especially competitive to make much sense out of wrestling-related hazing cases, some overtly sexual, that surfaced in Iowa high schools during January after incidents late last year.

So far as wrestling is concerned, I’m probably missing the point, but the concept of men young or old clad in skin-tight singlets rolling around on the floor with each other as crowds cheer seems a little warped. I’m told it builds character.

High school and college wrestling is a big deal in Iowa. State wrestling tournaments are a major cultural event. But ---

Two students at Nodaway Valley High School in Greenfield, over northwest of here, have been charged with second-degree sexual abuse for allegedly sodomizing as many as three younger teammates with the handle of a jump-rope as a punishment for infractions such as missing practice.

At Sioux City North High School, four members of the wrestling team have been charged with simple assault after three allegedly held a 15-year-old victim down while the fourth used “humiliation techniques on bare skin of sensitive body parts.”

At Lisbon, in northeast Iowa’s Linn County, simple assault charges are pending against three wrestlers after an incident during which a student was restrained while teammates placed their penises and testicles on his face. The victim also says he was placed in a shower and urinated upon.

At Gilbert, in Story County, wrestlers reportedly were disciplined by the school without police involvement after an incident involving “non-sexual horseplay.”

None of the coaches have been disciplined because investigators concluded they hadn’t known what was going on. The young men charged at Greenfield were jailed, but wrestlers involved in incidents elsewhere remained active in wrestling programs. And in many cases, especially at Greenfield, angry parents rather than school officials brought the incidents to light --- and to the media.

I’m sure there are many fine well-managed wrestling (and other athletic) programs in Iowa and it seems unfair to paint with too broad a brush, but three dramatic incidents and one less so in so short a time does bring up the question of how unexceptional this kind of behavior is.

A major point of sexual assault, or assault with a sexual element, is to shame. And those shamed I’d guess would be reluctant to speak out. So there’s probably much more of this going on than we’d care to think about.

When asked by the Register about proactive responses to hazing, an official of the Iowa High School Athletic Association, which governs boys’ athletics, told the Des Moines Register that conduct issues are in the hands of local school districts, although an anti-hazing seminar is available upon request. The overall impression was that the state organization wasn’t overly interested.

I’m surprised no coaches were held accountable. While a coach certainly can’t control everything a student in his charge does, he (or she) is ultimately responsible for the culture of his or her program --- and perhaps for supervising locker rooms, too.

The boys-will-be-boys approach isn’t really acceptable any more, and we seem to be getting over the idea that bullying, hazing and the like build character. The focus lately in schools has been quite rightly on ending the bullying and harassment of LGBT youngsters. But it looks like the target needs to be broader.

Newt Gingrich is the Antichrist!

2012-01-22T06:45:00.000-06:00

Just kidding --- honestly. But that son of perdition (and thrice-married serial adulterer) did trouce the inevitable Mitt Romney in South Carolina yesterday --- with endorsements from quite a few on the Christian right --- including that picturesque example of Southern Baptist beefcake Rick Perry --- who anticipate salvation from a highly problematic source.

Poor Mitt, so blandly white, so rich, so incapable of identifying with those who aren't, so Mormon --- and worst of all, from a Republican standpoint, most likely sane.

My favorite headline (from Huffington Post): "Mitt Newt-ered."

Favorite fanciful disambiguation --- Fox News (the antichrist of news sources) commentator Keith Ablow's declaration that infidelity enhances Gingrich's qualifications for the presidency because three women lusted after him (demonstrating just how enticing he will be to voters) and that by asking one former wife for an "open marriage" he demonstrated the likelihood he'll always tell the American people the truth.

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Since it is Sunday morning, here's a little clip featuring one of my favorite renegade Episcopal bishops, John Shelby Spong, late of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. Spong is a noted iconoclast, who consistently aggravates the orthodox by going too far and free-thinkers by not going far enough.

The exerpt is from a lecture delivered during 2008, the year he published "Jesus for the Non-Religious." His most widely known book probably is 1999's "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." Since 2008, he has published "Eternal Life: A New Vision" and "Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World."

Bill Stringfellow, Jesus & the hookers

2012-01-21T07:13:00.000-06:00

William Stringfellow

Two things juxtaposed in the night a while ago --- seeing again Louise Walker’s 2001 documentary “Inside Boystown” and happening upon this William Stringfellow quote from “My People is the Enemy” (1966: Anchor Books):

"To be concerned with the outcast is an echo, of course, of the Gospel itself. Characteristically, the Christian is to be found in his work and witness in the world among those for whom no one else cares --- the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the misfits, the homeless, the orphans and beggars. The presence of the Christian among the outcasts is the way in which the Christian represents, concretely, the ubiquity and universality of the intercession of Christ for all men."

Viewed from 40-plus years later, the word “characteristically” seems too optimistic, but that doesn’t detract from the general thrust of the thought.

Boystown, in the documentary, is a block-long area of Vancouver where, in 2001, young male prostitutes sold their bodies and their sexual services to a stream of eager buyers, driving by. There is nothing exploitive or sensational in the film --- just six young men telling their just stories with occasional commentary from others who work with them --- a counselor, a street nurse.

Most of the hustlers had ended up on the street as kids with no skills to exchange for food and shelter and so they began to sell themselves, became entangled with expensive drug habits and probably were doomed. Despite that, they were articulate, endearing and hopeful. But among the untouchables in the context of a contemporary culturally Christian society.

Stringfellow (1928-1985), activist for racial justice and peace and a lay theologian, was one of those guys talked about occasionally when I was at university, involved in a course or two about religion.

He was an Episcopalian, gay (“almost but not quite out” --- these were the 1960s and 1970s, remember) and, surprisingly, a Biblical literalist, although not in the sense we think of Biblical literalists now. His literalism, and he could thump the Bible with the best, would have turned the world upside down, chewed up conventional Christianity of that day and most likely of this day, too, and spat it out.

Although he wrote prolifically, he left behind no comprehensive guide to the Way as he viewed it and he was an activist rather than a scholar in the conventional sense. That, combined with his sexual orientation, has caused his thinking to be marginalized among those who think theologically.

Which doesn't diminish his relevance.

Those of us who still go to church, shielded from the world by stained glass or hunkered down Sundays in more contemporary megachurch bunkers, like to think in terms of Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three (hopefully more) are gathered together in my name ….”

But I wonder. Jesus, it seems possible and Stringfellow might argue, would be walking the streets of Boystown with the hustlers instead.

Faded photographs and newts

2012-01-20T07:01:00.000-06:00

That program for the 1902 Chautauqua I've been scanning also contains several photographs of Chariton homes and businesses, including some views I've not seen before. Although the historical society has the originals of some, others are missing --- and I wish they'd turn up in someone's attic.

This is a 1902 view of Frank and Minnie Crocker's home, now at the core of Fielding Funeral Home, which illustrates a couple of points about how Lucas Countyans once lived (although most lived on a scale substantially less grand).

Built ca. 1888, the house originally had only modest first-floor porches sheltering entrances, but extensive balcony-like porches on the second floor.

In fact, hardly any house built in Chariton prior to the 1890s had extensive porches. Front-porch sitting (and genteel partying) didn't come along until the 1890s, after which nearly every new house was built with extensive porches and porches were added to existing houses.

Our gradest home, the Mallorys' Illion, was wrapped in new porches for partying during the 1890s, and Frank and Minnie adorned the southeast angle of their home with porches featuring cut-stone bases, too. These porches remained in place until Keith Fielding's first major expansion of the funeral home, but the elements were saved, reused and may be seen now in the newer porches that sheild the entrance front of funeral home's chapel wing.

Also note the windmill to the west of the house. Chariton did not have a municipal water system when this photo was taken, so most likely the windmill pumped water from the Crocker well to a holding tank in the attic of the house from which it was distributed by gravity to bathroom and kitchen.

That absence of a water system was one of the reasons why such large sections of the town square burned so frequently. Firefighters armed with Old Betsy and a hook and ladder wagon relied on the water from four cisterns at the corners of the square when a building caught fire and when that water supply was exhausted, had to pump water up to the square from the small lake that filled what now is Yocom Park. It's a wonder as much survived as did.

This 1902 photo from the Chautauqua booklet of what then was the brand new Crocker-Ensley Block illustrates just how little that wonderful Richardson Romanesque facade has changed --- and how little would be required to return it to its original configuration. Because this facade, as well as that of the Stanton Building next door, mirror in material and style the courthouse, I'm wondering if they were designed by the same architectural firm, Des Moines-based Foster & Liebbe.

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Snow is in the forecast here today, but only a little --- while the northern half of the state is blanketed with winter storm watches and warnings. The predicted overnight low in Chariton is zero, but up north in Mason City where I once lived, too --- minus-12. Brrr. I'm glad to be here rather than there.

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I guess I really wasn't surprised about how persecuted I felt Wednesday when Wikipedia suspended service for a few hours in protest. It was darned inconvenient to have to actually look elsewhere, even in a BOOK, when that universal source of miscellaneous information wasn't available.

But I was surprised yesterday to discover that I missed Facebook. About twice a year, my security program develops an intense distaste for Facebook, blocking access to it entirely and throwing up angry warnings every time another site with a Facebook link is called up --- and more than half the pages I look at regularly now contain Facebook links.

The patch was applied and everything returned to normal after a few hours, so I can tune in again every few hours to see what my Facebook friends have been up to.

I still don't understand, however, why Facebook insists on defaulting to the display of "highlighted" posts (who the heck highlights them?) first, rather than a sequential display.

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And I've been looking after Thursday's open-marriage allegations for parallels via faithful Wikipedia between that leading GOP contender and his namesake, the "aquatic amphibian of the family Salamandridae."

According to that source, newts metamorphose through three distinct developmental life stages --- aquatic larva, terrestrial juvenile and adult. Adult newts, according to Wikipedia, have "lizard-like bodies and may be either fully aquatic, living permanently in the water, or semi-aquatic, living terrestrially but returning to the water each year to breed."

Those stages correspond with the number of Gingrich marriages, so the parallels between Newt the candidate and Newt the amphibian may have some relevance. In all likelihood, however, the amphibian has a better record of consistent morality, so the salamander is probably the better Christian.

Iowa's most endangered

2012-01-19T06:44:00.000-06:00

Lucas County's former law enforcement center, built during 1916 as a combined sheriff's residence and county jail, was named this week to Preservation Iowa's list of 10 most endangered buildings for 2012. That annual list is intended to draw attention to buildings of architectural, cultural or historic importance under active threat, but the designation carries with it no promise of actual aid.

Of buildings on the list, the old jail is one of the most endangered. Although in use until last fall, when a new Law Enforcement Center opened, the building's roof is deteriorating and county supervisors haven't been able to come up with a practical use that would justify spending tax dollars to repair and refit it. Recycling a jail is problematic in the first place; finding a private use for a building alongside Iowa's businest railroad tracks is an additional complication.

The jail was nominated for the list by the Chariton Historic Preservation Commission. More photos and additional information about the jail may be found here, under "Jailhouse Blues." And here's a look at the other nine buildings on the list:

Northwood (Worth County): The Stromstein Building. Located within Northwood's Central Avenue Historic District, the commercial structure is described as the most distinctive "bridge" linking the Shell Rock River, along which Northwood was built, and the city's commercial core. It is noted especially for its distinctive facade and roof and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2006. The building is structurally unsound, much window glass is missing and water infiltration has damaged the interior.

Independence (Buchanan County): Wapsipinicon Mill Museum. One of the largest historic mills in the Midwest, built 1867-70, the building was damaged in 2008 flooding, but repaired, and it is described in general as being in "very good" condition. The roof, however, has begin to deteriorate dramatically causing interior damage and the half million dollars in funding needed to repair it is not available, although fund-raising is under way.

Cedar Rapids (Linn County): People's Bank and Trust Co. One of architect Louis Sullivan's "jewel box" banks, the building was designed during 1909 and feature's Sullivan's signature elements --- sytlized prairie school lines, 15 shades of brick and terra cotta detailing. Four intact interior murals depict life in the Midwest. The building has not been used since severe flooding in 2008 although it is in an area designated for future protection against floods.

Decorah (Winneshiek County): County home superintendent's residence. An American Foursquare structure executed in brick during 1915, this house on remaining county farm property near Decorah contains most of its original detail. Although in excellent structural condition, freeze damage to the heating system in 2006/2007 has not been repaired and the rent it once generated for the county no longer is forthcoming casting doubt on its long-term survival.

Mason City (Cerro Gordo County). Egloff House. Constructed during 1939 to an "International Style" or "Streamline Moderne" design by architect Earle R. Cone. Heavily damaged during 2008 flooding and partially restored, the home was purchased during 2010 by the city as part of a FEMA-funded acquisition and demolition program designed to clear the Winnebago River's flood plain. The building is available for $1, but must be moved from its current location.

Osage (Mitchell County). County Courthouse. Built in four phases commencing in 1858, the courthouse is a rare example (in Iowa) of Greek Revival courthouse design. The North Lee County courthouse in Fort Madison is comparable, but lacks the cupelo. The building has a variety of structural issues that need attention and its relatively small size is a complicating issue. Supervisors are considering demolition of the courthouse and building another space to house county government.

Orient (Adair County). Nelson Brothers Hardware Store. Built in 1902 and occupied variously by grocery stores and then by Nelson Brothers Hardware from 1940 until 1996, the brick building is described as one of only a handful of historic structures in Orient retaining original architectural features.

Manning (Carroll County): Deb's Corner Cafe. Built during the early 1890s as half of the Horse Shoe Bar, which reportedly was the longest bar west of the Mississippi at the time at 120 feet (solid mahogany) served when fully staffed by eight bartenders, the facade is intact but crumbling. The remainder of the building is structurally sound, but the facade is endangered. Water infiltration is a related problem, as is the lack of owner financing.

West Des Moines (Polk County). Log cabin. While there is no clear threat to this privately owned cabin, dating from the 1850s, preservationists are concerned that it may be neglected and underappreciated. According to preservationists, the owner is aware of its significance.

The great 1902 Chautauqua

2012-01-18T06:53:00.000-06:00

I’ve been working this week with a program for Lucas County’s Chautauqua Assembly of 1902, the first of at least two held in Chariton at the turn of the 20th century designed to inform, entertain and elevate our forbears --- with a good deal of that old-time religion thrown in for good measure.

The dates for the great event were Saturday through Sunday, Aug. 16-24, and the location, “School Park.” I have no idea exactly where School Park was, but it was located within a five-minute walk of the depot and the square. I’m guessing that what now is Halferty Park (formerly North Park) may be a remnant of the location, but can’t be sure.

Whatever the case, School Park would have been large enough to accommodate the Chautauqua and related tents, vendors and thousands of people.

The Chautauqua organizers were among Chariton’s major movers and shakers --- Frank R. Crocker, president; Smith H. Mallory, first vice-resident; George J. Stewart, second vice-president; Eli Manning, secretary; and W.B. Beem, treasurer.

The event was intended to draw an audience from all over southern Iowa, so the C.B.&.Q. was offering round-trip fares at a discounted rate for all within a 60-mile radius and adding special excursion trains to its schedule on some days.

Once in Chariton, a ticket for all events during the week could be purchased for $2 by adults and $1 by those under 15 (under 10, free). Otherwise, per-event admission ranged from 25 to 50 cents. The lineup of speakers and entertainers had been organized by the Knepper Lyceum Bureau, headed by the Rev. A.V. Knepper, a Methodist minister

The only performers featured daily during Chautauqua were members of the Slayton Jubilee Singers, an eight-member black gospel group, plus accompanist, popular on the Midwest Chautauqua circuit.

Chautauqua opened at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 16, with an invocation by the Rev. A.H. Crittenden, then pastor of First Presbyterian Church; a welcome by Frank Crocker; and opening remarks by the Rev. John Merritte Driver, a Methodist preacher, author, song-writer and clerical star of the Chautauqua circuit. The Rev. Sam P. Jones, one of the most celebrated revivalists of his day, ended the evening with a rousing lecture entitled, “What I Know of Hell.”

Sunday commenced with a 10:30 a.m. service featuring the Rev. Mr. Driver. An open air “sacred” concert began at 2 p.m. followed at 2:30 by a lecture entitled “Abraham Lincoln” by Henry Watterson, known as the “silver-tongued orator of Kentucky.” Founder of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Watterson was active in Democratic political circles and an advocate for the rights of black Americans.

The day closed with another service, beginning at 7:30 p.m. and featuring another preacher popular on the Chautauqua circuit, the Rev. Thomas J. Wright.

During the balance of the week, afternoon and evening sessions generally began at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. with performances by the Jubilee Singers, followed by lectures at 3 and 8 p.m.

The featured speaker Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday evening was Maude Ballington Booth on the topics, “Lights and Shadows of Prison Life” and “Prison Reform: A Heart Story.” Booth was co-founder with her husband, Ballington Booth, of Volunteers of America and a crusader for better conditions in American prisons.

The Rev. Mr. Driver was a regular preacher during the week, holding forth on such topics as “The Anglo-Saxon, or the Future Rulership of the World” and “The Romance of Our Nation’s Birth.”

Featured speaker on Saturday was Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of Robert E. Lee and himself a former general in the Army of the Confederacy, Virginia governor and U.S. consul general in Havana on the eve of the Spanish-American War. Also a celebrated symbol of post-Civil War reconicilation, his topic was, “Peace and War in the United States and Cuba.”

The Chautauqua closed on Sunday, Aug. 24, with a morning service, afternoon entertainment and evening lecture.

The featured speaker Sunday afternoon was Ballington Booth, husband of Maud and co-founder with her of Volunteers of America.” He also led a “sacred song service” as part of the program. Booth was a son of William Booth, the Methodist preacher who founded the Salvation Army, and had come to the United States from England with his wife initially to take charge of the Army in the United States. Although the Booths parted company with the Salvation Army and formed their own volunteer-based organizations, both were stars of the Chautauqua circuit in 1902.

After that, the week ended with promises of a bigger and better event during 1903, tents were folded and loaded with other equipment aboard trains and Chautauqua moved on to its next stop on the Midwest circuit.

Dispatches from the Holy War: 01/17

2012-01-17T07:10:00.000-06:00

Chris Godfrey

Iowa’s gay workers’ compensation commissioner, Chris Godfrey, sued the state, Gov. Terry Branstad, the lieutenant governor and a few staffers for defamation, harassment and sexual discrimination last week. And over in the United Kingdom, the Very Rev. Jeffrey John, dean of St. Albans, also gay, seems poised to take the Church of England to court for blocking his appointment to bishop --- twice.

Although the success of either the actual or the rumored lawsuit is in doubt, both cases illustrate what can happen these days as the good old boy network discovers some of the perils involved in tangling with pissed off gay guys.

In Iowa, Godfrey has invoked the name of Roxanne Conlin, attorney and sometimes Democratic candidate for governor and senate. Faced with the prospect of facing Conlin in court, strong men have been known to swoon.

Once smelling salts had revived him, Branstad, via the Iowa Attorney General’s office, asked for assistance from the law firm of LaMarca & Landry at a state-funded cost of up to $325 an hour (some four times the going rate for outside assistance) to defend him.

Iowa’s workers’ compensation commissioners serve on an appointive basis --- six-year terms intended to shield them (and their department) from politics. First appointed by Democrat Gov. Tom Vilsack to fill an unexpired term resulting from retirement, Godfrey was reappointed to a full six-year term (confirmed unanimously by the Senate) by Democrat Gov. Chet Culver during 2009.

Republican Branstad first asked for Godfrey’s resignation, along with those of other department heads from the Culver administration, in December of 2010, before he took office. Godfrey, citing the purpose of his six-year term and his record as commissioner, declined. When further efforts to convince Godfrey to play the political game failed, the governor slashed his salary by some $36,000 annually and began an alleged campaign of exclusion directed against Godfrey and his department --- setting the stage for last week’s lawsuit.

Branstad claims Iowa business leaders were calling for Godfrey’s head on a platter, something those leaders perhaps disingenuously deny. He also claims worker compensation costs had increased modestly during Godfrey’s tenure, something Godfrey attributes to factors beyond his control. Godfrey cites his flawless record, multiple exemplary performance reviews and broad peer acknowledgement of his department’s efficiencies.

The implication here is that Branstad is homophobic, which he denies, and there’s no particular reason to believe that he is, personally. Iowa Republicans are, however, institutionally homophobic, so it will be interesting to see where this all leads --- at considerable expense. As Conlin noted during televised interviews --- with a big smile --- the way to prove discrimination is to prove the absence of any other just cause. It’s not yet clear that political expediency is a just cause.

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Across the Atlantic, there is general agreement that Jeffrey John would not win a lawsuit against the Church of England, which actually is licensed by the government to discriminate, if it chooses to do so, by exemptions to the Equality Act of 2010. So the effect would be primarily cathartic for a cleric consistently kicked around by the Anglican hierarchy and would highlight the peculiarities of the church’s current approach.

Jeffrey John

Homosexuality itself is not a canon law barrier to advancement in the Church of England (women bishops are, however, still forbidden) so long as, step one, the candidate is celibate. John, although in a civil partnership, is in a celibate relationship. Gay men, however, are required to verbally repent (and presumably be absolved of) earlier wickedness if they ever have been sexually active. This, John has politely declined to do. Candidates also may be excluded if the hierarchy considers them “divisive.”

First appointed suffagrin bishop of Reading in 2003, John’s alleged friend, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, forced him out of that position to appease traditionalists. Nominated again in 2010, this time as bishop of Southwark, Williams allegedly again led the campaign to derail his appointment. So it does seem that John’s patience is wearing thin.

His case is complicated by the fact the Church of Engliand is an established church, ruled if push comes to shove by Parliament. While Parliament generally keeps its hands off the church, the idea of simply disestablishing it and cutting it loose from government to rise or fall (and its been falling for many years) on its own has gained in popularity of the years.

That would not affect church finances necessarily, since the government does not fund the Church of Engliand. It would, however, remove 26 unelected bishops from the House of Lords and end other perks involved in being part of the establishment.

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The real Christians got together down in Texas over the weekend to endorse Rick Santorum as the inevitable Mitt Romney continues to gain in the polls, except of course for those real Christians still endorsing Newt Gingrich. I love it when Republicans fight. But has anyone heard of Rick Perry lately? Last I saw, he was defending as “aw shucks, ma’m, they’s just boys” those Marines photographed urinating on Taliban dead.

Paul Jennings and MLK Day

2012-01-16T07:27:00.000-06:00

I'm looking forward to Elizabeth Dowling Taylor's new biography of Paul Jennings (above), former slave of James and Dolley Madison, who authored the first (although brief at 19 pages) White House staff memoir --- in 1865. Something to think about on the day set aside to honor the memory to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Taylor, formerly director of education at James Madison's Montpelier, almost single-handedly raised Jennings' story from obscurity and now shares it at length in, "A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons."

Born during 1799 at Montpelier, the Madison plantation, Jennings served the Madisons during their tenure in Washington (1809-1817) and was a witness when White House staffers (not Dolley Madison) rescued the famed Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington as British troops closed in to burn the presidential mansion.

He became Madison's personal manservant during 1820 at Montpelier and was at his bedside when he died in 1836. Expecting his freedom upon Madison's death, he was instead taken back to Washington during 1837 by Dolley, forced to leave his wife, Fanny, and children behind.

In addition to utilizing his services personally, Dolley rented Jennings out periodically (he reportedly was leased to the White House during 1845, the administration of James K. Polk), retaining the revenue entirely for herself.

Eventually, Dolley sold Jennings for $200 in 1846. Six months later, Daniel Webster --- familiar with Jennings and his story --- provided $120 to buy his freedom from the new owner, insurance agent Pollard Webb. Jennings then worked as Webster's servent to repay him and went on to work as a laborer for the government. He died in 1874, modestly successful financially and having been reunited with his children (his first wife died during 1844) in Washington during the 1850s.

Jennings' memoir, "A Colored Man's Reminiscenses of James Madison," was published in magazine form during 1863 and as a book during 1865. Jennings retained his fondness for both James and Dolley Madison, reportedly giving small amounts of money to the widow from his own pocket during her cash-strapped later years.

Eight of our earlier U.S. presidents were slave owners, I believe, something else to think about on MLK Day, and slave labor had a major part in construction of the White House itself.

And then there are those elements of racism that remain within many of us of a certain age, raised in places where nearly everyone was white. It wasn't until university and, later, the military, that I stopper perceiving folks who didn't look like me as, initially, the exotic "other." There's still a good deal of that going around.

In any case, this is a good day to think more about Dr. King and his legacy and our own track records and less, perhaps, about the fact we're inconvenienced because the Post Office and a variety of other public offices and institutions are closed in his honor.

Britannia rules the waves

2012-01-15T07:16:00.000-06:00

So instead of doing anything useful last night, I just sat there watching via DVD old episodes of "Lewis," the British IPV series (rebroadcast in the U.S. by PBS) featuring Inspector Robbie Lewis (Kevin Whatley, right) and his sidekick, DS James Hathaway (Laurence Fox).

I love this series. The acting (and interaction) of Whatley and Fox is a joy to behold; the scenery in and around Oxford, wonderful, and the plots rarely disappoint.

"Lewis" grew out of the earlier "Inspector Morse" series (33 episodes, 1987-2000) with the late John Thaw (1942-2002) as Morse and Whatley as Lewis, his sidekick. I've probably seen all of those episodes, too, and plan to waste this evening by rewatching one entitled "Cherubim and Seraphim." "Morse," too, was set in Oxford.

While I'm watching that, PBS will be rebroadcasting the second U.S. installment of season two of "Downton Abbey," another wildly popular ITV series. Season two was shown last year in the UK and season three is in the works. I'll look at that later.

If it weren't for "Downton Abbey," all we'd have to look forward to in the U.S. is the March HBO premiere of "Game Change," starring Julianne Moore as the eminently forgettable Sarah Palin and Ed Harris as John McCain.

Palin and McCain? What in the world is HBO thinking? And who in the world would want to watch that?

In the instance of television, at least, Britannia still rules the waves. And will continue to rule my heart, since a sixth "Lewis" series is planned for 2012 in the UK and that will show up eventually here.

With the exception of PBS, the sheer banality of American television programming continues to astonish. Even when you think we've got a winner (I really liked the NBC version of the genealogy-based documentary series "Who Do You Think You Are?"), it turns out the BBC got there first. "Who Do You Think ..." originated in the UK in 2004 and fresh episodes continue to air.

"Antiques Roadshow?" Yup. That's been running in Britain since 1979.

Endangered primates of Anglicania

2012-01-14T09:15:00.000-06:00

I love this piece of nonsense, but I’m not sure how well it will travel outside the Anglican community. Much background is needed to make it intelligible to a non-Episcopalian. Here goes.

The Episcopal Church, formed as a colonial wing of the Church of England, declared its independence when the United States did. None-the-less, it remains (somewhat tenuously because of its liberality) a member of the Anglican Communion, a vast assemblage of independent national churches around the globe also derived from the Church of England.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, currently Rowan Williams (top), heads the Church of England and is the titular (although powerless) head of the Anglican Communion. His right-hand man is the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu. Archbishop Rowan’s headquarters is Lambeth Palace in London. Williams is a great intellectual, but barely capable of coherent communication. High Anglican bishops (archbishops and the like) are called primates.

Traditional Anglican clerics, as with their Roman Catholic brethren, deplore gay people (although many are, in fact, gay) and look upon women primarily as useful for breeding and arranging flowers. Episcopalians, as well as increasing numbers in the Church of England, view women as, well, just people, as suited as men to serve as priests and bishops. This pisses off traditionalist clerics, who either leave or threaten to do so.

To capitalize on this discontent, the veteran of Hitler Youth who now heads the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict XVI, has established the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, to welcome disaffected Episcopal/Anglican clergy types alarmed by gay people and uppity women. Those who join are allowed to take along their wives, for the purposes of breeding and flower arranging.

I hope that long introduction didn’t spoil the fun:

Handwriting on the wall

2012-01-14T06:51:00.001-06:00

The so-called wall of fame is a feature of Lucas County's courthouse attic that I neglected to mention when writing earlier this week about a visit to the uppermost recesses to local government.

Hundreds of names, the majority inscribed into plaster, cover the south wall of the stair well that rises from the second floor to a door leading into the big open space under the roof. A few later names have been added in ink, more structurally kind perhaps but aesthetically suspect.

It's not clear how far back the names go, but perhaps the last 50 years would be a good guess. Courthouse staffers preparing to haul loads of clutter down three flights of stairs to a waiting pickup said anyone who ascends to the attic is invited to add his or her signature --- although I wonder about that (neither the alternate Frank nor I did).

In at least one instance, there's enough additional information associated with a name to give some idea of why the signer was there. Dale Jordan apparently was associated somehow with the courthouse's slate roof. Whether Frank Rogers, a December 1978 visitor, was associated with Jordan is another matter, although their boxes join. Mr. Folkerts, upper right, apparently made several return visits between 1993 and 1997.

If you want to take a closer look at the names, just right click on a photo and select "open link in new window."

I'm wondering if the fact fewer people carry pocket knives these days had anything to do with the shift from incised to superficial penmanship.

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I walked into Piper's for donuts yesterday morning complaining about the snow, the cold and how tired I was of winter and Jill said something insensitive like, "yeah, all two days of it." But I guess she's right.

We're due, according to forecasters, for a Sunday high near 50. Hopefully that will take care of the snow since it doesn't look like many of us worked up enough energy to actually shovel away what little fell. Colder temperatures and a little more snow seem to be headed our way after that. We need the moisture, but snow is a darned inconvenient way to get it sometimes.

Just to show you how unusual our current state of affairs is, Jon Pearson went kayaking on Red Rock, just up the road, last week. You can read about that and view some video clips here.

The (really really) great presentation

2012-01-13T07:04:00.000-06:00

I've been kicking myself all over the place this morning for not taking a camera along yesterday when we drove into Des Moines for Chariton's oral (and visual) application presentation before the Main Street Iowa Advisory Council. If there were Emmy awards for primetime Main Street presentations, we'd be a shoo-in. Seriously. It was that good.

That's said modestly because I had nothing to do with it, other than a brief speaking part near the beginning. The credit goes entirely to Karen Wilker and Kevin Graves with a strong graphics assist from Joe Milledge, of KIIC Radio.

Lacking a live photo, I'll make do with this stock photo of the main conference room of the Iowa Economic Authority, where the presentation took place. Imagine Wilker and Graves set up behind a remote radio bradcast table to the right of the screen up front; Shawn Garton, of Johnson Machine Works, who handled graphics presentation, at left; the chairs around the table filled with the advisory council and various Main Street Iowa personnel; and chairs against the wall entirely around the room filled with the Chariton delegation, perhaps 30 of us.

The up-front caution is that a strong presentation does not insure selection for Main Street Iowa and we're all too aware of our own areas of vulnerability, as I'd imagine the applicants from four other Iowa cities who also made presentations Thursday are, too. Selection announcements will be made during early February.

Karen and Kevin selected the format --- a live broadcast by talk-show hosts from the green room where the Chariton delegation had gathered prior to the presentation --- in part because we were the last presentation of the day, commencing at 3:30 p.m. and following four others. So it had to be lively and engaging. And it certainly was.

They worked nonstop on the presentation for two and a half days, after Kevin flew in from Colorado Springs where the consulting firm he operates is headquartered. We all got together Wednesday night for run-throughs which, admittedly, were a little rough. But everything had smoothed out by Thursday afternoon.

This was a carefully timed event. We had exactly five minutes in the conference room to set up --- and there were quite a few props involved. Then exactly 30 minutes for the presentation. Then 15 minutes for questions and answers.

We started exactly on time and finished exactly on time with county assessor Tim McGee as our personal timekeeper. It was bright, it was lively, the graphics were exceptional, no one fumbled or stuttered --- even once. And we got a couple of rounds of applause --- then some tough questions.

The Chariton delegation lined up around the room was pretty amazing, too. Students, the superintendent of schools, hospital administrator, city and county officials including the mayor, businesspeople, representatives of Hy-Vee and Johnson Machine Works, our resident legislators --- Iowa state Rep. Richard Arnold and state Sen. Paul McKinley (the three of us formed a subdelegation of Russell High School graduates). Many others.

This has been an amazing process that kind of began last May during the National Main Street Conference, which several of us attended, involving an incredible number of people and incredible community support. All sorts of people deserve all sorts of credit, but most of us I think will acknowledge Alyse Hunter, who chairs the Chariton Historic Preservation Commission and who always was working on some aspect of the application. And always, when the rest of us, faced by frequent setbacks, were wailing and gnashing our teeth and threatening to quit or hold our breaths until we turned blue, just glanced up and said quietly something to the effect, "Oh just calm down; it'll get better." And it always did.

The final question from the advisory council was, "what will you do if not selected?" The answer from Chamber president Dave Fletcher and Karen was, "get to work --- and see you next year." There's been a tremendous amount of growth in Chariton during this process, and that's most likely just what would happen I think.

The view from Lucas County's attic

2012-01-12T07:15:00.000-06:00

Frank Mitchell examines the bound 1875 property tax lists from three Lucas County townships. These volumes, in addition to containing historic records, are works of bookbinding art well into the 20th century.

The alternate Frank and I had an opportunity Wednesday afternoon to climb into the attic of the Lucas County Courthouse and look around a little. This is an area not often see by the general public, although it's hardly a secret and by no means off-limits. But safety issues have ended what once were routine visits by students touring the courthouse and the area's a little too dark and dusty for the tastes of many.

We were there for the historical society at the invitation of County Treasurer Phyllis Baker to take a look at the contents of her storage room, filled to overflowing with bound property tax lists dating from the 1860s through the 20th century marching in ranks around its walls as well as other records, ancient and modern.

Bound tax lists from the earliest years of Lucas County march in consecutive order on the lowest storage shelves in the treasurer's room.

While tax records of historical value are not endangered, they are affected by three issues: limited storage space, the fact county treasurers are no longer required by state law to retain more than 10 years of lists and the deteriorating condition of some early volumes.

The latter issue actually may be the less significant in Lucas County, which has done an excellent job of maintaining the integrity of these volumes. The calfskin bindings of only perhaps the earliest few years have deteriorated seriously and appear to need conservation or archival storage.

In any case, these records are likely to be the topic of continuing conversation this winter among such groups as the historical society, genealogical society, historical preservation commission as well as county officials.

I couldn't resist looking around a little while in the attic just because it's an interesting place. Presumably entirely open with basic wooden flooring when the courthouse was built in 1893, the attic was never intended for anything other than storage. The builders certainly didn't foresee the need for energy efficiency, nor did they most likely anticipate just how many records would be accumulated by courthouse departments as the years rolled by.

At some point, enclosed and locked storage rooms have been built around the perimeter of the area not involved in the raised courtroom ceiling and insulation has been added, leaving a series of floor-level walkways between storage rooms.

Looking at the courthouse from the outside, it's not evident that this actually is a brick building encased in stone. But that brickwork is evident in the attic.

This is the insider view of the four arched windows high above the main entrance on the courthouse's north front (below). The original windows have been removed and their tops filled with insulated panels.

And the view from those windows offers kind of a unique perspective on the north side of the Chariton square, too.

As it looks from the most westerly window.

And from the second window.

The third.

and finally, the most easterly.

+++

Winter finally came in overnight on a cold wind with perhaps an inch of snow here and a "blustery" forecast for the day.

Late yesterday morning, 50 or more family members, old friends and neighbors gathered on a hilltop in the Chariton Cemetery for cousin Verle (Johnson) Reynolds' graveside service (she died late Sunday afternoon, age 100). It was a beautiful, warm and sunny time --- high near 50 --- and winter coats seemed too much. The perfect day for a sendoff for someone who had lived life so fully and so long.

The temperature outside now is 12, the wind is fierce and a nearly full moon in the western sky looks like ice. I wouldn't want to stand on that hilltop today.

We're scheduled to head out after lunch for the oral presentation segment of Chariton's Main Street Application in Des Moines, providing weather elsewhere in the state doesn't result in its postponement for a day. There will be more than 25 of us, including our senator, Paul McKinley, and representative, Richard Arnold, who plan to meet us there.

Practice sessions last night demonstrated just how effective those who have been working hard on this aspect of the application have been. We're one of five applicants. Now if we can all just get to Des Moines to wrap up the application process, leaving everything finally in the hands of the decision-makers.

But would the UK take us back?

2012-01-11T06:46:00.000-06:00

Queen Elizabeth I (of the Americas?)

Well, that was inconvenient. But after a day of acute discomfort and another spent lying around like a beached whale, life is looking up.

The inevitable Mitt Romney took the New Hampshire primary overnight by roughly 40 percent, followed by the whacky Ron Paul, with 23. Even Jon Huntsman, whom no one had noticed before (with 17 percent), outdistanced the darlings of Iowa’s (and Lucas County’s) GOP lunatic fringe --- Rick Santorum, with 9 percent, and the cosmically underqualified Rick Perry, less than 1 percent.

I missed Gov. Terry Branstad’s state of the state address yesterday. Some catching up to do there.

Also Tuesday but down there in Oklahoma, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier district court ruling that a state law attempting to ban shari’ah (or Islamic) law --- apparently perceived by Southern Baptists to be a considerable threat in the Sooner State --- was an unconstitutional solution to a non-existent problem.

Newt Gingrich and Santorum are among the GOP candidates who feel threatened by shari’ah law, so it’ll be interesting to see if that issue comes up in South Carolina, where the Republican roadshow now is located in anticipation of that states’s Jan. 21 primary.

On the other side of the Atlantic, just to prove discontent knows no national boundaries, Scotland’s devolved government is pushing for a 2014 referendum on independence (well, sort of --- the queen would stay). London wants an earlier vote, lessening time for the Scottish National Party to build its case.

Scotland and England united formally in 1707 nearly a century after James (VI of Scotland and I of England and Ireland) inherited the English crown from Elizabeth I in 1603.

I’m a little more in tune with this situation than our own right now, I figure, after lying on my sickbed for two days watching multiple episodes of an old BBC series, “What the Romans (Tudors, Stuarts, Victorians, etc.) Did for Us.”

So I’m wondering, if Scotland goes, would the United Kingdom, minus a fourth of its unitedness, consider taking us back? On the one hand, we'd get Elizabeth II, and Elizabeths always have worked well for both the British and Americans. On the other hand, a Charles would follow. And Charleses have never worked out quite so well.

Under the weather ...

2012-01-09T05:52:00.000-06:00

And yes it's going around. Yuk. So here's a photo taken last evening along the east side of the big marsh pond as unseasonable January weather continues.

Mourning into dancing

2012-01-08T07:37:00.000-06:00

I had to think a little before deciding Mary Louise wouldn’t mind if I reviewed her funeral. She had a wry sense of humor after all and might even have done something similar, circumstances being a little different.

But the first thing spotted this morning after coming downstairs to make coffee was the carnation brought home from yesterday’s service, parked in a glass of water beside the kitchen sink. I took that as a sign.

I’ve mentioned the circumstances previously --- a heart attack prior to Christmas, then a time of marginal consciousness prior to final departure Dec. 30 from the hospice house in Creston, near her sister and nephew.

Mary Louise was not an intimate friend, more of a fond acquaintance. We’d last met at the Lucas County Genealogical Society’s Christmas gathering on Dec. 12 where the big platter of chocolate in various incarnations she’d brought up from Russell led to a feeding frenzy.

I think she would have been gratified, perhaps a little surprised, that those of us who gathered at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) late Saturday morning to remember and celebrate her life filled the parking lot with our vehicles. It’s a big parking lot.

I prefer funerals held in churches, when appropriate. Nothing against funeral home chapels, but if you’re affiliated with a church and it’s big enough why not use it? These places are intended for all phases of life, beginning to end, after all.

Besides, First Christian has wonderfully comfortable pews. Yes, I know that shouldn’t be a consideration.

And the Disciples are accomplished cooks (lunch followed). Another inappropriate thought on the long march from the end of the parking lot to the church door.

The carnations were a lovely touch. Mary Louise’s sister, Catherine, greeted each of us as we entered, handing out flowers in various colors from vases on a big table near the guest book --- color-coded to reflect how Mary’s life was intertwined with our own.

She was a busy person, wearing many hats accumulated since her 2007 retirement, when she moved to Russell to be near her late mother, Mary Ellen --- genealogical society, Russell Historical Society, Pioneer Cemetery Commission (which she chaired) and First Christian, the childhood congregation she had rejoined, where she had been deaconess, Sunday school teacher and church board member. Memorials, appropriately, will go to the church’s furnace and air conditioning fund.

As at any church where militant ushers are not present, the back pews filled first (I was a little late, marched in typical self-absorbed fashion past the pewful of people I should have sat with and ended up toward the front). Balance was restored only when the family entered.

The ashes were wrapped in a roadmap. Wonderful! Few people enjoyed road trips more.

Mary Louise was a person of great calm and deliberation, always moving forward but, as someone said, as a rule rather slowly. I thought about that after sitting there reflecting on what a great service it had been (and about lunch) when it became evident we’d been listening to an extension of the eulogy and that the sermon was just beginning (it was a good sermon, however; I’m not complaining).

Pastor C.J. Latham did as good a job as I’ve heard of capturing in words the essence of the departed. It was a pleasure to listen to.

And the lunch --- well, Mary Louise certainly would have enjoyed that. Loose meat sandwiches, cheesy potato casseroles, deviled eggs, many salads, cake. Good conversation in a packed parish hall, too, about Mary Louise and everything else under the sun.

I’ve walked away from far too many funerals over the years --- occasionally depressed, sometimes distressed and now and then lifted up. This was one of the latter. I hope Mary Louise, wherever she’s traveling now, is able to appreciate just how effectively her family and friends echoed the Psalmist:

"Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness."

Martyrs & mirrors

2012-01-07T08:08:00.001-06:00

Just for the heck of it this morning I hauled my copy of Martyrs Mirror downstairs --- all 1,158 pages of it. The original full title of this mighty volume is “The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians who baptized only upon confession of faith, and who suffered and died for the testimony of Jesus, their Saviour, from the time of Christ to A.D. 1660.” You can see why a shorter title was in order.

“Defenseless” here translates as non-resistance (or pacifism, if you like) and, traditionally, Martyrs Mirror has been second only to the Bible in importance to Anabaptists --- Mennonites, Amish and the like.

Although the tales of martyrdom begin on the edge of Christianity, a majority of the horror stories involve persecution by the established Christian church during its first 1,600 years of some who begged to differ --- notably the Anabaptists who practiced both what now is sometimes called believer’s baptism as well as strict non-resistance. Both practices were considered by the Christian majorities of their day, once Christianity got rolling, to be heresy, which translates as a threat to the temporal power of the established church.

I keep this door-stop-sized volume around to read, now and then, but also because it serves as a fairly good reminder of the Christian proclivity to become obsessed first with acquiring power, then maintaining it, often with weapons ranging from sharp tongues to swords and fire. Anabaptists, by the way, rarely have fallen into this trap.

Christianity is not alone in this --- many religions share it. It’s what happens when God is perceived first as being on one side or another and then as endorsing whatever tactics are required to gain and keep the upper hand.

There’s been a good deal of this going around during the current election cycle, led mostly I think by Christians who sense their control eroding --- from the all-male Roman Catholic hierarchy at one extreme to Southern Baptists and their kind, ranging to the lunatic fringe, on the other.

I’m fascinated by the fact the Mormons, represented by the inevitable Mitt Romney, have the opportunity as part of this political campaign to become the focus of frightened Christians of a new era, mocked and demonized anew for the admittedly absurd ruffles and flourishes of their distinctly American faith.

And by the importance of the issue of same-sex marriage and the rights of gay people in general to Republican campaigners.

A fairly recent Web site launched by Fred Karger, gay gadfly and perhaps the most marginal GOP presidential contender, entitled “The Top 10 Craziest Mormon Beliefs,” is a good example of mockery.

Curiously, the site comes from someone who should know better, being a member of a somewhat marginalized community himself. You can read more about the site, from a gay LDS perspective, and find a link to it here.

And yes I know the Mormon hierarchy worked actively for California’s Proposition 8. That support, presumably, is what motivated Barger’s modest venture into demonization. So the game can be played in more than one camp.

There’s actually nothing new here. Christians of non-Mormon varieties have been saying (and writing) similar things since, oh let’s see, the 1830s.

The wonderful thing is, there’s nothing more whacky in Mormon theology than can be found in Christianity theology in general. Born of a virgin impregnated without penetration by God? Oh come now. God’s will written down in that cobbled-together, contradictory and scientifically and historically misguided old book the Bible? Bread and wine become flesh and blood, you say? That guy Jesus rose physically from the dead and we’re going to, too? Ridiculous. It’s somehow up to us to decide who is and who isn’t “saved”? Just plain crazy.

But it’s the variety of crazy we’ve gotten used to.

The old presumption was that what we’ve come to affirm about eternal matters can be proved and that the answers to all temporal questions flow logically from those beliefs. Most sensible believers know now that proof is lacking. It’s all about faith --- antidote to fear and unfulfilled life based on yearning and, most importantly for the believer, on leading. Nothing more --- or less.

That guy whose resurrection we affirm as God’s fools if nothing else, distilled the Way into two commandments: love God, love your neighbor. And by implication, demonstrate both.

Part of the demonstration process, applicable to all camps, involves passing when the opportunity arises to demonize (damn, it’s hard to resist temptation) and being careful to mock only when mockery is due and even then, gently.

God knows, none of this should be seen as an endorsement of Mitt Romney. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

County Farm Cemetery update

2012-01-06T05:53:00.000-06:00

Back in July, I wrote a little about a Chariton Historic Preservation Commission plan to place a sign at the Lucas County Farm Cemetery to commemorate those buried there --- all but four in unmarked graves.

Thanks in large part to the efforts of Commissioner Melody Wilson, who coordinated research and logistics, the sign has been designed and will be ordered officially next week from Iowa Prison Industries (which produces much of Iowa's roadside signage), then put into place by the county engineering department.

The little cemetery alongside Burlington Northern & Santa Fe tracks just northwest of town is the sole remnant of the Lucas County Farm, where the poor and afflicted were, when other options were not available, housed, cared for and in some cases buried commencing in 1869.

The sign will contain the names of 38 people whose burials are recorded in county home records, county death records (after 1880) and in some cases newspaper accounts. There may be more graves, since no effort ever was made to keep records specifically related to the cemetery. The spellings are not necessarily accurate, but are as recorded originally.

Here are the names and dates that will be on the new cemetery sign:

James Adkins, 1838-1912

J.C. Berry, 1837-1911

Mrs. J.Y. Berry, d. 1918

John Burns, 1863-1920

Jacob Bown, 1849-1907

James O. Bryan, 1867-1885

Edmon Carey, 1817-1894

Rachel L. Coleman, 1850-1898

Horace Coles, 1860-1895

Archie Cramer, d. 1917

Lewis Erickson, d. 1909

Louis Ferm, 1830-1917

Chas. Freed, 1869-1890

Benjamine Hillen, 1841-1879

Elias Jacobson, 1837-1916

Ida Mae Jenkins, 1887-1905

Albert Johnson, 1865-1887

P.G. Johnson, 1846-1911

Henry Kelley, 1820-1894

James Lafyett, 1849-1895

Wm. H. Linn, 1849-1885

Lydia Long, 1804-1891

Arthur Lucas, 1858-1893

Lucy Mathews, 1845-1914

John Miller, 1848-1917

Mary A. Moor, 1831-1879

Ola Olson, 1871-1911

Mrs. Swede Olson, 1816-1892

Peter Pearson, 1819-1902

James Perkins, 1802-1892

John S. Reed, 1827-1902

John Reiner, 1831-1918

Lizzie Shambory, d. 1916

Rebecca A. Shipley, 1815-1889

John Smith, 1826-1906

Nute Wayland, d. 1926

Alfred Whitcomb, d. 1926

Wesley Willey, 1808-1890

We've also talked about erecting some sort of memorial at the Potter's Field section of the Chariton Cemetery, where well over 100 Lucas Countyans rest in unmarked graves. That is a somewhat more complicated project, however, in large part because of the large number of burials. So we're still talking about that one.

Dispatches from the holy wars: 1/5

2012-01-05T07:26:00.000-06:00

Washington Gov. Chris Gregorie will back same-sex marriage legislation in her state.

The air seems lighter and perhaps the sun will shine a little brighter today as the various political entourages complete their moves elsewhere.

All Iowans can be thankful for the cash they left behind. It's not clear exactly how much that will turn out to be, but BuzzFeed Politics totaled up media spending and estimated the take in that category at $15.6 million --- $6.15 million from the Perry Camp; $4.2 million, Romney; $2.7 million, Paul; $1.3 million, Gingrich; $111,000, Santorum; and $24,000, Bachmann.

If nothing else, Santorum certainly got more bang for his buck than any of the other candidates.

Somewhat more than 400 Republicans turned out to caucus in Lucas County I've heard, giving 30 percent to Santorum, 24 percent to Perry and 20 percent to Romney. The fondness for Perry was a local peculiarity, of course, but it always warms my heart when GOPers fall into line behind a candidate who is totally unqualified and can't possibly win a national election. Wonderful!

And the close finish between Romney, Santorum and Paul means Republicans will continue to rip each other's guts out politically for a long time to come, something else guaranteed to warm the heart of a Democrat. Who could ask for anything more? Onward Christian soldiers!

+++

Just in time for the new legislative session, Polk County District Court Judge Eliza Ovrom Wednesday ordered the Iowa Department of Health to issue a new birth certificate listing two mothers as parents of their 2-year-old daughter.

The plaintiffs in the case were Melissa and Heather Gartner, who first filed suit during 2009, arguing that since they were married under Iowa law both also had the right to be listed as parents on their daughter's birth certificate (Heather Gartner conceived using donated sperm). The state had argued that Melissa Garner would have to adopt the child, since she was not a "husband."

Judge Ovrom ruled that the legality of same-sex marriage in Iowa carries with it the right of both parties in a marriage to be recognized from the start as parents --- not just the birth mother.

Which seems only fair, since a heterosexual woman equipped with a husband who shoots blanks and therefore is forced to rely on donated sperm would have no problem under current DHS rules obtaining parentlal recognition for her sterile spouse.

This, of course, will distress Republicans, and most likely will become a legislative issue.

+++

Out west, the governor of Washington, Chris Gregorie, announced her support Wednesday for legislation that could make her state the seventh to fully recognize same-sex marriage. Washington already has strong domestic partner legislation.

Although there are no guarantees the legislation will pass, if it does Washington would join Iowa, New York, Massachusetts, Connecituct, Vermont and New Hampshire, as well as the District of Columbia.

+++

One of my favorite stories of the week involves the resignation of Gabino Zavala, an auxiliary bishop in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, after the revelation that he has a secret family that includes two teen-age children.

The archdiocese, which paid out $660 million in 2007 as compensation for clergy sexual abuse dating back to the 1940s, also has reached out to aid financially and "spiritually" the rogue priest's family --- having finally located a priest who is demonstrably heterosexual.

The indifferent, the bad and the ugly

2012-01-04T07:15:00.000-06:00

A curious thing about the inevitable Mitt Romney, who squeezed out an eight-vote plurality last night among Iowa Republican caucus-goers, is that he could run easily as a Democrat if the situation required it. He’s already proved that in Massachusetts.

That doesn’t mean he has progressive convictions, merely that by obscuring any convictions he really may have, if he has any, he retains the ability to shape-shift into whatever it takes to draw voters. That’s useful when, rather than running for president, you’ll be running against the incumbent.

Rick Santorum’s close second-place finish was hardly a surprise after it became evident the reactionary Christian types were going to circle their wagons around him. Other than his opposition to same-sex marriage, the issue upon which Christianity as we know it apparently will rise or fall, no one really knows much else about him.

The most reassuring thing about the caucus results involved who was sent packing.

Rick Perry, for instance, who threw his Brokeback Mountain coat and cowboy boots into the back of the truck and headed home to Texas, where stupid plays more effectively than it does in the rest of the country. Hooray for Iowans --- who handed that pretty but dim-witted good old boy his first election defeat.

Iowans also had few problems recognizing Newt Gingrich as the rather sad, disorganized, hypocritical and morally bankrupt has-been that he is.

And poor Michele Bachman, who proved that old-time religion won’t take you all that far when it’s combined with an indifferent education and the absence of a penis.

The madder-than-hell crowd continued to gather round Ron Paul, who came in third. Neither especially religious nor especially thoughtful, this group knows what it’s against (taxes, for instance) but has no clear idea of what it might be for. Dr. Paul has the ability to say at least one thing that will appeal at some point to nearly everyone. Those who become fixated on that bright and shiny object then fail to note that much of the other stuff he says is just plain nuts.

The survivors will be moving on now, thank goodness --- we’ve had about enough here in the heartland for this four-year cycle.

I’ll be watching to see if the Christian crusaders sharpen their anti-Mormon knives and get busier slicing and dicing Mitt now and if Santorum can gain traction elsewhere on a single issue. Blessedly, this all will be observed from a distance.

+++

The Iowa caucuses have drawn their usual share of criticism, based principally on the assertion our state isn’t representative of the nation as a whole, whatever that means.

Of course it isn’t. Every Iowan knows that. It’s not intended to be. And what state is “representative”? That’s one of the reasons why having 50 of them makes life so interesting.

What the Iowa caucuses do is give anyone interested in running for president many highly public opportunities to shoot himself or herself in the foot. It’s just as well that happens early in the process. And it could happen anywhere. We just came up with the idea first and have managed to hang on to it.

It's also useful to remember that Romney hardly campaigned in Iowa at all, wisely steering clear of the Christian freak show. And won it (narrowly) anyway. Which gives some idea of his appeal.

Besides, a heck of a lot of money pours into Iowa during the caucus season. Who could argue with a growth industry?

Iowa nice ...

2012-01-03T08:15:00.000-06:00

Here's the video of the day about Iowa. Be warned that this is the "unclean" version, so if the f-word offends, don't listen.

Costume drama and cranberries

2012-01-03T06:39:00.000-06:00

Dame Maggie Smith as Violet, dowager countess of Grantham

Well, those blamed caucuses and that parade of gibbering GOP babboons will clear out of Iowa after tonight and we can get on to more important things --- like the second season premier of Downton Abbey Sunday on PBS.

Premiere in the U.S., I guess, since the newest series already has been broadcast in the U.K. and plans have been anounced for a third during 2012.

Although it's a little bland, Downton has proved in the U.K. at least to be the most popular British costume drama since 1981's "Brideshead Revisitied." Which reminds me that I've got Brideshead on DVD and should watch it again.

Personally, Dame Maggie Smith's antics as Violet, dowager countess of Grantham, are what make the whole thing worth the price of admission. I've been watching Dame Maggie since 1969's "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie." Few chew up and spit out scenery to better effect.

Siobhan Finneran and Rob James-Collier

Worth watching, too, are Siobhan Finneran as the villainous Sarah O'Brien, lady's maid to Cora, the incumbent countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern); and Rob James-Collier as the decorative but dastardly footman Thomas Barrow.

Sarah, you may remember, ended the initial series somewhat remorseful after strategically arranging a bar of soap that caused the incumbent countess to fall while emerging from the bath, resulting in miscarriage of the hoped for male Grantham heir and thereby allowing the series to roll onward into World War I.

+++

Christmastide continues apace, heading for the Epiphany on Friday --- but everyone else in my neighborhood has given up. All the bright lights have been removed or turned off --- it's kind of gloomy out there.

I keep lighting the candles in the lanterns out front, however, although high winds Sunday started blowing the lanterns around so I moved them to securer spots and took a night off. After Friday night, the lanterns will come inside for a good cleaning, then move to their perch in the garage until I come up with an excuse to use them again. Then I'll start packing away the decorations inside.

I suppose I'd be tired of Christmas, too, if I'd started on Thanksgiving. But since I didn't, there seems to be no hurry to pack it away.

+++

And I made cranberry sauce yesterday after a couple of forlorn-looking packages of berries still in the produce department called out to me as I passed.

Ocean Spray whole-berry sauce in a can suits me just fine, much of the time, but I like something a little more adventuresome occasionally, too.

For this, I start with three-quarters of a cup of water, three-quarters of a cup of sugar and a 12-ounce package of berries, washed and picked over to remove the spoiled ones. Cook that combination for five minutes or so, until the berries start to pop, then throw in a cup of orange juice, the grated zest of an orange, a teaspoon of cinnamon and mid-sized cans (drained) of crushed pineapple and mandarin orange slices. Finally, add a small Granny Smith apple, peeled and chopped (this supposedly provides pectin needed to make the sauce thicken). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the apple vanishes. Cool and eat.

Two cautions --- you need to watch this carefully, or it will boil over and make an awful mess; and this will be tart. I like it that way. If you don't, add more sugar.

Houses then & houses now

2012-01-02T05:17:00.002-06:00

It would have made more sense to be out with a camera on Saturday, when the high topped 60, than on Sunday, when strong winds made the 30s seem much colder. But you never know when inspiration is going to strike. And I'd been wanting to play the before-and-after game for a while.

This photo looking northwest along South Grand Street, taken perhaps during the winter of 1897-98, started the whole thing. The story of "A Klondyke Team" will have to wait for another time. This time, I'm interested in the buildings in the distance.

The photographer was standing in front on the Gibbon house when the shot was taken. Today, the nearest house across the street still is there, although substantially altered, but the site of the second house is now a vacant lot. In the distance is the Crocker house, now Fielding Funeral Home, in its earliest incarnation.

The Crocker house was designed during 1888 for Frank R. Crocker, whose star as a banker then was rising, by his brother-in-law, Minneapolis architect Edward S. Stebbins. Although the house has been greatly expanded and altered, the original house still is recognizable.

After 1900, as Crocker approached the financial debacle that would cause him in 1907 to kill himself here with an overdose of morphine, the house was substantially expanded. Colonial revival porches were added, as was a wing to the west and a wing to the north, consisting mostly of a porte cochere.

By the late 1920s, after the home's second family, the Horace Larimers, had moved out and Ralph Downs had moved in briefly to operate a funeral home here, the home looked like this when viewed from the east.

Sam and Edith Beardsley purchased the building in 1931 and remodeled it into what then was southern Iowa's finest funeral home, extending the west wing to include a first-floor garage with quarters to expand the family's second-floor apartment above.

Keith Fielding, after purchasing the funeral home from Edith Beardsley, continued to modify the home, first removing porches and adding more rooms and a new entrance to the south and east, then a chapel to the north, fronted by stonework and pillars from the earlier porches.

Here's what this section of South Grand Street looked like Sunday, also viewed from the front yard of the Gibbon home.

+++

This fine old home was built not long after 1900 at the Intersection of South Eighth Street and Grace Avenue by William B. Penick and his wife, Kate (Waddell). Penick, associated early with the Manning & Penick Bank, he spent most of his later years as a gentleman farmer, stockraiser and land speculator.

The Penicks built their new home in the Spring Lake Addition to Chariton, which William B. Penick developed in a corn field south of the CB&Q tracks along both sides of South Eighth Street. Its east-west streets were named for family members --- Grace Avenue for his daughter, Grace (who married J. Sherman Miller; their fine colonial revival home is just to the southeast of the Penick house); Penick Avenue, for the family (William B. Penick's brother, James A. Penick, built his fine house a block north, in the northwest corner of the intersection of South Eighth and Penick); and Stuart Avenue, honoring his brother-in-law and sister, the Frank Q. Stuarts.

The Penick house, as built, was closely related in design to at least two other fine old Chariton houses, the A.H. McCollouth and Larimer/Copeland houses, both along the north side of East Auburn Avenue just before the railroad bridge and both still standing in good states or repair. Circular extensions to the front porches of each underline the relationship.

Although the Penick house still appears to be in a good state of repair, subsequent owners have not been kind to it and it has been stripped of nearly all architectural detail inside and out. Lost to foreclosure, it currently is for sale for the absurd price of $25,900.

And yes, there once was a Spring Lake in Chariton --- more like Spring Pond than Spring Lake, but full of water nonetheless. South Eighth Street, when the Spring Lake Addition was developed, led to Spring Lake Park in what now is the somewhat isolated residential area south of the U.S. 34 bypass. The new Rock Island line, however, cut through this area a few years later, ruining it for park purposes.

+++

As I said, the Addison H. McCollough house along East Auburn Avenue was closely related in design to the Penick house. Here's the way it looked during 1903 (early photos of both the Penick and McCollough houses are taken from the program for Chariton's 1903 Chautauqua).

Here's what the McCollough house looked like this fall, still in a good state of repair although a little hemmed in now by later buildings.

People who pay attention to old houses generally notice that this old house, although smaller, is in some ways a mirror image of its neighbor three doors to the east, the Larimer/Copeland house (below).

Balmerizing Iowa's progressive tradition

2012-01-01T07:36:00.000-06:00

Randall Balmer

There’s nothing like a little word play to get the new year off to a lively start, so I’ve been fussing this morning about the terms progressive, conservative and reactionary. A new piece by Randall Balmer at Religion Dispatches entitled “How Iowa Became a Stronghold of the Religious Right” set me off.

Balmer, professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University, answers the implied question in that title by suggesting that the rise of the religious right has endangered Iowa’s “strong progressive tradition.”

Almost an Iowa boy, Balmer spent part of his youth in Des Moines, where his father was pastor of a large Evangelical Free Church congregation.

He has since progressed to the Episcopal priesthood and written extensively from a progressive standpoint on the political impact of conservative and reactionary religion. He appears now and then on talk shows and has become a go-to person for media types trying to understand old-time new-time religion and its implications.

I’m defining “progressive” here as forward movement, “conservative” as resistance to movement and “reactionary” as backward movement. Conservative is fairly straightforward, but I’m not sure what to do with a reactionary who defines progress as moving backwards.

But there’s no doubt that what we’ve seen in the Iowa Caucus process to date, or at least that part of it highlighted by the media, has been a continued reactionary renaissance, noted four years ago, too, in the ascendancy of the greasy Mike Huckabee.

Neither GOP candidates nor their backers seem to have any idea of what the future might look like or how to get there unless it involves returning to the past, which --- like the rug that’s been pulled --- is no longer there and cannot be reclaimed.

Besides, I’m not that convinced Iowa actually has a “strong progressive tradition.” Like every other state, the Iowa record is a mixed bag. Spared a slave-based cultural tradition and the Reconstruction aftermath, we’ve always appeared more progressive than, say, Mississippi --- the South’s favorite whipping boy.

On the other hand, I’d be willing to bet that had a bunch of Baptists gotten together in the 1950s to propose a constitutional amendment banning interracial marriage, something imposed legislatively in other states but never in Iowa where progressive leadership prevailed, a majority of Iowans would have voted for it.

We have for the most part done a good job of capitalizing on shared assumptions --- like the value of public education. That consensus may be fraying a little, however. And shared assumptions have power only so long as they’re --- shared.

We’ve proved vulnerable to wild cards, like the Iowa Supreme Court decision that held same-sex marriage, although culturally suspect, was not constitutionally prohibited.

The curious thing about the caucus process this year is that it’s been almost entirely about sex --- gay sex --- in large part because of that decision. How peculiar. Equally peculiar --- sex seems to be uppermost on the minds of most churches, at least if you pay attention to media reports.

And sex makes strange bedfellows, if you’ll pardon the expression. Catholics were the LGBT people of the 19th and early 20th century among Iowa Protestants. But now, according to the latest Iowa poll, the state’s religious reactionaries, most of them Protestant, are gathering around Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic.

And what’s going to happen to these poor folks if the GOP standard bearer turns out to be a Mormon (the inevitable Mitt Romney now leads Register polling)? After all those years invested in demonizing that religious tradition.

No doubt Balmer is right about the impact of reactionary religion on the Grand Old Party, but I think he overestimates Iowa’s progressive tradition. And perhaps underestimates the ability, once reactionaries have made themselves irrelevant, of conservatives and progressives to do a little constructive fence-mending in the area of shared assumptions. We’ll see.

Mary Louise ...

2011-12-31T07:35:00.000-06:00

Mary Louise on Dec. 12

Mary Louise Reeves, friend and mainstay of the Russell Historical Society, Lucas County Genealogical Society, Lucas County Pioneer Cemetery Commission, First Christian Church and more, died last evening at the Creston Greater Regional Medical Center Hospice Home. May light perpetual shine upon her.

Four hundred two posts, 365 days

2011-12-31T07:10:00.000-06:00

Four hundred and two posts have been added to this blog during 2011, which meets and exceeds the goal of a new year resolution made a year ago --- to write and post something every day, occasionally more often. That’s a surprise. “Discipline” is not my middle name.

I’m content with much of what’s here, but by no means all. Some days, it’s a stretch to come up with something to write about. When the stretch is too great, the result is sadly obvious.

Too often, I break commandments preached for years. Don’t trip a reader with self-indulgence, clumsy phrasing and esoterica or by violating basic rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Don’t show off (I know more than you do and I’m going to prove it). And be your own best editor --- keep paring away excess words until what’s left is lean and spare and elegant.

I’d rather write more about local history, but to do that usefully and well requires a great deal of research time. I’m surprisingly busy, too often short of time --- other than these few early morning hours.

Google (which powers this blog) analytics can be humbling. Going back to 2005, the most popular post here has little to do with my input, merely with the fact it contains words often searched for. I feel better about the post in second place, World War II: Lessons in their dying. Also in the Big Six is Becoming Lucas County; I'm happy about that, too.

Any blogger can skew his or her "page hits" result by writing consistently about what's current, or controversial. This blog got a lot of mileage this year out of Stephen Bloom and Cintra Wilson.

Any post about old houses is good for a few hundred hits; nearly everything about Lucas County history makes a respectable showing.

Iowa boys play "Hide/Seek," a post about a National Portrait Gallery exhibit featuring artists whose works were informed in various ways by sexual orientation --- including Iowa's Grant Wood and Carl Van Vechten, was surprisingly popular. Right up there with a post about Buffalo Bill, also an Iowa native, but so far as I know a straight one.

I like to write about LGBT issues now and then --- because I can. Much of the best and the brightest of my generation of gay men died of AIDS and the majority of the heterosexual majority didn't care. If I can twist the knife a little, good.

Same goes for religion, always on the outside looking in; after fussing about it now and then over the years, would be nowhere else. It's always surprising how many who logically should want nothing to do with Christianity can't leave it alone.

In any case, a year is ending and I guess I'll keep writing into the new, primarily an exercise in self-indulgence. I do, however, appreciate every hit and every comment no matter how it comes --- via the blog, Facebook or an email. Some of you are my conscience --- when tempted to go entirely over the top I think of you and step back. Others inspire me in all kinds of ways you couldn't possibly know about.

Thanks, and happy new year!

Will it last 150 years?

2011-12-30T06:49:00.000-06:00

It seems just wrong to be out walking on the 28th of December without a winter coat, but what can you do when temperatures are in the 50s? With a little rain in the forecast, today's predicted high is 48 and Saturday's, 56. Might as well be in Tennessee --- or Texas.

I suppose a guy could argue all that hot air rising from the mouths of Republican presidential candidates is the root cause, but more than likely just it's just plain old global warming --- something Republicans decline to acknowledge.

I've been inventorying the few remaining photographs in two small albums that came to the historical society during 1970 from the Mae Glenn Gasser estate.

This beautiful little album was a New Years gift to Mae's mother, Maria (Cook) Glenn, on Jan. 1, 1864, from Maria's sister, Mary. That means it's more than 150 years old. The binding still is in perfect condition, although the gold clasp is broken and partly missing and the album pages have come loose from the binding and are just floating around inside. But still ...

Mae was one of Chariton's great characters, living until her death in 1969 in the house where she was born a half block east of the southeast corner of the square. Her father, Henry Shannon Glenn, operated a profitable and widely respected wagon factory on the half block just east of the house prior to his death in 1905.

Mae had no children, although she married three times --- first to Harry Yost, a marriage that ended quickly and was never mentioned again; then to Ernest Gasser; and finally, to Frank Patterson. Frank did not survive long enough to allow Mae to transition in various legal documents from "Gasser" to "Patterson," however, so she reclaimed "Gasser" once Frank was gone and stuck with it.

Many of her personal belongings, like these little albums, ended up in the historical society collection because there was really no one to pass them on to. Her three siblings all died as youngsters --- two of scarlet fever and one of accidental poisoning. A child (little Mae, perhaps?), however, has gotten hold of this album at some point --- many of the pages inside are covered with pencil scribbles.

It's the quality of the binding that impressed me. This was not, remember, something manufactured for the especially affluent, just an item that would have been found in a case at one of the general stores in the Pennsylvania town where the Cooks and Glenns lived before 1869, when Henry and Maria came to Chariton.

I got to think about that binding in relation to the new Dollar General Store now under construction at the intersection of Court Avenue and North 17th street, where I turn when headed for the museum. This metal and concrete building will replace the current Dollar General, just north of the square, where I understand yet another "dollar store" of some sort will be located.

It doesn't seem to me that Chariton really needs two "dollar stores," but since I've never been inside the current one and actually have no idea what's for sale there, I could be wrong. I'm willing to bet, however, that nothing on the shelves of either will last 150 years.

Children of the corn

2011-12-29T06:10:00.000-06:00

The next Tammy Faye Bakker?

It’s getting nuttier and nuttier around here as the GOP’s Iowa Caucus traveling freak show closes in on Jan. 3. And kind of bloody, too.

Old Kent Sorenson (left) led Michele Bachmann into that clearing in the cornfield yesterday, but spared her the barbed wire, the corn husks and the cross --- merely endorsed Ron Paul instead.

Sorenson, state senator (as of 2010) and pointy-headed lump from Indianola, had been until earlier in the day Bachmann’s state chairman. After campaigning with her in Indianola Wednesday, he drove off to defect --- reportedly after assuring Bachmann that he planned to stick with her.

The more I see of Bachmann, the more I like her --- although totally unsuited to govern, not well educated and woefully misguided, she does seem to be sincere and consistent.

I can see Bachmann emerging from this as a gay icon of the Tammy Faye Bakker Messner genre. Lord knows, us faggots have traditionally loved a good underdog; and lord knows, Bachmann is one of those. And we don’t mind if she doesn’t have a penis, the big sticking point among her Christian “friends.” But can she sing and dance?

The question now, of course, is who is He Who Walks Behind the Rows, if you’ll pardon the Stephen King analogy (short story, 1977 ; various film adaptations commencing in 1983)?

Certainly not Rick Perry, who is kind of pretty but whose intelligence level is in the corncob range; nor Rick Santorum, obsessed with gay sex but having none of the fun that entails; nor Newt Gingrich, among the saddest of morally bankrupt and incompetent has-beens ever to hit the campaign trail.

That leaves Ron Paul, but that guy’s a loon, nuttier than my Walmart fruit cake and would be certified as such if he’d ever submit to examination. And so are most of his followers, including (now) Kent Sorenson. These are the folks who believe Jesus was dropped off near Bethlehem by a flying saucer and shape-shifted into the form of an infant.

That leaves the inevitable Mitt Romney. Of course. Look into those eyes, listen to him speak. There’s nothing inside that pretty head of his other than a “vacancy” sign --- plenty of space waiting for that giant red-eyed monster to emerge from amongst the rows of corn and move in.

It’s been a wonderful caucus season --- if you enjoy watching Republicans demonstrate day after day how morally, politically, socially and spiritually bankrupt they are or Christians turning faith into farce. I’m gonna miss it.

Under the buttonball tree

2011-12-28T06:36:00.000-06:00

I've slipped a sycamore seed pod (aka buttonball) into the mix of sweetgum and magnolia pods plus homemade ornaments on the kitchen table to uphold Iowa's place in the field of natural Christmas decor (the other pods are native Alabamans) now that the season is winding down.

It would be possible to bedeck an entire tree with home-grown decorations gathered along trails and fencelines and in fields around here and I probably could do it --- if I weren't so blamed lazy. Have trouble getting a tree with storebought decor organized. Maybe next year.

Wandering around in a stand of young sycamores at Red Haw yesterday and looking up, it took me a while to figure out how to get even a single buttonball down --- they hang from long strands of tough fiber. Finally picked up a fallen limb, hooked a lower sycamore limb and pulled it down to eye level.

There are several sycamores in the woods at Red Haw, some giants, all recognizable by their creamy white exfoliating bark. These younger sycamores probably were planted intentionally in an area long the trail that descends south toward the southwest finger of the lake.

Distinctive sycamore leaves, not decaying quite as fast as they might in other years because of limitied snowfall, are still scattered around under the trees.

There's still plenty to see outdoors this time of year, even through the predominant color is brown. You do have to look up, down and sideways, however, as well as straight ahead.

A good number of white-tails were sharing the woods with me late yesterday afternoon, crashing through the undergrowth. I keep thinking of "Granny Got Run Over by a Reindeer," but we maintained a polite distance.

Blogs and old houses

2011-12-27T06:23:00.001-06:00

James and Dolley Madison's Montpelier.

There are sagging shelves all over the place around here loaded with heavy (and expensive) books about old houses, nearly all in the United States and the United Kingdom, invested in over the years. I look at them regularly and probably will buy more this year (making a list; checking it twice) --- but the Web, especially the growing number of house-related blogs, has made my obsession with historic buildings much livelier than it used to be. Virtual tourism (or architectural voyeurism if you like) can be a wonderful thing.

Although the National Trust for Historic Preservation has a fairly ugly Web site, the site is a good portal to some of my favorite house blogs. And the National Trust's Preservation Nation Blog, although general, is a good read in itself. Go the bottom of the Trust's cover page, however, and you'll see a scroll-strip of National Trust properties, all leading to excellent Web sites about each, sometimes with links to related blogs. Here's another National Trust blog related specifically to historic sites.

Brucemore, in Cedar Rapids and Iowa's only National Trust property, does not have a related blog --- but for some reason Iowans tend to forget that Brucemore is here, so its Web site can serve as a useful reminder. Maybe a vist next summer is in order.

The old house blog I've followed the longest is related to James and Dolley Madison's Montpelier house (top), located near Orange, Virginia. Unlike many old houses, including those related to founding fathers and mothers, Montpelier never fell upon hard times. But it was vastly expanded and elaborated over the years, most notably by the duPont family. So when the National Trust acquired the property, the decision was made to strip away all the later additions and return it to its original form, as it would have looked when the Madisons lived there. That extensive and interesting process has been the subject of ongoing blog posts for years. All of that, as well as current happenings, still is available in the blog archive, or in somewhat more organized form through the main Montpelier Web site.

Although not quite as lively as the Montpelier's, the blog related to another National Trust property, Drayton Hall, near Charleston, South Carolina, is another I check regularly. The main Drayton Hall Web site is here and the Drayton Hall blog, here. Drayton Hall is especially interesting, to me at least, because its conservation has been a pioneering and innovative effort to arrest and preserve an historic building in a somewhat decayed state --- rather than to restore it.

Shadows-on-the-Teche, New Iberia, Louisiana, is among the oldest National Trust properties and perhaps my favorite. Although it has a blog, it does not seem to be updated regularly. The main Web site, however, contains a wealth of information about the building and its people. Now if the staff would just update that blog more regularly ....

The United Kingdom's National Trust has a far longer history --- and many many more properties --- than the United States' version, but lags when it comes to Web sites and blogs related to specific properties.

I am devoted, however, to Emile de Bruijn's Treasure Hunt blog, which is focused on items in or recently added to the National Trust collection and therefore a little indirectly to specific properties --- although the stories of the items always are told in the context of the properties to which they belong.

And I'm happy to report that there is a new (less than a year old) blog for Uppark house and garden, in South Harting, Petersfield, West Sussex, one of my favorite houses in the whole wide world --- and one that nearly was lost during a nightmarish 1989 fire. In the intervening years, it has been immaculately restored and I'm looking forward to reading its blog during the new year.

On the Feast of Stephen

2011-12-26T06:41:00.000-06:00

Among my annoying holiday tricks is the ability to sing "Good King Wenceslas" in its entirety from memory at upredictable times, something I'm doing now --- hopefully you can't hear it. This is, after all, the feast day of St. Stephen, marytr, upon which the good king set forth with flesh and wine, pine log and page, through snow --- deep and crisp and even --- to feed that poor guy living out there by St. Agnes' fountain.

No snow here, today --- and the predicted high is 46. A blessed brown Christmas after two years of snow and ice and cold. I'll worry about global warming tomorrow.

Stephen, generally recognized as the first Christian martyr --- stoned to death by the religious establishment of his day (see Acts 6 and 7 for details) --- don't get much respect these days. Every preacher and priest in Christendom, after all, is taking the day after Christmas off.

The photos here are from St. Andrew's, decked out for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I thought it looked rather nice, especially by candlelight on Christmas Eve.

My favorite Christmas story was published here, in yesterday's Register. Albia's Mary Sauter, aka Chrsitmas angel, has over the last 20 years or so spent roughly half a million dollars on gifts for children who otherwise would have been slighted at Christmas. Some children, according to the story, leave the price tags on --- they've never had anything storebought that was new before. The Register story will be accessible for a couple of weeks, then disappear into Register cybervaults.

And here's the finale of a "Home for the Holidays" concert on Dec. 17 by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus Ambassadors at First Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) in Santa Cruz, California. We sang "Silent Night" by candlelight, too, on Dec. 24, although perhaps not this impressively.

I'm always grateful at Christmas and througout the year to be able to enter a church and feel welcome, something not possible when I was younger. So bless the prophetic vision and radical inclusiveness of the Unitarian Universalists, the United Church of Christ, The Episcopal Church and, more recently and increasingly, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The Presbyterian Church (USA).

For those who prefer bouncers at the church door, well there are still plenty of Christians out there hurling St. Stephen stones.

Doggy souls & "Minuit, Chretien"

2011-12-25T06:42:00.000-06:00

This clever bit of Photoshopping, swiped from elsewhere online, is in honor of the ancient, ailing, much-loved, deaf and now-deceased companion of friends who inadvertently stepped in front of a jeep on the family farm yesterday and thereby was propelled instantly to glory. What a thing to happen on Christmas Eve.

But that led to conversation during soup in the parish hall last evening after a lovely Christmas Eve Eucharist about whether or not dogs have souls. Some thought not; others, why not? I'm in the latter category. All God's critters, ya know.

This was the first Christmas Eve in two years that we've not been treated to snow, ice and frigid winds. It was wonderful --- as was the service, and the food afterwards. More church this morning, then somehow I've got to turn out an apple salad and corn pudding before dinner at 1. I probably should be making the salad now.

Here's a good way to start the day: Rufus Wainwright's lovely version of "Minuit, Chretien," a 19th century French poem that became, in French, "Cantique de Noel" and in English, with considerable liberty taken regarding words, "O Holy Night." You'll probably have to listen to a commercial first.

These are a few of my ...

2011-12-24T06:52:00.000-06:00

I first encountered Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, visionary, mystic --- and prolific author, during the early 1970s through his books while visiting a friend, cooling her heels between assignments at the then-mother house of the Sisters of Humility of Mary in Ottumwa.

After Mass in the chapel (now the library and gallery of Indian Hills Community College), we walked back to the mother house entrance through the library of the noviciate, then being disassembled. Sister Jeanette, in typical Sister Jeanette fashion, began gathering books off the shelves and filling my arms with them. Among them were a few of Merton's.

Some years later, I came across Merton's poem, "Epiphany Carol," and have read it and used it in a variety of ways at Christmas since. Here it is again:

Flocks feed by darkness with a noise of whispers,
In the dry grass of pastures,
And lull the solemn night with their weak bells.

The little towns upon the rocky hills
Look down as meek as children:
Because they have seen come this holy time.

God's glory, now, is kindled gentler than low candlelight
Under the rafters of a barn:
Eternal Peace is sleeping in the hay,
And Wisdom's born in secret in a straw-roofed stable.

And O! Make holy music in the stars, you happy angels.
You shepherds, gather on the hill.
Look up, you timid flocks, where the three kings
Are coming through the wintry trees;

While we unnumbered children of the wicked centuries
Come after with our penances and prayers,
And lay them down in the sweet-smelling hay
Beside the wise men's golden jars.

Although it's hard to choose, my favorite sung carol of the season (this year at least, although it's consistently right up there) is the exquiste "In the Bleak Midwinter," poet Christine Rossetti's ca. 1872 imagining of the Nativity in a northern climate with a ca. 1906 musical setting by Gustav Holst. (The third stanza of the poem is not as a rule included in the carol.)

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone:
Snow had fallen, snow on snow
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Enough for him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk,
And a mangerful of hay:
Enough for him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air -
But only his mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part;
Yet what I can, I give him -
Give my heart.

As often is the case, everyone from theologian to farmer to skeptic has at time quibbled with the literal accuracy of these words and their arrangement, but somehow both carols manage to move directly to the heart of the matter. And that, after all, is the point of both music and poetry, which God does not merely inspire, but often is.

Hear the angels sing

2011-12-23T06:19:00.000-06:00

We got to talking about Christmas carols the other day --- personal favorites and the like. And that gave me opportunity to ride off on a favorite hobbyhorse --- the disconcerting habit of some who plan church services of truncating hymns willy-nilly in the interests of brevity without actually reading the words, as in “Oh let’s just sing the first three verses.” Despite the fact the first three verses, without the last two or three verses, sometimes make no sense whatsoever.

The difficulty here, I like to point out self-righteously, is that we really do not sing hymns or carols for variety --- to give the preacher a chance to rest his voice --- or because it says in the prayer book that we’re supposed to sing here or sing there.

Each hymn incorporates a message, usually thought out rather carefully, and while it may be possible to cautiously eliminate a verse or two if it is extraordinarily long, meaning really does deserve at least as much respect as melody.

Take “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” for example, one of the most familiar carols in the U.S. version of the English language. And it is “the” midnight clear, by the way, not “a” midnight clear. This is the Nativity we’re talking about --- not just any old birth in a stable.

As written (first as a poem) during 1849 by Massachusetts Unitarian minister Edmund Sears, the carol has five stanzas --- although some hymnals eliminate for some reason one or another.

The Episcopal “Hymnal 1982” axes stanza four; the “United Methodist Hymnal” and “Lutheran Book of Worship” chop stanza three, which happens to be my favorite of the original five.

Part of the difficulty is the setting we’re all most familiar with, Richard Storrs Willis’s 1850 “Carol.” This setting encourages the words to be sung as a lullaby --- or a dirge. Trying to get through all five stanzas in a reasonable amount of time using this setting, although lovely, is like swimming through molasses --- it’s going to take a long time to reach the other shore.

Nearly all recorded versions of the carol --- even those by devout schmaltz masters like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir --- reduce the number of stanzas to two or three.

In the process of all this, we lose two of the meatiest stanzas, necessary if the other three are going to make much sense --- one addressed to humankind collectively, the other to us individually.

It’s all very well, as the final stanza does, to announce that “peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,” But obviously very little of that peace has been flung about over the centuries and to understand why, it’s necessary in the context of this carol to go back to the third stanza and sing, among other things, “O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.”

Here are the most frequently missing stanzas:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

There is an alternate setting to the carol --- used most frequently in Britain although it is included in the Episcopal hymnal --- an 1874 arrangement by Arthur Sullivan of a traditional English melody, "Noel."

I prefer it in some ways because of the way it moves along in a less syrup-dipped sort of way. Here’s the carol to that setting as sung by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the words of the third stanza which, if you think about them, are downright revolutionary.

“O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.”

Out of darkness, a little light

2011-12-22T07:09:00.000-06:00

The debate with myself this morning involved whether or not to take these bleary-eyed photos of the dark underbelly of Christmas around here, exposing myself to ridicule, but then I decided --- what the heck.

Sadly, much of what you see stays out year-around --- and has to be dusted. But I’ve never seen the point of having stuff unless you can look at it.

This, however, is extreme --- too much concentrated in too small a place after having been spread over larger spaces for many years. My maternal grandparents keep watch over the clutter on top of the cherry bureau in the room where I write. Santa, the Buddha and the Holy Family get along just fine on top of what’s supposed to be a place to write in the living room.

A church has advantages. A more elaborate nativity set is spending the season there, as is a piano top full of candlesticks and an entire tree decorated with what won’t be in use --- eventually --- here. And there’s more, on tabletops, the refrigerator, elsewhere.

The Christmas-related items will go away after Epiphany. It’s all out this year because of a resolution to pull everything Christmas-related from boxes and take a look before repacking coherently. I may even get rid of a few things

Nearly everything Christmas-related here has a story --- about how and where it was acquired, who gave it to me, from whom I inherited it and the like. I like to think about that.

On the other hand, I’ve discovered in years when much of this stuff stayed packed away during December, that I didn’t miss it. None of it has any meaning in itself.

If clutter is a minor dark side to Christmas, there are a few others I’ve been thinking about, all more serious and all related --- like too many seasonal toys --- to too much invested in too few days.

No one is supposed to be sad, depressed, lonely, hungry, homeless or without a toy at Christmas. A lot of well-intentioned energy is focused on making the season as bright as possible for as many as possible. And that’s fine. But what about the rest of the year?

While it’s not OK if some of our neighbors are hungry or homeless, it’s perfectly alright too I think to be sad, perhaps depressed --- maybe feeling a little lonesome as Christmas nears. I’ve been thinking about friends in sad situations.

This is not, as some sing, the most wonderful time of the year. It’s just another time of the year --- with all the usual pitfalls and potential. And it’s OK to run away from it entirely, if that helps. A little “bah” and a little “humbug” can be useful things.

The seasons turned in an instant late last night and the days will begin to lengthen now, imperceptibly at first.

Christmas --- incarnation and redemption hitched to something similar but far more ancient --- isn’t a destination or a solution or a goal, it can be useful to remember. Just a place to light a candle called hope, then multiply that dim light by lighting other candles from it.

Just call me Frank D.G.S. Myers

2011-12-21T06:27:00.000-06:00

Vets Auditorium (now Veterans Memorial/Community Choice Credit Union Covention Center) as it looked in the 1950s.

I have decided to sacrifice my patrimony on the altar of Mammon and sell naming rights. At first, it seemed like a good idea to approach Clark Fielding because of the alliterative interest involved in “Frank Fielding Funeral Home Myers.” But now “Frank Dollar General Store Myers” seems wiser --- even though it doesn’t trip off the tongue quite as effectively --- because we’re getting a new one of those and I’d be able to keep “D” as a middle initial, among others. FDGSM. I like it.

The possibilities are endless in a marketing and economic stimulus area heretofore not considered in Lucas County. “Cornerstone Community 1st Credit Union Church,” for example. Cornerstone Community Church already is part way there and we have that new bank (err credit union). Why not consolidate efforts?

Or how about “Lucas County Hy-Vee Distribution Center --- Health” instead of Lucas County Health Center. They're already used to updated names out there, having started out a hospital before moving through medical center to health. They’d hardly notice.

This revenue stream came to mind while following the Polk County supervisors as they fumbled their way through a renaming process for Des Moines’ Veterans Memorial Auditorium.

Vets opened its doors in 1955 and until the fairly recent additions of Wells Fargo Arena and Hy-Vee Hall to form the Iowa Events Center (along with the Convention Center a brief skywalk to the southwest) stood alone as Iowa’s premiere location for huge public events. Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off that bat here, and hundreds of thousands have flocked through its doors to attend state basketball and wrestling tournaments.

The supervisors, having invested a few million in an upgrade of the ugly but beloved building, decided to recoup some cash and sell naming rights. Veterans Memorial Auditorium would have become Community Choice Credit Union Convention Center for 10 years in return for $2.5 million.

And then more veterans groups that either the supervisors or the credit union ever had dreamed of rose in unified protest.

So now it’s to be called Veterans Memorial/Community Choice Credit Union Convention Center (or VMCCCUCC for short, I suppose).

This will be a win/win situation for the supervisors, who will pocket the cash. It remains a public relations nightmare for the credit union which would have been accused of kicking a veteran while he/she was down had it either demanded sole custody of the name or backed out entirely when the compromise was proposed.

The rest of us will just keep calling it “Vets” and forget all about both the supervisors and Community Choice Credit Union. You’ve gotta love it.

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Just in time for Christmas, we’re down to the endorsement wire this week in Iowa, resulting in an array of stories like …

“… Old Shep, the Rev. Cletus Crankshaft’s black lab, endorsed Rick Perry for president today.”

As nearly as I can figure it out, The Register endorsed the inevitable Mitt Romney --- no surprise there, although it’s a mystery to most Christians why a godless Communist rag like that bothers to play the GOP endorsing game at all.

And the Family Leader, headed by Bob Vander Plaats, endorsed Rick Santorum. The Leader would have endorsed Michele Bachmann, you know --- but she, as has been pointed out previously, doesn’t have a penis. Nor does she cover her head --- or remain silent in church.

This is good news in a way for Newt Gingrich, who need not now swear off adultery.

Whatever the case, the caucus process soon will be over and Iowa will return to peace, quiet and political obscurity.

Charistmas Carded

2011-12-20T06:32:00.000-06:00

One of these years, I'm going to send Christmas cards again --- a lovely thing to do; every one that works its way through the complexity of address changes in recent years is appreciated. I enjoy annual Chrstmas letters, too --- even when the signature is photoduplicated. It's just not clear that this is going to be the year, however. Laziness, plus too much energy expended here and elsewhere.

But I have been looking at some of the antique cards scattered around, most dating from before 1900, a few framed, others kept in an antique lap desk from the 1880s and a badly frayed post card album dating most likely from the 1890s.

Most Christmas cards at that time were postcards and so are most of these, many with hand-written messages and stamps on their backs; others were enclosed with letters and bear no personalization at all; some were just handed, person to person, and have brief dedications.

This elaborate St. Nicholas, heavily embossed in Germany, stays out year-around in a comparably elaborate frame because I like to look at it. It is not a family card, but one of a handful given to me when I lived in the little Norwegian town of Thompson in Winnebago County --- insrribed to "little Julia."

I know who Julia was --- daughter of Norwegian emigrants living in a simple little house on the north Iowa prairie. And I know how she spent Christmas Eve --- gathered with neighbors in the lamp-lit sanctuary of old West Prairie Lutheran Church, its soaring steeple a landmark visible for miles, where a Christmas tree was erected each year within the half circle of the communion rail in front of the wedding cake altar.

There were hardly any trees at all then on the recently broken prairie, so acquiring an evergreen was a considerable accomplishment. Real candles were placed on it and lighted --- just once and briefly as adults held their breaths, eying the buckets of water placed alongside just in case.

The other two cards here are from the lap desk, but neither is inscribed. Most likely they were enclosed in letters. Both are tiny, in the neighborhood of 2 by 3 inches.

I like the little tri-fold card with pastel pink flowers on its front best. It also includes a diminutive Christmas message inside.

Although the other card bears a printed "My Message," it apparently was the message itself since nothing is written inside its single fold.

It's notable that under 10 percent of these vintage Christmas greetings incorporates religious imagery. Maybe we should analyze that.

+++

Two 27-ounce jars of pie-ready None Such mincemeat are now in the cupboard after a return trip to Knoxville, so things are looking up.

Although resigned to reconstituting what could be found on Hy-Vee shelves, a fellow fan of mincemeat encouraged perseverance during coffee with the artists yesterday morning --- she pointed out that Walmart mincemeat was kept in a seasonal mid-aisle baking display I'd missed and that if all had been sold by the time I got there again, Fareway --- a little farther north along Highway 14 --- buys mincemeat in bulk, then repackages it for sale by the pint. Four jars were left at Walmart. I took half.

+++

Another minor Christmas issue resolved itself at the dump Sunday afternoon, when I hauled away the carcasses of two huge chrysanthemus that bloomed on the front steps this fall (this is a dump for vegetative matter only, remember).

Pulling up, I spotted a small pile of trimmings from both a white pine and spruce tree --- just what was needed to refresh the greenery around the big wheel of the Advent wreath at church before lighting the Christ candle on Christmas Eve. Doing so will reduce the likelihood of burning the church down during the celebration of Christmas, always an unattractive thing to do.

So I loaded the evergreen boughs in the back of the pickup --- and now the garage smells seasonally appropriate when I go out to open the door in the morning.

Gratitude and the winter solstice

2011-12-19T07:28:00.000-06:00

Hundreds of geese flew over in honking "v" formations near sunset yesterday as I was lighting candles in front of the house, Canadas headed for a night on the lake at Red Haw after a day foraging in harvested fields. Spirits, grounded by concern for an acquaintace critically ill and unconsicous in a Des Moines hospital after multiplle episodes of cardiac arrest, lifted for the moment and soared with them.

Simple stuff in a time and season of great general confusion and self-created complexity on nearly every level, much of it needless and without point.

Earlier, during an atypical mid-December afternoon when temperatures reached the mid-50s, the nature of the late-afternoon late-autumn light as it illuminated water, grasses and cattails had accomplished the same purpose.

The winter solstice is near, an ancient cause to light candles and bonfires against the darkness in our hemisphere of fragile earth. The solstice instant comes at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday; Thursday, the first official day of winter.

Soon after, Christmas; the winter solstice instant of the spiritual tradition most of us are most familiar with whether we embrace it or not, when light is kindled weakly at first in the darkness, we gather to tell the old stories again, and then the hours of redemptive sunshine and rebirth begin to lengthen.

All of this becomes empty, irrelevant or threatening only when we lose our sense of wonder, restrict necessary compassion for everything we share creation with --- and forget gratitude. Here's a little meditation about both wonder and gratitude. Although not identified, the unseen narrator for much of this is the Benedictine friar David Steindl-Rast.

The Great "O" Antiphons

2011-12-18T06:44:00.000-06:00

Finding the Christmas music around here can be a challenge --- I never remember where I put stuff --- but the CDs, a couple of dozen, turned up yesterday behind the lower doors of a bookcase and I’m in business, listening this morning to an Advent service based on the Great “O” Antiphons recorded some years ago at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle.

The “O” Antiphons are seven brief prayers traditionally spoken, chanted or sung in precise sequence, one each during evening prayer, or vespers, in the final days of Advent, a period known as the Octave before Christmas which commenced yesterday on Dec. 17 and concludes on Dec. 24 with the Christmas Vigil.

This recording was an Advent gift several years ago, so I always think of the giver when I listen to it --- as well as the traditions wrapped in music and liturgy it represents. Heck, it may even inspire me to put up the Christmas tree today. We’ll see.

The Great O’s are among the oldest liturgical elements of Advent we have, found in literature dating to the sixth century and familiar in monasteries across Christendom by the eighth. Traditionally used with the Magnificat, the O’s are most familiar in the Roman, Anglican/Episcopal and Lutheran churches.

Each antiphon begins with the acclamation “O,” followed by titles for the Messiah based upon the prophecy of Isaiah --- O Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord), O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse), O Clavis David (O Key of David), O Oriens (O Dayspring), O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations) and O Emmanuel (O God with Us).

Another extremely cool thing about the O’s is that the monks who arranged these antiphons centuries ago in prescribed order incorporated a message by doing so. By starting with the last title and taking the first letter of each, Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai and Sapientia, the Latin words “ero cras,” translated as “Tomorrow, I will come,” are formed, an ancient way of announcing a joyful end to Advent preparations for the Messiah.

I’m willing to bet that the Great O’s don’t come up very often in casual conversation among those who sing the carols of Advent and Christmas --- “never heard of that.” But most of us have, in the form of the familiar Advent hymn, “O come, o come Emmanuel” (“Veni, veni Emmanuel”).

This version, thought to date from the twelfth century, has been translated from the Latin for those us who speak English in slightly differing ways. Its setting, usually ascribed to a fifteenth century processional for Franciscan nuns, may have its origins in eighth century Gregorian chants.

So if you happen to sing this familiar carol during the week now commencing --- think about the words coming out of your mouth and consider for a moment that you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with more than a thousand years of the faithful, and the faithless, who have marked this season in hope and, now and then, in despair.

Here’s an abbreviated version of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” (only five of the antiphons are sung and they are out of order) that I like, sung by the choir of Clare College, Cambridge.

Thanks be to God for an anti-theist

2011-12-17T07:19:00.001-06:00

I’ve wasted too much time this morning trying to track to its published or spoken source this Christopher Hitchens quote:

“Faith is the surrender of the mind; it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It’s our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me.”

Hitchens, master of the English language, critic, pundit, self-described contrarian and militant anti-theist, died Thursday at age 62 of esophageal cancer.

If a life lived fully is its own reward, Hitchens had it. All about that can be found in great detail all over the Web.

So far as eternal reward is concerned --- another matter. Some have consigned him straight to hell; others see him perched before a celestial laptop preparing to write an essay recanting what he got wrong in “God is Not Good: How Religion Poisons Everything,” the 2007 book that drew him broadest attention, and related musings.

Hitchens apparently anticipated nothing at all, other than perhaps release --- the inevitability of which he acknowledged but did not welcome.

So far as I know there is no significance to the fact he died during Advent, approaching Christmas, a season he characterized (Slate, Dec. 15, 2008) as a “moral and aesthetic nightmare.” I have no knowledge concerning his eternal destination.

But I do tend to think that in Hitchens’ death, Christianity and other faith constructs (most notably of late Islam) that he relished excoriating lost a prophetic voice, someone who challenged assumptions, complacency, laziness and the tendency to engage in magic thinking. Some call that blasphemy.

The only sure thing about faith is that it does involve surrender of reason because it is intuitive, rising from within, often perceived as directly linked to the great Without.

Hitchens was right about that. Nothing about Christianity, for example, can be proven --- although there certainly are those who try. Scriptural “proofs” are proofs only for those who are (irrationally) led to believe that scripture is valid, however.

I may see God in evolving creation. Others see only the objective fruits of evolution.

Christians rely on what we sometimes call the Holy Spirit, indwelling link to Creator, for that leading and others. But that, too, is experiential, and in the end irrational as well.

What we can do rationally is evaluate the outcome, perhaps even the validity during this life at least, of our own irrational faith and that of others by looking at the fruit faith bears.

Hitchens' leading may have been to point out harshly that the fruits of faith are most often flawed, frequently rotten and occasionally pure poison. Thanks be to God for Christopher Hitchens.

Put the cake back in Christmas

2011-12-16T06:54:00.000-06:00

Oft overlooked in seasonal fussing about “Happy Holidays” and putting “Christ” back in “Christmas” are the equally worrying issues of fruitcake and mincemeat. ‘Tisn’t the season with neither of the latter, either.

I am so partial to fruitcake that when my mother asked what she could send for Christmas during that year I spent in Vietnam, I asked for fruitcake --- and she baked and sent it. It traveled well. Fruitcake generally does. Fruitcake is so dense it will stop bullets, too.

Mother specialized in two varieties. One was dark and rich, mostly dates, raisins and nutmeats. The other incorporated more conventional dried and candied fruits and was lighter (in color; fruitcakes are never “light” and can double as doorstops, or weapons in a pinch) and stickier.

Another favorite Christmas memory --- the year a colleague’s husband was gifted with a fruitcake baked by the Trappists at Gethsemani Abbey, down in Kentucky --- where Thomas Merton used to hang out. That family didn’t eat fruitcake. So I inherited it. Bliss.

Now I rely on Walmart. Seriously. That was one of the reasons I ended up in Knoxville late yesterday afternoon. The other reasons involved Chariton Hy-Vee, which does not do fruitcake.

Plus for some reason, the local store was out of broccoli (?!?) yesterday, the seedless “holiday” grapes looked as if they’d been stomped on, I didn’t recognize any of the checkers and the one I got was cranky and no smiles were evident in any of the aisles. It seemed like a good day to shop elsewhere.

I always recommend Walmart’s “Fruit Cake Ring” (stay away from the cellophane-wrapped fruit cake squares --- they taste like cardboard). But the rings, stashed in the refrigerator, will keep forever and improve with age. I only bought one, but it’s not going to last, should have gotten another (at least), will have to go back.

Just as it isn’t Christmas without fruitcake, so too without mincemeat pie. None Such --- in a jar --- works well. But no jars were to be found at Hy-Vee yesterday either. Only the reconsitutable kind --- in little boxes, $4 each, two required per pie.

The jars aren’t any cheaper, but at least you don’t have to reconstitute the mince. Besides, I like to save None Such jars.

And if you do reconstitute mincemeat, baking a pie becomes a two-day operation. Don’t try to use dried mincemeat the day you resurrect it --- give it a day or two to settle and absorb.

Walmart didn’t seem to have any mincemeat at all, however, although perhaps I just missed it. That’s the disadvantage to shopping in unfamiliar territory.

So I’ll go back to Hy-Vee, buy two boxes and make my pie --- maybe next week.

In all fairness --- although Walmart does do fruitcake better, you can’t beat Hy-Vee deep-dish frozen pie crusts --- so I’ll use those, one for the bottom, another for the top.

That way it’ll be an ecumenical Christmas --- cake from Walmart, pie from Hy-Vee.

Declare victory, then depart

2011-12-15T07:11:00.001-06:00

Troops of Charlie Co., 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, prepare to enter one of Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces on April 9, 2003.

Josh Knowles

The United States declared victory early today in Baghdad, rolled up its command flag and closed down the war in Iraq after nearly 9 years, 4,500 lost U.S. lives, tens if not hundreds of thousands of lost Iraqi lives and $800 billion.

High-ranking Iraqi officials, invited to attend, didn’t. Negotiations that would have allowed a small U.S. force to remain had foundered earlier. The remaining 4,000 U.S. troops will be gone, perhaps, by Christmas.

It’s not clear what will happen to Iraq and Iraqis now in a still-volatile nation located in an even more volatile region.

I’ve been thinking back to Advent 2003, a few months after the war began with “shock and awe,” when the newspaper I then worked for quite extraordinarily dispatched a photographer, Arian Schuessler, and reporter, Bob Link, to Iraq equipped with a satellite telephone, laptop and cameras.

This was an amazing thing for a relatively small newspaper to do, perhaps the last amazing thing it did before serious decline commenced.

Schuessler and Link hooked up with the north Iowa’s 1133rd Transportation Co., deployed earlier to Iraq and then home-based in Baghdad, and provided several days of live coverage. I was editing and designing front pages then and recall the late-night tension as we worried about if and when that call from Baghdad would come and if the stories and photographs would transmit successfully. The system always worked.

On the 23rd of December that year, Arian and Bob managed to round up all the 1133rd troops and take a group shot. I fussed and fumed and argued and finally got my way --- we enlarged that photo to full broadsheet size, turned it sideways to fill the entire front page and that was our Christmas Eve gift to North Iowa.

Although I’ve long since thrown away all copies of it, it remains the favorite front page of all I had a hand in over the years, and there were many of them.

Two months later, on the 5th of February 2004, Josh Knowles of Sheffield, 23, who had been featured in several of the photos we published that December, was killed in a mortar attack in Baghdad.

And so we covered his funeral, too.

I’ve generally thought the war in Iraq was folly, the lives wasted. But that’s not my decision to make. Time will tell. And in the interim, the voices of Josh Knowles’ parents and the loved ones of all the other dead are the ones to listen to. And those of the 32,000 wounded, too.

Stephen Bloom's fighting words

2011-12-14T06:36:00.001-06:00

Although it seems to be a minority position this morning, it just doesn’t seem to me like we should tar and feather Stephen Bloom and ride him out of Iowa on a rail quite yet.

Bloom, a professor of journalism and mass communications at the University of Iowa, got himself into deep shit (pardon the expression, but Bloom brought it up) by writing an article entitled “Observation from 20 Years of Iowa Life” published Friday in the online edition of The Atlantic.

This has been wonderful for The Atlantic, which I’ll betcha has gotten enough Iowa-based online hits in the last few days to brighten the season substantially for its marketing staff. Not so wonderful for Iowans with blood pressure problems --- those have shot up a few notches. And maybe not even good for Bloom himself, who told The Register last night that the feedback has been “frightening” and that he feels threatened.

If he feels threatened now, just wait until the Iowa Legislature reconvenes in January and those good old boys latch onto his leg and start shaking.

What Bloom did was air before a broader public (with substantial exaggeration in several cases and some outright misrepresentations) many of those things us Iowans already know, even joke about sometimes, but prefer to keep quiet about in the presence of strangers. Maybe not even think about.

I mean, how dare he? He's only lived here 20 years. And what’s worse, he came here from San Francisco of all places.

+++

Admittedly, I’m a little miffed. Take this, for example --- “Almost every Iowa house has a mudroom, so you don't track mud or pig shit into the kitchen or living room, even though the aroma of pig shit is absolutely venerated in Iowa: It's known to one and all here as "the smell of money." Well, not exactly. I don’t have a mud room.

And if I were a resident of one of Iowa’s picturesque Mississippi River cities, I’d be a little cross about this: “… Keokuk is a depressed, crime-infested slum town. Almost every other Mississippi river town is the same; they're some of the skuzziest cities I've ever been to, and that's saying something.”

I do think it’s fair to fault an instructor in journalism for playing fast and loose with the facts here and elsewhere.

Bloom finds, for example, “absolute and utter desperation in America's hollowed-out middle, in particular in the state where I live,” which is just a bit of an exaggeration.

Potshots at Republicans, including the whacky Steve King, and organized religion are unlikely to gain the poor guy that many friends in the Hawkeye state, despite the elements of truth incorporated into them and the fact I tend to agree.

What’s happening, I’m afraid, is that overstatement combined with a degree of inaccuracy has undermined the whole and distracted attention from statements that are alarmingly accurate.

For example:

"The nightmare reality is tens of thousands of laid-off rural factory workers, farmers who have lost their land to banks and agribusiness, legions of unemployed who have come to the realization that it makes no sense to look for work, since work pretty much no longer exists for them."

"An illusionary, short-term salve has been the proliferation of casinos in the state."

"Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die, those too timid (or lacking in educated) to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth, or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that 'The sun'll come out tomorrow,' "

(That’s a really tough one to take and, in truth, our percentage of waste-toids and meth addicts probably doesn’t exceed the national average.)

"It's no surprise then, really, that the most popular place for suicide in America isn't New York or Los Angeles, but the rural Middle, where guns, unemployment, alcoholism and machismo reign."

"Of the students I teach, relatively few will stay in Iowa after they graduate. The net flow of Iowans is out, not in. Iowa's greatest export isn't corn, soybeans, or pigs; it's young adults. Many born in rural Iowa grow up educated due to the state's still-strong foundation of land-grant universities (although, that too is eroding) and abiding familial interest in education (on a per-capita basis, Iowa has more high school graduates than 49 other states). But once they're through college, they leave. Iowa is the number-two state in the nation in losing college-educated youth (only North Dakota loses more)."

+++

Now there’s going to be even more hollering in the next few days and quite a few who suggest that if Bloom doesn’t like it here, he should move back to San Francisco --- or RUSSIA!

But I think we should keep him (I admired his widely-acclaimed book, Postville), see if maybe we can turn this old Iowa boy around a bit and enlist his help in figuring out some solutions to those problems he so dramatically pointed out.

To do otherwise kind of reinforces some of the less-flattering things Bloom said about the folks who for better or worse are his people now.