Mary Louise ...

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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"

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 ...

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

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

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

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

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.

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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.

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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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)."

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 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.

More food and a near-miss

Chariton’s principal Internet service provider, Windstream, was out of service from sometime during the night until just before noon today --- so there have been a few delays.

Withdrawal pains brought about by inability to check e-mail at the drop of a hat are troublesome, so most of us compensated by bad-mouthing Windstream, headquartered in Arkanasas, which bought out Iowa Telecom a couple of years ago.

These outages actually have been happening more often lately, but this was the longest.

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Now about that Christmas food obsession --- this is the spread at last night’s genealogical society gathering. Enough to feed the 14 or so of us who turned out, you think?

As an appetizer, I especially liked the giant pecan-encrusted cheese ball. Main courses? Tiny wieners in barbecue sauce (just out of the picture) plus the alternate Frank’s cheesy escalloped potatoes and Ev’s taco salad/dip. Or at least I think it was Ev’s.

For dessert --- I thought about the apple slices, but in the interests of a more varied diet (the salad contained lettuce and tomatoes and no one wants to overdo on raw or otherwise unprocessed food), stuck with chocolate, arranged in several ways.

It was wonderful.

After everything had a little time to settle, a few more pieces of fudge --- you never know when they might stop making that.

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In the near-miss department, I was standing at the kitchen window about 3:15 p.m. yesterday, trying to figure out when I’d be able to back out of the driveway and run an errand.

This is always a weekday issue between 3 and 3:15, when Columbus elementary school, a few doors north, dismisses. Not a kid-related problem. They’re always careful and well-behaved (seriously). But a parent and school bus issue.

If you live here, you just have to accept the fact driveways are going to be blocked and travel almost impossible for those 15 minutes or so.

Anyhow, as I looked out, the shiny new pickup that was blocking my driveway started squirming, then pulled out abruptly and shot down the alley. It wasn’t clear why.

Just after the pickup had fled, here came a mid-sized sedan with neither driver nor passenger inside rolling backward down the hill with Mom in hot pursuit.

The good Samaritan in a big van who had been parked behind the pickup, then pulled out a little and stopped the car with his front bumper. There was no apparent damage to either vehicle, the drivers exchanged a few worlds, then Mom jumped in her roaming car and drove away.

If that guy hadn’t stopped the car, it easily could have mowed down a kid or another vehicle or, if it avoided both, gone shooting off into the horse pasture beyond the “t” at the foot of the hill.

The lesson seems to be the one many of us learned in driver’s education, when there was such a thing --- if you plan to leave your vehicle, put it into park, set the emergency brake and turn it off.