A Wonderful World in Des Moines

Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006) is a memoir of his growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, in the 1950‘s. Bryson was born in 1951, the year I celebrated my eighth birthday.

1951 was also the year my family moved from Des Moines to a small town 80 miles northeast of it. But we often returned to Iowa’s urban center to visit friends and family and so that my mom could shop at Younkers, which Bryson calls “the great ocean liner of a department store.” My earliest memories of Younkers are of long forced marches, punctuated by rides on its magnificent escalators and in its elegant elevators. In later years I appreciated its large selection of classical LP records.

Bryson and I lived very different childhoods, not because I moved from Des Moines in my third grade, but because we are wired very differently. I never imagined myself as a “Thunderbolt Kid” capable of vaporizing unappealing people into pools of liquid, though there were times I would like to have been that wickedly powerful. And I was for too modest to have collaborated with any of my friends in discovering that peeing on Lincoln Logs turns them white. Our differences are one of the reasons he’s a very famous writer and I only wish I were.

We were both paperboys–he of the afternoon Des Moines Tribune, and I of the morning Des Moines Register. Bill Bryson, Sr. was actually a sports reporter for the Register (his son says a very good one), and his mother wrote a column about domestic (i.e., women’s) matters. So Bill, Jr. was not confined to standing outside looking in at the Register and Tribune’s whirling printing presses as were most of us; he could actually go inside and hear their hum and smell their ink. We share memories of the huge globe that graced the building’s lobby. We also share memories of the newspaper boy’s life on the streets as we tried to collect the weekly fees people owed for our faithfully delivering the presses’ output to their doors. And we share grief now for the forking over of local ownership of papers like the Register to national corporations, for their decline, and for their impending demise.

Many details in Bryson’s memoir rang bells for me, though I’d like to know how he missed Triplet’s Toy Town, surely Des Moines’ most fascinating store. I excuse him for missing Russell’s Jewelers, owned by an uncle and aunt of mine; his father may have known about it because it produced trophies for schools and teams all over Iowa. I am not at all surprised he overlooked the Iowa Farm Bureau Building where my dad worked. You can’t know everything’s history, even if you are Bill Bryson.

He does recognize, mostly in retrospect, that the world beyond his Kid’s World was far from perfect. But the larger world’s faults and failures barely touched childhood as he traversed it, and the joys of his memoir is that he focuses on what being a kid in the middle of 1950’s Iowa was like for him.

In “The Thunderbolt Kid’s” final pages Bryson muses upon what has been lost since that decade. Among the greatest losses is the forced sterilization of urban experience by the Walmart-ing and Macy-ing and Starbuck-ing of our society. The bland and mindless uniformity of commercial enterprise as experienced by most middle class Americans means only the very poor and the very rich experience uniqueness when they shop for and try to buy things. A Des Moines Target looks like a Cedar Rapids Target, feels like a Chicago Target, sucks like a New York Target. And the centers of many cities (other than a select few) look like the aftermath of The Plague.

Which bring me to the point of this New Year’s Eve posting. Bryson writes that, “during a tragically misguided housecleaning exercise” in 1978, his parents threw out all the “stuff” remaining in his bedroom. He then reflects on how mass retailing, banking, media, etc. render our lives today uniform and bland (the words in [brackets] are mine):

“[Getting rid of ‘stuff’] is the way of the world, of course. Possessions get discarded. Life moves on. But I often think what a shame it is that we didn’t keep the things that made us different and special and attractive in the fifties. Imagine those palatial downtown movie theaters with their vast screens and Egyptian decor, but thrillingly enlivened with Dolby sound and slick computer graphics. Now that would be magic. Imagine having all of public life–offices, stores, restaurants, entertainments–conveniently clustered in the heart of the city and experiencing fresh air and daylight each time you moved from one to another. Imagine having a cafeteria [Bishop’s] with atomic toilets [you have the read the book to get that reference], a celebrated tea room [in Younker’s] that gave away gifts to young customers, a clothing store [Frankel’s] with a grand staircase and a mezzanine, a Kiddie Corral [in Dahl’s Supermarkets] where you could read comics to your heart’s content. Imagine having a city full of things that no other city had.

“What a wonderful world it would be. What a wonderful world it was. We won’t see its like again, I’m afraid.”

Touched with regret

for wondrous worlds

we will not see again,

but expecting

(against all odds)

new worlds to be seen...

Happy New Year.

Nativity's Pledge and Pleasure

“To a guilty world you (God) have pledged yourself,

not out of duty,

but because such was your pleasure.”

Those words (in English translation) are attributed to Jacopone da Todi, a 13th Century Franciscan friar and poet. They are from his Lauda Per Nativita Del Signore (“Hymn of Praise for the Birth of the Lord,” often referred to as the “Laud to the Nativity”), which was set to music by the 20th-century Italian composer, Ottorino Respighi, the only composer whom I know to have done so.

(Readers interested in my experience with and views regarding Respighi’s setting of the Laud will find them at the end of this post.) 

Jacopone tells and expands upon the story of Jesus’ birth by juxtaposing the glorious heavenly announcement with the abject poverty of the shepherds and of the Holy Family and Mary’s humble obedience. He well understands Luke’s perspective and interests. The lines quoted above appear late in the poem, after the shepherds have left and while Mary is pondering what has happened. They are spoken (in Respighi’s setting, they are sung) in the middle of the angelic chorus’s exuberant singing of the biblical texts praising God. I hear it as Jacopone’s understanding of the reason for the sung praises, and as his invitation to trust God with all we are and have:

We can say “Merry Christmas” (or as our British cousins prefer, “Happy Christmas”) and the like because God acted for us out of the shear pleasure of doing so. I confess I do not fathom the pleasure God derives from being committed to this world, despite my theological education, etc. And there is much to ponder in the charge that “the world” is guilty, a far greater problem than any individual’s particular sins, etc. Most likely I will never fully comprehend either God’s pleasure or universal culpability.

But despite all that, I can and do wish you and this broken world a Merry Christmas, and all the joys and pleasures of this season, because...

“To a guilty world you (God) have pledged yourself,

not out of duty,

but because such was your pleasure.”

(More about the music and me:)

Also often attributed to Jacopone is the Stabat Mater Dolorosa [“The Sorrowing Mother Stood”], which depicts Mary’s anguish at the foot of Jesus’ cross. It has been the subject of musical settings by many composers.

Perhaps the reason only Respighi (to my knowledge) has set the Laud to the Nativity to music is that his work captures the mood of Jacopone’s retelling and expansion of Luke’s birth narrative so perfectly that it is hard to imagine improving on it. The poet’s ability to convey both the poverty and the joy of the Holy Family and of the shepherds is convincingly re-conveyed by Respighi. A palpable sense of awe and wonder inhabits the entire 20-minutes-plus of the piece, and invites the listener into quiet contemplation of the holy birth. It may be the most authentic expression of “the true meaning the true story” of the birth of Jesus that I know.

Nearly 40 years ago I was a member of The Southern Maryland Choral Society, a community chorus conducted by Sandy Willetts. Sandy programmed Respighi’s Laud to the Nativity for our Christmas concert. As if singing that were not enough, we also performed Bach’s Magnificat at the same concert, so our work was cut out for us amateurs. They were each far beyond our obvious reach, but Sandy was an incredible conductor, and we pulled them off, and I like to think quite respectably. (Actually, the two are a beautiful programmatic pair.)

In any case, it was then that I bought an LP recording, which I recall had to be special ordered from England. It’s on the Argo label and is by the Argo Chamber Orchestra and the London Chamber Choir, directed by Laszlo Heltay, and sung in Italian. I cannot guess how many times I’ve played it, and it sounds like it.

After years of thinking I should get a new recording, last week I downloaded an old (1961, maybe) but recently (2010) re-released recording of the Laud by the Roger Wagner Chorale and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. it is directed by Alfred Wallenstein, is in English, and got good reviews on Amazon. And although I think think it is very nice, there is something about the old LP I’ve lived with for so long that I miss. There’s a purity to Heltay’s interpretation that I can hear through the scratches and hum that seems to elude Wallenstein. Maybe I will get used to it, but maybe I don’t want to.

In any case, if you love music Respighi’s Laud to the Nativity is well worth knowing. I’d appreciate any further information you have on any of this...including where I might find a new recording of Laszlo Heltay’s performance.

Why Jesus Weeps

Sylvia groped for answers – no, answers were not what she expected or even wanted. Answers asked too much. Answers were out of the question. Not explanations either – every explanation was beyond her imagination. Maybe responses. Any response would do, though she had no idea what it would sound or look like or who might offer it.

She caressed her coffee mug’s warmth as she tried to read about Friday’s massacre. Children and adults, warm and alive, condemned too young to death by a mad man with a gun. So quickly so cold, small bodies and bodies of their grown-up protectors. Then, a gun to the killer’s own head by his own hand, and the madness stopped. Silence, except for final gasps and moans, cries of survivors, weeping of children who had heard the chaos through thin walls. Cold chill.

“Answers” quickly posted on social media and confidently hawked by TV’s gurus (so full of themselves!) rang hollow: stronger gun laws and better mental health services and and more security in schools and less violence on TV and in games and stronger families and blah and blah and blah... “Explanations” cracked like gunshots in the electronic universe, as impotent and unlikely to change what needed changing as the flash of distant lightning at the end of a summer’s day. Real, yes; but distant, and silent.

Quasi-spiritual and religious answers and explanations most riled Sylvia, herself a good Christian. People justified their own beliefs upon altars built of children’s corpses, proposing that somehow their particular version of “god” made sense of it all, or maybe conveyed some comfort. As if their “god” had known what he or she was doing Friday morning. As if all those kids and teachers and administrators were somehow destined to “go to Jesus” then and there. As if that made the whole bloody affair okay, just fine, all neat and sweet...thank you, Jesus!

Nonsense! Whose “god” dared claim any right to do such a thing, or even just to have been looking the other way while a crazed killer’s gun preemptively sent time’s young to eternity? Sylvia could not imagine who could think her own grandchildren would be happier “with Jesus” than with their own families, or that those families would be pleased to think “god” had taken their children from them. No comfort in that. If “god” possessed any power at all, why the hell hadn’t he or she used it right then? Now it was too late, far too late. Sylvia believed...but this morning she didn’t know in what or whom.

The old coffee mug cooled. Low and thick clouds locked the morning’s dawn out of earth, still dark at 9:00 a.m. No light penetrated the absence of explanations, the dearth of answers. No light, no illumination, no response. Sylvia wept for the children, for the adults, for the shooter, for the families, for the future, for herself.

A knock on the back door lifted her out of her morass. Beth, her long-time neighbor and dear friend, stood in the doorway, bearing fresh-baked muffins on a plastic tray. Sylvia brewed more coffee, and they sat at the familiar kitchen table, silent, in the dark. The morning news paused between them.

They reached for the warmth of filled mugs and touched the warmth of friendship. They knew now, in that moment, why Jesus weeps.

Monday’s news reported that gun sales had been unusually good over the weekend.

Number One?

CNN reports the best quality-of-life cities in the world, according to a recent survey. Eight of the top ten are in Europe; the best the US does are Honolulu at #28 and San Francisco, tied with Paris at #29. And don't tell me Europe is broke; so are we. But they are at least seem to be trying to deal with their problems. Our leaders are just posturing, including the President I voted for.

I am glad I live in the USA, but we are not all we talk ourselves up to be. We are still by far the richest, most powerful nation on earth, yet the quality of life for many of us is marginal at best. A lot more honesty about who we are and how our citizens live and about who we want to be must take place if the USA is ever to fulfill its promise.