Strange, But (Apparently) True

The march is history often obscures our memories of things so radically that we actually ended of thinking, "No, that didn't really happen...did it?" Garrison Keillor has two examples of this fact in his Writer's Almanac for today, December 28:

1) On this day in 1973, President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law.  (WHAT President? No!)

Keillor's background information further strains credibility: "In 1972, Nixon outlined his environmental agenda to Congress. He said: "This is the environmental awakening. It marks a new sensitivity of the American spirit and a new maturity of American public life. It is working a revolution in values, as commitment to responsible partnership with nature replaces cavalier assumptions that we can play God with our surroundings and survive." (Nixon said THAT?) He specifically asked for a new Endangered Species Act that would provide early identification and protection of threatened species, and treat hunting or capturing endangered species as a federal offense. In 1973, the House and Senate versions were combined. The Senate passed the bill unanimously, and the House by a vote of 355 to 4. (Congress did WHAT?)

2) "It was on this day in 1945 that Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. It was written in 1892 by a minister and Socialist (!) named Francis Bellamy, who was eventually forced out of his position because he preached too many sermons about Jesus and socialism."

Interestingly, the Rev. Bellamy did NOT include the words "under God" in his original. Keillor writes how they came about: "The words "under God" were added in 1954 to make sure it didn't sound like something that would be recited by Communists." (Nor by Socialists, of course. Or Christians?)

My Lord has come

My Lord has come
Will Todd

Shepherds, called by angels,
Called by love and angels;
No place for them but a stable.
My Lord has come.

Sages, searching for stars,
Searching for love in heaven;
No place for them but a stable.
My Lord has come.

His love will hold me,
His love will cherish me,
Love will cradle me.

Lead me, lead me to see him,
Sages and shepherds and angels;
No place for me but a stable.
My Lord has come.


The December 20 "Crossing @ Christmas" concert at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill, PA, began and ended with Will Todd's, "My Lord has come." Words and music together spoke to me in a particular way on that evening in that beautiful place. The poem is my greeting to you this Christmas, and I invite you to give the few minutes it takes to listen to Tenebrae perform it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m8ryivqefk.

Merry Christmas!

Alternative Narratives

Author Ursula K. Le Guin in Steering the Craft includes a paragraph about story-writing that offers insight into our world and culture today:

"Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing."

While I think conflict usually is to be found in the seven other kinds of behavior Le Guin mentions (I suspect she'd agree), her thought that story-telling and life-living must always center on aggression and competition often seems at the heart of our personal lives and of each day's headlines.  Can we begin to consider other narratives for everything from family relationships to international politics? Dare we afford not to?

Prophets' Sestina

Aspiring to faithful adventures,

those who embrace the good risk

direct their worn boots

toward arenas where success

is less likely than failure;

they are seized by justice’s challenge.

Not a fantasy challenge

(pixelated virtual adventures,

bold graphically-portrayed failure

requiring no personal cost or risk).

Not for showy display of success,

for fancy, shiny, dress-up boots…

“Thank you. I prefer clean boots.

I will not let the grit of challenge

offered without guarantee of success

set the course of my ventures–

No dusty path that might ask I risk

embarrassment, shame, self, failure.”

But those brave who court failure

(weight of its mud on their boots)

to serve earth’s despised, at risk,

poor, beaten down by challenges

(whose small hopes are painful adventure)–

those brave for the meek’s success

detour their chances of success

to walk with repeated failure;

to hold close the poor through lonely adventures,

to lift the beaten with straps of their own boots.

They accept the challenge

of failing to avoid risk.

Justice-rolling takes long, long risk;

right and good stream toward success.

Justice-doing is a daily challenge

for love and kindness (which never fail).

Walking humbly in righteous boots–

doing what’s required–faith-filled adventure!

Prophets challenge our cheap successes:

“Matters not the risk of failure,

when boots wear thin in just adventure.”

Unlikely Dialogue

(telephone rings)

Mr. Richard MacMillan: Hello

(silence)

Mac: Hello

(silence, click, pause)

Voice on other end of line: May I speak to Mr. Richard MacMillan, please.

Mac: You've got him. Who's calling?

Voice: I am calling from Prove What You Want Research Associates to ask you a few questions. This is not a sales call. It will only take ten minutes, and you will be eligible to win a $25 Amazon gift card simply for participating in this survey. May I begin?

Mac: Not interested...

Voice: But sir, you should be interested. Here is your opportunity to take part in the great American democratic process (small "d", of course), and to make a contribution to building our economy and creating jobs, all in ten, short minutes. And then, there's that Amazon gift card...

Mac: I am not interested...

Voice: Please...I need you to be interested. This is my 456th call today, Mr. MacMillan, and not one person has taken the survey or received the gift card. I am sure you would like to be first to do your patriotic duty, and to help me keep my job as well. Please, please, let me ask you these silly questions. I know, they're designed to get the answers Prove What You Want is being paid to get. But I can tell you are a just man, not wanting to be the cause of little old me losing her job. Besides, I can tell you’re a man with a sense of humor. Please, O please, play along with me. What have you got to lose?

Mac: Besides my sanity? Well, OK, you win; fire away.

Voice: Thank you, O thank you. You won't regret a minute of these ten.

Mac: Humph!

Voice: All-righty; here's number 1: Which robocall would you rather receive after midnight: one from Rachel concerning your gas bill, or one from the Captain offering you a really cheap Caribbean cruise?

Mac: Ehh...neither? I don't want either call any time, especially not after midnight.

Voice: Oh, I am so sorry, Mr. MacMillan–”neither" is not an acceptable answer. This is a forced choice kind of test...well, except it's not a test, you know. It's a survey to find out your preferences. So, which would it be?

Mac: Well actually, it's still neither. But given the choices, in the middle of the night I'd rather hear about a cruise than about gas...though I did kind of like the sound of Rachel's voice.

Voice: Good; then you'd like to be robocalled about a really cheap Caribbean cruise after midnight...

Mac: Well, not really...

Voice: On to question number 2: On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means "sometimes a little tiny bit annoyed" and 5 means "this is more fun than sex"...on that scale, how do you feel about robocalls when you get them?

Mac: That's my range of choices–from "a little bit annoyed" to "more fun than sex"? I hate robocalls, hate them all more than I hate boiled turnips.

Voice: Oh, Mr. MacMillan, you have such a way with words! But surely you cannot indiscriminately hate them all. Perhaps your extreme reaction has something to do with your relationship to your mother. Have you considered that?

Mac: My "relationship to my mother"? Where do you get off at? What kind of a survey is this...is this some kind of a psychological assessment or something?

Voice: Well, yes, actually it is. We want to know what various kinds of robocalls do for your sex life when you get them after midnight. Judging from your responses so far, the answer is, "they do wonders."

Mac: Oh, for Christ's sake. I've had enough. I'm hanging up.

Voice: Not so fast, Mr. MacMillan. In order to get your Amazon gift card, you need to answer three more questions. I will say that they are for statistical purposes only, because that's what this coffee-stained cheat sheet says I am supposed to say, but (her voice getting softer and more seductive) you should also know I am looking for a man...

Mac: A man?

Voice: A man...so just answer the questions if you know what's good for you...if you know what I mean.

Mac (succumbing): Yes, dear. Shoot.

Voice: How old are you?

Mac: Fifty-six.

Voice: On scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means "good for my age" and 5 means "stunning for any age," how sexy are you?

Mac: A solid 5, baby; a solid 5!

Voice: And finally, can we meet for a drink tonight?

Mac: Sure, but it will have to be after midnight.

Whose Point of View?

Some thoughts about editorial integrity at Cleveland’s barely-daily newspaper, but leading to wider implications...

There’s a political columnist with the Cleveland Plain Dealer whose work often makes me wonder where he is coming from. He is Kevin O’Brien, and his role the paper is more that that of one columnist among several. He is also assistant editor, not only editing others’ columns, but also selecting everything that appears in the PD’s Forum section. He’s one influential man in the paper’s/media group’s stable, and though his choice of material for the Forum is fair and diverse, his own writing drives me nuts.

It’s not that Kevin O’Brien is conservative. I understand and accept the rightness of a newspaper presenting opinion writers who offer a range of perspectives and viewpoints. My problem with O’Brien is that he is, to my mind, an off-the-edge-of-the-cliff conservative who is so far right that he rarely lets facts get in the way of his rants.  He makes Charles Krathammer sound middle-of-the-road and George Will sound smart (which he probably is). He is Rush Limbaugh on printer’s ink, a male Maureen Dowd.

O’Brien has so upset me that I have written to the Plain Dealer twice to suggest that he be fired, despite the fact I am usually tolerant of diverse viewpoints and always defend the need to present them. But that is how much he irks me. I’ve been told he is really a nice guy, but I do not doubt for a moment that he would banish me and my liberal kind from the face of the earth if he could.

So, when Ted Diadiun, who is sort of the Plain Dealer’s ombudsman, wrote a column headed “Columnists give off sparks that illuminate multiple points of view” for the October 13 PD, I read it with great interest, wondering what he would tell us about my old nemesis. Diadiun began by explaining that “a columnist’s work [does not go] into the paper unedited. But the editor is there mainly to be sure that the column makes sense, is grammatical and won’t get the paper into legal difficulty.” He quotes Chris Quinn, vice president for content of the Northeast Ohio Media Group, as saying that “as long as the column is factual, and well-reasoned and fair, it goes in. But it does have to be those three things.”

Even though I believe Kevin O’Brien’s work often falls short of those standards, I have no energy for doing the work necessary to prove it again. Why bother? I have tried before and he is still there at the Plain Dealer, spewing out words that sometimes make no sense and often fall far short of being “factual, and well-reasoned and fair.”

But as I read further I witnessed O’Brien doing himself in. 

Diadiun reports that O’Brien said "he doesn’t write his columns necessarily to persuade,” and then quotes the man himself:

“I don’t write for people who disagree with me. If they read it and think about what I say, great. But as a conservative in Northeast Ohio, I’m writing for the minority who think the way I do, and who deserve to have someone in the media taking their side, and giving them some affirmation.”

So: when I read Kevin O’Brien’s words I read not his own thoughts but rather his take on the group-think of a minority (funny: conservatives often claim they speak for a majority). He sees himself as representing conservatives, and as responsible for affirming them. He submits his individual independence as a columnist to those who hold points of view broadly like his in order to take their side and urge them on, no matter how wrong or irrational they may be. Perhaps he is uninterested in persuading others to see things as he sees them because he doesn’t know how he sees things apart from the views of those he represents. Being “factual, and well-reasoned and fair” is not required unless the right-wingers for whom he is a shill should someday become that way.

But now O’Brien is no longer a shill for conservatives, because he’s outed himself. He has revealed his own secret. We don’t have to read him anymore. We just have to attend to the rantings and ravings of the Tea Party and we are inside Kevin O’Brien’s head.

How many other columnists and opinion shapers see themselves in the service of particular constituencies or groups? Conversely, how many think and write out of their own hearts and convictions, conscious of their particular point of view, but unwilling to bend everything they offer to that point of view, especially when facts take them to another place? I’d like to read columns that tell me why a thing is so, even when I wish that thing were not so, so I might learn something new and, if possible, speak and act upon it myself. I would even like such informed and independent thinking from the pens and keyboards of “liberal” writers and commentators.

So again I ask, why does the Plain Dealer need Kevin O’Brien? Why do they pay him to say things straight out of the scripts of a particularly partisan minority group? Let the right-wing pay him, so that the Plain Dealer can hire a conservative columnist and editor capable of thinking and writing for him or herself, willing even to try to persuade me. I can subscribe to that.

God of the Gun

The Holy Book in my heart–my shield against all enemies. My means of attack under the jacket of my pagan western-style clothes (all black), so out-of-place on Nairobi's streets, but not here, in this playground of the rich.

God and guns. Great good. Death’s dearest wish.

The car at an open back entrance to the mall (the work of an inside accomplice). I, through the shadows, now inside, and in a casual stroll toward the central transept, to my assigned place (no notice, please!). Others here, too, on time. Perfect planning.

From behind the northwest pillar, a clear view of the ignorant masses. Gun now in hand in plain sight, arm horizontal. No retreat now. Finger at trigger: CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! A dozen explosions of blood and fleshy pieces. Screams of men, women, and children in the chaos. No near exit, no safe place for any of them. None! Retribution and victory over the infidel, even fellow believers different in their believing. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! So purifying, so satisfying, so cleansing, so just: blood sacrifice for the almighty's glory. Righteous terror, clean execution!

But in a flash, a bullet with my name on it into my heart. From where? From whom? Blood and arm and gun down to the floor. Blurring vision. Gurgles of blood in my throat. A muffled scream (my turn): "God...good!" in the death of the innocent, and of me, now guilty.

"Gun?...God?...Good?" Yes, and in Ohio, too.

One Scene, Two Points of View

The vaulted living room of the million-dollar McMansion glowed with the light of celebrity. The near-rich and the almost-famous who inhabited the faux-opulent space filled it with vacuous chatter about one another. Richard fit right in here, and he knew it. His most recent film had garnered praise enough to be noticed and criticism enough to be interesting. His easy good looks were sure to attract the attention he craved.

He surveyed the scene in a way that he hoped would not be noticed. To his left there stood a small group of young film makers with whom he might be able to network his path to another success. The couple standing near the fireplace–an older, highly-respected producer and his wife–might be a good contact. How could he introduce himself without fawning?

Then his eyes fell on a woman whose beauty and bearing stopped his search. Who was she? He couldn't recall her. His mind ran through all the starlets he'd encountered along the way to his modest accomplishment, but she was not among them. His imagination undressed her and transported her to being alone with him. Thoughts of spending much time with anyone else that evening were overwhelmed by his desire to be with her. She was alone, and apparently available.

As he took his first step in her direction, she turned slightly to her left and headed toward the entry hall. Had she seen his approach? Was she leaving already? Had she forgotten something, or was someone she knew coming to join her? Richard hesitated, not wanting to seem to be chasing her, yet not wanting to lose her. In Richard’s moment of doubt she left the room and his sight.

+++++

At a little past nine I arrive at the Brown's home just outside Beverly Hills. I am sure I have been invited because of the decent, if not great, reviews Sleeper in Seattle got, and Dave and Marge think I might be useful to their growing company. But I also know I have a lot to gain from being seen here, both because of the other professional contacts I can make, and because you never know who you might meet at a big party. Reasons enough to attend alone...better not to have to worry about anyone except me.

I am not entirely comfortable in this tux, but that's required. Just have to trust my smile and my looks. Just inside the door of the living room I stop, stand tall, and casually look over the crowd. Who could be most useful to me? The young, aspiring folks like me, or the older, more connected men and women of the industry? I have to chose carefully, given this singular opportunity. 

Then I see her. My heart stops. I don't recognize her at all, and I think I've met most the young actresses in Hollywood, even spending quality time alone with many of them. Something about her, not just her beauty, but the way she stands and carries herself, even with no one else around her, makes me burn to meet her, to spend the evening with her. To hell with professional contacts.

I take a step in her direction, and she moves. O shit! She's headed to the door. On her way out? To meet someone else? She disappears from my sight, and I am alone again.

First Day of School

The Day Before

A thousand emotions overwhelm the young parents because tomorrow their little girl, born five years ago this past July, will be sent out into the world via kindergarten, commencing at least thirteen years of basically five-day-a-week learning and playing and finding and losing and growing and hurting, all experiences and events consuming her time and energy, and theirs, too...starting at 8:15 am, when mom will escort her into the big building, where big kids–fifth, sixth graders!–will tower over her and make her feel small just when she is feeling so very grown up, confusing her and frightening them, until when, at 3:30 pm, mom will appear in the classroom door and see their precious one, just shared for seven solid hours with a teacher and contemporaries the family hardly knows: so relieved, so proud, all of them.

The Morning of the Day Itself

She scrambles out of bed at 6:00 am eager to be off to school this first morning it won't always be that way eat a good breakfast now put on your new outfit here your backpack help me put your lunch in it take a picture to send to grandma and grandpa get in the car arrive at school so many kids and parents around here take my hand so I can show you the way pay attention soon you will have to find your own way to your room remember your teacher met her last week at that meeting teacher shows the little girl her cubby your back pack in here and sit down on one of the circles on the floor mom steps backward toward the door waves a weak good-bye swallows hard goes home to sip a melancholy cup of coffee at the kitchen table secure familiar

That Evening

Dinner is over. The dishes are clean and stacked. Quiet descends.
It is time to go to bed. Dad oversees the routine.
The girl hasn't said much. Questions only receive one-word answers. Is there too much to think about?
She's washed her face. Her teeth and hair are brushed. She’s wearing her favorite fairy pajamas.
Dad and daughter sit on her bed. He reads three familiar stories. Too soon she will read to herself. School does that.
She quiets, as if at prayer. He turns out the light. It is time to say good-night.
"I dropped my sandwich on the floor. Teacher wouldn't let me eat it. It was too dirty. I was so hungry all afternoon."
"I'm sorry," he offers. He kisses her good-night.
The world out there is tough. Too soon she will learn. School does that, too.

a man, yet by these tears a little boy again (plus postscript)

two brief excerpts from

a man, yet by these tears a little boy again

from CHAPTER ONE

Bobby tried harder than ever to hold back his tears. But it was too late; he could not halt their flow. He was afraid, embarrassed, and ashamed of himself.

Not that his mother's cruel words told him anything new, about him or about her. He knew she resented his constant string of questions: what makes the sky blue? why does the sun shine? how high fly the clouds? how far swim the sharks? Bobby knew she’d never ever had time or energy for such questions, but certainly not now, now that his father was gone. But why did she have to yell at him, to call him stupid, to slap his face?

Nothing she (or anyone else) could do would drive his questions away. That was the trouble with it. That was a trap of it. He wanted to know...to know...to know everything and then some, but when the questions came the only person he could ask didn't have time for them. It's tough for a seven-year old boy's brain to take a break from asking to know, to forget wanting to understand the world. It's tough for his mind to mind only his own business.

Bobby quietly closed the door to his room behind him. His silent tears moistened his pillow into sleep's calm.

from CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Rage drove Robert into Frank's corner office on the 21st floor of the Terminal Tower. He knew what was about the happen: another whistle blower quietly escorted out of the building at 10:30 a.m. when nobody would likely notice.

He had tried hard to maintain his composure, to speak calmly to the right people about how the brokerage’s cooked books hid the bilking of unsuspecting investors out of millions of dollars. He had documented it all, memorizing long columns of figures and names of shell companies during the day so he could enter the evidence in his computer at home each evening. The hours he spent holed up in the den made his wife suspicious that he was visiting porno sites or worse, which at times he really wished he had been. But the work had to be done carefully to provide everything management and prosecutors would need to build a case.

But the decision to fire him had been made, or so the rumor mill had it. His rage nearly morphed into tears of fear and disgust: fear for his future, and disgust at the callous treatment he and all the material he'd gathered were getting. Why didn't they hear what he had to say; why couldn't he convince them of its truth, of the danger it posed to them all? But his tears would have to wait; now he had truth to tell, as clearly as he could, now, one last time.

Robert knocked on Frank's door, heard “come in”, entered, and closed the door silently behind him. He was surprised to feel that, now, he was ready for anything.

+   +   +

Simon and Who?

During yesterday’s class my critique group consisted of three young college students and myself. One of the guys wrote a compelling piece about a boxer’s fall from grace. I commented that it made me think of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer. He looked at me sort of quizzically, and I realized I was showing my age. “You have heard of Simon and Garfunkel?” I asked. “I think so,” he replied, perhaps not wanting to disappoint me. The other two had never heard of them. He later told us he hoped to learn how to write lyrics for popular songs. I suggested he might look them up.

I am tempted to conclude, “SO THAT’S WHAT’S WRONG WITH KIDS TODAY!” But damn, all three sure wrote fine pieces anyway.

Regarding Syria Strike: to my Senators and Representative

I urge you to vote against the President's plan that is to be before you this week to take military action against Syria.

Like you, I have read the reasons for and against this proposal. I would only add that I hope you will take seriously the words of the many religious leaders both within and outside of Syria who are urging you to vote no.

I have little new to add to anyone’s arguments. Except this: as a young child I learned that "Two wrongs do not make a right." The purpose of that admonition was to make you think at least twice before responding to a wrong with a wrong.

“Two wrongs do not make a right” works on many levels in this situation. No doubt, using chemical weapons at all is a grave wrong. It cannot be ignored. But responding to it with the "wrong" of missile strikes that may or may not kill or injure civilians, that may or may not hit useful targets, that may or may not lead to a wider conflict, that may or may not stop Assad, that will most likely lead to the kind of situation we left in Iraq is wrong because it is nearly certain that greater harm will be inflicted on more people than was done by the original act itself, and the US will be no more secure.

Further: killing civilians and destroying their homeland is always the wrong way to enhance our credibility and standing in the world. It’s a sad day when that's what the US must do in order to be considered credible.

Our President has put us in a serious predicament. I am dismayed; I hoped for so much more from him. Now he is asking Congress to pull him out of that predicament. Make him work harder at it–vote against striking Syria.

Sincerely,

Keith Dean Myers

So Gracious the Day

So gracious the day (the sun rises before I): light illumines lands and lakes emerging from night's shadowed shroud; stars relinquish status, and the phased (yet never fazed) moon fades; cool night breezes collapse, temperatures trek upward, day's noise nudges night's narrative into silence.

Animals active with darkness descend to their dens, nodding vague acknowledgement to those emerging to engage again in their search for survival. Shadows born long and narrow slowly shorten and assimilate into mere mid-day selves, then reverse course to stretch again toward the eastern horizon. Birds chirp seducing songs, locusts saw away, arachnids arc webs around flapping flies (buzzing), fish drop deep into the cool reaches of the pond, leaves lean into light: each one speeds or slows, calculating its own course under the command of our single shining star working its daily way west.

All 7 billion homo sapiens (we who wallow in our wisdom!) live or die by the grace of the orb our gracious orb orbits. But we hardly know it. We assume it self-evident that we are in control, charge, and command: but our self-elevated placement is not at all apparent to our environment. Our star and our sphere surely laugh and lament the sorry swagger of our wordy ways and wars and wanderings. Who, beholding our hubris from heaven's heights, would not be amused, ashamed, afraid?

But I arise, wash my face, and bemoan the start of another day.

Stalwart sun (rising before I): you mock my pathetic self-pity!

Notes from a Road Trip West: Where It Began

Which is more important: the journey itself or the journey's destination? Is it more important to travel than it is to get there, whether there is determined by you or by someone or something else, where there happens to be?

In our time, pop psychology and philosophy weigh in heavily on the side of the journey itself. Is that because we do not know where are going, or even headed, these days? Or is it that we fear there's nothing out there that we can imagine might be more interesting or challenging than the world we glimpse as we rush through it?

The European-stock scouts and settlers of North America no doubt regarded their journey west as a high-risk necessity on the way to a life-promising destination. There were unimagined vistas to see and prairies and mountains to cross on their way, and those scenes and sights no doubt generated a wonder and an awe in them that our own experience of them can never duplicate. Nevertheless, it was the destination that mattered, that made the journey necessary, and they dearly hoped, worth its many costs.

When we left our home near Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday, July 9, 2013, we knew where we were going and we had a fairly clear idea of what we would see and when we would see it. Maxine and I packed all we could into our green Prius, and headed west on the Ohio Turnpike at 75+ miles per hour. The first day we drove some 675 miles to Grundy Center, Iowa, my home town, where we stayed with my mother for three days. Then, on Saturday morning, July 13, we headed west again, mostly on US 20 in Iowa, then jumping north to I-90, our main route for the remainder of our journey.

Our western-most destination was Spokane, Washington, home of our older daughter and her husband and their two children. But it was only an intermediate destination: after three days there, we turned around and headed back east, eventually arriving again where we had started in Ohio, by way of Iowa. The journey itself–nearly 6,000 miles of it–mattered most to us, for its final destination was the familiarity of where we had started. Ironically, even our most western stop, Spokane, was about to lose its significance for us when two weeks after we were there the family moved east to New York State. Will Americans ever learn to sit still?

What follows are entries into my blog, www.coelietterra.blogspot.com, which I made during our journey. I did not intend a travelogue as in a point-by-point description of every experience, but only to post a message coming out of what seemed to me at the time to be most interesting, perhaps even revelatory of the larger reality we were visiting at the time. You have read, two paragraphs ago, one of the few references to our route. What ended up mattering to me on this trip is not the journey nor the destination(s), but the markers along the way...as is true of life itself.

Just before we left home I downloaded an app to my phone called simply, "Altimeter." Turns out not give not only height above sea level, but latitude and longitude. So, at each place we spent the night, I recorded our elevation and our coordinates.

Here in our kitchen in Orange Village, Ohio, we are 1,180 feet above sea level, 41° 25' 46" N, and 81° 28' 19" W. It's a great place to start...and to return to as well.

Notes from a Road Trip West: Noticing Home

It's long past time for that summary post I promised nearly a month ago...

...we drove too quickly through the Tetons, vowing to go back and explore them more fully one day. Little did we know we were about to cross our highest pass on our way east: the sign told us we crossed the Continental Divide this one last time at 9584 feet above sea level, and my altitude app gave just about the same reading. We then drove and drove a long descent through more kinds of landscapes that I can remember, finally landing in Chadron NE (3471 feet, 42° 49' 19" N, 103° 1' 0" W) to spend that night, before the last mad dash to Iowa, three nights there, and home late on August 1.

If there's one word that keeps coming to mind as I recall our journey it is the word "vast." We live in a vast country sprawled across a vast continent, seemingly beyond the bounds of any natural or human limitations. Perhaps that is one reason we American’s play our part on the world stage as if we were answerable to no one but ourselves and our own desires.

Upon and underneath much of the landscape we traveled are the vast resources with which we have built our wealth, and that we count on to propel us into the future. From petroleum to precious metals to just plain, but absolutely essential, water, the great mid-section of North American holds riches every bit as valuable at the fertile Iowa soil of my birth. The cost–human, economic, and environmental–of extracting and exploiting this wealth is enormous, and we are willing to pay it because we trust it will lead to even greater wealth. Maybe it will, though that is not as sure a proposition as it once seemed, as the costs grow greater and the risks to the future livability of the planet increase.

I would like to see us contemplate the vastness of it all, more often, more deeply, more intentionally. To let where we now are sink into us, just as it is, and bring us face-to–face with the graced giftedness of this land we call our home. We might then treat it with the kind of respect we are told the original inhabitants had for the bison and for everything they used in their living. We might then realize that our living is not just an ongoing journey toward an imagined destination, but a series of stops and experiences along the way that hold value and worth in themselves, just as they are, just as we are.

Quick Thoughts on a Road Trip West: Up High, Down Below

Traveling Glacier Park's Going to the Sun Road makes one feel on top of the earth. Walking among Yellowstone Park's geothermal features makes one feel uncomfortably close to earth's nethermost regions. Either place, one is may be forgiven for feeling small and powerless in the face of overwhelming geological forces. One may also be expected, no matter what his or her religious convictions, to feel the force of the Psalmist's question: "What is humanity that you–God–should pay any attention at all to us?"

Am I wrong in thinking Yellowstone Park is like no place else on earth? I don't care; I like thinking that. After a day mostly spent exploring thermal pools and geysers and the like we visited the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It took our breath away in a way that perhaps only the other Grand Canyon might do. On our drive back to our room we saw bison and elk and one pronghorn grazing in vast valleys cut by glaciers and rivers, almost the way nature meant them to feed. Our planet is writ large in Yellowstone, and complex, and vulnerable, too. Awe strikes unawares, and even massive buildings such as the Old Faithful Inn cannot compete.

What's been the most impressive and moving site or experience on this Road Trip West? About that I have to think much harder than I have energy to think at the end of our last full day of sight-seeing. (We will perhaps drive by the Tetons on our way east tomorrow, but do not have time to explore them...everyone has to head home eventually.) A summary post will no doubt follow as I process and feel it all. Meantime, thanks for coming along for this ride.

Quick Thoughts on a Road Trip West: A River Runs Through It

I-90 from Spokane WA through the Idaho panhandle and well into Montana may be the most spectacular interstate highway I've ever traveled. The road follows long-followed routes between tree-covered mountains, races up and down spectacular passes, and grants one astonishing view after another  of this grand corner of our planet.

The highway weaves around the Clark Fork River for many miles as it approaches Missoula, the main setting of Norman Maclean's short novel, A River Runs Through It. Its story is based upon Maclean's growing up in Missoula, where his Presbyterian-minister father taught him how to fly fish and how to write. Many of my minister friends saw and loved the film Robert Redford made of A River Runs Through It about twenty years ago. It so moved me that I bought and read the book itself and about wore out the CD of the sound track. I think reading that book was the first time in my life that I read something and said to myself, "I want to write like that guy writes." It turned me on to writing as an art, not just as a means of sharing information.

A River Runs Through It also touched me, I think, because my brother, Don, was at the time I read it fighting the cancer that eventually took his life. I identified with Norman, who could do nothing to help his brother, Paul (played by a relatively unknown young actor named Brad Pitt), in his struggle against a very different illness.

I went on to read all I could find of the rest of Maclean's work. There apparently isn't much: two longer short stories usually published with River; Young Men and Fire that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago; and a book of various writings by and about  Maclean that his colleagues at the University of Chicago put together after his death. That volume includes pieces he was working on about The Battle of Little Big Horn, which I will reread when we get home since I've now been there myself.

So as Maxine drove I-90 nearing Missoula, I Googled "First Presbyterian Missoula Maclean" and learned that in 2009 a monument to Norman's father had been placed in front of the current FPC building (built in 1915). I wondered if we should stop to find it, and Maxine knew I absolutely needed to do that. Map Quest makes these things easy, and five minutes off the freeway we were at the beautifully well-kept brick building, and I was posing beside a large upright stone engraved with a picture of a fly-fisherman about to land a fish from a Montana river (surely the Bitterroot), and this inscription:

"In memory of Dr. John Norman Maclean, pastor of First Presbyterian Church from 1909 to 1925, whose love of God, family and creation inspired the story A River Runs Through It and construction of this sanctuary designed by his friend and church member, Missoula architect A. J. Gibson."

I feel as if my first visit to Montana has been somewhat like the first personal meeting of long-time pen pals. You know one another, and you are eager to experience one another in the flesh, but you are anxious that you won't live up to one another's expectations. That one or both of you might have mislead the other about who you really are. Norman Maclean's writings, however, seem to me to have presented Montana as the bold and beautiful place it really is.

Tonight we sleep in Gardiner MT, just north of the Wyoming state line, and about a mile from the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park. The next three mornings we will drive through the Roosevelt Arch to explore the wonders of one more spectacular place in our great country. I am very grateful that we can do this, and for all who've made it possible for us to do it...and for family and teachers and writers who gave me the hunger to want to explore and experience so much.

Quick Notes from a Road Trip West: Music to My Ears

While filling up our car with gas today in Spokane, I noticed that a fairly battered white pick-up had parked near me. A man dressed in work clothes got out and went into the store, leaving the windows open and the radio on. What a surprise to hear the music of strings and woodwinds floating out that window...obviously a classical-style chamber work of some kind. When he came out I resisted the temptation to congratulate him on his musical taste; how condescending that would have sounded!

Quick Notes from a Road Trip West: Family Business

Quick Notes from a Road Trip West: Family Business

I keep trying to think of something to write about Glacier National Park that may not have been said already by someone, somewhere.  But I am sure the picture I posted on Facebook a couple of days ago and the many other pictures I took before and after it would be the best commentary I could offer.  I guess I will simply take note of what seems like a side issue, but is important to all of our visits to parks and monuments preserved for us and shared with us by the Federal government.

I think Ken Burns called our national parks our government's best idea, and while I can't say that for sure, I am sure they are a darned good idea by our government. From this consumer's experience they are well-run and appropriately shared with us and will hundreds of thousands of visitors from overseas. I can't imagine what they would be like if they'd been left to private enterprise and entrepreneurship. They are beautiful, mostly clearly presented, and offer nearly everyone of nearly all physical abilities a chance to experience them.  They employ highly-dedicated staffs, supplemented by equally-dedicated volunteers. I know not everyone is happy with everything they do, but achieving that would be impossible. Their mission is too big to expect perfection.

Our parks even take global warming/climate change seriously, because they see it happening and they see what it is doing. It would be good for a number of the members of congress to spend some time at the national parks for which they are responsible, although I fear what they might try to do to alter their message about our climate if they knew what was being said. Maybe this is one area of public life where we're better off if they stay locked inside the beltway.

We are now in Spokane WA with our daughter and son-in-law and two granddaughters. The older of them celebrated her 5th birthday in a city park with a bunch of her (and her parents') best friends, and for the last half-hour her 2-year-old sister has been engaged in a fairly predictable end-of-a-big-day meltdown.  But it sounds as if a bath and the girls' patient parents have settled them into sleep mood, and soon all will be quiet so we adults can relax with appropriate drinks after hosting a big party in the 95-degree heat of the day.

In a couple of days we turn around and head back east, seeing Yellowstone en route. Can anything top what we've seen already. Maybe not, but I don't think it will matter.

Quick Notes from a Road Trip West: Miles and miles and miles and miles...

North out of Butte MT, driving the little Prius up the steep, steep grade of I-15, we catch a glimpse of the enormous copper mine that skirts Butte's northern edge.  The land flattens into the familiar high prairie ranch land we've see so much of already, then dips into the valley from which little Helena governs this huge state. North of Helena we come to the Gates of the Mountains, named by Lewis OR Clark (I can't remember which). I look for a memorial to the Mann Gulch fire that occurred in the area in1949, taking the lives of about a dozen young smoke jumpers, and subject of Norman MacLean's Young Men and Fire, but it and they seem forgotten on this busy Montana highway in 2013.  We visit the Lewis AND Clark Interpretive Center in Great Falls, but didn't have time to see the falls themselves, great as they surely are.  (It is almost impossible to imagine how the Corps of Discovery made that journey and learned so much from it.) Then we pass through farmland that makes me think of Iowa-without the cornfields though. Then back to grassland as we head west into the foothills of the Rockies.

You cover a lot of ground fast when you can legally drive 75 mph on the Interstates, 70 on many two-lane roads, and when miles of one-lane construction driving only makes you slow to 65. I ask myself why we can't do that back east, and then realize there's almost no traffic out here compared to New Jersey, just to pick a random example.

Tonight we are ensconced in a lodge just south of Glacier. What vistas of these magnificent mountains we had as we approached them from the east! Now looking forward to two days of seeing this majestic park. Even my cold won't keep me from enjoying it...but don't call me Lewis OR Clark. I'm nowhere near that brave or persistent, even in safe adventures like the one we are now on.

Quick Notes from a Road Trip West: Montana Battles

Our visit to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument took longer and was far more informative and moving than I'd anticipated. There was much to see and more to learn, and I sensed being immersed in both the glory and the shame of our national identity. I thought we'd spend an hour or so at most; we were at the monument nearly four hours.

If you'd asked me before today the difference between the Battle of Little Bighorn and Custer's Last Stand, I'd have had no idea. I always pretty much thought they were the same thing, but now I know the Last Stand was only a part of a larger and longer battle. But the Last Stand became the determinative factor in the outcome. Although the Native Americans won, their victory and our nation's political and economic pressures pushed the federal government to "solve the Indian problem" once and for all. Within a few years of 1876 all tribes were on reservations.  History is always far more complex than our memories make it seem to have been.

Long stretches of semi-arid grassland, then spectacular mountains surrounding green fields, with relatively small (by Eastern standards) cities built upon industrial and agricultural might widely spaced along the way. Montana feels vast in every way. Big Sky and big everything else. But people live and breathe the little things, as the headline in the Livingston MT paper reminded me: "Dog Recovering from Rattlesnake Bite."  The fight for life never ends.

Quick Thoughts from a Road Trip West: Is it Real? Is it True?

Deadwood SD is a wild and wicked Old West Town that thrives on keeping its reputation alive in the 21st century. We went into Mustang Sally's and come out with two iced teas...unsweetened, if you please. It was, after all, 11:00 am, but that didn't seem to matter to some of the other folks wandering Deadwood's Main Street this morning.

Drove up the long hill to Lead (pronounced "Leed" the AAA book says), which seems to be a much quieter sort of place, you could say rising morally above its sister city (they share a high school). But there George Hearst, father of famed publisher William Randolph Hearst, made his fortune through his initial investment in the Homestead Mining Co, setting his son up to become an forerunner of the likes of Rupert Murdock. What is truth? Truth is what sells papers.

Wonderful surprise of the day: on a whim we decided to exit Black Hills via Spearfish Canyon. It's one of the most beautiful scenic drives I've ever driven, and I've driven many, about half of them in the Black Hills in the last two days. I know now why so many people vacation there regularly. I didn't want to leave, and Spearfish Canyon told me that every mile of the way.

Looped north and west toward Devils Tower. Stopped on the way at the one-and-only store in Aladdin WY, pop. 15. Restrooms "out back," marked Cowboys and Cowgirls respectively. Sign tacked to wall near door says owners would like to sell. If you are interested in an investment, I'll send you a picture of the property. It's a sure thing, I'd say...but Maxine says if I go into to it, I will do so alone. Another missed opportunity.

Man to companion at Devils Tower: "Wow, how did they build this thing!" Companion: "No one built it; it's natural." Man: "You don't say." That's a true, overheard exchange, at the base of the 800 foot plus monolith jutting into the Wyoming sky.

Of course, the big question in my mind about Devils Tower is this: Where's the apostrophe? So I asked the ranger in the Visitors' Center and she said it was a clerical error no one ever fixed. Later I saw evidence that seems to support that understanding.

But here's the truth of the matter that came to my mind as we hiked around it: "tower" in the phrase is a verb, not a noun, and "Devils Tower" is short-hand for "The devils tower over us." Don't you think?

Seriously, it should not be called what we call it at all, apostrophe or no, but Native Americans' protests to that effect go unnoticed (natch). They prefer something like "Bear's Den," and tell a story to support that name. We, of course, go our own way, because, you see, devils tower over us, whether we know it or not.

Quick Thoughts from a Road Trip West: Icons on the Mind

As I hinted yesterday, we spent Sunday, July 14, touring South Dakota's Bandlands. It was a cool and damp day, which didn't fit the geography of that place well. But we were able to see most of what we wanted to see, and to take some short hikes into the eerie landscape created by eons of erosion's power.

Late in the day we headed due north to South Dakota's best-known town: Wall. We had to go there, having heard of the siren call of Wall Drug for most of our lives. Something eerie about that place, too...room after room of stuff for sale. How can there be so much stuff in the world, much less in one tiny SD town? I examined $450 cowboy boots and $3 refrigerator magnets and left the place with an ice cream cone. Didn't sit in the Traveler's Chapel (emptiest place there) or wait for the T-Rex to roar at me (which it does every 11 minutes, I believe).

Wall Drug is an iconic American success story, the kind people write books about. It's a family business going back to the 1931 when Ted Hustead came up with the idea of offering free ice water to hot and weary travelers. There's still free cold water (sans ice) in the "back yard," but I doubt anyone stops at Wall Drug for that nowadays.

We arrived at our B and B in Hill City, SD, Sunday evening, ready to begin two full days of touring the Black Hills. And icons suddenly struck me from every direction, around every turn. What is the American west if not "iconic?"

The icon that is Mt. Rushmore is awesome, and I use the word as I like it to be used: awe-inspiring. For one thing, how did they do that? Boggles the mind. Then, everything from the parking area to the entrance area to the evening program preceding the lighting of the faces is carefully coordinated to bring the visitor into the presence of the four great persons behind those stone visages. It's all like entering a holy space.

But the best-laid plans oft go astray: the night we went to see the faces light up was so foggy that when the great lights came on all we could see was...fog. As if heaven conspired to block from view four presidents who lived and acted in ways that seem larger than life. Yes, there really was a time when political leaders–Presidents and all–could act like that, and did. Bold vision, courageous decisions, game-changing policies, well-executed political strategies, faith, luck...of, by and for the PEOPLE. But I digress...

Our most moving view of Mt. Rushmore came late today as we were driving west on Iron Mountain Road, and stopped at the observation area at the top of whatever summit it crosses. There, in the distance, was Mt. Rushmore, visible within the context of the surrounding Black Hills, and we saw how it towers majestically over the landscape and how small those faces now seemed. Context allows the greatness inherent in certain people to flourish.

Another icon is the Crazy Horse Monument, some ten or fifteen miles west of Mt. Rushmore as the crow flies.  Its context is a very large complex of buildings devoted to Native American history, arts, and culture. The monument itself, also being carved upon a granite mountain, is barely begun even though the work has been in progress since 1949. Crazy Horses's face is complete, but his hair and his outstretched arm and the horse on which he rides are nothing but rough rock walls that have been exposed by innumerable explosive blasts. When finished–if it's ever finished–it will dwarf almost every other  human-made thing on earth, including Mt. Rushmore's four Presidential faces.   Are "they" trying to tell "us" something?

Clevelanders may be shocked to learn that Chief Wahoo did not seem to be among the many images of Native American leaders displayed in the Crazy Horse Monument's museum. I looked for him, but I was afraid to ask about him. Think his is an icon the first Americans could live without? Then why can't Cleveland's baseball fans?

(By the way, one thing I've wondered about the American Indian as icon is whether we've really come very far from the "noble savage" idea that the early European settlers came up with. How do you get to a real, unvarnished understanding of and appreciation for these people in all their remarkable richness and variety? Can we who are not they, ever?)

The night we went to the lazar light show projected on the unfinished Crazy Horse sculpture was crystal clear, and the show came off without a hitch.  Indians: one; US commanders-in-chief: zero.

Other icons I have seen these two beautiful days in South Dakota's Black Hills included Harley-Davidson motorcycles ridden and nurtured by men and women who dress that part, and the buffalo which I saw almost nose to nose in Custer State Park. Not to mention the sights and smells and sounds of the iconic pine forests that some say give this area its name.

Sadly, vast swaths of those pines are dried up and brown as the result of an infestation of insects. Our hostess expressed disdain for "tree-huggers" who prevented the Forest Service from spraying the trees before it was too late, which now it may be. I don't know the facts of that matter, but my heart is usually with the tree-huggers. Except sometimes what seems right can turn out to be just plain wrong. Icons are such slippery things.

Quick Notes from a Road Trip West: Bad, Very Bad

If you spend a Sunday visiting the Badlands, have you celebrated a Witches' Sabbath?

Risky perhaps, but worth every minute of it. The way such things tend to be...

Quick Notes from a Road Trip West: Corn and Pastures

Driving from the the eastern third of Iowa to the western third of South Dakota is a long journey from green fields of corn and soybeans to rolling grazing lands. It is to move from seeing farmers wearing feed caps to seeing ranchers in cowboy hats.

Somewhere in the middle of it all is Mitchell, SD, home of the world's only (or so they claim, and who's to doubt?) Corn Palace. It's a medium-sized auditorium/basketball court/exhibition hall right smack in the center of a town of about 14,000 souls.  You've perhaps seen pictures of this "Moorish style" building topped with turrets.  What makes it unique is that each year two of its four sides are covered with pictures and decorations created out of the products of the surrounding farm land...corn, grasses, sorghum, rye, oat heads, sour dock, etc. Each year has a theme; 2013 is-was-"we celebrate"...Christmas, Easter, Memorial and Veterans' Day, to name a few that made the cut. (It was somewhat disappointing to learn that only two of the building's four sides are covered with corn, etc; but that explains why all pictures of the Corn Palace are from the same angle.)

I say the 2013 theme "was" because large sections of the walls are now bare plywood, which the birds pecking  away at the art work may have caused to happen, but also because the Mitchellites seem to start the process in the fall with the harvest. I think you have to get to Mitchell before July 13 to view the Corn Palace at its best.

It's tempting to laugh at this unique example of American folk art, and I probably won't hurry to see it again anytime soon.  But it does represent the pride a relatively small town can take in something unique to it that also happens to draw thousands of tourists each summer. I can't imagine that creating it anew each year is easy and without controversy, but the people persist when they know they have something no one else has.  A tip of the old feed cap to the good people of Mitchell SD!

Bedding down tonight in Murdo SD, pop 670-some. Stomach full of buffalo burger from the Buffalo Bar and Restaurant, consumed in the company of real, hopefully working cowboys, genuinely at home on the range.  America, here we are!

Digging Into My Roots

"When I visit my mother in Iowa she always has a project or two or more for me to do, which is fine because I am glad she can live in her own house at the age of 94 and have jobs for me to do. This time she needed some work done in her yard, and so I spent yesterday and today turning over and raking smooth a small patch of Iowa soil.

"What a joy! After 20+ years of struggling with Ohio's clay, I actually enjoyed working the soil of my childhood and youth, with which I grew up and which I largely took for granted. The midwest's dirt is perhaps the single greatest gift of nature and of nature's god to our nation. It is a rich and fertile ground out upon which we built the bulk of our nation's abundance. The coastal folks may think of us as merely "fly-over country," but this land's bounty keeps their bellies full."

Young Men and Fire

In his 74th year author Norman Maclean (River Runs Through It and Other Stories) devoted himself to researching the 1949 Mann Gulch, Montana, forest fire which claimed the lives of 13 young Smokejumpers. When Maclean died in 1990 at the age of 87 the book remained unfinished. It was later completed by colleagues and published in 1992 as Young Men and Fire.

I read the book a number of years ago, and thought of it as soon I learned of the deaths of 19 firefighters in Arizona. Much about the two events sounds eerily similar, though I neither recall nor know the details of either of them now. As I have looked through Young Men and Fire I have remembered that it went into more detail than I could absorb at the time, interspersed with Maclean’s reflections on old age as he had attained it and on what it must be like to die young.

I offer the following passage from near the end of Young Men and Fire in memory of the young whose lives were consumed by fire in Arizona:

“To project ourselves into (the firefighters’) final thoughts will require feelings about a special kind of death–the sudden death in fire of the young, elite, unfulfilled, and seemingly unconquerable. As the elite of young men, they felt more surely than most who are young that they were immortal. So if we are to feel with them, we must feel that we are set apart from the rest of the universe and safe from fires, all of which are expected to be put out by ten o’clock the morning after Smokejumpers are dropped on them. As to what they felt about sudden death, we can start by feeling what the unfulfilled always feel about it, and, since the unfulfilled are many, the Book of Common Prayer cries out for all of them and us when it begs that we all be delivered from sudden death.

“‘Good Lord, deliver us.

‘From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder; and from sudden death,

‘Good Lord, deliver us.’

“One thing is certain about their final thoughts–there was not much size to them. Time and place did not permit even superior young men dying suddenly ‘to see their whole lives pass in review,’ although books portray people preparing to die as seeing a sort of documentary movie of their lives. Everything, however, gets smaller on the way to becoming eternal. It is also probable that the final thoughts of elite young men dying suddenly were not seeing or scenic thoughts but were cries or a single cry of passion, often of self-compassion, justifiable if those who cry are justly proud. The two living survivors of the Mann Gulch fire have told me that, as they went up the last hillside, they remember thinking only, ‘My God, how could you do this to me? I cannot be allowed to die so young and so close to the top.’ They said they could remember hearing their voices saying this out loud.”

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We leave tomorrow for another road trip, this one west. If I notice or experience unusual, funny, touching, or just plain weird things I will share them with you. Not a travelogue, thank you. Check in from time to time to join us on our journey.

Quick Notes from a Road Trip East: Tuesday, June 25

Get this: the house Maria showed us first thing Tuesday morning may be the right one for Jonathan, Liz, Robin and Keira. Better than the other houses we were prepared to visit in Oneonta. Life is in its living, so just go for it.

Beautiful drive home, but longer than we'd expected, in part because we got turned around in Binghamton when I-86 east seemed not to be there as the map showed it would be. Didn't know until we were a number of miles down SR 17 and saw a sign that it is the future I-86. Apparently lack of funding interrupts designating the portion of the road between Binghamton and Elmira as an Interstate highway. I guess the locals all know that, but am not sure why they don't make it clear to passers-through. Maybe they believe life is in its living, so why should I not live a few moments of it in beautiful Binghamton?

New York State's highways and attendant facilities leave a lot to be desired compared to Ohio's, in my humble opinion. But maybe my opinion will change after more trips to and from Oneonta. I expect we will make a lot of them.

Quick Notes from a Road Trip East: Monday, June 24

On our way to Ikea (our morning's entertainment) we passed a Methodist Church with a sign out front that read something like this: "Protect yourself from sunburn with Sonblock."  We'll, maybe it didn't say exactly that, but it's how I remember it. I pondered the message for several minutes, trying to figure out what it meant Perhaps the reason I never figured it out is that I remember it wrong. That's probably as logical an explanation as any I can come up with, except maybe that, in its original state, it was as incomprehensible as I now recall it.

On to Oneonta, NY. While checking into the Rainbow Motel on Oneonta's east side, I casually mentioned to the owner, Maria, that we were in town to scout out rental houses for our other daughter and husband and family, moving to Oneonta from Spokane WA in August. Maria said they had a house they are looking to rent a couple of doors down. She also told us about an agent she knew who might help us. Good thing we tried a mom and pop motel this time. Very nice place, too. I'd stay there again. Give folks a chance and you can be pleasantly surprised. It's often worth it.

Ate dinner at The Yellow Deli, which turned out to be part of something called "Twelve Tribes," which is a sort of a world-wide Messianic restoration-of-Israel commune. Great sandwiches in a place decorated to look like the great outdoors covered with words. Did my $20 go in part to support some kind of cult? Need to check it out. (Update: did check it out, and yep, some think it’s a cult.) When I recall the place now the witch's gingerbread house in "Hansel and Gretel" comes to mind. Give folks a chance and you might want to run the other way.

How many "religions" give rising generations good reason to be wary of all religion!

Quick Notes from a Road Trip East: Sunday, June 23

Easy Sunday morning in Chestnut Hill. Earth-warming sun shone as we walked to the Night Kitchen Bakery to satisfy my need for coffee. A little later, a short walk in Fairmont Park, then salad lunch of Weaver's Way Co-op's CSA greens at home. 

In the afternoon to Philadelphia's Ice Box for the second of The Crossing's three "Month of Moderns" concerts...this one called "The Gulf...between you and me." Inspired by the BP Gulf of Mexico blowout, the works performed invited us to ponder not only the scope of the disaster itself but also its effect on one couple. Also, other kinds of chasms between human beings and between us and nature.  Major work added original art projected on huge white wall. Far out "post modern" music with one more recognizable style of piece thrown in for relief. The Crossing is a unique and extremely talented vocal ensemble doing works few other groups would dare try. We are so proud and pleased that Rebecca is part of it. 

Went out after concert with some of Rebecca and Aaron’s friends and fellow performers. There's an energy in creative folks that I feed off of when I let myself. Diversity seems the rule though I am sure there are limits to tolerance for ineptness, boringness, and conventionality.  Met artist and apparent Renaissance man Steven Bradshaw who engaged me in conversation about 2001: A Space Odyssey. When we got home Rebecca presented me with a belated Father's Day gift: a print of a graphic by Steven featuring the film's famous monolith. Well-planned creative meeting on Steve's part. 

Quick Notes from a Road Trip: Saturday, June 22

I'll never eat breakfast at a Subway again, especially at one housed in a gas station and whose workers are young people who got up far too early...after all, it was only 8:30 am. But if you must eat there (which we felt compelled to do because our motel was handing out $5.00 Subway vouchers to compensate for the closure of the restaurant they had been sending people to for a free full breakfast)...if you must, when the sullen server reaches into the refrigerator to pull out the 8-inch yellow and white disk--a discolored round of something they call an egg--try to pretend you didn't see it.  Don't watch her slap it on the flatbread. But be sure to answer "yes" when she asks if you want it toasted. Imagine eating that cold.

The One World Shop in Ephrata, PA is by far the largest such store I've ever been in. Decent Beans-and-Something wrap at their cafe. Clerk at main desk mentioned her plans to drive to Montana in a couple of weeks, and I told her we'd be doing that next month. She'd made the trip often because it's her husband's home. They sort of count Davenport IA as their jump-off point since they go to the American Pickers' store/museum just north of there. Most sought-after recommendation? Don't miss the Corn Palace. It's decided; we will stop in Mitchell, SD. But I think we will skip the Pickers' place. 

The Bird-in-Hand Farmers' Market is one more sign that the Amish aren't above making a quick buck off the "English." If you go, stay in the food section; skip the kitsch. 

Arrived at Rebecca and Aaron's around 4:30. Nice al fresco dinner at The Cafette down the street. Given lunch, I had to try the ribs. Delicious!

Quick Notes from a Road Trip East: Friday, June 21

In Murraysville PA the Word and Worship Church and the Beer Arena share the same warehouse-like building along the Rt 22 corridor. A bit further east, in another community, you can board your cat or dog at The Pet Ho-Tail...a facility whose name (say it out loud) suggests it ought to be located far south of anywhere you might buy beer and worship Jesus under the same roof.

Learned the tragic story of the Johnstown Flood, including how the über-rich's carelessness that practically foreordained it excused themselves from responsibility for the consequences of their carelessness by calling the disaster an act of God.  Then visited the Flight 93 Memorial, and recalled that its perpetrators claimed to be doing the will of God. Wonder how God likes being blamed for all manner of human evil.