He blinked

He blinked.

You  have to have seen it because it was all over the news. He blinked.

He called both the guv in Minnesota, as well as the mayor of Minneapolis, two men he'd just recently called every blasted name in the book, and together, according to all three, the call was constructive. It wasn't just the would-be king, flailing away as if he was wielding a cat-o'-nine-tails. He blinked. He backed down. Honestly, he did. He's not my hero, but who would have guessed the guy had reverse in his transmission.

He blinked. Greg Blovino, became a flash in the pan. His onstage debut on Sunday talk shows was a miserable failure, as was his intent to make the Alex Pretti's murderers "the victims." Sorry. Just didn't make with a dozen videos of the moment. Today he's back in California where he can do less harm. For a moment, he looked like he might be aiming to get the coveted Hegseth, Jr. award, given to the alpha male in this administration who looks and talks toughest--not as tough as the Big Guy, of course. What I'm saying is, he blinked. Did he ever.

Speaking of alphas, an old tough guy named Corey Lewandowski, who's been coaching Kristi Noem how to be a real alpha male, is rumored to be gone as well, gone to wherever Trump may well shelf others who couldn't live up to the promise of their own lateral deltoids, more of the "might-makes-right" crowd.

He blinked. And why? Because tens of thousands of Minnesotans took to the streets in record cold temps, even for the North Star State, because of what they'd seen with their own eyes, what they could not have missed. Tens of thousands, even some of his friends, didn't buy what he was doing on the streets.

And more. Because two of their own were dead, beloved by family and friends, cherished as good people, slain, both of them, at point blank range in a fashion that was so unmistakable that even Republicans turned their heads.

Two people died in a gestapo-like movement that was, from the get-go, political: Trump hated the Guv and the mayor and the whole blame state for rejecting him three times. So he sent in his goon squad to crack some heads, and they did.

And the state, the whole state, came out on the street to demand they leave.

And he blinked. You know who I mean.

Write it down somewhere on a sticky note. Don't lose it. Get it out when he acts like the tough guy, the guy with bone spurs. 

Yesterday, the mighty one blinked.  

Trumptruth

I never heard of Greg Bovino before yesterday, but his words yesterday established new records for degree of insanity. Bovino, it seems, is Kristi Noem's right hand man, her first-in-charge on the North Star Front, the director of operations for Trump's Minnesota campaign, his bid to be of great aid and comfort to Minnesotans by getting rid of as many immigrants as he and his jackboots can. 

Bovino, yesterday, took possession of the much coveted KellyAnne Conway Award for most profoundly silly language usage (the award travels--Bovino won it yesterday, but who knows who might take it home by nightly news?) 

Bovino, a 30-year veteran of immigration policy administration, masterfully massacred the language when he insisted on calling his agents the "victims" and a man named Alex Pretti, who was murdered right there on the street, "the suspect," in language dereliction right out of the Noem playbook and Orwell's Animal Farm. After all, last week's slaying, so the government said, would require something quite unusual--an investigation of the deceased, even though no one on the Trump/Noem/Bovino team is pursuing an investigation into the truly shady background of the dude who, point blank, shot/murdered Renee Good, a mother of three who tried to run down ICE patriots on a street close to where she lived.

Imagine that. Alex Pretti is the "suspect"; the ICE are the "victims." Imagine that, and you've entered the Orwellian world of where we are today. Pretti, according to the Trumpians, was planning "a massacre," was just seconds away from bloodying the frozen sidewalk with--who knows?--a dozen agents before those very true patriots wrestled him to the ground and wasted him with his own gun.

There are those among us who claim that should Trump not run again for the office he'd like to hold in perpetuity, or should he run and lose, it will take the American bloodstream decades to sweep out the rot his never-ending falsehoods have established in American life and culture, a world in which "the Big Lie" has basically polluted the entire political system. 

Losing is not winning. Jan6 rioters are not patriots. Alex Pretti is not a suspect in the crime that took place last week in bloody Minneapolis.

Unless you live in TrumpWorld. 

Sundy Morning Meds from Psalm 32

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.”

Not long ago I talked to a friend who has been a middle-school math teacher for far longer than most people could maintain sanity in such a situation. I asked him how he did it, and he told me that things had changed so much in education in the last several years that today holding forth in the classroom is almost an entirely new experience.

 Come to think of it, holding forth isn’t the right language at all. What he doesn’t do at all anymore is hold forth because education has become far, far less teacher-centered. Lecture is a word long gone. Students don’t so much learn from teachers anymore as learn with them.

Detect some cynicism? Maybe so. Pardon me for the unfounded generalization, but professional educators are as fad-driven as middle-schoolers, or so it seems to me. Old birds like me can’t help but sound curmudgeonly.

Today, learning should be experiential, experts say. Math, my friend told me, is being taught in conjunction with other disciplines, very practical things that students “do” in class. Along with a science teacher, he might create a project, for instance, in which students calculate the amount of water that falls into a nearby pond as a result of a two-inch rainfall. The math required for that project would be taught in connection with the project itself, not as a set of abstract principles.

The truth is, I had to adjust my early American literature syllabus some time ago already for several reasons, but one of them, surely, is that my friend’s ex-students have been coming to college for a few years now, and they’re uncomfortable—and not particularly good at—learning in the old way. When I start lecturing what I see is boredom. They crave experience. They want me to shuttup. As my granddaughter used to say, they want to do it “all by self.” (I know I’m not being fair—forgive me.)

So the role of teacher has morphed from font of wisdom and learning (many of us liked being head honchos) to crafts coordinator (overlook the overstatement). Education has become more communal, more democratic. That’s not all bad, of course, but old birds like me don’t like our favorite trees felled.

What’s unmistakable, however, is the looks on their faces. Lecture, and they fall asleep; give them a project and they come alive. You can tell it. Their enthusiasm—or lack thereof—is itself an experience in learning for someone like me.

We’ve entered a whole new rhetorical pattern in verse 8 of Psalm 32. David is quiet, and it’s quite impossible not to note who is speaking—it’s the Lord. Things have changed. After David’s testimony, it’s God almighty promising leadership, promising to be the teacher, the instructor—and he’s doing it—mark this, please!!!—by lecturing.

But even an old bird like me can’t help but note what’s gone on this psalm so far because everything we’ve heard from the first few words has been (it hurts to say it) experiential, David’s testimony of how God retooled his psyche, freed him—body and soul—from sin’s bone-creaking bondage.

Maybe there’s a lesson there for old teachers. God himself instructs by his Word and by his—and our own—deeds.

Even old birds can learn new tricks, I guess. 

We've fallen to the bottom of the barrel

It's that time of year when there's no seriously good reason for living here. At least the phone I own doesn't sport the temperature 24/7, and I've got to ask Alexa. But, for the record, right now it's -15 degrees, and the wind chill is checking in at -38. It's early. Going to get worse.

In fact, what seems chilliest about the world outside our windows is a wind that's supposed to get really wicked--schools were called off yesterday, in frigid fear. Out here in the Upper Midwest, this killer of a weather phenom isn't going away soon; it's already overstayed its welcome.

One of the small blessings of such utterly horrible temperature is emptying the freezer. You put all the provender outside, then let the thick frost melt away into a pan. Barbara cleans the freezer up, plugs it back in, shimmies the thing back into its corner, then retrieves the whole mess of frozen goods (looks like a food drive outside of our place), and finishes up, proving that such horridly cold weather is at least good for defrosting freezers.

But not much else. A good old bachelor named A. J. Boersma once told me that in the little farmhouse they lived in when he and his family immigrated to America--it was out in the hills near Fairview, SD--had no insulation to speak of, shingles just nailed to boards pounded into the studs. When he and his brothers would wake up on mornings like this one, they'd peek up from beneath a ton of blankets and check the nails in the ceiling to see how much frost hung on them. Frosted nails were their thermometer.

It's possible that the Omaha who might have lived here--and certainly did both farther north and farther south--found possible shelter in earth homes the Arikara taught them to build. The Yanktons just stoked up the fire in the tipi, I guess, and laid a half-ton more stones over the bottom edge of the buffalo hides their tipis used for siding.

Buffalo, of course, had no problem. I remember reading somewhere that in the horrible blizzard of the early 90s, North Dakota lost thousands of cattle to three-feet of snow and the extreme temps--and just one buffalo. Of course, bison pull on an extra layer or two (or three) of winter coats, and come factory-equipped with their own snow plows. Just don't worry about buffalo.

All the sensible retirees are playing "Up and Down the River" in the community room of their Florida trailer courts right now. Even shuffle board sounds good. It's so cold, even the buffalo are thinking seriously about Arizona. 

Just how close is it? So cold that mailmen fear for polar bears. . .that people get morning coffee on a stick. . .that old men fart in snowflakes. . .that cold cops turn tazers on each other. 

Look, no matter how to cut it or slice it or plow it, it's just freakin' cold. 

And that's why, this morning, I'm greatly thankful I'm not in the old Boersma house or even waking up beneath a buffalo robe. I'm just thankful for sweet, warm shelter--and, oh, yes, that the freezer's defrosted.

The Star Quilt Giveaway (ii)

Just a word or two on Sioux Star Quilts. They are themselves traditional, which makes the pattern within of significant value to the community. In other words, this table runner, all by its lonesome, carries great meaning to and in the tribe or band--and, at the moment I realized it was designated to be mine, I couldn't help thinking it was going to be carried on home by this white guy, which, to me, made no sense.

I was embarrassed--I was, honestly. I walked up to the front and was presented with the Star Quilt by Marcella herself, who wore a radiant smile. I actually thought of standing before the entire gathering and telling them I was very happy to be the recipient, but there had to be dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren who would undoubtedly value grandma's work more. She was a legend on the reservation. 

I started walking to the table in the back where I'd been sitting, then spotted one of Marcella's daughters at the end of the aisle. Behind me, the Giveaway was continuing. I stopped beside that daughter, held the quilt out before me, and told her that I thought one of Marcella's descendants would make a much better recipient. I was serious, and, besides, I thought I was being gracious; after all, I would have liked to take that Sioux Star home.

She made no motion toward the quilt, just bore down on me with her eyes and made it very clear to this non-Native that giving the quilt back was something of a profanation. It simply wasn't done. It would be a violation of an old and blessed ritual that Marcella herself had thought to adopt for this, her 99th birthday. The real value was in her giving, not my getting.

Marcella's daughter looked at me as if my pleading was not only mistaken, it was almost irreverant because the ritual had determined me to be the one who would take the table-runner home, not any of the others. If I gave it back, it would, in a sense, profane the ritual; and wouldn't it be just like some white guy to misread the whole idea of what was going on, what Marcella herself was up front doing right then, something akin to walking to the front of the church, picking up the bread and wine, and then giving it to someone else.

So the Sioux Star table runner is here now--tucked away somewhere in what few corners we have for "stuff in the basement," now that we've moved to senior housing. It's mine.

And so is its story. I just looked--it may be worth between $400 and $1500, but it's not on the market.

We have two children, one of whom lives here in Iowa, the other in Oklahoma. Neither of them have likely ever seen the Sioux Star table runner, nor could they know anything of its origins. Someday they will find it when rummaging through their parents' "stuff." (We have no basement.) 

I don't know what they'll do with it, but if it's worth a grand, I'm guessing they'll try sell it. 

I hope not.  

Look at it again up there at the top the page. It's beautiful.

I have no idea whether my children read these pages, but if they do, I hope they realize that this whole story--it took me two days to tell--is for them, in hopes they won't just let it go without gauging a sense of their father's joy--and pain. 

The Star Quilt Giveaway (i)

 Basement is a bit pejorative, I guess, isn't it? A basement is mostly storage space, maybe ping-pong or even a snooker table; but if it's living space it's often the habitat of a teenager who wants to create some distance from the rest of the family unit but can't afford to rent his or her own. Millions of basement rooms are luxurious, I'm sure, but still, if you ask someone where he or she is living nowadays and he or she says, "my parents' basement," they're only rarely bragging.

The title of this decades-old blog has always been "Stuff in the Basement," or, rather, Stuff in the Basement (I think I've been at it long enough to earn the italics). A thousand years ago, I thought it might be fun--for a while at least--to run through the "stuff" on my library shelves two houses ago, stuff I'd accumulated through the years and treasured enough to give a place in our home--and not just toss. We all have our mementos, right?  

If you could turn back the pages far enough--which you can't--you'd find me going on and on about "stuff," because there were so many things in that basement three houses ago, so many things that were there because they were worth more to me than they might well be to anyone else on the face of the earth, "stuff" whose stories I knew and wouldn't or couldn't forget.

Like that bright and beautiful quilted table runner up there at the top of the page created specially by a 99-year-old Lakota woman, along with a table full of other possessions, for a "giveaway" at her birthday, which I attended, having been invited. 

A "Giveaway" is a fine Lakota tradition passed on from the olden days, the idea being to make sure that the band doesn't develop pockets of the super rich. Giveaways happened for a variety of reasons, in this case a birthday; the idea was that my 99-year-old friend spend a ton of time getting ready, on her special day, to give away things she valued, not to "get" presents but to give them away.

A century ago, white folks squelched the ritual Giveaway, just like they outlawed the Sun Dance. It was, some believed, drawn from a pagan past and thus had to go. Native people were going to be Christians now after all, and farmers. The old ways had to die. 

Well, the old ways didn't, and there I was at a Giveaway, which resembled, for comparison, a raffle. Every last person at the party was given a number when we came in, and once the age-old ritual began, those numbers were called. 

For the record, I wasn't the only white guy at the birthday party, but I was most definitely a part of the minority. I wasn't interested in making a big deal out of being there and once the numbers started rolling out, I wanted to shrink away--this big old white guy for sure didn't want to have to walk up to the front to pick up whatever it was that might have drawn my number.

That gorgeous table runner was one of the most valued treasures--the biggest, as I remember, was an entire quilt. But when the star quilt table runner came up--was shown by the grandsons in the front, as if in an auction--and my number was called, I could have crawled into a hole. I won.

The people at the table where I was sitting, motioned for me to get up and walk to the front. 

[More tomorrow]

Epiphanies

In 1837 a caravan of covered wagons left Indiana for Iowa, which wasn’t Iowa at all back then, but still referred to as the Wisconsin Territory. Call it what you will, but what lay west of the Mississippi in the 1830s was wilderness. This trek was led by John Maulsby, a fearless pioneer who, according to his daughter’s memoir, loved the wilderness fiercely.

One of the wagons held the Westgates, although Mary Ann Maulsby claims she’s making up that name, not wanting to lay shadows over the path of his life. Westgate was a schoolteacher who had a vision, a great spiritual vision.

On that score, he wasn’t alone. Throughout the land, ordinary people had visions that grew out of what historians call the Second Great Awakening, a revival that brought forth a gaggle of home brews.

Professor Westgate believed the Lord had sent him to the wilderness, to the heathen, to preach the gospel of Christ. He was vision-bound to bring the Sauk, the Fox, the Kickapoo to the Lord.

It was a pact he’d made months back while praying over his sickly wife. He believed the good Lord had promised her recovery—she would become the woman he’d married once again—if only he would go out west and preach Jesus to the wilderness savages. That was the deal. I'm not sure it was written down, but it was believed.

Sadly enough, Mrs. Westgate passed away. Along the way, her condition slumped greatly. “Her face and limbs were so emaciated there was no flesh left on them,” Mary Ann Maulsby wrote, “and her eyes were glassy and held a strange expression.”

When Mrs. Westgate died, so too did her husband’s vision. Apparently, the deal was off. “They yoked their oxen to their wagons” in the morning, and “soon disappeared from our sight.”

I read that story just an hour or more before reading the wonderful old story of the Samaritan woman, a story most of us know well. What I hadn’t remembered of that mission saga was what happened after the she returned to her people to tell them what happened at the well. You can imagine her, wide-eyed, saying that this very strange Jewish prophet knew every secret there was to know about her life. “Could this be the Messiah?” she asks them (vs. 29). She can’t quite believe it herself.

No matter, at that point her people went wide-eyed too, I’m sure, and traveled back forthwith to hear the words of this odd Jewish prophet.

Now, the denouement of the story is something I’d forgotten completely:          

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.

They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.

I rather like the fact that the Samaritans needed some convincing.

Damascus-road experiences get all the ink. Paul become Saul in a blinding moment of divine insight. Many Christian believers mark the day on the calendar when they were saved. Praise Jesus.

But today I say, praise the Lord for the Samaritans. Things don't always happen in a wink and flash, some wide-eyed epiphany. “Because of his words,” the apostle John says, “many more became believers.”

They heard it for themselves. They listened. They believed.

Did the Lord come to Professor Westgate in a vision?

Maybe he did.

But in the wake of two decidedly different mission stories in this epiphany time is that He comes to us in His own ways, in his own time.  Some believe in an instant; some trek into a wilderness before he brings them on home.

He’s got His ways. He’s God. We aren’t.

Praise his holy name.