Politics on the Banks of the Wabash

Indiana is not good Democratic country. The physical sweep of the state, from Lake Michigan to the Ohio River and the borders of Kentucky, incorporates most of the basic elements of American political life. In the north, around the steel town of Gary, racial tension smolders miserably in some of the nation’s grimmest industrial deserts. The central belt, with the exception of Indianapolis, is small-town America, and the south is the beginning of the South. But the over-all mixture--which includes a splash of fierce local chauvinism--is significantly more conservative than the national whole. Since 1936, no one but Barry Goldwater has been enough to make Indiana go Democratic in a Presidential race.


Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page, An American Melodrama, 1969

I’ve done my civic duty and voted in the Indiana primary. Because I work in Illinois and won’t be home May 6, I voted early at the Superior Court Building last Thursday. My vote for Barack Obama may really count for something: if Obama can beat Hillary Clinton in the Hoosier State, he can show he’s competitive in the nation as a whole. According to NPR commentator Cokie Roberts, a win for Obama in Indiana will give him the nomination.

What the three British journalists wrote about Indiana in 1969 is still true. Gary is even grimmer than it was in 1968, the last time the Indiana Democratic primary mattered. That year, Robert Kennedy defeated Eugene McCarthy (the candidate I stumped for when I was a high school student in Iowa) and Governor Roger Branigan, a stand-in for Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

What’s changed is that the divide between northern Indiana and the rest of the state has widened. Republican Governor Mitch Daniels leased the Indiana Toll Road to a Spanish-Australian consortium, and shifted much of that money from north to south. My own hometown of Elkhart, once home to Miles Laboratories (Alka-Seltzer, One-A-Day Vitamins, etc), Whitehall Laboratories (Advil), Selmer Musical Instruments, and other high-paying industries, has lost virtually all of it. Miles became Bayer, and Bayer eventually moved out. Selmer closed a few years ago. What’s left is mainly recreational vehicle manufacturers, which are nonunion and pay relatively low wages.

Southern Indiana is more prosperous, as Japanese auto manufacturers have built factories there, lured by the lack of unions. Indianapolis is also a success story, at least for now. Its lack of good public transportation (just buses, no rail), could seriously hurt it with the rising price of gasoline.

Once upon a Indiana was a swing state. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when Republincans could count on New England and the upper Midwest, and Democrats had the Solid South, any candidate who took the two swing states of New York and Indiana could win the White House. Because New York had a lot more people, it ususlly provided the presidential candidate, while Indiana became what Vice President Thomas Marshall called "The Mother of Vice Presidents." Actually, only five Hoosiers have made it to the vice presidency--Schuyler Colfax (Grant), Thomas Hendricks (Cleveland), Charles W. Fairbanks (Theodore Roosevelt), Marshall (Wilson), and J. Danforth Quayle (Bush I). Quayle was picked not because of his state, but for his youth and conservatism. Since 1936, politicians have taken Indiana for granted.

But Hoosiers are enjoying the attention we're receiving. It's been a long time since Democrats paid attention to a state that's not gone Democratic in a presidential election since 1964. So far, the contest hasn't been devastatingly negative, though that could change.

My son, who will be voting for the first time, supports Obama. My wife is for Clinton. She usually has better political sense than I do, and may very well be right that Hillary has a better chance of defeating John McCain in November than Barack--especially after the Reverend Jeremiah Wright went out of his way to sabotage the Obama campaign. I'll be watching for the results Tuesday night.

The Weather Forecast in Anglican Chant

Even the most mundane information can be made beautiful when sung in Anglican chant. The Master Singers showed this in 1966 when they recorded the weather forecast (well, not a real one) in Anglican chant. I first heard it on a program called "Weekend Radio." My daughter Anne heard it and began shreiking with laughter. I'm not sure whether I could ever take her to a sung Mass at an Episcopal church. She'd probably start laughing uncontrollably when she heard the Anglican chant. Thanks to Lisa at Eudaemonia for instructions on how to embed the YouTube video. And thanks to Tubeyou18a of the Netherlands for creating the video.

Uriel--The Archangel Nobody Knows

Bill, of Greenwich Gossip, suggested that the exorcism in Chapter 16 of my Dickens Challenge novel, Things Done and Left Undone, might have been quick and easy if Father Sam had invoked the name of Uriel, the fourth, and least-known of the four principal archangels. All archangels have names ending in "el," meaning God, or "of God." (It's a variation of the Hebrew Elohim and cousin to the Arabic Allah.) Michael means "Who is Like unto God, Gabriel is translated "Man of God," and Raphael means "God's Healing." Uriel means "Fire of God" or "Light of God."

I used the Litany of Saints from the 1957 edition of St. Augustine's Prayer Book for my exorcism rite, with some additions and a lot of subtractions and glosses. I simply listed St. Michael as the first archangel, and went on to other saints. But when I checked back with the book, I found that the good monks of St. Augustine's listed only Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.

Michael is mentioned in the Old Testament Book of Daniel, (10:13, 21, 12:1) and in the New Testament Letter of Jude, verse 9, and in Revelation, 12:7-8. Gabriel also shows up in the both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles: in Daniel 8:15-17, and in Luke 1:5-20 and 1:26-38.

The only Biblical reference to Raphael is in the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit--one of the Old Testament books originally written in Greek rather than Hebrew, and accepted by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches as canonical, but not by most Protestants. We Anglicans, known for taking the "middle way," put these books at the back of the Old Testament. The Articles of Religion say this of the deuterocanonical books: "And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine..." (Hierome is better known as St. Jerome.)

So Raphael if fine with us Anglicans--he's not establishing any doctrine. But Uriel is in the Third Book of Esdras, which isn't in the Western canon.. He was struck off the list of archangels by Pope Zachary in the year 745:

"At the Council of Rome of 745, Pope St. Zachary, intending to clarify the Church's teaching on the subject of angels and curb a tendency toward angel worship, condemned obsession with angelic intervention and angelolatry, but reaffirmed the approval of the practice of the reverence of angels. This synod struck many angels' names from the list of those eligible for veneration in the Church of Rome, including Uriel. Only the reverence of the archangels mentioned in the recognized Catholic canon of scriptures, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, remained licit."

-Wikipedia article, Uriel

And the monks of St. Augustine's, being in the high Anglo-Catholic tradition, would certainly follow the dictates of a church council from before the break with Rome.

Maybe Bill is right. But I have some doubts. Here's another Wikipedia quote from the article on archangels: "Uriel means "Fire of God", or "Light of God" (III Esdras 3:1, 5:20). He is depicted holding a sword against the Persians in his right hand, and a fiery flame in his left." In my novel, Helena is half-Scottish-American and half-Parsi. She's descended from the Zoroastrian Persians who fled to India after the Arab conquest of Persia. She treasures her Persian heritage and has been known to offer prayers to Ahura Mazda. (She believes the Judeao-Christian God and Ahura Mazda to be one and the same--why else would the Magi have come to worship Jesus?) So I'm not sure how eager Uriel would be to save this half-Persian woman.

But even if Uriel overlooked Helena's Persian ancestry, I needed the exorcism to take some time. Someone once asked John Ford, director of the film "Stagecoach," why the Indians didn't just shoot the horses of the stagecoach (as they certainly would have done in reality). Ford was indignant. It would have destroyed the whole chase scene. Uriel would have gotten the demon out of Helena before it could reveal some unhappy secrets about the characters. Worse than that, I'd have to redo Chapter 17 completely.

Three Years on the Slow Train, or How a Vampire became a Woman

Three years ago I was working at the Amtrak call center in Philadelphia and living in a studio apartment in a Northeast Philly high-rise. The plan had been for the family to move to Philly once our house in Elkhart was sold, but money and an attachment to the Midwest changed that. About once a month I arranged a long weekend and took

the train back to Elkhart, most often using Amtrak's Capitol Limited, which winds its way through the Alleghenies along the river valleys. When I rode it, I thought of Bob Dylan's poem on the liner notes of his album, "Highway 61 Revisited," and the Flanders and Swann song, "On the Slow Train," bemoaning the elimination of branchline passenger trains in 1950s Britain.

Meanwhile, my son Jim, who was and is very much into role-playing games, let me know about a novel writing contest sponsored by White Wolf Publishing. The novel could be set in the vampire world of Chicago or with the werewolves in Denver. I had lived in the Chicago area for eight years, so my choice was easy. My proposed novel featured a beautiful vampire known as Cassandra, because she told some unpleasant truths that the Chicago vampire hierarchy refused to accept. I wasn't sure exactly what the original story of Cassandra was, so I Googled the name. I found a blog called the Cassandra Pages, written by Beth Adams. It inspired me to start my own blog.

My synopsis of the novel didn't make it past the first round, but I had an idea for a novel that would focus on the idealism of my generation and would involve the 1968 Democratic Convention. Cassandra became Helena, lost her bloodsucking ways, and the story morphed into Things Done and Left Undone. (The next chapter should be ready soon.) When I'm really optimistic, I have fantasies of a movie version of the story, with Navi Rawat playing Helena. One can always dream.

I began writing On the Slow Train three years ago. Since then I have met many wonderful people online. You've been a great help to me in my writing, and in my life. Thank you all. 
Photo credit Jim Frazier

The Twa Corbies and the Three Ravens

Lisa, of Eudaemonia, recently urged us to celebrate National Poetry Month, so I thought I'd write about the poems--really ballads--that got me hoooked on poetry. The poems can be gruesome and sometimes chilling, but then I was a pereadolescent boy when I discovered them. The first uses a more archaic language--corbies for ravens, fail for turf, wot and ken for know, and hause for neck. But I suspect the second is older--pre Christian despite the Christian time references. In both poems, ravens are discussing a potential meal--a slain knight. In "The Twa Corbies," the knight's hounds, hawk, and lady abandon him, while in "The Three Ravens," they are loyal--in the lady's case, chillingly loyal.

I suspect the archaic language as well as the subject matter attracted me. But they are also fine poems:

The Twa Corbies

AS I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t'other say,
"Where sall we gang and dine to-day?"

"—In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.

"His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady's ta'en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike out his bonnie blue een;
Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare

"Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair."


The Three Ravens

THERE were three ra'ens sat on a tree,
Downe a downe, hay down, hay downe
There were three ra'ens sat on a tree,
With a downe

There were three ra'ens sat on a tree,
They were as blacke as they might be.
With a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.

Said one of them unto his mate,
“Where shall we our breakefast take?”

“Downe in yonder greene field,
There lies a knight slain under his shield.

“His hounds they lie downe at his feete,
So well do they their master keepe.

“His haukes they flie so eagerly,
There’s no fowle that dare come nie.”

Downe there comes a fallow doe,
As great with yong as she might goe.

She lifted up his bloudy hed,
And kist his wounds that were so red.

She got him up him upon her backe,
And carried him to earthen lake.

She buried him before the prime,
She was dead herselfe ere even-song time.

God grant to every gentleman,
Such haukes, such hounds, and such a leman.


Leman means lover or sweetheart. Several versions of these ballads can be heard on YouTube.
Check out The Twa Corbies by An Drasda, and The Three Ravens by Andreas Scholl.

Major ballads such as these inspire parodies, such as this American version:

There were three crows sat on a tree.
Billy McGee, McGaw!
There were three crows sat on a tree,
Billy McGee, McGaw!
There were three crows sat on a tree,
And they were black as a crow could be.
And they all flapped their wings and cried,
Caw! Caw! Caw!
And they all flapped their wings and cried,
Billy McGee McGaw!

Their meal is a dead horse, rather than a knight. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the song on YouTube. There's also the Scottish "Three Craws Sat Upon a Wa'," which can be found on YouTube, but only as sung by small children.

In they came jorking

Back in the 1960s, when Establishment types were denouncing the Beatles as trash, a number of people from more traditional musical genres defended the new muscians. One defense was to play the Fab Four's tunes in classical styles. My favorite is Joshua Rifkin's "The Baroque Beatles Book. Rifkin, with the "Merseyside Kammermusickgessellschaft," released it as a novelty record, but with it he made the point that the Beatles were serious musicians. It's now available on CD. My daughter Anne recently discovered that the Baroque "Help" was on YouTube. It's done in the form of a cantata. The recititive is taken from John Lennon's poetry:

"In they came jorking and labbing shoubing 'Haddy Grimmble" ("Randolf's Party," In His Own Write) 'JACK THE NIPPLE STRIKE AGAIN.' ("The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield," A Spaniard in the Works) Puffing and globbering they drugged theyselves rampling or dancing with wild abdomen, stubbing in wild postumes amongst themselves. (? IHOW) There is a lot to do in Liddypool ("Liddypool," IHOW) She went cold all over ("Singularge Experience," ASITW) Then lifting her face upwarts, she said with a voice full of emulsion... " ("A Spaniard in the Works," ASITW).

Listen to Rifkin's "HELP" here.

Canonized for Love: John Donne, Love Poet and Saint

One thing I love about the Episcopal Church is that it's willing to confirm sainthood on an erotic poet. All right, John Donne (1572-1631) was Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, and he did write many sacred poems, sermons, and essays, including the famous "No Man is an Island." But he wrote some extraordinarily sensual love poems, such as "Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed, in which he compares his exploration of his lover's body to the discovery of America:

License my roving hands, and let them go
Behind before, above, between, below.
Oh my America, my new found land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my Empery,
How blessed am I in this discovering thee.
To enter in these bonds is to be free,
Then where my hand is set my seal shall be.

Or take his well-known poem, "The Canonization," a one-sided argument with a someone who does not want him to carry on a love affair. He argues that after death, he and his lover will be made saints for their love:

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;

Donne was born into a prominent Roman Catholic family, but his parents had managed to escape the outright persecution of Catholics. His brother Henry, however, was arrested for harboring a Catholic priest, and died in prison of the plague. Sometime after this, Donne converted to the Church of England. In his young manhood he was something of dashing young swashbuckler, according to the Wikipedia article on him: "During and after his education, Donne spent much of his considerable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes, and travel." He fought against the Spanish under the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh.

At age 25 he was appointed chief secretary to Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. But he fell in love with Egerton's niece, Anne More, and the couple secretly married in 1601. Because Egerton and More's father opposed the marriage, Donne found himself in prison, along with the priest who married them and the man who witnessed the ceremony. He was released after it was decided that the marriage was valid, and he arranged to have the other two released. But he lost his position. He signed a letter to his wife with a play on the pronunciation of his name: "John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-Done"

The couple struggled financially, especially as the family grew. Done made a meager living as a country lawyer, but the large family (nine of twelve children survived infancy) had to depend on the generosity of Anne's cousin. Only in 1609 was he reconciled with Anne's father, and received her dowry. Anne died in 1617 after giving birth to a stillborn baby. John was devastated. He never remarried. In his later years the turned to sacred verse, and to meditations on our mortality.

Donne's love poems, written in his younger years, were not published during his lifetime, though they circulated in manuscript form. His theme of the sacredness of love--not just the selfless agape of the New Testament, but eros, the physical, psychic, and emotional love between two people--resonates with me.

So I'm thankful that my church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church honor him as a saint, on the date of his death (his "heavenly birthday"), March 31. But I wish Anne More Donne, who inspired much of his love poetry and had to endure much pain and hardship for her love, were similarly honored.

Saint Thomas's Sunday

For all churches that follow the standard lectionary, the Gospel reading for the second Sunday of Easter is John 20: 19-29, the story of Thomas’s doubt and belief. And St. Thomas’s Sunday is not complete without singing O Filii et Filiae, or O Sons and Daughters Let Us Sing--a hauntingly beautiful fifteenth-century Latin hymn by Jean Tisserand, translated into English by John Mason Neale:

O sons and daughters, let us sing!
The King of Heaven, the glorious King,
Over death today rose triumphing.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

That Easter morn, at break of day,
The faithful women went their way
To seek the tomb where Jesus lay.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

An angel clad in white they see,
Who sat, and spake unto the three,
“Your Lord doth go to Galilee.”
Alleluia! Alleluia!

That night th’apostles met in fear;
Amidst them came their Lord most dear,
And said, “My peace be on all here.”
Alleluia! Alleluia!

When Thomas first the tidings heard,
How they had seen the risen Lord,
He doubted the disciples’ word.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

“My piercèd side, O Thomas, see;
My hands, My feet, I show to thee;
Not faithless but believing be.”
Alleluia! Alleluia!

No longer Thomas then denied;
He saw the feet, the hands, the side;
“Thou art my Lord and God,” he cried.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

How blessed are they who have not seen,
And yet whose faith has constant been;
For they eternal life shall win.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

On this most holy day of days
Our hearts and voices, Lord, we raise
To Thee, in jubilee and praise.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

For me, who was raised an agnostic, but came to shaky faith after marrying a believer, the story of Thomas is special. While homilists often give Thomas a hard time for his doubt, Jesus’ words to him are loving. After all, the other disciples had seen Jesus appear in the locked room. Thomas is honest enough to express his doubts openly.

While my work schedule, prevents me from attending church in my own Episcopal denomination, I try to go to Saturday afternoon vigil Mass at the nearby Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Bloomington. I don’t receive Communion, as the Catholic Church has closed Communion, but I do receive a blessing.

I'm often so exhausted after the Saturday morning shift that I don't make it to church. But I make every effort to attend church on St. Thomas's Sunday. Holy Trinity didn't disappoint me today. We sang O Filii et Filiae.

A Happy Dyngus Day!

Dyngus Day, celebrated on the Monday after Easter, is a northern Indiana tradition, especially in South Bend, which has a large Polish-American population. It's a Christian adaptation of a pre-Christian spring celebration. In Poland, young men would get up early in the morning and pour water on young women they fancied. They would also whip the young women's legs with a switch made of willow. My Hungarian blogging friend SzélsőFa writes that Hungary has a similar tradition, called Húsvét. In her blog she writes, "Water has a central importance in Easter festivities. In the old times, men used to throw water on women. Now Hungarian men and boys sprinkle women and girls with fragrance. In return, they are given decorated eggs and/or chocolate, and more recently, money." (Personally, I like the modern Hungarian adaptation.)

In the United States, Dyngus Day is mostly about drinking beer and eating spicy Polish sausage. But it's also a time for Democratic politicians to gather at the West Side Democratic Club in South Bend. Once upon a time, when the Indiana Democratic primary , held the first Tuesday after the first Monday in May, mattered, presidential candidates visited the club. The last time that happened was in 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy came to the club on Dyngus Day. RFK won the Indiana primary handily, beating both Eugene McCarthy and Governor Roger D. Branigan, a stand-in for Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

For the first time in forty years, it's "once upon a time" again. The Indiana primary matters. And while neither Democratic candidate will be at the West Side Democratic Club this year, Bill and Chelsea Clinton will. Former Congressman Tim Roemer will represent Senator Barack Obama at the festivities. I wish I could be there.

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton

Dear Senator Clinton:

Like you and many others in our generation, I was very idealistic in my youth. In 1968 I sold 'McCarthy's Million' buttons to my high school classmates. Four years later I was writing press releases for the Dick Clark Senate campaign in Iowa. And in 1976 I knocked on doors for Mo Udall. I have tried to hold on to those ideals, even after the stolen 2000 election and the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush.

Just as Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, and George McGovern inspired our generation, Barack Obama has inspired a new generation of idealists. Do not alienate them from our party. Do not become the Hubert Humphrey of 2008. In the last few weeks your campaign has become more negative, and all signs point to a vicious campaign against Obama in Pennsylvania and here in Indiana. You talk of seating the delegates from Michigan and Florida without holding a revote. Should your campaign win the nomination by such 'ends justify the means' tactics, you will surely lose the support of many young idealistic Obama supporters. As for me, I would vote for you, but only as the lesser of two evils.

While I plan to vote for Senator Obama in May, I have found much to like about your campaign. Your health care proposal makes more sense than his (though less sense than a Canadian-style single-payer system). You have creative but pragmatic plans for the economy, education, energy, and foreign policy. If you win the nomination fairly--without resort to the improperly elected Michigan and Florida delegates, and without a destructive campaign against Barack Obama, you will have my unqualified support.

The late Allard Lowenstein, who inspired so many of us to work for progressive causes, said at the end of that the 1968 Chicago convention that it had elected Richard Nixon president of the United States. He likened it to electing Arthur Goldberg Mayor of Cairo. I do not wish to see the Denver convention elect John McCain president. McCain is an honorable man, but his unquestioning support for Bush's war and Bush's welfare for the rich make him nothing but an older version of George W. Bush.

So please, please, run a clean, positive campaign. Support the mail-in revote in Michigan and Florida. (Senator Obama's rejection of the revote complicates matters, but your support of the idea might sway him.) We can't afford to alienate Barack Obama's idealistic supporters. And this nation surely cannot afford to have four more years of Bush policies.

Stephen Crews Wylder
Elkhart, Indiana

The Person from Porlock: Villian, Hero, or Invention?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" has to be one of the most memorable poems in the English language. The poem is a fragment, only 54 lines. Coleridge's explanation of why the poem is so short is well-known:

"In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.' The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!"

The poem itself was not published until 1816, after several revisions, which has led some scholars to believe that the story of the person from Porlock was an invention to explain the fact that Coleridge was unable to finish the poem. I'm willing to believe the poet. And I wonder whether the poem would have been as popular had it been the "two or three hundred lines" that the author mentions. The very mystery of the forgotten lines have inspired so much. My favorite science fiction novel is Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in which the hero (SPOILER ALERT!) becomes the Person From Porlock and saves the world. The English poet Stevie Smith, in the poem, "Thoughts About the Person from Porlock," believes Coleridge used the interruption as an excuse for not finishing the poem. She goes on to write:

I am hungry to be interrupted
For ever and ever amen
O Person from Porlock come quickly
And bring my thoughts to an end.

Canadian writer Robert Fulford wrote a fascinating essay on the impact of this nameless interrupter. Someone once told me about a Porlock Society, which celebrated fragments, though I am unable to find any reference to it on the Web.

Do we blame the Person from Porlock for preventing the completion of a masterpiece, or thank him for creating a very romantic mystery about one of the great romantic poems? Of course, we'll never know what "Kubla Khan" might have been had Coleridge not been interrupted. But I love the poem as it is, and have read it scores of times. Given the tremendous outpouring of creativity that resulted from the Porlock story, perhaps we should thank the anonymous Person.

The Peace Symbol turns 50 today

On February 21, 1958, designer Gerald Holton created a symbol for the upcoming Easter march from London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment near Aldermaston, England. The march was organized by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, and the symbol represented nuclear disarmament. It was based on the semaphoric symbols for the letteers "N" and "D."

(See below: images uploaded from Wikimedia Commons, as is the peace symbol .)

How the Aldermaston symbol evolved into the peace symbol is not exactly clear. According to Wikipedia, Philip Altbach, a student at the University of Chicago, brought a bag of the Aldermaston buttons back to the United States. I've also heard that civil rights and peace activist Bayard Rustin played a role in popularizing the symbol in the United States. In any case, once it got to America, it lost its specific meaning of nuclear disarmament and became a generalized peace symbol.

The symbol has been denounced as the Satanic symbol of a broken cross, the "footprint of the American Chicken," and countless other things. But by its its very simplicity it has endured. It even showed up in a Star Trek novel, "Strangers from the Sky," by Margaret Wander Bonanno, in which Mr. Spock is sent back in time to mid-21st Century Earth and helps save two Vulcans who have crashed their spaceship in the Pacific. Spock visits his human ancestor, Professor Grayson, who gives him a peace symbol on a chain. He calls Spock "Ben" in honor of peace activist Dr.Benjamin Spock. In the story, the peace symbol is something of a magic talisman.

I'm sure it will still be around in 2058.

Note: After listening to "Strangers from the Sky" on my drive from Elkhart back to Bloomington while hoping the "Check Engine" light on my 1990 Toyota didn't mean I was going to crash-land on Interstate 55 (it didn't), I realized the story was much more complex and interesting than I remembered. I've revised the summation of the story, though that doesn't do it justice.

The Parsis and our continuing fascination with them

You don't think of Jules Verne as a writer of love stories. But he put one in what may be his most popular work--Around the World in 80 Days. The love story isn't very lifelike, at least not in the English translation I read. But he did one thing I thought brilliant: he made Aouda, the female love interest, a Parsi. There's something romantic and fascinating about a people who still practice the Good Religion of the prophet Zarathushtra, (Zoroaster in Greek) who probably lived in the tenth or 11th century B.C. Their priests still worship in fire temples (though they do not worship fire--it is a symbol and focal point for their worship of Ahura Mazda) and they bring their dead to the Towers of Silence, for the vultures to claim.

Zoroastrianism may be the first monotheistic religion. Zoroastianism introduced the concept of heaven and hell (though even those in hell will be united with Ahura Mazda in the end), the Evil One (Angra Mainyu), prayer five times a day, and the concept of free will to choose good or evil.

The Parsis came to India sometime between 716 and 965 A.D., possibly because of persecution after the Arab invasion of Persia. They sailed to Gujarat on the west coast of India. The local ruler Jadi Rana gave them permission to stay if they adopted the local language of Gujarati, that the women wear the sari, and that they should cease to bear arms. One story goes that the ruler persented them with a full pitcher of milk, symbolizing that Gujurat was full. The Parsi leader added a pinch of sugar to the milk to represent the contribution his people would bring.

And this small community had contributed greatly to India. Parsis were especially prominent in trade and banking. During the British Raj, Parsi influence increased. They were eager to learn English and to send their children, including girls, to British schools. (Zoroastrians believe in equality of the sexes, though their priesthood is exclusively male.) Nonetheless, a number of Parsis were prominent in the Indian independence movement.

Well-known Parsis include orchestra conductor Zubin Mehta and rock icon Freddie Mercury. Wikipedia. has an impressive list of notable Parsis.

Because conservative Parsis do not accept converts, and initiate only the children of two Parsi parents in to the religion (though some Paris communities are changing), the future of the Parsi community is in question. It would be a shame if this beautiful religion of Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds vanished from the earth.

In my Dickens Challenge novel, I've made my heroine the child of a Scottish-American father and a Parsi mother. That allows her to have a connection to Zoroastrianism (the story begins on Epiphany, when Christians celebrate the arrival of Zoroastrian astrologers, or Magi, to Bethlehem) and still be an Episcopal priest, as she is when the story begins.

Like Jules Verne, and countless other Westerners, I have a fascination for this small but incredibly influential community.

A Marvelous Garden of Words--Blogging for Patry Francis

If you don't know Patry Francis, go immediately to her blog, simply wait, and experience some of the liveliest and most elegant prose on the Internet. Then come back here and order The Liar's Diary, her first novel, which has just come out in paperback. When The Liar's Diary was published in hardback last year, Patry and her many friends set up "Liar's Parties" across the nation to promote the book. Last fall, we learned that Patry had been diagnosed with a particularly aggreressive form of cancer. After two surgeries and continuing therapy, her prognosis looks good. But she's in no condition to do a book promotion.

Karen Dionne of Backspace Writers' Conference came up with the idea of bloggers promoting the book on their sites. And if anybody deserves our support, it's Patry. To give you an idea of what kind of person she is, take a look at her blog. Instead of focusing on herself, she tells us stories about her interaction with others--the seemingly obnoxious woman who gave a lesson to Patry and to all of us, the wonderful tale of her baby grandson Hank breaking the tension of an oncologist's waiting room. Or just the view of the city of Boston from her Massachusetts General Hospital waiting room. She portrayed that wintry urban skyline as The Marvelous Garden.

When I first discovered Patry's blog more than two years ago, it was called The Marvelous Garden. I've always thought of that as an apt title for her range of writing, though I understand why she's gone back to her original title, simply wait. (She changed long before she was diagnosed with cancer.)

The Liar's Diary has memorable characters, suspense, and what one writer called one of the most unreliable narrators in fiction. After reading it a year ago, I still think of Jeanne and Ali, and Jeannes's troubled son Jamie.

The Amazon.com link to her book is here. For Amazon.com uk, click here.
Amazon.com Canada has it here. And if you're looking for the Liar's Diary (Tagebuch einer Lügnerin) auf deutsch, hier.

One more thing about Patry: She sent me an encouraging comment on my Dickens Challenge project from her hospital room! That's the kind of person she is.

A Point For Hillary

I've personally expressed support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. And I still believe he's the candidate who can recreate the optimism and enthusiasm about our country that's been missing for so long. But I'm troubled about the latest tiff over the civil rights movement. Senator Hillary Clinton reminded us that without the support of President Lyndon Johnson, the great civil rights bills of 1964 and 1965 would never have made it through Congress. She's right. Johnson, who had been Senate Majority Leader before becoming vice president, knew which arms to twist and what promises to make in order to get the bills through Congress.

Johnson's skill at manipulating Congress does not detract one whit from the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King, jr., James Forman, Ralph Abernathy, Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, or any of the other courageous black men and women of the civil rights movement. Senator Clinton was saying that without strong presidential leadership, progressive legislation is not likely to get through Congress. And she's right.

I still support Obama. But it's troubling that people in his campaign have made this unwarranted attack on what is simply a true statement.

Chapter 6 will be in by tomorrow, honest!

I got stuck on Chapter 6--wanted to use the opening of my favorite poem, "Thomas the Rhymer," for the introduction. I had already given Helena the grass-green skirt and the half-Scottish ancestry. But then I decided it was too much--I've got too many references from the New Testament to the medieval Free Spirit movement to the Democratic conventions of 1948 and 1968 (the '48 convention is referenced in Chapter 6.). The Rhymer overlay wasn't necessary, even if there is some parallel between Timothy and Thomas and Helena and the Queen of Fair Elfland.

I've reworked the story without referencing Thomas, but I had to head for work before I could get the post in.

The Iowa Caucuses--A personal retrospective

It's finally caucus time, and the state that I once called home can recede from the center of national attention. I thought I'd recycle a post from last year which explains the origins of the first-in-the-nation caucuses, and reflects on the 1976 Democratic caucuses, in which I played a small part. My precinct caucus voted me to be a delegate to the county convention, and from there I won a seat at the district and state conventions. It's there--at the congressional district and state conventions--that the actual delegates to the national convention are selected. So the caucuses are really something of a straw poll. Iowa's actual delegation to the national convention may not reflect the results of the caucuses, as every delegate has the right to change his or her mind, and candidates who receive fewer than fifteen per cent of the vote at cannot go on to the next level. But the news media have made the caucuses the first test of a presidential race. What goes on later, in a state which has a very small delegation at the convention, doesn't much matter to the media.

Until 1972, caucuses were held in March or April, and Iowa had virtually no influence on presidential nominations. But that year two things happened: Harold Hughes, the popular ex-governor and senator, was considering a run for the presidency, and the complicated McGovern Commission rules for selecting delegates went into effect. Iowa Democrats decided to hold their caucuses early that year to allow more time to work through the McGovern Commission rules, and to give Hughes a boost in his run for the White House.

Alas, Hughes bowed out of the race, saying he knew he could never push the button to fire our nuclear missles, even if the Soviets launched first. He endorsed Edmund Muskie, who won the caususes. George McGovern managed a strong showing. It was not until four years later that the Iowa caucuses became the media spectacle they are today. I was living in Iowa City that year, and was working the precincts for Representative Morris K. (Mo) Udall of Arizona. He was one of about a dozen Democratic candidates in the Bicentennial Year. A bumper sticker that year, taking off on a McDonald's Big Mac commercial, read something like:
"bayhbentsenbrowncarterchurchharrisjacksonsanford
shappshriverudallwallace...on a sesame seed bun!"

Udall had the problem of telling too many jokes. He was a serious candidate, and his message of conservation was right for the time, but people didn't take him seriously because he couln't stop telling jokes. Instead, Iowans--even very liberal Iowans who had campaigned for Gene McCarthy in '68 and George McGovern in '72--seemed to be backing a conservative former one-term Georgia governor who had been a supporter of the Vietnam War.

I saw Jimmy Carter at a forum at the Iowa Memorial Union. I had a work-study job driving the campus bus (Cambus), and we drivers were in an adjacent room, signing up for shifts. While waiting for our names to be called, some of us looked in on the candidate. I thought he was boring. Of course, after seeing the trailer for the movie "Rocky," I said that the last thing this country needed or wanted was another fight film. My finger was not exactly on the national pulse of that decade.

But I also remember walking around campus that winter, and seeing the chartered Greyhound buses parked by the Fieldhouse. The "H" in CHARTER had been taped over. Scores, perhaps hundreds of Georgians had left their subtropical world for the snows of Iowa. They did what the students for McCarthy had done in 1968: knock on doors and make personal contact with the voters. Even then, Carter was unable to win the caucuses. He came in second, to "Uncommitted." In the Iowa caucuses, you can beat somebody with nobody. And Carter's spin doctors (I'm not sure they used that term then, but there were people who did the same thing) convinced the news media that coming in second to Uncommitted was indeed a great victory. He went on to win the New Hampshire primary. In spite of the "Anybody but Carter" movement in the West, where Frank Church and Jerry Brown beat the Georgian in several primaries, Carter's people held onto their lead and swept the 1976 convention.

Carter beat Gerald Ford in a very close election that year. Ford might very well have won, had it not been for Ronald Reagan, whose attacks on Ford during the Republican primaries weakened the president.

It was a bizarre campaign, with dozens of candidates, from Ronald Reagan and George Wallace on the right to Mo Udall and Fred Harris on the left. I had friends who wouldn't vote for Udall because he was a Mormon, and supported Harris, a populist from Oklahoma. (Harris was a born-again radical; in 1968 he was a Johnson/Humphrey man.) Since then, the Iowa caucuses have been more important in winnowing out the weaker candidates or persuading the eventual winners to shake up their campaigns. But in 1976 the Iowa caucuses really did make a president.

RFK's Indianapolis speech

In Chapter 4 of Things Done and left Undone, I quoted from Robert F. Kennedy's April 4, 1968 speech in Indianapolis, in which he had to announce the death of Martin Luther King, jr. For me, it's one of the most moving speeches I've ever heard. YouTube has at least three videos of the speech: the first has original footage, which cuts off at the middle. The sound quality isn't good, but it gives you a feel of the atmosphere. A second video, which has Italian subtitiles, has better sound quality and more of the speech, but also contains audio of RFK's assassination. A third video plays the entire speech, but features a photomontage instead of video from the scene, which, in my opinion, doesn't really work.

A Roar For Powerful Words

Szelsofa, the most articulate tree in the blog forest, has honored me by awarding me the Shameless Lions Writing Circle's "A Roar for Powerful Words" award. Thank you, Szelsofa. Seamus Kearney, a writer living in Lyon, France, began the award, just last November, and it's gone to literally thousands of blogs around the nation. Here is Seamus's explanation of the way it works:

Those people I've given this award to are encouraged to post it on their own blogs; list three things they believe are necessary for good, powerful writing; and then pass the award on to the five blogs they want to honour, who in turn pass it on to five others, etc etc. Let's send a roar through the blogosphere!

Here are my three things that make writing powerful:

1. Resonance. Charles Gramlich, a fellow Shameless Lion winner, did an interesting post on this subject. He writes of resonance: "The power of this approach is that it is all about the “reader” and not the writer. The reader feels the currents passing underneath..." Resonant phrases remain with the reader. In an example I mentioned in a recent post, Leo Durocher actually said, "The nice guys over there are in seventh place." It had no resonance. The sportswriters eventually changed it to "Nice guys finish last." That, Charles commented, had resonance.

2. A lack of pretension. George Orwell, in his essay, "Politics and the English Language," decries "pretentious diction," and goes on to translate a passage from Ecclesiastes into modern English:


“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

And Orwell's modern version: “Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”

The King James translation is resonant; Orwell's parody demonstrates the kind of pretentious diction that seems to dominate business and political writing.

3. Personality. Even in nonfiction writing, the personality of the writer comes through, or ought to. It's why Norman Mailer's coverage of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention is so readable, even when we're not comfortable with some of his views. In fiction, the writer not only needs to present his or her personality, but that of the protagonist, and of other characters.

Here are five blogs which roar with powerful words:

Oliver's Offerings: Jana Oliver, whose time travel novel Sojourn contrasts a dystopian future world with Jack the Ripper's London, writes of the conventions and forums she's attended as a fantasy writer. Her rants on the political scene are not only entertaining, but well-reasoned. Jana was a classmate of mine at University High School in Iowa City, but she makes the list on the strength of her writing.

Simply Wait: Patry Francis, author of The Liar's Diary, is a writer of elegant prose. Her most recent posts tell of her recent battle with cancer, and what we all hope and pray is her victory over it. Her writing has been an inspiration to me and to many others,, including the author of:

Eudaemonia, Lisa Kenney's blog is just a delight to read. (The current post, "When Kids Get Life," is more sobering than her usual posts, but she bravely addresses a controversial subject.) While I've never heard her voice, I can hear a gentle, compassionate, yet persuasive presence when I read her work.. Her site also features artwork by her very talented husband, Scott Mattlin.

Slow Reads, by Peter Stephens, is just that. You need to read his posts slowly, but you'll almost always be rewarded. Check out "freshman comp" for a devastating critique of the way schools teach writing. And his Blogstroll links to interesting posts on many different blogs.

The Virtual Journey belongs to Julie of Kent, formerly of the English North Country. It's a blog with a very British accent. Scroll through the photographs of Britain's landmarks and countryside, and find fascinating essays on subjects ranging from Blenheim Palace to the Book of Ecclesiastes. Actually, Julie has four connected blogs, which can be reached through VJ.

I'm sorry I'm limited to five. Quite a few blogs deserve it, including Karen's Beyond Understanding (Sustenance Scout), Rebecca Burgess, and a new blog on my blogroll, Stress Management and Other Things, ( Tea N. Crumpet). In fact, I'd give it to every other blog on my roll if I could.


The green lion above is in thanks to Szelsofa, "the tree that stands on the edge of the forest."

One more thing: No obligation from any of the recipients to pass on the awards. I hope some do, but one or more of them may not be in a position to prepare such a post.

Were The Puritans Right? Or, How to Save Christmas from the Marketplace

"For preventing disorders, arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others: it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shilling as a fine to the county."

From the records of the General Court, Massachusetts Bay Colony May 11, 1659

I've been known to say "The Puritans were right," after being overwhelmed by the commercial demands of Christmas. Of course, the Massachusetts court wasn't complaining about commercialization. Any gift-giving would occur at New Year's. I learned the reasons for the Massachusetts ban here. What the Puritans didn't like was excessive drinking, merrymaking, and wassailing. The wassail--a sort of adult trick-or-treating, in which people would go from house to house and demand food and drink--could become violent if the wassailers did not get what they wanted. A familiar wassail song echoes this:

Come master, give us a bowl of the best,
And we hope that your soul in heaven may rest.
But if you do give us a bowl of the small,
Then down will come wass'lers, bowl and all.

The ban, which lasted only 22 years, really had nothing to do with Christmas as it is celebrated today. While I may still say "Bah, humbug" occasionally, my wife did things to make Christmas more meaningful--if just within our family.

She reminded us that the month leading up to Christmas is not the true Christmas season, but Advent--a time of hope and expectation. We light Advent candles at dinner, and sing a vese of "O Come Emanuel."

When the children were young, they would put their shoes outside the door on the eve of St. Nicholas Day, December 6, and we'd fill them with candy. St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, was known for gift-giving. A legend about him says that he anonymously gave three bags of gold to three girls in a poor family, so that they would have dowries for marraige and not be forced into prostitiution.

On December 13, St. Lucia's Day, we adopted the Swedish traditon of baking the braided St. Lucia bread. And for a while, our daughter Sarah presented it wearing a wreath of lighted candles. Anne made the bread last night--it's different from the one on the link, but it's very good.

And on Epiphany, January 6, Kathleen would make the Spanish Three Kings Bread. You had to be careful with it, as there was a bean (for good luck), a penny (for wealth), and a ring (for love and friendship) baked into it.

This was, I'll have to admit, a lot of work (mainly for Kathleen), but it did help put Christmas into context as a religious holiday in contrast to the commercial extravagnza that it has become.