Ode on a Russian Urn

 

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

From “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

It had been years since I last set foot in the Glastonbury Arms. It was built for its proximity to Chicago’s Union and North Western Stations, but it was too close to Skid Row to achieve the success its first owner had expected. He bore the improbable name of Launcelot Merlin MacArthur, and had taken the Arthurian legacy as his own. MacArthur, who had visited the town of Glastonbury in his youth, had been enthralled with the Arthurian legends, as well as the stories that the young Jesus had visited the site with his great uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, and that Joseph had returned after the Crucifixion with the Holy Grail, filled with Jesus’ blood. 

Joseph, according to the legend, was a merchant who sailed to Cornwall to buy tin, but also visited the site of Glastonbury, then an island, which came to be known as Avalon. When he returned with the Grail, he thrust his staff into the ground, which became a thorn tree. In the High Middle Ages, the legends of Joseph and the Grail were comingled with those of the legendary King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. 

My name, officially, is John Chauncey Smith, but I’ve been writing and living under the name of Gershom Davies for so long that I do a double take when someone calls me Jack. I took the first name from Exodus 2:22: “And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land,” back when I was in self-imposed exile in Venice Beach, California. Owen Davies, Bookseller, a shop in Old Town specializing in railroad memorabilia, gave me my surname—one I’d used before and in different circumstances. I’ve worked in newspapers for most of my adult life, but for the last year it’s been as a syndicated columnist after the Express folded in ’78. 

When I first visited the Glastonbury Arms, I was a cub reporter, newly hired by the Express. In ’51, the hotel was still respectable. The coat of arms behind the front desk had just been repainted, and the thorn tree still grew in the center of the lobby, surrounded by a protective barrier. And old Launcelot MacArthur still owned the place. 

In fact, I wouldn’t have had the assignment if the old man hadn’t insisted on an Episcopalian. Most Chicago reporters were Catholic, with a few Protestants, Jews, and atheists added to the mix, but there weren’t many Episcopalians. 

“Smith,” said the city editor, “your bio says you’re an Episcopalian.” 

“Not a very good one,” I replied. 

“You know Launcelot Merlin MacArthur?” 

“I think I’ve seen him. There’s a plaque with his name on it in Saints Peter and Paul Church.” 

“He owns the Glastonbury Arms Hotel. He thinks he has the God damned Holy Grail, and he’ll only talk to an Episcopalian. You know the place?” 

“Yeah. West Monroe, just down the street.” 

It was a very warm and sunny afternoon in early October, so I didn’t need a raincoat. The walk was pleasant, even with the traffic. While I had been curious about the place, I had never stepped inside. There was no doorman at the entrance, but it didn’t seem shabby. The lobby was dominated by an immense tree. And there, above the keys and cubbyholes behind the front desk was the coat of arms—a bishop’s miter in the escutcheon, with two croziers, or bishop’s crooks, crossed behind it. Below it was the motto, "Floreat Ecclesia Anglicana." “May the Church of England Flourish,” I gleaned from my college Latin. The young woman behind the desk looked up from what appeared to be a volume of poetry. I saw the title, “Kubla Khan” as she closed it. 

“How may I help you?” she said. She was probably a graduate student, with that white ruffled blouse, tweed skirt, and long, dark hair tied back. Very nice-looking. The horn-rimmed glasses framed a lovely oval face. 

“Let me feed on honey-dew and drink the milk of Paradise,” I said. 

She said nothing. 

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be forward. Paraphrasing end of the poem you were studying. I’m Jack Smith with the Express. Mr. MacArthur said he had something newsworthy.” 

“Mr. MacArthur should be back shortly,” she said. “Oh, maybe I should just drop the formality. I’m Celia West, Lance MacArthur’s granddaughter. I don’t mind your being forward, especially by way of Coleridge. Grandfather’s got it into his head that he’s found the Holy Grail, and I don’t want him to be the laughingstock of the city. She stood up, moved a bell on the desk, and put a “Ring Bell for Service” sign by it. Let me show you.” She stood up, revealing herself to be just below my six feet, left her enclave, and led me to a door with a plaque bearing her grandfather’s name. Behind his tidy desk was a large green urn on a pedestal. 

“Impressive,” I said. “Seems familiar, but I can’t see it as the Holy Grail.” 

“It gets more complicated,” she said, tucking back a strand of hair that had escaped. “It’s a replica of an 18th century urn from the Pavlovsk Palace outside of Leningrad. And I only know that because a friend is an expert. Grandfather won’t tell me how much he paid for it, but it can’t have been cheap.” 

“Are you sure it’s a replica?” 

“I think so. My friend said she wasn’t sure. The Germans took the palace, during the war, but most of the artifacts from it were hidden beforehand.” 

At that moment the bell rang. 

“I’ll need to get that. Take a seat. I’ll be right back.” 

I sat down in a chair behind the desk and stared at the urn. A few seconds later, the door swung open, and as I was turning around, I was grabbed from behind, roped to the chair, gagged, and blindfolded. And the gag was wet. It took some struggling, but whatever was on the gag did its job. By the time I came to, somebody was untying me, and a cop was asking me questions. 

“Is the girl OK?” was my first question. 

I didn’t get an answer. “Did you see who hit you?” 

“No,” I said. “What about Celia?” 

“She’ll be O.K. The old man should be, too, but he’s in worse shape.” 

After blinking my eyes a couple of times, I saw that the urn was gone. Not a surprise. 

“You’re sure you didn’t see anyone?” 

“By the time I started to turn around, somebody had a blindfold over my head. The only thing I heard was the bell.” I felt my pockets. My wallet and keys were still there. Along with my reporter’s notebook. I started to get up, but there were two strong hands on my shoulders. 

“Chloroform is funny stuff. Too little, and you’ll just feel dizzy,” said the voice behind me. “Too much, and it can be your last breath. Stay in the chair for a little longer and take a few breaths of oxygen.” He placed an oxygen mask over my mouth. “I think you can walk out of here, but you’ll need to take it easy.” 

After I breathed pure oxygen for a few minutes, the medic came around and listened to my heart and lungs with a stethoscope while checking my pulse. He then told me to get up slowly. I felt a little lightheaded, but I managed to move without stumbling. I made it out the door and saw Celia lying on a sofa in the lobby. A nurse was bending over her. 

“How is she?” I asked. 

Before the nurse could answer, Celia said, “Better than I look. But the honey-dew and milk of Paradise will have to wait. I’m here most Tuesdays and Thursdays. Stop by if you have time.” 

“She’s not delirious,” I told the nurse. “A little inside joke.” I said to Celia, "You look better than you think. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’” 

“’That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,’” she responded. 

The nurse looked puzzled. 

“The last two lines of Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’” I said. 

Celia held up a hand to me, and I took it in both of mine. 

“I’ll definitely see you again,” I said. To the nurse, I said, “Do you know what happened to her grandfather?" 

“The ambulance took him. I don’t know where.” 

“St. Luke’s,” Celia said. “Only place he’d go.” 

I gently let go of her hand and went into a phone booth, where I called the city editor, gave him the basics, and said I was headed to St. Luke’s. 

“Take a cab,” he said. “We’ll cover it.” 

He was right. Chicago was built on a grid, and St. Luke’s was at 14th and Michigan. There was no single bus or streetcar I could take from the West Loop. I flagged down a Checker in front of the hotel and was at St. Luke’s in a matter of minutes. 

It took a few minutes to ascertain where he was in the big complex and a few more at the nurses’ station for permission to visit him. And then, “The chaplain is in with him right now. It shouldn’t be too long.” 

I took the time to jot down everything I remembered from the afternoon. A young man in a Roman collar came out a door, leaving it slightly ajar. Naturally, MacArthur would only go to St. Luke’s. It was the only Episcopal hospital in town. I got up and knocked. 

“Mr. MacArthur,” I said. It’s Jack Smith from the Express." 

“Come in, young man! I’m glad you found me.” 

“Your granddaughter said you’d be at St. Luke’s. She’s going to be fine, by the way.” 

“Yes, she’s a bright girl. Working on her Master’s. She needs to be busy to keep up her spirits. Her husband is missing and presumed dead in Korea. That was over a year ago. But you didn’t come here to talk about her. I’ve been a fool. I made my confession to the chaplain, but I’ll tell you.” 

He was in a hospital gown and recovering from being chloroformed, but he didn’t appear to be in bad health. He still had most of his hair. It was gray, of course, and he sported a little Thomas Dewey-style mustache. He was probably tall, but perhaps not so tall as his granddaughter. 

“In late August,” he told me, “I received a letter from a dealer in London, saying he had something that would interest me. He said it was a replica of an urn in Russia, very high quality, but there some of the provenance connected it to Glastonbury. It was from a firm I didn’t know, but the connection to Glastonbury hooked me. I flew to London, something I shan’t do again. I think you saw the urn—it was exquisite—and the price he offered was far lower than what I was expecting. But what intrigued me was inside the base. It was a simple, pewter chalice, which, according to the provenance, had been added when the urn was owned by a gentleman in Glastonbury. And there was a letter stating that the chalice had been found during an 1892 excavation that found Glastonbury Village.” 

I nodded. 

“Too good to be true. I know,” he continued. I bought it and brought it back on the Media from Liverpool. Not the Queen Mary, I know, but a decent Cunard liner and a first-class cabin. Customs was a breeze, and I brought it home on the Broadway Limited. I was going to take it to a restorer who’d separate the pewter chalice from the urn. It seemed to have been soldered in.” 

 He went on for a bit longer until the nurse came in and shooed me out. I had enough for a story. Even though we were an afternoon paper, we’d have the scoop. 

There was a northbound bus coming up to the stop as I left, so I took it and changed to a Madison streetcar in the Loop. When I got back to the office, just west of Union Station, the receptionist sent me to the city editor. 

“We have to kill the story,” he said as soon as I entered his office. The FBI asked me, well, told me so. Sent an agent in person.” 

“You’re sure he was legit? You know, the City News slogan.” 

“Yeah, ’If your mother says she loves you, check it out.’ He had the uniform—the dark suit, white shirt, plain tie and he had the I.D., but yes, I called the Bureau office after he left. He’s legit.” 

“It would have made a great story,” I said. I gave him the gist of my interview with MacArthur and said I suspected the urn wasn’t a reproduction. 

“Keep your notes,” he said. “Maybe we can use it later.” 

The next day was a busy one—Michael Moretti, a suspended state’s attorney policeman, was indicted for murder. The Chicago Transit Authority proposed selling a $1.25 weekly pass for riders in the downtown area. And three more Chicago boys were killed in Korea. 

I was out of the office most of the day, phoning in my stories to the rewrite man. When I finally returned, the receptionist said I’d gotten more than one call from Celia West. 

I called the number she gave me. 

“Hello, this is Celia.” 

“Jack Smith, returning your call.” 

“Jack, I need to talk to you in person. Could we meet someplace for dinner?”

“Certainly,” I said. 

“Can you meet me at Elliott’s Open Kitchen on 55th, in, say, an hour?” 

“I’ll be there.” 

I put on my hat and trench coat and walked the three blocks to my apartment, where I freshened up and shaved. I was lucky with the Chicago Transit Authority. Still, Celia was waiting for me as I walked west from the 55th Street “L” station. 

Nearly twenty years later, Jory Graham, the expert in all things Chicago, would write, “Elliott’s is housed in a once-white diner in a neighborhood that’s even more dilapidated. Ignore everything but the food, which is first-rate.” The place and the neighborhood were in slightly better shape then, but the food—barbecue and fried chicken—was excellent, along with the doughnut holes they gave you when you were waiting. 

In the din of the restaurant, she made her confession. “I never thought it would come to this. The couple who talked me into doing this said nobody would be hurt, that Grandfather would have an exciting adventure, and that we could rescue an important artifact from the Reds. They couldn’t take it out of the UK without an incident, but nobody would bother Grandfather. I was foolish enough to believe them. And maybe they were right, but they didn’t count on Grandfather calling a reporter. When I found out he had called you, I called them to see if they could get the urn away. They did, but not the way I expected. Grandfather might not have made it through if the medics hadn’t arrived with oxygen as soon as they did. I didn’t even hesitate about showing it to you. I figured they’d have it before any story came out.” 

“Quite a story,” I said. 

“And I have a favor to ask you. We’re down here on the South Side because the couple who talked me into this are grad students at the University.” She was referring to the nearby University of Chicago. “I just want to talk to them about what happened, and I need some backup.” 

She led me to a DeSoto coupe in the parking lot. We got in and she turned on the headlights and drove east on 55th to a block in the Hyde Park area, where she squeezed into a parking space. Ahead in the dark, I could see an ambulance double-parked.

She saw it too. "That's where we're going," she said.

When we got to the door, there was a cop showing his badge.

“We’re just here to see our friends,” Celia said. 

“You can’t come in," said the cop. “Police investigation.” 

“Are they all right?” 

“I can’t say anything right now.” 

I couldn’t see behind the cop. A second man, this one in a dark suit, came to the door. He took out his FBI badge. It looked genuine. 

“We can’t comment right now,” he said. “This house is off limits.” 

As we got back in the car, she got close to me and said, “Maybe I’m being forward this time, but I’m upset and tense. Most people would want a stiff drink. I need something else. I’ve liked you ever since you quoted from Keats. And I think you like me. How about checking in at the Shoreland and we can release some of this tension. I might just have that honey-dew and milk of Paradise.” 

I didn’t have to think twice. A tall, beautiful, sophisticated woman wanted me! She had her mouth close to mine and we kissed. 

When the kiss was over, she opened her purse and handed me a twenty. “The front desk clerks get suspicious when a woman checks in. And don’t use your real name, especially since it’s John Smith.' Oh, and a five for the desk clerk so he doesn't ask any questions."  

I thought of the journalist and novelist Richard Harding Davis, and then my favorite bookshop, Owen Davies, and I checked in under the name of Richard Davies. The first name Gershom would come later, when I moved to Los Angeles. I knew I wasn’t the first to enjoy Celia’s charms after her presumed widowhood, but at the time, it didn’t seem to matter. 

Celia’s friends were lucky. The ambulance took them to the University of Chicago Hospitals rather than the morgue, and they weren’t interested in talking about their experiences. The urn was gone, and they weren’t going to try to retrieve it. 

Over the next two months, I’d get a call at the office every week or so, and I’d discover some new Chicago-area restaurant and experience some exquisite lovemaking in another grand hotel, interspersed with some Romantic poetry. I learned about life in an old-money Chicago family and growing up in the Prairie Avenue neighborhood after most of the old-money families had decamped to the North Side or the suburbs, and I gave her some stories about growing up in academia—in my case, Iowa City. 

I got the last call from Celia on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. Her husband, presumed dead, was alive, and was being repatriated just before Christmas. I wrote a story about their happy reunion and consigned our affair to the past. 

And now it was 1979, nearly thirty years later, on another warm October day. The Glastonbury Arms had long since fallen into disrepair. Launcelot MacArthur had sold the place shortly after I first visited, and it had changed hands a few times since then. While it was never a Skid Row “Single Room Occupancy” place, it was just a step above them. It was now slated for demolition, along with many other buildings on or near West Madison Street. Gentrification, they called it, a term unknown back in 1951. 

I had ridden the Lake Street “L” from Oak Park and then walked the down to the site to take a few pictures for a feature story about the hotel’s history. Maybe I’d even write about the urn, though I expected to leave Celia out of it. 

And as I approached the place, there was someone else inspecting the ruins. As I approached, she turned around. She had aged, of course, and though I knew she had a few years on me, she looked lovely. 

“Celia West?” I said. 

“Jack Smith! Or should I say, Gershom Davies? I remember you used that last name when we were seeing each other.” 

We hugged. She was wearing the same scent I remembered from our affair. 

“It’s Johnston now,” she said as we broke from the embrace. Edward had some demons I couldn’t exorcise. After his experience in North Korea, things just didn’t work out, and I think he suspected I hadn’t been exactly chaste while he was presumed dead. He found a sweet young brunette from Glen Ellyn, and as far as I know, they’re still together. I married the man I should have married back in college. The trouble was, he was married in ’51, or you and I might not have had our little fling. We’re living in New York now. I’m teaching at NYU, and my husband is a CPA. We have three great kids. In memory of Grandfather, I came out on the Broadway Limited, though he might not have appreciated Amtrak’s version of the train. David, my husband, is flying in this evening. We’ll spend the weekend here, and we’ll both go back on the Broadway.” 

I filled her in on my life, much of which she knew from my column, which was carried in one of the New York papers. She was free for lunch, so we walked over to Café Bohemia, a place where we had dined back in the day. It specialized in exotic game, such as bison, beaver, and sometimes even lion. We enjoyed buffalo burgers, and we did some more catching up. 

“Oh,” she said, as we were getting to the end of our meal, “I should tell you. David and I visited Leningrad a couple of years ago, and we made a side trip to the Pavlovsk Palace. That urn that brought us together—it’s there. Either that, or the replica was very, very good.” 

We said our goodbyes, and I wrote my story about the Glastonbury Arms. I even included some quotes from Celia about its glory days. But I didn’t mention the urn. Some things are better left out of the story.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Remembering Allard Lowenstein

 

I was barely aware of Charlie Kirk until his death. I had heard the name, followed by the epithet, “right-wing influencer,” but I wasn’t aware of the scope of his influence. He, and other younger male influencers, have succeeded in persuading a growing number of young people to reject American democracy in favor of Donald Trump's authoritarianism. And it reminded me of another influencer from my youth--a man who brought hundreds, perhaps thousands of young men and women into the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the Democratic Party. 

Like Kirk, Lowenstein was murdered, though in Lowenstein's case, the killer was a former disciple, Dennis Sweeney, whose schizophrenia had convinced him that Lowenstein was sending messages to him. Sweeney was found not guilty due to insanity.

The list of people Lowenstein influenced is a long one. Here's a very abridged list, assisted by Google's artificial intelligence:

Bill Bradley, NBA star, former U.S. senator from New Jersey, and 2000 Democratic presidential candidate.

Barney Frank, former U.S. representative from Massachusetts

Tom Harkin, former U.S. Senator from Iowa

Bob Kerrey, former U.S. Senator from Nebraska

The late Paul Wellstone, U.S. Senator from Minnesota

The late Joe Lieberman, U.S. Senator from Connecticut

Steve Roberts, journalist (husband of the late Cokie Roberts)

The late singer Harry Chapin, whose 1980 song, "Remember when the Music" was a tribute to Lowenstein.

The hundreds of young activists (most from the so-called "Silent Generation"), who volunteered for the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project, later known as "Freedom Summer," to register Black people in one of the most racist stated of the Union. The late David Harris, who was briefly married to Joan Baez and went to prison for draft resistance, went with David Sweeney, a fellow Stanford student, to McComb, Mississippi, one of the most dangerous assignments in that voter registration drive. Harris's memoir, Dreams Die Hard (1982) relates the story of Harris, Sweeney, and Lowenstein, and how the tragic combination of Lowenstein's confused sexuality and Sweeney's mental illness led to Sweeney's killing of Lowenstein.

The thousands of young men and women who took time off from college to campaign for Eugene McCarthy in the snows of New Hampshire. Lowenstein really thought he could bring Bobby Kennedy into the race to challenge Lyndon Johnson over his conduct of the War in Vietnam. The 1968 campaign was a sort of tragedy of errors, with Kennedy entering the race only after McCarthy's strong showing against Johnson. By that time, Lowenstein's army had committed itself to McCarthy. LBJ withdrew from the race at the end of March, leaving his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, as the establishment candidate who carried on with Johnson's support of the war, despite his private opposition. That hopeful early spring was destroyed by the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and then Robert Kennedy himself. Humphrey was nominated amid the chaos of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and after belatedly changing his position on the war, nearly was elected president. Had Richard Nixon not treasonously sent Anna Chennault to sabotage the Paris peace talks, he might have won. Nineteen sixty-eight was also the year Lowenstein won election to Congress in New York's Fifth District

And finally, the people of my generation, who participated in the Dump Nixon movement. While I had sold "McCarthy's Million" buttons to my Cedar Falls (Iowa0 classmates, I was too young to go off to New Hampshire, as were all but the oldest of my Baby Boom Generation. I was unaware of Lowenstein until I read David Halberstam's article, "The Man Who Ran Against Lyndon Johnson" in the December 1968 issue of Harper's Magazine. Had Lowenstein not been gerrymandered out Congress by the Republican New York legislature in 1970, he might not have had time to lead the effort. When he came to Iowa City in 1971, I met him. He told me to look him up if I was ever in Brooklyn. I never had the chance. Of course, Nixon won in a landslide in 1972, But I suspect that a lot of us, seeing that Nixon was going to win reelection, went to work for congressional, and state legislative candidates. I wrote press releases for Dick Clark, the Iowa Senatorial candidate who managed to oust GOP incumbent Jack Miller from office. Democrats increased their Senate majority by two seats in 1972.

And I've left out his work as head of the National Student Association and in the effort to end apartheid in South Africa. I'm hoping that in this dangerous era, there are influencers continue the legacy of Al Lowenstein.

Image: Wikimedia Commons via The Daily Tar Heel

The Business of Nostalgia: 1970s edition

YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.

-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1906)

Like many of my fellow Baby Boomers, much of my youth was in the 1970s. It was the decade when I found a woman I truly loved and married her (see above). It was the decade where I worked for idealistic political candidates, including Dick Clark (not the Bandstand guy) in his successful 1972 U.S. senatorial campaign in Iowa and Congressman Morris K. Udall, who lost to Jimmy Carter in his 1976 presidential run. And, as an advocate for intercity passenger rail, I was a leader in the effort to maintain and expand Amtrak service.

Looking back from 2025, it seems a magical time. It was, for me and millions of others, "The Period of Possibility." And it's become Big Business, thanks to social media. I recently joined a Facebook group called "We Pretend It's Still the 1970s," a platform owned by Do You Remember? (DYR), which describes itself as "home to the largest online community of nostalgia enthusiasts and is the go-to website for fans of the ’50s ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s." In other words, the postwar Baby Boomers and Generation X, along with the older so-called "Silent Generation." Yet from the photo of the DYR staff, it appears that Silents, Boomers and Xers are absent. I'm not sure whether any of the staffers are old enough to be Millennials. But maybe it doesn't matter, because we nostalgic oldsters provide virtually all of the content of DYR's platforms, albeit without monetary compensation.

We have the distinction of being both the market and the product. That's true of all social media users, of course, but it seems peculiarly unfair that the profits are flowing to trendy-looking twentysomethings from Manhattan. Perhaps some of DYR's investors are Boomers, along with some of its "team members that work remotely," but every indication suggests a much younger demographic than its target audience.

The "We Pretend It's Still the 1970s" group, under "About," includes the following: "Travel back in time, and let's pretend it's still the 1970s and we're there!

"Please do not post or comment in 'past-tense'. No 'I remember' posts! Everything you say, must be in 'present tense', written as if you're writing it from your childhood bedroom, your school desk, or anyplace you hung out at back then!

"Rules: Be Nice. Don't Troll. Nothing Current (including and especially Politics). Report bad behavior."

Many of the posts are from couples like Kathleen and me, who married young, were told their marriages wouldn't last, and are still in loving relationships after 45 to 55 years. I admit to enjoying their stories and their satisfaction at proving the naysayers wrong. I've seen only one post from someone who was divorced in the 1970s, though there could be more. But generally speaking, the Facebook group presents the decade as an idyllic time, which, in many ways, it was, especially for those of my generation.

But, of course, it wasn't all young love, great music, and cool cars. The decade began with Richard Nixon as president, and the Vietnam War not just raging, but expanded into Cambodia. That war continued for the first three years of the decade, while protests counter-protests, and police and National Guard actions turned violent. Then there was Watergate, the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent Arab oil embargo that brought about the recession of 1975-76. Elation over Nixon's resignation and Jimmy Carter's election soured in the face of double-digit inflation, the Iranian hostage crisis, and another oil embargo and recession at the end of the decade. It also marked the beginning of the end of the American Dream. I've read more than once that 1973, the year Kathleen and I married, was the first year when Americans' real wages began shrinking. Internationally, there was mass murder in Cambodia, Chile, and Afghanistan. And that list of negatives just scratched the surface.

While some of the posts mention boyfriends or husbands returning from Vietnam, they're shown in a positive light. I doubt whether the administrators would allow posts featuring antiwar protests or Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to read and like the posts of those young couples who defied the odds, and even those who are brave enough to write about their divorces. I don't plan to add my own story to them, at least not in the "We Pretend It's Still the 1970s" Facebook group, though I suspect the wedding photo of Kathleen and me from 1973 would be a hit on the site.

"Tell Out My Soul!" Too Evangelical or cryptically Anglican?

 

It's time for new T-shirts and polo shirts for my congregation--the last ones came out several years ago. I still have my T-shirt and fleece hoodie from then. But I was a tad shocked at the new design, above, which features the phrase, "Tell Out My Soul," in bright blue and red and in a much bigger font than the church name, in basic black. Our pastor, the Rev. Terri Peterson, is a Lutheran--something that has only been possible since the 2001 agreement between the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which established full communion between the two denominations. And she's been diligent in maintaining the Anglican tradition. Since she became pastor seven years ago, I'm seeing new faces in the congregation, so she must be doing something right.

But sometimes, the Evangelical side of her comes out, as I believed it did when I saw the new shirts. I responded that I could never wear a shirt bearing that legend. I'm a fairly reserved, introverted Episcopalian for whom "Tell Out My Soul" is just not appropriate. Pastor Terri graciously agreed to offer shirts with just the church name. 

But after my wife asked me where the phrase originated, I turned to Google, which gave me an answer that surprised me--it's relatively recent and it's thoroughly Anglican. It's the first line of a 1961 hymn by Timothy Dudley-Smith (1926-2024) an Anglican priest, who later served as Bishop of Norwich from 1981 to 1992. It's based on a paraphrase of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) from the New English Bible. It begins, "Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord." It's sung to the tune, "Woodlands," composed in 1916 by Walter Greatorex.

So, after finding out that the phrase, at least with an added comma, is as Anglican as Whitsunday, am I going to order the shirt? Nope--I'm sticking with the blue shirt with the church name only. Anglican as it is, it still sounds too Evangelical for me.

Besides, the "church name only" shirt mentions that St. John's is downtown. It's one of the few mainline churches that hasn't abandoned the central city for the prosperous exurbs, and for me, that's a point of pride.

"When Jesus Left His Father's Throne" and savoring the Liturgy of the Palms

 

In the Palm/Passion Sunday liturgy, it seems the theologians who crafted it wanted to get the joyous and triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem out of the way quickly and move right into the Passion. But I think that we in the pews want to savor it, especially the children, who eagerly wave the fronds. And hymnodists throughout Christian history have celebrated the event. “All Glory, Laud and Honour” is John Mason Neale’s translation of a Latin hymn written by Theodulf of Orléans in 820. A thousand years later, in 1820, Henry Hart Milman penned “Ride On, Ride On in Majesty.” Even Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice made a hit out of “Hosanna” in “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1970). 

One beloved Palm Sunday hymn, “When Jesus Left His Father’s Throne” (Hymnal #480), doesn’t even mention Jesus’ entry until the third and final stanza, but it does so through a child’s eyes. Ralph (say “Rafe”) Vaughan Williams (1872-1858), who was co-editor of the 1906 English Hymnal, heard the haunting folk song, “Dives and Lazarus,” in the Sussex village of Kingsfold, and he adapted it as a hymn tune bearing the town’s name. (Vaughan Willaims also used the song in his 1939 orchestral composition, “Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus.”) The tune surely has Celtic roots, because the Irish folk song, “The Star of the County Down” has virtually the same melody. 

Scottish-born poet and editor James Montgomery (1771-1854) wrote the lyrics for the Hallam Sunday School, near Sheffield, England, which is why it takes a child’s point of view. The first stanza is about Jesus’ birth, and the second, his blessing of the children. In the third stanza, Montgomery celebrates Palm Sunday through children’s eyes: 

When Jesus into Zion rode,

the children sang around;

for joy they plucked the palms and strowed

their garments on the ground.

Hosanna our glad voices raise,

hosanna to our King!

Should we forget our Savior’s praise,

the stones themselves would sing.

 

And it brings us back to that moment when there was the hope, fleeting though it was, that Jesus could bring about the Kingdom of God without the Cross. No wonder we want to savor it.

Image: Entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem (1320) by Pietro Lorenzetti (Wikimedia Commons)

Note This was first published in The Tower, a monthly newsletter of the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Elkhart, Indiana

Flooding the zone and my choice to focus on passenger rail

 

“The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

-Steve Bannon to Michael Lewis, January 30, 2018

Thanks to the Trump administration’s “Flood the Zone” tactics, it’s easy for ordinary Americans to feel powerless. That’s something Mr. Trump and his enabler, billionaire Elon Musk, are counting on. I got some wise advice from someone—either Mary Doria Russell or Heather Cox Richardson—to focus on something you know and care about. For me, that’s easy: intercity passenger train service. 

I’ve been a supporter of passenger rail for most of my life, including 32 years as an Amtrak employee. Outside of North America, rail is an integral part of the transportation system. In Europe, Japan, China, and other developed countries, passengers can travel rapidly and cheaply on well-maintained rail systems. 

But Trump and Musk don’t want Americans to have that option. Musk wants Amtrak, the quasi-public system of intercity passenger rail, to be privatized, after comparing it unfavorably to the Chinese rail system. Yet the Chinese State Railway Group is government-owned, and China has spent over $500 billion in the past five years in new tracks, trains, and stations. If Amtrak had that kind of support, it truly would be a world-class system. 

The reason Amtrak came into being was that the private railroads were unable to make money on passenger trains after the U.S. Post Office shifted first class mail off the trains and onto trucks and planes in the late 1960s. Fred Frailey, in Twilight of the Great Trains (1998) writes that most railroads kept two sets of books: one using the “fully allocated” formula demanded by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which included costs that the railroad would incur whether or not the passenger train ran; a second, based on solely related costs, showed the true expense of running a train. “In 1960,” Frailey writes, “In 1960, when the fully allocated loss on U.S. passenger trains was $485 million, the loss based on solely related expenses was a mere $10 million and would turn into a $17 million profit in 1961.” 

That all changed, beginning in 1967, when the Postmaster General, Larry O’Brien, began eliminating the Railway Post Offices—cars where first-class mail was sorted enroute. Most of the first-class mail went to trucks and planes. While some trains still carried bulk mail, the drastic cut in revenue made virtually every passenger train a money-loser, even using solely related costs. Railroad companies, which had opposed federal subsidies for passenger trains, suddenly changed their tune, and Congress, after massive discontinuance proposals, especially by the Pann Central Transportation company, passed the National Railroad Passenger Service Act of 1970, creating the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. 

When the Nixon Administration signed off on the NRPC, later called Amtrak, it added a “poison pill,” making the corporation “for profit.” While Congress changed the wording to “operated and managed as a for profit corporation” in 1978, some Amtrak opponents believe the profitability is the only way to measure Amtrak, despite the intercity passenger train’s fuel-efficiency and low carbon footprint. And, of course, they ignore massive government subsidies of other transportation modes. 

Privatization, without major spending on infrastructure and the return of mail and express to the trains, would mean a shutdown. Last year, Amtrak advocates were talking about an expansion of both short- and long-distance Amtrak service. That won’t happen if Trump and Musk get their way—the entire Amtrak system would go down. 

Former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood wrote in 2023, “In recent decades, America invested trillions to maintain and expand highways and air travel, while European and Asian nations invested heavily in high-speed trains. Between 1949 and 2017, the federal government invested only $10 billion in high-speed rail with $4 billion of that dedicated to the California project, compared to investments of $777 billion in aviation and over $2 trillion in highways. 

“Meanwhile, since 2004, China has invested over $1.4 trillion to build a 25,000-mile high-speed rail network and is pouring billions more into high-speed rail projects worldwide.” 

The message needs to get out. Trump and Musk can’t be allowed to destroy passenger rail.

 

 

Note: I recently sent an abridged version of this letter to Indiana Senator Todd Young, a moderate Republican who has the potential of challenging the Trump Administration. I’ve also published shorter versions in the Elkhart Truth and South Bend Tribune.

It’s like, weird, man. Like, really weird!

 

Former president and Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance have been called worse: Fascists, Nazis, Misogynists, racists, to name a few. Trump has regularly been labeled a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a rapist, and many expletives. Yet both candidates, along with much of the MAGA crowd, just shrugged them off. But when Minnesota governor Tim Walz said, “These are weird people on the other side,” on MSNBC last month, Republicans took umbrage. 

 “Weird” began as a noun, not an adjective, and meant fate. It’s a direct descendant of the Old English weorðan and a cognate of the German “werden,” both meaning "to become." 

The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the word’s change in meaning, from a noun to an adjective, and from the eerie world of the fates to the strange and curious:

“The sense of ‘uncanny, supernatural’ developed from Middle English use of weird sisters for the three Fates or Norns (in Germanic mythology), the goddesses who controlled human destiny. They were portrayed as odd or frightening in appearance, as in "Macbeth" (and especially in 18th and 19th century productions of it), which led to the adjectival meaning "odd-looking, uncanny" (1815); ‘odd, strange, disturbingly different’ (1820)” 

Since the 19th century and especially since the 1960s, “weird” has become an even milder adjective, usually meaning odd or eccentric. In 1960s counterculture, a weird experience was usually a good one. Heck, Al Yankovic made it his trademark. 

Then what is it about being called “weird” that so upsets the MAGA folks? All I can surmise is that they see themselves as the American norm, and to be labeled as deviating from that norm is a shock. 

I’ve never been offended at being called weird. But then, I’ve never been offended at being called a liberal.

 

Image: The norns Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld beneath the world tree Yggdrasil (1882) by Ludwig Burger.