This passage (and the whole book, really) from Jedediah Purdy's For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today really resonates with our conversation of engagement in LAR 112. 

We are at liberty to be entirely self-concerned. Our freedom, though, does not prohibit seriousness of purpose; it may be that it can come to maturity only by undertaking such seriousness. With a free, reflective choice to accept responsibility for some place, to take a role in a political and geographic community, and to answer to some tradition, we take full responsibility for our lives. We relinquish boundlessness to acquire form. (107)

Christmas Break Reading List

I love making reading lists.  Those lists don't always translate to actually getting things read, but so be it.  As the end of the fall semester arrives, I am naively and optimistically anticipating a couple weeks of non-course-related reading.  I'll never get all of these works read, but here's the list I'm contemplating.

• Breslin, James E. B.  Mark Rothko: A Biography.  I've been a casual fan of Rothko since encountering a few of his paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago Museum.  I've got a notion for a poem or essay that works with Rothko's paintings as a thread.  I'm not sure the biography is necessary for my own writing, but I hope to find out.
• Karr, Mary.  The Liar's Club. 
• Purdy, Jedediah.  For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today.  I originally encountered W. E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk by watching the old TV show Spenser for Hire, where it was quoted by Hawk (played by Avery Brooks).  For Common Things was quoted a couple of time in the HBO series The Newsroom, and I'm planning to take the bait.
• Robinson, Marilynne.  Lila.

Of course, I'll also be planning a new syllabus for ENG 200 in January, which means I'll be reading The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, by Alan Jacobs. 


And, or course, I'll probably be napping a lot. 

Wrecked, Chapter Two: "You Won't Find Yourself Where You're Looking"

I'm trying to extract the essence of what Goins is asserting in this book and to minimize the impact of the manner by which the ideas are asserted. (But it's hard.[1]) One part of my frustration with the "manner" of the book may be a concern with audience. I'm still not quite sure to whom he's writing. Christian? Non-Christian? Those who want to be wrecked? Those who are wrecked? Those who should be wrecked, whether they want to be or not? At various points in the book, any or all of these audiences seem to be in play. As a result, the book seems to send contradictory messages. 

For example, Goins attempts to distinguish his book from "self-help books" by noting that they hold different basic assumptions. Self-help books function on the assumption that "life is supposed to be comfortable" (45), whereas Wrecked posits as different approach:

You can't grow without pain; you can't find your life's purpose if you aren't willing to embrace discomfort and join others in their suffering. Simply reading this book won't help. You need to act, too--to do something hard, even dangerous. Because it will change you, .... (53)

Just as chapter one had a nugget that one wants to embrace while getting rid of what surrounds it, this brief passage is the most direct, succinct, and powerful statement in chapter two. Unfortunately, it is once again linked back to the romantic, essentialist mindset of chapter one:

... and you will find that piece of you lost in the process of growing up, of becoming wise and aware of how the world works. You will become a child again. (53)

If possible, my children tend to avoid anything painful.  They will endure discomfort in order to be obedient, but left to their own devices, they would just as soon do what they deem comfortable at any given moment of the day.  So, I have a difficult time understanding why the choice to "embrace discomfort and join others in their suffering" is not dependent upon the wisdom and insight we gain as we mature.  I don’t understand what Goins seeks to achieve through enticing us with an idealized notion of childhood.  It’s this kind of stuff that makes it seem like he’s selling something.

There are other aspects of this chapter that I found problematic, also.  In describing the tendencies of our culture, Goins notes that “We think it’s about self-actualization, about becoming the best version of ourselves.  It’s not.  It’s about losing ourselves” (48).  Well, yes.  As a Christian seeking to decrease so that Christ-in-me might increase, I agree.  But then, about five pages later, we’re told that “Even if we get turned around in the process [of journeying beyond what is comfortable] and end up on our own doorstep, it will have been worth it, because we will have changed” (52-53).  Well, that risks sounding a lot like prioritizing self-actualization.

Then, of course, there’s the sentence following what I’ve quoted in the last paragraph: “That’s why I don’t believe in books and programs” (53).  Check out Goins’s website (http://goinswriter.com)  and let me know if you find that assertion slightly problematic.

I like what Goins is getting at—or, at least, what I understand Goins to be getting at.  Let’s combine our chapter-one nugget with our chapter-two nugget.

If we are to follow the Jesus who suffered with us and bled for us, we too must suffer. We must hold the dying in our arms. We must shed tears for hungry stomachs, trafficked children, and wandering souls. This is what He wants for us. It’s the reason we are called to lay down our nets and take up our crosses to pursue the Suffering Servant. And it’s the one thing we will avoid at all costs. It is not enough to feel bad. […] We must act. (40)

You can't grow without pain; you can't find your life's purpose if you aren't willing to embrace discomfort and join others in their suffering. Simply reading this book won't help. You need to act, too--to do something hard, even dangerous. Because it will change you, .... (53)

My issue with Goins continues to be the manner in which these points and conveyed.  I guess this brings me back to the question of audience.  Perhaps I’m simply not part of his.

---

[1] This chapter, we’ve traded in John Mayer for Jason Bourne and Yoda.

Diving Into Wrecked

In connection with a group at my church, I've been asked to read Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams Into Your Comfortable Life, by Jeff Goins.  Given the gravitas of the group reading the book and the discussions that will be generated through our reading, this felt like a text I wanted to respond to a bit more formally--a text for which I wanted to articulate my thinking rather than merely scribble notes and comments in the margins. So, I'll try to respond chapter by chapter and see where it takes me.

Chapter 1: You Must Get Wrecked

Well, the chapter starts off with a John Mayer quotation, so I'm not sure what to think about that.  I assume that the quotation--"Something's missing, and I don't know what it is"--is a lyric from one of Mayer's songs.  I will say that it aligns with this first chapter pretty well.  Like Mayer, Goins is also asserting that something is missing, some unknown "it" that get referred to again and again but not quite identified.

I should say that Goins and I got off on the wrong foot, as his opening chapter makes—or at least begins with—the same sort of simplistic, essentialist assertions found in the Eldredge books (e.g., Wild at Heart).  For instance, he asserts, “We begin life with a simple understanding—that our lives are tales worth telling and we have an important part to play” (27).  Well, no.  We don’t begin life which this understanding.  This perspective is something that is cultivated--to varying degrees--within us as we grow.  Goins even undercuts his own point—this very point—in his next paragraph.  Like Eldredge, Goins presents our lives in romanticized terms.  In this case, all children are imaginative and uninhibited by a concern with “trivial things” like money, sex, and recognition.  “Without prompting, kids know how to dream up adventures and slay dragons.  To embark on epic voyages and live out idyllic scenes.  To spend hours in the backyard with nothing but their imaginations” (28).  Well, that’s crap.  Kids are raised and encouraged to “embark” on such voyages, just as men and women are raised and encouraged to embrace the roles and perspectives that Eldredge presents as being intrinsic to our nature. 

 
Eventually, chapter one got a little better, but I could never really escape the feeling that Goins was pushing too hard, that he was selling something—namely discontent and the promise of contentment.

Something is missing. Something important. Something necessary to making a difference in the world. And most of us are afraid to find out what it is. Because we know. It’s the secret we’re afraid to admit: this will cost us our lives. (29)

Well, sure.  Many of us do have the sense that something is missing.  On the other hand, we live in a culture that operates largely by seeking to cultivate discontentment in order to market things to us.  Marketers assure us that our lives are empty, so we should pursue thrill and independence by purchasing a new car.  Or our lives are provincial and dull, so we should travel.  Or our lives are filled with unnecessary burdens, so we should by a robotic vacuum.   

To be clear, I should say that I don’t think Goins is merely trying to “sell us something,” but his tone and rhetoric just feel too…unexamined…too consistent with the very status quo he’s attempting to help us see beyond.  Because of this, he risks seeming disingenuous.  When introducing the title of the book, he writes: “…they all sang a similar song: wherever there is pain without explanation, hope amidst despair, redemption in spite of tragedy, that’s where they wanted to be.  Walking away from each experience, people would tell me how they felt, and they all used the same interesting word: wrecked” (29-30).  On this point, I simply don’t believe him.  All of these folks with their various experiences all used the word wrecked to describe their experience.  The word doesn’t strike me as that common.  I recognize this may say more about my mindset as I read the chapter than it does about Goins and/or his argument, but the presentation of this anecdote leads me to feel like Goins is trying to create a buzzword rather than being honest.  

Certainly, Goins presents moments and perspectives that challenge and encourage in meaningful ways.  I really like the definition of wrecked as being “disabused of the status quo “ (32), and I really like the acknowledgment that compassion “means literally ‘to suffer with’” (37).  I think the best articulation of what he’s getting at is found on page 40: 

If we are to follow the Jesus who suffered with us and bled for us, we too must suffer. We must hold the dying in our arms. We must shed tears for hungry stomachs, trafficked children, and wandering souls. This is what He wants for us. It’s the reason we are called to lay down our nets and take up our crosses to pursue the Suffering Servant. And it’s the one thing we will avoid at all costs. It is not enough to feel bad. […] We must act. (40)

 Yes.  Go with that.  Help us explore and pursue that calling.  But do so without resorting to a romanticized and essentialist ideal of youth that presents adulthood as the problem.  Do so without the hyperbole that seems to turn this whole concern into a decidedly First World problem.[1]  And, for the sake of all that is holy, do so without mangling Emily Dickinson.

---

[1] The whole paragraph with Jimmy set me off a bit.  Says Jimmy (from Peru!), “Traveling helps me realize what my preferences are, who my true friends and family are, and where my home is.  It gives me a clearer understanding of the need to have an anchor in this uncertain, steady life”(36).  This is all fine for folks like Jimmy who can travel to Peru.  I’m hoping there are avenues to a deeper life for those of us who can’t travel in search of self-definition, for those who are working multiple jobs just to put food on the table.  I pray there is hope when wrecked is not merely a metaphor, hope for those who are suffering and not just for those (who seem to be the audience of this book) who are trying to find ways to “suffer with.”  I’m reminded of a recent article in Slate titled “In the Name of Love: Elites Embrace the ‘Do What You Love’ Mantra.  But It Devalues Work and Hurts Workers.”  The article critiques the now clichéd advice that each of us should “Do What You Love” (www.slate.com).  This first chapter of Goins’s book seems tinted with a similar sort of privilege. 

BAE12: Anastas's "The Foul Reign of 'Self-Reliance'"

I'm always amazed when an unintended theme seems to pop up in a class.  And, so far, these early weeks of ENG 360 have included an unintended concern with Emerson and self-reliance.  I suppose this is probably as much a theme of David Brooks's (the BAE editor for 2012) and not merely my own, but, nevertheless....  

I have to say, first of all, that I really like Emerson--what I teach of him, anyway.   In my sections of American Literature: Survey I, I usually assign "The American Scholar" and "Nature."  There are problems/issues with each of these, but, as a whole, I find myself drawn to some of the key themes and the most memorable passages.  I don't teach "Self-Reliance," and I'm not entirely sure why.  But I'm pretty sure, now, that I'll be recalling--and perhaps addressing--some of Anastas's perspectives when Emerson comes up again next spring, particularly since Anastas hits some concerns that I already address--the tension between the American ideals of individual autonomy and opportunity (CF: John Smith), on the one hand, and the still-oft-quoted emphasis on community (CF: John Winthrop) on the other hand.  

I was particularly struck by the following passage from Emerson that Anastas quotes:  “Most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief and attached themselves to … communities of opinion” (3).  I was reminded of another essay—an essay that series editor Robert Atwan quotes in his preface: David Foster Wallace’s “Deciderization2007—a Special Report,” which was the introduction to the Best American Essays: 2007.  Wallace asserts that in our current  culture we’re surrounded by “Total Noise”:

“[…] a culture and volume of info and spin and rhetoric and context that I know I’m not alone in finding too much to even absorb, much less try to make and sense of or organize into any kind of triage of saliency or value.  Such basic absorption, organization, and triage used to be what was required of an educated adult, a.k.a. and informed citizen—at least that’s what I got taught.  Suffice it here to say that the requirements now seem different.”

Between the two of these essays, one gets the sense of a perfect storm; we’re both living in a culture that inundates us with so much information that we tend to just pick a voice to listen to—a “decider,” in Wallace’s terms—and living in a cultural tradition, derived from Emerson, that inclines us to simply embrace our own self-serving worldview and shut out any voices that might challenge us.

A couple of final notes….  I really enjoyed the snark/humor that Anastas uses in the essay.  Also, for those of you enrolled in ENG 360U, keep this essay in mind when we get around to talking about the rhetorical analysis essay.  Anastas is essentially doing a bit of rhetorical analysis when he discusses the “Think Different”commercial for Apple in 1997.

BAE12: Edmundson's "Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?"

First, let me say that I want to read more of Mark Edmundson's writing.  While I will quibble with some of his assertions, I mostly found myself cheering along.  While reading “Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?” one appreciates Mark Edmundson’s willingness to share—well, not his experiences in higher education, really, but the conclusions he’s drawn from those experiences.  For the most part, his conclusions align with my own experiences, as well.  There are places where I think he overstates things a bit, but these may simply be the differing experiences we’ve accumulated—Edmundson as a high-profile professor at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities, and me at a Christian liberal arts college on the northern plains.  For example, he asserts:

The work they [faculty] are compelled to do to advance—get tenure, promotion, raises, outside offers—is, broadly speaking, scholarly work.  No matter what anyone says, this work has precious little to do with the fundamentals of teaching. (91)

There is truth in this, particularly for academics in the “big leagues,” I suspect.  However, my own experience is that the research and scholarly work required or encouraged feeds the teaching, and the teaching generally sparks the possibilities for research.  Much of Edmundson’s essay admonishes the undergraduate student to understand that whether he or she gets an education is largely up to the individual student.  I think the same is true of the role research and scholarly work plays for faculty.  If a faculty member prioritizes teaching, then the research will be more likely to be relevant.  If the faculty member sees teaching and research as two distinct concerns, then then, yes, it’s easiest for the faculty member to prioritize the concern that is recognized and privileged by the institution.  

While I could nit-pick the particulars of Edmundson’s essay, I think the foundations of it are pretty accurate.  At the center of his assertions is a distinction between schooling/credentialing and education: “Education has one salient enemy in present-day America, and that enemy is education—university education in particular.  To almost everyone, university education is a means to and end” (91).  And, as a result of this, “The students and professors have made a deal: neither of them has to throw himself heart and soul into what happens in the classroom” (92).  Edmundson has a pretty compelling take on the reasons for this unwillingness to engage in really meaningful, personal ways.  There are legal issues; there are market-based factors; there are political demands that diminish our collective understanding and ideal for education to percentiles on standardized tests.  

The irony, however, is that much of the reason for the lack of engagement—and all the factors that contribute to that lack—might also be the Emersonian self-reliance that Edmundson touts as an ideal.  It is a version of this self-reliance that generates our litigiousness and the lingering concern with legal issues, that leads universities and colleges to appeal to individual students as consumers, that leads us to prioritize “objective” forms of assessment (e.g., standardized tests).  In order to throw ourselves “heart and soul into what happens in the classroom” (92), in order to explore questions about whether “the books contain truths you could live your lives by” (99), we all have to be willing to enter into a meaningful level of community that enables and allows us to share our lives with one another.  We have to be willing to be subject to one another, to forgive perceived slights, to entertain alternative (and sometimes ignorant or distasteful) perspectives.  This sort of community is messy, sometimes dangerous, and certainly at odds with both the size and the market-driven motivations of the contemporary university or college.

So, yes, Edmundson is right to tell today’s students that receiving an education, rather than merely a degree, will be their responsibility.  However, receiving the type of education that Edmundson nobly envisions will require community.  The challenge for students is not simply one of asserting their own identity and relying on themselves.  The challenge is finding, perhaps creating, and caring for pockets of community within the institution, because the size and shape of contemporary education doesn’t lend itself well to forming such communities.

Yellow Lines

I'm all for symbolic acts of civil disobedience, but the increasingly common practice of extending any given parking lot by one unmarked space is beginning to drive me batty. The following pictures were all taken in a two-day span.

Summer Reading List

Friends and I have been talking about our summer reading lists and planning for some overlap and related discussion.  (Overlapping titles are in bold.)  Here's my list, as it stands at the moment.  It will inevitably shift, as there other books will need to be read in planning for next year's readers' forum at my church, etc.  And, if I actually tackle Infinite Jest, then it's likely some of the other titles will go ignored.

• Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace  ::  This will be the second summer for which I've planned to read Infinite Jest.  Last summer, it never got past the planning stage. For fans of Wallace, if you haven't seen the recent short film composed to DFW's graduation speech "This is Water," you should check it out.

• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card  ::  This title has been on the periphery of my "someday" list for decades.  Chris wanted to read it in advance of the movie that's coming out, and that sounded like a good idea.

• Best American Essays: 2012  ::  I'd be reading this anthology anyway, but I'm also using it in connection with some of my summer teaching.

• The Ragamuffin Gospel, by Brennan Manning  ::  This is another book that's been on the to-read list for ages.  Seems like a good time to read it, since the Rich Mullins bio-pic, titled Ragamuffin, is on the horizon.

• Grace (Eventually), by Anne Lamott

• The Wisdom of Stability, by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove  :: 

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J. K. Rowling  ::  This is the book I'm currently reading, in an attempt to stay ahead of my son, who, at the moment, is conveniently engaged in Eldest, by Christopher Paolini.

• Writing Fiction: Creative and Critical Approaches, by Amanda Boulter, and Writing Poetry: Creative and Critical Approaches, by Chad Davidson and Gregory Fraser  ::  For the fall of 2013, I'm switching up the texts in my creative writing class.  Need to get a firmer grasp on these two books before the class starts.

• Tinkers, by Paul Harding  ::  This summer, my Introduction to Literature course will be reading this novel.

• The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, by Walter Brueggemann  ::  This book is related to some writing I would like to do over the summer.

• A Sense of Place: A Christian Theology of the Land, by Geoffrey R. Lilburne  ::   Also related to the writing project mentioned above.

Audre Lorde and Verbalization

This morning, I encountered the following quotation from Audre Lorde.  It seemed particularly relevant today.

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.” 

Reboot

Well, it’s been nearly two years since my last post to this blog. It is long past time for a reboot. I and some fellow writers at the University of Sioux Falls have started a writing group centered on religious writing. Figuring out what each of us means by “religious writing” will, no doubt, be part of the project, but we’ve decided to use our blogs as a means of beginning that exploration. So, I’m here trying to knock off the rust and get things started. Let the games begin.

Dallas Willard Always Brings Me Back

Well, it's been over a year since I've posted to this blog, with the last six months or so consisting of occasional musings about how I might get going again. As the title of this post suggests, over the past 25 years of my life, I've gotten used to having Dallas Willard "bring me back" to one thing or another.

In this case, I encountered the following interview clips at the Out of Ur blog and felt compelled to post them here.

PART ONE





PART TWO

University Diaries

One of the blogs I read regularly is titled University Diaries. Written by Margaret Soltan, an English professor at George Washington University, the blog takes a critical look at the contemporary university.

Recently, one of Soltan's posts ("What's a University?") begins by considering the damage done when universities are viewed--and administered--as businesses. The same post concludes with Soltan's commentary on an opinion piece written by an undergraduate economics major. In this piece, the student articulates the conventional "What will all this stuff do for me?" question. (CF: Arthur Holmes.)

Soltan's post is worth reading, as is an article by Mark Slouka, titled "Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School," which was published in the September 2009 issue of Harper's and referenced by one of the commentators on Soltan's post.

Links to both pieces are included below:

Soltan, Margaret. "What's a University."
Slouka, Mark. "Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School."

If you visit University Diaries, be sure to click on the tag "Scathing Online Schoolmarm."

A Good Life: Longing

A friend of mine, Tim Keel, who pastors a church in Kansas City, has invited readers of his blog to join him in a Blog Book Club centered on Robert Benson's A Good Life: Benedict's Guide to Everyday Joy. I've decided to join his BBC, and rather than ramble away in the comments section on Tim's blog, I figure I'll use my own (nearly abandoned) blog for my rambles and confine my comments on Tim's blog to more focused responses generated in response to Tim and others. This way, I get back into the habit of thinking about my blog, and no one on Tim's blog will have to read my ramblings if they don't want to do so.

The BBC is structured around one chapter in Benson's book each week. Check out Tim's blog if you'd like to follow--or participate in--the larger discussion. What follows are some of my thoughts on Benson's chapter 1, titled "Longing."




The Big Picture:


I found myself really enjoying this first chapter, and I can tell that I'm soon going to have to come to a decision about whether I'm going to restrict myself to reading and digesting a chapter a week or go ahead and reading the whole book and then working back through it. (I'm leaning toward the latter, at this point.)


Benson begins the chapter by quoting a passage from the Rule of St. Benedict, including this key sentence: "Is there anyone who yearns for life and desires to see good days?" It's hard to imagine someone not answering that question with a hearty "yes." But a few pages later, where Benson articulates a number of questions connected with the focus of his retreats, he mentions the question of our practices and experiences being "dry and lifeless" (6). This past Sunday, I was talking with my wife about the fact that I just kind of felt "dry" at the moment--pulled in enough directions that I'm not really sure what I'm working towards. Oh, there's plenty to do, but I'm not sure I currently have anything but the most conventional and trite answers to Buechner's formulation of "a self to be, ... other selves to love, and ... work to do" (qtd. in Benson 4).

This season of dryness--and Benson's mention of it--prompted some thinking about longing, the title of this first chapter. And it causes me to reconsider that key sentence from St. Benedict: "Is there anyone who yearns for life and desires to see good days?" The answer, for me, is "yes," but I'm not sure my "yes" rises to a longing. Now, part of my situation is rooted, I think, in the fact that I'm just not one terribly inclined to longing. A tendency toward contentedness is in my nature--most days. I think. But perhaps I'm just reconciling my apathy, or some degree of acedia. At one point, I noted in the margins of the book that my "longing" seems more like a "welcome obligation." I could cite some other passages that generated similar responses for me, but I'll simply note that this first chapter has me attempting to map the distance between dryness and longing.


Apart from reflecting upon my own spiritual condition, I also found myself thinking about the whole emphasis on spiritual formation from a more institutional standpoint. In the excerpt from St. Benedict quoted at the beginning of Benson's chapter, St. Benedict notes that "We intend to establish a school for the Lord's service" (1). Since I teach at a school with a similar mission, the chapter has prompted a consideration of how the Benedictine rule might inform what I do as a teacher. Consider the following passage:

"We are asked by the communities of which we are a
part--our families, our neighborhoods, our churches, and all the rest--to do
more, not less. In the places where we work, we are asked to be more
productive, more efficient, to work longer and harder. We are seldom
encouraged to rest and we are seldom asked to slow down." (4)

Are there ways in which I, as a teacher, might--or ought to--ask my students to rest, to slow down? How might one ask students to embrace such rest in ways that are wise rather than foolish? How does one ask students to slow down while maintaining professional and pedagogical integrity?


Basically, after chapter one, I find I'm asking myself lots of meaningful questions, and I'm eager to dive into the reflection that will surely be generated as Benson addresses the four "pieces" of life: prayer, rest, community, and work (6).




Other Tidbits:

I have to acknowledge my annoyance over Benson's failure to provide any sort of bibliography for the works from which he is quoting. As a book person, I just find this practice terribly annoying and frustrating.

-----

Annie Dillard rocks. The passage that has stuck with me the most after reading chapter one comes (I think) from Dillard's The Writing Life:

"How we spend our day is, of course, how we spend our
lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are
doing. A schedule defends us from chaos and whim. It is a net for
catching days."

As one who struggles with schedules (less with construction, more with observance), this quotation just sort of resonates. Conviction and inspiration.

-----

Robert Benson: "I am also in search of enough good days to make a life, maybe even a good life."

-----

Potential T-Shirt: "Feed Your Inner Monk!"

"Over time, I realized that I was not called to live
in the monastery, but I learned that I could live the monastic life interiorly"
(10).

-----

I had to smile at a bit of verbal playfulness on Benson's part when he referenced Thomas More:

"Thomas More, a writer who lived in the monastic
world, said, 'In the midst of our lives we can live the spirit of this
rule.' More and more, I am coming to see that is true." (13)

Trees on the Prairie

From E. B. White’s “A Report in Spring,” written in 1957:

One never knows what images one is going to hold in memory, returning to the city after a brief orgy in the country. I find this morning that what I most vividly and longingly recall is the sight of my grandson and his little sunburnt sister returning to their kitchen door from an excursion, with trophies of the meadow clutched in their hands—she with a couple of violets, and smiling, he serious and holding dandelions, strangling them in a responsible grip. Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists—just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.

While the passing of fifty years has not been kind to the first sentence in this paragraph, that last sentence is timeless. It’s one of many I wish I had written.

In the midst of this sabbatical, the paragraph as a whole struck a chord for me, not only because it will be interesting to see what images stick in my memory (and those of Dana and the kids) after we return to Sioux Falls, but also because its been interesting to see which images are summoned to the surface by the day-to-day events of our current stay.

The local electric company has undertaken the task of clearing the trees and brush along the rural power lines. They’ve hired a company called Poor Boys out of Fairplay, Missouri, which has had a crew and a couple million dollars of massive machines running up and down the roads around here. Yesterday, they came to clear out some trees around the power lines that lead from the road to the trailer we’re living in. The mobile home we’re currently living in sits on the same slab that held the double-wide mobile home I grew up in, so these trees, which stand just east of the trailer, suddenly became the source of some of those images to which White was referring.

Just beyond the trees, Dad and I (mostly Dad) were loading the trailers with round hay bales to take back south. While the Poor Boys took out only a few trees along the power line, Dad mentioned that he wanted to take out the whole bunch of them, as the land is currently producing nothing when it could go to grass to feed cattle. There is nothing picturesque about the little clump of trees. It consists entirely of what my dad calls scrub oak (I think), spindly little trees that are neither tall, nor imposing, nor particularly beautiful. However, when I was younger—probably somewhere between ten and thirteen—my younger brother and I used to go out and play in these meager trees. We were in Boy Scouts at the time and learning to lash things together. A little clearing among the tree trunks became something of a hideout, complete with makeshift “doors” lashed together and hung on opposite sides of the clearing. The “doors” were about the size of those swinging doors in the entrance to a saloon on Gunsmoke or Bonanza or some other western. But, of course, our doors were hung from the limbs above. I think one has to be an Eagle Scout before he learns to lashing together hinges.

As I recall, the trees also contained an old well and a trash mound that was a regular source of discovery—old bottles and pieces of rusted metal from contraptions both familiar and foreign. These details later became part of a meager little poem written for my M.A. report, which was titled “Under the Rocks,” after a line from Norman MacLean’s A River Runs Through It.

Under the Rocks

I
Removing first the rocks and then the one-
by-twelves above the well, we dropped the stones
and broken bottles captured out of ash,
and waited for the splash that would not come.

II
We turned to stacking—laid our dog to rest
beneath a humble mound of limestone, left
the blackened cinders under the fire ring
after our campout with Dad—our first and last.

III
We buried Grandpa—who took us fishing, turned
the rocks and sifted through the soil, endured
the shining grubs, some stretching toward the sun,
some playing dead, afraid to be unearthed.

Watching some of those trees come down, and anticipating the eventual clearing of the whole clump, I encountered a bout of nostalgia, of course. I also found myself thinking about why such a meager clump of trees should have an emotional resonance. This led to some reflection on the nature of the imagination (or perhaps just my imagination). As much as I love the prairie and the wide open spaces, it seems to me there is something about confinement that sparks the imagination. Perhaps this is why people generally prefer forests and mountains, with their nooks and crannies, the imagination expanding with each unexpected clearing, each surprising discovery. I thought of Lewis’s wardrobe, with its confinement that opens up into a world of imagination and wonder. I suppose each of us—particularly as children—finds the necessary nooks and crannies—whether they are in a wardrobe up in the attic, or in a clump of trees east of the mobile home.

The [What Week Is This?] Update

Here are some of the highlights from the last week or so.

Firsts

• Put a tag in a calf’s ear.
• Notched that same calf’s other ear.
• Burnt pastures.
• Watched as Dad “put down” a cow with a broken hip.
• Took down a section of old barbed-wire fence.
• Made the rounds of feeding cattle.

Outside of my own personal history and context, this isn’t much of a list. Its unremarkableness is part of its significance, however. Consider the following from Wendell Berry’s “Think Little” and “Economy and Pleasure,” respectively:

The average American farmer is now an old man whose sons have moved away to the cities. His knowledge, and his intimate connection with the land, are about to be lost.

One of the most regrettable things about the industrialization of work is the segregation of children. As industrial work excludes the dead by social mobility and technological change, it excludes the children by haste and danger. The small scale and the handwork of our tobacco cutting permit margins both temporal and spatial that accommodate the play of children. The children play at the grown-up’s work, as well as at their own play. In their play the children learn to work; they learn to know their elders and their country. And the presence of playing children means invariably that the grown-ups play too from time to time.

The fact that I am now, as a forty-year-old, accomplishing some of these “firsts” that might have been accomplished long ago is indicative of the extent to which my own childhood was “segregated.” As a child and an adolescent, I saw that segregation as a blessing. As a younger man, I rarely thought about it. Now, however, I find myself lamenting the fact that I was so completely excluded from the work of my dad.


There’s an Angus Ambassador?

Last Thursday, the weather was wet and the creek was high, so Dad decided we should grab the kids and head to a bull sale over in Fredonia. A ranch down in this area that runs registered Angus cattle was selling about 80 bulls and a few high-end cows. I’d been to several cattle barns and livestock sales, of course, but I had never been to one that was quite this specialized. It’s a little bizarre. The sale included a twenty- to thirty-page program printed on glossy paper, with key stats for the registered bulls, almost like the batting averages or RBIs on the back of baseball cards. The stats included averages and scores related to everything from the birth weights of a bull’s progeny to ultrasound readings reflecting the muscle mass of the rib eye. The beginning of the program included a list of the ranch’s “Reference Sires,” the notable ancestors for the various bulls in the sale. If you’re at all familiar with horse racing (i.e., watch coverage of the Kentucky Derby or something), then you might have a sense of what I’m talking about. Otherwise, I suspect the whole thing would seem rather arcane and bizarre. I’m thinking there’s an essay in the whole experience—perhaps something akin to Susan Orlean’s “Lifelike” (BAE 2004) or David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” (BAE 2005).

As we were sitting in the sale barn, eating our complimentary lunch, and waiting for the sale to begin, a young woman walked in wearing a tiara. Kind of surreal. Later, after she had donned a leather sash (think of a cross between the Miss USA pagent and the National Finals Rodeo), I gathered that the young woman was the “Angus Ambassador.” Who knew?


The Writing Life

Quite apart from the challenges of time management (both the weakness I have cultivated over my life and the demands of ranching, fathering, and trying to write), the writing life during my stay in Kansas has been frustrating. Some of these frustrations have to do with audience. (Who is the audience for the essays I’m envisioning? Why would that audience be interested in what I have to say?) I’m trying to keep reminding myself about Peter Elbow’s article on ignoring audience, trying to realize that concerns of audience are a bit premature. Another frustration is focus. Because I’m thinking about these essays as a collection, and because at least six of those essays (not counting any new possibilities that might surface along the way) are related to the family ranch in one way or another, I find myself jumping mentally from one idea to the other without taking/making the time to really dive in on any of them.

Then, this evening, I picked up Essays of E. B. White, which I checked out from the Independence library, and encountered what I believe will be a new friend. To my recollection, I had never read any of White’s essays. Having now read only the foreward and the first essay (“Good-Bye to Forty-Eighth Street”), I’m hooked—both consoled and encouraged.

From the forward:

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.

Can’t help but wonder what E. B. White would think about blogging.

A writer who has his sights trained on the Nobel Prize or other earthly triumphs had best write a novel, a poem, or a ply, and leave the essayist to ramble about, content with living a free life and enjoying the satisfactions of a somewhat undisciplined life.

While I can’t claim the title of “essayist,” I’m at least encouraged by the degree to which my life embodies the “rambl[ing] about” that White describes.


From “Good-Bye to Forty-Eighth Street”:

[…] I would rather have a ringside seat at a cattle sale than a box at the opera […]

National (Cowboy) Poetry Month

Since this is National Poetry Month and I'm not at USF to clutter people's inboxes with emails for the annual poetry blitz, I thought I would go ahead and include a poem here. One of the first things that Dana did after we brought the kids down was to get a library card and the Independence Public Library. On their first visit, Dana saw a book titled Prairie Poetry: Cowboy Verse of Kansas and checked it out for me to take browse. While some of the poems are stereotypically "cowboy poetry" (i.e., narrative ballads featuring more novelty and/or charm than craft), there were some poems that struck a chord. The poem below, by Tom McBeth, may actually end up working its way into one of the essays I'm working on. It's not a great poem. Many of you may find it a bit pedantic and/or sentimental, but, as one of those "kids" trying to figure out "what to protect," I found the poem resonating with a number of the tensions driving this whole sabbatical thing.


All That's Left

All that’s left is the skeleton windmill;
Its vane is whirling with the changing wind,
Though the waterpump is rusting, silent, still.
All that’s left of self-reliance’s place
Is Grandma’s perennial bed of yellow iris
And the cottonwood shading discarded grace.
All that’s left of the house, barn and shed
Are a few of the hand hewn stones where they sat,
The foundation was strewn as neglect has spread.

All that’s left of then are memories, where
Grandad hung his stained, sweaty working hat
And down to dusk he worked for his welfare.
There was a porcelain pan for the men to wash
Before they ate what Grandma could prepare.
They fed on the worth of giving a good day’s
Work that all their neighbors came to share.
They were the Melting Pot, their families brought
From the Old Country for something that was theirs.

On that first quarter where Grandad was born,
They staked themselves against the prairie’s storms
With anything that sprouted or grew horns.
Now all that’s left of their generation’s need
Is the land where they fulfilled their driven dream,
Where their sweat irrigated freedom’s seed.
So many have forgotten how we came
And the land that gave direction to our way.
So few see that land and freedom are the same.

The homeplace has fallen into neglect,
That taught our folks to do the chores on time
And shut the gates and sweat a wreck’s effect.
Hard times made their families understand
How fiddlers play until the times collect
And there’s a price of freedom on the land.
All that’s left are folks that don’t suspect
How Grandpa’s was the way to harness land
and how our kids must see what to protect.

The Pad & Other Pics

Well, I'll try uploading some pictures. If it works this time, the first picture will be of the old mobile home where we're staying.

This was previously (and will be again, after May) a mere waystation (sp?) for my Dad. He'd pop in for lunches and such, and spend the night when he had cows calving. It's now home to the four of us.

Here's a picture of the calf that arrived in the first couple of days after our arrival. Dana was hoping to see the calf be born, since she's never seen a cow give birth before. Unfortunately, the calf came in the middle of the night, so she missed the delivery.

The kids' favorites: Hotshot (in foreground) and Sonny Boots.

Fire (burning pasture) ...

... and water (the creek south of the house after a night of thunderstorms).