John Adams

ciciation

I just finished reading John Adams by David McCullough. It's a very well-written book as to be expected from McCullogh. The focus is on John Adams' part in the American revolution and his relationship with his wife Abigail. I don't recall the American history courses I took making much of John Adams except for his unfortunate support as president for the Alien and Sedition Acts and for his defeat by Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 presidential election. If McCullogh is right, Adams was the driving force behind the Declaration of Independence even if the writing of it was done by Thomas Jefferson. Certainly Adams' diplomatic work as minister to France during the Revolution made a significant contribution to our being a nation at all.

I am always impressed at the quality of the men who had the vision and determination to found our country. None of them were professional politicians, but principled men with some over-arching view of society and what the role of government should be.

One new thing I learned about Adams was that he authored the first constitution for he Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It contained some of the provisions to guarantee people's rights that would be lacking in the United States Constitution, for example, liberty of the press, freedom of speaking (which the delegates would remove), protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, trial by jury. The most amazing aspect of this constitution was the provision that it was the duty of government to spread opportunities for education, cherish literature and science, inculcate principals of humanity and general benevolence. I find this striking because Adams had a generally conservative view of government, but today's conservatives would have fits at this provision. In my community we have politicians that work tirelessly to gut the library and reduce education to the bare essentials.

Another interesting aspect is Adam's statement (lifted from George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights) that all people are born "equally free and independent." This was changed by the delegates to read "free and equal." Adams was dismayed by the change because he believed that all people had equal rights under law, but not that they were all equal. I suppose that point of view would garner a lot of protest today from both sides of the political spectrum, but I think it is essentially right. All people are not the same in their abilities and attitudes and no amount of legislation can change that. On the other hand everyone deserves to protected equally by the law.

Equality of rights has been hard to put into practice in the U. S. A slave did not have equal rights, and even after emancipation people of color did not have equal rights. Women did not have equal rights either. Still we have the frightening attitude in our country that rights are awarded or withheld by the government at will rather than something that belongs to people naturally. For example, our government seems to think that it can detain people anywhere in the world, throw them into prison indefinitely, and as long as they don't touch American soil, they have no rights. Even within the country we have arrested people and held them without charges and without access to an attorney or even allowing them to contact their family.

While equality of rights under the law is essential for a society, it is not necessarily helpful to regard all people as equal in every respect. Take for example the simple fact that some people are willing to work harder and longer than others. Should everyone be paid the same? That's what communism tried to advocate, but it was a miserable failure. Nobody is going to work harder than another if there is no benefit to be gained from doing so. On the other hand, shouldn't there be a basic fairness so that people who do work hard are paid enough to live with all the necessities of life--food, shelter, health care, etc. Shouldn't the people who spend 10 hours a day picking fruit at least be able to afford buying it?

The troublesome aspect to this natural inequality is that some of it stems from differences beyond the control of the individual. People who come from well-to-do families will have advantages that others do not. We have tried to mitigate this difference in our country by using education as a way to provide equal opportunity. I think on the whole this has been successful, but not entirely. For decades now people have been coming out of our educational system without the necessary skills. We have far too many drop outs and far too many people who graduate without adequate reading skills. This is witnessed by the appalling number of people who must take remedial courses in community colleges. I know from teaching some such students that they simply are not ready for college-level work and are often indignant when told so. My goodness, we are doing them no favors by throwing them into classes before they can write a coherent paragraph.

I haven't given up on schools entirely, but they aren't enough. We've come to depend on them to do everything for the young people from dealing with social problems to feeding them. The whole community needs to take a deeper interest in its young people so they can have a chance. We can defend equality of rights and work to balance the natural inequality of people by doing everything in our power to give people equal opportunity. We can't determine what path each person will travel in life, but we can help them get started on one.

And may the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

WEIRD WEEK

I had a guest for a couple of weeks. This was one of the least demanding guests I have ever hosted. Very quiet. In fact, I was hardly aware of sharing a room with her–or maybe it was him. I never knew. My guest was a snake who had moved into my office.

I didn't see Snake's arrival, but one of the church members did. We had the outside door to the building open because people were going in and out working on things. Some one said, "there's a snake behind your door. I just saw it crawl in." I looked behind the door. No snake. I searched in the vestment closet behind the door. No snake. I began to think it was a joke. Then I spotted the snake under the drapes that cover the window and outside door to my office. Simple, I thought. I'll just open the door and let it out. As soon as I started opening the door the snake took off and hid in a closet. Painstakingly, I removed things from the closet until I found the snake in a nearly inaccessible corner. I still wasn't sure what kind of snake it was, so I didn't particularly want to make a grab for it. I set up a barricade so that if the snake came out, it would only have access to the outside door which I left open. I left to get a broom, then proceeded to sweep around the blind corner to move the snake out. Nothing happened. After several more attempts I ventured into the closet. The snake was gone. Had it really left or simply moved to some other location? I assumed the former and returned the office to its usual state of disorder.

I gave no more thought to Snake, until a week later when I saw it dart along the floor and behind a book case. At least this time I got a good enough look at it to identify it as a black racer and not a pigmy rattler or one of the other venomous creatures in this part of the world. Now black snakes are harmless, serving a good purpose in consuming small vermin. I didn't want to harm Snake, but I knew some of the church members of the female persuasion did not share my benign view of slithery reptiles. Probably something to do with Eve's encounter with the serpent in the garden of Eden. So, from time to time I left the outside door to my office open in hopes that Snake would leave. I only did this when I was right in the office able to watch the proceedings because there was always a possibility that some friend of Snake might come in for a visit. Finally, this past Thursday I spotted Snake by the door looking longingly and hungrily outside. Once again I opened the door and this time my guest slithered out. So ended that weird adventure.

That afternoon I decided to head off to the barber since my hair seemed to be getting rather shaggy. As my usual barber began cutting my unruly hair, he remarked, "Didn't I just cut this a few weeks ago? It should have lasted longer than this." That immediately conjured up a new weird experience. You see on the night after Snake came to visit, I had a dream. It was about having a tremendously awful bad-hair day. In the dream my hair had grown about three feet overnight. Not only that, but my hair was black. In real life, before my hair acquired its present distinguished gray, it had been a sort-of blond. Well, in this dream I went around telling people I didn't know what had happened. I had had my hair cut just three weeks ago. I even pulled my flowing locks around front of me and tried to cut off a foot or two. The dream ended as I encountered one of the youngsters from my church who said to me, "You've been weird ever since your hair got like that."

I had great hopes that with the exit of the snake and a haircut the general weirdness in my life had ended. Not so. I opened the mail at church today and discovered that some company had sent me a four-page, full-color brochure with pictures of various tombstones and grave markers they had for sale. Enclosed was a letter encouraging me to contact them if I had need of any memorial markers. Oh my gosh! What do they know that I don't know? Has my doctor contacted them about that leaky mitral valve in my heart? Should I be checking out real-estate at the cemetery? This is just too weird. Now I know how Alice felt when she fell down the rabbit hole.

Well, I must be on my weird way. May you way be joyful with a minimum of weirdness. And may the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

TOLKIEN

I picked up a new book the other
day, Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings: A guide to Middle
Earth. It's one of dozens of books that give plot summaries,
chronology, and dictionary of terms for understanding thewriting of J.
R. R. Tolkien. Believe me, you need some kind of guide for this. I've
read the Lord of the Rings at least a dozen times,
but it always takes work to plow through it. Tolkien created a complex
plot in an even more complex world with its own mythology and an
assortment of languages. It must have been a shock to people who had
read the children's book The Hobbit (1937) when they
picked up the The Fellowship of the Ring (1954),
the first book in the Lord of the Rings. Instead of
another fantasy adventure in Middle Earth, readers discovered the
beginning of a great, involved saga. And behind the story there was yet
another saga, TheSimarillion, (1977) that would be published by Tolkien's
son after his father's death. Since then even more material has
appeared–earlier drafts and unfinished items–comprising The
History of Middle Earth.

I wouldn't attempt to sketch the plots
of any of these writings. It's far beyond me to grasp it all. What
amazes me is thatTolkien's fertile mind could create this elaborate
world while all the time working as a professor at Oxford. For some
reason this strikes me as akin model railroaders who create their own
worlds in impressive detail. I envy the ability to create such a world.
Little children can do it with their tremendous imaginations, but it's
lost by many adults–including me despite my lame attempt at a fantasy
book.

One of the
things I discovered about fantasy writing is the necessity for rules
about how the imaginary world operates. This sounds really peculiar.
Can't you make up just about anything for you fantasy world? Well, yes,
but there has to be rules so that there is consistency. If there is to
be magic, you have to decide who can do magic and how it works and what
the limitations are. Think about the related genre of science fiction,
in particular Superman. Now Superman has all sorts of super powers.
That's all well and good, but there isn't much to work with if Superman
spots all crimes, stops them in the nick of time and is impervious to
any sort of attack. There has to be super rivals, the dangers ofkryptonite, the secret identity to maintain. That's how the rules work.

In Tolkien's
writings we see the rules at work in the natures of the various types
of peoples. The Hobbits are sort of human-like, without any magical
powers, unlikely to seek adventure, preferring comfort and well-being
to excitement. The elves are also human-like, but with some ability
limited to work magic, masters of every kind of knowledge, and almost
immortal. In general they only die by accident or by being killed.
Tolkien worked at length to develop a mythology that explains the
different peoples and their natures. There is a supernatural hierarchy
that has caused the world to be–Iluvatar, The Father of All, the One. In short, God. Then there are the powerful spiritual beings, the Valar, something like angels. Indeed one of the Valar, Melkor
is the equivalent of the fallen angel Lucifer. The there are lesser
spiritual beings, the Maia, sort of angelic assistants who sometimes
take on human form, most notably the wizards likeGandalf and the evil Sauron.

I am so impressed by this creative
ability. Somewhere I read that such creativity is not really creativity
at all, at least not the kind of exnihilo creation
of God, but a kind of rearrangement of what already exists. Maybe so,
but that rearrangement can be pretty impressive. Thomas Edison
rearrange an assortment of gears and wheels and a needle and a few
other parts and out came the phonograph. That's rather amazing in my
book. So, too, the artist rearranges things and out comes stories,
pictures, plays, songs and a host of other things that enrich our lives.

Experiencing these creative works are an
act of discovery. I read Tolkien and discover this world of
Middle-Earth, its people, its myths, the way it works. Like any good
work of art, I keep coming back to it. There's more to see, more to
discover.

I've seen
little children who play with the same toys again and again. I guess
it's part creativity and part discovery, but it intrigues them. I think
the best toys are those that require the most investment by the child
in making it entertaining. A set of blocks, for example, the basic
doll's house. Those sorts of things call for creativity and discovery.

I wish education was more like
that–calling for creativity and discovery. I have a sense that the
present emphasis on learning for objective tests works against real
learning and suppresses the desire for both discovery and creativity.
That leads to a fairly dull life. I hope young people get to live lives
as a journey. There may be some tough going at times, but it's better
to keep trying than to become stuck in the mud. Keep on dreaming and
thinking and creating. That's the way you find new paths to travel.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.


Wayne

GRIPES

I don't know if I'm am just nostalgic or I have become a curmudgeon, but I've come to think that some things were a lot better when I was a kid than now. I'm not a troglodyte; most of the technological advances are a vast improvement. Computers are wonderful, washer and dryers terrific, CDs a marvel, and dish washers one of the greatest inventions since the wheel. Medicine has vastly improved, dentistry is far more comfortable, and there are all sorts of pills for what ails you. No, it's other sorts of things that are a problem for me.

I really would hate to be a kid trying to grow up in our society. In my community they are constantly testing the kids with standardized test requiring you to fill in little circles with number two pencils. Oh yeah, that's going to be really important in life. As a result a whole lot of kids can't even find their home town on a map because there is no time to teach trivialities like geography when there are circles to be filled. I also fear for the kids. When I was in school we practiced for air raids. We'd stand two or three deep in the halls covering our faces. I'm not sure what that would have done if an A-bomb fell on the school, but at least we had the knowledge that no one had yet bombed a school. Today's kids have to worry about being shot. They need metal detectors to search for weapons and bans on backpacks to try to keep the kids safe. And despite the precautions every so often there is some act of terror at a school.

Then there're drug problems. There were some guys when I was in high school who drank alcohol to the point of oblivion on weekends, but hard drugs in school were never dreamed of. Now they're available in the middle schools. When I was in sixth grade the only serious problem we had was one kid who smoked, and the teacher watched him like a hawk, checking him for cigarettes with no fear of violating his rights against unreasonable searches. No, our kids are facing a tough time.

There are also some trivialities that bother me, like the lack of civility and manners. No man or boy would EVER have worn a hat inside a building. When I suggested that to male students at the university, they thought I was nuts. (Of course that's minor compared to the ones who answer their cell phones in class. Generally I object to almost everyone who uses a cell phone in public or while driving. Why is it necessary to report telephonically to anyone that you are in a restaurant having meatloaf? ) Young persons always said hello to their elders. I have to say that the young people I know at church are always polite to the adults even when some of the adults are downright rude to them. This gives me hope. However, around the building where I live, the kids would as soon run me over with their skateboards as acknowledge I'm a human being.

The death of the evening newspapers is another loss I mourn. I don't like getting my news from the TV or radio (Except for NPR and PBS). I like more in-depth reporting, sidebars on related topics, and commentary by real columnists. Sure we get that in the morning, but I'd still like to settle down in the evening when I have more time to see what went on. I miss the Chicago Daily News.

I don't watch much television because I can only get 2 1/2 channels unless I pay for cable which I refuse to do. You pay for cable and still have to watch commercials. What's the point? Besides, the programs are awful. What I enjoyed were programs like Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, The People's Choice (with the basset hound, Cleo), Our Miss Brooks, Mister Peepers, I love Lucy, I've got a Secret, What's my Line? and of course the variety shows like Sid Caesar, Carol Burnet, and Ed Sullivan. When's the last time you saw the opening scene from The Man of LaMancha, Senor Wences (the ventriloquist), and a guy spinning pie plates on top of sticks all in the same program?

Final gripe (for now): Urban Sprawl. When I was young (about the time kerosene lamps were invented), our family spent many holidays at Phil's Beach on Bangs Lake. There was so much to do there. Swimming, of course, and building castles on the sand, and riding the floating horses made of kegs, and running to the end of the pier, and watching people slide down the big slide (I was too chicken to try it), and picnicking, and a little store (with a bar, I think). Actually, if you saw the movie The Blues Brothers, you've seen Phil's Beach. It's the scene on the beach where they are announcing the concert with a sound truck. A day at Phil's Beach was great fun, followed by a painful night with a wicked sunburn. I was looking for a picture of Phil's Beach (at the head of this blog) only to discover it closed in 1990, a victim of development. There are no public beaches left on Bangs Lake. It's all developed now.

It's quite similar to what happens here. Farms are bought up and replaced with houses and stores and roads. It's called progress. The current administration in Washington has proposed selling of some bits of the National Forest here for development. That's supposed to be progress, too. What will we do when they sell off all the open land? Is it really progress to cover nature in concrete? What would Teddy Roosevelt have to say about this foolishness?

Sorry, that's getting us into politics. Well, that's another thing I liked about the days gone by. The country used to be run by statesmen with a vision for the future. Now it's run by politicians with their eyes on the buck. Sometimes what passes for progress is one step forward and two steps back. That's no way to get anywhere on a journey.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.
Wayne

MOM AND DAD

Some years before her final illness my mother said to me, "I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to miss out on all the things going on. Think about it. Men on the moon in my lifetime!" Yep, that was Mom. It was no surprise when the doctors diagnosed her with cancer of the esophagus and told her that she had three to five years to live, she replied, "You'd better do better than that." She had every intention of living to at least 80. After trying chemotherapy and radiation without positive result, she was anything but resigned to death. She wasn't afraid, just disgusted that she wasn't recovering. She intended to do a lot more living. She died a mere seven months after her diagnosis.

Both of my parents had a high school education. Neither of them would ever have thought about going beyond that. In my father's case, it would not have been allowed. It was only somewhat reluctantly that his parents consented to his attending high school. After all, it was the depression and anyone who was able bodied should be out earning money. It wouldn't have mattered. Less than two years after my father graduated from high school, World War II started, and he enlisted in the navy. Great Lakes first, then machinist school at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. (Dad would occasionally mention to people that he had been at the University of Kansas, never explaining why he was there.) Then Tampa, Key West, the Panama Canal, and the Philippines. End of the war and back to work again. That was so different from his father's experience. He never traveled more than 150 miles from the place he was born.

Dad wasn't alone in traveling to foreign places. My mother had spent the summer of 1937 in Romania with her family. I've wondered whether that experience added to my mother's interest about the things around her. She never made a formal study of anything, never took classes (except adult Bible Studies), but we were always going to museums, visiting the zoo, and so forth. Vacations were usually spent in a cabin in some forsaken part of Wisconsin fishing, but always with side trips to whatever Indian exhibit or abandoned lumber camp or old house might be in the vicinity.

My mother was the music lover. Big band was her favorite naturally Tommy Dorsey in particular, but also Jimmy Dorsey and Glen Miller. She also had some interest in classical music–classical piano at least. She hand sung in her high school chorus and played the accordion. There're two strange twists of fate here. I would eventually study piano with the same man who taught my mother accordion, and I would do my student-teaching at the same high school my mother attended and–yep–worked with the same teacher that had directed girls chorus in my mother's day.

My father appreciated music, but being tone-deaf couldn't sing. He could never make heads or tales out of classical music and would at times become quite disturbed that that was all I played or listened to. However, he had some interest in art and architecture. He didn't make a study of it and he certainly thought that most modern stuff was goofy, but I can remember him taking me to the Art Institute of Chicago and showing me Georges Seurat's painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. He carefully showed me how it was made up on thousands of little dots of paint laid next to each other. I also recall riding with him in the car in the suburbs one day when he pointed out a house that he passed each day on the way to work. "That's by Frank Lloyd Wright," he said.

I think the thing that really made my parent's interest in things clear to me was during my last year in seminary. The King Tut exhibit was coming to the Field Museum. There was to be a series of lectures on Egypt at the University of Chicago prior to the exhibit. I they were once a month for four months. So my parents would trek to the University Campus, near where I was living, we would have dinner together and then attend the lecture. I can't imagine any of my parents' friends doing anything like that. But my parents were different. They wanted to know about things.

I am exceedingly grateful for the way my parents exposed me to this fascinating world around us. Although I am often overcome by all the things I need to get done, I'm never bored. I am very much like my mother who couldn't understand how anyone could be bored with life.

I have seen people in their later years of life who have very limited interests. Some are focused entirely on what comes on TV next. They rapidly withdraw from everything until the withdraw from life itself. That wasn't my parents, especially not my mother. She left this life under protest, frustrated that her body was failing long before her mind was ready to let it go.

I know that some people believe the Christian should welcome death. I don't think I like that notion, at least not for myself. To be sure a Christian accepts death with trust in the Lord. But I don't like an approach to death–even by a Christian–that belittles the value of life. Why should God have created us in this earthly life if it weren't something good to be valued?

"I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to miss out on all the things going on." I hope I can have my mother's view of life until my journey in this world.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne