Summer Thoughts 2015
I shamelessly neglected this blog while we cavorted our way through a grand summer…both the Cather Spring Conference in Red Cloud (preached) and International Seminar in Lincoln (led a panel), the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival in McCook (gave a poetry reading and emceed Bill Harley and Mike and Ruthy), the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha conference at Ole Miss (helped Brian McDonald, Jim Carothers, Theresa Towner, and Terrell Tebbetts in offering the Teaching Faulkner sessions), Kansas City where we gathered* to celebrate our 50th Anniversary with the Royals and Lego-Land, WWI Museum, Negro Leagues Museum, National Archive, Sea World, NFL exhibit), and on to Milwaukee for our weeks there (enjoying family, Brady Street, Lake Michigan, the Brewers, new friend Ben Wubbels, new and old places to eat, and my fellow ‘steppers’ at 232 and Dewey.
- “We” ended up including George and Laura Grace Peek and their Willie, Greta, and Huck; Noelle and Harlan Ptomey and their Rowan and Brody; Jon and Chris Bruss and their Ingrid; Jim and Bev Carothers; and thankfully us, not to mention the management, kitchen, wait staffs, and clerks and concierges of various places in the Crown Westin, including the Brasserie, and of Jack Stacks and Lidias, a great place we picked on a tip from Bob and Diane Bee!
Along the way, lots of things cropped up that gave me pause to think.
A Facebook post lumping all the candidates together and deploring the quality of the whole passel of them. Sorry, but I don’t buy it. There are lots of differences in capacity, attitude, and intelligence, not only between the candidates of one party and another but even within each party. To lump them all together is simply intellectual laziness, whether you are lumping them to deride them all or lumping them to swallow everything any of them says.
News reached us in Milwaukee that UNK (University of Nebraska at Kearney) would be honoring among its distinguished alums two former students, Travis Miller (2001) and his wife Andrea Walton (2002). Travis is Superintendent of Schools in Bayard, Andrea is a lawyer with a firm in Scottsbluff. In addition to enjoying their fine minds and attitudes in class, I was privileged to be part of their wedding. Their selection reminded me of what wonderful students I was privileged to teach across a span from my first classroom at UNL in 1964 to my last classes for Senior College here in Kearney and OLLI in Lincoln a year ago. These two were certainly among the brightest and best.
Speaking of UNK, good news that the ill-conceived motto “Join the Herd” has been relegated to the trash heap and the new motto emphasizes making a difference. Very true that most of us will never make much of a difference…the nature of life and the world and the way the two interface militating against making much of a difference for most people…but it is still the aim of education to make a difference in who we become and how we affect the world we live in…and it is decidedly not the aim to join a herd. Well, it is probably the aim of corporate American who desire only a docile, don’t-rock-the-boat work force that can be easily cowed or dulled…but it should not be the aim of universities, college, and schools.
Witness the recent turmoil of one Vanessa Ruiz: Ms. Ruiz had the mixed fortune of being made an anchor for an Arizona TV channel. As her name might suggest, she is Latina. One suspects her name is R-r-ruiz! Anyway, in keeping with her own origins and the history of the state (though, sadly, not the state of mind), she pronounces words the way Spanish-speakers would…and gets heaps of criticism for it from the xenophobes who wish the 20% of Americans who are bilingual would, well, shut up or go away…back where they came from…in Ms. Ruiz’s case, Miami! I’m trying to picture the kinds of patrol cars and uniforms the language police might adopt to shuttle Ms. Ruiz out of Arizona and into Florida! Will Jeb Bush welcome her? Rubio?
Incidentally, that 20% is almost exactly the Latino population of Arizona’s capitol from which Ms. Ruiz broadcasts. In an op-ed piece for the NYT, Ilan Stavans noted this as a microcosm of a larger phenomenon—that imperial power is inevitably changed by the culture of the imperialized! Or as Dick Gregory once put it, you can’t stand with your foot on the neck of someone you want to keep in the gutter without being stuck on the curb yourself! In this case, Arizona was far more enlightened when we lived there in the ‘70s than it is today. (Tu ve, Nina!)
You might help me here: in a group of prayers published for the United Thank Offering’s 125th anniversary (in which our daughter, Noelle Ptomey, has a prayer), there are a number of prayers in Spanish. As we use them, I’ve been trying to translate, but my Spanish is only fair-to-middling. Twice I’ve come across the phrase ‘cajita azul.’ I can speculate what it might mean (probably not little blue piggy bank!), but can someone enlighten me?
Imagine that, like my son George, you go into the law. . . and spend your days learning about flat beds, drive shafts, ammonia, welds…and a host of things that can go wrong and end up in court. Reminded me of my students who were going into something like engineering because they didn’t like to write—only to find out that writing is what engineers do most!
We were privileged on the way back to Kearney to meet the Gerry and Cathy Parsons and their granddaughter Annaleigh in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and George and Clara Day in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Always good to see old friends, especially when they are as kind and courageous and intelligent as these, but a special treat this year because both had a copy of my new book of poems, Breezes on their Way to Being Winds (Finishing Line Press). My copies were in a box in the hallway at home where they were put when they arrived by the people who keep daily watch on our home while we’re gone…I’d never seen the book until Albert Lea. (You can order it either at FLP or Amazon—or, if you are in the Kearney, Nebraska, area, you can purchase it at the Museum of Nebraska Art.)
Incidentally, in the heat of what threatens to be the longest and most expensive political campaigns ever, which progressive democrat said, “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business”? Oh…you knew it was not a current progressive who said that? You knew it pre-dated this campaign by not just years but generations? You knew it was Henry Ford who said it?
This year we discovered the man behind William Carlos Williams “red wheelbarrow” and the man “behind” Atticus Finch! Quite a year.
And I just read something about 1957—Joe McCarthy died that year…and Osama bin Laden was born that year. (No wonder we’ve never seen the two together! Gives some credence to doctrines of re-incarnation!)
Feeling better about several things at the end of summer—An admittedly risky deal with Iran still leaves us safer than we were without it; an absurd challenge to an admittedly flawed Affordable Care Act was kicked out by the Supreme Court, allowing 8 million of us to have insurance who didn’t before; the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline is still held up in legal battles on every front, at least delaying the blatant dangers to land, water, and the living this elongated leaky bucket poses; and the Royals are still in the race!
I’ll close with thanks to those who made our summer adventures so rewarding, not least to the Bruss family, Bruce and Jo Johnson, and Gladys Cravitz! Chanced on this clipping my late mother had saved:
The Church offers us—
A great faith to live by,
A great purpose to live for,
A great fellowship to live in,
And great resources to live on.
Henry Emerson Fosdick
Now, on to a 55th class reunion, McCook’s Heritage Days and George Norris talk, a Cather talk for Roads Scholars in Red Cloud, “Sunshine Boys” at Kearney Community theatre, and joining our friends the Price-Gibsons in saying farewell to Scott and Patty Taylor.
Until next time—sometime sooner than later.
Chuck Peek
capeek 