Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. -Gustav Mahler
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, US general and 34th president (14 Oct 1890-1969)
Dr. Helen A. Winter Stauffer (January 4, 1922-November 21, 2019)
As my generation’s rock, film, political, and sports stars age, I’ve realized there will be no way to keep track of them all, especially no way to register every death of the celebrities (or friends) who brought some measure of joy to so many. Consider each of these lists to be headed by “for those I’ve forgotten but many others will remember.”
RIP: Departed (since our Memorial Day blog)
Acquaintances/friends
Jim Applegarth, parishioner when I served at Calvary, Hyannis
Dorothy Baker, much loved secretary at MHS when I was in school there
Verna Barney, long time parishioner at St. Luke’s, altar guild directress, kitchen chair
Larry Butler, local attorney, friend of many, and coconspirator in the orange-tailed squirrel frolic
Mike Churchman, wonderful colleague, friend, and caring priest
Dick Cloyed, long-time English Faculty at KSC/UNK, national officer with Sigma Tau Delta, KCT stalwart, and of the three of us who worked on it, about 90% of the reason our home has nice front walks
Karen Cook, a relative of Nancy’s (Nancy worked for her for 14 years at Women’s Health Services) who cared deeply about women in general, the poor in particular, and health care availability for all
Del Funk, Episcopal Priest, formerly in the Diocese of Nebraska, Grace Church, Columbus
Gary Ginther, Nebraska sculptor, one-time student of Greg Haring
Jack Karraker, long-time artist/teacher at UNK, one of the three “founders” of MONA and the Nebraska art collection, head of the Art Department forever
Frank LaMere, Winnebago tribal leader and activist; Charles Pierce called him the best activist “you’ve never heard of”
Stacia Larson, former parishioner at St. Stephen’s, mother of Thor, the Y director when we lived in Grand Island and I was on the Y board.
Darrell Lloyd, long time English faculty at Hastings College and part of the Cather “pioneer memorial” foundation
Stan Longfellow, long-time faculty at KSC/UNK, husband of Gay, father of Vance who now lives in the first house we had in Kearney
Wayne McKinney, long-time parishioner at St. Luke’s, noted local banker, who, with his wife Virginia, was the first person to take us out to dinner in Kearney—at Bicos!
Sam Morford, one of the early Deacons in the program Bishop Warner sponsored in our Diocese to restore the ancient order
Helen Winter Stauffer, premier scholar of Mari Sandoz, fine teacher, and our introduction to Willa Cather. 97!
Steve Thelen, of the Mike Cartwright/Pam Lay family, as well as of the Thelens in Wood River
Cindy Weichel, classmate, popular girl who left McCook for greener pastures—hope she found them
Wayne Ziebarth, farmer, teacher, politician who served our state on several commissions, set up the current community college system, and narrowly lost the 3rd District to Virginia Smith because of lies out of the opposing party’s dirty tricks department
Celebrities:
Danny Aiello, Sal Frangione, banking on having done the right thing
Rene Auberjenois, of Star Trek and Benson fame, one of the supporting role players that often stole the show
Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi, dead as a doornail we’re told in what would be pages of Twitter-feed; no relation to Peek Abu, the imaginary snail that made so much money for our local CASA
Luis Alvarez, only 53! NYPD Detective turned advocate for 9/11 compensation. May he lie among the blessed even as our Congress tries again and again to diminish compensation—beware of those who tout the responders and victims at “prayer breakfasts” and turn them away from the door when it’s time to vote!
David Bald Eagle, Native American activist, actor, dancer
Willie Brown, NFL Hall of Fame, mourned in Oakland
Diahann Carroll, aka “Julia”—a very classy lady
Jaques Chirac, former French President and champion of European identity
John Conyers, longest serving African American in the Congress, bedeviled by a sexual abuse charge (interesting how many Democrats were punished, how many Republicans were not!)
Louie Crew, whose zest for life and gift for words were always used in support of justice
Elijah Cummings, House of Representatives stalwart. “He worked until his last breath because he believed our democracy was the highest and best expression of our collective humanity and that our nation’s diversity was our promise, not our problem. It has been an honor to walk by his side on this incredible journey. I loved him deeply and will miss him dearly.” Maya Cummings
Peter Fonda, Jane’s Easy Rider brother, Henry’s son.
Robert Frank, photographer of the tell it like it is school
Valerie Harper, a.k.a. Rhoda; Mary Tyler Moore prepared the way once again
Jerry Herman, think Dolly, think Mame
Lee Iacocca, what would Chrysler have been without him? Hope his chariot was a Mustang, but I guess a Chrysler mini-van wouldn’t be too bad under the circumstances!
Don Imus, shocking! One of the reasons we are in the fix we are in!
David Koch. Where are the munchkins now that we need a song!
Jim Leavelle, the law enforcement official hanging on to Lee Harvey Oswald when Jack Ruby shot Oswald, narrowly missing Leavelle, making the second time Leavelle had survived, the first being at Pearl Harbor; ironically, died about the same time as the doctor who tried to save JFK’s life
Patrick McNee, the once and only avenger, foil for Diana Rigg
Eddie Money, who maybe punched his ticket to paradise
Toni Morrison, inheritor of the mantle of the previous generation of great writers but her own original artist
Robert Mugabe, dictator who used a beautiful country for his own aggrandizement (sound familiar?)
Jessye Norman, opera star and Grammy life-time achievement awardee who sang an amazing variety of music
H. Ross Perot, who almost had us fooled until he had to contend with Al Gore
Hal Prince, the prince of Broadway, now finding life is a sort of cabaret after all
Cokie Roberts, Hale and Lindy Bogg’s daughter, journalist who knew fair coverage from fake news
Carroll Spinney, who voiced Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, despite a painful spinal/neck malady
Bart Starr—Mr. Green Bay Packers Glory Years, one of their great quarterbacks
John Paul Stevens, Supreme Court Justice (where are you when we need you most?)
Rip Torn—actor from Larry Sanders Show (Larry not to be confused with Bernie)
Gloria Vanderbilt—fashion industry leader and mother of Anderson Cooper
Paul Volker—who had more to do with what’s in your pocket than many might be aware
Allee Willis, who wrote the Friends theme song and lots of stuff for Earth, Wind, and Fire
Joseph Wilson, diplomat and true statesman—challenged the grounds for going to war in Iraq
Creation was subjected to frustration . . . in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children . . . the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now. And . . . not only the creation. We . . . also groan inside as we wait . . . to be set free. Romans 8:20-23 Common English Bible
For many of us these days, never have frustration and loss, pain and peril seemed so visceral. Reality, as Lily Tomlin once said, is the greatest cause of anxiety—but only for those who are in touch with it.
So it was times before and so it is now as Christmas comes upon us again—or any of the dozens of festivals of light that surround it around the world—its meaning, its hope is captured in Paul’s passage (above) in the letter to the Romans that charts the course of all liberation. Frustration and pain almost always precede liberation. Or, perhaps better put, liberation is only born out of frustration and pain.
Galilee at the time Jesus was born
This is not to say there might not be momentary breakthroughs—flashes of insight or a happy chance here or there. But true transformation takes time in the refiner’s fire. Usually a life-time!
Have we had moments when a just and peaceful and healthy and free society has seemed to draw closer? And this despite the conflicts that sometimes arise among these ideals?
Think of Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob, and Fr. Sam Shoemaker creating Alcoholics Anonymous. Think of the jubilation that led to the countless celebrations of Barak Obama’s election. In 2018 Nebraska voters voted for an expansion of Medicaid after one legislative session after another could not muster the votes to overcome the Governor’s veto. Smoking rates are down. The guy who wore the “lock her up” t-shirt is himself being locked up! Good news crops up now and again.
But, of course, there are more alcoholics now than ever and Fascism, bludgeoning its way to power even as the Big Book was being written, is encroaching still on lives drunk and sober all over the world—India, Turkey, Britain, the USA. Obama has endured years of vilification. Despite the people’s vote, Medicaid Expansion has yet to happen in Nebraska. Mitch McConnell is still Senate Majority Leader. Vaping is rampant despite death tolls.
New brothers and sisters of Jesus or of Thich Quang Duc* still have to make the sacrifice to put their hearts in the chalice on the altar, asking us if we can drink the cup from which they drink. The good news: such new brothers and sisters continue to be born!
Progress comes in fits and starts and its existence is as fragile as any existence must be. The artist, the scholar, the saint may flourish, but by the very nature of the calling to serve Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, they will often have an uneasy relationship with institutions, even galleries and schools and churches, a dis-ease that sometimes ends in suffering—the loss, say, of an ear in Remy, of a hand in Canterbury, of a cock owed to Aesculapius.
Mark Duke’s Our Lady of Ferguson
So, Paul: groan and hope! So, Mills: better a man dissatisfied than a pig satisfied! Live so as to change the end of the story. Or, as we hear in today’s vernacular, “queer” the expectations! Who was it said “Living well is the best revenge”? It’s a Pauline thought!
I was just finishing my course work for my doctoral degree when the poet Antonio Porchia died. He once wrote, “I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.” So the gift of life, the gift of grace, the gift of being gifted, the gift of Baptism—of any gift at all. It is one thing that it is given, another that it is received—fully received, grown into over a life-time.
The Peace and Good Will the angels proclaim are not like choo-choo trains when you are little or socks that dreadful year Aunt Martha decided you were too old for toys. Nor are they like the tinsel and lights brought up from the basement each year, hung, and then packed away again for next year. They are the notes you practice hitting clean and clear for years. At once the foundation stone and the tower finial epi, the blue print of the designer and the work of the temple builder.
Wishing you, whatever the halo that lightens the darkness in you, around you, and among us, the gifts of joy and wonder that Christmas celebrates and realizes. May the season sanctify to you even your deepest distress!
Chuck and Nancy
FAMILY NEWS
One family highlight of the past year—our visit with my cousin Dorothy Leeds. When her son Greg and daughter-in-law Lynnea took new jobs in Minnesota, they brought her with them from Billings to the acreage they are developing near Clear Lake. We stopped with them for a great dinner one night, stayed in nearby Becker, and spent the following day with Dorothy.
Dottie’s memories of our shared Greeley, Colorado, years are better than mine. I was aged 1-5, she was in high school. But it’s fun to talk together about what we each remember. At one point, as I remembered Papa’s gladiolas she’d forgotten and she remembered his roses I’d forgotten, she said, “Well, you remember what Papa said to the woman passing by.” (Papa would be our mutual grandfather, our mothers’ father. A 1960 bulletin from his and Nana’s beloved Trinity Church, Greeley, Colorado, described them as “Trinity’s nobility’!
No, I told her. I don’t think I know that story. What is it? Oh, surely said the high schooler’s memory, you remember hearing it. Nope, don’t think so. So, she told the story: Papa, Doc Urie, would come home from his dental practice, change from his shirt and tie into his old work clothes—the same as served for hunting and fishing—and go out to tend his rose plants. A woman passed by walking her dog and stopped to watch him tend the roses. She complimented him on the roses and wondered if he’d like a job taking care of her yard. No, he told her, he wasn’t interested in that. Clearly not a woman used to being told ‘no,’ she asked him how much these people were paying him. Well, he told her, “They don’t pay very well, but I get to sleep with the lady of the house!”
What can I say—that’s the stock from which I come!
Other Family news is pretty much this:
Nancy was asked to serve on the steering committee of Kearney Action Network, and their programs continue to enlighten us on social and political issues. She joins Chuck each October in re-reading one volume of the Alexandria Quartet, and fact checks the daily barrage on Reuters.
Son George continues to practice law and teach forums on family law and estate planning, while serving as Vice-President of his Mount Olive LCMS and chauffeuring kids to school and sports.
Daughter Noelle moved from occasionally substitute teaching to taking on the load of a teacher on extended pregnancy leave, among other things teaching the course she avoided at KHS—chemistry.
Noelle’s Harlan is struggling with some of the issues facing public schools as a Superintendent, which sadly these days means keeping up on the attempts of a handful of legislators to undo the foundations he’s built on.
George’s Laura Grace is working from home—and with four children under 10, also working at home, and shares the chauffeur’s license with George.
Will Peek convinced LG to let him play football—the one kid who got better each week, his coach said—and to sing in the Mount Olive Schola Cantorum (we’ll hear him in Chicago in February).
GretaPeek is blossoming as an artist and sometime ‘mother’ to her 1-year-old brother, and is easily equal to three brothers.
HuckPeek and two other musketeers shocked his parents by being credited by their teacher as the three who helped her keep order in the classroom.
LouPeekwalks! Lou Earthwalker!
BrodyPtomey made first-string All District football honors, took part in the school play, and started visiting possible colleges.
Rowan Ptomey got his motorcycle, got his license, stripped the cycle all down, put it all back together, and continues to work two jobs.
Chuck’s highlights were playing Gaston in Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Candy in Of Mice and Men for Crane River Theaterand meanwhile working on four book projects, two immediate, two longer term; also taught Roads Scholars in Red Cloud, newcomers at St. Luke’s, and seminarians at Bishop Kemper School for Ministry in the fall and will teach short stories for Kearney’s Senior College and Lincoln’s Olli in the spring.
Just about all of us except Will grieved the fortunes of Cornhusker football—Will was pretty happy week after week rooting for the Patriots, though here, too, good things have a way of ending! Come on K.C. Chiefs! Chicago Bears! Green Bay Packers!
Besides our joint reading of The Alexandria Quartet, I’ve enjoyed immensely Daryl Palmer’s new biography Becoming Willa Cather, Barbara Brown Taylor’s Holy Envy (given us by Rod Moore and recommended by Bishop Barker), George Packer’s Our Man, and my continuing reading of Peter Ackroyd’s Albion, not to forget great spy and mystery stories by Louise Penny (thanks Tom Miles for the tip), Alan Furst, and Donna Leon. And thanks Don Compier for the Wiman tip.
Chuck with 2019 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Keynote Speaker John Duvall
Friends we have been able to see, visit, talk to, or eat with in 2019: Ann and Dale Abadie, Linda Anderson, George and Jackie Ayoub, Kate Benzel, Jan Bowker, Carla Brook with Dori and Violet, Jim and Don, Martha Bruss and Jamie, Steve Buttress and Jan Weber, Jim and Bev Carothers, Cloyd and Linda Clark, Pierce, Bryce, Brooks, and Cullen Coffee, Elizabeth Cornell and her friends Chris Dieman and Tyler Mercer (doing a theater script of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and in Oxford for photo shoots), Jeremy Daniels, Stan and Carol Dart, Bobby and Rachel Fox and their granddaughter, Jerry, Janet, and Greg Fox, Javier and Sami Fox, Galen and Marilyn Hadley, John and Kay Hall, Peter Higgins, Ron and Barb Hustwit, Andy Jewell, Clint and Pat Jones, Jennie Joiner, Colby Kuhlman, Keagan, Brian, Talon, Emmy, and Coco Lenihan, Michael Wainwright, Jack McSweeney and Janice Wiebusch, Tom and Susie Miles, Robert and Dorothy Miller, Rod and Mary Moore and their family, Katie Nickels, Rosemary Northwall, Karen and Mary Park, Tom and Jan Paxson, Greg and Erlinda Perkins, Martha Pettigrew, Stephen and Carolyn Price-Gibson, Barclay and Lorita and Sutton Resler, Francis and Judy Roberts, Greta Sandburg, Bill and Gloria Schlachter, Jim Schmitt, Grayson Schick, Bob and Ruth Schrott, Steve Shively, Theresa Towner and Steve, Marty Townsend and Clark Swisher, Joe Urgo, Bob Wiester, JoAn Van Balen and Sarah Spain; Chuck’s editorial board for Kearney Creates!: Kate Benzel, Jerry Fox, Kerri Garrison, Pat Jones, Rob Luscher, Teri Schifferns, Terry Sinnard, and Nathan Tye; the KAN steering committee on which Nancy serves: Suzanne Brodine, Carol Dart, Janet Fox, Pam Gallagher, Deanna Jesse, Dorothy Miller, Glennis Nagel, and Sharon Swett; not to mention The Friday Problematics (lunch group, eaters would prefer not to be named in public), and the folks of St. Luke’s at coffee hours, potlucks, and Wednesday evening Christian Education, a wonderful class at the Bishop Kemper School for Ministry, many friends from our 12-Step groups, the casts of Crane River productions, and the happy crowd at the weddings of Joe and Abbey Kutlass-Prickett and Dillon and Breanna Rose. A jar of Randy Goeke’s pickles had to make up for us and Mary Haeberle being altogether too busy to get together. Thanks Jim and Bev, Theresa and Steve for the wonderful send-off dinner at the Ravine in Oxford and your and Terrell Tebbetts’s kind words celebrating our years at the Faukner and Yoknapatawpha conference!
We continue to enjoy our Senior College and Torch Club; great films at our World Theater; the Kearney Community Theater and Crane River productions (some at UNK, some at the Merryman Performing Arts Center, some at parks, barns, and other topical sites!); UNK Theater and Kearney Symphony performances; the Front Porch Poetry and Reynolds Reading Series; art shows at MONA and live music about town, including concerts at St. Luke’s featuring our outstanding organist, Marilyn Musick.
In 2020, the Kearney Peeks will join the Milwaukee Peeks and the Ptomeys in Brainerd, Minnesota at Craguns resort for their Winter and New Years’ activities and then hope to get out to Wyoming and Montana for a July Hemingway conference, as well as maybe visit Greece and who knows where else. Chuck’s 60th class reunion comes later in September 2020—we’ll be out to McCook for that. We hope the year will bring news of two and possibly three book projects.
Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.
Eugene Ionesco
Instead of a poem of mine this Christmastide, I’m closing with one of Gary Johnson’s poems:
December
A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves, And also the partridge in a pear tree And the golden rings and the turtle doves. In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled, Enduring the cold and also the flu, Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled. Not much triumph going on here—and yet There is much we do not understand. And my hopes and fears are met In this small singer holding onto my hand. Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.
*Thich Quang Duc was the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in 1963 as a protest against tyranny. His actual heart survived the conflagration and was displayed in a chalice on a public altar. There is more than one level of meaning in JFK’s greeting the site of Duc’s photo with the words “Jesus Christ”! For a current account of the scene, see George Packer’s Our Man.
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