Growing Catnip

22 Saturday Aug 2015

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park bench in spring

Catnip is one of those weeds that I enjoy having around. I planted some in my herb harden. At former homes in Paxton and Minonk, catnip grew all over the place, and I pulled it out except where I wanted it to grow. Once before, when I lived at Tilton, and tried to grow catnip, the same thing happened. It got a good start and was growing beautifully. One morning I looked out and it had disappeared. In its place was a well-satisfied tabby, new to the neighborhood. She had eaten every particle of the catnip.

Some things are just too good to pass up. Some things attract would-be connoisseurs from a distance. I have dreamt about being that kind of preacher and leading the kind of congregation that would be one of those attractive entities. Some characteristics of ours would simply attract without our having to do the work of listening, relating, interpreting, and living out the faith. Like catnip.

In the real world we must sow seeds with such abandon and in such abundance that there will be plenty to take hold, survive, and grow regardless of who shows up to take voracious advantage of the crop. We cannot hope to grow it in one small space and have it flourish.

I know I could have catnip if I fenced it in, protected it, and really tried to preserve it from contact with the cats who really seemed to need it. Instead I have decided that catnip does better as a weed growing all over the place than as a protected herb, confined to one small garden spot. Even so, most things faithful.

Lake Michigan dunes reverie

21 Friday Aug 2015

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The forecast called for rain for most of the six days we stayed in the Michiana dunes along the southeast shore of Lake Michigan, but rain only fell during the first night, and the next morning dawned fresh and breezy. When we arrived on the shore that first morning the waves that greeted us the previous afternoon continued to crash against the shore loudly and strongly, enough for some body surfing for those not minding the chill. Every day afterward the wind slowed, the waves calmed, the water warmed, the sky cleared, until the last two days provided a lake so still that the lapping against the shore made barely a whisper. The temperatures every day were warm enough for a first week in August not to need a shirt or wrap, and cool enough in the reflected sunrays against the white sand never to feel oppressively hot. Out of twenty-five years of spending a week or two on the dune area beaches, I do not remember such a stretch of opportunities for beachcombing, resting, reading, swimming, sunbathing, or anything else we were prepared to do in or near the water.

Not a trace of alewives showed up on the beach, which in the early years of our visits met us in smelly die-off by the thousands. They hadn’t invaded the Great Lakes until the St. Lawrence Seaway made their incursion from the Atlantic possible in the 1950’s, when I paid my first visit, but the lake trout had also disappeared through over-fishing, so the alewives didn’t have any predators until Coho and Chinook salmon were brought into Lake Michigan. As those game fish became established, the alewife die-off slowly subsided, and the beaches depended on the cleanliness of their human occupants. Apart from an occasional piece of trash arriving with the waves, the Michiana shores were clean, and the users kept them so. An active storm season had left evidence along the tide zone, where a strip of heavier rocks interrupted the smooth sand of the beach. That rocky border, from two to ten feet wide, made the approach to the water a little painful for those of us with tender feet. We either walked gingerly through that zone, or we wore our sandals and beach slippers into the water. Either way the journey was worth it, as the lake water became unusually clear and warm during those days.

Even in such mild weather, every day proved different for those of us living on the beach. From noisy to nearly silent, from heavy waves to barely a ripple, from cloudy to clear skies, from cold water to warm, each day brought its variations. Never was it easy to leave the beach on the last day of our scheduled time. This year brought no difference at all in that respect.

Persistent Welcomers

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Farm, Growing up, House, Seasons

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Burlington house in fall

They welcomed us in great numbers when we arrived in August, 1988. Throughout the fall they kept coming, sometimes pestering us to the point that we wondered whether we would ever be rid of their nuisance. Even in January they kept moving, popping up at odd times and places, such as on my collar during a children’s sermon at a Sunday morning service. If I had been quick-witted, I would have turned that moment into an object lesson on persistence. When winter came in its fullness of ice and snow, they still persisted, although I saw only one every day or so. Boxelder bugs.

As a child I became acquainted with them. They were more numerous and lasted longer than lightning bugs, so when it was no longer possible to collect the more illuminating lightning bugs, I turned my acquisitive attention to boxelders, seemingly harmless, and only slightly stinky, but certainly persistent and ubiquitous. The worst weather in heat and dryness brought out the best in them, but they made themselves known even in cold and icy times in the warm comfort of the house. In Burlington the bugs had occupied the soft maple trees that grew along the berm immediately north of our house. On the farm they had occupied the namesake boxelder trees that grew along the river bank not far from the house. In both cases they moved inside when they decided the conditions were better there. For whatever reason the bugs left our Burlington house the next spring and have never returned.

I want such long-lasting determination, such unexpected perseverance, for my faith. When I am caught in mundane, day-to-day tasks that seem to drag on endlessly, I need the unexpected reappearances of joy and surprise that persist in spite of all I do to suppress them or tame them or forget about them. When I am overcome by the scale of problems that seem insurmountable, I need the confident will to see a victory that gives meaning to my feeble and uncertain movements. Sometimes such faith does appear in solitary heroic figures battling all odds. Sometimes such faith comes in masses of individuals filling every corner and space with their relentless march of life conquering death. Even such lowly creatures as the boxelder bug encourage us by the nuisance of their example.

You have to be “on the inside”

18 Tuesday Aug 2015

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Burlington house in fall

We moved into our old house in Burlington in August of 1988, twenty-seven years ago. Friends helped us to move from Minonk, Illinois, and we sat together on folding picnic chairs on the back porch and had lunch. They noticed that there was a doorbell on the back porch, just outside the kitchen. It worked well, making a “dong” sound, and when the front doorbell sounded it made a “ding-dong” sound.

The doorbell location presented a problem. You had to go through the rear door of the house to get to the doorbell. By the time you made it to the kitchen door, you were already inside the house, and since the kitchen was usually the center of activity in the house, most of the time you could just say hello to anyone who was working or sitting around the kitchen table. You wouldn’t need to use the doorbell.

Like many old farmhouses, most people who know us come to the back door anyway, but the fact is that, unlike when we lived in the country, we usually lock the back door, so getting to the doorbell presented a challenge. You would have to knock on the door in order to get us to let you in so that you could press the doorbell.

Many years ago the back porch was really an open porch. There was no door because there were no walls. The kitchen door was the back door. Sometime in the 1960’s, the Nelsons hired a young Jim Wilson to enclose the back porch, build walls, and put in a row of casement windows to make a three season unheated room. (We liked it so much that we added insulation and a heating vent and made it into an all-season room.) But no one bothered to move the doorbell.

Maybe the previous residents were so friendly that people could just open the door and walk in. Ideally we would like to live that way, but we tend to live a bit more privately, even though the large windows on all sides of the house make it a see-through first floor when the curtains are pulled to the side.

We don’t always make it easy for people to get inside. With the door locked, you had to raise a ruckus to get our attention. It would be a lot more welcoming to place a doorbell in a convenient location, so that is what I did, among one of the top items on my “to do” list.

We don’t always make it easy for people to get inside other things either, but hospitality means making the changes that make it easier to get in.

Loads in Need of Redistribution

17 Monday Aug 2015

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Burlington house in fall

My house in Burlington is now 115 years old, but I installed a new 200 amp circuit box several years ago, and the panel of circuit breakers was impressive—23 circuits with room for 28. Only one circuit kept blowing, and when it blew just about everything went with it. The television, the dishwasher, the electric heater, lights and outlets all over the place—all went out. Since something was amiss, I put on my electrician’s sleuthing hat.

The air conditioner, refrigerator, freezer, furnace, clothes dryer, electric range, hot tub, and the clothes washing machine each had its own own circuit. They were dedicated circuits serving major appliances and ones that had enough of a load to justify their single purpose and that was appropriate. They kept doing their own jobs even when the other circuit blew. That totaled eight dedicated workhouse circuits—four of which were double or 220 circuits, so those and the one that blew accounted for thirteen spaces in the box. What about the other ten?

One took care of the outlets and lights in three rooms upstairs. We didn’t use them a lot, but there were times when the whole family came to visit, and then they got put to use. They were there, ready to serve, even when the rest of the house shut down. Then there was one circuit serving one outlet in the half-bath downstairs, and one serving an outlet in the kitchen corner, and another serving another outlet behind the antique Hoosier in the kitchen, and another serving one outlet in a corner of the basement. They seldom served any purpose, so it was plain that they were far from being overloaded. They were seriously underloaded. There was one serving a small fluorescent light fixture above the kitchen sink, which explained why it continued to shine when everything else went dark, but in spite of its perpetual and faithful shining, it was definitely an underused circuit. There were two circuits available for the garage, which took a few years to put into service. Then there was one that went upstairs to the master bedroom where a window air conditioner used to sit. Every one of these circuits was added when someone wanted to add one more light or outlet or appliance to the house. The tenth one served the lights, ventilating fan, and outlets in a new addition that was added several years ago.

Yes, something was amiss when over half of the available circuits were completely idle most of the time, and when one—obviously the original house circuit—was trying to carry too much of the load. I had to spread the load around so that the underused circuits could carry their share, before the breakdown of the one circuit led to more disastrous results.

It made me wonder how much of the power distribution in the organizations and churches in which I have taken part resembled my old house. Perhaps some load redistribution has been in order in other places too?

Alone in the Dark

09 Sunday Aug 2015

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Chicago Old Town

In 1969, working for the Independent Precinct Organization [IPO]in Chicago’s north side Lincoln Park neighborhood, we canvassed door to door to build support for community-based initiatives instead of the urban renewal plans of the democratic machine and Mayor Richard J. Daley’s administration. The city plan called for bulldozing entire blocks of housing, displacing hundreds of poor and elderly families of many races and ethnic backgrounds, and building apartment buildings and condominiums that would cater to wealthy, upper class, largely white people. The area needed rehabilitation and preservation, from our perspective, not destruction and replacement. In canvassing , we met many wonderful people of various backgrounds who would be forced to move, priced out of the neighborhood.

We organized meetings, rallies, and took part in city-sponsored meetings that were supposed to give the people a voice, but largely consisted of city spokesmen telling the residents what was going to happen, whether they liked it or not. The city’s only authentic German beer garden became a center of attention, when the city planners decided it had to go the way of every other building of historical, ethnic, or cultural significance in the urban renewal area. What would the new neighborhood look like? An uninspired collection of modern boxes of uniform size, shape, and costliness, with little attention to amenities that existed in the previous community, because Lincoln Park would be considered a residential extension of the downtown. “Little boxes…full of [just more expensive] ticky-tacky,” anyone?

One night I had to park three blocks from the meeting –place at the edge of an already bull-dozed three-block strip, where the citizens were confronting city planners. Parking was scarce because we had generated a lot of interest in the meeting. The people present were angry and eloquent, expressing their grief at the prospect of losing homes and businesses and facing an uncertain future with below-replacement value appraisals and no help in relocation. The IPO presented alternative plans and proposals that had the backing of much of the resident community. When the meeting ended we felt that we had done well in getting both citizen-involvement and the important media attention.

I walked out of the building after a brief feedback session with my co-volunteers, needing to get back to my apartment on the south side and ready for seminary coursework the next day. The street was empty and dark; many of the street lights were removed with the destruction. I didn’t see anyone around, until I had walked a block, but then I heard from a distance when a gang of Spanish Disciples had spotted me. I didn’t understand all that they were saying, but I knew from a few words and phrases that they had recognized a lone target for their resentments and rage when they saw me. It didn’t matter that I thought I was serving their interests in being there. Their street sophistication did not extend to political disputes between the city and local white liberals.

They were coming at a run, and I decided that I needed to be faster, and so I was. I unlocked my car, jumped in, and sped off just as they were arriving. I didn’t wait to see whether I could persuade them that I was a good guy just trying to help out.

I returned to that neighborhood, continued to canvass, participated in other meetings and demonstrations, but I made sure that I was not alone in the dark after that.

Check the Supporting Structure

07 Friday Aug 2015

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Burlington house in fall

Our Burlington house is a late Victorian eclectic built in 1899, originally a farmhouse on the railroad magnate Charles Perkins’ estate. For most of its life three families by the name of Nelson had owned it, although two of them were not related to the third. The family that sold it to us in 1988 had begun to restore it after several attempts at remodeling. Jan said, when she first entered the front hall, seeing the old varnished woodwork, that it wrapped its arms around her and said, “Welcome home.” That made me happy, since the other seven houses in our price range that I had previewed all had serious problems that would need a lot of attention right away. This one was almost “move-in ready.”

Walls were newly papered with tasteful period patterns. Ceilings were newly coated to cover the cracks and holes. New curtains were hung just about everywhere. Floors were sanded smooth and refinished. Only a few issues remained that would need resolution sooner or later.

The six basement windows provided the first challenge that I tackled. The casings had deteriorated past the point of repair, reglazing, or repainting. I tore them all out, stabilized the surrounding limestone rocks with mortar, and installed new windows that resolved some of the leaks and drafts in the cellar.

All the while I looked at that solid wide-board wooden wall that ran down the center of the cellar, lengthwise of the house, separating the cellar essentially into two large narrow rooms. Above that wall in the center of the house, the floors were noticeably uneven, and a wall crack had broken through the new wallpaper on the second floor. Something was going on behind that wall, I decided, exercising my powers of deduction.

The wall seemed so solid until I started to take it down. A little pushing on the heavy boards and they gave way at the bottom, so I proceeded to remove every board. At the top the boards attached to the main support beam of the house. At the bottom, everything seemed increasingly loose and mobile. The upright posts supporting the beam had obviously rotted at the bottom, so that the entire wall, about a ton of wood, was hanging from the main beam. When I finally reached the center of the wall, I found that the beam itself, was not one large hewn timber, but two butted end to end, with nothing supporting the center. The center was hanging from the rafters of the house. No wonder it had settled! The whole support system was hanging from the house, rather than holding up the house. It made no sense, but the house seemed to be lifting its support.

I quickly put several jacks in place under the two main beams, and dug footings under the concrete floor, that the owners had obviously poured years after the original rock footings had been put in place. Then new pressure-treated six by sixes were wedged into position, firmly attached at top and bottom. This house was not going to collapse or going flying off into the great beyond if I could help it.

Not So Finger-lickin’ Good

05 Wednesday Aug 2015

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.com

We were traveling in Europe as a family—Jan, Alicia, Nathan, and I. London, Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva, Frankfurt, and assorted smaller towns in Germany where we rented a small VW Polo so I could enjoy driving on the Autobahn. This was Europe on $25 a day when the dollar was worth more anyway, and beds and breakfasts, hostels, and pensions provided inexpensive overnight accommodations for families.

I was studying the relationship between church and state for two months, so not every stop proved interesting to my minor children, although they seemed to appreciate churches in general, most of which provided stately, beautiful, and immense echo chambers.

One area where I knew we would have to compromise occasionally involved food, considering the fact that my children tended to be picky eaters, one in particular, though she is not so picky anymore in her adulthood, I must hasten to add. England to me meant steak and kidney pie, shepherd’s pie, and stock pots. Only to me. To the rest of the family it meant the accommodation of one stop at McDonald’s.

Amsterdam meant raw ground meat. Only to me and my flirtation with Mad Cow disease. There we began the tour of different national variations of pizza, especially of the Four Season variety, with four different items in the four quarters of the pizza. That worked well in Paris and Geneva, but in Bacharach, Germany, the Four Seasons pizza that included tuna, peas, sardines, and squid did not go over so well with the rest of the family. Fortunately they were placated with Brats mit Brotchen at the next stop.

It was the Geneva visit to Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken that caused the most intense reaction from the local clientele. We had not observed that the advertising slogan “Finger Lickin’ Good” was noticeably absent in French, German, or any other language. Believing that we knew how to eat fried chicken, since it was after all a conspicuously American restaurant with an all-too-familiar menu, the four of us proceeded to eat the chicken with our fingers. Every one of the other customers began to stare at us , and there were unnervingly many customers. As our nearest neighbor at the next table informed us, “It is extremely impolite and unsanitary to eat with your fingers.” We must have thought that we had entered Geneva out of a time warp from the Fifteenth Century when they were not so fastidious, from their point of view. We rapidly adapted to knife and fork consumption of the rest of our meal.

No Waiting

05 Wednesday Aug 2015

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After college I swore that I would never stand in a waiting line again. Cafeteria lines, registration lines, textbookstore lines all had eaten up more time than the studies themselves, it seemed. It was a vain resolution.

Lines and waiting rooms became a prominent feature of my career as a minister. Hospital waiting rooms, court house lobbies, city council chambers, and jailhouse waiting rooms took the place of earlier lines. In retirement, road and traffic delays and outer office sitting areas have continued to devour time.

Early line training introduced me to the art of starting conversations with strangers, if they were amenable, or preparing sermons, letters, or work outlines without the benefit of notepaper. Thinking through concerns in empty spaces of time also helped with the daily exercise of running. Regardless of work being accomplished and acquaintances being made, waiting is still waiting.

“Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.” It is a running mantra that I used sometimes. I would say that waiting saps strength and waiting rooms are more tiring exercise chambers than gymnasiums and running tracks. What makes “waiting on the Lord” any different? While most waiting involves anxiety, is there at least the possibility that waiting on the Lord can involve faith, trust, confidence, and some assurance that all things work for good for those who love the Lord? Perhaps waiting on the Lord involves more serving time than leisure time.

Practicing patience and endurance is good for you, my significant other says. Where do these gifts fall in the series of spiritual gifts? Between suffering and hope, with one experience making possible the next, according to Romans 5.

“No waiting” is a good advertising ploy, but I have not found a commercial establishment that yet lives up to that claim. No waiting will be heaven.

The Wild Life at Wind Cave and Custer Parks

04 Tuesday Aug 2015

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Driving through nearby Wind Cave National Park into Custer State Park for a circuit of its forty mile Wildlife Loop has become a frequent part of our sojourns at the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs at the southern reaches of the Black Hills. Both parks have extensive herds of American bison as well as populations of elk, pronghorn, white-tail and mule deer, prairie dogs, marmots, mountain goats, and bighorn sheep. Custer has its burros that became “wild” after their usefulness as beasts of burden officially ended, but the visitors offering food don’t have any trouble getting them to eat out of their hands. We bring carrots, although we often see less healthy snacks offered. The burros are not fussy.

This season we also saw a prairie rattlesnake at the edge of a road, but still no cougars, which are numbered among the inhabitants of the parks.

Two years ago Wind Cave obtained a large additional acreage of old homestead tracts, long since merged into ranch pasturelands, but still containing some of the pioneer buildings, and at least one bison jump, used by Native Americans to herd bison to their doom over the edge of a cliff in centuries past, when several captured animals provided food, tools, clothing, fuel, medicine, and shelter for many native peoples. A ranger took a few of us on a preview tour of that locale, and we look forward to the day when it will be open for others to appreciate.

The bison herds here are among the first to be restored after the animals were nearly extinct. People purposefully destroyed these majestic and well-adapted animals by the millions to make way for cattle or just for their own amusement. It makes us wonder about human intelligence and character. We could watch their behaviors for hours. Part of the herd is usually on the move even when most of the bison are resting as they graze over large territories, never depleting their resources.

One magnificent old bull walks across the road and stops both lanes of traffic, then he walks down the middle of the road as cars slowly pass, then he stops one lane of traffic for a full minute, then he moves into the other lane to stop it for another minute. A loud motorcycle tries to pass, sounding like another bull, and he challenges it with the hoof-scraping gesture and his characteristic bellow, then he snorts and turns his back and moves on. He knows what he is doing.

One bison cow nurses her calf until she decides it has had enough. She turns in circles while the calf tries to reach for more. The calf persists until the cow finally lies down and the calf has to go to another cow if he wants more. It tries, but that cow knows what it is doing, and she imitates the first cow’s behavior. Finally the calf has to be satisfied with what it already has.

We looked for the bison herd on our first visit in 1976, but didn’t see any. Now we usually check with the rangers for their last observed location, and head for it, but usually we find them whether we have good information of not. We have learned to be patient in the quest and we are rewarded.