In Memoriam - Bernice Alfson

A recent trip back to North Dakota for a family funeral for a favorite Aunt, Bernice Alfson, was a special time for me to see her grandchildren grown and her great grandchildren who were new to me. I had written a poem in remembrance at 2 AM before the one day trip, but the tributes at the funeral by her grandchildren were more apt and a pleasant reminder of the wonderful person that so many of us called "Barney" or "Aunt Barney." She was a person of great warmth and kindness. Here is a late draft of the poem I wrote in remembrance of her.

Drifting over the drumlin

Tonight the stream is up blowing crystals
Desert dry o'r the ridge onto the lee.

This ridge of mounds scoured by polar winds
Was once the debris wall of an empire of ice.

Was it the burden's mass pushed ahead
By the invading ice (tiring of onslaught)?

Or did sun shine warmly on day of rest,
Leaving debris a sign of far enough?

From here the First People signaled with smoke
The bison's direction in the sea of grass.

Later emigrant scouts atop these mounds
Scanned to the horizon for fields of promise.

Below in the ridge's lee a finger lake
Collects the snow's runoff and hosts the flocks.

I hear here a loved one with wisdom blessed
Who stops eternity from such a spot.

She places her foot out, remembers
That time long ago on a sylvan shore.

Now she pushes at air as once she pushed
At waves washing ashore with her prospects.

A moment shoeless girl sudden bounded
Start and raise family, so soon to leave.

Winds speed, spirits journey, from this bleak ridge.
Give her wish its flight, resounding air.

I beg you feel this ocean of air here
At this place; leap off with a lighter heart.

Thanksgiving, a double blessing.

I was so pleased to see families on Thanksgiving coming to the shelter for homeless men to serve Thanksgiving dinner. One family was hard at it all day in the various phases of food preparation, service, and clean up.

I was there briefly at the Simpson Shelter in Minneapolis just to serve and to do some clean up. The men who came to feast seemed so glad of the food. I poured milk and replenished water glasses and everyone seemed gracious. I encouraged folks to pass condiments and butter around to others.

I believe that the blessings and thanks of these men made the evening a two way street. Kindness and goodness are each their own reward and we need look no further for reward. I know my own fears of economic hardship seemed so much lighter after this particular meal.

I am especially thankful for time with my children and grandchild at the home of my former wife who put on a marvelous dinner yesterday afternoon.

A Poem of Gratitude for my Readers

Prairie rose volunteers

Be glad of your wants, each of you.
Do not be anxious for your life.
If you can, you shall not want.
Be still, be comforted, feel blessed.

When we did without all those years
And sacrificed for naught, then
I say we have known want:
Spiritual or material want or both!

The psalmist trusts, “I shall not want,”
But we struggle to get it right.
Unless we stand with who dare say:
“God loves me as you can see by my plenty.”

We can keep a prairie rose volunteer
In a clay or silver cup;
We can complete each sunrise or sunset
With a celebration in song of yet another day.

Somehow it’s the half empty cup
That’s filled with what is unseen:
The sense of contentment and acceptance
Of the unfinished business of life.

Peace Now Grows Ever Remoter a Possibility

My sympathies are with the victims and their families of victims of the shootings yesterday, Monday, November 5, 2009, at Fort Leonard Wood, Texas. President Obama has declared a national mourning period from today forward thru Veterans Day.

The Muslim world is living and dying each day in a world dominated by the United States and its allies. Many in the Muslim world believe that their world is under attack by and is victimized by Western values and Western powers. The proponents of terrorism and suicide bombings in wrecking Muslim vengeance on the Western world and their own Muslim populations are into a victim mentality and justify the evil they do as necessary for the ultimate triumph of the Muslim world over the Western world.

The American people are led to believe that they are safe in their beds because of wars, occupations of foreign lands, and drone attacks. As a United States citizen, I do not believe I am made safer by the killing done in my behalf. On the other hand, I can not wash my hands of what my country is doing because I live in a republic of laws and elected representatives. The blood of innocents is on my hands.

I do not see my government's current efforts as helpful nor ultimately productive. Drones with pin point accuracy launched by the United States are fired at targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The target selection is often done in haste with personnel of the enemy often in transit and using the screen of villagers for protection. Innocent men, women, and children are killed in these attacks which presumably have a degree of success in killing actual terrorists who are at war with the United States and its allies. Technology permits my government and enemies of my government to kill indiscriminately. I know technology is not the enemy, but the servant of those who would do war on one another.

When civilians died on September 11, 2001, in the World Trade Center attacks,it confirmed that we are all combatants and are asked to take sides. Where is the end of war to be found in a world gone mad?

I find myself asking for spiritual leaders for the Muslim world who could help Muslims embrace peace instead of revenge. I find myself asking for spiritual leaders for the Western world who could help non-Muslims embrace peace instead of revenge.

I advocate for restorative justice in how the Muslim and Western worlds interact. We need to step back from the ledge of pursuing solutions to relationship ills between people by resort to violence.

Coming into Life in North Dakota

There was a time when I had next to no experience of the rural life of my home state, North Dakota. During college years (1968-1972), I had learned to stack bales on a wagon and to make a haystack with the bales on the rolling hills above Lake Lida, for farmer Cliff Hanson, but that was in Minnesota. As a child, I had no hankering to live a rural life either, or even live in a small town. I would come to have experience of rural life.

After college graduation in December 1972, I accepted a position as a replacement teacher in Neche, North Dakota, for January 1973. I remember getting off the Greyhound Bus in Pembina and hitchhiking into town with a very beautiful but forlorn woman who knew Neche first hand and knew the address where I had quarters with another teacher. I never saw her again but her kindness in helping me out is not forgotten. I enjoyed my students but felt totally detached from the community and was not even sure there was a community. Fellow teachers left Neche to have a social life in a neighboring town at a bar. I thought then I was not meant for life in a small town.

When the quarter at Neche public school ended, I returned to Fargo-Moorhead and went to work in a farm store where I worked with another young man, Dennis Gerger (a friend from Moorhead State University). He lived in Barnesville, Minnesota, where he was raised on his father's very prosperous farm. As a town kid, I had to admit small talk with farmers was a stretch for me. I was selling them plow shovels, harrow teeth, and harvester blades with only a mental image of the equipment the part fit into.

Dennis on the other hand knew exactly what the part was. He was into history and sparkled when he talked about his family heritage. His ancestors were German immigrants to Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Great because of their agricultural acumen. Later in time, his grandparents had fled the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 for the United States.

I remember attending Dennis's marriage to Julie in southeastern North Dakota. I did not think I was headed for small town life such as Julie and Dennis knew. I married that summer myself to a sweetheart from Carrington, North Dakota, Jean Bronaugh.

Even though I would go to law school in 1974-1975 at the University of North Dakota, I would end up in really small town North Dakota as a rural English teacher. At the end of first year law, I was busted up having worked two jobs in addition to attending class with a really low grade in Property Law and seemingly little prospect of finishing my professional degree. Wife Jean had to do almost all the child care and housekeeping when our first child Kendra was born that year while I kept going out the door to work or to the law library and class. We did not have an easy year to say the least.

Fortunately after the harshness of first year law, I was asked to interview for a position teaching English in a rural village, Grace City, North Dakota. It was the best thing for me it turns out as I came to know the land which is my home state and to garden prodigiously (until wife Jean could not stand canning another thing). The people of the school district were welcoming and kind. We joined the local Lutheran Church and I served as a trustee and Sunday school teacher. The three years in Grace City for me were very heartening.

At this point in time, it has been years since I physically lived in North Dakota. The keepsakes I have are the poems that capture for me the experience of the land, the people, and the the thoughts and feelings of living on the great plains in my native state.

Poets Against the War

In 2003 I was so fortunate to hear of a poetry reading of Poets Against the War and then later to attend this poetry reading in downtown St. Paul. In attendance among others was Robert Bly. This reading convened poets to read poems of their own, or another, against the war mongering which was rampant in the run up to the Iraq War. Similar readings were held elsewhere in our country for the same purpose. I subsequently purchased Samuel Hamill's collection of the poetry he anthologized at that time by Poets against the war.

The country seemed caught up in jingoism at the time but not everyone bought into that popular sentiment to go invade Iraq. I recall first lady Laura Bush disinvited poets to the White House when she learned of anti-war sentiments that were rife in the literary community.

One observation I would make is that poets, even the most political of us, are unlikely to set out to write anti-war poems. I remember writing an anti-war poem as a young man as a language experiment. It is the least successful of poems except as an experiment but even that contains concern for the youth offered up as cannon fodder.

Poets of anti-war verse more likely are caught up in the moment by an underlying concern or passion about our fellow humans. Poems I wrote later in life that can be characterized as anti-war are a product of concern for my country and the human race. These poems ended up in a collection of my own anti-war poems (available upon email request to this blogger).

Editing my blog - thank you.

I am especially grateful to my brother, Joe Hilber, for being my reader. At his encouragement I have reworked my blog chiefly for paragraphing and emphasis purposes today. If you are a reader, please provide criticism and insight feedback. I cherish it and know my work product is thereby a living project.

Why History Lessons Have to be Honest

One of the revelations to me was how even my private school education and public college education had never covered the American subjugation of the Phillipino independence movement prior to and during the Spanish American War and into the Theodore Roosevelt Presidency. My country hunted down (like a dog) the George Washington of the Phillipines, Emilio Aguinaldo.
Had that history been taught us and those who conducted the Vietnam War before us, perhaps we would have chosen a different path.
My country can not even claim its paternalistic rule of the Phillipines protected it from the hegemony of other world powers because Congress never funded meaningful defense of the Phillipines from Japanese invasion in 1941 and subsequently the Phillipines were occupied. The lesson of that of course is that colonialism like slavery is part of our past, but it should not be part of the legacy we bequest to future generations.
Had the past White House occupants seriously considered a paternalistic sponsorship of foreign governments (i.e. that of Saddam Hussein as our proxie in his war against Iran) and in other instances occupation of them as counter-productive to our national interest (i.e. that of present day Iraq), the lessons of the Phillipino would have been honored.

Literature, a Window on our Nation's Past

My discussion here is of three novels that are today no longer part of the high school curriculum (if you know otherwise please let me know). High school students are often not asked to reflect on our rich national and regional heritage when it involves harsh realities and difficult topics and concerns.

An October 2 posting to this blog referenced Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn as an example of literature not welcomed in many literature classes in our public schools. I know this particular book requires treatment of sensitive issues of our national origin in slavery and discrimination. Teaching this particular book in a rascist community is a daunting challenge. Some censors fear this particular selection because it dwells on 19th Century stereotypes and attitudes. The fact Mark Twain was satirizing the stereotypes and attitudes is not in purview of these censors. Twain's methods make this novel a senior high selection in which discussion of his methods and the effectiveness of those methods are the work of the English teacher to clarify and to gauge.

I know some think we live in post-rascist America, but that is only by degrees true. If we can not tell the truth to our children about our nation's progress up from our baser conduct they will have no view of the work in front of them to do.

I remember as a young teacher being told that John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath could not be used for American Literature (this supposedly because of a parental complaint about its vulgar, profane dialogue). My students benefitted from the book in terms of understanding dislocation of farm families and rural poverty but also that all people are to be respected and legitimized in their quest for life and prosperity. It was still apropos in 1980s North Dakota which shared in the out-migration of farm families that was the 20th Century history of the Great Plains.

The curriculum which includes the Grapes of Wrath should include O.E. Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth which chronicled the 1870s in Dakota Territory and the lives of pioneers in the harshness of their new land (specifically the tragedy of husband and wife, Per and Beret Hansa) . This work in translation did not have the idiom of American English as spoken by pioneers but it was also like Steinbeck's novel brutally honest.

One topic of Rolvaag's novel, rural farm wife isolation, was such an important topic in the life of the communities I first taught school in, but the community attitude was not to talk about suicides and mental ailments, and only in an off hand way talk about isolation. Education has to be about opening even the taboo topics in a timely fashion with our children. Today's parents and educators have to deal with taboo topics, such as homosexuality. Our schools have to be safe places for all children.

I encourage all parents who would be educators and supporters of education to open the mind of their child and especially their teenager to the past as a window on our future (or perhaps a future to be avoided). Teaching American Literature in conjunction with U.S. History is and should be considered true underpinning to civics especially when so many of the citizens of tomorrow are the children of immigrant families who learn English and democracy as our common language and idiom.

No Loss There

If you are anything like me, you probably have taken yourself too seriously. With maturity, that posture becomes less and less sustainable.

I remember the huge loss in my life when I realized I'd not become a priest (Roman Catholic). The Maryknoll Fathers who were my teachers actually prepared me for life outside the priesthood and were genuinely interested in my transition from the seminary life in which I felt at home. In hindsight, they helped me picture a life in which I would not be a priest.

One of the gifts to me was that of Father Sheridan who was my English teacher. In his class, I began to find in poetry and literature in general a broader world view of life than I had as yet formed. As a result, in college I became an English major. Like most English majors, I saw in the life of John Keats the romantic disposition. With time I even came to understand the huge loss he'd suffered in losing a future life with his true love, Fanny Brawne. As I suffered other losses in life, I began to realize the consolation that I found in poetry was linked closely with dealing with depression (not unlike Keats). I could obsess about the creation, a poem I was writing, instead of obsessing about my loss.

The connections was recently renewed when I saw the film Bright Star starring Ben Whishaw, written and directed by Jane Champion. It really hit me how the poem I'd written about John Keats and Fanny Brawne in my twenties and rewritten in maturity had gone from a placeholder kind of poem to a dramatic playlet within a playlet (one act essentially). I realized that had I not lived through all my losses I could not have managed to make art out of life the same as John Keats who managed it at such tender years. Had I died like Keats at age 23, I'd never have learned so deeply life's lessons of compassion and forgiveness of self as well. The mature poem makes light of the human condition and for me marks a passage from the youth who took himself too seriously to the adult who wants to be a player on life's stage. [1] I guess the benefit of living long is that I no longer take myself so seriously. No loss there!

[1] The profane dramatic poem The Allegorical Death of One John Keats is available upon request by making an email request to this blogger.

Before Us The Land of Milk and Honey

Many of us have survived the spiritual wasteland which America tends towards. We only want to die in peace knowing we have done our part to save our land from spiritual destruction. That's a bit premature for you and me though! I have to live out my life countering meaninglessness, despair, and hopelessness and if I have to die anytime soon even then not give up the struggle.

I hope my children will enter into the new age dawning for humankind. To me Barack Obama is our Joshua battling the forces of darkness while my generation becomes an aging Moses atop Mt. Nebo. One day it's likely my children will hope the same for their children and grandchildren. Is this part of what it means to be an American?

We in America live in the land of milk and honey (as far as the rest of the world is concerned). The promised land though at times is also a spiritual wasteland in which greed and materialism reduce all to shambles.

Occasionally, I reflect that I have lived my adult life outside the promised land of milk and honey (my perception) and deal with dreams and longings for better times (which may materialize and evaporate as they do for many of my fellow citizens).

Our spiritual rebirth is a necessary generational task which includes our escape from the enslavements of a rampant capitalism (the land of the rich for the rich and to hell with those who would mess with our rapacious acquisition of wealth). I do not say this to condemn capitalism, rather to curb and soften its excesses and provide respite from the spiritual impoverishment of my country.

Recently, through a Time magazine article, I realized that I have lived long enough at age 59 to see how I have participated in my writing in dialogue with American cultural mainstream.[1]

I have written unintentionally over time a sequence of poems[2] having to do with rebellion, quest, self-denial, want and exile with the Exodus story as the basic metaphor for the human condition.


[1] See specific observations noted in "How Moses Shaped America," Time, October 12, 2009, at 48-50, by Bruce Feiler (an adaptation by Bruce Feiler of his booklength exposition America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story).


[2]Poems in this sequence are available by email request to this blogger and are listed out here:

A Birth mother’s love
If the night watch should fail
Can I be so bereft of thee
Ephemeral flower of the dry hills
The Meandering path
Part I. Jackals and mirages
Part II. Moving on
Part III. Conspirators
Part IV. The Quest
Part V. The Scout
Tribute not sought

What is our connection to the earth?

At about the time I wrote Glebewise, the poem, I also wrote a short narrative poem entitled Radish about a peasant who kept the glebe fields of a medieval bishop.

I remember showing this narrative poem to one of my high school students. Today I marvel I took that risk given the realities of public school educators. I felt at the time that by my conduct in foisting the poem on a student with the intellect to understand it revealed questionable conduct on my part, and thereafter vowed never to share poems with any student again (I was a public school teacher and had no business sharing a position on the ecclesiastical conduct of the medieval church in Europe). I am reminded that our public schools are no place today for a liberal education - rather fettered mindcontrol or at least exclusionary content control.

There is no respect for the mind of child if you do not engage the child's mind in timely discussions of the import of historical human conduct. More about education and respect for intellectual growth of the child on another day and why Huckleberry Finn is not taught in today's public school curriculum.

[The poem Radish is available upon email request to this blogger.]

Glebewise

I wrote a poem in my early 30s which I entitled Glebewise. At the time I was churched as a Lutheran and schooled in Catholicism.  The imagery of the poem provides a layering of farm and village as well as community and family, but definitely about the context of our lives, literature, and symbolism.  The poem is in multiple parts and has recently been edited.  Here is an outline of this multi-part poem:

Glebewise

Part I. The Slough
Part II. Aqua pura
Part III. The Gardener
Part IV. A Reservoir
Part V. The Attic
Part VI. The Young exploding spring
Part VII. Flowering heads
Part VIII. The Glebe

What is a glebe? In what Kingdom do you live?

My poetry (and this blog) is about the modernism of living off the land, its consequences and context. Today's sense of living off the land is ambiguous: do you mean beneficiary of the fruits of the earth or do you mean you live away from the farmland life. I live off the land in both senses.

I coined the compound glebewise to represent the wisdom inherent in learning to live on the land. I was a gardener at the time I coined the word.

The latin word glebe is now archaic language for a clod of earth or land. In medieval times, the word glebe was used to name a landstead dedicated for support of a parish priest including a house in which to live. The glebe of the parish could not be sold or alienated by attachment by any conduct of the parish priest (so creditors beware).

I know the responsibility of the human community is to persist in care for the land. We in the upper Mid-West like to underscore reminders of our earthbound dependency. We maintain the highest regard for the earth on which we are dependent.

In a similar vein, any theology which loses sight of our earthbound condition and therefore the essential materialism of our human condition is suspect for me. Midwesterners like myself typically consider a person of religious convictions is God-fearing. The reason that works is that even though we live in a republic of laws with democractic tendencies, we are personally governed by the rules of the Kingdom of God. As subjects in that Kingdom, we obey the laws of our King. Outside of that Kingdom is darkness and damnation for those without personal accountability.

Personally, my moral conduct is not dependent on whether there is a heaven or a hell, while it is enhanced by the prospect that if there be a God, God is love. We are called to the highest motivations in governing our conduct. The rub is in contemplation of the afterlife. I do not believe I can procure life everlasting by any conduct of mine. I do believe that failure to live my life governed by the rules of love is the same as hell on earth.

Belief in an afterlife of hell for the damned strikes me as a theology of consequence for those over whom a religion does not hold sway (at least and unless there is made an affirmation of the religion in a deathbed confession). There is enough fearful in our condition without terrorizing people with belief in a vengeful god. I persist in saying if there be a heaven or hell in the afterlife, it is the domain and provenance of God and not of humankind if it be so.

Origin of Blog Title

Long years ago I shared a portfolio of my poems with a dear friend from my youth. She wanted to know the origen of the title I used, "Glebewise." I told her it was a compound word I'd fashioned. My understanding of "glebe" was that it was a clod of earth. I later learned it was dedicated land for support of the person who kept the church grounds and lands and probably the housing for this peasant. See my next blog for more about the context of my writing this blog and my poetry.

A Childlike faith

If you send me your email address, I will send you the poem "A Childlike faith" about what in my experience is the essence of how we come into life already made (though not yet realized fully). This is the poem which attempted to capture for me the reality of yearling daughter as she encountered the world of nature. She has remained to this day the scientist that she was when she came into this life.

The Human Life from Conception to Grave

This blog is titled Glebewise because I want to provide a strong impetus to look at our materiality for signs and significance of things spiritual.

Ben Franklin as a youth steeped in Calvinism and drawn to deism in the Age of Reason started on a journey in which science did not prove adequate to proof of the existence of God to his way of thinking. I believe that Ben Franklin is much like my second daughter, drawn by nature and intrigued by science, and that probably from conception this was so of Ben and my daughter.

I know my daughter as a yearling exhibited the natural curiosity of the "child scientist." She gravitated to plants and then as she grew to the marsh and to lake and to estuary and to the sea. Today she is a marine biologist and environmental scientist and I could not be prouder of her journey and its inexorable march towards embracing the physical world. I believe that for her spirituality is an embrace of the natural world.

In contrast, I know my original impetus in life was toward the mystical world of Christian belief and as an adult am certain that it has been the keynote of my life in which I place myself not at the center of creation but at the foot of God. I think humility is the product of the quest for truth as we grow ever simpler and earthbound with each year.

I also sense that the ebbing tide of reduction into the material world is potentially and ultimately to be matched with a swelling tide of affirmation that is the result of feeling the embrace of God around and about us (regardless of how we as individuals can reach that point).

Santiago, a poem

If interested I will email you a copy of a poem entitled "Santiago" about the hope for a new marriage of spirituality and science. Send your request to my email address. Expect delivery in about a week.

A True Devotion to Progress for Humankind

I have often thought that for generations Christians have stood on a bridge between the shrouded past and a dim prospect of the human community to survive its own defeats and excesses (i.e. the various Crusades or Intifadas, the Inquisition, the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

In my lifetime, creationists in our society want the proponents of the theory of evolution to take a backseat to traditional beliefs about origin of the human race and want the science curriculum degraded to a religious posturing. Modernism means we have arrived at the understanding that neither science nor religion has always been the servant of progress in the human community.

The firm belief I espouse is that recognizing and fostering true progress is a spiritual activity that requires education, political involvement, and values commitment. Degrading the role of science or religion is not ultimately consistent with mutual progress for humankind.

An active modernism means embracing a better future for ourselves and our children through the progress afforded by science married to spiritual values. This is our ultimate task of values clarification (i.e. you do not build more nuclear plants when you lack the means physical or political to safely store nuclear waste).

The metaphor that works for me is the pilgrimage. I am reminded of Geoffrey Chaucer's Caunterbury Tales about pilgrims on the way to the tomb of Thomas a Becket. They were fellow travelers who just happened to spend time on the road and in roadside inns telling self-revelatory stories to curb one another's character excesses and flaws. Saints and sinners, we learn from the Tales sometimes by ribald humor, are all in this together.

For me, the devotion of the pilgrimage is only relevant if it is transformative and leads to the pursuit of outcomes that lead the observer to conclude that God is Love.

Last spring while reading Iberia by James Mitchener, I came across the legends associated with James the Greater (to the Spanish Santiago) and his missionary journey to convert Iberia to Christianity. (The Epistle of Saint James is attributed to this saint and apostle as well.) Today as for generations past, pilgrims travel to northwest Spain to venerate this saint and seek his intercession.

The legendary stories of James in Iberia on an apostolic journey remain without factual or historical basis. The devotion of the pilgrims to his shrine is real. The devotion I would foster is that we all journey together towards human progress.

In an Age of Materialism and Want

As a youth I was enamored of stories of saints and mystics. Lately, in James Mitchener's Iberia I came across the enormous and continuing devotion to St. James, apostle, who is believed to have traveled to Iberia (Spain) and converted persons to Christianity in the First Century. Was this the same James who led the Jerusalem church and was martyred in the holy land?

More importantly, the Bible has an Epistle attributed to James which has a distinct quality. This Epistle of James is especially sharp about his own generation which was not unlike our own in which materialism is rampant in society. The author of the epistle encourages those who live in want to not live in spiritual want. This epistle is attributed to James the Greater. The epistle in my thinking has long been an important touchstone piece of literature and in part explains why I write poetry in an age of rampant and degrading materialism and also choose certain images over others.

While living in North Dakota as a young teacher, I walked on hillsides in the hills east of Binford (not too far from mystical Red Willow Lake) on a visit to Leroy and Bernice Alfson's farm (my wife's relatives and my all time favorite Aunt Barney). These hills are glacial moraine and were for the most part in use as pasture. You could see the flat farms running to the horizon in all directions. On our walk, I remember suggesting to my daughter Kendra, age three, that she pick the wild flowers and bring them down to her mother during our visit.

At that time, my wife Jean, daughter Kendra, and I lived in a school board house rent free with one caveat: we had to heat it. The bills were so exorbitant that we began to understand why it was rent free. Eventually, the home was reinsulated in part because of the skyrocketing fuel oil prices during the Carter Presidency. One of the three winters we lived in Grace City, one family, two of whom were my students, tore siding off of their home to burn in the wood stove. I was not all that shocked because as a youth I had spent two summers for a couple of weeks on Fort Totten Indian Reservation working at a Catholic Youth Organization at Seven Dolors Mission. At that time reservation families were beset with rampant alcoholism and teenagers having babies. At that time,I was shocked to see housing with the siding stripped for firewood.

Oddly, while I seemed to have first hand experience of rural poverty, I wrote a short story about a family in a new housing development in Fargo in which the family was being torn apart by materialism, not poverty. I sent the story into the state fair and nothing came of it. I wonder why I didn't write a story about rural poverty. I think I probably was in it and just didn't realize it. Farm families in some parts of North Dakota live in housing on the farmer's land and probably experience the same rural poverty I was witnessing, but I didn't write about their plight either. The Twentieth Century for many rural families was spare but the families I met were hard working hands or tenants. Most of us were glad to have employment and a roof over our heads.

What I did do to help me mark the passage through the low income years was to write a poem for Sunday school class using the image of wildflowers, Prairie Roses. Flowers like the ones that Kendra and I had seen as we walked that day in the hills. This poem and its attitude about life helped me live those years on a rural English teacher's salary without much ado. Don't feel sorry for me though as the cooking at home was satisfying and the relatives always had great feasts too. The Grace City School had produce from gardens and locally raised beef and deer sausage in home cooked meals. Hot lunch was the highlight of everyone's day in that school.

Don't remember sharing my "Prairie Rose Volunteers" poem it with anyone until I sent it out as a Christmas greeting some years ago. The poem is available upon email request to this blogger. I'd like to think that the author of the Epistle of James would like my poem.

President Obama on Healthcare Plan

Last Saturday I took the city bus from St. Paul where I live to Minneapolis. I stood in line for two hours and waited over two hours to hear the President. He provided his personal encouragement to those who would reform healthcare. He said the insured are statistically dwindling with the status quo as is the actual liability of the insurance companies for those that are insured. He is dealing with the realities of rampant capitalism in charge of funding healthcare outside of government funded healthcare such as veterans care, medicare, and medicaid. I recommend you follow honest brokers in the healthcare debate. For example see my brother's blog: HTTP://vftl.blogspot.com

Glebewise Blog and my poetry

I have had a facebook inquiry as to whether or not I will publish my poetry on this site. If I reference a poem from the past, I will respond to requests for the poem to be sent to the requestor's email address. I will also publish to the blog poems which are relevant to blog topics.

Anniversary of September 11, 2001

I watched the NBC Today Show rebroadcast of the events of September 11, 2001, in New York City, the Pentagon, Washington, and rural Pennsylvania. I felt physical pain moving around my body as I watched. I kept wondering why I did not just turn it off or walk away from the television set. I believe the aftershocks of the terrorism of warfare are to ripple through time. I think we Americans should be especially sensitive to the pain and suffering of those who suffer from terrorism (especially if inflicted by American reactionary warfare). The killing and maiming must have a stop. Give peace a chance.

Frequency of Update on this Blog

Stan Ford in a Facebook note wanted to know how often I would be updating this blog. Thanks for asking Stan. Initially I will try update this blog weekly and respond to email requests for Glebewise publications also on a weekly basis. Be sure to comment as I welcome your insights and criticisms. Thanks for reading Glebewise.

Why Talk to One Another

In my life I have not shied away from those who see things differently than I do. On the faith question of belief in a loving God, I expect that we are at different points on a spectrum from non-belief in a loving God to where I am at (and beyond where I am at for that matter). I have written an open letter to those who believe there is no God, and as well to those who believe there may be a God but not knowable to us. For a copy of this open letter to be sent to your email place a request here in my blog being sure to include your email address.

Belief in a Loving God

An electronic brochure is available composed by this blogger on belief in a loving God and the ethical benefit to human life of such a belief. If you wish to receive this copyrighted brochure, please let me know your email address and I will forward a copy to you.

A View on the Healthcare Debate

People die even if they can afford health care. Many people go broke if they get sick. The winners in life have length of days and health to enjoy those days. The super winners have available the wealth to prolong that good fortune for a greater span of time. That is the essence of materialism (the American way).[1]
No one owes us another day of good health, so gratitude is the attitude for each day. I do not begrudge the winners and super winners but trust in society and the family that it will provide for the young a chance at length of days and quality of life. This is not a political posture, but it is a spiritual dimension where I can live my life at peace with myself and my brothers and sisters. Be sure to support health initiatives to protect our young and give them the same chance at life that we have had.
[1] The capitalist provides himself wealth by underlings who work for slave wages. In our pluralist society capitalism has become more palatable because it is not the only "ism." The failure of capitalism or its opposite socialism is that greed prevails in either system and it is only in harnessing that greed that society is left open for the future of children, the poor, and the immigrant. Close that door and you have revolution. Read your history and choose wisely what kind of America remains infertile ground for tyrants and demagogues.

A View on Capitalism

The capitalist provides himself wealth by underlings who work for slave wages. In our pluralist society capitalism has become more palatable because it is not the only "ism." The failure of capitalism or its opposite socialism is that greed prevails in either system and it is only in harnessing that greed that society is left open for the future of children, the poor, and the immigrant. Close that door and you have revolution. Read your history and choose wisely what kind of America remains infertile ground for tyrants and demagogues.