Garden of Eden

Unfortunately, I had forgotten to charge my camera’s battery before we left for Lucas, Kan., recently. I had to rely on a disposable point-and-shoot camera for our pictures there.

The town’s signature attraction is “The Garden of Eden”. Hubby is standing in front of it.

Civil War veteran S.P. Dinsmoor began working in Portland cement while he built his home. He first told the Biblical story of Garden of Eden, then Cain’s murder of his brother Abel. He then began to explain his Populist political philosophy in cement.

Murdered Abel is watched over by angels and a demon. The light is in a snake’s mouth. Dinsmoor electrified his house two years before the rest of Lucas got electricity.

Dinsmoor portrayed bankers and the era’s monopolistic trusts as giant octopuses using their tentacles to steal from the common man. His last, unfinished, work shows Labor crucified by preachers, bankers, lawyers and doctors. He built an onsite mausoleum for himself and his first wife. When she died, she was originally buried in the Lucas cemetery. He disinterred her and reinterred her in solid concrete. When he died, he ordered that his corpse remain available for viewing. Tour includes a look at Dinsmoor’s mummy. With our current economic troubles driven by financial “experts’” foolishness, Dinsmoor’s Populist vision continues to resonate today.

A dream comes true

I did not vote for Barack Obama. My yard sign read “McCain-Palin”. I do not agree with Obama’s agenda and I am concerned about what his proposed policies will do to the country I so love. I have rarely disagreed with a candidate as much as I disagree with President-elect Obama.

With that said, I am proud to be an American today. Within my lifetime, we have progressed from legal segregation to electing an African-American man as President. At least part of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech has come true.

In 1968, a “George Wallace for President” campaign sign loomed over our grade school playground in Chattanooga, Tenn. I didn’t understand what “segregation” meant. Little white girls didn’t have to worry about such issues.

But I remember the horror of Martin Luther King’s assassination. Some Chattanoogans, along with people in 125 other cities, rioted. The city was immediately put under a dusk-to-dawn curfew. I had forgotten about this incident until I was in Chattanooga again in the summer of 1980, when protesters rioted again over the acquittal of two Ku Klux Klan members. The eerie silence of that curfew took me back to 1968 and my uncomprehending fear. Why did I have to stay inside and why did we have to keep all the curtains closed? Why did Daddy have to stay home from work? I didn’t understand and I was frightened.

The true, shocking meaning of segregation didn’t come home to me until I worked for a school year at Longwood College, now University, in Farmville, Va.

Farmville, county seat of Prince Edward County, was at the epicenter of Virginia’s post-Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka strategy of “Massive Resistance”. Students from all-black Robert Russa Moton High in Farmville went on strike to secure a better high school building. With the help of the NAACP, they sued to end segregation. Their case, Dorothy E. Davis, et al. versus County School Board of Prince Edward County, Va., was combined with Brown.

Prince Edward County responded by shuttering its school system from 1959-64, when the threat of prison forced the County Supervisors to reopen public schools. While the schools were closed, white children took advantage of state tuition grants to attend newly-opened private schools. Black children lost five years of education.

When I lived in Farmville, Farmville High, the old all-white high school, had been turned into a storage building. My boss pointed it out to me and told me the shocking story of a county without a public school system.

And now, 40 years after Martin Luther King’s assassination, an African-American has been elected to the nation’s highest office.

Wow.

I pray that he will be a wise and just leader of our country and am committed to continual prayer for him. He’ll need it.

Remembering 9/11

I am too young to remember President Kennedy’s assassination. I wasn’t born when Pearl Harbor was attacked on the Date Which Will Live in Infamy. Those horrendous events are the only ones I consider comparable to the shock we all experienced Sept. 11, 2001.

Even though I well remember that horrible day, recalling it still has an air of unreality. How could such a bizarre attack happen? How could it have succeeded so well? Partially, of course, the attacks were successful because “who would’ve thunk it!”

The night before, I had finished reading a Tom Clancy novel, probably “The Sum of All Fears”. When the alarm went off, the local radio announcer said that a plane had struck one of New York’s Twin Towers. I thought I was dreaming this, that the book had gotten into my dreams. Surely this was an accident, I thought, but I could not shake the idea that I was dreaming. Finally, I went into the kitchen and turned on the TV. Surely that would dispel this nightmare world I’d fallen into.

Instead, I watched in shock and horror as another plane slammed into the second tower. I remember feeling completely numb. I believed my eyes’ evidence, but how could this be happening?

As I sat there open-mouthed, trying to make sense of what was nonsense, Hubby returned from an early-morning meeting. I said that the second tower had been struck. He fell into a chair. He knew that the first tower had been struck. That had happened before he left for his meeting, but he hadn’t yet learned that Tower No. 2 was a target.

We watched numbly until we had to leave for work. I went on my sales route. No one wanted to buy anything. People brought TVs from home to see what was happening. I missed almost nothing because every business was either glued to TV or radio.

I had the feeling that I had fallen into some movie set. None of this could be real, could it? As the events played out, the feeling of unreality kept growing. Even though I knew full well that planes flown by despicable, evil men had flown into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and that, at the cost of their lives, heroes had prevented that foul gang from flying into some other target, I just could not shake the notion that this was not quite real. The scenario was too far out, too unbelievable, too wicked.

That evening, Hubby and I went outside to enjoy our lawn chairs, hoping to receive a respite from the day’s horrors. The sky was empty of planes. No friendly lights blinked above. Just the Moon, stars and planets shone down. The feeling was beyond eerie. I had felt a sense of violation all day, but those were TV images. As we looked at the sky, my sense of violation, anger and shock broke through the unreality of it all.

That weekend, we attended a show in Copper Mountain, Colo. Many of the vendors who usually packed the hall were trapped at other shows, unable to fly out. Some had rented vehicles so they could fill their booths. Some of the booths had displays but no vendors. Some of the booths had vendors but no displays.

One had been in the sky when the attacks occurred and had ended up at an airport far from his intended destination. The pilot had announced that the Towers had been attacked and that he had to get out of the sky, wherever he could find a place to land. Vendor was still shaken from the experience.

That night, we stood out under the stars holding candles, singing patriotic songs. “God Bless America” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” meant more to me than ever before. Many of us shed tears. Our beloved country had been attacked by cowards who used civilians to wage war. We grieved and mourned. We desired justice for those who had been so brutally murdered.

I will never forget. To this day, I feel relieved every time I look up and see contrails or airplane running lights. Something that meant nothing before is now a source of comfort.

God bless America and protect her from all her enemies.

The cost of freedom

Tintype is likely of Daniel Q. or his eventual brother-in-law Daniel D.

Daniel Q. served in the 36th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which saw a great deal of action, including the Battles of Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, the Siege of Chattanooga, the Battles of Resaca and Atlanta. Daniel Q. was captured somewhere in Georgia or Alabama.

He died Jan. 31, 1864, while a prisoner of war. Family originally believed that he had died in Andersonville Prison, the most notorious of the Confederacy’s prisoner-of-war camps, but War Department files showed that he had died in Danville [Va.] Prison, another terrible place.

Daniel D. enlisted near the end of the war and served for about three months.

Excerpt of poem below was written by Union soldier Andrew A. Wright at Murfreesboro, Tenn., May 17, 1863. Daniel Q., who was in Wright's company, sent home a copy to his sister Annie, my great-great-aunt. She had it published in her local newspaper.

Who Wouldn’t Be a Soldier?

“ … Wherever the Cumberland Army shall go
They are brave soldiers of freedom, the world shall e’er know
The Butternuts [Confederates] find us too much for their mettle;
When brave Rosy [Gen. Rosecrans] moves on, they are sure to skedaddle.
And we’ll closely pursue them with [illegible]
Till the last Reb is vanquished and peace is restored
And the Stars and Stripes fly triumphant again
O’er a land that is purged of disloyal men,

Then ’tis homeward we’ll turn and we’ll sing as we go:
Ho! Friends, we are coming, we have conquered the foe,
The rebellion has ended; secession’s played out!

But oh! There are those who will shed bitter tears,
For the loss in this struggle of brave volunteers;
How many there are who in anguish will mourn
For the bold soldier boys who will never return,

Should it be in my lot in this struggle to fall,
Dear friends in the North, I would say to you all;
Mourn not at the fate which may take me from you;
The patriot’s grave with no terrors, I view.
He who tempers the wind to the lamb that is shorn
Will guide, guard and protect you when I’m dead and gone.

But we hope for the best and sad thoughts dispel,
And trust to the end that all will be well,
That the day will soon come when our friends we will greet,
And that circle of loved ones again we shall meet,

Then keep up your courage ’till rebellion is crushed;
[Illegible, illegible] for our cause it is just.
The above are my thoughts and I send them to thee,
From your ever-true brother now in old Tennessee.

Freedom has a price

On this Independence Day, I want to honor our fathers who served our country.

My dad was an aircraft mechanic in the Air Force. Dad served between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Hubby's dad was a radioman in the Navy during the Korean War and afterward.

We are deeply proud and honored to say that our fathers served and protected our country.

My cousins Nicholas and Joshua currently serve in the Navy and Marines. I have a friend stationed in Saudi Arabia and another in Afghanistan.

I cannot express my gratitude enough. Thank you. May God watch over each of you and keep you from harm.

Freedom is not free. Celebrate Independence Day by honoring a veteran and/or service person.

Dust Bowl Blues

Hubby and I watched American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl a few nights ago. Grandma's stories of life in the Dust Bowl years returned vividly to mind, made more real by the footage of that time.

Many people fled the Dust Bowl conditions, packing their belongings into whatever motorized transportation they had, then driving off with their house door standing open.
They were "Dust Bowl Refugees".

But many stayed, including my grandparents.

Dust filtered into everything. People caulked their windows with rags. They hung wet sheets in front of their doors. And still the dust filtered in.

Grandma reminisced about hanging wet towels above my aunts' beds to keep dust out of their lungs. They still coughed black phlegm.

When she served meals, she covered each plate and serving dish with wet towels, but they still had to eat grit with their food.

My grandparents' hired men did not get cash wages, just room and board. That was enough in those days. At least they had a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. Many did not.

My great uncle was caught in one of the terrible dust storms and died of dust pneumonia. Pneumonia was epidemic during those years. Aunt Betty never remarried.

No wonder Woody Guthrie recorded "Dust Bowl Blues".

We read "The Grapes of Wrath" in high school, about a family who fled Dust Bowl conditions for "the promised land" of California.

I asked Grandma once why they stayed on the land.

"Why didn't you flee?"

"This is our home," she said.

Alone in the endless grass

Sometimes we can get a glimpse of what life was like before modern conveniences arrived, of the isolation and back-breaking work our forefathers and foremothers endured. Such is the case at this set of abandoned buildings. The corner of the building in the foreground might have been a bunkhouse. The main house is just visible on the horizon at right.


Civilization barely intrudes on an endless sea of grass. Little topsoil is present in this area. Grass barely disguises limestone. Farming would have been an exercise in futility. Those who lived here would have raised livestock, which require lots of pasture land. Except for the buildings on the horizon, these plains dwellers would have seen no human habitation. Only the wind would have kept them company.

The wind is hard on High Plains dwellers today. What would it have been like for someone alone in the endless grass to listen to the wind's howling day after day? This house was cut from the native rock, but it couldn't have been impervious to the noise of the relentless wind.


At some point, power came to this house. Many farms and ranches were not hooked to power lines until the 1950s. How long did the family who lived here wait for the blessings of electricity and telephones? How long until manual labor was eased? How long until they could reach out and touch someone through the miracle of the telephone? The advent of power and electronic communication, no matter how primitive they seem to us now, would have been cause for great celebration.

The world had come to the lonely High Plains hilltop.

World without End

When I heard that Ken Follett had written a sort of sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, I was thrilled.

"Pillars" ranks as one of the best books I have ever read, full of danger, intrigue, suspense and fascinating details of life in the 1100s. An unscrupulous bishop unites with a vicious lord to tangle with a prior and his master builders in the fictional English town of Kingsbridge. The book held me enthralled from first page to last and still does after repeated readings.

If I had not already read "Pillars", World Without End would certainly have been more satisfying.

"World without End" is set two centuries after "Pillars of the Earth". "World" references the original book's characters, but stands alone. Just as its predecessor, "World" opens with a mystery. But unlike "Pillars", the mystery is not central to the plot.

The characters in the second book seem to be copied from Follett's first visit to Kingsbridge. The builder Merthin Bridger is a copy of the original cathedral's builder Jack Jackson. Merthin's lifelong love Caris Wooler is a copy of Jack's lifelong love Lady Aliena. The twists and turns of Merthin and Caris' love affair somewhat parallel those of Jack and Aliena's. Ralph Wigleigh, Jack and Aliena's descendant, is a copy of the villian William Hamleigh.

"Pillars" was set against the background of Stephen and Maud's battle for kingship and the lawlessness and disasters it spawned. The barons were lawless in Edward II and III's time as well, plus the Black Death slaughtered much of the population.

Still, even though I didn't like "World without End" nearly as well as I loved "Pillars of the Earth", I still recommend it.

I Like Ike

Recently I read Ike: An American Hero" by Michael Korda.


I have been interested in World War II nearly all my life. Books on the war take up several feet of my bookshelves. When I picked up this book, I wondered if I'd learn anything new about Dwight Eisenhower.

I did.

Ike was severely criticized for his management of the war in Europe. The British wanted to have a narrow thrust deep into northern Germany, while Ike favored a broad front, attacking Germany from north to south. Ike's decision was second-guessed during and after the war. Would a narrow front attack have ended the war sooner, saving thousands of lives?

Korda says no. In this decision and many others, Korda supports Ike.

He puts Ike into the tradition of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, a man who rose from humble origins to exalted leadership. Ike followed in the American military tradition of using American technology and unrivaled firepower to win wars. He followed in Grant's footsteps by seeking to destroy the enemy's military capacity, not capture cities and other geographic objectives. As Grant went after Lee's army instead of Richmond, so Ike went after Hitler's armies instead of Berlin and Prague.

One of the war's great controversies still swirls around the policy that Germany, Italy and Japan must surrender unconditionally. Korda supports this decision. At the end of World War I, Germany had not been invaded, their army command remained intact and they deposed the Kaiser themselves. Germany's complete humiliation and destruction ensured that they would have to learn to cooperate with their neighbors.

Korda also points out that Ike was in charge of the world's two greatest amphibious attacks, the one at Salerno, Italy, and the greatest of all, D-Day.

I also learned that Ike opposed using the atomic bomb on Japan. The Japanese were "already defeated" and using the bomb was unnecessary and would only "shock world opinion."

Ike had great energy, patience, common sense, and the greatest advantage of all, the ability to deal with prima donnas like Sir Bernard Montgomery, the British commander. Korda pulls no punches in describing these prima donnas.

Winston Churchill was definitely on the prima donna list. I had always thought that the British aristocracy kept up impeccable manners. This book shreds that assumption. Churchill is twice said to have had "atrocious" table manners. "… A concern for good table manners was essentially middle class or Frenchified."

I also learned more about Ike's life between the war and the presidency, but I was disappointed in the short shrift Korda gave Ike's presidential years.

Laying aside that issue, I liked "Ike" the book.

Learn more on all things World War II

Carbon paper and typewriter erasers

I stood in for Ms. Math Teacher today, getting called in at the last minute. School starts at 7:50. I got the call at 7:15. I had been up since 5:30, but hadn't showered or eaten breakfast yet. Yep, I never know what I'm going to get.

She told me to show an episode of the TV show "Numb3rs", but we couldn't get it to work. iTunes insisted on a password that did not exist. Technology is wonderful, but only when it works!

Instead of watching a great TV show, I had study hall all day. Actual teaching was out of the question. I'm not at all qualified to teach math! As I told one student, "Math and I are not friends."

During one "class", a paraprofessional and I started discussing my previous post about technological changes in the classroom.

"Do you remember carbon paper?" she asked.

(It's the blue sheet in this picture. The artist has drawn or traced the image on the top sheet. The pen pressure transferred the ink on the carbon paper to the bottom sheet.)

"I hoarded every piece I got," I said. Carbon paper was relatively expensive and didn't last long.

When I was in high school and early in my college days, carbon paper was the main way to make copies of one's work. It was messy and inconvenient. Mistakes could be erased on the original, but they would still appear on the carbon copy as strikeovers. And if the carbon got too worn, pieces of the original would be missing.

Since the machines had no memory, mistakes could not simply be deleted and redone. Enter the typewriter eraser.

In theory, the typist could use the rubber wheel to erase the mistake and the brush to sweep away any crumbs of eraser material. My eraser hated me. It didn't erase the mistake; it erased the paper! Holey documents just don't tend to be acceptable.

Correction fluid (like Wite-Out or Liquid Paper) was also a mistake-covering option, but it had grave disadvantages as well. Theoretically, white correction fluid matched white paper. But white to one paper manufacturer isn't white to another. And the typist had to wait for the fluid to dry. If she got in a hurry, the ink from the typewriter ribbon would smear.

The fluid often began to dry out before the bottle was empty. Correction fluid that was laid on too thickly made an unsightly bump on the paper. So typists had to keep bottles of thinner on hand. To use the thinner, the typist put her thumb over the top of a pipette and remove it from the thinner bottle. Then she injected it into the opening of the fluid bottle and removed her thumb. Thinner theoretically flowed into the correction fluid and a few shakes would make the fluid reuseable. Note that I said "theoretically". Sometimes the thinner worked and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I had thinner on my desk instead of in the fluid bottle.

When erasable typing paper appeared on the market, I bought it. That paper was more expensive than regular typing paper, but the lack of aggravation was worth every penny. No more typewriter eraser, no more correction fluid. An ordinary eraser took care of typographical errors. Typos be gone! That paper had one drawback, though. Type tended to smear if handled immediately, but that was a minor issue compared to the alternative.

I was so delighted when memory typewriters appeared on the market and overjoyed when I finally got a computer that could erase mistakes before they ever ruined a piece of paper.

But more about that later.

New technology = distractions

Classrooms have certainly changed since I went to high school and even since I student taught.

I graduated in 1980. The school building housed not one computer. We learned to type on IBM Selectric typewriters. The roar of those motors and the chatter of the keys was audible well away from that classroom. We watched movies on reels.

I was ahead of my time. During study halls, I hid a tape recorder in a large notebook and ran an earpiece from it up my coat sleeve into my ear. The sound quality was horrible, but it was music!



I student taught at my alma mater in 1993, the final step before earning my second bachelor's degree. The typewriters had been replaced by computers. The first time I walked past the typing classroom, now the keyboarding room, I was shocked how quiet it was. Instead of that roar, only a light clicking sound came out of a classroom full of computers. I showed movies on a VCR. I once confiscated a Walkman. We'd seen cell phones on "Hart to Hart", but no one I knew had one.

Students passing notes were the main classroom distractions at both times.

This morning, my class went to an online German teaching site, Hennings' Haus. Typewriters were loud, but I never had found their sound to be annoying. One of the educational games on this web site featured a man searching for various destinations. His shoes squeaked on every step he took. Fingernails on the chalkboard, especially after 4 hours of it.

I circled the room continually looking for students who had sneaked over to YouTube. I wrote up half of one class for "YouTubing" and I probably missed more of them.

Friday I confiscated my first cell phone. I nearly confiscated a BlackBerry today.

All these toys distract both the students and the teacher.

Technology definitely has its downsides, but I still wouldn't want to be without it.

Tower of the Plains

Blogger has decided to behave today and let me upload more pictures of Nebraska's state capitol.

The capitol dome is covered with gold and topped by a statue called "The Sower". Mother told me that the gold was stripped off during the World Wars and used to pay for them. The dome was simply painted with metallic paint thereafter. After the wars, the state regilded the dome. She said that the dome was noticeably less shiny during and immediately after the wars. Babylonian ruler Hammurabi, the man depicted on the corner, promulgated one of the first known law codes. Cuneiform letters are below his bas relief.



This is a view of the second level. The cutout reliefs are of the Magna Carta, and two other scenes, perhaps the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The Magna Carta signing is the center panel.



Dad said that much of the building was paid for by voluntary contributions from the people of Nebraska.

I have not been able to confirm either story.


This is the south elevation of the building. Previous picture is a detail of the building's upper left cornice with the dome beyond. We arrived around 5 p.m., so these are state government workers going home for the evening.

I had forgotten the craftsmanship and design that had gone into the "Tower of the Plains". It was a joy to see such beautiful, meticulous work, especially on a day when the light was so beautifully even!

Nebraska state capitol

My husband and I went to Lincoln with my dad for medical tests. We had just enough time to visit the state capitol's south side. This view is from the southeast.

For me, a native Nebraskan, Lincoln is a piece of home even though I've never lived there. The heart of every Cornhusker probably turns to Memorial Stadium, home of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Mine does, too, but this time I wanted to see the capitol again.

I wish I could have walked all the way around it and photographed it from all angles, but time was short. Maybe someday I'll be able to give this building the time and attention I'd like to give it.

I intended to add more pictures, but for whatever reason, Blogger won't let me do it today. So we'll have to try again later!

It Ain't Gonna Rain No More

My grandparents (at the right of this family photo from the period) lived on the outskirts of the Dust Bowl, but they still experienced the drought and dust.

One night during a prolonged dry spell, my grandmother sat down at the piano and began to play, "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More, No More".

This is the chorus:

It ain't gonna rain no more, no more
It ain't gonna rain no more
How in the heck can I wash my neck
If it ain't gonna rain no more?

As she was playing and singing, the sky suddenly darkened and lightning struck the house. All the nails were blackened on that side.

My grandparents' hired men lived with them. One had been napping in the upstairs bedroom on that side. He came down the stairs so fast that he didn't seem to have touched the stairs at all.

"Don't play that song again!" he said. "That song called down the lightning on my head!"

She never again played "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More."

During dry spells, I often teased Grandma that she should break the drought by playing that song. She pursed her lips and shook her head each time.

Several versions of this song exist, and I have no idea which verses she was singing. She would never say.

Dust Bowl house

The light Wednesday morning was just perfect for picture taking. Unfortunately, we had miles to go before we slept. But I still couldn't resist this stop. This house had attracted my attention for years and the light was too good to miss.

I turned the color photos into sepia toned ones using the built-in actions from Photoshop CS3. The sepia tones remind me of the Dust Bowl years.



My grandparents, who lived through those years, would probably prefer not to be reminded.


I also photographed this house in 1991 or 1992. If I find those photos, I'll be interested to see the changes in the house.