Levant Report

For some time now, I have refrained from commenting on the deteriorating situation in Syria (and Egypt, for that matter.)  The political circus that was the 2012 election cycle distracted me, to be sure.  But beyond that, I was truly depressed over the whole affair--the loss of innocent life in Syria, the destruction of churches and property, the refugee status of some acquaintances there, the almost universal misinformation (at least in the U.S.) about the true nature of the conflict.  I could not help but believe that the Devil we know was preferable to the untold demons we were doing our best to unleash.  Perhaps the most discouraging aspect, however, was watching helplessly as American foreign policy does what it always seems to do, regardless of the party in power.  Secretary of State Clinton breezily assures the world that Assad must go and that "democracy" will prevail, while  the media paid court to John McCain and Lindsey Graham (as if they know what the hell they are talking about) who howl that we are letting the rebellion slip away by not pouring more money and weapons into the conflict.  Yes, the tent of American Exceptionalism is broad indeed.

I was encouraged by a bit of news last week.  We learned that President Obama rejected the advice of Secretary of State Clinton and the Pentagon, who urged him to ramp-up support for the Syrian rebels.  That is a start.  But American voices should continue to question the accepted wisdom on the Syrian crisis, and what our response should be.  One certainly won't find this in conventional U.S. new sources.  But there are independent voices, such as the well-known  www.antiwar.com, for example. 

I also recommend my good friend's new blog, here.  He is a young man with a connection to Syria who is passionate about the subject.  Bookmark his blog and encourage him to continue his postings.  I know I look forward to what he has to say.

Andrew Bacevich is a National Treasure

  
     "How to revive the flagging fortunes of the Republican Party might matter to some people, but it's not a question that should concern principled conservatives.  Crypto-conservatives aplenty stand ready to shoulder that demeaning task.  Tune in Fox News  or pick up the latest issue of National Review or the Weekly Standard and you'll find them, yelping, whining, and fingering our recently reelected president as the Antichrist.
    

     Conservatives who prefer thinking to venting--those confident that a republic able to survive eight years of George W. Bush can probably survive eight years of Barack Obama--confront a question of a different order.  To wit:  does authentic American conservatism retain any political viability in this country in the present age?  That is, does homegrown conservatism have any lingering potential for gaining and exercising power at the local, state, or national levels?  Or has history consigned the conservative tradition--as it has Marxism--to a status where even if holding some residual utility as an analytical tool, it no longer possesses value as a basis for practical action?"

From Counterculture Conservatism:  The right needs less Ayn Rand, more Flannery O'Connor by Andrew Bacevich in the January/February 2013 issue of The American Conservative (not yet online)

2013 Georgian Monastery Tour

Once again I have the great pleasure of helping spread the word about the annual Georgian Monastery Tour.  If you have ever thought about visiting the country (and what right-thinking person hasn't,) then there is no better way to do so than with John and Luarsab and the crew.  I am not a tour person, but my 2007 visit was a highlight of my life.  I am seriously considering ways in which I could justify going this year.  I suppose the house could go another year without paint. 

Aesthetic Irresponsibility in a Broad and Mellow Land (Part II)

          With this post, I continue a few observations on W. E. D. Allen's 1932 A History of the Georgian People.  The author contends that in the late Middle Ages, and during the transition into the Modern Age, that Georgia's status differed little from that of Spain, France or England.  In other words, by comparison there was nothing intrinsically different about the obstacles the Georgians faced, when compared to these other peoples as they were developing into great empires.  So the question remains, why did the Spanish, French and English succeed (if that is the right word) and the Georgians failed?  Allen may be on to something, but in so doing may call into question traditional definitions of success and failure.
    
     ...the difficulties which impeded the consolidation of a strong Caucasian State were no greater than those which had stood in the way of the rising Houses of France and Castile in the West.  Set against Persian influence in the eastern Caucasus the predominance of the English in Anjou, Gascony and Guienne or of the Muslims in Andalusia; set against the dinintegrant local lordships in Imereti and Samtzkhe the dukedoms of Brittany and Burgundy or the powerful independencies of Aragon and Navarre; you have the same picture.  And the problem presented to the Bagratids by the mountaineers of Circassia, Osseti and Daghestan was no greater than to the Plantagenets and Tudors was the problem of "the Celtic fringe" in Ireland, Wales and Scotland.  For the Georgian Kingdom of the Bagratids, the possibilities of power, of nascent nationhood, the chances of history, were much the same as those of Aragon and Castle, little less than those of Valois France and of Plantagenet England.  And therefore we may inquire why at the  of the eighteenth century, when France and Spain and England had grown to be the proud world-empires of the West, Georgia was no more than a string of paltry principalities ready to the may of the Russian Emperors.  In history we speak much of economic forces, of geographical conditions, of universal political tendencies.  Yet so much of it is man-made and chance-made.  Character and luck are the fundaments of Empire.  The characters of individual men and the luck of not infrequently a loaded dice it was that gave England power in the five continents, and left German emerging tardily from mediaeval divisions to impotent resentful unity; that made the Castilians rise to Empire, while ancient cultured Italy remained a congeries of senile principalities; that thrust down Sweden with the feckless Vasas and reared up the Dutch, so careful, obstinate and grasping; that sank derelict the jabbering liberties of Poland, and founded the sombre rigidity of the Muscovian Monarchy.

     In Georgia history went askew....the Georgians had ample time, one hundred years, in which to consolidate a stable kingdom based on a common nationhood, which no less than sprawling, disjointed Poland might have resisted the onset of the Turks....Yet in that century the political battle of the Georgian people was lost, and the nation passed to a perpetual minimality....In Georgia, the shattered and dissected monarchy forgot even its vain pretension to rule "from Nikopsia to Derbend"; "the Mussulman third" of the Caucasus which in the twelfth and even in the fourteenth century had been partly won and might have been consolidated, was lost for ever.

     The Georgian rivals fought like chivalrous boys; they did not kill like kings.  The House of Bagrationi spawned far and wide its handsome knightly claimants, but not one of them grew cunning, mean and watchful-to scotch the rest.  Here were no cold, wary Tudors whetting the axe for their distant cousins, but a pack of Christian gentlemen wasting the land in chivalrous fracas.   (emphasis mine)  In this period the gallantry of one claimant towards another is as amazing as the futility of their plots and combinations.  From which let us remember that is is not Black Princes that have built the nations, but black livers [and]...that nations, like tunnels, roads and bridges, are not built by gentle men.

     One of my core beliefs about history is the fact that it can turn on a dime.  Character, circumstances and chance--what some would characterize as luck--are often more important to the direction of history than any socio-economic factors, or God forbid, ideologies.  I think Allen would certainly agree with all that.  In short, he finds that the Georgian Kingdom failed because its people were too foolish, too gallant, too romantic, too gentle, and dare I say it it--too Christian.  As my son put it, they were not serious enough about killing to become a "great" nation. 

     When the two of us traveled to Svaneti in 2006, our guide hired three armed guards to follow our rattle-trap old Lada up into the Caucasus.  I thought it was overkill at the time, as I have never concerned myself much about personal safety.  She explained that solitary vehicles on these mountain passes made easy targets for local bandits.  These brigands would rob travelers, but they never committed murder.  She went on to explain that if you had wine in the vehicle, they would probably uncork it and pass the bottle around with you before fading back into the forest.

          

Aesthetic Irresponsibility in a Broad and Mellow Land

Teimuraz I by Castelli

     I am still having quite a time with W.E.D. Allen's A History of the Georgian People (see three posts previous.)  The author detects a bit of the heroic in the Georgians--likening them to the Irish and the Spanish--and sees this as the defining characteristic of the nation.  This is not just literary hyperbole on his part.  Georgia is an altogether different place--you can see it, you can feel it, and somehow, you want to part of it.  The region worked its charms on me as much as it did on Allen.  I recall sitting in the airport terminal, awaiting my flight out of the country, and being unable to stop crying.  That has never happened to me, either going to or coming from anywhere else.  Even if I am never able to return there, Georgia will remain the great and grand adventure of my life. 

     A few of Allen's observations gave me pause, but only at first.  For example, he did not find them to be a particularly religious people.  I would beg to differ with Allen on this point, as that was not my experience at all.  I have to consider, however, that he was an Englishman viewing a Soviet republic during the 1930s, where outward religiosity was certainly circumscribed.  (I recall my visit with the caretaker of the small village church in the Caucasus where he allowed us to see the priceless 12th-century icon of St. George--hidden by villagers for the 70 years of Communist rule--then passing around a bottle of homemade vodka there in the sanctuary.)    The--shall we say--exuberance of the Georgian people (others might characterize it as boisterousness or even rambunctiousness) carries over wherever they are--yes, even in a church service.  Little of it would be recognizable as piety, as understood in the Western sense.  So, I get what Allen is saying, and will concur with him, but only up to a point.  (I also detect in Allen some antogonism to the particularities of Christiantiy, or rather anything beyond its cultural sheen, which is not unexpected of an English author of that era.) 

     He also noted that Georgian culture emphasized heroes rather than martyrs.  Here again, this struck me wrong at first--particularly after having visited Davit Gareja twice.  Upon on further reflection, however, I believe he may be on to something.  When you read accounts of the Georgians saints, they are quite often stories shot-through with the heroic grand gesture. 

     Allen is a romantic and when he compares the Georgian people to the Armenians, the latter comes-off at a decided disadvantage.  The term he employs for the former is "aesthetic irresponsibility," while the Armenians are described as "individual materialists."  Still later, Allen skillfully summarizes the Turkish interlopers in the region.  But enough of my commentary....

     The survival of the Georgians, not only as a people but as an individual cultural and political whole during these centuries of aggressive Imperial intervention from west and east and of formidable sporadic attack from nomads--Khazars, Turks and Mongols--is remarkable.


Gori by Castelli

     There is a curious element in the character of the Georgian people, a kind of irresponsible individuality of the nation as a unit, which is comparable to a somewhat similar individuality which may be observed in the national characters of both the Spaniards and the Irish.

     This characteristic of the Georgian people may be described as an aesthetic irresponsibility.  Thus the Georgians, like the Spanish and the Irish, have come under many forms of alien political and cultural coercion.  They accept this domination, but they do not take it seriously, and when the domination passes the people that have suffered it remain in character much the same as formerly.  It would be untrue to say that they do not resist such domination; they frequently resist it savagely, but they resist as a nation, as a living animal, and their resistance is not for a principle.  Thus we find throughout the history of Georgia, as of Spain and of Ireland, that it is the nation that is held sacred and not this or that principle.  And if one people or the other has fought with ostensibly religious aims, it will be found that it is because the religious cause represented the national cause.  The Georgians are not a religious people, neither are they a political people, but they have a very strong and abiding sense of their community as a nation, and their individuality as a nation.  This sense of national individuality is very old--far older than the clamant sense of nationhood which is voiced by so many of the comparatively young European nations.  The Georgian sense of themselves as a nation certainly dates from the time of the mediaeval Georgian kingdom, and it is voiced by Rusthaveli and other of their mediaeval poets.

     The sense of nation is in itself a kind of aestheticism--a form of sensual taste--a preference for one's kind in contrast to other kind.

     One the other hand no man--or no people--of essential aestheticism, of taste, can conceive a fixed preference for a certain religious or political conception.  Martyrdom is essentially a breach of aesthetics, while heroism on the other had is an orgasm of individualistic artistry.  Thus we find that the Georgians are often, indeed always, heroes and never, or very seldom, martyrs.

     In this "aesthetic irresponsibility" of the Georgians lies the secret both of their charm as a nation and of their survival as a strongly individualistic national unit.  The Georgians retain in a remarkable degree, both individually and as a people, the clear and gentle outlook, the free and inquiring intelligence and the high amoral and untrammelled mind of primitive man.  The generosity, the loving simplicity and the humanity, the animal love of life which characterizes the Homeric poems and the ancient literature of the Celts and Scandinavians lights the pages of the mediaeval Georgian epics and declares indeed the mind of the Georgian of these days.

     It is this "aesthetic irresponsibility" which has secured the integrity of the Georgians through the vicissitudes of their history.  Many political systems and many creeds have lain heavy on the country.  They have passed away, and the Georgian has remained, laughing, easy, unchanged and untroubled.

     The remoteness of the geographical position of the country has been one of the fundamental causes of the strong sense of kind--of national individuality--of the Georgians.  this remoteness has at once isolated them and caused them to develop a sentiment of long and ancient and independent communion among themselves.

     At the same time the climate is a mellow joyous climate and the wine is good, so that neither the air nor the diet are conducive to the worrying over principles and the gnawing over grievances.

     The unfortunate Armenians, on the other hand, nursing hard dogma upon their icy uplands, made material in this bleak economic want, have as a nation come very near at times to that physical extinction which usually awaits the martyr, and to that cultural extinction which falls to the lot of a community composed of individual materialists.  For during the early Middle Ages the Armenians fought doggedly against the Muhammadan invaders as the enemies of the Christian religion and they entered with enthusiastic heat into the interminable theological disputes that rent the East Christian world.  But the individual materialism which in inherent in men born in a sterile unfriendly land always drew off the most vigorous spirits of each succeeding generation into the service of rich masters--Byzantine, Arab, Mongol and Turk.  Thus we may view upon a very broad and general background of the history of these peoples--the Georgians in their broad and mellow land, with their troubadours and light philosophies, their joistings, their drinking-bouts, their heroes and their games; and the Armenians, a dour and dogged yet self-pitying people, with their dogmas and their rites, their monkish chroniclers, their hard soldiers, their merchants and their martyrs.


The Ambassador of Samegrelo in the Entrance Gate of the King of Imereti by Castelli

     The mediaeval Kingdom of Georgia struck the imagination of Western travellers, Marco Polo, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo and others, as an isolated community of Western culture and Christian religion surviving in the midst of powerful Mussulman tyrannies and half barbarous tribes and peoples.  And we now may marvel less at the military prowess which maintained the independence of this culture than at the tenacity of those Classic traditions of life and at the vigour of that East-Christian civilization which after every devastating storm cloud sprout new twigs of life upon the ancient soil of Colchis.        (pages 71-74.)

     And the Turks became masters of Anatolia and peopled it, which the earlier Asiatic powers, Persian and Arabian, could never do, really because they liked the land; it suited their dour northladn nature, and they wanted to inhabit it.  They brought with them the beliefs and ways of Islam, civil clothes but lately borrowed by spiritually naked pastoralists, and they found and used and lived upon, rather than built upon, the debris of the feudal culture of the East Christian world.  These needy reivers, fierce destroyers, now settled over their wide provinces as comfortable and unprogressive, but still warlike barons; they built their feudal states and pressed against the broken towers, left standing, of Eastern Christianity in the Mediterranean coastlands, along the Pontus, and in Georgia.  (pages 92-93.)
        

Homily 51

 

I thought I would start off the New Year on a high note by quoting from St. Isaac the Syrian.  The problem with doing this, however, is finding a place to stop.   Here is a selection from Homily 51:

Justice does not belong to the Christian way of life and there is no mention of it in Christ's teaching.  Rejoice with the joyous and weep with those who weep, for this is the sign of limpid purity.  Suffer with those who are ill and mourn with sinners; with those who repent, rejoice.  Be every man's friend, but in your mind remain alone.  Be a partaker in the sufferings of all men, but keep your body distant from all.  Rebuke no one, revile no one, not even men who live very wickedly.  Spread your cloak over the man who is falling and cover him.  And if you cannot take upon yourself his sins and receive his chastisement in his stead, then at least patiently suffer his shame and do not disgrace him.  Do not strive with men for the sake of the belly.   And do not hate for the sake of honour.  and do not find pleasure in judging....If you cannot be still within your heart, then at least make still your tongue.  If you cannot give right ordering to your thoughts, at least give right ordering to your senses.  If you cannot be solitary in your mind, at least be solitary in your body.  If you cannot labour with your body, at least be afflicted in mind.  If you cannot keep your vigil standing, keep vigil sitting on your pallet, or lying down.  If you cannot fast for two days at a time, at least fast till evening.  And if you cannot fast until evening, then at least keep yourself from satiety.  If you are not holy in your heart, at least be holy in body.  If you do not mourn in your heart, at least cover your face with mourning.  If you cannot be merciful, at least speak as though you are a sinner.  If you are not a peacemaker, at least do not be a troublemaker.  If you cannot be assiduous, at least in your thought be like a sluggard.  If you are not victorious, do not exalt yourself over the vanquished.  If you cannot close the mouth of a man who disparages his companion, at least refrain from joining him in this.

Know that if fire goes forth from you and consumes other men, God will demand from your hands the souls which your fire has burned.  And if you yourself do not put forth the fire, but are in agreement with him who does, and are pleased by it, in the judgement you will be reckoned as his accomplice.  If you love gentleness, be peaceful.  If you are deemed worthy of peace, you will rejoice at all times.  Seeks understanding, not gold.  Clothe yourself with humility, not fine linen.  Gain peace, not a kingdom.

The Untold History

      I have enjoyed watching Olver Stone's The Untold History of the United States.  A good friend of mine described it to another friend as "taking everything you' ve ever heard about American history, and flipping it on its head."  Unfortunately, that is not too much of an exaggeration, though it speaks more to our general ignorance of real history rather than to Stone's well-known agenda.  I find his account to be closer to the truth, rather than myth, end of things.
     Taki Theodoracopoulos, of all people, has some nice things to say about Stone in a recent column.  One would not normally think of the two as natural allies.  Taki admits as much.

Oliver Stone’s The Untold History of the United States is a very courageous effort to set the record straight. Stone is an old adversary of mine with whom I’ve recently made my peace. I agree very much on certain parts of his extremely controversial theories about his country. But unlike most other historians, Oliver has paid his dues. He won a Bronze Star in Vietnam as a grunt, whereas he could have gotten deferments, since he was at Harvard and near the top of his class. Stone sees Uncle Sam as a rapacious imperialist. He cites American repression of the Filipino struggle for independence around the turn of the 20th century and the repeated US interventions and covert operations in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. He names capitalism as the bogeyman. He also says that the United States, not the Soviet Union, bore the lion’s share of responsibility for perpetuating the Cold War.

The Treasure Book

 

          From all accounts, everyone will be reading books on Kindles within five years time.  Please go on without me.  I appreciate the advances in technology as much as anyone.  I revel in the ease of online research--for any subject imaginable.  But if the future portends books that are not books at all, but mere passing images on a screen, then this is the stop where I get off.

     I recently purchased--after months of careful deliberation--a 1932 first edition of W. E. D. Allen's A History of the Georgian People.  I am slowly assembling books on the history and culture of the Caucasus region.   Allen's work is hard to find, but an essential component of such a collection.  I found only one copy online, in Adelaide, Australia.  What a book this is--running about 400 pages, with incredible plates and illustrations, and not one, but three fold-out maps!

     William E. D. Allen (1901-1973), a Belfast native, was an interesting character in his own right.  He covered the Greco-Turkish War as a military correspondent, and later the Rif War in North Africa.  During the 1920s, he traveled extensively in the Soviet Union, and stumbled upon Georgia along the way.  He published this history when only 31 years of age.  He would write other books, but Allen always came back to the Caucasus, his first love.   He served in Parliament for a term, and during the 1930s became involved with Owen Mosley's Fascist movement in England, though there is speculation that he was, in fact, a M15 informant.  Allen covered the war in Abysinnia in the 1943.  Finally, in 1949, he returned to Ulster--and the family business--along with his third wife, Nathalie Maximovna.

    Allen never attained great reknown--outside Georgiophilic circles--as an historian.  And yet, he is an engaging writer, one who sweeps the reader up in his narrative.  For example, he wrote the following in the first chapter:

To cross the Caucasus imposes on the mind a great significance.  It is one of the journeys in life which are worth the making--and a certain tribulation.  You have left behind that drear Eurasian steppe--the breeding-ground of slaves and conquerors and passivistic thoughts, where the mists and flat forests and the oozing swamps can maudle men.  You are among the high shining mountains; the sparkling seas are near; the woods of this uneven country are ever changing--not always the lament birches and mean-visaged pines of the sandy steppe.  You are in the lands of Nearer Asia, where man, among the mountains, between the seas, and in the pellucid sunlight, early grew to prying intellect; lands of vivid life, of doings and undoings, or risings up and fallings down, of splendours and of shambles, of wisdom and of scattering.

Sadly, no one writes history like that today.

     A bookplate in the volume identifies its former owner as Frederic Hardwicke Knight (1911-2008), noted author and photographer.  Adventurous from his early youth, he bummed around Europe in the 1920s and 30s, often working as a photo-journalist.  Hardwicke Knight photographed archeological digs in Greece, was in Spain during the Civil War, crossed Mount Ararat, and finally found himself in Moscow during the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s. Knight registered as a  conscientious objector during World War II and served in the medical corps.  In 1957, he and his family relocated to southern New Zealand.  An avid collector, Knight donated some 20,000 items to a New Zealand museum in 1991.  His remaining items were auctioned-off in Australia in 2010, from whence my book found its way to an Adelaide bookseller.

     But the pages of A History of the Georgian People revealed treasures beyond the mere words themselves.  For starters, three pages of colored plates were stuck inside the front cover.  They depicted medieval Roman Christian religious art--one a profile of Saints Peter and Paul, another of the two saints flanking the Virgin Mary, one of Moses, and finally--the only one that could be considered an icon--a print of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian of Rome.  Someone--probably Knight-scribbled some notes on the side of a couple.  The one of Moses is said to be 11th-century. 

     A faded newspaper was also neatly folded within the front cover.  I carefully unfolded it to find the entire front page (and obviously, page two on the reverse) of the December 26, 1937 edition of the English language Moscow Daily News, sold for 10 kopeks.  The front page contained reports from the Spanish Civil War, a story noting the rise in deposits of Soviet savings banks which, in the paper's opinion, reflected the "constant rise of well-being of Soviet toilers," and the flight of the Soviet dirigible from Moscow to Sverdlovsk, heralding soon-to-be regularly scheduled commercial flights.  Yet the main story on the front page (contained in three articles no less) was the 750th anniversary of the writing of Shota Rustaveli's epic Georgian poem, The Knight in the Panther's Skin.  The fact that Stalin himself was Georgian probably goes a long way towards explaining why this particularly anniversary was such a really, really big deal.

Like the people of the whole of the Soviet Union, freed by the Great Socialist Revolution from exploitation and oppression by native and foreign landlords and capitalists, the Georgian people for the first time in their history possess the necessary political, economic and cultural conditions enabling them to restore, develop and enjoy the best heritage of their past.  The triumph of the Leninist-Stalinist national policy has made it possible for a reborn Georgia to commemorate the Rustaveli anniversary as a truly people's holiday.

The editor goes on at great length in that vein. And, the entire second page is devoted to Rustaveli--with a portrait, excerpts from the work, and analysis of the story and its importance to Georgian cultural history. 

     Hardwicke Knight was in Moscow during this time and undoubtedly purchased the newspaper.  He could have easily placed the article within the pages of the book later on, but I enjoy believing that the book was there with him in Mosocw at that time.  Hardwick Knight was a man of many interests--a book on Georgia history would not be out of place on his bookshelf.

     The next item was a typed, legal-size page, inserted next to a plate depicting Georgian King Irakli II.  The narrative outlines his (presumably Knight's) experiences at the Koban archeological dig "on the Military Road."  (The Military Road connects Tbilisi, by way of a tunnel through the Caucasus, with Russia.)  A little research revealed that the Koban site is in what we would now call North Ossetia.  The archeologists were employing native Kasbek tribesmen to help with the excavation of recently-discovered catacombs.  The workers were digging out the artifacts behind the archeologists' backs and then having their children sell them back the next day.  Knight decided to leave.

I have no desire to remain and work here for the search for untouched tombs is going to be a heartbreaking job and better fitted to the enthusiasm of a bunch of young communists....Archaeology has often been a military undertaking, and there is much to be said for it.  Discipline is most important.

     The next find is an undated "letter to the editor" of the Times of London by the author W. E. D. Allen, then of Tonacombe Manor, Morwenstowe, near Bude, Cornwall.  The letter is titled "Social Structure of Albania," and begins, as follows:

Sir,--The Begverlazzi referred to by your Special Correspondent in Tirana is presumably Shevket Bey Verlaci, who is undoubtedly the richest man in Albania, and who controls a wide area round Elbasan...

Allen knew a thing or two about a great many places, it seems--as did the owner of his book.  In comparison, we know nothing much at all.

     Between pages 274 and 275, I found a folded page with a simple sketch of a woman.  In one sense, it was little more than doodling, but obviously done by someone with artistic talent.  There is no clue as to her identity.

     A few pages further on, a small grainy photograph is inserted.  The pictures shows six children on some sort of cart, with a stone wall for a backdrop.  For someone who later made his career as a photographer, this snapshot is not particularly clear.  Maybe that is why is was stuck between the pages of a book.  One can only guess as to the location of the picture--but I would suggest the southern rim of the old Soviet Union, perhaps at the time of the Koban archaeological dig.

   Finally, there is a short note from Cambridge University Press, dated February 20, 1941 (this, I believe, during the Blitz) to W.W. Hill, Esq., "The Schoolmaster", Toddington Manor, nr. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.  I do not know how Prof. Hill fits into the narrative.    The publisher regretted to inform him that they would be unable to supply a review copy of W.E.D. Allen's The Ukraine, A History, "as the number of copies available was severely limited.

 

     I realize that I am merely the caretaker of this book and the treasures it contains.  Perhaps one day it will fall into someone else's care, and I can only hope they get as much enjoyment out of it as I have done.  Try doing that with a Kindle.

Dr. Wood on Tolkien and O'Connor

           Dr. Ralph Wood, professor of Literature and Theology at Baylor University, recently delivered two excellent presentations in Tyler, Texas at the invitation of the Kalos Foundation.  Sylvania Church, technically still Baptist--but now something a bit more--hosted the lecture on J.R.R. Tolkien.  The Bishop Gorman Catholic High School library served as site, appropriately enough, for the invitation-only talk on Flannery O'Connor.  I cannot imagine two literary subjects that would be of any greater interest to me.
          Baylor University has come a long way from the days when Brann the Iconoclast characterized the Baylor Board of Regents as "men who could not father an original thought if hurled bodily into the womb of the Goddess of Wisdom."  A good friend of mine was one of several professors recently brought on board, partially in a conscious effort to increase the Orthodox presence on campus.  12% of the student body is Roman Catholic.  If those numbers fail to impress, just remember that this is the premier Baptist college in Texas and the Southwest.
          Dr. Wood, now age 70, grew up in East Texas.  He received a $150 scholarship for one year at the old East Texas State Teachers College in Commerce.  There, in 1962, he attended a rare lecture by Flannery O'Connor (this two years prior to her death.)  The rest, as they say, is history.  He has been studying, lecturing and writing about her ever since--and along the way, introduced young evangelical Protestants to the riches of the Catholic literary tradition (and I lump Russian Orthodox writers in with this as well.)
           Wood remains Baptist, or as he says "Bapto-Catholic."  His somewhat different Baptist church in Waco has cherry-picked some elements of the liturgical calendar, has icons in the classrooms, and tries to convey that the communion service is something more than a memorial.  All well and good, that.  Rather than criticize the inadequacies and severe limitations of the mix-and-match approach, I will just express deep appreciation for the work that he does.  You might say that Dr. Wood is simpatico, and a great and genial friend of Catholic and Orthodox Christians.
          I arrived at the Tolkien lecture fairly early, which gave me time to observe the audience as they filtered in to the sanctuary.  I have been a long time away from such evangelical settings, and I find they now makes me uncomfortable.  Without sounding like a misanthrope, all that chatty, forced-friendly hoo-rawing just strikes me the wrong way. I suppose it was the lack of reverence--no sense of being in a church.  They could have just as easily have been at a concert or football game. [And, I am showing my age here, but I find it hard to stay in the company of people who talk on cell-phones in a restaurant (consequently finding myself eating out less and less) and am still shocked by young people who have not been taught to not wear hats in church.  As you can gather, I am well on my way to being an old crank.]
          Dr. Wood had some harsh things to say to his audiences, if they were listening closely.  He pointed out that the faith espoused by both Tolkien and O'Connor was an "angular" Christianity-- at cross purposes with the world.  He commented that the world one saw on television was the same as in "our churches" (and by this I take it he meant evangelicalism.)  "No difference," he concluded.  In the second lecture, Wood referenced O'Connor's dictum that "sentimentality is to Christianity as pornography is to art."  He told his audience that the next time the "Holy overhead projection screen" descended with the latest praise songs, just to think of it as the unfolding of a Playboy centerfold, for it is exactly the same thing.  He made several scathing references to our obsession with "shopping."  Dr. Wood gently chided one questioner for his use of the word "consumer," and noted its connection to "one who devours." 
           In the Q&A, one lady struggled a bit with her question.  She wondered why all these great literary figures (or at least the ones under discussion) were, well, you know...Catholic? She had hit upon something, however.  Protestants can write great literature, to be sure--just not like this.  Dr. Wood used this as a lead-in to introduce his listeners to the idea of a sacramental world view, and how this could impact literature and the arts.  Another questioner commented that "he just didn't see the salvation story in Tolkien."  Dr. Wood strongly suggested that the problem was not with Tolkien, but with the false premise the man was trying to force upon his literature.  Clearly, if you are expecting a story line akin to that found on the "Christian fiction" aisle at the Lifeway Christian Bookstore, then you are not going to have much use for Tolkien.
          Dr. Wood opined that, if there is a Third Millennium, then Tolkien will still be read, while Lewis will be forgotten.  He also characterized O'Connor as the only great overtly Christian author this country has produced.  The lectures ended too soon for me, but I was fortunate enough to have a good visit with the professor after his last presentation.              

No Surprises

A day or two before every Presidential election, I find some red and blue map colors, and shade-in an electoral college map with my predictions for the election.  In 2008, I called it exactly right on every state.  This cycle, I missed by one—I was playing it cautious and predicted Florida would only just go for Romney instead of Obama.  I am not a political psychic.  I read from a number of different publications, both online and in print.  I follow a number of blogs—preferably non-ideological realists who know what they are talking about (Nate Silver and Daniel Larison come to mind.)  I enjoy the discussions on Morning Joe.  The one thing I absolutely never do is watch, listen to or read from any of the Fox personalities and their imitators. 

With the exception of the close call in Florida, election night was uneventful, playing-out just as I expected it to do.  Nate Silver called it exactly right, and had been doing so for the last several weeks.  The aggregate of the polls were right on the money.   In short, no surprises.

Just for fun on Tuesday night, I switched over to Fox to see what was going on.  They were basically sitting there with their mouths agape, while Karl Rove frantically shuffled papers.  I tuned-in at about the time the Fox personalities were refusing to admit they had lost Ohio, after every network (including their own) had called it for President Obama.  Shortly thereafter, their info babe interviewed one of the house commentators, asking him if he thought that Romney had been too much of a gentleman, not responding to Obama’s negative campaign against him.  Now it was time for my mouth to be agape.  Admittedly, President Obama waged a very aggressive campaign in his own right.  But if there is one constant throughout this ordeal, it was the “Truth Be Damned” nature of the Romney campaign, throwing anything and everything at the President, refusing to back-down when their accusations were disproved by impartial sources, and giving tacit approval to the ravings of fringe wing-nuts.  Clearly, Fox has it own facts, and its own narrative, and they have proclaimed it so long that they thought it was actually True.  Never believe your own PR.

I had my facebook page open during the debate, posting a couple of mild comments as the news came in.  I became aware of the reaction in my part of the world:  shock, incredulity, disbelief, anger, and end-of-the-country prognostications.  Soon, a faint hope appeared among them—maybe Ohio had not really gone to Obama.  After all, Karl Rove thought so.  Posts appeared—with lots of all caps and exclamation marks, and encouragements to Pray! Pray! Pray!  (In all my life, first as a Protestant and now as an Orthodox Christian, I have never, ever prayed for a particular candidate to win any election.  I have always found such unseemly, and not at all the sort of thing I need to pray for.)  But the point is this:  everyone was completely floored by the course of events.  Not only did they actually believe that Romney was going to win, but could not imagine circumstances where he would not.  After all, everyone was set to “take their country back.”  What is clear is that Fox seemed to be their only source for what is going on in the country, and many found themselves unprepared for reality.

           There are lessons to be learned from this election.  The demographic changes are here to stay.  The real world, as opposed to the conspiratorial world, is not such a scary place.  Come on over and check it out.

Daniel Larison has it about right, below, and here:

But the problem wasn’t just that conservative media gave Romney supporters bad information. The people in conservative media also seem to have been fully taken in by the idea that Romney would win and would do so in decisive fashion, and the campaign came to believe its own propaganda, too. As York notes, Romney didn’t have a prepared concession speech. It apparently never occurred to his campaign that he would lose. That’s not so remarkable by itself, but it is just one part of the overall pattern of the Romney campaign and the conservative movement’s reaction to Obama. Romney spent years running against a fantasy record and campaigning on a series of gross distortions and falsehoods, and so it shouldn’t be too surprising that his campaign and his conservative media boosters didn’t have the firmest grip on political reality.

When you pretend that you’re running against another Jimmy Carter, and you actually start to believe it, you’re not fully prepared to compete with a sitting president whose record and approval ratings are nothing like Carter’s. Organizing an entire campaign on such flawed assumptions eventually came back to haunt them. Romney and his allies not only didn’t understand their opponent, but they went out of their way to make sure that they misunderstood him, and in any kind of contest that is usually a recipe for failure.

Summer Travels: Road to Rowena

    In recent months, I have traveled twice to San Angelo, Texas on business.  For those unfamiliar with a Texas road map, that is a drive of about 370 miles from my home.  You leave the South far behind long before you reach San Angelo.  Incredibly, El Paso is still another 400 miles further on.  Although vistas such as the one above might suggest that the road holds long stretches of nothing much at all, such is not the case.  There is plenty to hold your interest--that is (as I like to say, with apologies to Evelyn Waugh)--if you are interested in things.

     One such place of interest to me is the dried-up cotton town of Rowena.  The highway between Ballinger and San Angelo just barely clips one corner of the town.  About all one can see from the highway is a number of boarded-up cotton gins and abandoned farm machinery--but the impressive spire of a church indicates that there might be reason to double-back and poke around a bit.  And of course, I did that very thing.

 

     If they were to ever make a remake of The Last Picture Show, Rowena could definitely be a contender for the movie shoot.  The town was obviously once a going concern, laid out properly, about 6 blocks by 8 blocks.  The downtown area, was completely boarded-up.  The most impressive commercial building was the old bank, built in1909, according to the plaque on the wall.  I thought I detected a light on inside, but there was no visible sign of activity.  There were 2 Suburbans parked behind the building, so perhaps the banker and a teller were keeping the doors open.  Rowena did boast, however, at least 5 watering holes:  a VFW Hall, a S.P.J.S.T. Hall, a Sons of Hermann Hall, D. J.'s Bar and the Turning Row Bar.  It is nice to see a community with their priorities still in order.

 

      I drove out the other end of town and turned around at the cemetery, or I should say, cemeteries.  All three of them were lined-up in a row:  the large and well-kept Catholic Cemetery, the Protestant Cemetery about half that size, and the much smaller and somewhat forlorn Evergreen Cemetery-a branch of the mega-cemetery of the same name in the county seat.  And so, I was able to form some conclusions about the town's beginnings:  an old German-Czech Catholic West Texas cotton town.

 

     I passed by the old two-story stucco schoolhouse, long closed but still in relatively good shape.  The only real going-concern in the town seemed to be the St. Joseph's Catholic Church, a graceful brick edifice, accompanied by hall and expansive school--which apparently now served the community in place of the public school.   Rowena was not completely a Catholic company-town, however.  I saw another building that had once obviously been an old stucco church, now converted to a residence.  But the oddest thing, I found on the edge of town.  I ran across a small frame church--probably from the late 189s or early 1900s--on a largely residential street, 2 or 3 blocks east of the main street.  The ruins of a much larger brick church were immediately adjacent, on the same lot.  The cornerstone read:  Deutsche Evangelische Zoar Kirche 1928.  I found it interesting that the German was still in play, even at that late date.  This was one of those solid churches built in the popular style of that day--with outside stone steps leading to the sanctuary above, and classrooms below.  These German Evangelicals were wise not to tear down their older church upon building this impressive replacement.  In time, the newer building burned--or at least the top of it did.  Not willing to waste anything, the congregation tore off the rubble, made a flat roof and retained the rooms below--and the stairway now leading nowhere.  The congregation moved back into the old building, and used the rump newer building as their classrooms and hall.  The old Zoar German Evangelical Church is no more immune to the trajectory of American Protestantism than any other evangelical church, and so now it is, as one would expect, the Zoar Community Church.  At the bottom of their sign, it reads Se habla espanol.  In fact, the only people I saw in the entire town were Hispanics.  No doubt the descendants of the German pioneers still own much of the surrounding farmland, and keep the lights on  and the beer flowing in the Sons of Hermann Hall.  But for all practical purposes, German Rowena has smoothly transitioned into Hispanic Rowena.  Having a really nice Catholic Church and school in place just makes it all the easier.  There's some irony here, I suppose.  And many in my state would be alarmed at the demographic shift I have casually described.  I am not among their number.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     On my way back, I made a  slight detour at Glen Rose, home of the Dinosaur Valley State Park.  A number of years ago, dinosaur tracks were discovered in the old bed of the Paluxy River, and the site has became something of a tourist attraction in those parts.  I did not go to the State Park, and was not inclined to peer at the dinosaur tracks.  Science, paleontology included, has never interested me.  What did amuse me was the human absurdity clustered just outside the park.  Billboards all around promote the "Dinosaur World" exhibit, which imply that it is a component of the real dinosaur tableau presented by the State Park.  Not so.  "Dinosaur World" is a cheesy tourist trap just outside the State Park entrance.  The entrance looks like it came right out of "The Flintstones," with pterodactyls perched atop for effect.  And there's no way to miss the T-Rex out front.  But lest one get carried-away with all this paleontological secularism, a Christian fundamentalist group operates the "Creation Evidence Museum" on the road before "Dinosaur World."    Frankly, this is not a battle with which Orthodox Christians need to unduly concern themselves.  Friend-of-this-blog Owen linked to an interesting (if very lengthy) article by Deacon Andrew Kuraev, here, which sets out an Orthodox perspective on such things.   

 



Summer Travels: Ancestral Trails

     I took a week off this summer to research old family haunts in two locales-the Piedmont of North Carolina and the Pequea Valley of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  My wfie was more than happy to stay home and forego the thrill of spending every day poking around old graveyards and archives.  Some people are just strange that way, I guess.

Old Fourth Creek Presbyterian Burying Ground,
Statesville, NC.

     The trip hardly made a dent in my budget.  I taught a seminar in July and had already designated that honorarium for this purpose.  Recently discovered frequent-flyer miles covered the flight and car rental.  Motel 6 and Red Roof Inns helped out on the lodging.  My itinerary took me from Raleigh to Charlotte to the Salisbury-Statesville area, then up through the Shenandoah Valley and across a tip of West Virginia and Maryland into the Pennsylvania Dutch country, then back down the spine of Delaware and the Eastern Shore, across and through the Chesapeake bridge/tunnel into North Carolina and back to Raleigh.  I have been trying to compose this post for 3 weeks (months now,) but have hardly had the time to devote to it.  So, instead of a coherent, flowing narrative, I believe I will just record my impressions in bullet-point fashion, to-wit:

North Carolina in general--I found it to be a very appealing region-as nice as Virginia, but without the pretense; Southern, to be sure, but not part of Crazy Land.  I like nothing better than driving the backroads, and North Carolina offers up some of the prettiest farmland to be seen anywhere.  People go there for either the beach or the mountains, but it seems to me, the best part is in the middle.  This is what Texas could be if we had cooler weather, more rain and we picked up our trash.  I understand that the state has its own bat-shit crazy politicos, but even here it seems to be more out of a sense of tradition than from ideology.

Charlotte-The city reminds me of Dallas (not a compliment.)  I stayed there as a convenient base, as I needed to tour a historical home on the city's outskirts, and the other areas I wanted to research were only a county or two away.  I did enjoy a good seafood supper at a Greek-run restaurant one night.  Three generations were working the front, with the 5 year old son taking customers to their table.  The place was painted all in aqua, with fish murals on the wall so that you felt like you were in an aquarium.  It reminded me of a bizarre establishment we visited 25 years ago in Yorktown, Virginia--also run by Greeks.  The plastic seagulls dangling from the ceiling was a nice touch.  No matter.  The fish was excellent.

Rowan and Iredell Counties-These adjoining counties and their seats-Salisbury and Statesville-are the best of the Piedmont, in my view.  My favorite experience turned out to be a visit with my distant kinswoman, a no-nonsense farmer straight out of Flannery O'Connor, she being the 7th-generation of our family to live in the 1774 brick country house built by Capt. Thomas Cowan.  There are plenty of little communities to poke around, and much to hold your interest, that is, if you are interested in things.  The pirates' graves at Thyatira is a favorite, as is the grave of that old faker claiming to be Marshall Ney.  Old Fourth Creek Burying Ground (not cemetery, not graveyard, but burying ground) is as scenic as any.  Cleveland (formerly Cowansville) looks like it could be right down the road from Mayberry.  And finally, there is the Epic Chop House in Mooresville, which will remain a destination if I ever again find myself within 100 miles.

Davidson College-Southern Ivy League, don't you know.  Perfect college in perfect little college town--all leafy and red-bricked and professory and Presbyterianish.  In other words, as dull as dishwater.  Every single building on campus, and I do mean every building, looked as though it was built at the same exact same time, out of the exact same batch of bricks. I firmly believe that red-bricks should be rationed to Presbyterians.  They are as thick on the ground in the Piedmont as Baptists are back home, and you can spot their identical red-brick churches a mile away.

Raleigh--a great little city, believe it or not.  The Texan in me just has to note that we have courthouses bigger than their statehouse, but it is all nicely done nevertheless.  The state capitol is anchored on 4 corners with 4 churches--Christ Episcopal on the NE corner, First Baptist (black) on the SE corner, First Pres on the SW corner and First Baptist (white) on the NW corner. Interestingly, both First Baptists claim descent from the original First Baptist in Raleigh.  The Methodists didn't make the cut on the 4 corners, but their campus occupies an entire block, one block west.  Another Episcopal church and a Catholic church round out the religious offerings within a block of the capitol.  And yes, Raleigh does have a nightlife--a good selection of cafes and bars downtown.  I found a Turkish restaurant in the restored old City Market, south of Moore Park.  I enjoyed a pide' and got to talk at length with the owner.  But the most amazing thing about Raleigh has to be the Trolley Pub.   This is a rolling pub, powered by the pedaling patrons.  The weird thing is, the pub is moving 90% off the direction they are all pedaling.  I don't have to understand it, I just know its neat as all get out to watch--and hopefully one day, pedal myself.

Fearrington Village--a distant cousin encouraged me to check out this place on my way, even though they would be away from home at the time.  This is an old dairy farm, now transformed into one of those precious new-old retirement communities.  She raved about the bookstore and the shops and eateries on the "town commons."  I checked it out--dairy barn still there with real cows and goats, bookstore with overpriced books that didn't interest me in the least, places to eat scones and socialize--picture perfect, except for all the rootless and well-fixed old people in khaki shorts and golf caps, wandering about, looking for something to hold their interest until they die.

Radio preachers on a long day of driving--Leaving Statesville about 10:30, I pressed on towards Pennsylvania, by way of the Shenandoah Valley (which was not as beautiful as I remembered, but it may just be my prejudice for North Carolina over Virginia.)  I opted for a Sirius Radio package when I bought my truck back in 2008.  And so, I have become spoiled to listening to my news shows and talk radio.  I never much listened to music while traveling, anyway, which in the old days used to drive my wife and son up the wall, as I was constantly fiddling with the radio to find a NPR station.  And so, in the rental car, I listened to radio preachers out of North Carolina and all the way through Virginia.    I wish this were fresher on my mind.  I have now forgotten most of the highlights I was trying to remember.  I know there were some doozies.  I do recall one call-in show, however.  As it turned out, it was a Catholic show wedged in amongst all the evangelicals.  The host was having a discussion with a young Protestant who was insisting on the the inability of the saved to ever lose their salvation--I guess that would be the P in the TULIP.  The host walked him through several scenarios, as the young man became increasingly frustrated.  Boxed into a corner, he finally admitted that if a faithful Baptist converted to Catholicism, then he had had never really been saved to begin with and was lost.  I had to hand it to the host, who got the caller to say what he really meant, even  though he was doing his best to avoid doing so.  Orthodoxy has its quirks, to be sure, but at least we have never had to manuever through those contortions.

Right-wing radio--It's been a while since i had been exposed to any of this sort of thing, and frankly, I had no idea just how bad it had become.  My preacher shows played out in northern Virginia, and I began to pick up Fox News stations instead.  Before long, it had me scrambling the dial to find a preacher--any preacher.  Sean Hannity was absolutely unlistenable.  But for pure loathsomeness, Laura Ingraham inteviewing Dinesh D'Souza had to be the worst.  On one low-budget show, a guest was outlining his scenario for Muslim Brotherhood Egypt.  First, they would blow up the Aswan Dam.  This would flood much of the country, causing a humanitarian disaster.  President Obama would step in, bringing millions of Egyptian Muslims to this country.  He would then declare a state of emergency, and settle the immigrants on our National Parks (yes.)  This would be the spring-board for the Islamification of this country, and of course, the killing of American Jews.  For pure inventiveness, this equals any of the pre-millenial fantasies I was listening to on the religious stations.  The scary thing, of course, is the fact that the speaker freely walks our streets, out of the control of the trained psychiatric workers he so clearly needs.  After this, I did what I should have done 200 miles earlier, and turned off the radio.

Wood Grove, Rowan County, NC

The Amish Country--Lancaster County has long been a favorite of mine.  The best drive leads east out of Lancaster, through Bird-in-Hand, Intercourse, White Horse, Compass and Sadsbury--turning off on any side-road along the way to have a better look at the Amish farmland.  Leacock, Salisbury and Caernarvon Townships comprise the better part of the Pequea Valley, and then you cross the ridge at Compass into the Brandywine Valley for West Caln and Sadsbury Townships. I do not romanticize the Amish way.  I rather like electricity.  And I find their theology, to the best that I can understand it, pretty dreadful stuff.  But I do have tremendous respect for them.  They live their lives (at least outwardly) with dignity--something we moderns fail to do at almost every turn.  And they have been good stewards of the land.  I love to watch them during their harvests.  I slowed down on one back road to watch as a crew of Amish were cutting their cornfield.  They had a hay bailer like the kind my dad used as I was growing up, but it was pulled by a team of 6 magestic horses.  A trailer was attached to the back of the bailer so that a man could stack the hay on the trailer as it came out.  I remember days in the hay field.  We were not that inventive and had to pick the bales up off the ground, then toss them up, onto the back of the truck.  The land there is simply some of the best farmland to be found anywhere, and their care for it is really remarkable.  The city of Lancaster is pressing hard on one side, and you do not have to drive too far east before encountering the outer suburbs of Philadelphia.  With property values being what they are and the pressure of development on either side, the Amish have their work cut out for them.   Generally, however, they are pretty well off to begin with.  In fact, some might say that the admonition in Scripture against "bigger barns" could well apply to them, as it does to the rest of us.  I have to wonder what they think of us, as we whiz by in our cars on the roads we share with their buggies.  I would have to think that they have to tune-out the modern world buzzing around them.  I find it interesting to see the accomodations they have made with modernity.  Gas motors and generators are fine, as long as they are not used for motion.  Weed-eaters and push lawn mowers are acceptable, but riding mowers are not.  Bicycles are not allowed, but they can take a bicylce frame and make it into a scooter for their children.  Speaking of which, they are everywhere.  If you see a young Amish couple going into town, chances are they have 5 to 6 small children onboard with them.  And they all look the same, largely because they are all dressed alike--overalls, dutch-boy haircuts and barefoot for the boys.  All the children seem to be blond.  I also think that the fact they have been drawing from the same shallow genetic pool all these generations must have something to do with it as well.  I talked to a woman I know there who lived in the Amish neighborhoods.  She told me that Sunday afternoons and Sunday nights were the times the young people got together, socialized and had parties.  She said she and her husband would be laying in bed, and at about 4:00 AM in the morning, they would hear the clip-clop of horse's hooves on the road, as the buggies were returning home.  The rule was that the young people could stay out as long as they wanted, as long as they were home in time for milking Monday morning.  She said the young men would generally be asleep in the buggies, as the horses knew the way home. 

Cowan family plot, St. John's Pequea
Episcopal Cemetery, Compass, PA

At old St. John's--My main reason for being there was to oversee the installation of a monument in the family plot of an Episcopal cemetery that contains burials of my clan back to 1730 or so.  That went off without a hitch--I took the requisite pictures, and everyone who contributed from across the country was very pleased.  While in the area, I actually stayed in Harrisburg.  This allowed me to visit and enjoy a meal with a family from our church, now living in that vicinity.  I was also searching for a document in the Pennsylvania State Archives.  A kinsman of mine got into trouble during the Revolutionary War.  He was a prosperous bachelor farmer--mid thirties or so--when the war broke out.  He remained loyal to England and refused to take the Oath of Alliegance.  This is not surprising as he fought with the British during the Seven Years War, was captured and held prisoner in France.  During the time the redcoats occupied Philadelphia, my cousin David openly traded with them.  After they left, the colonial officials confiscated his farm and he had to go into hiding.  He was soon found-out, however, and jailed in Philadelphia.  We know so much of his story through the writings of his cellmate, a Quaker conscientious objector.  I found the documents I was searching for in the Archives, namely the letters from family members, including his mother and sisters, begging for clemency.  My Aunt Margaret gently reminded the judge that while he was now in a powerful position, that one day he too would be on his deathbed--in need of mercy--and that it would be a great consolation to him at that time if he showed mercy now.  Her anquished pleas fell on deaf ears, however.  Her son was hanged on the town square of Philadelphia--without a trial--on November 25, 1780.  My aunt and her daughters carried his body back home for burial.  This is not the sort of story that fits well into our national mythology.  Real history is messy that way.

Delaware--Leaving the Amish Country late in the afternoon, I ambled southeasterly, staying on the backroads down through the old Quaker areas, where Friends Meeting Houses still dot the countryside, and into northern Delaware.  I now know that the University of Delaware is in the northern town of Newark.  As Johnny Carson used to say, I did not know that.  From there, I followed Highways 1 and 13 down through the spine of the state.  Once past Newark (which is really just outlying Wilmington,) you have the odd sensation of being in limbo--not quite urban, but not rural either.  The rest of the state feels like you are coming into the outskirts of some town, but you never quite get there.  Enjoying geography as I do, I always like the read the occasional articles that suggest better configurations for states than we have now.  No doubt many (myself included) have colorful ideas of what we could do with Texas, for example.  I do enjoy small places and small states.  That said, I have never really gotten the point of Delaware, exactly.  Wilmington and New Castle County seem to be a better fit for Pennsylvania and tbe Philadelphia metro area, while Kent and Sussex Counties could be sucked into Greater Maryland, which borders on the west and south.  The rest of Delaware--wait, there is no rest of Delaware.  You get my point.


Oak Grove Methodist Church,
Wachapeague, VA

The Eastern Shore--Before running out of Delaware, I swerved into Johnny's Diner, where I had the best fresh corn on the cob that I can remember.  Johnny's redeemed Delaware a bit in my eyes.   I slept in Maryland, but pushed on early the next morning, arriving in Virginia, which claims the long narrow finger of the Eastern Shore.  A huge Rebel flag adorns the north-facing wall of the first liquor store past the state line, informing everyone that they are now in the South.  This is false bravado, though.  There is nothing very Southern about this part of the world.  Before crossing the Chesapeake, I turned off on a side road at Melfa, wandered down through Wachapreague and Quinby on the Atlantic side of things, and then looped back onto the main road.  Just as the Carolina Piedmont is heavily Presbyterian, the Eastern Shore is traditionally Methodist country.  I stopped and looked around at the unique Oak Grove Methodist Church between Melfa and Wachapreague.  Apparently, this is where Sunday School began, and they claim the oldest continuous Sunday School in the nation.  So, if you have SS horror stories, then blame these folks.  I also liked the simple little unadorned Weslyan Church in Quinby. 

Weslyan Church, Quinby, VA

Just outside of Quinby, I passed a sign in a tobacco field that said "James Farm, circa 1662."  Now those are some roots.  Before finally leaving the Eastern Shore, I had to do a   U-turn and come back for a picture of this church sign.  It reminded me of the late, great Milton Burton, who often called unsuspecting people using his alter-ego:  "the Reverend Buford T. Smeets, Senior Pastor of the Greater Gum Springs Apostolic Church of the Final Thunder."

On being tested--The thing about being tested is this:  we usually don't realize it until after we've failed.  Sunday afternoon found me in historic Mooresville, North Carolina.  The town had been laid-out along the railroad, with a downtown consisting of one long street paralleling the tracks.  I had not eaten all day, except for snacking around at coffee hour after Liturgy in Charlotte.  I happened upon the aforementioned Epic Chop House, in an old two-story brick building with a sign in front saying "since 1888."  Sounded like my kind of place.  The valet parking out front seemed a little out of place for Mooresville, which seemed much more of a working-class town than its neighbors Salisbury and Statesville--to say nothing of Davidson.  But I was hungry and I always make it a habit to eat at local establishments when travelling.  I sat at the bar, and looked over the menu that, while upscale, was not as high-priced as I imagined.  I do not think I will ever forget the meal they served me. I had "3 peppered filet medallions over country potato cake with cabernet mushroom demiglace, & haystacks," accompanied by a Malbec, Italian bread and whipped butter and a salad.  Simply put, it was one of the finest meals I have every eaten.  And I was not too proud to use the last piece of bread or two to sop-up every drop of that "cabernet mushroom demiglace."    Finishing-up with coffee and bread pudding tipped the scales from indulgence to outright decadence.  And so, I was feeling pretty flush and satisfied as I started motoring back to Charlotte.  There was a convenience store next to the Motel 6 where I was staying.  I needed to dart in there and get a bottle of water--for the CPAT machine which allows me to sleep at night.  This is one of those stores with a door on each end.  As I approached the north entrance, I noticed two thuggy-looking dudes hanging out by the door.  Without thinking, I pulled around to the south entrance.  Again, two thuggy-looking guys standing out by this doorway as well.  In addition, there was a man in a wheelchair next to the door.  Looking back now, I don't know why I was acting like some kind of scared white guy from the suburbs.  I am generally not afraid of anything, or any neighborhood.  I ducked my head, looking neither right nor left, and aimed straight for the door.  The man in the wheelchair said something to me, in a gruff manner, as I entered.  I guess I, like most people, want our beggars to be washed, polite and cuddly.  Water bottle in one hand and keys in the other, I made a bee-line for my car upon exiting the store.  I was all the way back to my room before it hit me--the full enormity of what I had just done.  There I was, on vacation--playing, you might say.  I had just enjoyed a sinfully extravagent meal--excess upon excess.  I stopped at this store, eyed my fellow sinners with distrust and apprehension, then, with cash in my pocket, walked right past the beggar to purchase a damn plastic bottle full of water!  I went back to the store the next night to see if the beggar had returned, but he had not.  I was not going to get off the hook that easy.  Late on Tuesday, I was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a working class town west of Harrisburg.  At dusk, I was tromping around the Carlisle Old Burying Ground, where some of my kin have a plot that dates back to the 1760s (One stone even has a bullet hole through it, left by a Rebel soldier either right before or right after Gettysburg.)  As I was leaving town, about to work my way onto the turnpike, I saw a young man and woman begging at an intersection.  They were of the scruffy hippie-dippie variety.  Ah, here was my chance.  Unfortunately, I was in the wrong lane.  I swerved over to the right lane, but had to circle way around to get back to where they were and be on the right side of the road.  By the time I worked my way around, a policeman was stopped there, talking with them.  They had a car in the nearby parking lot, and a dog.  I noticed the young man had a crutch.  Whether it was a prop or not, is not for me to say.  But the  end of the story is that I was still not going to be let off the hook that easily--throwing a $5 their way and thinking I had made everything right.  I haven't.  And I'm still on the hook.