Loose Leaf Binder is now a blogroll on my website: fetterlyroad.com. Please visit me there and follow along. Stay well.
Nature and culture have designed us for sophisticated oral communication. To think before we speak. It is still good advice. Radio helps.
My memories of our small-town Decoration Day celebration began with the sale of buddy poppies in the Rexall drug store, the Ben Franklin dime store and other shops. Veterans of World War II sold them to raise money for comrades disabled in conflict. At the age of 10 or 11, I couldn’t explain why I bought one except everyone expected me to. Like going to church, I did it because–well–everyone else did it. It was part of being an American to buy and wear this icon of remembrance and sacrifice.
For many years, we didn’t buy a lot in the stores because it was cheaper to order goods from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue. We did it for the same reason we order books, clothing, cameras, yarn and household good from Amazon.
Now, looking back from a half-century on, I know our differences in ancestry, ethnicity and prejudice blinded us to what we shared in common. Maybe that’s why it was a good Friday. In those three hours, we were of one spirit in reverence for something we held in common even if we refused to recognize it. These days, three hours of publicly shared and reflective silence could help us all see something greater good we share lying just beyond our immediate prejudices and passions.
A Slice of Humble Pie Thanksgiving occupied a special place in the year on our Minnesota farm and marked the end of the crop year. During the eight months between April and November, we tended the fields; tilling planting, cultivating, harvesting and then plowing. Every day, we minded the sky for the perils of the […]
Beatriz’s story is a glorious miracle. We think miracles come as bolts from the blue but I think most of them are quieter and last longer. Her miracle is glorious because she lives with faith in a just universe. She is an avatar of the kind of person who in their millions made America great. Her vision, drive and humility are the qualities that made our diverse nation what is and—I hope—what it will continue to become.
I have no idea where my most ancient origins began. My veins don’t run with the ‘pure blood’ from any group—and it’s likely yours don’t either. Though we are free to interpret our past as we choose, there is at least one over-riding lesson we can draw from our DNA. Racial purity is a lie. There is no ‘other;’ there is only ‘us.’ Our DNA makes us children of many fathers and mothers; at the level of our DNA, we are the ‘spittin’ image’ of each other.
“Just call me Jane” was her calling card. She planted her life at The River Farm, and bloomed with values, virtues, mores, and manners that she gave as gifts to her children. Her presence was a gift of unmerited grace, and pausing to recall and celebrate Jane is like a Pentecost, a moment when the fires of love, compassion, and grace rest on us like tongues of flame.
My arrival in Minnesota is an eidetic memory, a tenacious image of a passing moment. The rain had stopped but the yellowish clay road is boggy. After days on the road, Dad stops the gray 1940 Plymouth on the shoulder of Waseca County Road 26. The lane downhill to the farmhouse is a slick rut of black mud. I sit in the back seat with my infant sister. Low clouds and pewter puddles add to the day’s gloom surrounding the weathered farmhouse with peeling paint, and the slattern barn in need of boards. The moment we stop among the dark, loamy fields and soggy stubble comes back to me. It’s April 10, 1947. I’m three years old, and this is my earliest memory of home.
R. Newell Searle 