Winter and Dad

St. Casserole wants more Dad Stories. All right.

So many of my memories of Dad are tied up with winter. He had an almost missionary zeal about fighting and prevailing against everything that winter could administer.

Well, with Chicago’s first snowstorm of the season looming, it seems appropriate to relate some experiences (the snow has begun to fall here in north Chicago).

Countless times I can recall him getting out of the car to shovel our family through yet another drift on the road; on open country gravel roads, those were numerous. My mother had no patience for it, but nevertheless she was along for the ride. To me, it was an adventure.

We had gone over to some neighbors, about five miles away, to buy some eggs and cream. Of course, we visited a while, while a winter storm struck. Dad insisted on heading home, though after the umpteenth snowdrift, my mother wanted to go back to the neighbors’ (though she didn’t really want to stay there). We did get home.

My dad was around 60 then (I was born when he was almost 53). I do marvel at his stamina.

I attended a one-room country school in grades 1–4, and on two occasions we students and teacher nearly ended up spending the night. Back in the mid- and late ’60s, no one could predict blizzards.

The first time, we set out for the home of two of the students, which was nearest at ½ mile away. It was already dark at this point, but still we set out (on foot) and made it. Various parents who dared to and could came to retrieve their children. Of course my dad did, with the assistance of my uncle.

The next time it wasn’t quite so late—we were still at the school—and once again we reached safety and warmth at home. With my mother once again reciting her litany of moving south.

Fast forward to after I got my driver’s license. For some reason, Dad and I were heading to a town 20+ miles south, in a snowstorm (of course). The roads were snowy and slick. I just had to drive. Before automatic braking systems, with rudimentary power steering, he calmly tutored me in his strategies (I still can’t believe he didn’t have a stroke!). We didn’t end up in a ditch (though I’ll admit that I did some years later, with a front-wheel drive—he didn’t know about those).

Embrace the steering wheel, joining hands at the top. Support your weight on the steering wheel. With the slightest deviance of grip, you’ll feel it in the wheel. Your weight will adjust to the grip and correct the steering.

I don’t think I can drive in wintry conditions with these fancy-schmancy computer-controlled cars (hey, even ABS on rental cars give me a bit of a heart attack). How to deal with winter driving conditions in this millennium?

Musical taste mischief and organ-tuning

Two more episodes in “Fixing Things with My Dad,” in which we were co-conspirators:

Episode 1:

When a childhood friend of mine got married, I played organ for the wedding. New church, but old electronic organ, the kind that organist friends of mine refer to as an “appliance” and/or a “toaster.” Really can’t compare with big old pipe organs.

The happy couple scheduled the wedding for right before Christmas in order to make it possible for me to do the job (I didn’t insist, but my friend really wanted me to play—so as I had planned to fly back for Christmas, I had no excuse).

A couple of days before the wedding, I went to practice and “try out” the organ. Besides possessing funky imitations of the real thing, it was badly out of tune. The next day, Dad came with me and we tuned it. He was an electrician and he possessed a good ear—and tuning the thing consisted of turning the screwdriver in the right direction for each note in each stop that was out of tune.

So the wedding was beautiful—duh!—and, as I’d worked out which stops to avoid, the organ sounded respectable. Many people came up to me afterward to tell me that that organ had never sounded so good. Funny what tuning does (even when people don’t know that that’s the issue).

Episode 2:

Mischief. The organ I played throughout high school and college was a good pipe organ. Not huge, but a very good sound. It also had a tremolo setting, which gave the organ a vibrato kind of sound (while shaking the organ loft). The mechanism that created the effect was perhaps ill-advised in this installation.

And most, if not all, of the great organ literature doesn’t call for whole-organ tremolo (though certain stop combinations create a pleasing effect for solo lines). Whole-organ tremolo is a sound effect native to certain worship music styles—but not native to my Scandinavian Lutheran church.

A wedding was to be held there, and the organist (bride’s preference—funny how that works) for the event was fully steeped in the tremolo-organ (Hammond, etc.) tradition. In a small town, we knew these things.

Our main organist wasn’t happy about it—Mrs. E. expressed her concern to me about the dreaded use of the tremolo.

So Dad and I took it into our hands… Even though it’s a pipe organ, the switches for the stops are electronic, and it was a small matter to put a piece of paper over the switch contact to prevent the tremolo from working.

After the organist had practiced on the organ, she encountered Mrs. E. and told her that the tremolo wasn’t working. “Oh, really?” After the wedding, the tremolo was miraculously restored, if thenceforth unused.

Bad, bad, bad. An entire wedding without tremolo organ. How righteous can one get?

Faced with the same instance now, I don’t think I would take action. Then, though, Dad and I were of the same mind, and it was frighteningly easy to act on it. We could; we did.

A lot happens in a century

My father would have been 100 years old today. He died almost eight years ago, shortly after turning 92.

His lifespan encompassed plowing fields with horses as a boy to watching the space shuttle land in California. And his mother had seen a Native American traversing a nearby swamp with a canoe. He never officially went past eighth grade, though his schooling continued—whatever was at hand, he studied.

Born on a homestead claim in North Dakota, he obtained master electrician’s licenses in both North Dakota and Minnesota—in the latter state with the highest test score up to that point and for years after. He loved his Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, and was forever tinkering and inventing. No patents, but it seems that the exploration was sufficient for him.

He went from milking cows by hand to repairing equipment in milking parlors (and the accompanying really smelly—duh!—barn cleaners). Not to mention fixing televisions—and he had the first television in the surrounding five counties.

Before I was old enough for school (no pre-school or kindergarten for me) I sometimes accompanied him on service calls to neighbors. I especially loved the electronics repair—he’d bring out his tube tester, and I really wanted to “help” him turn the knobs on his equipment as he figured out which components were shot (though he never let me). Long before solid-state electronics, sealed circuits, motherboards.

I did more than once witness him poking inside television innards with a screwdriver, only to see the set fully restored to action. He had the magic touch, widely acknowledged. But when color television blossomed, it got trickier. Still, he ruled.

Not a whole lot into “feeling,” he nevertheless provided a foundation for me. In 4-H, I insisted on taking woodworking (really hated sewing—though I still did it, under duress), and he taught me how to handle woodworking tools. I built a table that I took it to the county fair. Got a blue ribbon for it. Still have it.

Years after that, my rattletrap had brake problems after I took it in for new tires. Dad told me what to look for in the master cylinder—turns out the “tire folk” tampered with the cylinder to make it lose brake fluid. With his long-distance guidance, I fixed the problem.

Several years later, I decided to attach the optional light to the fan fixture in our rental house. Over the phone, Dad told me which wires to hook up to each other.

Never, “you’re a girl.” Just, “here’s how to do it.”

Thank you, Dad.

Jefforts Schori sighting

The new Presiding Bishop was at a nearby church this morning (only a couple of miles away!), and I just found out about it this evening, or I’d have gone. A friend who went called to tell me about it. My friend was very pleased and positively impressed by Jefforts Schori, who preached. And she got to meet her after the service, and reported Jefferts Schori to be warm and authentic (my friend has pretty good radar for that).

The following, which sums up better than I could do from my friend’s report, is from the Episcopal News Service e-newsletter:

Earlier Sunday, council members and Church Center staff traveled to All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Chicago for Eucharist. The service took place under strings of multi-colored paper cutouts or “papel picado” strung across the nave for All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day, made in remembrance of members and friends of the congregation. Parishioners, church school children and neighbors had also made “ofrendas”—traditional Day of the Dead “shrines” paying tribute to lost loved ones. The ofrendas were placed among candles on tables along the walls of the nave.

Jefferts Schori, during her sermon, noted Jesus’ admonition from the morning’s gospel (Mark 12:38-44) to “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.”

Holding her cope out from her sides, Jefferts Schori said “Ouch.”

“Surely that can’t have anything to do with us,” she added, smiling.

She noted the Old Testament story (1 Kings 17:8-16) of Elijah asking a starving widow for food and promising her that if she shared her last bread with him, God would replenish her grain and oil until the killing drought was over.

He was, Jefferts Schori said, asking the woman to make the “remarkable gamble” of trusting a stranger and the stranger’s God.

The gospel reading also included Jesus’ observation of the widow’s contribution to the temple treasury, noting that she had given out of her poverty, not her abundance. Jefferts Schori told the congregation that the word “poverty” in the gospel was translated from a Greek word—hustereseos—associated both with the word “hysteria” and with a woman’s womb.

The widow whom Elijah encountered was “hysterical” because the fruit of her womb, her children, were in danger, she said.

“The desperation of the terribly poor knows no gender,” Jefferts Schori said. However, she noted that widows and mothers of children are more likely to find themselves in such desperation.

This desperation is what makes some people buy lottery tickets, enter every sweepstakes offer that comes in the mail, and otherwise gamble away their paychecks, she said. And it makes others bet that “even a God they haven’t met will provide.”

“You and I must be foolish enough” to believe that God will provide, Jefferts Schori said. “We have to bet it all.”

Making such a bet is hard for most people, she added. “We’re much more interested in playing it safe that in betting it all.”

Today’s “long-robed ones” can point fingers and calculate percentages of giving, Jefferts Schori said, “or we can figure out how to cure the hysterical desperation of poverty.”

“Be merciful, join the hysterical and companion the friendless,” she said.

After the post-communion prayer, co-warden Joey Sylvester presented Jefferts Schori and Anderson with rolls of duct tape—because “for years, All Saints has used duct tape to hold this place together. For us, it is an outward and visible sign of God’s grace and longing for unity.”

Sylvester added that the tape also symbolized the parish’s prayers for them, and the parish’s pledge to “stick by and stick with you as you shape and lead our church in the day ahead to respond to God’s call for a more compassionate, just and peace-filled world.”

All Saints, whose building is the oldest wood-frame church still in use in Chicago, is in the midst of a multi-phase capital campaign whose first phase of interior work was recently completed.

All Saints’ rector is Bonnie Perry, who truly deserves the credit for the parish’s tremendous vitality and outreach, coming back from near-mission status, if I recall correctly.

Cats and Meat

Just before the start of Ramadan, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, mufti of Australia, said in a religious lesson:

If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.

Follow-up articles here and here.

Of course, his characterization of women as meat provoked an uproar, being described as incitement to rape of women. At the time, I barely noticed it except to mentally file away that yet another person with authority and influence had said something stupid and potentially harmful. It happens so much that, sad to say, I blazed right on by. (Probably a result of having heard way too much from Rush Limbaugh and cohorts. And now this. It really is all the same.)

Sheik al-Hilali’s comments recently received another mention (the follow-up articles above), to which I did pay attention. This time, I pondered the entire analogy. For an analogy to hold, more than just one part of it must ring true. Yes, plenty of men consider women mere objects, possessions, in this country and throughout the world. It matters not what the religion is, as objectifying humans (male or female, enslaved or free) spans all beliefs or lack thereof. Even in this country we refer to singles’ bars as meat markets, and without any implication of religion. Though both men and women are meat in that reference.

I was far more intrigued by the implication that men are like cats, and I wondered if al-Hilali really meant to suggest that. If I were a man, I’d be hollering at that characterization. Heck, I’ll holler anyway.

Cats are amoral, predatory, whimsical, and notoriously difficult (some say impossible) to train. I’ve read that the reason isn’t just because they’re not interested in rewards for obedience, but that they have notoriously short attention spans. They may grasp what is expected of them, but are so easily distracted by what?—a shadow, a creak, nothing that’s there. They are only truly and completely focused when on the hunt.

Cats take what they want in the absence of anything that prevents them from doing so. An affectionate cat who rubs all over a human is using the human to stimulate certain glands on the head that make it feel good. (But I still pet my cat, and the good feeling is mutual.)

So a religious leader says that men are cats. What does that say about men’s spirituality? Spirituality is kind of wasted on cats. All the rules and edification in the world are useless when dealing with cats. And have you heard the expression “It’s like trying to herd cats?”

If I want to keep my cat from eating certain food (meat for human consumption), certainly I keep the food away from the cat, but as I’m not interested in rotten meat, my first concern is to take good care of the meat and so I store it in the refrigerator. The cat is but one small concern in this. And no, nobody needs to keep me, a woman, in the figurative refrigerator for my own good.

Mostly, though, I maintain boundaries for my cat that have more to do with keeping the cat in line than with ensuring my meat doesn’t misbehave. I’m not focused so much on the food as on having a coexistence that benefits both my cat and me without giving the cat something she really doesn’t need and that won’t properly nourish her. Already we’re way outside the analogy.

In defense of all the men I’ve known who don’t behave as cats (and that really is most of them), al-Hilali is as wrong about the males-as-cats part of the analogy as he is in his offensive view of women. The men I know/have known don’t go around assaulting women, even the scantily clad. And these men’s religious beliefs cover the entire spectrum, from strictly observant Islam to atheistic, including the familiar (to me) hues of Christianity and Judaism.

While I don’t know nearly enough about Islam, I have read a number of thoughtful, helpful articles by Islamic leaders who don’t share al-Hilali’s or other extremist’s views. Just as so very many Christians, Jews, Hindus and adherents to other faiths don’t share the views of extremists within their own religion.

As happens so dismayingly often, bigotry of all flavors does hide behind the skirts of religion. How convenient. God countenances my insecurities and lack of self-control by giving me permission, even commanding me, to subdue anything that might threaten that self-control. God would never ask me to develop spiritually in such a way that I might have to respect all of God’s creation, including my fellow humans. Far better that they be subservient to me, because then God won’t ask anything of me.

You’ll find people with this mindset who claim religious beliefs, but it matters not at all what religion it is.

Al-Hilali said way more about himself than he did about men and women, or even how God works in the world.