There are a number of powerful phrases to describe depression, most of them from self-help books or first-person narratives. “Noonday Demon.” “Stubborn Darkness” and “Darkness Visible.” Each of them resonates with me these days—most days, in fact—because I have dysthymia. So, indeed, do two good friends, while others endure their own variations of the Big D.

One of the odd things about depression is that we want others to know that we have it but we also don’t especially want to talk about it—with them or one another. My friend Milton tries Lutheran Therapy on me (“Well just snap out of it, then.”) but most non-depressives wonder what we’re depressed about. My answer—”nothing, actually”—isn’t very satisfying, I understand. But it’s the truth.

My most successful strategy for coping with this stubborn darkness has been writing: letters, research inquiries and the papers that ought to grow from those efforts; stories (fiction or faction), many of which contribute to the story of an imaginary town in Iowa; and my less frequent attempts at poetry. My letters are addressed to individuals; the stories find their way here to the Agincourt blog. The poetry—with only one exception—has been consigned to the trash. But I’m putting the cart before the horse.

If my psychotherapy has been even modestly successful—you’ll be the better judge of that—it may be that I am a visual person. Some of us have an ability to describe abstractions; to render the ineffable in more vivid, familiar terms. I can, for example, actually watch the slow and steady arrival of my depression like the approach of a storm front on the Great Plains. It rolls across my field of vision like rain clouds on their way from Mapleton toward Dilworth. And like the weather, I observe this deliberate phenomenon, in slow motion, with no ability whatsoever to do a thing about it. The shift in temperature and humidity registers on my skin. My eyes dilate. I shiver.

Dysthymia (in case you haven’t looked it up) is a low grade depression that often sets in during the teen years and never leaves. It can be compounded or “double up” with the more normal sort of periodic depression for really spectacular effect. That’s what I’ve been experiencing lately. But while my dysthymia can’t be traced to any particular source, the heaping addition can.

That’s a story that could be shared but for no useful purpose.

One of the most interesting characters in my long-term research project on the early fieldstone Episcopal church buildings in Dakota Territory—that was a lengthy introduction, wasn’t it?—is the Reverend John Keble Karcher. Like many clergy who transplanted Anglicanism to the American Outback, he was itinerant, hopscotching from his birthplace in Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, Indiana, Minnesota, Dakota and ultimately (I think) Illinois. And with each geographic move Karcher changed his religious affiliation: he was born into the German Reformed tradition and then became, in order, a Unitarian, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, back to the Episcopalians, oops, back to the Romans, and finally back to Canterbury and the Episcopal faith. Who knows what might have transpired had he lived longer. I mention this only because, at this point in my life, a religious conversion is unlikely.

Religion absolutely captivates me, both Faith itself and the shifts that we often make between and among its many faces. Did you know, for example, that if I were an adherent of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (abbreviated LDS or, colloquially, Mormon) and had lived a spotless life; had tithed and performed all the requirements to be signed, sealed and delivered to God at the end of my life, I could look forward 1) to becoming a god myself; 2) being given my own planet whose tenants I would govern as our god has governed Earth; and 3) I and my Celestial wives would birth an endless supply of spirit babies to inhabit the bodies of the planet’s physical children. Are you with me so far?

Whatever you may think of religious traditions other than your own, LDS beliefs are unusual. But several things are also probable: If I were a Mormon, I’d be a bad one. The “Godhead” would elude me but, on a more positive note, an entire planetary population would therefore be spared my divine intervention.

Would I be a laissez faire god? Very likely. Creation is a heavy responsibility, and authoring the town of Agincourt and its hinterlands in Fennimore county is about as close as I care to get to the”Godhead.”

This morning I saw an episode of an HGTV reality show. A couple with too much money—by which I mean way more money than I have—invest in a resort property for the rental market. Essentially, they are able to afford a second home by having renters pay for it during the “high season.” The target area was Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border.

The host (whose name I never quite learned) and his clients inspected three candidate properties, none of which had the necessary  level of Tahoe-ness—whatever that may be. The clients chose a a down-on-its-luck example from the 1960s, wherein and on the host applied a chalet entry porch, faux beams of distressed wood, and other rustic touches said to be characteristic of that region. I flashed back to a Fargo parallel of the 1970s.

At the southwest corner of Broadway and N.P. Avenue there was a men’s clothing store (whose name escapes me) that had a going-out-of-business sale, closed its doors and was promptly remodeled as “Old Broadway.” The interesting thing for a budding preservationists like myself involved the removal of everything in the essentially intact interior sales area and its replacement with imported historical artifacts that may well have come from a warehouse in Milwaukee or Omaha or Newark, for that matter. All of the interior surfaces—bead-board wainscoting, wallpaper, pressed-metal ceilings, hexagonal toilet flooring, etc. and, of course, nothing to do with the actual history of Fargo’s central business district and everything to do with the nostalgia then popular with twenty-somethings. In the 70s, we preferred a homogenized pseudo history for the real thing. And, of course, that faux history is a shifting target that changes with each generation.

This afternoon on MPR’s talk channel, there was a piece on the rebuilding of New Orleans and the remarkable phenomenon that restauranteurs are playing in that process. Here, also, Katrina had created a situation where the synthetic could all too easily have supplanted the authentic. Yet The Big Easy had resisted that trend. Instead, former neighborhood haunts survived, reborn through the persistence of their owners for the expectations of the clientele. Friends and neighbors they and been; friends and neighbors they remain. And the benefits accrue to rest of us. I, for one, look forward to a chance to revisit New Orleans for the first time since 1972! And, of course, I’m curious what the authentic-versus-synthetic dichotomy has to do with Agincourt.

authentic

[aw-then-tik]

adjective

1. not false or copied; genuine; real: an authentic antique.

2. having the origin supported by unquestionable evidence; authenticated; verified: an authentic document of the Middle Ages; an authentic work of the old master.
3. entitled to acceptance or belief because of agreement with known facts or experience; reliable; trustworthy.

Authenticity, coincidentally, has been my goal for Agincourt, itself a synthetic community based on the circumstances of its time and place. This ersatz essay can only pose the question: How is Agincourt substantially different from the Tahoe-fication of a weekend place in Nevada?

Someone on eBay is selling a postcard of the Public Market in Kansas City, Missouri. The slightly elevated view shows a crowded market day with the single-story market building at the intersection of two busy streets, alive with pedestrian traffic, horse-drawn delivery wagons, and electric trolleys (“streetcars” when I was much younger in Chicago). The seller’s spiel is curious and actually undermines potential interest in the card: they wonder whether the crowding has, in some way, been enhanced.

Incidentally, the building in the left background was the City Hall, a design of circa 1890 by Chicago architects Burnham & Root.

The sellers don’t mention Photoshopping; they don’t have to, because real photo postcards (RPPCs in the trade) often ghosted in a trolley to suggest that some small Midwestern or Great Plains hamlet was far more advanced, more urbane, than its gravel streets and saloon-front stores would suggest. FYI, here’s an example of the Main Street of Coberg, Iowa with a superimposed street railway.

Are you laughing? No one seriously believed these cards. But the folks in many “wide spots in the road” of the American outback aspired to be another Chicago or a newer and better Kansas City. Remember that in 1907 it was the place that had “…gone about as far as they can go.” Agincourt had aspirations. Its people hoped to improve themselves and the future for their children. My own political preferences tell me that they may have weighed the potential costs of those improvements and, I hope, tried to better themselves at a minimal cost to others.

The punctuation of American family and urban life is ceremonial and celebratory.

Anniversaries, whether public or personal, abound. Holidays and holy days. Parades! Weddings—I should know: my own two years ago and another this weekend. In this age of smart phones and selfies, there is little danger of any event passing without considerable public awareness. Every minor public appearance in the course of a political campaign is recorded, often at the candidate’s regret.

Agincourt’s sesquicentennial in 2007 was one such event—invented, of course—and 2015 offers its own. In May the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of RMS Lusitania went largely unnoticed (not by me, of course) and October 25th is the convergence of several events: first, it is Saint Crispin’s Day in the church kalendar; “Founders’ Day” in Agincourt itself (the celebration of the city’s founding in 1853 and incorporation four years later); and—drumroll—it is also the 600th anniversary of the actual Battle of Agincourt. Sorry if I harp on this too often. My point is simply that all of these and other similar events are opportunities for Janus-like reflection: moving forward with one eye in the rearview mirror.

A.F. & A.M.

“…[T]he stone has been proved and found to be ‘fair work and square work’ and fit to be laid as the foundation stone of this Holy Temple.” Anyone who’s attended a cornerstone ceremony conducted by the Masonic Lodge (A.F. & A.M., in longhand) may recall the formula for judging a stone suitably laid for the Ages. Images such as this ceremony from Independence, Iowa, however, would not have represented Masonic ritual for the laying of a cornerstone at St John-the-Evangelist Roman Catholic church—the lodge is a decidedly Protestant institution—but surely something similar must exist among the Knights of Columbus. [Frankly, K-of-C regalia is, if anything, even sillier than Masonic outfits and is borderline Monty Python.] With that caveat, the 1911 event at St John’s would have drawn a community-wide audience of every stripe; multiple clergy, reporters, and surely every politician within fifty miles. This was a photo op not to be missed. I suspect we can find considerable information about “Gilbert” the photographer.

To be in an age; not of it.

A relatively long life has given me many things. Friends (a handful is sufficient, thanks). Experiences aplenty and, fortunately, many of them have been shared with the friends just mentioned. Possessions, to be sure; I’m knee deep in stuff, but they present their own special problems. What I value most at present are the questions proposed by life each day—each day that I’m willing to engage it, that is. Twilight sharpens their focus, somehow, into matters both of leaving and of what is left behind. That’s what happens when there is more sand in the bottom of the hourglass than the top. I’ll need a little more time to work them out. In the meantime, consider the finale of “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life”:

Lady Presenter: Well, that’s the end of the film. Now, here’s the meaning of life.

[She is handed a gold-wrapped booklet.]

Lady Presenter: Thank you, Brigitte.

[She clears her throat, then unwraps and examines the gilt booklet.]

Lady Presenter: Well, it’s nothing very special. Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations. And, finally, here are some completely gratuitous pictures of penises to annoy the censors and to hopefully spark some sort of controversy, which it seems is the only way these days to get the jaded, video-sated public off their fucking arses and back in the sodding cinema. Family entertainment? Bollocks. What they want is filth: people doing things to each other with chainsaws during tupperware parties, babysitters being stabbed with knitting needles by gay presidential candidates, vigilante groups strangling chickens, armed bands of theatre critics exterminating mutant goats. Where’s the fun in pictures? Oh, well, there we are. Here’s the theme music. Goodnight.

I have had several experiences of late that have brought me low; into that range where I should, by any sensible measure, be prevented from access to devices like this. Indeed, I have achieved that level of down-ness that I’m likely to write a letter. So be very afraid that your address is in my rolodex.