A few figs from thistles…

by Howard A. Tabor

The Common Sense

As a seventy-four-year-old White American male, the media tell me the way I ought to feel and behave: disenfranchised and angry. I am neither—and I wonder in these contentious times why I’m not. Hindsight enables me to satisfy that curiosity.

Chris Mooney has written a book with a title that will put you off, so I won’t mention it. But his thesis is interesting: Mooney cites chapter and verse from scientific research (i.e., objective, if you buy into science) that, as our species evolves, we are becoming two distinct subspecies: one actively engaged with the World, prepared for and welcoming the new and unfamiliar; the other resistant to change, favoring the known over novelty. I am personally on the fence here, preferring the comfort of the campfire and the security of the cave on most days. But when shoved outside its shelter, I’ll respond to new and strange conditions with as much creativity as the next guy, maybe more. But if Mooney’s thesis is true, was there ever a time before the bifurcation; a time when there was a common sense, a shared vision of the World and our purpose within it? Having written this column for more than thirty years [has it really been that long?], I’ve looked at a lot of Agincourt’s history and tried to tell its stories with accuracy and enthusiasm. And I think there may have been a time in our community’s past, when our small world was new, that we shared a vision. Then, again, it may only be my hope.

In David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas, his character Sonmi-451 is asked for her version of the Truth. Her reply, “Truth is singular. Its ‘versions’ are mistruths.” By Sonmi’s understanding, I have not been entirely truthful. Yet my “Truth” is all that I have to offer in these columns. If it resonates with yours, so much the better. When, on the other hand, it has struck a sour note, a hollow chord, I have been grateful for your kind and gentle upbraiding.

The renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a member of the Lloyd-Jones clan of southwestern Wisconsin, a band of 19th century Welsh Unitarians whose family motto was “Y Gwir Yn Erbyn Y Byd” (“Truth Against the World”), which pervaded Wright’s architecture as well as his personal life. That note of counter-conventionality has sounded in Agincourt, as well, and it has been at those times that I believe our Truth has a common sense about it. I’ve written here about a few of those moments.

There was the case of Sheriff Joe Pyne [the antithesis of Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio?] who performed his duties with due diligence in 1933 yet spared the Ruffini Brothers Circus from what may have been unjust prosecution. Pyne served six consecutive terms as Fennimore County’s sheriff principally because he understood the difference between that binary pair, Justice and the Law.

We were civilly disobedient a second time when in 1942 the community rallied ’round Tadao Ito, a Nisei in our midst when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 and authorized the interment of all Japanese in the United States for the duration of World War II. Chance had marooned Ted Ito here and a group of citizens spared him that ignominy, hid him in plain sight as staff at the Blenheim Hotel and explained his appearance as “Native American.” This occurred during Sheriff Pyne’s last term of office, one of his last opportunities to “look the other way.”

Other examples include the tenure of Father Francis Manning, priest at St Ahab’s, who everyone knew was a woman but preferred “his” familiar services to those of an over-zealous priest fresh from seminary and eager to please his bishop. Long before the Ecumenical Movement of the 1960s, Fathers Manning (RC) and Grimaldi (Episcopal) shared pulpits and administered sacraments without prejudice—unknown to their respective bishops.

Or the triumvirate of women Annabelle Miller, Sissy Beddowes, and Martha Tennant (my great-grandmother), who sheltered the lives of “fallen women” and engineered their transition back into polite society when others would savagely cast them aside, and were aided in this conspiracy by Dr Rudyard “Ruddy” Fahnstock.

Or the creation in 1909 of the Muskrat Valley Building Association, a coöperative venture in providing low-interest loans for families of modest means. Or the creation of “Common Ground” a few years later to thank those who sacrificed so much in the Great War—our very own “G.I. Bill”.

All things considered, Agincourt has been a kind and nurturing community throughout much of its history. It’s even reasonable to think of it as the “Mayberry” of 20th century civil disobedience. But I’m beginning to suspect those days have passed. All things considered.

“A few figs from thistles…”

by Howard A. Tabor

“Industry”

Long before the railroad, long before steam power or cheap reliable electricity, Agincourt made things. It was waterpower — the default approach to generating energy that came west with settlers from New England and New York — that drove the earliest engines of industry. Our low-lying southwest quarter, wedged between the Muskrat and Crisping Creek, was a natural for milling of the New England type.

By the end of the Civil War, the first Muskrat dam created eight to ten feet of drop — enough to warrant the city’s first Industrial District.  Phase One of the Syndicate Mills could have been mistaken for one on the Merrimack or the Brandywine; with four “side shot” water wheels and a complex system of axles, gears and belts distributing power to three floors of enterprise, its heavy timber construction is indistinguishable from its Eastern cousins. Phase Two was complete just before the Panic of 1875.

The Syndicate’s earliest tenants milled lumber and manufactured windows; they ground local wheat into flour. But there was also a maker of wool felt (one of the earliest employers of women) used in clothing and especially for hats. The oddest product from the mill was a type of “engineered wood” made from compressed wheat straw, a  process patented by local farmer Hiram Baecher—who made more reputation than money, but I shows the creativity of 19th century seat-of-the-pants engineering.

The strip of land between the original townsite and the river attracted enough industry to warrant a railway siding when the Milwaukee Road arrived. Anton Kraus and his sons relocated their blacksmithing and evolved into an iron foundry, but the scale of manufacturing in the 1880s was cramped; the West Bank offered a solution. Expansion beyond the river also removed a growing fire hazard that had begun to concern the city.

Hearthstone Manufacturing was a pioneer in that new part of Agincourt called “Industry” on the west bank of the Muskrat. David Parmelee, a businessman from Rockford, Illinois, had visited the area about 1905 and chose to expand here. Hearthstone manufactured enamel cookware and other utensils in a plant managed by his son-in-law Aidan Archer.

Noblesse Oblige

The Archer family relocated here for business purposes and, like many Capitalists of that time—profiting from the labor of others in an age of organized labor—they became participants in many aspects of the larger community: serving on the school board and church building committees; giving to social causes; perhaps even taking a public position on America’s entry in the First World War. Most noteworthy, perhaps, Archer was an incorporator of the Muskrat Valley Homebuilding Association, a non-profit provider of low cost loans for home construction. Families, stable thriving families, eventually require pots and pans.

In light of recent expressions by hedge fund operators and venture capitalists a century later, the notion of “Capital” has evolved considerably.

[#899]

“A few figs from thistles…”

Howard A. Tabor

St Crispin’s Cabinet

Some buildings are great from the beginning. Others grow into their greatness. Agincourt’s Episcopal church, St Joseph-the-Carpenter, belongs in the latter category.

St Joe’s was certainly an exemplar of the Gothic Revival in 1878. But the next forty years only refined its original vision. Chancel and narthex sprouted at the east and west. Plain stained glass gradually disappeared, one window at a time, as donors stepped forward to memorialize an anniversary, a parent, a child, a spouse. The original baptismal font—a green enamel wash basin—survived twenty years until an Arts & Crafts replacement came from The Roycroft Shops in East Aurora, New York. And our own Tony Kraus designed and wrought the iron rood screen that separates nave from choir. It’s the little things that count.

The biggest of our “little things” materialized in 1915 when St Crispin’s Chapel blossomed at the south side of the chancel.

Nineteen fifteen was the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, the definitive contest between the English and French in the Hundred Years War, an anniversary neither celebrated nor even noticed elsewhere in America, I suspect. In 1915 the French and British were too busy fighting Germans. How this matters to us is fairly obtuse, since the Battle of Agincourt occurred on October 25th, St Crispin’s Day in the Anglican Church kalendar of festivals and feasts. It was, in fact, my own family who chose to commemorate that 500th anniversary by commissioning a chapel in the saint’s name.

Nominees for the chapel’s designer include Anson Tennant (my great-uncle) and Manuel Galvez, the furniture-maker who came from Albuquerque, New Mexico to build it. James and Martha Tennant took anson and his three sisters to New Mexico and Arizona in the winter of 1912, the year both territories entered the Union. In Albuquerque the family were smitten with the craftsmanship of a young woodworker named Manuel Jesus Galvez y Paz. And the rest, as they say, is history.

James and Martha began their relationship with Manuel Galvez modestly enough, purchasing a pair of chairs for their home. Manny was only a year or two older than Anson and the two young men struck a friendship, since Anson had become a devotee of William Morris, Elbert Hubbard and the Arts & Crafts Movement then sweeping America. Anson stayed in New Mexico an extra week to learn the rudiments of woodworking at Manny’s shop.

More of Galvez’ furniture found its way to Iowa: a library table, a wardrobe and a handsome buffet that eventually became part of the Fennimore County History Center collections. Recently, one of Galvez’ reclining chairs showed up on “Antiques Road Show” where I learned that all of his pieces are branded with “M.J.Galvez y Paz” and the date of manufacture.

Fast forward to the spring of 1915, while the Agincourt Public Library was under construction. Uncle Anson had sketched the Crispin Chapel addition to St Joe’s but left it incomplete when he sailed for Europe on the RMS Lusitania in May. Suddenly the chapel project gained a double meaning: marking the anniversary of an obscure medieval battle and the more immediate and probable loss of a son.

At James and Martha’s invitation, Manny Galvez came from New Mexico to build the chapel, the biggest “cabinet” of his career. He stayed in Anson’s old rooms above the stable and worked on the chapel for six months. I think it was Manny’s presence in the household that helped the family through its first awful Christmas. If you’re interested, there’s a standing $100 reward for the person who finds Manny’s brand; it’s in there somewhere, a signature authenticating his work.

The chapel idea expanded to accommodate a mausoleum in its basement; no doubt the Tennants believed their son’s body would be recovered and interred there. But it was his father James who became the crypt’s first occupant in 1919. As a grandson of Anson’s older sister Lucy, I’m also eligible to spend eternity there, but frankly, that shelf would be put to better use preserving some of Aunt Phyllis’ green tomato chutney.

“A few figs from thistles…”

by Howard A. Tabor

Ma’at

Candace Varenhorst’s sermon yesterday took me back to a class I’d taken as a freshman. Most of my college experience has worked that way: without application or meaning at the time, but, now and then, massively useful in the most obtuse situations. And so it was Sunday morning. I don’t think she’ll mind being called a small-C catholic.¹

Education occurs at three scales: 1) wholesale (large-lecture classes delivered to undergraduate throngs in drafty lecture barns); 2) retail (classes of 25-40 where it was far more difficult to remain anonymous and you might actually learn something); and 3) boutique (the advanced seminar of fewer than ten students; classes taught by real faculty, rather than grad students more intent on passing their orals and finding a suitably obscure dissertation topic, approval guaranteed).

Uncertain of a path in the world of work, my freshman year happened in those barns (where you were told, the first day, that persons to your left and right would likely be gone by mid-term). And one of those classes of 300+ was Intro to Anthropology, which I took because it wasn’t Econ 101. And so, one foggy morning at 8:00, I was captivated by fifty minutes devoted to the religion of ancient Egypt.² What I recall — and remember this was in 1963 or 1964 — was rekindled through the sermon of Rev Candace Varenhorst.³

Ma’at is the Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice, and in her personification she regulated the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the deities, and established the order of the universe out of chaos at the moment of creation. Each Egyptian, from Pharaohs to farmers harvesting onions from the fields, conducted their lives according to ma’at, which lacks a convenient English translation. Perhaps it is precisely that vagueness (to us in the 21st century, at least) which gave ma’at its utility, for each Egyptian knew that, at death, they would confront the Assessors of Ma’at in Duat (the Egyptian underworld) to answer the Forty-two Negative Confessions. Moses might have got a double hernia lugging these down from Mount Sinai; ten was sufficient for Yahweh, thank you.

Just half of the Judeo-Christian commandments guide our relationships with one another. Not so for ancient Egypt: Only two of the forty-two concern the gods; the other forty are practical tools for daily living and dealing with one another. By Egyptian standards, I wouldn’t measure up.

It’s probably a good thing they had no Hell. Your heart was the measure of your truthfulness: Successfully weighed against the Feather of Ma’at, the deceased was granted passage to the Fields of Bullrushes. But a heavy heart — now there’s a notion we might all take note — was devoured by Ammit and its owner simply ceased to exist. Is that a worse fate than the Lake of Fire and eternal damnation? I’m not sure.

This cycle of Rev Varenhorst’s sermons challenge us; they’re an invitation to reëvaluate our behavior as members of the community — no idle task in the current political environment. In my case, the message was clear.

[#870]

¹ cath·o·lic (adjective) — 1. (especially of a person’s tastes) including a wide variety of things; all-embracing. synonyms: universal, diverse, wide, broad, eclectic, liberal, latitudinarian.

² In the 60s we didn’t have Jan Assmann’s book Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. That wasn’t available in English until 2005.

³ While I’m nominally an Agnostic, Rowan comes from Methodist stock, so we alternate between St Joseph-the-Carpenter and Asbury UMC. Frankly, the coffee is better at St Joe but one of those Methodist ladies makes a killer snickerdoodle.

“As Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, ‘The answer to the ancient question, Why is there something rather than nothing? would then be that “nothing” is unstable.’ … In short, the natural state of affairs is something rather than nothing. An empty universe requires supernatural intervention–not a full one. Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.” — from Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007)

“A few figs from thistles…”

by Howard A. Tabor

Building something from nothing with nothing for all

Spending time at the lake is a reprieve from many things: job, school, and chores, not to mention setting a limit on social obligations. “Sorry, we’d love to but we’re at the lake.” And somewhere near the top of every list you are likely to find church attendance. Those twenty-five miles back to town are an easy excuse to evade it. After all, even God rested on the seventh day.

One or two ad hoc spiritual gatherings at cabins or the Station-Store disrupted the otherwise unblemished quiet of a Sunday morn. But they, too, failed for lack of numbers or an available cleric. We might have known this splendid isolation couldn’t last: the pastors could do nothing as individuals but their combined forces — a Ministerial Association — could marshal larger resources to displace that happy void. Why not build a non-denominational chapel near the Station Store that no one within sound of its bell could avoid! Ministers would alternate conducting services sufficiently generic to satisfy all [and offend none; good luck with that!], but therein lies a story for another time.

So they leased a patch of ground at the end of the interurban spur and made plans for a chapel to seat an over-optimistic fifty souls. But even the cheapest construction and volunteer labor put the project beyond their means. Architect Anson Tennant [my great-uncle, I should confess] proposed a novel solution: locate an unused farm building or shack, move it to the site and make alterations suitable for Godly service.

Octogenarian Elias Fahnstock offered a decrepit shed that had sheltered his chickens. But it was on the opposite side of Sturm and the road either way around the lake was either peppered with pot holes or too steep and unpaved in the bargain. Tennant proposed an ingenious solution: wait a few months and slide the coop across the frozen lake in the dead if winter. One mid-January day was chosen for Fahnstock’s draft horses to pull the coop on sledges to the opposite shore. Then, following Tennant’s drawings (on the back of an envelope), construction began in the Spring of 1913. Dedication of “Lakeside Chapel” on June 1st combined the choirs from Saint Ahab, Saint Joe, Asbury Methodist and First Baptist for more ecumenism than we’ve seen before or since.

As a physical setting for Divine Service, the chapel was adequate — lacking a full-immersion tank for Baptists but there was the lake. Its previous tenants, however, had left an aroma that defied exorcism. It took little time for someone to identify Saint Ferreolus, Patron Saint of Sick Poultry, who became its popular dedication.

Services at the Chicken Chapel (another unfortunate moniker) continued into the war years, when it answered a higher patriotic calling — a chicken coop for the war effort itself — and came full circle. In its thirty years, St Ferreolus had been something made from nothing with nothing for everyone — and then some.

Can I hear an Amen?

In the summer of 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright made the rounds of his Chicago clients, favored galleries, and friends, converting his collection of Japanese ukiyo-e prints — and any other liquid assets — into cash. He turned his office and current work over to Herman von Holst, a fellow architect with no strong commitment to the emerging Prairie Style. All of this was preface to Wright’s elopement with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, wife of client Edwin Cheney.

The Wright’s departure with Mrs Cheney erupted onto the front pages of Chicago and other major newspapers for a few days — “above the fold” — until it was swept from public attention by the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo, capital and largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina — a place familiar to few Americans. World War had had distracted us from the personal infidelities of a temperamental artist.

As a Midwestern daily newspaper linked by telegraph with the wider world, The Plantagenet may have announced the first of these events; certainly the second. My point concerns the connectedness of even small communities with happenings far beyond their reach: We may suppose a small-town provinciality that simply didn’t exist.

Within days, anxiety spread among Agincourters who had European family connections; debate ensued regarding our neutrality, as German-Americans became sensitive to public perceptions of their patriotism; and the community’s youth considered prospects for military service. Within three years, the United States entered the war and our own Marshall McGinnis became its first casualty. I’m fascinated by the multiple entwined links between Agincourt and places and events far beyond its horizons. In that light, here is a story written three or four years ago about Kropotkin, a mysterious arrival in the year leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

A few figs from thistles…

by Howard A. Tabor

Kropotkin, the Knife-Man

Agincourt has been slow to correct and even more reticent to punish its social fringe. But no one tested that tolerance more than an itinerant mechanic named Kropotkin.

Our community has been exceptionally tolerant—that is, it has accepted difference from, even defiance of, societal norms. It neither rewards not punishes for that difference from a so-called normative state or condition. Perhaps that’s our inheritance from the Dutch who came here in the 1870s, because the Low Countries have traditionally welcomed all, with an attitude that your behavior is acceptable so long as it doesn’t impinge on mine.

Some time after 1905, a rough man calling himself only Kropotkin (Кропоткин in what a friend of mine calls the Acrylic alphabet; thank you, Cecil) arrived in town with neither family nor much in the way of possessions. The little English he spoke came wrapped in a thick Eastern European accent redolent of onions. Everyone assumed he was Russian; some even inferred that his appearance had been connected to the failed 1905 revolution in Russia which was so prominent in the local and national press.

Revolution was on everyone’s mind—from rumors that Victoria’s death would bring about a British republic, to fears that our own oligarchy might be threatened. It may have excited the natives to imagine that a card-carrying anarchist revolutionary was in their midst. Radical change can be frightening, no matter how far from its source.

Kropotkin didn’t live in town; in fact, for several years no one was quite certain where he lived. But he and his horse-drawn wagon appeared regularly throughout town to sharpen tools, kitchen knives, lawn mowers, ice skates—anything with a metal blade dulled from use or abuse. He was the Master of Metal, plying his skills as far as Fort Dodge and Storm Lake in good weather.

Kropotkin’s wagon had a large whetstone mounted on a foot-fed treadle. He would set up business on residential street corners and announce his presence by clanging a large cowbell and proffering his sharpening services in a rich basso-profundo that would have secured a contract withe the Metropolitan Opera and the lead in “Eugene Onegin”! Eat you heart out, Robert Goulet.

A dozen or so years after his unheralded arrival, Kropotkin disappeared. Evaporated would describe it more correctly. It was only then that folks realized he had been living in an abandoned farmstead five miles south of town on the flats near Muskrat City. Pinkerton agents showed up a few weeks later seeking his whereabouts, which seemed to confirm local suspicions of anarchist tendencies and a possible return to Mother Russia following the more successful revolution of 1917.

An entire generation of Agincourt children ate their vegetables and took their medicine and respected their elders with a parental admonition that “the Knife-Man will get you!” if they didn’t behave. What a sorry example of tolerance. And what a sad legacy for the memory of a strange man who did no harm—strange only because we did not know him nor make the effort.

Not all strangers are strange.

And our cutlery has never been the same.

[#798]

“A few figs from thistles…”

by Howard A. Tabor

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.” — Neil Gaiman

The Sac & Fox people inducted our old friend Seamus Tierney into their number, but I can’t recall his new name. If I were admitted to the tribe — probably with purification rites involving sweatlodges, smoldering herbs, and eagle feathers — and allowed to choose my name, it would be Sleeps-with-Books. My bed is peppered with them, at least two or three at a time; mysteries, histories, sudoku; rarely best-sellers. But always within easy reach for the insomniac and early-awakener that I am.

In an HDTV home renovation episode last season, the single parent and her daughter dismissed each candidate house: “There just aren’t enough shelves. I’ve got nearly a hundred books, you know!” Really? I have twice that number stacked where the nightstand used to be; actually I got rid of extraneous furniture to accommodate more books. Truth be told, there isn’t a room in the house without them. We’re at the point of adding an official exclusive Library Wing or using the Holtzman Effect to fold space. It’s premature to invoke Borges’s “Library of Babel” but you get the point.

In a recent New Republic article, William Giraldi makes a case for the physicality of books, so well that my thoughts are hardly worth note. Yesterday afternoon, for example, a book surfaced that I hadn’t read in forty years. Indeed, it’s from the core of my collection, the very heart of my hoard; one of the first twenty or thirty books I owned: Lewis Garrard’s rite-of-passage narrative Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Trail, the experience of a seventeen-year-old, published in 1850 when he was twenty-one. It came to me from Hamish Brookes, proprietor of Shelf Life, Agincourt’s own antiquarian bookstore until his death in 1959.

I had met Mr Brookes when I was fourteen and became a frequent visitor to his second-floor shop above Vandervort’s Bakery; but the baked goods below held no fascination, compared to what there was above. Too young for the familiarity of “Hamish,” Mr Brookes was my mentor and guide to the empire of print on paper. From him I learned the rudiments of type fonts, em- and en-dashes, majuscules and ligatures; of letterpress printing on good paper; of signatures and spines. Libraries and archives across the Midwest sent their damaged volumes to him for repair. I observed some of those projects and was allowed to help with humbler pieces, but all were treated worthily. When he died in 1959, Wah-to-Yah was bequeathed to me with a handwritten note still folded between its pages. It remains there today.

Lewis Garrard printed so few copies of Wah-to-Yah in 1850 that bookmen Edwin and Robert Grabhorn reprinted it in 1935, a handsome limited edition with three- and four-color woodcuts by Mallette Dean on the title page and above each chapter head — twenty-six of them. The simple cloth-and-paper binding yesterday morning was comfortably balanced in my right hand, while I turned the pages with my left, enjoying the paper’s texture, tooth and weight. Flecked with something like Japanese mulberry, but thicker, the paper held letterpress and woodblock impressions these eighty years. The font may be Cheltenham — memory has faded since the 1950s — but it just encourages me to find a specimen book and reacquaint myself with the simple majesty of type; the coming and going of serifs, like the changing height of ladies’ hem lines. [Could there be a kinky correlation?]

How much of this, I wonder, translates to the screen of a Kindle, a Nook, or their ilk?

PS: Thanks to French printmaker Erik Desmazières for his conception of Borges’ Babel.