The family left the city to
visit family in the country
and he, a fourth-grader, would
go to the one-room schoolhouse
with his relatives. He would
sit and watch the first graders,
second graders, third graders
and so forth around the one room
of an ark in the middle of the
field. One teacher, many students.
He wondered at how smart she
must be to teach it all. Then the
family would leave and he would
go back home to his big, brick
schoolhouse squeezed between
many streets — an ark with many
rooms and many teachers. Years
and years later, he wondered at
the wonderful idea of public
education for all — country kids
and city kids alike all safe in
the arms of the ark of learning.
But look out! The political
storms of straight wind, tornado,
hurricane, blizzard, cyclone,
gale, monsoon, snowstorm, squall,
tempest, twister, whirlwind,
windstorm are beating against
the clapboard and old, worn,
brick sides of what we once
thought was the unsinkable ark
of learning for all.

*“Education is our only political safety.
Outside of this ark, all is deluge.” —
The father of American public education,
Horace Mann. — from The Writer’s Almanac,
May 4, 2020

The greatest plague on the
land is not COVID-19 as hor-
rendous as it is. It is the
plague of certitude. Viruses

come and go but certitude
has raped and pillaged for
generation after generation.
It gives birth to opinions of

absoluteness to absolute
differences of opinions, to
skirmishes, to fights, to wars,
to annihilation, to ethnic clean-

sing (if ever there was lying
language), to genocide and
on and on. The antidote to
certitude with its attending

calamities is mystery and
mystery births wonder, open-
ness, questioning and dis-
covering and more question-

ing and more discovering and
realizing that the wonder,
openness, questioning are
much better playmates than

the answers, which lead to
certitude, which leads not to
playgrounds but death marches
and concentration camps

(there’s another false euphem-
istic term; better just call it
death) and, well, you get the
picture and we have the choice…

at least for a while.

Who knew the dysfunction was so great?
Who knew there was so much fear and hate?
For the most part we went our way,
thinking everything was “pretty-much” okay,
but when those now in charge ascended
the systems we took for granted into chaos descended.
Machiavelli’s answer after abandonment and torture
was to use whatever is available — love or fear.
Love is not in the equation. Fear is clearly here.
We see it work for those demanding
and minions fall in line like lemmings.
The Franciscan said that non-violent action in love
is still the only antidote that can lift us above
all the hate and fear,
and so we offer open, uplifted hands while shedding a tear.

Actually, he detests his base, the white, lower-middle-class;
he despises the white, working-class;
he demeans the sixty-three million;
he descends upon them with a vengeance with his tax law;
he deplores their lack of status;
he deprecates their white, evangelical faith;
he denies their economic plight;
he declines to invite them to Mar-A-Lago;
he doesn’t care if they die of the virus;
yet, he determines that they should “liberate” states;
yet, he summons them to his rallies;
yet, he charms them with the smoothness of snake oil;
yet, they follow his commands;
they are his base;
they are his cult;
they think of him as some kind of god;
they say he is ordained to protect them from people of color;
they liken him to Cyrus and Esther;
they say,
“Ye, tho he slay me; yet shall I trust him,”
though not in the King James English
or maybe in the King James English
depending on where they go to church;
though, he wouldn’t know the quote anyway.

The Valkyries, lovely ladies of the sword,
deciders of who would live and who would die,
and who, off to heaven, would fly,
took the fallen fighters
to Valhalla, the hall of Odin,
the god of war,
and the fallen fighters
would fight on
without personal harm
and would feast the night through, too.
Sounds just like I did as a kid in Johnny’s
front yard. We would battle for the cause,
fall and get up to fight again another day
and then I would hear my mother say,
“Dinner is ready. Come home, okay?”
Only the Valkyries were missing,
the lovely ladies of the sword, the
seductive Valkyries, the deciders of who
would live and who would die, and who,
off to heaven, would fly.
Oh, they would start showing up
around my junior year in senior high.

The contagious disease guy said,
“There is no peeing section in the
swimming pool,” — a scientist
with a penchant for metaphors
also said (to paraphrase), “If we
aren’t really careful, we might as
well all be employed by the meat-
packing plants.” Do we get the
picture?

*for my West Michigan friends,
the contagious disease fellow
is a Dutch-American guy
from Michigan who graduated
from Calvin College.

He was too late to the party.
P.T. had already done it —
built the circus, conned the
people into believing, enter-
tained the crowds, got famous,
made money — received the
desperately desired love
and produced the Greatest
Show on Earth. This Johnny
Come Lately just came lately,
too late, so what did we
do? We elevated him when he
wasn’t half bad as a T.V.
reality show host, where he
should have stayed and now,
the poor guy, the J-C-L
probably will be Jail
Come Lately where he can
con the cons.

We seem a bit alarmed and at
the same time fascinated by
talk and images of ancient
fertility cults — May Day, tall
phallic poles and young women
dancing around them. Okay.
It’s about spring, germination,
growth out of cold, sterile winter,
pregnancy, birth — that’s it. No
big deal, except it is kind of funny
to think about a conservative
Christian college where every
May Day, the pole is erected and
the coeds coalesce and dance
innocently in their colorful
spring dresses while Victorian
minded elders pass by with a
public frown and secretly just
a sly, lascivious, sideways
glance.