5.21.2025 – think God’s on your side

think God’s on your side
John Calvin’s under floorboards
during board meetings

He told me that I should note in my reading of journals, monographs, and texts how all the great predators were theocratic …

that if you were going to rape the land and people, whether it was the original Indians or the working class that followed …

it was important to think that God was thoroughly on your side.

“John Calvin is always under the floorboards during America s board meetings.

From True North by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).

Probably quote from Mr. Harrison a lot more than I should and I admit it isn’t without some misgivings.

The passage I quote today, I feel it explains much of what makes the Evangelical Church of Trump work.

There is a lot of my West Michigan background in the background of Mr. Harrison, though his foreground can take in a lot of life I did not experience.

And I wonder, do other people get it?

Take the John Calvin reference.

I am sure that most folks might know who Mr. Calvin was, but in West Michigan, where I grew up, John Calvin wasn’t under the table, he had a seat at the table.

The local college was named, Calvin College.

My wife went to a grade school operated by the Christian Reformed Church name Calvin Christian.

Most folks I knew had copies of The Institutes of John Calvin on a shelf in their home.

But I was raised Baptist.

Mr. Calvin was there in our theology with his TULIP acronym*, but we also told the joke that Calvinism was the fear that someone, somewhere, was having a good time.

BUT I DIGRESS.

I make no apology for Mr. Harrison’s content.

It is what it is.

But his use of language and narration and view of life, lives and lifestyle is powerful.

I remember back in the day when I worked in a bookstore and this one customer, who by his dress and manner and overall appearance was probably from what we called, ‘Up North’ which took in the part of the State of Michigan that was north of Kent Country up to and including the Upper Peninsula of the state.

Boy Howdy, maybe just north of the Grand River all the way to Lake Superior.

Nothing wrong with guy understand, but going north, you entered a different world that often times might have been more comfortable had it been about 1952.

Close to the same feeling I get when I drive across the back country of the State of South Carolina.

This feller as I remember him would not have stood had he been in the band, ZZ Top, including the long beard and dark sunglasses.

He was buying a copy of Garrison Keillor’s latest book, though I can’t remember which one.

I chit chatted with him, told him I hoped he enjoyed the book as I read all the Keillor stuff and enjoyed it all myself.

He stopped and looked at me for a second.

“I am getting it for my nephew”, he said, “he needs to read about life.”

Well says I, you should get something by Jim Harrison.

He stopped and looked at me for a second, looked away then back at me and said, “No, no way, this kid is not ready for Harrison …”

He looked off again, then said:

“Someday …”

And he caught my eye, nodded, a nod with a lot of understanding and kinship in it, and walked out.

*The acronym TULIP is used to represent the five core doctrines of Calvinism:
Total depravity,
Unconditional election,
Limited atonement,
Irresistible grace, and
Perseverance of the saints.

5.18.2025 – hydrothermal blasts

hydrothermal blasts
and dacitic magmatic
pumiceous ash

Adapted from THE 1980 ERUPTIONS OF MOUNT ST. HELENS, LOGICAL SURVEY PROFESSIONAL PAPER 1250: Early results of studies of volcanic events in 1980, geophysical monitoring of activity, and studies of volcanic deposits, effects, and potential hazards by UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, Washington, DC, 1981.

The climactic eruption began at 0832 PDT on May 18, probably triggered by an earthquake of magnitude 5 that caused failure of the bulging north flank as a 2.3-km3 rockslide avalanche. This failure rapidly unloaded the volcanic edifice, and probably caused the water in its hydrothermal system to flash to steam, initiating a series of northward-directed hydrothermal blasts that devastated an area of 600 km2. These events in turn triggered a 9-hr dacitic magmatic eruption that drove a Plinian column more than 20 km high, producing ash fallout for more than 1,500 km to the east as well as pumiceous ash flows on the volcano’s north flank. Catastrophic mudflows and floods were generated from rapid melting of snow and ice and water derived from the avalanche.

Smaller but significant magmatic eruptions occurred on May 25, June 12, July 22, and October 16-18; each lasted as long as several hours and produced eruption columns more than 10 km high, dacitic fallout, and pumiceous ash flows. A dacitic dome emplaced during or after the June eruption as partially reamed out in the pyroclastic eruption of July 22.

Geologists, like Meteorologists and food critics get to use some of the best words.

Volcanic edifice.

Hydrothermal system to flash.

Dacitic magmatic eruption.

Plinian column.

Pumiceous ash flows (which spell check throws out, always a plus in my book).

Dacitic dome.

Partially reamed out.

Pyroclastic eruption.

Also have to point out the use of ‘Plinian column’ which is a reference to Pliny the Younger’s description of Vesuvius when it erupted on August 24, 79, that states:

About one in the afternoon, my mother pointed out a cloud with an odd size and appearance that had just formed. From that distance it was not clear from which mountain the cloud was rising, although it was found afterwards to be Vesuvius. The cloud could best be described as more like an umbrella pine than any other tree, because it rose high up in a kind of trunk and then divided into branches. I imagine that this was because it was thrust up by the initial blast until its power weakened and it was left unsupported and spread out sideways under its own weight. Sometimes it looked light coloured, sometimes it looked mottled and dirty with the earth and ash it had carried up.

1 Thousand, Nine Hundred and One years later, the best description of a mountain top blowing up, even with all our science, hadn’t been improved.

As Mr. Churchill said, “Short words are best and old words when short are the best of all.”

Just for fun, here is the USGS predictions for further volcanic activity in the Pacific Rim.

5.17.2025 – I understand that

I understand that
he’s been reading James Joyce and
T. S. Eliot

100 years ago today, May 17, 1925, in the New York Times, there was a story that “Princeton’s Literary Magazine Banned By Dr. Hibben, Who Calls May Issue Obscene. “

Dr. Hibben objected that the author of an article, “Sketches from a Madhouse” by William Mode Spackman of the class of 1927 and editor of the Nassau, the student Literary Magazine, was one of the most sacriregious and and obscene pieces of writing he had ever seen.

Inside that article in something called, Preface for the American Public, Dr. Hidden says that Spackman attacks what he calls COSMIC INANITIES as “all faculties, deans, directors, lictors, hangman, all Philadelphians, both Cabinet and society, all rules, regulations, totems, taboos, and mumbo-jumberies, all credos, standards, debarments, band and prohibitions.

Dr, Hidden tells the New York Times that “I understand that he has been reading a good deal of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ and T. S. Eliiot and other of the modernists in literature. He has evidently been well soaked in this type of literature and has tried to go the writers one better.”

Such problems American Universities had back then doncha think?

I had never heard of Mr. Spackman but wikipedia says:

William Mode Spackman (May 20, 1905 – August 3, 1990) was an American writer. He was born in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, the son of George Harvey Spackman and Alice Pennock Mode. A graduate of the Friends School of Wilmington, Delaware and in 1927 Princeton University (B.A.; later also an M.A.), he was also a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1929, he married Mary Ann Matthews (1902–1978); they had three children: Peter (1930–1995), Ann (1932–1961), and Harriet (born 1934). Spackman was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to study public opinion at Columbia University. Spackman also taught classics briefly at New York University and worked in radio.

Spackman’s literary success came relatively late in life. He wrote about romance from a realistic rather than a romantic perspective. Highly praised by critics like John Leonard, John Updike, and Stanley Elkin, he has been called a “Fabergé of novelists” and his works have been called “delicate comedies.” The characters in his novels are school friends, their associations, often in New York City, and the women with whom they spent time.

But when he died, it was this incident the NYT remembered, writing in Mr. Spackman’s OBIT on August 9, 1990:

The author, who was born in 1905 in Coatesville, Pa., was removed as editor of Princeton’s Nassau Literary Magazine while an undergraduate. The university president, John Grier Hibben, suppressed an issue that contained what he called the ”most sacrilegious and obscene articles” he had ever seen in print. About Mr. Spackman, he said: ”I understand that he has been reading a good deal of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ and T. S. Eliiot and other of the modernists in literature. He has evidently been well soaked in this type of literature and has tried to go the writers one better.”

After graduation, Mr. Spackman became a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. Later he worked as a Rockefeller Fellow in opinion research at Columbia University, as a radio writer, as a public relations executive and a literary critic. He also taught classics at New York University and the University of Colorado. His other novels are ”A Difference in Design,” and ”A Little Decorum.” ”On the Decay of Humanism” is a volume of essays.

The obit also said this:

Alice Quinn, poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine, who was his editor at Alfred A. Knopf, said yesterday, ”Mr. Spackman was a radiant human being and a radiant writer, a writer of great charm and high style, who took as his subject men and women who really liked and enjoyed each other.”

I had never heard of him.

I have now.

I will have to read his stuff and find out if he had been reading a good deal of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ and T. S. Eliiot and other of the modernists in literature and if He had evidently been well soaked in this type of literature and has tried to go the writers one better.

4.30.2025 – parents had hard time

parents had hard time
convincing me he was no
kin whatsoever

I can remember that on the shelves at home there were these books by Thomas Wolfe.

Look Homeward Angel and Of Time and the River. Of Time and the River had just come out when I was aware of his name.

My parents had a hard time convincing me that he was no kin whatsoever.

My attitude was, Well, what’s he doing on the shelf then?

But as soon as I was old enough I became a tremendous fan of Thomas Wolfe and remain so to this day.

I ignore his fluctuations on the literary stock market.

From Tom Wolfe, The Art of Fiction No. 123 as Interviewed by George Plimpton, The Paris Review, Issue 118, Spring 1991.

Myself, I long confused Thomas Wolfe and Tom Wolfe.

I always thought is was the guy who wrote The Right Stuff who said you can’t go home again.

And I am not sure when it was that I got straightened out.

Even when I started working in a bookstore I wasn’t completely sure until I shelved The Right Stuff in New Releases and Look Homeward Angel in classics.

Then I got Thomas Wolfe mixed up with Thomas Mann and I seem to be forever paying for not taking a 100 best books class in college.

I always enjoyed Tom Wolfe’s writing.

I was always a bit amazed listening to his interviews and wondering how he survived long enough to write.

4.25.2025 – die with empty hands

die with empty hands
and empty pockets, but with
a very full heart

40 years ago, when I went through orientation as a new student in college, my advisor asked me what classes I planned to take outside of my major, US History.

I told him I hadn’t thought much about what else to take and that I didn’t really care.

He stared at me for a second and then kind of exploded, YOU ARE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN – YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO STUDY WITH ANY NUMBER OF GREAT SCHOLARS AND WORLD TOPICS … DON’T YOU DARE NOT CARE.

We sat for a minute in silence.

Me, I was scared to death.

He was most likely bored but he kept looking me in the eye.

He tried again and asked what I liked and somehow we got on the subject of art and I ended up with a minor in History of Art of the Renaissance.

And I have never regretted it.

The Professors and the lectures and even my co students in this field were all wonderful and they really loved what they were studying.

The lectures on the high Renaissance, when I would put away my pencil and just listen, were love stories.

One professor spent a few weeks on the life and work of one Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and the passion of the artist came through in the passion of the professor.

So it was with both some joy and some understanding that I came across the article, Piercing the Shadows of the Pope’s Favorite Painting by Jason Farago (April 24, 2025 – NYT).

Mr. Farago touched on the passion of the art of writing: In some of the grandest churches, Caravaggio endeavored to bring the saints and the angels down from the heavens to earth. But the naturalism had a function that went beyond popular accessibility. Because what matters, what makes Caravaggio so much more than an illustrator, is less the realism of the sacred image than its translation — through the bodies and faces of ordinary people — from the time of the Gospels to now. Into Caravaggio’s time. Into ours.

You could not study the art of Caravaggio with people who understood it and not have it all sink into your core.

Because, some how, it all mattered.

Mr. Farago then writes, quoting Pope Francis:

“Among the great painters, I admire Caravaggio; his paintings speak to me,” Francis said shortly after his election as pope.

During his trips to Rome when he was still the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis favored lodgings right near San Luigi dei Francesi. “Every time I came to Rome,” he later said during an address at St. Peter’s, he would seek out one painting in particular. It was the “Calling of St. Matthew,” in the church’s Contarelli Chapel.

“It is the gesture of Matthew that strikes me,” Francis said shortly after his elevation to the papacy. The instinctive lunge for the coins was one he saw in himself. “He holds on to his money as if to say, ‘No, not me! No, this money is mine.’”

You are comfortable, you’re not looking for it, but the calling comes just the same. “Here, this is me, a sinner on whom the Lord has turned his gaze,” the pope continued. “And this is what I said when they asked me if I would accept my election as pontiff.”

Lets say that again.

“It is the gesture of Matthew that strikes me,” Francis said shortly after his elevation to the papacy.

The instinctive lunge for the coins was one he saw in himself.

He holds on to his money as if to say, ‘No, not me! No, this money is mine.’

You are comfortable.

You’re not looking for it.

But the calling comes just the same.

I found this comment on another website and it fits in nicely.

Pope Francis on Matthew’s conversion story: “That day, when Matthew left his home, said goodbye to his wife, he never thought he was going to come back without money, and concerned about how to have such a big feast to prepare … for him who had loved him first, who had surprised Matthew with something very special, more important than all the money that he had.”

As God surprised Matthew, so would God’s surprises “shake the ground from under your feet and make you unsure. But they move us forward in the right direction. Real love leads you to spend yourself … even at the risk of having your hands empty.”

He referred to St. Francis, his namesake, who “died with empty hands, empty pockets, but with a very full heart … Think well, feel well, do well. Be wise, allow yourselves to be surprised by the love of God.”

Die with empty hands.

Die with empty pockets, but die with with a very full heart …

Think well.

Feel well.

Do well.

Be wise.

Allow yourselves to be surprised by the love of God.