Faith Works 12-29-23
Jeff Gill
A local Christmas tradition that hasn't started yet
___
If you have read the last four columns I've done about how we've observed Christmas in Licking County, thank you!
We considered Christmas in 1800, 1844, 1864, and 1944. I know, it would have been nice if I could have found a cool Christmas story from 1804, but the Stadden-Green wedding on Christmas Day in 1800 was too good to pass up. Plus, I didn't see anything in 1804 from the archives that took us where I wanted to go.
Which was: reflecting on what's timeless, and what's changing, and how it might yet change further, about our cultural and religious understanding of the holiday itself. The holiday, or holy day, which is where the term comes from.
The birth of Jesus, or theologically the Incarnation, is the core concept that does not change. Incarnation, or the idea that God incarnate, or "in the flesh" would be with us, let alone in a humble form, worshiped by shepherds and laid in a manger: that's the heart of Christmas, or "the reason for the season."
Other aspects of a traditional (to us) Christmas are more fluid. Early Christmases in Licking County talk about candles in the long nights after the winter solstice, and "decking the halls" with fresh scented greenery like pine garlands and holly branches, not to mention discreet sprigs of mistletoe, but not trees. This seems to be a post-Civil War fashion which the returning soldiers made a common practice, but not until 1865 and after.
Likewise, a tree would be cut and brought in and decorated pretty much altogether, on Christmas Eve, and sometimes removed after Christmas Day or perhaps by some until Jan. 6, Epiphany. They were locally cut on common woodlots, and propped up by makeshift stands.
Historically, it's a recent idea that we can own a purpose made stand with a water reservoir and tree to keep a Christmas tree up most of December; when artificial trees became more common I don't know, but that's more post-World War II. Likewise electric lights, not candles.
Now with mail order pre-lit artificial trees, you can have Christmas decor up for weeks and months, and many do. But that's a change, you see, don't you? And each such change due to technology or cultural adaptations subtly changes our holiday sense.
As a person of faith and a religious teacher, the shift of imperishable decor and LED lights doesn't bother me per se, except for how Christmas has done two odd things: it's backed into November, if not October for some (and certainly in advertising), and it chops off ruthlessly at the end of the 25th.
When I served a parish, I enjoyed saying "now that everyone has given us back Christmas, we can make the most of it!" There's a season of Christmastide in the great tradition, which extends from Dec. 25 through Jan. 6. Even as all the decorations get packed away in deference to a flood of Valentine's retail offerings on Dec. 26, that's when a believer in the Incarnation should be gearing up to move from Advent to Christmastide, to celebrate twelve days at least of Christ's nativity and presence among us.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's enjoyed looking back at other ways to do Christmas, and hopes you have too. Tell him what you'd like to learn about in faith and hope during 2024 at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, December 18, 2023
Faith Works 12-22-23
Faith Works 12-22-23
Jeff Gill
Christmas not so long ago but very different all the same
___
Christmas in 1944 was by all accounts an unsettled time, both overseas and here in Licking County.
It was the previous December of 1943 that "I'll Be Home for Christmas" had launched onto the scene, embraced both at home and in the trenches as an anthem of heartfelt hope. If you've listened closely to it, you know the wistful twist that it concludes with: "if only in my dreams."
Bing Crosby is better known today for "White Christmas," but it was that new classic in 1943 that by the holiday season of 1944 had become a standard, one which made him a hero to many soldiers, sailors, and Marines. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" took unarticulated thought and gave it voice; it was requested constantly at Bing's USO shows, and during World War II had a profound impact for encouraging everyone who heard it.
They needed it, because even by Christmas 1944, the outcome was not certain. The original hearers of the song had invaded Africa, Sicily, and into southern Italy within the European Theater of Operations, then D-Day the previous summer and to Paris and beyond; in the Pacific after turning back the Japanese Navy at Midway there had been successful invasions of New Guinea and Tarawa, but at a savage cost.
And in Germany and Belgium, on December 16, 1944 there had been the launch of a new Nazi offensive, whose outcome was as yet hard to predict (unless you were Generals George Patton or Tony McAuliffe). As it turns out, the 101st Airborne, 969th Artillery Battalion, and elements of the 10th Armored Division would resist a final Panzerkorps assault on Christmas Day, and it was the last German success in the Battle of the Bulge.
On a personal note, I cannot count the number of stories I've heard over the years from elderly men who were young in 1944, and in the weeks leading up to and following that dire Christmas were on the front lines around Bastogne and in the Ardennes Forest. What all of their stories have in common is one word: cold. Bitter, biting cold. Cold so severe that it likely caused more casualties than weapons, on both sides.
And in those weeks after Christmas, as American troops pressed forward, I have heard stories of how some soldiers died seeking warmth. It seems the US uniform jackets were short, while the Wehrmacht winter uniform included a long greatcoat, one of the most coveted parts of their gear. Some of our soldiers put on those long heavy coats taken from the enemy dead, but at night when only silhouettes and shadows were clearly visible, they would be shot at as hostile troops.
Yet even as knowledge of these deaths spread, some chose to take that risk if they found a German greatcoat: it was that cold.
In that frigid Christmas and New Year season, if only to take their minds off the cold if not for a hundred other reasons, they would dream of being home for Christmas, and wondered if it would be next year.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; this weekend he will help with his father-in-law's funeral, who in later years served in the 101st "Screaming Eagles." Recall your loved ones gone on before us this Christmas to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Christmas not so long ago but very different all the same
___
Christmas in 1944 was by all accounts an unsettled time, both overseas and here in Licking County.
It was the previous December of 1943 that "I'll Be Home for Christmas" had launched onto the scene, embraced both at home and in the trenches as an anthem of heartfelt hope. If you've listened closely to it, you know the wistful twist that it concludes with: "if only in my dreams."
Bing Crosby is better known today for "White Christmas," but it was that new classic in 1943 that by the holiday season of 1944 had become a standard, one which made him a hero to many soldiers, sailors, and Marines. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" took unarticulated thought and gave it voice; it was requested constantly at Bing's USO shows, and during World War II had a profound impact for encouraging everyone who heard it.
They needed it, because even by Christmas 1944, the outcome was not certain. The original hearers of the song had invaded Africa, Sicily, and into southern Italy within the European Theater of Operations, then D-Day the previous summer and to Paris and beyond; in the Pacific after turning back the Japanese Navy at Midway there had been successful invasions of New Guinea and Tarawa, but at a savage cost.
And in Germany and Belgium, on December 16, 1944 there had been the launch of a new Nazi offensive, whose outcome was as yet hard to predict (unless you were Generals George Patton or Tony McAuliffe). As it turns out, the 101st Airborne, 969th Artillery Battalion, and elements of the 10th Armored Division would resist a final Panzerkorps assault on Christmas Day, and it was the last German success in the Battle of the Bulge.
On a personal note, I cannot count the number of stories I've heard over the years from elderly men who were young in 1944, and in the weeks leading up to and following that dire Christmas were on the front lines around Bastogne and in the Ardennes Forest. What all of their stories have in common is one word: cold. Bitter, biting cold. Cold so severe that it likely caused more casualties than weapons, on both sides.
And in those weeks after Christmas, as American troops pressed forward, I have heard stories of how some soldiers died seeking warmth. It seems the US uniform jackets were short, while the Wehrmacht winter uniform included a long greatcoat, one of the most coveted parts of their gear. Some of our soldiers put on those long heavy coats taken from the enemy dead, but at night when only silhouettes and shadows were clearly visible, they would be shot at as hostile troops.
Yet even as knowledge of these deaths spread, some chose to take that risk if they found a German greatcoat: it was that cold.
In that frigid Christmas and New Year season, if only to take their minds off the cold if not for a hundred other reasons, they would dream of being home for Christmas, and wondered if it would be next year.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; this weekend he will help with his father-in-law's funeral, who in later years served in the 101st "Screaming Eagles." Recall your loved ones gone on before us this Christmas to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, December 11, 2023
Faith Works 12-15-23
Faith Works 12-15-23
Jeff Gill
Christmas here has roots elsewhere, going deep
___
A few days before Christmas, 1864, a local lad made good, Lancaster's own William Tecumseh Sherman, sent a telegram to his commander-in-chief Abraham Lincoln saying to him: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton."
The 76th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, "The Licking Volunteers," had seen hard service from Chattanooga to Atlanta and then on the March to the Sea across Georgia, culminating in Sherman's gift to his president. Perhaps their worst day as a fighting force had been a year before, just as the Army of the Tennessee had set foot in Georgia, at Ringgold Gap where their colors had been taken by the Confederate opposition, and many brave soldiers had fallen.
You can continue to learn about the proud history of the 76th O.V.I. in Doug Stout's excellent columns about the soldiers, often telling their stories in their own words. But suffice it to say that of 900 some soldiers who marched out of the Great Circle Fairgrounds where they trained as 1862 began, there were no more than 300 of those original troops left by the end of 1864, between those killed or wounded.
What has me reaching over into this Civil War story is the reality of that Christmas in Savannah, as 1864 was ending, but the conflict far from over. They would still wear their uniforms halfway into 1865 before the Grand Review in Washington the next spring, and it would be summer before the soldiers and officers of the 76th would return to civilian life.
Christmas, 1864 that was all still uncertain. Many of the "old soldiers" had taken leave back home, but always so brief, then back to the front. Home was far away, and the encampments around Savannah in the respite before the new year's fighting were a home of sorts for the XV Corps and its First Division.
Around them in that year end encampment were other soldiers from Illinois and Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Troops from Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts weren't far off, digging in for a short season of stability, building their temporary homes around the perimeter of this southern city which did not love them.
So, the soldiers looked out for each other. They shared foodstuffs, coffee, tobacco, likely some rum or other spirits at times (but unofficially that last). Like soldiers throughout the ages, they told their war stories to audiences that best understood them, and who knew what was left unsaid. They sang songs and occasionally were satisfied with silences around their flickering campfires in the long nights through Christmas Eve.
It is said, by others who have delved more deeply than I into the records and accounts of American history around Christmas, that the roots of Christmas trees as a truly national custom go back into those encampments. Before 1864, there were groups, especially German ethnic communities, who marked Dec. 24th by cutting down a live tree and bringing it inside for decoration and the day of Christmas. But greenery, evergreen boughs and holly and mistletoe, were more widely used. Trees in the parlor? They were fairly uncommon . . . until after the Civil War.
It appears that on those cold nights, watching their Germanic fellows from eastern states or some of the Nordic troops around the upper Great Lakes all making a point of cutting down a pine and dragging it into their encampment, covering it with ribbons and streamers, and attaching what candles they could find: something struck a chord.
Come Christmas 1865, families all across the United States, and some Licking County veterans I am sure, chose to repeat the custom they'd first seen by firelight within their camps, now by lamplight in their homes. A Christmas tree, with connections now not just to the holiday, but to the fellowship of service in the Civil War.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a little tree up even amongst many distractions from the season. Tell him your decorating customs at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Christmas here has roots elsewhere, going deep
___
A few days before Christmas, 1864, a local lad made good, Lancaster's own William Tecumseh Sherman, sent a telegram to his commander-in-chief Abraham Lincoln saying to him: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton."
The 76th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, "The Licking Volunteers," had seen hard service from Chattanooga to Atlanta and then on the March to the Sea across Georgia, culminating in Sherman's gift to his president. Perhaps their worst day as a fighting force had been a year before, just as the Army of the Tennessee had set foot in Georgia, at Ringgold Gap where their colors had been taken by the Confederate opposition, and many brave soldiers had fallen.
You can continue to learn about the proud history of the 76th O.V.I. in Doug Stout's excellent columns about the soldiers, often telling their stories in their own words. But suffice it to say that of 900 some soldiers who marched out of the Great Circle Fairgrounds where they trained as 1862 began, there were no more than 300 of those original troops left by the end of 1864, between those killed or wounded.
What has me reaching over into this Civil War story is the reality of that Christmas in Savannah, as 1864 was ending, but the conflict far from over. They would still wear their uniforms halfway into 1865 before the Grand Review in Washington the next spring, and it would be summer before the soldiers and officers of the 76th would return to civilian life.
Christmas, 1864 that was all still uncertain. Many of the "old soldiers" had taken leave back home, but always so brief, then back to the front. Home was far away, and the encampments around Savannah in the respite before the new year's fighting were a home of sorts for the XV Corps and its First Division.
Around them in that year end encampment were other soldiers from Illinois and Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Troops from Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts weren't far off, digging in for a short season of stability, building their temporary homes around the perimeter of this southern city which did not love them.
So, the soldiers looked out for each other. They shared foodstuffs, coffee, tobacco, likely some rum or other spirits at times (but unofficially that last). Like soldiers throughout the ages, they told their war stories to audiences that best understood them, and who knew what was left unsaid. They sang songs and occasionally were satisfied with silences around their flickering campfires in the long nights through Christmas Eve.
It is said, by others who have delved more deeply than I into the records and accounts of American history around Christmas, that the roots of Christmas trees as a truly national custom go back into those encampments. Before 1864, there were groups, especially German ethnic communities, who marked Dec. 24th by cutting down a live tree and bringing it inside for decoration and the day of Christmas. But greenery, evergreen boughs and holly and mistletoe, were more widely used. Trees in the parlor? They were fairly uncommon . . . until after the Civil War.
It appears that on those cold nights, watching their Germanic fellows from eastern states or some of the Nordic troops around the upper Great Lakes all making a point of cutting down a pine and dragging it into their encampment, covering it with ribbons and streamers, and attaching what candles they could find: something struck a chord.
Come Christmas 1865, families all across the United States, and some Licking County veterans I am sure, chose to repeat the custom they'd first seen by firelight within their camps, now by lamplight in their homes. A Christmas tree, with connections now not just to the holiday, but to the fellowship of service in the Civil War.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a little tree up even amongst many distractions from the season. Tell him your decorating customs at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, December 04, 2023
Faith Works 12-8-23
Faith Works 12-8-23
Jeff Gill
Our local Christmas history, era by era
___
By 1844, Father Lamy had finally gotten a church building built for his parish of St. Francis de Sales in Newark, Ohio.
Jean-Baptiste Lamy had been born in France thirty years earlier, and over forty years later he would be buried as the retired first Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the crypt of the St. Francis Cathedral he helped build.
Sunday, December 22 of 1844 would be the sixth anniversary of his ordination. It was also the fourth Sunday of the month, and as the priest for now four congregations, he was based in Danville, Ohio where his first parish was already well established. St. Luke's by now had a building, and in Mount Vernon, Father Lamy had built St. Vincent de Paul parish, so dedicated as his favorite saint; however, in his seminary studies he had come to love the writings of St. Francis de Sales, and that was the dedication he asked for his Newark parish.
It was to establish new parishes that he had come, responding to a call put forward into Europe from Bishop John Purcell of the Diocese of Cincinnati, which at that time encompassed all of the state of Ohio. The newly ordained Lamy wanted to pursue his calling on a mission frontier, and he found Maryland migrants and Irish and German immigrants hungry for a Catholic priest's service.
In Newark, as John Horgan notes in his 1975 biography "Lamy of Santa Fe," the priest writes to his bishop that he has a largely German parish, "We have then a very good choir of German Catholics with some fair instruments. They sing very well, but almost all in German, expect the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo in Latin, till they get some books of church music." Unsurprisingly, he asks for some additional financial support to do just that from his bishop, noting "we have got a little help from the Widow McCarthy" so they don't all appear to have been German.
There was a church building, on the location where the 1887 sanctuary stands today, but it was as yet unplastered inside; due to some rounds of illness in Newark, Father Lamy decided to start building a rectory for his monthly residence, trusting in his bishop's retroactive permission and his confidence that very soon they would have their own resident priest.
But on that Christmas Sunday, Lamy's sixth as a priest, on his regular visit to Newark, we can trust that the sanctuary was ornamented "with garlands of evergreen all around with a kind of lustre" as he records was the case a few nights later in Danville; Lamy's good friend Father Machebeuf in Sandusky wrote him that they had greenery, three hundred candles lit, and parishioners had cut perhaps that many stars out of gold paper and affixed them to the ceiling.
So we can imagine that Christmas Sunday in Newark of 1844: garlands of green in contrast to the raw unplastered brick, myriad bright candles, glittering stars overhead, and carols sung in German of the Christ child's birth, "Die Geburt des Christkindes."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he wanders in other centuries from time to time. Tell him about times past that capture your imagination at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Our local Christmas history, era by era
___
By 1844, Father Lamy had finally gotten a church building built for his parish of St. Francis de Sales in Newark, Ohio.
Jean-Baptiste Lamy had been born in France thirty years earlier, and over forty years later he would be buried as the retired first Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the crypt of the St. Francis Cathedral he helped build.
Sunday, December 22 of 1844 would be the sixth anniversary of his ordination. It was also the fourth Sunday of the month, and as the priest for now four congregations, he was based in Danville, Ohio where his first parish was already well established. St. Luke's by now had a building, and in Mount Vernon, Father Lamy had built St. Vincent de Paul parish, so dedicated as his favorite saint; however, in his seminary studies he had come to love the writings of St. Francis de Sales, and that was the dedication he asked for his Newark parish.
It was to establish new parishes that he had come, responding to a call put forward into Europe from Bishop John Purcell of the Diocese of Cincinnati, which at that time encompassed all of the state of Ohio. The newly ordained Lamy wanted to pursue his calling on a mission frontier, and he found Maryland migrants and Irish and German immigrants hungry for a Catholic priest's service.
In Newark, as John Horgan notes in his 1975 biography "Lamy of Santa Fe," the priest writes to his bishop that he has a largely German parish, "We have then a very good choir of German Catholics with some fair instruments. They sing very well, but almost all in German, expect the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo in Latin, till they get some books of church music." Unsurprisingly, he asks for some additional financial support to do just that from his bishop, noting "we have got a little help from the Widow McCarthy" so they don't all appear to have been German.
There was a church building, on the location where the 1887 sanctuary stands today, but it was as yet unplastered inside; due to some rounds of illness in Newark, Father Lamy decided to start building a rectory for his monthly residence, trusting in his bishop's retroactive permission and his confidence that very soon they would have their own resident priest.
But on that Christmas Sunday, Lamy's sixth as a priest, on his regular visit to Newark, we can trust that the sanctuary was ornamented "with garlands of evergreen all around with a kind of lustre" as he records was the case a few nights later in Danville; Lamy's good friend Father Machebeuf in Sandusky wrote him that they had greenery, three hundred candles lit, and parishioners had cut perhaps that many stars out of gold paper and affixed them to the ceiling.
So we can imagine that Christmas Sunday in Newark of 1844: garlands of green in contrast to the raw unplastered brick, myriad bright candles, glittering stars overhead, and carols sung in German of the Christ child's birth, "Die Geburt des Christkindes."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he wanders in other centuries from time to time. Tell him about times past that capture your imagination at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Friday, December 01, 2023
Notes from My Knapsack 12-28-23
Notes from My Knapsack 12-28-23
Jeff Gill
Media tools and mental development in 2024
___
I'm continuing on the question I last started with: Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?
Teachers and principals in general say no. Most school districts and each building has a policy of one sort or another about use of smartphones or internet devices during class time; often that has to do with a requirement to keep the device in the locker, and accessible only between classes or during lunch.
There's variation out there, but what I hear an increasing academic chorus plead for is some way to treat phones on campus the way we do handguns, and they're not kidding. Many think they should be banned, in no small part because of the hazards they represent.
Parents often feel otherwise, and that's what has top administrators and school boards in a bind. How to support parent and guardian concerns while also doing what's best for the students. I have a few, tentative ideas, which I'll lay out in order of feasibility and practicality.
First, to those parents and families with school age children: to me, the biggest unambiguous challenge with smartphones is how they carve into sleep time. I know there are other issues (fights, self-image, bullying) people think of around students with phones, but in my experience out around our schools, that's the driver for many, even most of the negative effects. Your child's phone should not be in their room at night. Period. Charge it on the kitchen counter, or better yet in your room. No phone after bedtime. Lack of sleep could be creating or magnifying most of the negative issues Haidt and Twenge describe in their research (see previous column).
Honestly, I think that could help our schools and our students more than anything else. Having laid that on the table, I support the idea that phones be deposited in a secure space or blocking bag on arrival and only get it back at last bell. I'm also aware of the opposition that will impede ever getting there.
But I'll take it a step further. I think it would be of interest for some school, or even a district, to declare online tools and internet devices and screens to be limited to only certain parts of the day, in certain classes under clear restrictions. That's not a simple request, because the trends are overwhelmingly to ebooks and online texts and to be fair, that's the world they will live in after graduation.
If I had a million or two laying around doing nothing, I'd be tempted to set up a charter school that was explicitly book and paper oriented, all but one period a day, just to see how learning happened in that setting again. There is so much we don't know yet about learning on screens.
Yet I'm teaching a graduate level course three times a year online myself, to students I mostly never meet. It's amazing. It's not all bad. We just still don't know so much. Which makes me wonder…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's quite serious about the sleep thing, which is a boat anchor on students today. Tell him how you're sleeping at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Media tools and mental development in 2024
___
I'm continuing on the question I last started with: Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?
Teachers and principals in general say no. Most school districts and each building has a policy of one sort or another about use of smartphones or internet devices during class time; often that has to do with a requirement to keep the device in the locker, and accessible only between classes or during lunch.
There's variation out there, but what I hear an increasing academic chorus plead for is some way to treat phones on campus the way we do handguns, and they're not kidding. Many think they should be banned, in no small part because of the hazards they represent.
Parents often feel otherwise, and that's what has top administrators and school boards in a bind. How to support parent and guardian concerns while also doing what's best for the students. I have a few, tentative ideas, which I'll lay out in order of feasibility and practicality.
First, to those parents and families with school age children: to me, the biggest unambiguous challenge with smartphones is how they carve into sleep time. I know there are other issues (fights, self-image, bullying) people think of around students with phones, but in my experience out around our schools, that's the driver for many, even most of the negative effects. Your child's phone should not be in their room at night. Period. Charge it on the kitchen counter, or better yet in your room. No phone after bedtime. Lack of sleep could be creating or magnifying most of the negative issues Haidt and Twenge describe in their research (see previous column).
Honestly, I think that could help our schools and our students more than anything else. Having laid that on the table, I support the idea that phones be deposited in a secure space or blocking bag on arrival and only get it back at last bell. I'm also aware of the opposition that will impede ever getting there.
But I'll take it a step further. I think it would be of interest for some school, or even a district, to declare online tools and internet devices and screens to be limited to only certain parts of the day, in certain classes under clear restrictions. That's not a simple request, because the trends are overwhelmingly to ebooks and online texts and to be fair, that's the world they will live in after graduation.
If I had a million or two laying around doing nothing, I'd be tempted to set up a charter school that was explicitly book and paper oriented, all but one period a day, just to see how learning happened in that setting again. There is so much we don't know yet about learning on screens.
Yet I'm teaching a graduate level course three times a year online myself, to students I mostly never meet. It's amazing. It's not all bad. We just still don't know so much. Which makes me wonder…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's quite serious about the sleep thing, which is a boat anchor on students today. Tell him how you're sleeping at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Notes from My Knapsack 12-7-23
Notes from My Knapsack 12-7-23
Jeff Gill
Connections that short circuit communication, let alone learning
___
Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?
There's a familiar fatalism to the discussions I've been hearing the last year. It's akin to the "vast wasteland" worries Newton Minow first voiced sixty some years ago about television. But kicked up a notch, both in the level of concern and the basis for it, and as to the presumed inability of anyone to do anything about it.
Jonathan Haidt, a highly respected non-partisan scholar at NYU, has put forward some unambiguous data showing the link between common smart phone use and juvenile mental health. I won't walk you through too much of it, and it's easily findable online (yes, irony, hold that thought), but his point is something has happened, and it tracks closely with the spread of hyper-connectedness by juveniles mostly through their phones.
Correlation is not causation, true (I heard you say that!), and good people are working on that; you can look at Jean Twenge's work for first steps to nail down those links and triggers. What has my attention is the near unanimous opinion among educational professionals, teachers and administrators alike (and they do not always agree on everything, but they do here) that everyone would be better off, emotionally, psychologically, and academically, if personal phones were treated, and I'm quoting what a number have said to me all not knowing others said it the same way, "like we would a weapon on campus." In other words, no phones. None.
That's what they'd like. They also all quickly admit they know it's not going to happen. Wait, if they all feel that way, from the office secretary to the substitute teachers, plus the principals and assistant superintendents, why can't that become a policy, at least in some districts as a test?
The answer is parents. Even attempts to limit and manage student phone access during the day, such as a disciplinary action on a student who has admittedly broken school rules and been on their phone repeatedly without permission during class, in restrooms, etc.: the parents are all over administrators and the district office. In general, I'm told, school staff don't believe school boards would support it.
There's a complicator here: the school shooting issue of the last decade or two has parents wanting to be able to contact or be contacted by their child if something happens at the school. It's a mix of pragmatism and sentiment stirred up by strong parental emotions. My child needs to be able to call me at any time.
Those of us who readily recall one phone, in the office, used only with great necessity by a student and not always then, will sigh. That train has left the station. We are all used to constant contact and "find my phone" tracking and the like.
Meanwhile, good people with close attention to the issue have real concerns about the impact of smartphones on learning and emotional health at school. What can we do? I'll try to suggest some ideas in my next column.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not promising to solve the whole question, but he's been thinking about some solutions. Tell him your ideas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Connections that short circuit communication, let alone learning
___
Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?
There's a familiar fatalism to the discussions I've been hearing the last year. It's akin to the "vast wasteland" worries Newton Minow first voiced sixty some years ago about television. But kicked up a notch, both in the level of concern and the basis for it, and as to the presumed inability of anyone to do anything about it.
Jonathan Haidt, a highly respected non-partisan scholar at NYU, has put forward some unambiguous data showing the link between common smart phone use and juvenile mental health. I won't walk you through too much of it, and it's easily findable online (yes, irony, hold that thought), but his point is something has happened, and it tracks closely with the spread of hyper-connectedness by juveniles mostly through their phones.
Correlation is not causation, true (I heard you say that!), and good people are working on that; you can look at Jean Twenge's work for first steps to nail down those links and triggers. What has my attention is the near unanimous opinion among educational professionals, teachers and administrators alike (and they do not always agree on everything, but they do here) that everyone would be better off, emotionally, psychologically, and academically, if personal phones were treated, and I'm quoting what a number have said to me all not knowing others said it the same way, "like we would a weapon on campus." In other words, no phones. None.
That's what they'd like. They also all quickly admit they know it's not going to happen. Wait, if they all feel that way, from the office secretary to the substitute teachers, plus the principals and assistant superintendents, why can't that become a policy, at least in some districts as a test?
The answer is parents. Even attempts to limit and manage student phone access during the day, such as a disciplinary action on a student who has admittedly broken school rules and been on their phone repeatedly without permission during class, in restrooms, etc.: the parents are all over administrators and the district office. In general, I'm told, school staff don't believe school boards would support it.
There's a complicator here: the school shooting issue of the last decade or two has parents wanting to be able to contact or be contacted by their child if something happens at the school. It's a mix of pragmatism and sentiment stirred up by strong parental emotions. My child needs to be able to call me at any time.
Those of us who readily recall one phone, in the office, used only with great necessity by a student and not always then, will sigh. That train has left the station. We are all used to constant contact and "find my phone" tracking and the like.
Meanwhile, good people with close attention to the issue have real concerns about the impact of smartphones on learning and emotional health at school. What can we do? I'll try to suggest some ideas in my next column.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not promising to solve the whole question, but he's been thinking about some solutions. Tell him your ideas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, November 27, 2023
Faith Works 12-1-23
Faith Works 12-1-23
Jeff Gill
How Our Christmas Has a History
___
What I want to do this December is go back to a few particular years, and look at our local roots, which have a wide reach, for how Christmas came to be in Licking County: what we can easily think of as "how it's always been." 1800, 1844, 1865, and 1944. There are other points of interest along the way, but I'd like to visit, each in turn, a Christmas memory out of each of those four years.
1800 marks what is effectively the first Christmas observed as such in our area. We have some historical records of people passing through in other months during earlier years, 1751 and 1773 in particular, but not during December.
What we call pioneers were the first European American visitors to leave records; there were Native Americans here for thousands of years, and as I wrote previously, there were African Americans here through the winter of 1773, with a community presided over by a Shawnee woman who was chief of a mixed Delaware and Shawnee settlement, but we know nothing more about their story, or if they marked Dec. 25th in any way.
The first pioneer settlers out of Pennsylvania and Maryland that we have confirmation for arrived in the spring of 1800, most of them men without family at first, but not all. The initial work to clear land, plant crops, then build cabins came first, and for most the word would be sent back through the nearest post office at Zanesville to come on west.
Isaac Stadden and his brother, Col. John Stadden were among that earliest group of arrivals; Isaac is buried just east of the giant basket, in the Bowling Green Cemetery which holds so many of our early settlers. They worked to prepare a place, planting often in openings left by earlier Native American clearing and burning efforts for their crops, speeding the pioneer process.
Benjamin Green and his son-in-law Richard Pitzer had tried out some land for a year near Marietta, then came up the spring of 1800 to land about where O'Bannon Ave. is today, but Benjamin and Catherine had eleven children, some full-grown, so their whole family were involved from the start (they would have three more, after relocating to the Hog Run/White Chapel area south of Newark a few years hence).
Isaac Stadden left his brother in charge once the crops were in and the cabin built, and went back in person to escort his wife, also a Catherine, and their two children to what would become in 1808 Licking County.
By the time they arrived, fall was in the air, and so was something else. John was a widower, and Benjamin Green had a daughter Elizabeth, better known as Betsey. She and John were about the same age, and had determined to share their challenges together in marriage, had set a date of Dec. 10, 1800 to be married. By all accounts everyone was happy for them, including brother Isaac. As he had business with the territorial magistrate, Judge Henry Smith back in Zanesville, he offered to call on his services to marry the happy couple.
But the judge explained to Isaac that the law required notice be posted at three prominent places for a minimum of fifteen days before a marriage could be solemnized. As a good brother, Isaac took it upon himself to ride about, post the notices, and then on Christmas Day escorted to the bride and groom their officiant.
Our earliest history of Christmas is practical, functional, but not without a small note of romance. That's very much what Christmas was in the earliest days of settlement in Newark and Licking County.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows he could have picked other years, but believes you'll learn from the ones on offer. Tell him about your customs of Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
How Our Christmas Has a History
___
What I want to do this December is go back to a few particular years, and look at our local roots, which have a wide reach, for how Christmas came to be in Licking County: what we can easily think of as "how it's always been." 1800, 1844, 1865, and 1944. There are other points of interest along the way, but I'd like to visit, each in turn, a Christmas memory out of each of those four years.
1800 marks what is effectively the first Christmas observed as such in our area. We have some historical records of people passing through in other months during earlier years, 1751 and 1773 in particular, but not during December.
What we call pioneers were the first European American visitors to leave records; there were Native Americans here for thousands of years, and as I wrote previously, there were African Americans here through the winter of 1773, with a community presided over by a Shawnee woman who was chief of a mixed Delaware and Shawnee settlement, but we know nothing more about their story, or if they marked Dec. 25th in any way.
The first pioneer settlers out of Pennsylvania and Maryland that we have confirmation for arrived in the spring of 1800, most of them men without family at first, but not all. The initial work to clear land, plant crops, then build cabins came first, and for most the word would be sent back through the nearest post office at Zanesville to come on west.
Isaac Stadden and his brother, Col. John Stadden were among that earliest group of arrivals; Isaac is buried just east of the giant basket, in the Bowling Green Cemetery which holds so many of our early settlers. They worked to prepare a place, planting often in openings left by earlier Native American clearing and burning efforts for their crops, speeding the pioneer process.
Benjamin Green and his son-in-law Richard Pitzer had tried out some land for a year near Marietta, then came up the spring of 1800 to land about where O'Bannon Ave. is today, but Benjamin and Catherine had eleven children, some full-grown, so their whole family were involved from the start (they would have three more, after relocating to the Hog Run/White Chapel area south of Newark a few years hence).
Isaac Stadden left his brother in charge once the crops were in and the cabin built, and went back in person to escort his wife, also a Catherine, and their two children to what would become in 1808 Licking County.
By the time they arrived, fall was in the air, and so was something else. John was a widower, and Benjamin Green had a daughter Elizabeth, better known as Betsey. She and John were about the same age, and had determined to share their challenges together in marriage, had set a date of Dec. 10, 1800 to be married. By all accounts everyone was happy for them, including brother Isaac. As he had business with the territorial magistrate, Judge Henry Smith back in Zanesville, he offered to call on his services to marry the happy couple.
But the judge explained to Isaac that the law required notice be posted at three prominent places for a minimum of fifteen days before a marriage could be solemnized. As a good brother, Isaac took it upon himself to ride about, post the notices, and then on Christmas Day escorted to the bride and groom their officiant.
Our earliest history of Christmas is practical, functional, but not without a small note of romance. That's very much what Christmas was in the earliest days of settlement in Newark and Licking County.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows he could have picked other years, but believes you'll learn from the ones on offer. Tell him about your customs of Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, November 13, 2023
Faith Works 11-24-23
Faith Works 11-24-23
Jeff Gill
Advent is a necessary season
___
The four Sundays leading up to Christmas starts late this year; in fact, December 3rd is the latest it does come.
Most ministers, I believe, prefer Advent to start after the Sunday following Thanksgiving, just to buffer the chaos of travel and family events around the fourth Thursday of November, before diving into the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day (still the 25th).
I always felt odd when Advent began in November, but I also think it odd that the World Series now can extend into November, although the Rangers saw to it we only had one day of baseball into this month.
November 26th has a liturgical role all its own; I know many Christians are not liturgical, even a little, and there are non-Christian readers here. But aside from the Feast of Christ the King of Reign of Christ Sunday (have at it, if you so observe!), I'm wanting to nod in preparation towards a season of preparation, called Advent.
Liturgical purists will debate musical propriety and how or when ornamentation goes up and where. Some of this, I want to note, is because for long centuries we didn't have trees and garlands and wreaths made from mysterious plastics and polymers. All our decor was natural, and as is the way of all flesh, and of all greenery, it came to pieces fairly quickly.
So both churches and families tended to place and decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, and keep it up perhaps a few days, at most until January 6 and Epiphany. Lights were small clipped candles, and not a few of those candles helped speed the end of the decorations.
Now, just to bring everyone up to speed, we have electricity, and decor in stores from just after the Back to School displays come down. I'm neither defending nor endorsing manic holiday decorations, it's just a historical development. We used to couldn't, so we didn't. Now we can, so we do.
As to worship and spiritual disciplines, I prefer to operate from the other end. Rather than spend so much time on what we can't or shouldn't do in Advent, or trying to ban and exclude stuff, I just want to say: Advent is cool. You should try it. Let the full bore Christmas stuff wait a bit, and try out some of these Adventy ideas.
I'm not, for instance, entirely on board with "no carols until Christmas Eve!" but I do think it is a wonderful thing to always sing something with an Advent theme on those Sundays leading up to the celebration of Christ's birth. "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is an ancient classic, and has some fascinating contemporary settings; "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" is plaintive and eminently adaptable. "Breath of Heaven" by Amy Grant is to me a very Advent oriented song, and "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" is directly on point.
Until I started putting this together, I had in the back of my mind the idea that both "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light" and "Lo, How a Rose 'Ere Blooming" were by J.S. Bach, but I realize the latter is in fact a German carol, but the tune is by Michael Praetorius. Either one is majestic, brooding, and thought provoking.
Because that's the point of Advent. To enhance our ultimate celebration by thinking and praying and working through, very carefully, what it means to anticipate the coming of God-with-us into the world.
That's what Advent is all about, Charlie Brown!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not a purist in much, truth to tell. Tell him how you observe Advent at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Advent is a necessary season
___
The four Sundays leading up to Christmas starts late this year; in fact, December 3rd is the latest it does come.
Most ministers, I believe, prefer Advent to start after the Sunday following Thanksgiving, just to buffer the chaos of travel and family events around the fourth Thursday of November, before diving into the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day (still the 25th).
I always felt odd when Advent began in November, but I also think it odd that the World Series now can extend into November, although the Rangers saw to it we only had one day of baseball into this month.
November 26th has a liturgical role all its own; I know many Christians are not liturgical, even a little, and there are non-Christian readers here. But aside from the Feast of Christ the King of Reign of Christ Sunday (have at it, if you so observe!), I'm wanting to nod in preparation towards a season of preparation, called Advent.
Liturgical purists will debate musical propriety and how or when ornamentation goes up and where. Some of this, I want to note, is because for long centuries we didn't have trees and garlands and wreaths made from mysterious plastics and polymers. All our decor was natural, and as is the way of all flesh, and of all greenery, it came to pieces fairly quickly.
So both churches and families tended to place and decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, and keep it up perhaps a few days, at most until January 6 and Epiphany. Lights were small clipped candles, and not a few of those candles helped speed the end of the decorations.
Now, just to bring everyone up to speed, we have electricity, and decor in stores from just after the Back to School displays come down. I'm neither defending nor endorsing manic holiday decorations, it's just a historical development. We used to couldn't, so we didn't. Now we can, so we do.
As to worship and spiritual disciplines, I prefer to operate from the other end. Rather than spend so much time on what we can't or shouldn't do in Advent, or trying to ban and exclude stuff, I just want to say: Advent is cool. You should try it. Let the full bore Christmas stuff wait a bit, and try out some of these Adventy ideas.
I'm not, for instance, entirely on board with "no carols until Christmas Eve!" but I do think it is a wonderful thing to always sing something with an Advent theme on those Sundays leading up to the celebration of Christ's birth. "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is an ancient classic, and has some fascinating contemporary settings; "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" is plaintive and eminently adaptable. "Breath of Heaven" by Amy Grant is to me a very Advent oriented song, and "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" is directly on point.
Until I started putting this together, I had in the back of my mind the idea that both "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light" and "Lo, How a Rose 'Ere Blooming" were by J.S. Bach, but I realize the latter is in fact a German carol, but the tune is by Michael Praetorius. Either one is majestic, brooding, and thought provoking.
Because that's the point of Advent. To enhance our ultimate celebration by thinking and praying and working through, very carefully, what it means to anticipate the coming of God-with-us into the world.
That's what Advent is all about, Charlie Brown!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not a purist in much, truth to tell. Tell him how you observe Advent at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Faith Works 11-17-23
Faith Works 11-17-23
Jeff Gill
Thankful for what we do not yet have
___
Thankfulness is an art, and like any art, it must be practiced.
Anyone who has practiced, whether it's shooting free throws or sketching landscapes, turning wood on a lathe or diagnosing patients, knows that you can't just practice when it's easy or convenient. Sometimes the best practice in sailing is during a storm; when you can master a skill even as you're weary or distracted, that's a good sign you are at home in your art.
So it is with the art of thankfulness.
Our government is not in the best of order right now, on many levels; I am thankful that we have the outline and tools of democracy still at hand, and ready to be used more responsibly.
The world is not at peace; I am thankful for my awareness that some of the sense of war everywhere is because we can know things previous generations, even our parents's generation, could not, and there is more peace to work from than we might think from a quick glance at the news.
Members of our armed forces have challenges aplenty before them, whether you know any personally or not; I am thankful for the contrast I see looking at life for the average enlisted soldier in most of the great armies of the world, and for our troops. May they train hard so their sweat replaces the blood that might otherwise be shed, and have leave to remind us at home of their sacrifices as we honor their service.
Harvest time is finishing up; I am thankful that I do not have to spend long days and longer nights out in harvester machinery and transport trucks, bringing today's sheaves and selling them at elevators, balancing costs of fuel and taxes on their land against the high calling of growing useful crops. Blessings on our farmers and their families.
Schools face unprecedented challenges in today's world, and are expected to manage tools and technologies the rest of us still are baffled by, both in their use and how to react to potential abuse; I am thankful for teachers and secretaries and administrators and attendance officers and parents and grandparents and yes, thankful for students who keep reminding us, if you pay attention, that there are many fine young people who will exceed our every hope and expectation.
And churches. God bless all the faith communities and new plants and different belief systems all trying to fathom what the Eternal One is saying to the times and seasons we face today; I am thankful for having a religious tradition that feeds my soul and helps me stay connected, and I pray that more people find seek out such a connection in their lives, for I truly believe that in community there is both hope and strength.
If I were to list all the worries, doubts, and concerns that come to mind without much mental effort at all, I could easily fill this column and many more. What takes time and intention is to be thankful, to use Alex Haley's advice: "find the good, and praise it."
There is much good at work in our community this very day, and those who love and seek goodness continue to serve and witness. For them, and those about to join them, I am thankful both now, and in anticipation of more yet to be thankful for.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has to work at thankfulness from time to time. Tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Thankful for what we do not yet have
___
Thankfulness is an art, and like any art, it must be practiced.
Anyone who has practiced, whether it's shooting free throws or sketching landscapes, turning wood on a lathe or diagnosing patients, knows that you can't just practice when it's easy or convenient. Sometimes the best practice in sailing is during a storm; when you can master a skill even as you're weary or distracted, that's a good sign you are at home in your art.
So it is with the art of thankfulness.
Our government is not in the best of order right now, on many levels; I am thankful that we have the outline and tools of democracy still at hand, and ready to be used more responsibly.
The world is not at peace; I am thankful for my awareness that some of the sense of war everywhere is because we can know things previous generations, even our parents's generation, could not, and there is more peace to work from than we might think from a quick glance at the news.
Members of our armed forces have challenges aplenty before them, whether you know any personally or not; I am thankful for the contrast I see looking at life for the average enlisted soldier in most of the great armies of the world, and for our troops. May they train hard so their sweat replaces the blood that might otherwise be shed, and have leave to remind us at home of their sacrifices as we honor their service.
Harvest time is finishing up; I am thankful that I do not have to spend long days and longer nights out in harvester machinery and transport trucks, bringing today's sheaves and selling them at elevators, balancing costs of fuel and taxes on their land against the high calling of growing useful crops. Blessings on our farmers and their families.
Schools face unprecedented challenges in today's world, and are expected to manage tools and technologies the rest of us still are baffled by, both in their use and how to react to potential abuse; I am thankful for teachers and secretaries and administrators and attendance officers and parents and grandparents and yes, thankful for students who keep reminding us, if you pay attention, that there are many fine young people who will exceed our every hope and expectation.
And churches. God bless all the faith communities and new plants and different belief systems all trying to fathom what the Eternal One is saying to the times and seasons we face today; I am thankful for having a religious tradition that feeds my soul and helps me stay connected, and I pray that more people find seek out such a connection in their lives, for I truly believe that in community there is both hope and strength.
If I were to list all the worries, doubts, and concerns that come to mind without much mental effort at all, I could easily fill this column and many more. What takes time and intention is to be thankful, to use Alex Haley's advice: "find the good, and praise it."
There is much good at work in our community this very day, and those who love and seek goodness continue to serve and witness. For them, and those about to join them, I am thankful both now, and in anticipation of more yet to be thankful for.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has to work at thankfulness from time to time. Tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Tuesday, November 07, 2023
Faith Works 11-10-23
Faith Works 11-10-23
Jeff Gill
Asking myself some questions without answers
___
In 1923, Ohio had six ballot measures for voters on that century ago Nov. 6th; as has been our long standing habit electorally, four of the six were voted down.
But approved was an initiative to remove the words "white male" from the State Constitution's description of eligible voters. However, it has to be noted that 44% of Ohioans voted against it. It appears that a majority did not approve it in Licking County.
This is the context in which the Ku Klux Klan found a new footing in its second resurgence in the United States, with particular success in the Midwest. Changes were happening, and voters were uneasy. Some changes were approved, others were not. Some changes, say Prohibition, had passed, but there were rumblings to overturn it. And when the electorate is broadly speaking ill at ease, this opens up pathways for new responses, reactions, resistance.
The earlier Know Nothing movement, which was formally the "Native American" party of the 1850s, was a nativist reaction to a spike in immigration from Europe after the revolutions of 1848 and the better known "Potato Famine" in Ireland. Irish, Polish, German immigrants came in unprecedented numbers, and as the percentage of immigrants in the population increased, there was a reaction, the Know Nothings, who were largely anti-Catholic in Northern and Midwestern states. Issues around slavery and the Civil War collapsed the movement as a political force.
By World War I, a new surge of immigrants, now from southern and central Europe, appears to have helped raise concerns about crime, disease, and education especially in the rapidly growing industrial cities, and sure enough: the 1920s Klan.
In both periods of nativist reaction and socially acceptable hostility to Catholicism and parochial schools, religious bodies including my own particular Protestant tradition were front and center in supporting actions to limit or suppress both immigration, and immigrants already here.
This is where I find myself asking hard questions. My strong suit in many ways is that I've always been someone who tries to do what's expected of me. If there's a duty or responsibility that's on me, my goal has always been to fulfill that, and then some. I don't like letting people down. Yes, this can become "people pleasing," which is an essay on its own. But in general, I do think this can be a strength. However.
In the 1920s Klan organization, each county had a Kludd. This was the title of their chaplain, an Imperial Kludd the state chaplain. They wore a bright scarlet robe and hood with purple trim; they carried a ritual book called a Kloran. I know, it sounds so childish, doesn't it?
I found an online copy of the 1925 Klan robe catalog, which included a picture and description of the robes of a National Lecturer: "Made of satin, trimmed with military braid and embroidered with silk. Silk cord and tassels. Price, each $25."
That's about $440 in today's dollars.
Here's my uneasy question. Almost every one of the National Lecturers I find identified by name were national leaders in my particular church body. And while I don't know for sure, it appears the local Kludd in 1923 Newark was of my tradition as well. The fact that the relevant records are missing, with his predecessor and successor well documented, adds to that inference.
So if the members of my church, uneasy about increasing numbers of people not like them, were Klan supporters, and encouraged me to be their religious leader, their Kludd, would I have said no?
It is easy to say today we'd have nothing to do with such a clownish, ugly, mean-spirited and hateful movement. But in that moment, with those around us robed and ready, what would we do?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he tries not to talk to himself too often. Tell him what questions you ask yourself at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Asking myself some questions without answers
___
In 1923, Ohio had six ballot measures for voters on that century ago Nov. 6th; as has been our long standing habit electorally, four of the six were voted down.
But approved was an initiative to remove the words "white male" from the State Constitution's description of eligible voters. However, it has to be noted that 44% of Ohioans voted against it. It appears that a majority did not approve it in Licking County.
This is the context in which the Ku Klux Klan found a new footing in its second resurgence in the United States, with particular success in the Midwest. Changes were happening, and voters were uneasy. Some changes were approved, others were not. Some changes, say Prohibition, had passed, but there were rumblings to overturn it. And when the electorate is broadly speaking ill at ease, this opens up pathways for new responses, reactions, resistance.
The earlier Know Nothing movement, which was formally the "Native American" party of the 1850s, was a nativist reaction to a spike in immigration from Europe after the revolutions of 1848 and the better known "Potato Famine" in Ireland. Irish, Polish, German immigrants came in unprecedented numbers, and as the percentage of immigrants in the population increased, there was a reaction, the Know Nothings, who were largely anti-Catholic in Northern and Midwestern states. Issues around slavery and the Civil War collapsed the movement as a political force.
By World War I, a new surge of immigrants, now from southern and central Europe, appears to have helped raise concerns about crime, disease, and education especially in the rapidly growing industrial cities, and sure enough: the 1920s Klan.
In both periods of nativist reaction and socially acceptable hostility to Catholicism and parochial schools, religious bodies including my own particular Protestant tradition were front and center in supporting actions to limit or suppress both immigration, and immigrants already here.
This is where I find myself asking hard questions. My strong suit in many ways is that I've always been someone who tries to do what's expected of me. If there's a duty or responsibility that's on me, my goal has always been to fulfill that, and then some. I don't like letting people down. Yes, this can become "people pleasing," which is an essay on its own. But in general, I do think this can be a strength. However.
In the 1920s Klan organization, each county had a Kludd. This was the title of their chaplain, an Imperial Kludd the state chaplain. They wore a bright scarlet robe and hood with purple trim; they carried a ritual book called a Kloran. I know, it sounds so childish, doesn't it?
I found an online copy of the 1925 Klan robe catalog, which included a picture and description of the robes of a National Lecturer: "Made of satin, trimmed with military braid and embroidered with silk. Silk cord and tassels. Price, each $25."
That's about $440 in today's dollars.
Here's my uneasy question. Almost every one of the National Lecturers I find identified by name were national leaders in my particular church body. And while I don't know for sure, it appears the local Kludd in 1923 Newark was of my tradition as well. The fact that the relevant records are missing, with his predecessor and successor well documented, adds to that inference.
So if the members of my church, uneasy about increasing numbers of people not like them, were Klan supporters, and encouraged me to be their religious leader, their Kludd, would I have said no?
It is easy to say today we'd have nothing to do with such a clownish, ugly, mean-spirited and hateful movement. But in that moment, with those around us robed and ready, what would we do?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he tries not to talk to himself too often. Tell him what questions you ask yourself at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, October 30, 2023
Faith Works 11-3-23
Faith Works 11-3-23
Jeff Gill
Changes we can tolerate, others we cannot
___
As this year began, last January I started an intermittent series of columns outlining the events of 1923, one hundred years ago, in Licking County.
My focus was, and is, the effective Klan takeover of the political process in the county and in large part the state, along with other Midwestern and some Southern state governments.
Timothy Egan's "A Fever in the Heartland" came out last spring with this same history in mind, about how the second era of the Ku Klux Klan made a very serious run at taking over the country. The first Klan arose after the Civil War to turn back Reconstruction in the South, and in fact was successful in large part by 1877, so that original Klan went dormant.
During and after World War I, a book and a movie spurred the creation of a dues paying Ku Klux Klan, which only became a public entity by the first weeks of 1923 in Newark, Ohio, but in a level of organization and public display that shows their leaders had been at work for some time, perhaps as far back as 1919. Whatever their plans, they do not burn crosses and hold torchlight parades until the late winter and early spring of 1923.
Further evidence that there was some momentum behind the 1923 rallies and public ceremonies is that in the general election of 1923, on November 7th that year, the mayor and municipal judge candidates running as Klan supporters won office. A majority of city council was Klan endorsed, demonstrated by their actions to remove Klan opponents from the police department and fire department, for being Catholic and thereby, the Klan leaders insisted, opposed to Prohibition. Reporting in regional newspapers indicated that they were successful in "cleaning up" the police ranks, but the fire chief and most of the firefighters apparently were Catholic and stood together to resist legally and pragmatically any Klan intrusion into their staffing or operations.
The Klan responded by buying a horse for the police department, but gave nothing to the fire department.
H.N. Stevens, the mayor of Newark from 1924 to 1928, won re-election, and was not only very openly a Klan backed candidate, he was the Ohio legal counsel for national Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. This Klan leader over 23 Northern states owned a house on Buckeye Lake and a boat in Toledo harbor, and was charged with indecent exposure in Columbus: Stevens drove over to deal with Stephenson's multiple run-ins with the police over his treatment of women.
So I can speak freely about Mayor Stevens. Other names are implied or inferred, but the reality is that there was no Klan party. As in Indiana, where both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor were Klan endorsed, so they couldn't lose. In the 1923 Ohio election for governor, Carmi Thompson as the Republican accepted Klan endorsement where three years earlier Ohio-born presidential candidate Warren G. Harding had refused it; Harding of course won his election, while Thompson lost to Democratic Klan opponent "Honest Vic" Donahey.
What doesn't answer my many questions about "who" but opens up a window perhaps on "why" is what else was on the ballot on that century past Nov. 7. There were six ballot measures for voters across Ohio; four of them were voted down. One of the two approved was to remove from the State Constitution's description of voter eligibility the words "white male."
I'm very glad to see it passed; it worries me that 44% of Ohioans voted against it. In Licking County, a majority did not approve it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got questions for which there are no simple answers. Tell him what questions keep you up at night at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Changes we can tolerate, others we cannot
___
As this year began, last January I started an intermittent series of columns outlining the events of 1923, one hundred years ago, in Licking County.
My focus was, and is, the effective Klan takeover of the political process in the county and in large part the state, along with other Midwestern and some Southern state governments.
Timothy Egan's "A Fever in the Heartland" came out last spring with this same history in mind, about how the second era of the Ku Klux Klan made a very serious run at taking over the country. The first Klan arose after the Civil War to turn back Reconstruction in the South, and in fact was successful in large part by 1877, so that original Klan went dormant.
During and after World War I, a book and a movie spurred the creation of a dues paying Ku Klux Klan, which only became a public entity by the first weeks of 1923 in Newark, Ohio, but in a level of organization and public display that shows their leaders had been at work for some time, perhaps as far back as 1919. Whatever their plans, they do not burn crosses and hold torchlight parades until the late winter and early spring of 1923.
Further evidence that there was some momentum behind the 1923 rallies and public ceremonies is that in the general election of 1923, on November 7th that year, the mayor and municipal judge candidates running as Klan supporters won office. A majority of city council was Klan endorsed, demonstrated by their actions to remove Klan opponents from the police department and fire department, for being Catholic and thereby, the Klan leaders insisted, opposed to Prohibition. Reporting in regional newspapers indicated that they were successful in "cleaning up" the police ranks, but the fire chief and most of the firefighters apparently were Catholic and stood together to resist legally and pragmatically any Klan intrusion into their staffing or operations.
The Klan responded by buying a horse for the police department, but gave nothing to the fire department.
H.N. Stevens, the mayor of Newark from 1924 to 1928, won re-election, and was not only very openly a Klan backed candidate, he was the Ohio legal counsel for national Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. This Klan leader over 23 Northern states owned a house on Buckeye Lake and a boat in Toledo harbor, and was charged with indecent exposure in Columbus: Stevens drove over to deal with Stephenson's multiple run-ins with the police over his treatment of women.
So I can speak freely about Mayor Stevens. Other names are implied or inferred, but the reality is that there was no Klan party. As in Indiana, where both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor were Klan endorsed, so they couldn't lose. In the 1923 Ohio election for governor, Carmi Thompson as the Republican accepted Klan endorsement where three years earlier Ohio-born presidential candidate Warren G. Harding had refused it; Harding of course won his election, while Thompson lost to Democratic Klan opponent "Honest Vic" Donahey.
What doesn't answer my many questions about "who" but opens up a window perhaps on "why" is what else was on the ballot on that century past Nov. 7. There were six ballot measures for voters across Ohio; four of them were voted down. One of the two approved was to remove from the State Constitution's description of voter eligibility the words "white male."
I'm very glad to see it passed; it worries me that 44% of Ohioans voted against it. In Licking County, a majority did not approve it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got questions for which there are no simple answers. Tell him what questions keep you up at night at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Notes from my Knapsack 11-9-23 & 11-23-23
Notes from my Knapsack 11-9-23
Jeff Gill
That uneasy feeling you can't quite shake
___
We all know what "herding" is. Even if we don't call it that. You can call it manipulating, or see it as directing, but there's an element of herding that's what I'm thinking about.
At the grocery store, we've all made our rueful peace with the fact that pretty much wherever you go, you walk through produce first, but have to reach the very back of the building to get a quart of milk.
Maybe you're aware of it, perhaps not, but the items on the end caps are pretty carefully selected, those prominent aisle dividers along the main flow of traffic, and what's at eye level versus what's around our ankles? Businesses sometimes pay for placement.
We like to think we're not merely creatures of impulse, then we suddenly change our minds and order something in the drive-thru that was colorfully featured on the menu in a large, distinct fashion. The fact that the item doesn't quite look like it did on the menu board when it's unwrapped in the car isn't going to keep it from happening again, either.
Then there's online herding. And yes, news sites can be the worst, but the "one weird trick" sites featuring "news" can be even worser. You scroll past the opening banner ad, flick aside the pop-up, click "no" on the invitation to subscribe or activate notifications, then keep having to shut down or otherwise work around embedded video windows and further pop-ups. At a certain point, you stop to ask yourself "what was I reading that I'm trying to find the rest of?"
I call it micro-herding when the sudden overlay screen you want to move aside has a button that looks in color and typeface and relief as if it's the way to say "nope" when it's actually the "yes" or vice versa. Or when the X that's there somewhere for you to click to make the obscuring addition to your phone screen go away is cleverly hidden, shaded to near invisibility to trick you into actually reading the thing you're trying to maneuver past.
Some herding is well-intended and actually helpful. I was at a medical appointment and they'd rearranged the layout of the spaces from how it had been, and to some degree against how it was originally built. When I was done and ready to go back to the waiting area and lobby to exit, I went the wrong way, which a few months ago was the right way. The nurse said "no, just follow the footprints" and indeed there were big blue footprints on the floor to guide my steps.
Herding is sales, too, and where would we be without advertising in all its glory? [pauses to let you think about that imaginary world for a few moments] It's not going away, and we have to figure out how to live with and around and through it.
But I think herding is starting to bother us, and it's showing. The bother, I mean. I'll come back to this next time.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
=+=+=+=
Notes from my Knapsack 11-23-23
Jeff Gill
Herding cats, herding sheep, herding ones own self
___
When last we spoke here, I was going on about "herding."
Herding is what I call all those social and commercial and online ways we get nudged and encouraged and manipulated into doing something we didn't necessarily start out to do.
Like sheep wanting to pursue the next clump of grass when the shepherd wants us heading for the barn, we can be herded to our own good. My phone since the last update has taken to nudging me about exercise and steps and health. I didn't ask for it, but I'll admit I haven't worked too hard to shut it off. I need the nudges.
What is more irritating is the nudging to buy or spend or subscribe that piles up on us, even when we're trying to do better and manage our finances more consciously. You've noticed, no doubt, that there's nothing so simple as making certain online impulse purchases; have you tried to unsubscribe from a recurring payment lately for anything? It ain't easy, and they don't mean for it to be.
I've been helping an older family member shift their bill paying over to online (and that suggestion isn't herding, it's been club-over-the-head in the monthly envelopes for the last few years). It's started to irritate me that, since we need a couple of safeguards on the process, I want to NOT go online to pay and have it go auto-pay, but that's what each utility and payment recipient is set up to herd you towards. Just go paperless, auto-pay, and forget about it! Well, I don't want to forget about it, even as I see the upside for the vendor. They save all kinds of steps and time and expense on their end (while I'm paying a fee, eh?), plus they get an extra measure of security with me going to auto-pay.
So the herding is vigorous, like a good sheepdog, everything but the bite.
What I am starting to wonder about, though, is the ubiquitousness of the herding experience. In stores, in processes and forms, in our online experience. We get the not at all inaccurate impression that we are being herded constantly, and not for our best interests, but to increase profits, enhance revenue, improve someone else's bottom line.
And I think it makes us cranky. You spend all day being herded, and your first hour at home paying bills online and looking up the news and your latest updates feeling constantly herded, and you realize since the first unsubtle herding nudges during the morning news program to get you to download the station's app or buy something they're recommending for which they get a cut, and you find a certain pain behind your right eye, or maybe in your back, or somewhere further down. You squirm, and snarl a bit at those you love, and there's just an atmosphere of rebellion looking for an outlet.
Or are we being herded towards that mood, too?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
That uneasy feeling you can't quite shake
___
We all know what "herding" is. Even if we don't call it that. You can call it manipulating, or see it as directing, but there's an element of herding that's what I'm thinking about.
At the grocery store, we've all made our rueful peace with the fact that pretty much wherever you go, you walk through produce first, but have to reach the very back of the building to get a quart of milk.
Maybe you're aware of it, perhaps not, but the items on the end caps are pretty carefully selected, those prominent aisle dividers along the main flow of traffic, and what's at eye level versus what's around our ankles? Businesses sometimes pay for placement.
We like to think we're not merely creatures of impulse, then we suddenly change our minds and order something in the drive-thru that was colorfully featured on the menu in a large, distinct fashion. The fact that the item doesn't quite look like it did on the menu board when it's unwrapped in the car isn't going to keep it from happening again, either.
Then there's online herding. And yes, news sites can be the worst, but the "one weird trick" sites featuring "news" can be even worser. You scroll past the opening banner ad, flick aside the pop-up, click "no" on the invitation to subscribe or activate notifications, then keep having to shut down or otherwise work around embedded video windows and further pop-ups. At a certain point, you stop to ask yourself "what was I reading that I'm trying to find the rest of?"
I call it micro-herding when the sudden overlay screen you want to move aside has a button that looks in color and typeface and relief as if it's the way to say "nope" when it's actually the "yes" or vice versa. Or when the X that's there somewhere for you to click to make the obscuring addition to your phone screen go away is cleverly hidden, shaded to near invisibility to trick you into actually reading the thing you're trying to maneuver past.
Some herding is well-intended and actually helpful. I was at a medical appointment and they'd rearranged the layout of the spaces from how it had been, and to some degree against how it was originally built. When I was done and ready to go back to the waiting area and lobby to exit, I went the wrong way, which a few months ago was the right way. The nurse said "no, just follow the footprints" and indeed there were big blue footprints on the floor to guide my steps.
Herding is sales, too, and where would we be without advertising in all its glory? [pauses to let you think about that imaginary world for a few moments] It's not going away, and we have to figure out how to live with and around and through it.
But I think herding is starting to bother us, and it's showing. The bother, I mean. I'll come back to this next time.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
=+=+=+=
Notes from my Knapsack 11-23-23
Jeff Gill
Herding cats, herding sheep, herding ones own self
___
When last we spoke here, I was going on about "herding."
Herding is what I call all those social and commercial and online ways we get nudged and encouraged and manipulated into doing something we didn't necessarily start out to do.
Like sheep wanting to pursue the next clump of grass when the shepherd wants us heading for the barn, we can be herded to our own good. My phone since the last update has taken to nudging me about exercise and steps and health. I didn't ask for it, but I'll admit I haven't worked too hard to shut it off. I need the nudges.
What is more irritating is the nudging to buy or spend or subscribe that piles up on us, even when we're trying to do better and manage our finances more consciously. You've noticed, no doubt, that there's nothing so simple as making certain online impulse purchases; have you tried to unsubscribe from a recurring payment lately for anything? It ain't easy, and they don't mean for it to be.
I've been helping an older family member shift their bill paying over to online (and that suggestion isn't herding, it's been club-over-the-head in the monthly envelopes for the last few years). It's started to irritate me that, since we need a couple of safeguards on the process, I want to NOT go online to pay and have it go auto-pay, but that's what each utility and payment recipient is set up to herd you towards. Just go paperless, auto-pay, and forget about it! Well, I don't want to forget about it, even as I see the upside for the vendor. They save all kinds of steps and time and expense on their end (while I'm paying a fee, eh?), plus they get an extra measure of security with me going to auto-pay.
So the herding is vigorous, like a good sheepdog, everything but the bite.
What I am starting to wonder about, though, is the ubiquitousness of the herding experience. In stores, in processes and forms, in our online experience. We get the not at all inaccurate impression that we are being herded constantly, and not for our best interests, but to increase profits, enhance revenue, improve someone else's bottom line.
And I think it makes us cranky. You spend all day being herded, and your first hour at home paying bills online and looking up the news and your latest updates feeling constantly herded, and you realize since the first unsubtle herding nudges during the morning news program to get you to download the station's app or buy something they're recommending for which they get a cut, and you find a certain pain behind your right eye, or maybe in your back, or somewhere further down. You squirm, and snarl a bit at those you love, and there's just an atmosphere of rebellion looking for an outlet.
Or are we being herded towards that mood, too?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, October 23, 2023
Faith Works 10-27-23
Faith Works 10-27-23
Jeff Gill
Remembering the dead in the land of the living
___
"Coco" is an animated film, not a theology text.
The Disney Pixar production back in 2017 is a story woven around the Mexican traditions of the "Day of the Dead," and cultural practices to honor deceased relatives from marigolds and music to shrines with pictures and even favorite foods, all meant to help keep alive the memory of those who have died.
In the larger Christian tradition, it connects to Nov. 1 being "All Saints Day," and the lesser feast of "All Souls" on the 2nd. In our neck of the woods, more people may be aware of the evening before honoring all the saints, or "All Hallows," which has become Hallowe'en.
All Souls, or "Día de los Muertos" is an expansive celebration however you look at it, including all those who have gone on before. In "Coco," the traditional practices and communal beliefs are given some twists with a visit to a not-quite-Purgatory, a "Land of the Dead" which is explained, at one point, as being itself a stage along the way to a deeper mystery, a more lasting eternity. It's a-theological, while dealing very directly with last things.
Most compelling in the narrative is the idea that you vanish from that stage of afterlife once there is no one left who remembers you in life. Again, it isn't a theology text; some might argue it's not even all that Christian. The movie has trouble with the idea of whether or not it's good to move on, or not; to be forgotten and vanish from this post-death phase is most often presented as a tragedy, while it would seem to make more sense for the tragedy to be staying in that in-between state forever, or at least for too long.
Still, the story if you haven't seen it is a truly moving meditation on memory. The recurring theme is in a song, central to the plot in all the many ways it ends up being sung, by different people, to whom, and why. "Remember Me," written Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, is truly the heart of "Coco."
"Remember me/Though I have to say goodbye/Remember me/Don't let it make you cry."
There are aging family members losing their own memories in life; in death, there are memories the living seek to forget, or even erase. There is time, and distance, and pain, and hope, and the desire to be remembered which itself can take many forms.
"For even if I'm far away I hold you in my heart/I sing a secret song to you each night we are apart."
Being an animated movie, there is final plot twist, a flash of the right memory at the right time, redeeming a past almost forgotten.
"Know that I'm with you the only way that I can be…"
In an imperfect, one might even say broken world, there is hope for healing and restoration, a happy ending even when death is very near. I honor the movie, the intention behind a joyful and sometimes laughing Day of the Dead commemoration. And whether it's a Disney production or a Hallmark Christmas romance, who doesn't love a happy ending?
"Remember me." The tears that come for many watching "Coco," and with that song, is that memories don't always heal. Some memories have to be redeemed, and transformed, and occasionally just given over to a deeper mystery, a more lasting everlastingness where we can trust the Keeper of eternity with finding the solutions we do not have, who can tell us just what it is we can safely forget, and cast aside.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to laugh with the kids in costumes at death and decay. Tell him how you mark this season of memory at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Remembering the dead in the land of the living
___
"Coco" is an animated film, not a theology text.
The Disney Pixar production back in 2017 is a story woven around the Mexican traditions of the "Day of the Dead," and cultural practices to honor deceased relatives from marigolds and music to shrines with pictures and even favorite foods, all meant to help keep alive the memory of those who have died.
In the larger Christian tradition, it connects to Nov. 1 being "All Saints Day," and the lesser feast of "All Souls" on the 2nd. In our neck of the woods, more people may be aware of the evening before honoring all the saints, or "All Hallows," which has become Hallowe'en.
All Souls, or "Día de los Muertos" is an expansive celebration however you look at it, including all those who have gone on before. In "Coco," the traditional practices and communal beliefs are given some twists with a visit to a not-quite-Purgatory, a "Land of the Dead" which is explained, at one point, as being itself a stage along the way to a deeper mystery, a more lasting eternity. It's a-theological, while dealing very directly with last things.
Most compelling in the narrative is the idea that you vanish from that stage of afterlife once there is no one left who remembers you in life. Again, it isn't a theology text; some might argue it's not even all that Christian. The movie has trouble with the idea of whether or not it's good to move on, or not; to be forgotten and vanish from this post-death phase is most often presented as a tragedy, while it would seem to make more sense for the tragedy to be staying in that in-between state forever, or at least for too long.
Still, the story if you haven't seen it is a truly moving meditation on memory. The recurring theme is in a song, central to the plot in all the many ways it ends up being sung, by different people, to whom, and why. "Remember Me," written Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, is truly the heart of "Coco."
"Remember me/Though I have to say goodbye/Remember me/Don't let it make you cry."
There are aging family members losing their own memories in life; in death, there are memories the living seek to forget, or even erase. There is time, and distance, and pain, and hope, and the desire to be remembered which itself can take many forms.
"For even if I'm far away I hold you in my heart/I sing a secret song to you each night we are apart."
Being an animated movie, there is final plot twist, a flash of the right memory at the right time, redeeming a past almost forgotten.
"Know that I'm with you the only way that I can be…"
In an imperfect, one might even say broken world, there is hope for healing and restoration, a happy ending even when death is very near. I honor the movie, the intention behind a joyful and sometimes laughing Day of the Dead commemoration. And whether it's a Disney production or a Hallmark Christmas romance, who doesn't love a happy ending?
"Remember me." The tears that come for many watching "Coco," and with that song, is that memories don't always heal. Some memories have to be redeemed, and transformed, and occasionally just given over to a deeper mystery, a more lasting everlastingness where we can trust the Keeper of eternity with finding the solutions we do not have, who can tell us just what it is we can safely forget, and cast aside.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to laugh with the kids in costumes at death and decay. Tell him how you mark this season of memory at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, October 16, 2023
Faith Works 10-20-23
Faith Works 10-20-23
Jeff Gill
The enduring incoherence of anti-Semitism
___
In 1982 at Purdue University, I took a class from Robert Melson. Hardly a week has gone by since when I don't think about one of the readings, discussions, or insights gained in that lecture room.
The course was officially titled "The History of the State of Israel." Honestly, my interest began because it fit my schedule, but I'd had an Iranian Jewish roommate not long before, and my curiosity was provoked by some of the stories he told. So I signed up for it, three days a week, and a daunting syllabus.
As I recall, we started with about 20 students, but quickly rattled down to 12 and it may have been only 8 who finished. One issue was the volume of readings; there were six books required, a few more recommended, and Bob had a habit of announcing he'd run across a book or article that he'd put on reserve for us at the library which he thought would be illuminating. This was catnip for me, but some of the pre-law students looking for an easier three credits bolted early.
The other reason a number left was by the time of the final drop opportunity, we weren't even up to 1948 yet. As one student said in class, "I didn't sign up for 'The History of Anti-Semitism,' I was expecting to learn more about Israel." Bob was gently apologetic, saying "But you can't understand the history of Israel without understanding the history of anti-Semitism."
We didn't learn, or at least most of us didn't know, until half way through the semester that as a child, Dr. Melson and his family had escaped the Holocaust from Poland, but they saw it begin to burn across the landscape as they made their escape with false papers.
In the class we learned about Ottoman rule & British Mandate control, Czarist pogroms & Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. A number of us went to a Conservative Jewish synagogue for a Sabbath eve service. And we did finally get to 1947 & 1948, where Bob made sure we learned about Deir Yassin as well as the SS Exodus, the bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun as well as about Herzl and Haifa.
The history of Jews and Palestinians in the eastern Mediterranean is complicated. To come to grips with it, you might need to read a few books, even ones not on the syllabus; it may require consideration of events decades and centuries in the past but live issues today.
I ended up with the assignment for a final paper on Menahem Begin. When I turned it in, I said to Bob the process of fitting all the pieces of his life together made me feel a little sympathetic towards him. He looked concerned, and replied "that keeps happening, but that's not my intention." We walked from University Hall to the Union talking about terrorists and Israel and peace . . . and I've been thinking about those conversations for over forty years now.
The lunacy of anti-Semitism from the medieval purges of northern Europe, to the Russian murderous hostilities of the Eighteenth & Nineteenth Century, then to a peak of madness under Nazism, is a toxin that still rattles around our neck of the woods. I've encountered it coming from family & fellow worshipers right here in the Midwest. We could step back from Israel, but we'd still have our own hyper-xenophobic impulses to contend with.
There's no solution here, just these thoughts about how deep and wide the questions are, not just about one place on the map, and forces on the move. And thank you, Robert Melson, for trying to teach the complexity to us, those of us who stuck around for the whole semester.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still thinking about how to find justice in his own life, as well as advancing peace in the world. Tell him how you think we can get there at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
The enduring incoherence of anti-Semitism
___
In 1982 at Purdue University, I took a class from Robert Melson. Hardly a week has gone by since when I don't think about one of the readings, discussions, or insights gained in that lecture room.
The course was officially titled "The History of the State of Israel." Honestly, my interest began because it fit my schedule, but I'd had an Iranian Jewish roommate not long before, and my curiosity was provoked by some of the stories he told. So I signed up for it, three days a week, and a daunting syllabus.
As I recall, we started with about 20 students, but quickly rattled down to 12 and it may have been only 8 who finished. One issue was the volume of readings; there were six books required, a few more recommended, and Bob had a habit of announcing he'd run across a book or article that he'd put on reserve for us at the library which he thought would be illuminating. This was catnip for me, but some of the pre-law students looking for an easier three credits bolted early.
The other reason a number left was by the time of the final drop opportunity, we weren't even up to 1948 yet. As one student said in class, "I didn't sign up for 'The History of Anti-Semitism,' I was expecting to learn more about Israel." Bob was gently apologetic, saying "But you can't understand the history of Israel without understanding the history of anti-Semitism."
We didn't learn, or at least most of us didn't know, until half way through the semester that as a child, Dr. Melson and his family had escaped the Holocaust from Poland, but they saw it begin to burn across the landscape as they made their escape with false papers.
In the class we learned about Ottoman rule & British Mandate control, Czarist pogroms & Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. A number of us went to a Conservative Jewish synagogue for a Sabbath eve service. And we did finally get to 1947 & 1948, where Bob made sure we learned about Deir Yassin as well as the SS Exodus, the bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun as well as about Herzl and Haifa.
The history of Jews and Palestinians in the eastern Mediterranean is complicated. To come to grips with it, you might need to read a few books, even ones not on the syllabus; it may require consideration of events decades and centuries in the past but live issues today.
I ended up with the assignment for a final paper on Menahem Begin. When I turned it in, I said to Bob the process of fitting all the pieces of his life together made me feel a little sympathetic towards him. He looked concerned, and replied "that keeps happening, but that's not my intention." We walked from University Hall to the Union talking about terrorists and Israel and peace . . . and I've been thinking about those conversations for over forty years now.
The lunacy of anti-Semitism from the medieval purges of northern Europe, to the Russian murderous hostilities of the Eighteenth & Nineteenth Century, then to a peak of madness under Nazism, is a toxin that still rattles around our neck of the woods. I've encountered it coming from family & fellow worshipers right here in the Midwest. We could step back from Israel, but we'd still have our own hyper-xenophobic impulses to contend with.
There's no solution here, just these thoughts about how deep and wide the questions are, not just about one place on the map, and forces on the move. And thank you, Robert Melson, for trying to teach the complexity to us, those of us who stuck around for the whole semester.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still thinking about how to find justice in his own life, as well as advancing peace in the world. Tell him how you think we can get there at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, October 09, 2023
Notes from my Knapsack 10-26-23
Notes from my Knapsack 10-26-23
Jeff Gill
We are in good company
___
With the formal declaration of World Heritage List status for the Newark Earthworks, in company with the Chillicothe and Lebanon, Ohio area earthworks together as the "Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks" nomination, it's a good time to look around at the company we are now numbered with by UNESCO.
In this same session of the World Heritage Committee, other new nominations from around the world included the ancient city of Jericho, on the Jordan River, and World War I memorial sites in another group nomination, which includes the Menin Gate and Vimy Ridge monument.
Listening online in the early hours of September 19th, in that morning session there were six nominations from around the world considered including the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, and two of them were turned aside. It's not a small or simple matter to become a World Heritage Site. They have the opportunity to revise and resubmit in a future cycle, but there are relatively few nominations allowed every two years to a country.
There are both cultural and natural sites; the Newark Earthworks are part of what became the 25th for the United States, among about a thousand around the world.
U.S. cultural sites in alphabetical order, with the year they were inscribed on the World Heritage List in parentheses, are: Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site (1982), Chaco Culture (1987), Independence Hall (1979), La Fortaleza and San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico (1983), Mesa Verde National Park (1978), Monticello and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (1987), Monumental Earthworks of Poverty Point (2014), San Antonio Missions (2015), Statue of Liberty (1984), Taos Pueblo (1992), and The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (2019). Now, with Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks (2023), six of the twelve mark Native American achievements and architecture, but only Poverty Point is older in construction. Taos Pueblo is a living site, still occupied, and well worth visiting in northern New Mexico, about six hundred years old at the foundation level; the Newark Earthworks are nearly two thousand years old.
We share company with the natural sites on the World Heritage List: Carlsbad Caverns National Park (1995), Everglades National Park (1979), Grand Canyon National Park (1979), Great Smoky Mountains National Park (1983), Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (1987), Kluane / Wrangell-St. Elias / Glacier Bay / Tatshenshini-Alsek (1979, 1992, 1994), Mammoth Cave National Park (1981), Olympic National Park (1981), Redwood National and State Parks (1980), Waterton Glacier International Peace Park (1995), Yellowstone National Park (1978), and Yosemite National Park (1984). Along with those twelve, there is one mixed cultural & natural site, in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii: Papahānaumokuākea (2010).
It's been one of the small pleasures of working with the World Heritage effort that if I'm looking at it in print, I now know how to say "Papahānaumokuākea"!
I've also had the pleasure over the years to visit 13 of the 25 United States World Heritage Sites. Like many, I'm now reviewing those I've missed and revising my "bucket list": time to go visit a few more and learn about their "outstanding universal value" to the world!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been both to the San Antonio Missions, and the Alamo, which are not quite the same things. Tell him what other WHL sites you'd like to visit at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Faith Works 10-13-23
Faith Works 10-13-23
Jeff Gill
Tragedy and trust in church life
___
My goal was to spend three columns, ending in this one, talking about trust and the work of church leadership, particularly ministers, in a time when trust is in short supply.
Events in the Middle East on top of turmoil in Washington just turn those dials up to eleven. The personal and the political intersect with faith and faith communities in peculiar ways; they always have, and always will.
But we're going through a particularly challenging era in that busy intersection. Between the internet and cable news access to alternative perspectives has never been easier, but the ability to judge between them may not have grown along with the range of choices.
Sure, someone can say and even make a case for "you can't trust the mainstream media" (although the fact I can write that line and know it will get printed should tell you that's not the whole story), but when they say "but I trust the bulletin board at Craig's Crab Shack implicitly!" I think you're allowed to ask "why is that?" There are online media outlets that aren't much more well sourced than the cork board in a restaurant bathroom hallway.
I don't want to paint a rosy picture of the past. In my first congregational position as a minister, people would walk up to me with mimeographed fliers about Madalyn Murray O'Hair and the FCC (I'm dating myself, aren't I?) and get upset when I would explain the case was in 1964, over twenty years ago, and had been dismissed. And yeah, I'd ask myself as they walked off "why do they trust a mimeo sheet in the mail from a stranger more than they trust me?"
So in that sense, this has always been with us. But as I said about things turned up to eleven, the internet and cable TV have intensified this problem. If I were disagreeing with Walter Cronkite in some way, the congregation I preached for might hear him for 22 minutes a night five nights a week, not even two full hours versus the hour or two we had together for preaching and teaching.
Today, it's not unusual to have politically engaged members tuned into an outlet with a set of perspectives for a dozen hours or more a week. To which I preach once, maybe teach in Bible study, and any other material I can put forward (newsletters, posts on social media, even columns in newspapers!).
Which means there's trust, and there's time. I still think most church folk would say they trust their pastor more than any one media source, but we're losing the battle of time which erodes the effective nature of trust.
Not always, though. I've noticed over the years that people I've had the chance, even in tragic situations, to sit with for stretches of time, are most likely to trust me in challenging situations. When you've spent a long morning in a surgery waiting room with someone, your relationship changes.
I'll close these reflections with an observation and a challenge. It has been a concern of mine that many online and televised ministries like to use the line "what your minister won't tell you" as a way to both flatter the listener or reader, and imply a connection… and drive contributions their way. I've been given materials to read which I've taken back to the member who shared them, and pointed out that line, usually with a reminder of when I actually had recently talked about it.
Which is to ask any of us: whom do you trust, and why?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows that trust is earned over time. Tell him when you know you can trust someone at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, October 02, 2023
Faith Works 10-6-23
Faith Works 10-6-23
Jeff Gill
Tending the flock, herding cats
___
In John's Gospel, Jesus talks in chapter ten a great deal about sheep and shepherds.
A good shepherd knows the sheep and the sheep know their shepherd. In fact, there are four variations in this short passage about Jesus observing that his sheep "know my voice."
The idea that sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd is probably not too unfamiliar to anyone with pets, where their alertness to our voices versus those of others is pretty obvious.
For the ancient Near Eastern hills of Galilee, you have the added complication of multiple shepherds and many different flocks. Lands held in common or used for grazing by many means you have sheep with ties to one household or another, but all munching together on a hillside.
It works out because the sheep know their shepherd's voice, and when their call comes, even poor ignorant sheep know which sound to follow. Their shepherd has led them to water, away from hazards, been with them through storms and many long nights, and when they hear their shepherd, together they gather.
I started this out last week talking about using shepherding as a model for ministry. If this model for God's people is good enough for Jesus, then shepherding is worth our looking into a little more closely today, even if we don't most of us deal with sheep and flocks as much as once could be assumed.
Chapter ten of John's Gospel gives us the words of Christ himself talking about the many ways we are like sheep, needing to come together, needing protection, and finding our trust in the shepherd. Jesus notes that the good shepherd is willing to give their life for the sheep, and the flock knows that, having been protected and guided thus far by their shepherd.
A big challenge ministers of congregations face these days is that the flock is listening to so many voices, I would argue they, we, you . . . all of us get confused sometimes. In the practical sense of Jesus's teaching, I'm sure while the listening crowd was familiar with the reaction of a flock coming out of a larger herd to the sound of their shepherd's call, they also knew a group of shepherds were smart enough to not all shout for their flock to come their way all at once.
This is where the metaphor of calling our flock together breaks down in the solvents of modern life. The flock is hearing many voices, all at once, and frankly I think people get themselves confused about whom to follow.
Earlier in my ministry service, I dealt with Robert Schuller. There were folks in churches I served who would tell me they wouldn't stay for programs after the service because they wanted to get home in time after our worship and my sermon "to hear Dr. Schuller." Okay. Fine. Honestly, I never heard anyone say he was right and I was wrong, it just seemed odd (and I think the choirs and celebrities he had on his well produced "Hour of Power" were the draw).
Then I got accustomed in home visits to seeing the knick-knacks on the TV of Jim and Tammy Faye, from Jimmy Swaggart, from other ministries whose messages I was quite certain were not quite in line with the leading I was trying to give.
Today, the TV ministries are now also online and have apps, and they've multiplied. Other voices are calling out, giving direction, leading in different directions. Many of them suggest they shouldn't trust their preacher, and point in a different direction. But who are they, and why are . . . sheep, so to speak, following them?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he suspects we're overdrawn on our trust accounts. Tell him what you find trustworthy at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Tending the flock, herding cats
___
In John's Gospel, Jesus talks in chapter ten a great deal about sheep and shepherds.
A good shepherd knows the sheep and the sheep know their shepherd. In fact, there are four variations in this short passage about Jesus observing that his sheep "know my voice."
The idea that sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd is probably not too unfamiliar to anyone with pets, where their alertness to our voices versus those of others is pretty obvious.
For the ancient Near Eastern hills of Galilee, you have the added complication of multiple shepherds and many different flocks. Lands held in common or used for grazing by many means you have sheep with ties to one household or another, but all munching together on a hillside.
It works out because the sheep know their shepherd's voice, and when their call comes, even poor ignorant sheep know which sound to follow. Their shepherd has led them to water, away from hazards, been with them through storms and many long nights, and when they hear their shepherd, together they gather.
I started this out last week talking about using shepherding as a model for ministry. If this model for God's people is good enough for Jesus, then shepherding is worth our looking into a little more closely today, even if we don't most of us deal with sheep and flocks as much as once could be assumed.
Chapter ten of John's Gospel gives us the words of Christ himself talking about the many ways we are like sheep, needing to come together, needing protection, and finding our trust in the shepherd. Jesus notes that the good shepherd is willing to give their life for the sheep, and the flock knows that, having been protected and guided thus far by their shepherd.
A big challenge ministers of congregations face these days is that the flock is listening to so many voices, I would argue they, we, you . . . all of us get confused sometimes. In the practical sense of Jesus's teaching, I'm sure while the listening crowd was familiar with the reaction of a flock coming out of a larger herd to the sound of their shepherd's call, they also knew a group of shepherds were smart enough to not all shout for their flock to come their way all at once.
This is where the metaphor of calling our flock together breaks down in the solvents of modern life. The flock is hearing many voices, all at once, and frankly I think people get themselves confused about whom to follow.
Earlier in my ministry service, I dealt with Robert Schuller. There were folks in churches I served who would tell me they wouldn't stay for programs after the service because they wanted to get home in time after our worship and my sermon "to hear Dr. Schuller." Okay. Fine. Honestly, I never heard anyone say he was right and I was wrong, it just seemed odd (and I think the choirs and celebrities he had on his well produced "Hour of Power" were the draw).
Then I got accustomed in home visits to seeing the knick-knacks on the TV of Jim and Tammy Faye, from Jimmy Swaggart, from other ministries whose messages I was quite certain were not quite in line with the leading I was trying to give.
Today, the TV ministries are now also online and have apps, and they've multiplied. Other voices are calling out, giving direction, leading in different directions. Many of them suggest they shouldn't trust their preacher, and point in a different direction. But who are they, and why are . . . sheep, so to speak, following them?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he suspects we're overdrawn on our trust accounts. Tell him what you find trustworthy at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, September 25, 2023
Faith Works 9-29-23
Faith Works 9-29-23
Jeff Gill
A letter to an applicant of sorts
___
From the search committee, to John D. Baptist:
Thank you for your application & interview with us for the open ministry position on our church's staff. We appreciate your time with us, especially as you seem to have walked some distance to be here!
While we are not filling the position at this time, we will keep your resume on file for future consideration. As discussed when we were together, our ministry team dress code would require some adjustments on your part, though sandals with socks could be discussed should a future offer arise.
It was a bit jarring for you to call the search committee "a brood of vipers," but it was said in such a matter of fact tone we might have missed the intended irony. More problematically, your employment history is weak, or at least unclear. Were you working as a wilderness guide for a tour company, or as an interpretive ranger during your time outdoors? If you were serving as a camp chaplain there it is something we'd take into account, but we are looking for someone with previous (indoor) church experience.
As to your current ministry status, we would need you to pursue standing with current certifications. Your preaching skills are apparent, but you would benefit from interpersonal skill development and some small group leadership training. Repentance is all well and good, but you need to hold some effective meetings along the way!
Again, thank you for the chance to meet, and for the honeycomb you shared with us so generously, and we look forward to possibly working together in the future.
Sincerely,
The Search Committee
P.S.: Hold the locusts next time.
===
So, that's a joke, of sorts.
October is in many traditions clergy appreciation month, probably because it's not in either Advent or Lent, or during the summer, so here we are.
I wrote something back in the spring alluding to this calendar custom, urging churches to, if they really want to appreciate their clergy, to encourage them to take the time off they have coming. That kind of support is needed. I know while some sincerely want support their preacher, there's always a critical mass of people who have a tendency to treat them like an employee, no matter what the compensation or benefits are or aren't.
To treat ministers like employees is dangerous to the spiritual health of the whole community, I would argue. What is tricky is that the other relationship I hear about and see in some ways playing out as a model for the church and minister relationship is that of a marriage. This creates all sorts of expectations that aren't helpful, either, or so I'd say.
For Christian faith communities, the best starting place is scripture, and there I think the leading model is that of shepherd. I'm going to sidestep for now the question of how much a preacher is standing in the place of Christ, which is part of the model in some traditions, much less so officially in Protestant circles, but still thought to be part of the persona.
But there's an aspect of being Christ to one another, and to the world, which relates to Jesus speaking about being the Good Shepherd, and some allusions especially in Acts to how the apostles and elders and leaders are shepherds called to good stewardship of the flock in their care.
One obvious problem with using shepherding as our model for ministry is that we don't most of us deal with sheep as much as once was the case. I'd like to talk about that metaphor in practical terms next week!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's never tended sheep himself, but he's been around at lambing time before. Tell him what you know about sheep at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
A letter to an applicant of sorts
___
From the search committee, to John D. Baptist:
Thank you for your application & interview with us for the open ministry position on our church's staff. We appreciate your time with us, especially as you seem to have walked some distance to be here!
While we are not filling the position at this time, we will keep your resume on file for future consideration. As discussed when we were together, our ministry team dress code would require some adjustments on your part, though sandals with socks could be discussed should a future offer arise.
It was a bit jarring for you to call the search committee "a brood of vipers," but it was said in such a matter of fact tone we might have missed the intended irony. More problematically, your employment history is weak, or at least unclear. Were you working as a wilderness guide for a tour company, or as an interpretive ranger during your time outdoors? If you were serving as a camp chaplain there it is something we'd take into account, but we are looking for someone with previous (indoor) church experience.
As to your current ministry status, we would need you to pursue standing with current certifications. Your preaching skills are apparent, but you would benefit from interpersonal skill development and some small group leadership training. Repentance is all well and good, but you need to hold some effective meetings along the way!
Again, thank you for the chance to meet, and for the honeycomb you shared with us so generously, and we look forward to possibly working together in the future.
Sincerely,
The Search Committee
P.S.: Hold the locusts next time.
===
So, that's a joke, of sorts.
October is in many traditions clergy appreciation month, probably because it's not in either Advent or Lent, or during the summer, so here we are.
I wrote something back in the spring alluding to this calendar custom, urging churches to, if they really want to appreciate their clergy, to encourage them to take the time off they have coming. That kind of support is needed. I know while some sincerely want support their preacher, there's always a critical mass of people who have a tendency to treat them like an employee, no matter what the compensation or benefits are or aren't.
To treat ministers like employees is dangerous to the spiritual health of the whole community, I would argue. What is tricky is that the other relationship I hear about and see in some ways playing out as a model for the church and minister relationship is that of a marriage. This creates all sorts of expectations that aren't helpful, either, or so I'd say.
For Christian faith communities, the best starting place is scripture, and there I think the leading model is that of shepherd. I'm going to sidestep for now the question of how much a preacher is standing in the place of Christ, which is part of the model in some traditions, much less so officially in Protestant circles, but still thought to be part of the persona.
But there's an aspect of being Christ to one another, and to the world, which relates to Jesus speaking about being the Good Shepherd, and some allusions especially in Acts to how the apostles and elders and leaders are shepherds called to good stewardship of the flock in their care.
One obvious problem with using shepherding as our model for ministry is that we don't most of us deal with sheep as much as once was the case. I'd like to talk about that metaphor in practical terms next week!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's never tended sheep himself, but he's been around at lambing time before. Tell him what you know about sheep at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, September 18, 2023
Faith Works 9-22-23
Faith Works 9-22-23
Jeff Gill
Donation season is setting in
___
Let me share some news with you all in this developing season of donation requests, as they flood into our mailboxes and email accounts.
Nice people can be terrible managers of large, complex operations.
Good managers of large, complex operations can be horrible people on a personal level.
Good causes can be used to front fairly mundane greedy donation harvesting operations.
Bad fundraisers can be excellent advocates for important causes, just not in terms of raising money.
Excellent fundraisers can use a modest amount of good work done to cover for operations that mostly enrich key staff and accomplish very little.
Alternatively, well paid executives can also do good work; poorly compensated ones can also be ineffective leaders — and I'm always wary of any organization head who says too often "I'm not making a dime." They DO exist, but it's broadly speaking a signal to do due diligence.
Donation season is ramping up: my elderly father-in-law's mailbox is JAMMED with appeals. Lots of people give based on fundraising materials. Friends, a modest amount of checking can complicate simple stories, but give you peace of mind at the end of the day.
Full disclosure — I've had to be on clean-up crews for far too many community or faith-based programs that imploded over bad faith, internal controls collapsing, or simple improvidence or malfeasance. All of them had one thing in common: a refusal of smart people to believe nice people doing good things might be either inept, or somewhat scammy, let alone outright lying. Do everyone a favor, and check out some basic info from third parties before you give.
One modest obscured example from many years ago: I was a board chair (hint - if you want to stay out of these situations, never agree to serve as board chair, of anything) & our executive director came to me. Some mail had been misdirected to our address. "This can't be what it looks like, can it?" I took it off that person's hands, went with the materials to the United Way board chair. "This can't be what it looks like, can it?" Once we agreed it was, we had a meeting with our fiscal officers jointly, who said "This can't be what it looks like, can it?" Then we set up a meeting with the agency director who was doing not right things, and he loudly affirmed "This isn't what it looks like!" We had a follow-up meeting with legal representation on both sides; sadly the relevant agency board chair resigned the moment we reached out to them. At the lawyered-up meeting, admissions were made, to what turned out to be about half of what had to be rectified in the end.
Two points: not counting the board chair who likely knew & didn't want to deal with this, there were about five points at which this all could have stopped, and the problem grown to where it couldn't be resolved without dire outcomes. Each stage required facing unpleasant facts.
The other point is I have multiple stories in this vein, from three states. It will always happen where there's not adequate oversight & multiple controls. Which take time & attention… but are worth it in the end.
I'd name some national organizations but I don't have the time or bandwidth to respond to those whose oxes might be gored. This can include anyone from coaches of professional sports teams, to clergy heads of para church organizations, or about smaller programs claiming larger impact than their press kits can really support.
But almost any of them will hit you with multiple mailings annually if you send them a $5 check & your email.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's asked for money, and he gives money (sometimes). Tell him how you decide where to donate at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Donation season is setting in
___
Let me share some news with you all in this developing season of donation requests, as they flood into our mailboxes and email accounts.
Nice people can be terrible managers of large, complex operations.
Good managers of large, complex operations can be horrible people on a personal level.
Good causes can be used to front fairly mundane greedy donation harvesting operations.
Bad fundraisers can be excellent advocates for important causes, just not in terms of raising money.
Excellent fundraisers can use a modest amount of good work done to cover for operations that mostly enrich key staff and accomplish very little.
Alternatively, well paid executives can also do good work; poorly compensated ones can also be ineffective leaders — and I'm always wary of any organization head who says too often "I'm not making a dime." They DO exist, but it's broadly speaking a signal to do due diligence.
Donation season is ramping up: my elderly father-in-law's mailbox is JAMMED with appeals. Lots of people give based on fundraising materials. Friends, a modest amount of checking can complicate simple stories, but give you peace of mind at the end of the day.
Full disclosure — I've had to be on clean-up crews for far too many community or faith-based programs that imploded over bad faith, internal controls collapsing, or simple improvidence or malfeasance. All of them had one thing in common: a refusal of smart people to believe nice people doing good things might be either inept, or somewhat scammy, let alone outright lying. Do everyone a favor, and check out some basic info from third parties before you give.
One modest obscured example from many years ago: I was a board chair (hint - if you want to stay out of these situations, never agree to serve as board chair, of anything) & our executive director came to me. Some mail had been misdirected to our address. "This can't be what it looks like, can it?" I took it off that person's hands, went with the materials to the United Way board chair. "This can't be what it looks like, can it?" Once we agreed it was, we had a meeting with our fiscal officers jointly, who said "This can't be what it looks like, can it?" Then we set up a meeting with the agency director who was doing not right things, and he loudly affirmed "This isn't what it looks like!" We had a follow-up meeting with legal representation on both sides; sadly the relevant agency board chair resigned the moment we reached out to them. At the lawyered-up meeting, admissions were made, to what turned out to be about half of what had to be rectified in the end.
Two points: not counting the board chair who likely knew & didn't want to deal with this, there were about five points at which this all could have stopped, and the problem grown to where it couldn't be resolved without dire outcomes. Each stage required facing unpleasant facts.
The other point is I have multiple stories in this vein, from three states. It will always happen where there's not adequate oversight & multiple controls. Which take time & attention… but are worth it in the end.
I'd name some national organizations but I don't have the time or bandwidth to respond to those whose oxes might be gored. This can include anyone from coaches of professional sports teams, to clergy heads of para church organizations, or about smaller programs claiming larger impact than their press kits can really support.
But almost any of them will hit you with multiple mailings annually if you send them a $5 check & your email.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's asked for money, and he gives money (sometimes). Tell him how you decide where to donate at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Notes from my Knapsack 10-5-23
Notes from my Knapsack 10-5-23
[EMBARGO UNTIL CONFIRMED on 9-19-23]
Jeff Gill
Spanning centuries, let alone millennia
___
Back in the 1990s, Dick Shiels, now emeritus history professor at Ohio State's Newark Campus and longtime resident of Granville, wondered why Cahokia, and not the much older Newark Earthworks or Chillicothe's Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, was in the front of all the US history intro textbooks he reviewed for his classes.
Dick visited Cahokia, across the Mississippi from St. Louis, and they told him "World Heritage List status from UNESCO made all the difference."
He came back to Licking County with that realization, and went to work starting the Newark Earthworks Center, which was a pioneering effort in its own right. The center helped put on the Octagon Moonrise events in 2005, when the geometry of the octagonal enclosure last aligned with the Observatory Circle and towering platform mound to point at the northernmost rise of the moon on an 18.6 year astronomical cycle.
Once those programs around the lunar alignment were completed, he picked up on the relationships made with the Ohio History Connection, and began pushing for a World Heritage List inscription in 2006.
Seventeen years later, here we are. The effort was not only across two decades, but encompassed myriad institutions and many individuals, crossing boundaries once thought to divide us, such as between archaeologists and today's Native American tribal nations. Now, the leaders of those sovereign governmental units, with historic roots in Ohio before the period of "Indian Removal" in the 1830s, are often traveling back here, and finding a welcome, even bringing busloads of children to Newark, where they can learn about the accomplishments of their ancestors.
Those ancient builders deserve credit, and in the years since, so many people have dreamed and drafted and written and delivered the work which resulted in the declaration and inscription of September 19, 2023, placing the Newark Earthworks on the World Heritage List of UNESCO, now the 25th US listing, along with Independence Hall and the Grand Canyon, Monticello and Mammoth Cave.
Dick Shiels saw an opportunity, over twenty years ago, to add the Newark Earthworks to a roster that globally includes the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge in England, and added just a few days before the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks was inscribed on the World Heritage List, the ancient city of Jericho on the Jordan River. It was a dream to most who first heard it, to see "our local mounds" in such august company.
Brad Lepper had a chance to help add "The Earthworks of Newark, Ohio" to "The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World" as the century turned, and slowly, steadily, more and more people saw that dream as a simple statement of fact: Ohio's ancient earthen enclosures qualify under the UNESCO phrase as having "outstanding universal value." The world has been coming to see them, in fact, for some time.
More will come. Let's be ready to welcome the world, and invite it to stay a few nights and see the rest of Licking County. And another northernmost moonrise in that generational cycle is just around the corner . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to seeing you at one of the Octagon Open House events on Oct. 15th. He's hearing from the world these days at knapsack77@gmail.com, and on Threads @Knapsack77.
[EMBARGO UNTIL CONFIRMED on 9-19-23]
Jeff Gill
Spanning centuries, let alone millennia
___
Back in the 1990s, Dick Shiels, now emeritus history professor at Ohio State's Newark Campus and longtime resident of Granville, wondered why Cahokia, and not the much older Newark Earthworks or Chillicothe's Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, was in the front of all the US history intro textbooks he reviewed for his classes.
Dick visited Cahokia, across the Mississippi from St. Louis, and they told him "World Heritage List status from UNESCO made all the difference."
He came back to Licking County with that realization, and went to work starting the Newark Earthworks Center, which was a pioneering effort in its own right. The center helped put on the Octagon Moonrise events in 2005, when the geometry of the octagonal enclosure last aligned with the Observatory Circle and towering platform mound to point at the northernmost rise of the moon on an 18.6 year astronomical cycle.
Once those programs around the lunar alignment were completed, he picked up on the relationships made with the Ohio History Connection, and began pushing for a World Heritage List inscription in 2006.
Seventeen years later, here we are. The effort was not only across two decades, but encompassed myriad institutions and many individuals, crossing boundaries once thought to divide us, such as between archaeologists and today's Native American tribal nations. Now, the leaders of those sovereign governmental units, with historic roots in Ohio before the period of "Indian Removal" in the 1830s, are often traveling back here, and finding a welcome, even bringing busloads of children to Newark, where they can learn about the accomplishments of their ancestors.
Those ancient builders deserve credit, and in the years since, so many people have dreamed and drafted and written and delivered the work which resulted in the declaration and inscription of September 19, 2023, placing the Newark Earthworks on the World Heritage List of UNESCO, now the 25th US listing, along with Independence Hall and the Grand Canyon, Monticello and Mammoth Cave.
Dick Shiels saw an opportunity, over twenty years ago, to add the Newark Earthworks to a roster that globally includes the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge in England, and added just a few days before the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks was inscribed on the World Heritage List, the ancient city of Jericho on the Jordan River. It was a dream to most who first heard it, to see "our local mounds" in such august company.
Brad Lepper had a chance to help add "The Earthworks of Newark, Ohio" to "The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World" as the century turned, and slowly, steadily, more and more people saw that dream as a simple statement of fact: Ohio's ancient earthen enclosures qualify under the UNESCO phrase as having "outstanding universal value." The world has been coming to see them, in fact, for some time.
More will come. Let's be ready to welcome the world, and invite it to stay a few nights and see the rest of Licking County. And another northernmost moonrise in that generational cycle is just around the corner . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to seeing you at one of the Octagon Open House events on Oct. 15th. He's hearing from the world these days at knapsack77@gmail.com, and on Threads @Knapsack77.
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Faith Works 9-15-23
Faith Works 9-15-23
Jeff Gill
Who is included among "us"?
___
Through this year I've been asking us to think about the modern implications of events taking place 100 years ago in Licking County, and the Midwest all around us in 1923.
With the rise of what historians call "the second era of the Ku Klux Klan," there is an assumption that the causes and motivations of the post-Civil War Klan's origins, and the "third era" Klan of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s & 60s down to today, are all of a piece.
But it's complicated by how the larger and more politically influential 1920s Klan was agitating against migrants and minority groups of its day, and claiming special status and exclusive rights for "white supremacy." Especially in the Midwest where the 1920s Klan was even more influential than in the South, and the hostility of the organization was primarily aimed at Catholics and Jews newly arrived from Europe (newly as in within the last century, since many of these migrants had come in the wake of social strife in 1848 across Eastern Europe). Some were revolutionaries, others simply displaced common folk caught up in an age of revolution from the Atlantic to the Urals.
Somewhat confusingly to modern eyes and ears, these peasant immigrants were called "black people." A nationally famous muckraking journalist, Ray Stannard Baker, after spending a few weeks in Newark following the infamous 1910 lynching on Courthouse Square, wrote in 1912 a picaresque novel where his narrator records a union organizer saying:
"And then the "black people" began to come in, little by little at first, and then by the carload. By the "black people" he meant the people from Southern Europe, he called them "hordes" — "hordes and hordes of 'em" — Italians mostly, and they began getting into the mills and underbidding for the jobs, so that wages slowly went down and at the same time the machines were speeded up. It seems that many of these "black people" were single men or vigorous young married people with only themselves to support, while the old American workers were men with families and little homes to pay for, and plenty of old grandfathers and grandmothers, to say nothing of babies, depending upon them.
"There wasn't a living for a decent family left," he said."
Baker's protagonist goes on to describe a strike for better working conditions that led to dire circumstances in a place very like what we know of Newark in that era, until:
"And presently the strike collapsed, and the workers rushed helter skelter back to the mills to get their old jobs "Begging like whipped dogs," he said bitterly.
Many of them found their places taken by the eager "black people," and many had to go to work at lower wages in poorer places — punished for the fight they had made."
After his effort at leading a strike for better pay and working conditions failed, the narrator had a realization:
"It was then that he began to see clearly what it all meant. He said he made a great discovery: that the "black people" against whom they had struck in 1894 were not to blame.
"I tell you," said he, "we found when we got started that them black people — we used to call 'em dagoes — were just workin' people like us — and in hell with us. They were good soldiers, them Eyetalians and Poles and Syrians, they fought with us to the end.""
This by a journalist who is not a Klan apologist at all, but is helping us understand what's going on in 1912 or so around the racial definition of "white."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's trying to make sense of how we understand who is included in what we call community. Tell him how you would draw that circle at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Who is included among "us"?
___
Through this year I've been asking us to think about the modern implications of events taking place 100 years ago in Licking County, and the Midwest all around us in 1923.
With the rise of what historians call "the second era of the Ku Klux Klan," there is an assumption that the causes and motivations of the post-Civil War Klan's origins, and the "third era" Klan of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s & 60s down to today, are all of a piece.
But it's complicated by how the larger and more politically influential 1920s Klan was agitating against migrants and minority groups of its day, and claiming special status and exclusive rights for "white supremacy." Especially in the Midwest where the 1920s Klan was even more influential than in the South, and the hostility of the organization was primarily aimed at Catholics and Jews newly arrived from Europe (newly as in within the last century, since many of these migrants had come in the wake of social strife in 1848 across Eastern Europe). Some were revolutionaries, others simply displaced common folk caught up in an age of revolution from the Atlantic to the Urals.
Somewhat confusingly to modern eyes and ears, these peasant immigrants were called "black people." A nationally famous muckraking journalist, Ray Stannard Baker, after spending a few weeks in Newark following the infamous 1910 lynching on Courthouse Square, wrote in 1912 a picaresque novel where his narrator records a union organizer saying:
"And then the "black people" began to come in, little by little at first, and then by the carload. By the "black people" he meant the people from Southern Europe, he called them "hordes" — "hordes and hordes of 'em" — Italians mostly, and they began getting into the mills and underbidding for the jobs, so that wages slowly went down and at the same time the machines were speeded up. It seems that many of these "black people" were single men or vigorous young married people with only themselves to support, while the old American workers were men with families and little homes to pay for, and plenty of old grandfathers and grandmothers, to say nothing of babies, depending upon them.
"There wasn't a living for a decent family left," he said."
Baker's protagonist goes on to describe a strike for better working conditions that led to dire circumstances in a place very like what we know of Newark in that era, until:
"And presently the strike collapsed, and the workers rushed helter skelter back to the mills to get their old jobs "Begging like whipped dogs," he said bitterly.
Many of them found their places taken by the eager "black people," and many had to go to work at lower wages in poorer places — punished for the fight they had made."
After his effort at leading a strike for better pay and working conditions failed, the narrator had a realization:
"It was then that he began to see clearly what it all meant. He said he made a great discovery: that the "black people" against whom they had struck in 1894 were not to blame.
"I tell you," said he, "we found when we got started that them black people — we used to call 'em dagoes — were just workin' people like us — and in hell with us. They were good soldiers, them Eyetalians and Poles and Syrians, they fought with us to the end.""
This by a journalist who is not a Klan apologist at all, but is helping us understand what's going on in 1912 or so around the racial definition of "white."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's trying to make sense of how we understand who is included in what we call community. Tell him how you would draw that circle at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @knapsack77 on Threads.
Sunday, August 27, 2023
Faith Works 9-8-23
Since Labor Day weekend is ahead, thought I'd get ahead before I was asked to:
Faith Works 9-8-23
Jeff Gill
Just imagining losses in the light of gains
___
Living in Licking County in 2023, I find myself thinking about ministry in 1923.
The interurbans, electric railways, had seen their national premiere between Newark and Granville in 1890; both the tracks and the transportation along them grew, spurring an industry to build interurban and subway and elevated railway cars.
Preachers through this period had seen the demise of once common hitching posts and watering troughs along the street in front of their churches. In fact, architecture up to this point had always made a point of putting a high set of stairs between the street level and the main entry, to keep the door above the dust of passing carriages and buggies, much of that dust pulverized from what the horses left behind.
Older members might find that climb a barrier to church attendance, but if you kept the grit and grime and flies out of the auditorium by doing so, since you had to keep the doors propped open in the warmer months, it was a tradeoff.
And you might even remember the livery stable operators and hansom cab drivers in a state of shock as first interurbans and then Mr. Ford's horseless carriages steadily eroded their businesses, let alone the craftsman in leather and fine woods who made buggy whips. Some moved further out in the country and found work where they could still be close to the horses they understood, others sold their stock at a loss and went to work in the growing factories and foundries.
Those pastoral conversations were still vivid in your memory, even as now you were hearing from parishioners that the Jewett Car Company was laying off even more workers. Automobiles were taking away passengers and fares, so interurbans were reducing replacement rates and it was said some municipal rail systems were closing down. Strangely, north in Sandusky the interurban company was closing down much of its business and putting their investments and energy into the former weekend sideline of an amusement park they had at Cedar Point.
The local interurban was still riding high, especially in the summers when so many rode all the way to Buckeye Lake Park, but after Labor Day, the passenger cars certainly looked emptier. At least there was talk about some plants might make automotive parts for the Detroit behemoths. And Heisey Glass kept adding capacity, so they'd be in business for another century for sure.
If people still came to church by automobile rather than by buggy or interurban trolley, that was fine. There was talk among ministers, though, about the silent films that were becoming so popular. Downtown Newark had theaters on all sides of the courthouse square, and there was talk of those "movie palaces" coming to town, giant spaces with pipe organs finer than any church had, with trumpets and bells and sound effects to accent the story. If they figured out how to put the sound of actors talking with the film, how would a Sunday service compete?
And even in the home, it seemed like every other house, at least of the better off church members, had a radio set; people after church talked to each other about music and news they were hearing from Pittsburgh and Akron, and that President Harding had a radio in the White House.
With private automobiles for almost every home, radios becoming common, and movie houses getting more popular, businesses like Scheidler and Jewett cutting back, a preacher could be forgiven for wondering: how would this influence church members? Would people become even more mobile, and disconnected from family and each other, distracted more easily by increasingly intensely interesting entertainment options? Or did that even occur to them, as our modern age was being born?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's pretty sure the worries of clergy in 1923 weren't what we'd think, looking back. Tell him what you wonder looking ahead at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Faith Works 9-8-23
Jeff Gill
Just imagining losses in the light of gains
___
Living in Licking County in 2023, I find myself thinking about ministry in 1923.
The interurbans, electric railways, had seen their national premiere between Newark and Granville in 1890; both the tracks and the transportation along them grew, spurring an industry to build interurban and subway and elevated railway cars.
Preachers through this period had seen the demise of once common hitching posts and watering troughs along the street in front of their churches. In fact, architecture up to this point had always made a point of putting a high set of stairs between the street level and the main entry, to keep the door above the dust of passing carriages and buggies, much of that dust pulverized from what the horses left behind.
Older members might find that climb a barrier to church attendance, but if you kept the grit and grime and flies out of the auditorium by doing so, since you had to keep the doors propped open in the warmer months, it was a tradeoff.
And you might even remember the livery stable operators and hansom cab drivers in a state of shock as first interurbans and then Mr. Ford's horseless carriages steadily eroded their businesses, let alone the craftsman in leather and fine woods who made buggy whips. Some moved further out in the country and found work where they could still be close to the horses they understood, others sold their stock at a loss and went to work in the growing factories and foundries.
Those pastoral conversations were still vivid in your memory, even as now you were hearing from parishioners that the Jewett Car Company was laying off even more workers. Automobiles were taking away passengers and fares, so interurbans were reducing replacement rates and it was said some municipal rail systems were closing down. Strangely, north in Sandusky the interurban company was closing down much of its business and putting their investments and energy into the former weekend sideline of an amusement park they had at Cedar Point.
The local interurban was still riding high, especially in the summers when so many rode all the way to Buckeye Lake Park, but after Labor Day, the passenger cars certainly looked emptier. At least there was talk about some plants might make automotive parts for the Detroit behemoths. And Heisey Glass kept adding capacity, so they'd be in business for another century for sure.
If people still came to church by automobile rather than by buggy or interurban trolley, that was fine. There was talk among ministers, though, about the silent films that were becoming so popular. Downtown Newark had theaters on all sides of the courthouse square, and there was talk of those "movie palaces" coming to town, giant spaces with pipe organs finer than any church had, with trumpets and bells and sound effects to accent the story. If they figured out how to put the sound of actors talking with the film, how would a Sunday service compete?
And even in the home, it seemed like every other house, at least of the better off church members, had a radio set; people after church talked to each other about music and news they were hearing from Pittsburgh and Akron, and that President Harding had a radio in the White House.
With private automobiles for almost every home, radios becoming common, and movie houses getting more popular, businesses like Scheidler and Jewett cutting back, a preacher could be forgiven for wondering: how would this influence church members? Would people become even more mobile, and disconnected from family and each other, distracted more easily by increasingly intensely interesting entertainment options? Or did that even occur to them, as our modern age was being born?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's pretty sure the worries of clergy in 1923 weren't what we'd think, looking back. Tell him what you wonder looking ahead at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Faith Works 9-1-23
Faith Works 9-1-23
Jeff Gill
A history worth remembering, faith that redeems
___
2022 will long be a significant date in Ohio and Licking County history.
The truly historic decision to put what now seems to be starting out as a $30 billion dollar investment in our backyard will put Intel in a narrative that goes back through names like Heisey, Scheidler, Rugg, Pharis, and Wehrle.
[ https://www.dispatch.com/story/business/manufacturing/2023/08/23/intel-is-seeking-federal-chips-act-money-for-new-albany-ohio-project/70594547007/ ]
Some years ago I had the opportunity to share a platform with other local historians talking about the industrial development of Licking County. In a ballroom that was filled to capacity (hat tip Freedom Years and Park National Bank!) we talked through a fascinating narrative of how sand and natural gas led to glassworks and lighting, and why the B&O Railroad and the Pennsylvania Station set the table for machine shops and foundries to start and grow here.
We also tried to point out the multiple waves of industrial and technological development that rose and fell across this narrative; I tossed in light heartedly, but with a sincere intention, the fact that our first known industry was flint based technology, distributed across the continent, spurring the local Hopewell economy two thousand years ago. But, I noted, we don't engage in large scale flint business anymore.
Nor do we make cast iron stoves, or rope, or beer bottles. Fiberglass comes along, and that has had a day not yet done; aluminum replaced the dominance of cast iron, with a smaller workforce to make more tonnage. Things change.
This was November 2019. COVID wasn't even a rumor yet, and Intel? That's an overseas manufacturer, right? Turns out they had US fabs, and now half of Licking County knows where they are and it seems half of those have been to Arizona or New Mexico or Oregon for a visit.
Dayton isn't going to make the world's cash registers again, and Akron has blimps but no longer a near monopoly on tire manufacturing. They're looking for their next step forward. In Licking County, we're already marching on ahead.
None of what's coming is going to erase our past history. We have some remarkable episodes in American history, some epic and marvelous, others tragic and painful, that happened here in our previous eras of boom and bust. We're entering a boom time; many of us have only known a busted era as adults, watching plants close and factory ship south, with our elders comparing any development today to better days in the past. A boom time is good times, right?
Pastorally speaking, I find it interesting that the crowd on the evening in 2019 did not respond well to our attempts to talk about positive developments in our local economy that were taking place, with the Port Authority in Heath and The Limited and other distribution centers to our west. There was some strong and immediate grumbling at any talk of better days ahead. The focus was on what we'd lost. And I understood, even if I regretted that attitude in the room.
In a parallel way, I find myself sifting some of the earlier history for what we lost when the now vanished manufacturers and businesses got started. What we as a community recall as boom times came with costs to persons and ways of life that were displaced by steam engines and assembly lines. Growth wasn't, and won't be, all good.
The challenge for faith communities: how do we celebrate new opportunities, while ministering to the losses that will come with change?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's imagining a pastor talking to a livery stable owner as the interurbans went in. Tell him what your community is doing with change at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
A history worth remembering, faith that redeems
___
2022 will long be a significant date in Ohio and Licking County history.
The truly historic decision to put what now seems to be starting out as a $30 billion dollar investment in our backyard will put Intel in a narrative that goes back through names like Heisey, Scheidler, Rugg, Pharis, and Wehrle.
[ https://www.dispatch.com/story/business/manufacturing/2023/08/23/intel-is-seeking-federal-chips-act-money-for-new-albany-ohio-project/70594547007/ ]
Some years ago I had the opportunity to share a platform with other local historians talking about the industrial development of Licking County. In a ballroom that was filled to capacity (hat tip Freedom Years and Park National Bank!) we talked through a fascinating narrative of how sand and natural gas led to glassworks and lighting, and why the B&O Railroad and the Pennsylvania Station set the table for machine shops and foundries to start and grow here.
We also tried to point out the multiple waves of industrial and technological development that rose and fell across this narrative; I tossed in light heartedly, but with a sincere intention, the fact that our first known industry was flint based technology, distributed across the continent, spurring the local Hopewell economy two thousand years ago. But, I noted, we don't engage in large scale flint business anymore.
Nor do we make cast iron stoves, or rope, or beer bottles. Fiberglass comes along, and that has had a day not yet done; aluminum replaced the dominance of cast iron, with a smaller workforce to make more tonnage. Things change.
This was November 2019. COVID wasn't even a rumor yet, and Intel? That's an overseas manufacturer, right? Turns out they had US fabs, and now half of Licking County knows where they are and it seems half of those have been to Arizona or New Mexico or Oregon for a visit.
Dayton isn't going to make the world's cash registers again, and Akron has blimps but no longer a near monopoly on tire manufacturing. They're looking for their next step forward. In Licking County, we're already marching on ahead.
None of what's coming is going to erase our past history. We have some remarkable episodes in American history, some epic and marvelous, others tragic and painful, that happened here in our previous eras of boom and bust. We're entering a boom time; many of us have only known a busted era as adults, watching plants close and factory ship south, with our elders comparing any development today to better days in the past. A boom time is good times, right?
Pastorally speaking, I find it interesting that the crowd on the evening in 2019 did not respond well to our attempts to talk about positive developments in our local economy that were taking place, with the Port Authority in Heath and The Limited and other distribution centers to our west. There was some strong and immediate grumbling at any talk of better days ahead. The focus was on what we'd lost. And I understood, even if I regretted that attitude in the room.
In a parallel way, I find myself sifting some of the earlier history for what we lost when the now vanished manufacturers and businesses got started. What we as a community recall as boom times came with costs to persons and ways of life that were displaced by steam engines and assembly lines. Growth wasn't, and won't be, all good.
The challenge for faith communities: how do we celebrate new opportunities, while ministering to the losses that will come with change?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's imagining a pastor talking to a livery stable owner as the interurbans went in. Tell him what your community is doing with change at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Notes from my Knapsack 8-31-23
Notes from my Knapsack 8-31-23
Jeff Gill
Service and civic opportunities
___
When it comes to serving your country, that phrase most quickly brings to mind enlistment in the armed forces. We salute all veterans and the family members who supported them in that kind of service to our nation, but I'm thinking of some different sorts of opportunity more broadly available to citizens wanting to show their patriotism.
The most basic form of public service is voting. Not everyone can vote, children and foreign nationals for starters. The big issue is that not everyone who can does: only about 60 to 70% of those who could vote do so, and that's in high turnout elections.
Failure to register in the first place keeps that number down, some register but don't vote or move and their voter registration lapses, and others just don't show up, which is why political parties are interested in what they call GOTV or "getting out the vote." If in more mundane election cycles you have about half of the eligible population going to the polls, smaller and smaller fractions of the whole can change the outcome.
Along with voting, paying taxes is something many of us do, but not all: in 2022 it was about 60% of all households that paid income tax. Of the 40% that didn't, they are still in many cases paying FICA (Social Security and Medicare, "Federal Insurance Contributions Act" at 6.2% & 1.45% of gross wages, respectively), and we all end up paying sales taxes or gas tax somewhere somehow. I find disputed sources on how many pay property tax, but I think the average renter would share my suspicion that much property tax cost is passed along to them. In one form or another, we all pay taxes, probably more than how many of us vote.
So as citizens, we can and should vote, we kind of have to pay taxes, and there's military service. But when it comes to citizenship, I think on the list of basics there's one we don't talk about enough.
There is jury duty. I would argue on behalf of our judicial system that in line with voting and taxpaying and honoring the flag, responding to a call for serving on a jury is a basic element of citizenship. Without jurors, we can't deliver on those constitutional promises of a trial by a jury of your peers, and the harder it is to find jurors, the slower the course of justice can be, and a speedy trial is one of those basics we want to honor as well.
I'm writing this because I continue to be amazed at the good, upstanding people who consider a request for jury duty nothing but a burden and inconvenience. And I know full well: being on a jury can be burdensome, but it's not a 55 pound pack or a forward deployment. Jury duty is inconvenient, but it's not a tour in a combat zone. Serving as a juror, though, is an element of our national polity as much as registering to vote, paying taxes, or having a certain number of us willing to serve in uniform.
I started writing this thinking about the further opportunity to serve as an elected or appointed official in the small quiet corners of our civc life, but hearing my umpteenth protest that it's ridiculous to ask a busy person to do jury duty caused me to change course. I hope putting it in this context changes yours.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's served on multiple juries. Tell him about what you learned responding to a jury summons at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Service and civic opportunities
___
When it comes to serving your country, that phrase most quickly brings to mind enlistment in the armed forces. We salute all veterans and the family members who supported them in that kind of service to our nation, but I'm thinking of some different sorts of opportunity more broadly available to citizens wanting to show their patriotism.
The most basic form of public service is voting. Not everyone can vote, children and foreign nationals for starters. The big issue is that not everyone who can does: only about 60 to 70% of those who could vote do so, and that's in high turnout elections.
Failure to register in the first place keeps that number down, some register but don't vote or move and their voter registration lapses, and others just don't show up, which is why political parties are interested in what they call GOTV or "getting out the vote." If in more mundane election cycles you have about half of the eligible population going to the polls, smaller and smaller fractions of the whole can change the outcome.
Along with voting, paying taxes is something many of us do, but not all: in 2022 it was about 60% of all households that paid income tax. Of the 40% that didn't, they are still in many cases paying FICA (Social Security and Medicare, "Federal Insurance Contributions Act" at 6.2% & 1.45% of gross wages, respectively), and we all end up paying sales taxes or gas tax somewhere somehow. I find disputed sources on how many pay property tax, but I think the average renter would share my suspicion that much property tax cost is passed along to them. In one form or another, we all pay taxes, probably more than how many of us vote.
So as citizens, we can and should vote, we kind of have to pay taxes, and there's military service. But when it comes to citizenship, I think on the list of basics there's one we don't talk about enough.
There is jury duty. I would argue on behalf of our judicial system that in line with voting and taxpaying and honoring the flag, responding to a call for serving on a jury is a basic element of citizenship. Without jurors, we can't deliver on those constitutional promises of a trial by a jury of your peers, and the harder it is to find jurors, the slower the course of justice can be, and a speedy trial is one of those basics we want to honor as well.
I'm writing this because I continue to be amazed at the good, upstanding people who consider a request for jury duty nothing but a burden and inconvenience. And I know full well: being on a jury can be burdensome, but it's not a 55 pound pack or a forward deployment. Jury duty is inconvenient, but it's not a tour in a combat zone. Serving as a juror, though, is an element of our national polity as much as registering to vote, paying taxes, or having a certain number of us willing to serve in uniform.
I started writing this thinking about the further opportunity to serve as an elected or appointed official in the small quiet corners of our civc life, but hearing my umpteenth protest that it's ridiculous to ask a busy person to do jury duty caused me to change course. I hope putting it in this context changes yours.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's served on multiple juries. Tell him about what you learned responding to a jury summons at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
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