Notes From My Knapsack 1-21-07
Jeff Gill

January is Getting Moldy This Year

You may have noticed something going on in your community.
North sides of houses and sheds and buildings are starting to get, well,
colorful. Sort of.

Mostly the colors are grey and green and speckled black, with the stray venture
into rusty browns. On pavements there can be a lighter green, even some yellows
and bluish greens.

The hues are due to mold. Mold, or mildew, or fungi of various sorts, with
lichens less likely (they tend to take years to develop), are all having a rare
field day in our neck of the woods.

Short days, low light angle when the Sun does come out, the Sun rarely coming
out, and fairly constant moisture along with persistent above freezing
temperatures: it spells fungi.

Which is, of course, the plural of fungus. But fungus is rarely among us in
singular amounts, but like "The Blob" it spreads fast. Fungus is already
invisibly everywhere, the spores that propagate it or the first tiny colonies
busily consuming organic material (think fallen logs) and turning it into
energy for growth.

When conditions are as oddly good as they’ve been recently, they grow fast and
wide and get downright visible. Everything from mushrooms in your mulch to that
yellow orange dog vomit stuff (actually, not a fungus, but a slime mold;
different family, same habits) and the green slime on your siding is getting
big and bigger.

As it happens, they are absolutely crucial to most life, especially trees.
Killing it all is a bad idea, although you probably want to use some bleach or
SimpleGreen on your house just for tidiness sake.

Baker’s yeast which makes bread, the staff of life, lively? A fungus. Brewer’s
yeast, which brings us everything from Milwaukee’s (coff) Best to fine
Champagne? Fungus.

You probably already thought of penicillin, the first antibiotic, as a product
of fungal growth, but it turns out there are over 1600 antibiotics in general
use, all due to fungi.

Biologist trace fungi back in the fossil record about 400 million years, and
botanists chuckle over "mycology," the study of fungus, being in their
department, since DNA studies shows fungi as closer to animals than plants.

And it was a fungus that was European Potato Blight, killing the relatively new
New World plant after a couple centuries, long enough to see ‘taters become a
staple of the Irish diet. So the Potato Famine was due to fungi, as are the
Kennedy family, Irish cops, and far too many performances of "Danny Boy."

But so are truffles, that final flourish on "Iron Chef America" where we’re
regularly reminded "these are $50 a pound" while the sous-chef briskly grates a
couple sawbucks’ worth onto scrambled eggs or something.

Mycologists tell us that fungi are absolutely vital to the Global Carbon Cycle,
from the breakdown of wood to every stage of decomposition that keeps new
energy flowing through Nature’s systems.

You can reflect on all of this as you struggle to clean the little buggers off
your porch with a stiff brush, and welcome the arrival of sub-freezing
weather.

Just remember: it doesn’t kill them, it just slows them down. They’re out
there, everywhere, waiting for a chance to grow . . .

In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan 15 years ago, while doing unrelated
scientific research, some ecologists found a "humongous fungus," a connected
mushroom colony that is essentially one organism, covering dozens of acres.
Tipped off by the announcement in "Nature" magazine, scientists found one 82
acres big in the Pacific Northwest. Everyone thinks there are more, still
undiscovered, even as mushroom hunters break off bits to take home for their
omelets.

So be kind as you obliterate them; their relatives may be taking notes, and
patiently waiting for their day . . . which will be dim, and cool, and rainy.
Meanwhile, I want ‘shrooms on my pizza. They can hold it against me if they
want.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he
is not a trained mycologist. If you are, send him your views (or anyone else)
at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 1-13-07
Jeff Gill

Care . . . For Some Pasta?

The Coalition of Care might be a good name for a restaurant, but they aren’t actually in that line of business.You could say it is their line of work, though.The Coalition of Care is a group of churches, still expanding in number, who are pooling resources in order to more effectively assist needy families and individuals who are looking for help. Along with the Crisis Information Center of Pathways at 345-HELP, the CoC number at 323-0603 is a place where you can find out where resources are available, and get a listening ear to help you put those scattered pieces together.Food help, housing emergency counseling, and some basic life skills guidance are all part of their menu. Friendly volunteers are at the CoC number from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm every weekday.But tomorrow, they want to serve a warm, welcoming pasta dinner to folks who will support their weekday program. For just $15, $5 under 8 years old, you can come to Granville’s First Presbyterian Church on Sunday anytime between 5:00 and 7:30 pm. Chefs Jay and Alfredo will serve up antipastos, other salads, a range of pastas from Meaty Marinara to, of course, Alfredo sauce (and a Vegetarian selection). Mama Carmen’s own Lasagna is on offer as well.Like the work of the Coalition of Care, the breads and desserts come from bakers and pastry chefs out of many local churches.Take home orders may be offered after 7:30 depending on availability.Just as the St. Vincent dePaul Help Line at 348-0989 gives the St. VdP Societies at Roman Catholic parishes of the area a way to offer direct, faith-rooted assistance, the Coalition of Care wants to be the same kind of opportunity for Protestant churches to offer help out of their own faith commitments. Anyone who calls 323-0603 can count on respect and compassion, coming from trained volunteers who are motivated by their beliefs to help anyone who is in need, without regard to what culture or church they come from. And while The Salvation Army, at 345-8120, is a church itself, with a worshiping congregation as part of the emergency shelter options they offer, is also open to all faiths (or none) -- there is room in this county for a variety of approaches and methods in serving those who live on our societal margins.Any of the four groups and phone numbers I’ve mentioned in this column can get a person on the most direct, helpful path to finding the assistance that may be housed in a couple, or a couple dozen other agencies all hard at work every day here. The problem is that when the chips are down for a person, that’s a tough time to ask them to navigate a slew of phone numbers and doorways to find the aid they probably already qualify for, if they can find it. Pathways/Crisis Info at 345-HELP, St. Vincent dePaul at 348-0989, Salvation Army at 345-8120, and the Coalition of Care at 323-0603. Keep those numbers handy if you think you might ever want to know how to connect a person in need with help that will get them back into stability and security.But only the Coalition of Care is having a pasta dinner tomorrow night! Drop by First Pres in Granville off the four corners, and grab a bite. You’ll feed more than yourself that way, and you might feed more than just your growling tummy.Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; pass the word about food anywhere to him through knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Faith Works 12-30-06
Jeff Gill

Give Up Resolutions Now!

Some New Year’s resolutions may be on your mind this week.
"Never again will I purchase items that require so much assembly; this year I will figure out what they actually want instead of what I want to give (at least to start); next year I will not spend money I don’t have."All good ideas, but true any time. New Year resolutions tend to go into the category of "change my life" decisions and plans, and then tend to go into the dumpster of life faster than last week’s wrapping paper."I will exercise every day but Mondays, eat more green vegetables, and lose 45 pounds.""Starting now, I will not lose my patience (or temper) with the kids, and start coaching some of their activities.""I will register for those classes and finish the program to get that certificate.""When I empty the milk carton, I will no longer put it back in the fridge; I will also consider purchasing milk occasionally myself when it runs below a quarter.""Mornings, I will try to throw outfits together that do not make my spouse wince with actual pain, because some colors are not meant to go together.""Mornings, I will try to throw yesterday’s clothes closer to the hamper than I usually do.""Mornings, I will get up more often.""I gotta clean the place up this year."All good ideas, each of ‘em, for all of us. What makes traditional resolutions so traditionally unobserved, I have observed, is our tendency to "over-elaborate" them. "I gotta clean up the place, so I should buy a carpet shampooer, except first the clutter needs to get out of the piles on the carpet all over, so if the plastic bins go on special after the holidays, then I can buy a label maker at the office supply store, with a color code for each category to match the bins, where I can label the outside of those to. . . why look, a puppy!"End of resolution.What I would commend, instead of a resolution, is an ancient Christian practice known as discernment. What’s discernment? Well, first, it involves prayer (actually, it’s pretty much prayer all the way through). You offer up your questions well before you sweat the answers. What is it you lack? Why are you feeling a need for change? Where is your life not working out? Lay it out in the presence of God.Yes, yes: God already knows. Not the point. It’s the practice of telling the truth, clearly and coherently to someone you can’t buffalo that helps to start.Now, you’ve laid out the situation as fairly and fully as you can; stay with that in prayer. Don’t rush for a solution or a tidy answer, so much as give God a chance to help you see your situation clearly. Prayer has a way of doing that.Discernment is considered a gift in the Bible, and as such is available to all believers in some measure, but a special capacity given to a few. This is where your life in community comes in; not just being part of a church or faith community of some such, but having a group that relates to you and you to them. They could be a fellowship circle or study class or just friends who come together regularly, but with a sense that you are especially responsible for one another. Or to put it more simply, people in your life who are almost as hard to buffalo as God is.Odds are there is someone in that group that has the gift of discernment. (PS – You my have the gift yourself, which is not the same as being able to apply it to yourself!) If your prayers lean in this direction, tell them about what you’re working on prayer-wise, and invite them to pray along with you.What discernment is ultimately about, in Christian understanding, is not a way of getting magical, mystical answers handed to you on a plate. Discerning is about the idea that each of us has been given some kind of gift (see entry under "Spirit, Holy, gifts of") and the world around us has certain needs. When the needs and gifts are put together, amazing things happen. When they go in different directions, problems occur for all involved, including the gifted.Do some discerning this new year as 2007 gets going. Be open to what you already doing, doing well, maybe even gifted for. And keep your eyes (and heart) open for what brokenness near you might be healed by you, and few other than you. The resolution to what ails you might just be in working on that other person’s problem.Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story about how faith works for you at knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Faith Works 12-23-06
Jeff Gill

A Family That Makes Do

You knew that Uncle Charlie and Aunt Edna were coming with their three kids some time ago, and between the guest room and a cot along with the sofa in the basement would set them up well enough.A conference in the hotel nearby, races down at the track, and parent’s visitation weekend on campus across town meant you’d have to put them up; even if you offered to pay for the room, "no vacancies" were lit up far and wide.Then your brother Martin dropped by, which he always does. He never calls, and you’re always glad to see him, and please would you call ahead next time? You say this as you make up the daybed in the sewing room.What you couldn’t have expected was Gadja and Grandpa showing up, since they usually don’t travel much, and they are getting on in years.But they heard Martin was passing through, and apparently he never drops in on them on the other side of the state. That would be rude, to just impose on your elderly grandparents (unlike your siblings, you think, but only think).When they see Charlie’s kids sprawled across the sofa and living room floor, they immediately say they’ll just sit and visit a bit, and then drive straight back.Right. Well over 80, they’ve driven four hours, and it’s already three in the afternoon. You say with perfect sincerity that you don’t want them to even think about doing that, and that if they don’t mind taking turns in the bathroom, we can make this work. You make eye contact with your dearly beloved across the room, who lifts an eyebrow, and then somehow points it at the sofa, currently covered with Charlie’s offspring. Nodding back, you blow a kiss across the room, and go downstairs to the camping closet where the foam pads are. You have time to rummage and assemble while Grandpa talks about how many months it was between hot showers during the war in Europe.And then the bell rings again, and since you’re in the hall you open it before the second chime. There stand cousin Joe and his – girlfriend? Fiance? – Mary. Or maybe they’ve gotten married since you last heard from him, but she certainly is pregnant.Someone quickly and graciously slides a chair from the kitchen across the back end of the living room to the edge of the wood floor near the entry, and Mary sits, with visible relief. Talking to Joe, you sketch out the situation, trying to stay cheerful while feeling "why me, Lord?" Then you see the worry and tension only slowly slipping off Mary’s face, as Joe stands close, one hand steadily rubbing her shoulder, and you think "OK Lord, I guess it’s me."You could put her in your bedroom with Gadja, and Grandpa could share the sewing room with Martin (Martin can go on the floor, you think with momentary satisfaction), and we’ll sleep on the sofa and floor out here. Joe winces and says very slowly that he’d rather sleep out in the garage than be separated from Mary right now.In a burst of noise behind them over the control of the TV remote, you and Joe put your heads closer together, just above Mary. There is a back room out there with a heater and actually even a toilet and shower, but with twenty feet from the house and cold nights and no real bed, you hadn’t planned to use it. There were straw bales there, though, for the rabbits and sheep you keep in the field below the house, and you could put a big foam roll over the top of a dozen of them on the floor, lay down a big sleeping bag from the hunting gear, and tuck in sheets all around and it’ll look and almost feel like a bed – if you don’t try to slide your shoes underneath.That gets a laugh even from Mary, and Joe says he’d be so thankful for that much, and still sorry to impose. You remind him that the rabbits will enjoy the company, and if Charlie’s kids get much louder you’ll be out to join them, so don’t even talk about imposing.Hardly anyone in the jammed living room notices when you all bundle up and go out the front door. There’s a stiff wind going around the house, but you hold the door for the two of them and they walk into what the family calls "the shop." With the lights on (florescent, but hey) and the heater already running, it looks spare but comfortable indeed after the chill outside. A little shifting of bales, the roll and bags from the loft (thankfully, you washed them this year before they went up that ladder), and the sheets on top really do look like a bed, if you ignore the plywood walls. Checking out the little bathroom, you point out they may have more hot water than anyone inside; and given where you’re sleeping, that’s only fair, you add, when you see Joe react. There’s a TV on the workbench, and CD’s in the player if they want, and don’t worry about the volume!With everyone laughing at that, you close the door firmly behind you, and head back to the house, with the snow starting to fall. Good thing you convinced the folks to stay the night, and now you have to convince them to take your bed.The only thing left, you think, is for that girl to go ahead and have her baby out there on the straw. Could this night get any crazier?Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; have a blessed and safe and warm Christmas in every possible way, and offer your seasonal wishes to knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Faith Works 12-16-06
Jeff Gill

The Privilege of Faith

Once again at Christmastime, we pick up stray echoes of arguments over trees in airports, greetings at cash registers, and analyses of greeting card inscriptions.What religious traditions should show up in public spaces, and how many private arguments will hinge on outward displays of personal faith?In debates about the role of religion in "the public square," the strict language of the US Constitution is no longer the actual point of dispute."Establishment" of an official state church is what is clearly forbidden in the first clause of the Bill of Rights. Then you read a promise for the "free exercise" of religion for all, and there hangs in the air, if not in print, a fainter echo from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote later in life about "separation of church and state."What people today are actually arguing about for the most part is a very modern concern, that of "privileging" a particular religion or faith tradition. To privilege a particular point of view is a cardinal sin in the modernist (not to say post-modernist) world view, as most if not all points-o’-view are supposed to be equal, or at least interchangeable.For Christians, a quick read of Philippians 2 will show that privilege is something to be willingly set aside (go ahead and check the reference, I’ll be here when you get back). Even someone with a very strong sense that Christian truth claims are absolute and exclusive can trust that "truth will out." In a marketplace of belief, the value of gold will always end up outweighing straw.An interesting example of this is playing out on the slopes of Granville’s College Hill leading up to Denison University, one of Licking County’s oldest institutions, civic or religious.This last week marked the precise 175th anniversary of the first classes at the Granville Theological and Literary Institution (Dec. 13, 1831, 2:00 pm, NE corner of Cherry and W. Broadway). Most of the observances which have already taken place and will be observed through the remainder of the academic year refer to the founding purposes of the Baptist worthies who started the school now known as Denison University.Those were to a) train ministers of the Christian gospel for the Baptist faith, and b) build up laity (OK, laymen) in citizenship and leadership for the same Baptist creed. From the very start, it was often mentioned in early records that they didn’t have as many Baptists as they had hoped would be attending the school.As time went on, not only did that problem continue, but Baptist denominational officials regularly made grand promises for fundraising and support which almost invariably fell less than short. Books could be, and have been written on what distractions kept the church from fulfilling its commitments to their academic institutions, but it can be fairly said that the move to a secular basis of schools like Denison – and Harvard, and William & Mary, and Brown, and most every other historic college in America – had as much to do with self-preservation as it did with a desire to cast loose the bonds of ecclessial limitation. Churches said to colleges, "go ye and be fruitful in the marketplace," and they have.Ironically, the landscape today shows that private, non-sectarian institutions like Denison can now more freely and easily contain clear and explicit expressions of, say, Christian faith (to pick one, not quite at random) in events and programs, as part of a range of religious offerings on campus. Meanwhile public schools, both secondary and post-secondary, fear including just some Bach in a choral concert.So even as Denison University removes the granite inscription from their main entrance saying, in part, "A Christian college," there is more room for Christian expression there, in that statement’s absence, than on any educational property owned by the government. Many would happily agree that this is what the Founders were after: private institutions offering religious viewpoints with designated support, and public institutions with no religion "privileged" only engaging churches as historical or social players.

I doubt if the Founders could make head or tails of the current scene when it came to faith, even with a majority of them Unitarian Deists. What they did secure was the utter absence of a "state church" collecting their income through government taxes, and beyond that they expected a wide range of religious perspectives to flourish both on and adjoining the public square.

Administrators, bureaucrats, and politicians have a sort-of "constitutional" dislike of messiness and complexity and nuance.

Whatever "Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion" means in a wider sense, it has been used to try to flatten and homogenize public discourse on the beliefs that will always underlie our choices.But Americans, however they feel about churches, are fine with messes. They are more comfortable with conflict and engaged, ongoing disagreement than their leaders are. Evangelical Christians will support the display of menorahs for Hanukah, Jewish leaders will affirm Christmas trees, and Wiccans will file briefs to keep Moslem crescent and star insignia in public use.

Colleges may take down the word Christian from their facades, but collegians can practice their faith all the more passionately in lecture rooms and on bulletin boards.

We may no longer sing "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen" at civic events, or send angel-bordered Christmas letters, but it becomes all the clearer that those who do so nowadays really mean something by it.That strikes me as a good thing!

So Merry Christmas from my house to yours, and I welcome whatever seasonal greetings you freely choose to offer.

Jeff Gill knapsack77@gmail.com

Notes From My Knapsack 1-14-07
Jeff Gill

Bright Side, Or Right Side?

This is what I'm talking about.
Ohio State's football team goes, what, 15 and 1, plays in the national
championship game, has the quarterback win Coach Heisman's trophy, and everyone
is in mourning, downcast, muttering "what went wrong?"
Yes, I did watch the game. To the end. We stunk. Over seven weeks off, eating
banquet food five nights a week, and watching way too much football on TV
(think about it: how many college games do you think they watch during the
season other than "film" in the locker room?), and their brains were flabby,
not their bodies.
One more half and they woulda had 'em, I am sure.
But the point is, why are so many of us so very down? It was a good season,
with much to remember with contentment. Great moments, stellar performances,
and carrying the burden of a Number One rating almost six months. Yeah, and a
huge loss on Jan. 8.
This is what I was getting at about Newark and Licking County last week. Are
there problems here? You don't have to be clever a'tall to find 'em. Can you
honestly, accurately, precisely say that there are good things happening in
Licking County in general, and right down to Courthouse Square in Newark in
particular? Sure, and it doesn't take too much looking.
Last week I was waiting for a class tour at the Octagon Earthworks in the
parking lot of Moundbuilders Country Club. While the Little Guy and I were
waiting, a car pulled into the otherwise empty parking lot. They had North
Carolina plates, and walked over to the interpretive sign, so I said hello,
introduced myself, and said I'd be happy to answer any questions 'til the class
showed up.
This couple was interested in history, culture, and art, and they "chose" to
drive through Licking County on their way from Buffalo to Cincinnati to back
home. (I didn't ask, but got the impression it was a second honeymoon/25th
anniversary trip for them from Niagra Falls to family in Lexington KY.)
After talking about the 2000 year old mounds, the almost 100 year old golf
course, and the weird weather, they said "This sure looks like a nice place to
live! Can you tell us where there are any art museums, anything else to see?" I
gave them direction to The Works (and told them to see if they could get up to
the second floor courtroom in the Courthouse), LeFevre Hall at OSU-N, and Burke
Hall on the Dension campus, mentioned some galleries on Broadway in Granville,
and then said goodbye as the students arrived.
Do you hear what I'm saying? Of all the towns and all the attractions they
could have seen between western New York state and Kentucky, they came through
Licking County. And they were glad they did. And they bought at the very least
a meal, and may well (I don't know) have ended up staying a night, maybe even
bought some stuff. Like art.
The Urban Institute is an organization that does fascinating work on assessment
and policy for communities. You can look at most of their publications online
in "PDF" format through their website, www.urban.org. They aren't just about
big cities, but the nature and development of places where large numbers of
people come together, and how to make those interactions positive, mutually
beneficial, and sustainable.
They have found that in measuring typical "quality of life" benchmarks, far too
many areas end up unintentionally following the "drunk under the lamppost"
method: looking where there's the most light, not where you need to be looking.
Analysts tend to follow the most available data, so Census Bureau numbers and
standard economic measures carry the most weight.
Two insights they gave me in reading through a chunk of their material have to
do with "creative classes." Community vitality and quality of life are often
tied at one level or another to the raw numbers of artists, art galleries, art
sales, and other artistic venues like theaters, concerts, et cetera.  Urban
Institute scholars have asked whether or not we're missing "the rest of the
iceberg" in that approach -- those are the visible creative professionals, but
doctors, lawyers, academics, engineers, and many other professions are all
creative in different ways. Those "hidden" creative professionals usually know
that the creative process can be spurred by experiencing other forms of
creativity, so a programmer at State Farm is interested in the fabric art of an
executive at Longaberger who goes to hear a concert where one of the players is
county coroner (none of those three are made up, by the way).
So the second insight is that a community, while being careful not to find what
they want to find, needs to make sure they use not only standard quantitative
measures, but figure out some benchmarks that are meaningful for who and where
they are.
And promote the heck out of 'em.
Technically, that's called "indigenous venues of validation," but it just means
don't measure yourself against Albuquerque or Santa Fe or Taos, or even the
Short North Gallery Hop. Art and creativity are bubbling up all over Licking
County, in local libraries, school shows right down through elementary grades,
and in church fellowship halls.
I don't think we've even begun to correctly calculate the value of what we
have, which is why so many people aren't sure we have much. The Ohio Arts
Council (www.ohiosoar.org) has some approaches you can read as well.
Licking County, let's finish brushing the lint off our lapels and step out
proudly. We're competitive way above our weight class, and in ways we have not even
acknowledged yet.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio;
tell him about a creative endeavor near you through knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Notes From My Knapsack 1-07-07
Jeff Gill

Choosing a Place To Live

A few weeks ago, our family meandered to downtown Newark in the evening. It was
a weeknight, and we had a bag of canned goods to deliver to the "Elves in
Action" with the county Food Pantry Network by the courthouse square gazebo.
Turning off of Rt. 16, we came up West Main Street with a glorious view of the
Christmas-lit Courthouse. A lap around the square wove around many cars, since
Marie Osmond was appearing within the hour at the Midland Theater. On the
second lap, we pulled into the elf lane and the Little Guy handed out the bag
to waiting hands, getting a discreet candy cane in response.
We paused to let a mass of pedestrians cross to where a smaller crowd was
taking pictures of each other sitting with Mark Twain by the box office under
the marquee. Park Place Coffee Roasters was open, and the Natoma Café had a
full complement at the bar. Our last lap showed the Manna Restaurant and their
McCousin in the eatery business down the block both bustling, and then we were
on our way home, but first we looped south of the square, past the lovely Penn
Depot, turning just past the attractively exteriored Lil’ Bear downtown
grocery. Finally, around The Works complex where we had been to an art show and
bought quite a few presents a few weeks before.
And people fret about Newark’s downtown why, again?
Sure, it is no doubt an ongoing effort to keep businesses going these days in
the Ohio economy. Not just downtowns, though: I know folks out at the mall in
Heath who worry about the foot traffic volume and sales figures. American
willingness to walk twenty feet to save a buck versus spending more at drive-up
windows is fading to non-existent, and spending more for quality along with
walking around a (gasp) corner seems to be a lost art.
All true, but the bottom line that strikes me as worth underlining is that
Licking County has a vital, vibrant county seat downtown.
Hey, I heard that snort.
It baffles me as to why so many can’t believe it when people like, um, me say
that we’re doing great. There’s a combination of living in the past ("you
shoulda seen it when…") and not getting out much. Like to Columbus, f’r
instance.
Do we have problems? Oh, sure. Read a little microfilm on downtown Newark over
the last hundred years, and I’m liking our current crop. We’ve come a long,
long way. There are no department stores near Park National Bank, but Lazarus
and Ayres aren’t looking too good these days either.
If you have business that takes you to downtown Mansfield, Springfield, Akron,
Canton, Lima, Toledo, Xenia, or Portsmouth (just to name a few I’ve been to in
the last couple years), let alone nearby Columbus, tell me you see a place you’
d swap with downtown Newark.
Yes, the Licking County Convention and Visitors Bureau recently was very kind,
and honored me as their Volunteer of the Year (aka "sucker who always says yes
award"). I point this out only to say I have no personal angle to polish in
promoting our communities in Licking County, since I already have the award. I
enjoy doing local tours and what they call "step-ons" with tour buses passing
through because I really, truly think this is a wonderful place to live and
raise a family. The Lovely Wife and I came here from elsewhere, and came back a
second time, because we chose this place.
Which brings me to a web site that might be the nugget of a good idea for
someone here to put together. When we were visiting family over the holidays in
Indianapolis, a county seat with a few urban problems, but a truly awesome
downtown, I found out about a web site called "I Choose Indy." You can go to
www.ichooseindy.com and look around.
Some infotech professionals wanted to share their own take on how they chose
that town, as opposed to a marketing set of slogans.
Why have people chosen Licking County? They are, and in growing numbers. What
would we learn by giving them a chance to tell us why? It might even help us
all, longtime, newer, and just arriving residents of the Land of Legend, to
figure out what we need to protect and preserve and maintain, along with a few
new ideas for how to all make a community.
And look for more on why this is not only a great place to live, but to have
people visit, in 2007.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio;
tell him why you chose Licking County at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 1-06-07
Jeff Gill

Thinking About Africa

Thought about Africa lately?

Darfur you likely know a little about, though my word processing program puts a red squiggle under it.

Windows Vista won’t let the new Office do that, I suspect, thanks to George Clooney and others who have worked hard, to little result so far, but some, to get more international attention to Sudan’s brutality.

Somalia and Ethiopia press against the Horn of Africa, trying to make enough noise to distract the major players across the Persian Gulf. Even the millions who watched "Black Hawk Down" couldn’t all spot Mogadishu on a detailed map, though.

Yemen and the USS Cole, first salvo in our current conflict, technically in Arabia but trading partner with most of the east coast of Africa, where terrorist bombs blew up in two African capitals before 9-11 was a date, not a phone number. Which two? Look ‘em up.

And after you figure out where Kenya and Tanzania are, note that the Congo (the one that used to be Zaire) is just west of them both, where three million (Four? Five?) have died the last few years in what is jestingly called a civil war, as neighbors all place bets and markers and their own players on the board.

Twenty million orphans are going to be wandering this continent by 2010. 20. Million. This in a place where ragtag armies already seek out soldier children to shape in their own vicious image, and AIDS will give them potential raw material beyond imagining.

The Bush administration, often criticized for an apparent obsession with the fellow they just hung, turns out to have better peripheral vision than many of us thought. Turns out that since 2001, when the US gave $1.4 billion in development and emergency aid to Africa, we deployed $4 billion in 2006, and President Bush has committed nearly $9 billion by 2010. Something about those 20 million orphans struck a chord, pragmaticlly or altruistically.Or some combination of both.

Church groups across a wide spectrum – Rick and Kay Warren, Sojourners Community, the Islamic Societies of North America, Jewish relief organizations, the Unitarian-Universalist Association, to name a few – have all tried to turn our attention, as a nation with global influence, to problems in Africa. They start with genocide in Darfur, and continue through HIV’s spread leaving 10% of all the continent’s children with at least one dead parent. Africa is more than just problems, though that seems to be the chief export. The one billion souls who live there are Christian, Muslim, and still a swath of animist believers. Just a few months back, the bishops of the United Methodist Church met in Maputo, Mozambique, on November 2 for their fall 2006 meeting. Not just an American body, there are conferences in a number of places, but the most overseas are in Africa.

Their historic parent body, the World Anglican Communion, of which The Episcopal Church is part from this country, will have a meeting of their chief leaders, or "primates" as primary bishops of their national churches, in Tanzania next month. Episcopal leaders, or bishops, that preside over African dioceses are offering theological insights and arguments that run counter to American and European trends.

Given that 50 million of the 77 million Anglicans in the world live in Africa, those bishops carry some weight. How will they throw that weight around?Africa now sends missionaries to the West, not vice versa. And the visitors who return to the scene of former missionary endeavors find that the land of bushmen and squatter’s camps and dictator’s palaces is now also a land of skyscrapers, apartment buildings (with elevators), and subdivisions. There are townships filled with scrap-built housing, but there are also paved streets with mailboxes.

TV stations in Africa compete with the internet to deliver news, and iPods (well, more often off-brand knock offs from Indonesia, but still) dangle from kinte cloth tunics with specially tailored pockets for that and the cell phone.

Have you thought about Africa lately?You really should.On Monday, Jan. 22, the week after the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, Denison University will host a special guest in Swasey Chapel at 1:30 pm. Tsidii Le Loka-Lupindo is an international recording artist, Broadway performer, and powerful public speaker, whose heritage is from her father’s side out of Lesotho. Don’t know where Lesotho is? Go look it up, but check southern Africa for nations surrounded by other countries.

As big as Lesotho is (you say "Lee-sue-too," by the way), the size and terrain of West Virginia, it is a small country in the vastness of Africa. Like Wales in the British Isles, Lesotho has musical tradition and cultural reach far beyond her size.

Tsidii will sing and speak and tell stories out of "the real Africa," she says. Not the Africa of war, crisis, AIDS, and poverty, though that is part of the story, but the whole Africa, Africa entire.Come join Denison that afternoon if you can, and either way, think about Africa.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; reach him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 12-9-06
Jeff Gill

Hospitality is Hard Work

Most religious traditions see hospitality as a gift, a talent that noteveryone has.

Martha and Mary had it between them in the Christian Gospels. Islam hasa strong tradition going back to Abraham and Bedouin culture ofwelcoming the guest, even the stranger. Judaism sets out an empty chairfor Elijah if he makes it to the Passover meal with your family, but theunexpected guest has a claim on that seat.

Certainly the season of Mary and Joseph making their way to Bethlehem, aplace where they have family history, but no living roots, makes usthink about the ones who have no place to stay in our own community,wherever they come from and wherever they are journeying. The Letter tothe Hebrews hints that "some have entertained angels unawares," and thatspirit is lively among Christians and many others that sees thesojourner as a vehicle for God's grace.

Not necessarily for them, but for us. Being a "pilgrim people" has atheme familiar to most faith traditions, but generally those who aredispossessed and lost in this world's deserts are victims of sin andbrokenness. God does not want anyone to be lost, but we have a chance toembody God's love in the encounter with those who are cast aside.

How do we react? Do we turn aside, sneer in contempt, snarl in anger atthese reminders of how fragile comfort and security are, let alone life?Wanting to turn away from the indigent and homeless isn't surprising,seeing how we tend to make use of nursing homes and hospitals to keepage and illness on the edge of life and at least a long corridor orelevator ride away from everyday life.

Or do we see our brother and sister in those folk, and try to find a wayto help without enabling, assist without condescending? Like our ownpossible sibling, who needs a little help, but just like that brother orcousin or grandchild (you've got one, I know) they don't really want tolisten to advice or guidance right off from you, you who have "gottenall the breaks." When family members don't graciously accept help, youcan imagine the task of helping, caring, assisting, has a ragged side toit.

Hospitality is a gift. Not everyone has it, nor every community. Somepeople can take a can of mushroom soup and the bottom of the wilteddrawer in the fridge and make a houseful feel at home without fuss, andsome of us can't make guests feel comfortable even with a caterer tohelp.

Our town now has dredged up a little reputation, desirable to some, ofbeing inhospitable. We've become too welcoming, is the observation, witha reaction trotting through the legislative process right now.

Many of you know I have some horses in this derby, and know which whitehorse I'd rather ride on. But my Boss rides a donkey, and reminds me,especially this time of year, that it isn't about winning or losing.(See also Ephesians 6:12.)

What does seem worth pointing out, in the context of this column, is aradical observation that I hope you'll reflect on. I mean this calmly,but with absolute grim concern. If we start legislating undesireables around the mapboard in the Game ofLife, then churches are next.

Right before I moved to Licking County in 1989, I worked with a newchurch start effort outside of Indianapolis. The denomination bought,market price, a useful intersection's worth of acres, and filed with thetownship for the permits to build a place of worship.

It took fifteen months of negotiations to get the permits, and only atthe cost of promising not to give out any food, host foster care agencyprograms, or offer any feeding programs of any sort at all, even forsenior citizens. Oh, and no weekday child care.Some of us started to wonder if we really wanted to build a church underall those restrictions. At least we got permission for a preschool inthe end.

That trend, which was news to me in 1989, is now quite widespread. Usezoning and other legal devices to make sure that churches only do whatthe secular world thinks they're supposed to do, which is do your sillylittle worship thing on Sunday, have choir practice during the week, gohome, shut up, and pay taxes.

So when I say - Churches are next - I really mean it. If you can't stopus religious people from feeding and housing and rehabilitating andtraining and 12-stepping and educating people who don't quite lookright, why not zone them out to the city's edge?

Wait, they're trying that one in Texas and California.

Or we can just go along with the idea that we're just for Sunday and anhour (or two, for the charismatics), and keep the doors shut for theweek.But what's to be done with those who have the gift of hospitality? Guess they'll have to learn to keep that light under a bushel, too.

I'll try to be more cheerful next week approaching Christmas. Maybe. But remember: Churches are next.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around centralOhio; he's also the current board president for the Licking CountyCoalition for Housing (donations can be made at www.lcchousing.org).Tell him what you want for Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com.

If you are looking here for the seven scenes of Licking County, running from Thanksgiving weekend to New Year's in the Community Booster, just scroll down a bit -- they're posted there together.

Peace & Grace,
Jeff

Faith Works 12-2-06
Jeff Gill

What Lasts Forever?

Diamonds, of course, are forever, as James Bond and the DeBeers family and Botswanan miners all know.
Scientifically, let alone theologically, that’s not quite right: they’re only about a billion years old at best in their current carbon lattice formation, and the super hard material (10 on the Moh scale, to all you geologists) will not survive the rapid expansion of the sun in 5 to 6 billion years.

So not forever.

They are well known parts of the holiday season, since engagements are common in the Midwest during Christmas break, for a variety of reasons that have to do with gift-giving, having the family together, and colleges out of session.

Even non-collegiate folk have picked up on the growing tradition, making December a leading period for jewelers along with retailers and discounters. If you watch TV, you already knew that.

Ushering in the holiday season, we all got to see Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes wedding pictures along with the family photos passed around the Thanksgiving table. As garnish, a cheery newspaper story from new government data: 4 in 10 babies were born out of wedlock last year.

And the trend is only likely to increase in the near future, since these aren’t teen unmarried mothers, whose birth rate went down to the lowest levels on record in the same year. Add the fact that abortions are declining as well, and you have a new social pattern at work.

Let me pull out my old fogey hat, and then spell this out in simple terms.What was once a standard social sequence of meet, then a) get to know each other, b) get engaged, c) married, and d) move in together, e) have sex, and f) have a baby. . .is now this –- meet, e) have sex, d) move in together, a) get to know each other, f) have a baby, b) get engaged, and then c) get married (maybe).

Before you point out that people have been sneaking e) in ahead of c) for some time in human history, let me offer my real point.The Sexual Revolution is one of those tags for an era that is so imbedded in the popular and media imagination that you can’t imagine changing it, but I’d sure like to try.

Don’t let the little ones keep reading past this point, but there was no Sexual Revolution. As a pastor, I’ve been talking to elderly people since the 70’s about their lives, struggles, triumphs, regrets, and hope for a future they won’t see themselves. And if I’ve learned anything from all that conversation, mostly casual and sometimes heartfelt, occasionally in spirit of confession, is that they did it. It. Yes, that. No, that too. Uh huh. Yeah, and anything else later generations like to think they uniquely discovered. They did that, too. (You can turn off your imagination and let it cool down now.)

Trust me just this far: there was no sexual revolution. We had a Marriage Revolution, and it is still going on. That label hides too much of the reality of what it is American society, and most churches (especially Christian denominations) are still struggling with it. Every time a sloppy connection to a so-called "Sexual Revolution" gets made, ask yourself how the whole news story or cultural reference would sound if they had said Marriage Revolution?

Yes, from the 60’s forward we’ve had a new openness to nudity and sexual references in popular culture, which qualifies as a Sexualized Revolution, but that’s a separate consideration, and will keep until after New Year’s.

Questions of The Pill and birth control? A Marriage Revolution. Hook-ups and cohabitation? A Marriage Revolution. Quantity and sequence of, um, partners? A Sexual Revolution? Nope, I think it is revolutionary only in the context of how we’re looking at marriage.

Suri Cruise’s parents are now married – and getting to know each other, perhaps? – and Britney and K-Fed’s two aren’t, while their step-siblings never were, and fiancés are often introduced as the parent of their children. This is the elephant in the living room, or sanctuary, of many churches today. Do we talk about the Marriage Revolution that we’re all enlisted into during this time of year, or just shake our heads about the wacky doings of Paris Hilton as easier (and safer) to bemoan?And personally, I just think you can’t call someone a fiancé unless there’s a date set. Moving in together isn’t sufficient qualification.

But I could care less if you buy a diamond. My Lovely Wife got a peridot, in fact. It should be good for a couple billion years, anyhow. It’s only self-giving love that has a chance to last past the six billion mark.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been married long enough to know that toasters and blenders definitely don’t last forever. Tell him something revolutionary at knapsack77@gmail.com.

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FaithWorks 11-25-06
Jeff Gill

With slow, irregular movements, he worked his left leg around to a better position. He had been up in this tree stand since Orion began to dip down to the western horizon.

That constellation was striding across the sky when hunters first crouched silently waiting for dinner in these woods. Thoughts like that were why he hunted, the opportunity to get out and away from all the noise and buzz and just, well, think thoughts. Even pray sometimes.He didn’t pray that God would send him a big buck; somehow, that felt wrong, like praying (which he knew he didn’t do with the regularity he ought) when the Browns were down by a touchdown. What he did feel coming up and out of him as a natural, effective prayer, was that he would be careful, that he would be safe.

And praying that no half-wit with a new shotgun would stumble his direction, either.These woods were full of deer; the challenge, he thought, was just not to scare enough of them off by accident. So he wore his blaze orange along with a full kit of camo, he had a rain barrel that sat out back for all the washing of his hunting kit, which was stored in a special bag that hung in the shed away from the house. He didn’t use special scents, which the gear stores were full of, he just worked at keeping his own scents to a minimum.

His homework through the year of tracing the paths through the leaves, watching the deer stroll by without a motion on his part, setting out a bit of salt, placing two tree stands, all came down to this week.

It really was a spiritual discipline for him, and he tried to use it as one, with time set aside for silence and reflection offered to God along with the hunter’s preparation routine. This very moment was a prayer of sorts, with God all around, and he trying not to distract his mind and spirit into the opposite direction.

No, you couldn’t hunt God, but he also had come to the realization over the years, and a few bucks of his own, that you can’t capture this moment with a gunshot, either. When everything comes together, you already know that the end result will call on him to do the hard work of hanging up, bleeding out, and carrying away, the check station and the butchering and the packing away of the venison. There is an intersection of the preparation before and the intention to follow of which the right shot at the right time is only a part.

Whatever the deer’s role in all this was from God’s point of view he wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that God definitely didn’t honor the wasteful and cruel dropping of a deer and leaving the carcass to rot in the woods; and God surely didn’t honor the carnage along the highway of roadkill, either.

If the deer was used well and not shot just as living target practice, there was an integrity in the act that fed back to you. That’s as far as he’d figured it out, but he did know that God sure let them reproduce at crazy rates, and it was hunting, disease, or roadkill for most of them. His freezer was full from bow season already. If he got a deer today, there was a food pantry his church worked with that would end up with the result.

Haze in the east was shimmering, barely at the level of starlight but stretching across the sky opposite the exit of Orion the Hunter. He saw his breath, and thought "what an amazing thing that is," even as he worried about letting that plume show too well.

Crystals of frost, blossoming on branches just below his stand, almost grew fast enough for him to see them expand. How weird it is, he thought, that if this were going on right outside my window, and I was standing in a warm spot with a mug of coffee in my hand, I wouldn’t have the patience to stand still and witness this.

On that thought, he caught a blur of movement, a hop, and then slow, steady movement on four hooves, almost moving right at his perch. If they turned left, he wouldn’t need to shift the gun at all, just a lift and pull. If they turn right, the adjustment he had to make would certainly spook them right off into a trot.

There were three, and they paused, just out of what he considered his range. Muzzles prodding at downed logs, shifting brush, then starting upright, looking around, nearly looking at him. They are beautiful creatures, he thought. He was thankful for them as they were, and he would be thankful for one of them as food for the hungry, while the other two ran away. He would be thankful, as he was thankful right now for this moment.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. Share your story of where you hear God with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Faith Works 11-18-06
Jeff Gill

Mythologies of the Holiday Season

With the finale of "Dancing With the Stars," are there any big, nationally anticipated sporting events left in 2006?
Oh, right. This afternoon.
For the majority of us (not all, I know) who will be watching the Apocalyptic Armageddon-ish Activity at 3:30 pm on television, The Game will be accompanied by The Ads.
Ohio State-Michigan isn’t the Super Bowl (this year, it may be bigger), so there aren’t the specially made advertising spots with megastar cameos and wild premises. What we do have in this High Holy Day for Buckeye fans (possibly, dare we hope, to be followed by High Holy Day, the sequel, in the BCS?) is the placement before both Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Those two days, and their alcoholic cousin New Year’s Eve, make up "The Holidays." As in "Happy Holidays," "Holiday Greetings," "Best Wishes for the Holidays," or maybe "Season’s Greetings."
No, it isn’t my purpose to haggle over when the US was a more "Merry Christmas" nation or which retailers are training their staffs to say what. You’ll hear about that elsewhere this year. But the holiday season, or "The Holidays," have taken on a certain bulk rate atmosphere of their own, one that holds onto pieces of what they used to be, and smooshes in clumps of what some may ask of them.
Thanksgiving and Christmas oriented commercials used to frequently have a middle class home setting, get the grandparents and little kids together kind of feel. The paradigm is summed up by a coffee commerical so effective they bring it back some years, even with the fuzziness of old videotape. The thirty second plot is a young man back from college unexpectedly and early, whose little sibling is sweetly shushed, and who wakes up the sleeping family by brewing a big ol’ pot of java. Mom comes down the stairs wondering what the little ‘un got into, and goes from worry to delight to a hug, and the company logo.
More dominant today is "The Party" for "The Holidays." An assortment of cars, a snowy night, tasteful gifts or a bottle of wine under the arm. China on the table, surrounding a centerpiece that has the Martha seal of approval, napkin rings, and most flat surfaces have a floral arrangement in muted colors.
The bright colors come from the multicultural gathering, and the striking sweaters and waistcoats worn by the partygoers. Some ads show a largely youthful event, ethnically diverse, others a more society type gathering with few children and more grey hair, but still racially inclusive.
You can look at these developments from a number of angles. Certainly it is harder to show a family gathering with four or five distinct ethnicities present in the mix, although I know families in Licking County who would say from their own experience, "why not?" And it is surely good that older Americans can be seen in Thanksgiving and after ads without being the grandma in the kitchen smacking the hands of the turkey pickers (grandpas can still be shown as irascible and dumpily dressed, just like the 60’s, I see, and dads are still always idiots unless they’re purchasing diamonds).
What I wonder is whether this is a cause, or an effect? It could be an outgrowth of the fact that it is harder for family to get together for seasonal gatherings, sprawled across the continent as we are, making social events more the center of our holiday calendar (just try to find an Advent calendar outside of a religious bookstore).
Or it could be that retailers and advertising companies like the greater latitude that "The Party" motif gives to product placement and sales. They can point to the admitted social value of multiculturalism as the reason to shift away from family scenes to events assembled by invitation more than relation. My concern isn’t with ethnic diversity, but the idea that the heart of the season is in "elective affinities," who we choose to associate with as individuals instead of who we’re related to. I love holiday parties myself, but they’ve always seemed to me as if they are, and ought to be, secondary to family activities.
One argument against that concern is that there are people who have little or no family: do you want to exclude them from seasonal enjoyment? I could answer, in a cranky mood, that we who don’t have sleek, glossy, sophisticated friends who throw painfully tasteful parties are pretty excluded by the new ideal . . . and I’m guessing there are quite a few of us.
Another way to ask the question is: are the ads just following where society is already going, or is the business getting out ahead of us, trying to lead us in a new direction?
And if the latter, should we go?
Something to think about as you watch the ads during The Game this afternoon, kicking off The Holidays.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; toss him your opinions about the ads o’ the season through knapsack77@gmail.com.

This is a little unusual -- i am putting up here the next *seven* "Notes From My Knapsack" columns through Dec. 31 for the Community Booster, since they are meant as a series of "Winter Scenes, Licking County," starting with 11,000 years ago or so, and the last one set somewhere in the neighborhood of right now. I'll keep dragging this series to the top even as i keep adding each new week's "FaithWorks" column that goes Saturdays in the Advocate. These stories are based on what we know historically and archaeologically, but mostly on what i imagine in the cracks and seams running through the heart of what we know. I hope you enjoy them!

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Notes From My Knapsack 11-19-06
Jeff Gill

Winter Scenes, Licking County – Part One

They had trudged step by step through the frost-clumped grass, thawing a bit during the height of the sun in the grey sky.
From the wide waters and marshes running south, their path climbed up and then back down into a wider valley, where the waters tending toward the rising sun.
The hunting across the wide waters had been sparse, with little cover or slack water for the game animals their hurling stones and spears best brought down. These ponds and gravely swales were growing up in high sedges and grasses, and fringes of cedar showed green around black still pools.
With the long spear in hand, the strongest of the family walked far ahead of the group, who drug their poles and bundles in a tight, ready to defend mass. They had seen no other people for weeks, but there were big cats and bears with swift reflexes that could suddenly appear from behind a blunt hill.
When it happened, it was a sudden and unexpected event of a good sort, too rare, he thought. A mastodon nearly twice his height, looking away from him while grazing at water’s edge, the breeze into his face and away from the creature’s trunk.
A quick hand signal, instantly understood, to the party behind him freezing them into stillness; a zig-zag forward to a carefully chosen position with room left for fast retreat; a rush forward and a thrust behind the ear, deep into the head.
The great tusks never even swung back in reaction, just a vast exhalation and a shuddering slump to the ground, front knees, almost to the back ones, and then an earth shaking thud to one side.
Another stone knife from his pouch was in his hand before the fur had ruffled to a stillness, and with a wary eye, almost not looking, a careful slash across the neck and a leap backwards.
With no further motion from the dead beast, he stepped back into the huddled embrace of the forelegs, and cupped his hands beneath the slowing flow of blood. A lifted motion to the sky, and then he drank reverently, tasting warmth and life flowing from the hunted to the hunter.
All the rest came up quickly and set to their tasks, familiar with elk and moose, but with broader motions and more effort on this immense carcass. Some to the hide, others began removing more tender accessible cuts of meat as they were revealed. The liver was pried out of place beneath the first ribs lifted up, and slices were shared around for quick energy to the remaining tasks.
One such task was a decision, not greeted happily by all, but accepted. Their bags were still heavy with dried meat from the plains west of the wide waters, and nuts were stuffed everywhere they could go. The major portions of this kill would be cut into moveable, retrievable parts, with a few savory roasts put to cook and be carried where best for travel, in their bellies.
As the feasting went on, the portions would be weighted and sunk in the deep, cold waters of the nearby pond. If the hunt to the east did not go well, if they journeyed even north to where the ice still stood tall on the land, but game animals did not choose to let themselves become theirs, then they could return to this place in the spring, and know there was yet hope. A scraping here and there, and the solid meat below could be eaten without much illness after hard roasting. Then they would all gain even more strength from this animal’s gift, and then return west to the wider plains, more welcoming in the long days than in the time of snow and wind.
Last of all, after camp was broken, the poles and bundles packed, the wide, tusked skull was sunk atop the cache of meat, watching for their return and perhaps, if willing, to warn off interlopers. Eyes closed to this world, but tusks bending toward them as they saw the whole disappear below the water’s surface, even now catching the first flakes of snow.
That duty done, they gathered themselves into journeying order, and set of to the east, towards the rising sun. They would not pass this way again.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and he had the honor of being involved in the recovery and study of the Burning Tree Mastodon in 1989. Tell him what you think as these seven winter scenes of Licking County unfold to knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Notes From My Knapsack 11-26-06
Jeff Gill

Winter Scenes, Licking County – Part Two, 2000 years ago

With the setting sun, basket loads after basket load of earth had settled down into place on the steeper slope of the mound.
Green tufts touched with brown fringed the circle ringing a now high circle. Twice her height at the center, she thought, with another layer of building, working, burning, and burying.
They still sing the songs of the Bear-talker, laid deep within the heart of the family mound. So many generations ago, no one recalls even whether the first singer was a man or woman, just the seer of seasons and wearer of the heavy brown hide. From that bear mask came the words of direction and guidance, still among them, but the earlier voice growing old and cracked, then suddenly younger and higher after the log tomb was set deep in the earth, and the first house of song was built and used and set aflame to conclude the singing.
Now this place of regular return was raised high above the surrounding terrace overlooking the rivers. Long house after long house had taken shape, sheltered the sacred ceremonies, and been lit from their own fire within, until the cool ashes could receive a new coating of turf.
Three cycles of the Moon’s full measure along the eastern horizon had passed since then, long before any living memory, but the People still recalled Bear-talker and the songs of this confluence.
She walked the now well-worn path down to the meeting of rivers where the right clay could be clawed, assisted by deer horn picks, from the banks. Dozens more trips in company with many dozens of sisters and brothers would be needed to close the work, but tomorrow would see the last singing. Their return would come at the same time as a shroud of yellow green covered this latest working on the family mound.
One of the new singers was walking a path pounded round and about the sharp cone of the earthen mound. There had been talk of some clans ringing their family burial mounds with an encircling wall of soil, one opening only to the warmth of spring’s sun. She suspected that a path about the mound was being danced and sung into a foundation for such a shape made of earth, and that their baskets and deer bone hoes and antler picks would be at work on another task if the snows held off.
This year’s harvest in the gardens had been rich and full, so if the singers told them to join a new working to honor this mound, they would all happily join in. The ring of wooden posts, set in a circle back on the plain above the meeting of the rivers, marked a series of spots along the eastern hills that foretold the return of warmth and longer days, promised each year after the celebrations and songs were offered up.
Reaching the clay bank, she quickly began to chip slabs of the malleable earth into her basket. Are there to be yet more shapes on this cradled plain, beyond the mounds and protective circles they had already built? Larger circles, squares, ovals, octagons?
Others it would be to make such a choice, but many there were who would honor the urging, since the People had gained so much in seeds and food and preserved supplies, ground and dried. With this surplus had come measurers, and distributors, and watchkeepers; among them came the shaman leaders and sacred architects.
If they asked for shapes and signs to be written across the landscape, then all would join to complete the work, pivoting on the anchor point of Bear-talker’s mound. Many generations might see their work, and sing their songs, to the rhythm of steady feet along the paths of construction.
So did the Sun pivot down to the darkness, and echoed by the Moon swinging easily into the sky above the growing earthworks.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; respond to these scenes through knapsck77@gmail.com.

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Notes From My Knapsack 12-3-06
Jeff Gill

Winter Scenes, Licking County – Part Three, 1500 years ago

It was time to head west, toward the setting sun. All the game worth hunting had led the way, and even most of the plants were shriveled and bent to the west as well, silently saying "look to where I grow now, not where I have been found in the past."
The growth of numbers among the villages of the People, a long drought, and a restlessness that defied easy explanation, all combined to bring about a wide agreement: we shall move to the west. The years of these valleys have ended, and our time in the well watered valley of the Great Father of Waters is coming. This is what nearly all believed, and many had acted on.
They stood, the two of them, on a high ridge with a wide view of the expanse that spread to the hills beyond, a level space below inscribed with shapes well known to them from years of ceremony, and gently rounded at each corner with age. To their right, invisible in the growing darkness below, was the Long Road, guarding in two parallel walls the pilgrimage path, echoed the angled course of the greater White Way path in the skies above. Now they would walk a longer path, but without ancient walls to guide them.
No more would they carefully fire with torches these ridgetops, when the soft breezes from the south agreed with all the intruding signs of woody plants and strange weeds saying "Set us aflame now, set free the long grasses." In days to come, far from their inscribed prairie and familiar eastern horizon, they could but guess at the Small Cycle and Great Cycle in the moon’s migrations. Their travels would be guided by the sun, and those movements, simpler and more understandable in a strange land, could give them some brief solace.
Crops may yet grow each season, but the thinning of bad fruit and the careful harvesting of the strong would be done by the animals at browse and the wind’s whimsy, not their own hands.
And the mounds of their ancestors would climb no further to the sky; in fact, they would settle and soften into rounder forms.
These were the worries that kept a significant number of the People in this now dusty valley, but the need to find food and return to the camps of their kindred overcame the ties to place and scene.
Could they begin again, or would their children, setting a first chamber in the earth, and raising year by year or generation by generation the layers of homegoing moundbulding? How many generations worth, how many Great Cycles of the Moon would it take to lift their new family resting places as high as these?
A doe dashed past them, unseeing their stillness and running through their upwind side. She was not right for culling, and no weapons were at hand, but she was a sign more than possible meal. She ran due west, straight into the eye of the setting sun, in the direction they knew they must go.
Were they the last to depart? A few sheltering clans were to the north in the bog lands, hunting birds fattened for their own migration, and so also were a few looking for a last kill near the salt licks, at the high marshy valley to the south.
But the valley below them was dark, a strange sight when fires fringing the great ceremonial enclosure had long been a nearly year-round scene.
All the light was now to the west, dimming in the sunset, but still quivering with promise through the bands of high cloud. It was to that light they turned, and walked even more quickly away from where their ancestors had lived and built and reflected on the skies, for time out of mind.
They left only their ancestral mounds and earthworks behind, and the memory of those they left buried there carried easily with them.
As they walked into the dusk before them, behind, unseen, the moon rose in the northwest, and followed them on their way. In fact, the moon would soon go before them.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; respond to the scenes of Licking County long ago through knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Notes From My Knapsack 12-10-06
Jeff Gill

Winter Scenes, Licking County – Part Four, 234 years ago

There was a path up the ridge as they plodded east, which surprised Chaplain Jones. The Shawnee guide Duncan had engaged back at their town (Chwlagatha, he thought it was called) told them, in his easy French and broken English, that the valleys beyond the heights east of the Scioto were empty. Rarely hunted, and lived in by none.
When he had been asking about the rough maps of areas beyond Goshagunk, White Woman’s town, in the taverns around Fort Pitt, they said only Christopher Gist had been through that area some twenty years ago and more. When Col. Bouquet had closed the chapter that was Pontiac’s Rebellion, and asked for the captives first promised to Croghan at the Fort Quiatenon negotiations, he made his show of force on the edge of this territory.
But the captives, many who returned unwillingly (and escaped on the road back to Fort Pitt), were handed over by Mingo and Delaware and Wyandot from villages to the north and south. This territory between the Scioto and Goshagunk’s Muskingum Rivers had no stories among the returnees, and little marked on the maps.
David Jones had long felt the pull of the places on the maps where there were no marks. His Baptist congregation in Freehold, New Jersey had raised him up as a preacher in their dissenting tradition, a strong voice among the Presbyterians that surrounded them.
Governor Franklin spoke often of the rich lands to the west of the Alleghenies, and while Rev. Jones knew he thought they were good lands for those he wanted out of his colony, might it not be good for them to move and make an early claim?
There were few in the Freehold Baptist community who were eager to pioneer beyond the Ohio, but they were willing to stake their pastor for a season of missionary work among the Indians, and perhaps to scout out a land of promise. It could come to that.
With a small hop to shift the heavy packs, they came across the ridge to the path, thin but visible, that steeply sidled down the far side. Duncan was farther ahead, chatting in simple Shawnee with their guide.
As he picked his way down the slope, Jones reflected that some God has gifted in certain ways, and others are called in directions they must go. Hours and hours in the Miami and Scioto valley campsites he had struggled to learn a few words of the native tongues, and Duncan appeared to pick up their speech by absorption, just with a few words said and the response was on his tongue without thought.
He would always have to think carefully about each word, Jones acknowledged to himself, and to God. And that meant he might be a fine preacher to his own people, but he would never be a missionary to these tribes. So much for that part of his calling.
The other commission he saw fulfilled all around him. These lands, less settled for whatever reason, could quickly open up to farming and trade. Hardy and adventurous people would find a good living in these level terraces above the wide, winding rivers and soft ridges east and west.
No, the Freehold Baptist Church would not come as a group. He had realized back at Fort Pitt, and as they floated down to Fort Washington and Losantiville, that few of those in New Jersey would welcome this life. But there were still, almost every month, Welsh brothers who came to this land who were looking for something more than apprenticeship or hiring out in others’ farms. They might want to come here, and build a church of their own.
He was ready to go home himself. This frontier life was more to his taste than most, but only in measured doses. He would return, he was sure, but he wanted to get back to Freehold.
Gov. Franklin’s father, Benjamin, and others were writing and speaking of freedom for all in the colonies, from the Atlantic coasts of New Jersey to this nameless valley and beyond to the Mississippi. Rev. Jones wanted to see this "father of waters," but not on this trip. He was heading home, but as he looked around at the hills sheltering around him, he could almost imagine those who would find their home here. And he would lead them.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; respond to the scenes of Licking County long ago through knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Notes From My Knapsack 12-17-06
Jeff Gill

Winter Scenes, Licking County – Part Five, 1801

Stadden lifted his rifle quickly to his shoulder, and then slowly swung it down again.
Nothing.
He had seen dozens of fat deer, and not a few plump turkeys, easily trotting by him while he swung an axe, closer to the cabin on the Licking River. He and Ratliff and Hughes had staked out different ends of the "bowling green," the broad flat opening below where the three rivers of the neighborhood came together into what the local Indians called the "Lick-licking." Hughes scowled whenever they came near, muttering about his father’s death back in Virginia up the Monongahela, and kept his hand near his belted knife.
Stadden saw no harm in those he had spoken to, though his hand to knife or gun would have been as fast, or even quicker, than the more impulsive Hughes, if there was any real threat.
Now he was working along the banks of the south fork, well above the confluence, miles from home, and he had seen no deer for hours.
Soon Baby Jesus would have been born eighteen hundred and one years ago, and while they saw little enough of preachers, his wife would like a good dinner and a special few days of rest with this year’s end. He was intent to find more than a young stringy buck or a few geese for the table.
Stadden had been working his way along from stand to stand of tall, nut-rich timber where he could circle in close, the wind in his face and away from his dinner.
Each, in turn, was unaccountably empty of deer. It was getting too late in the afternoon to bleed out a kill and carry it back to the encampment, and he may just have to hope for a wild turkey along the way.
Then he saw a movement up the banks, along the edge of the second terrace, where the river’s valley ended and the wooded plain stretched back to the hills. Side stepping up the bank, watchful for sticks and large dry sycamore leaves that could make his step a sound, he came to the brink, edging his hat and one eye over the verge. There stood a cluster of deer as fine as he could want – oh, Stadden thought, if I could fire just two shots one after another, without having to reload down that long, long muzzle.
Ducking back down, he slid back along the slope, to come up at a better angle to the herd, maybe even giving him a chance to take that second shot, if he could reload fast enough. Looking over again, he saw they had not spooked, but just started a slow, measured trot away from him as a group. Hunched and trotting himself, he began to shadow the herd; he felt like a wolf on the hunt, almost on all fours himself.
Then he looked up, and stood up, startled. They had disappeared, completely. The deer had been working upslope to a small, broad hill, but then were gone. Cautiously, watching the ground which was solid underfoot, and the trees which spread high above, Stadden kept on walking silently, now upright, to the hill’s edge, and stopped.
He had seen mounds throughout the district, but nothing like this. He stood in a gateway, a mouth open wide, where the hill revealed itself to be a vast, high wall, a moat within at the wall’s foot, and curving left and right, disappearing into the distance.
Just before him was the herd of deer, cropping the level space not far within the unexpected enclosure. One looked up at him incuriously, and went back to feeding.
He could have dropped one, two, even three by staying in the gateway and reloading in place, the deer trapped within. Or protected. It felt like that, somehow.
So he did not fire. He stood with them, and stared, and drank in this mysterious sight. Then Stadden turned and headed home.
Not a half-mile from the bowling green he dropped a twelve point buck who stepped right into his path and dared him to shoot. He did, and the sound called out the others who came and helped him with the cleaning out as darkness fell. The preparing and cooking went so quickly that he did not think to tell his wife about what he had seen until the next morning.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; respond to the scenes of Licking County long ago through knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Notes From My Knapsack 12-24-06
Jeff Gill

Winter Scenes, Licking County – Part Six, 1860

Civil War, they said. Odd to think that even Americans could fight brother against brother, as they had 200 years before in England. Was Abraham Lincoln another Oliver Cromwell, or more King Charles the First?
Mrs. Dille walked quickly along the sidewalk bordering Courthouse Square, her basket weighing down one arm held out to the side, so she could watch for knotholes in the planks. Since she moved to Newark ten years ago with her once widower husband, she privately thought of mud as the defining characteristic downtown, but would never say so to Mr. Dille.
She knew full well, from frequent retellings around the fireplace at home, how muddy and malarial the heart of the city had been, and how much work he had put into beautifying the space between the frame building and the busy roads on four sides.
These "botanical gardens," as he called them, were raised with many wagon loads of fill, and dotted with strong young saplings sent as cuttings through the post from his many correspondents in Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington.
Washington. Few conversations anywhere, let alone in Newark, did not touch on the recent elections and the remarkable victory for Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. Remarkable, that is, to everyone but Israel Dille, who had been assuring skeptical listeners for weeks that his candidate and not the Little Giant, Sen. Douglas, would be elected President of the United States.
Even decades after he had served as mayor, most still called him "Mayor Dille," or judge or even general, and while he had no current title, everyone knew that when it came to Ohio politics, and particularly the new Republican party, Israel Dille’s hand was on the levers that powered the locomotive.
Perhaps that was a poor image, given that they had lost years of savings in speculation on a rail line to Licking County. He had bounced back quickly, and their home east of the square, while not as grand as "Elmwood" north of town (soon to be subdivided as Hudson Avenue, they said), but was comfortable enough.
At least when it did not have three or four unexpected guests in it, which was rarely.
They had not the funds for live-in servants (or the space), so she had quietly slipped out to scour the markets for a few more items to fill out the next day’s menu. Having married into respectability, she still was pleasantly surprised by the graciousness of shopkeepers and merchants at such an hour.
She wondered sourly if they, too, hoped for a job in Washington from the new administration. Surely Mr. Dille, who had good reason to expect, let alone hope, would not move the family at this time. The girls just married, and young Willie at home (Mr. Lincoln had a son William, too, she had heard); though Will already spoke of joining the Army to put down any rebellion against the Union.
Some grim faced men in the parlor at home had spoken of armed resistance even to swearing in Mr. Lincoln, and that legislatures in slave states were even now considering seceding from the rest of the nation. Mr. Dille calmly discussed such things far into the night with bishops and senators, congressmen and cart drivers, any of which might be leaning against the mantlepiece when she returned to the house.
He had hinted to her of the possibility that the president-elect himself would be passing through by rail some night soon, and may be pausing at their house. The usual twinkle in his eye doubled at that thought, she could tell.
For his sake, she hoped so, but who knew how to entertain a president-elect? If Mr. Lincoln spoke from the train’s rear rail and then rode on to Zanesville and Wheeling, she would be content to see him and that be all. If he came to the house, she would not apologize for anything, but push aside the stacks of old newspapers and flint arrowheads and mastodon teeth, and simply say "Mr. Lincoln, would you have sugar in your tea?"
As she stepped onto her porch, she wondered as the knob turned: who would be their guests tonight?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; respond to the scenes of Licking County long ago through knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Notes From My Knapsack 12-31-06
Jeff Gill

Winter Scenes, Licking County – Part Seven

Harry was his name to many, and he answered to it, but his own name was a secret that few knew, and none nearby.
Twelve years and more he had lived in this area, first as a farmhand up from the Ohio River, and then . . . well, then an assortment of things. Nothing that ever lasted long, but that was as much his own restlessness than jobs coming to a close.
By now, he had lived in Licking County longer than he had anywhere else, though with less mark on the official records, little things like driver’s licenses, leases, a name.
He owned very little, but he was proud of owning no record of lawbreaking. Some of his acquaintances along the riverbanks would resort to a few acts of foolishness to seek out the warmth of the jail, but not Harry.
Once he had owned a bicycle, but after the tires went flat he left it leaning gently against a downtown dumpster. It had been handy enough, but his knees didn’t swing up and back as easily as they once did.
His chief possessions were a blue tarp he found blowing down Main Street one day, and a sleeping bag devoid of holes that a kind-faced young woman had given him one night. He had carried a blanket roll with a patchy, zipperless sleeping bag for years, until a conversation on a bench had ended with her return later that evening with the bag he now used.
She was a Denison student, and was working on a project of some sort, Harry thought. He hoped she got an A; that’s what he would have given her. It felt right to take it because he had helped her, so it wasn’t charity. The idea that he had helped someone get a college degree amused him greatly.
Between the odd jobs, the stray work here and there, and canned goods from the Family Dollar, he was content. There was a clinic, they said, on down along the river bank and up the way by the old Children’s Home, but he hadn’t been there yet. If his foot started hurting real bad again, he might go.
For now, he had a camp down among the out-thrust tree roots, well above the water but far below where decent citizens (what his father would have called them) might stumble on him washing up or cooking or just sitting and watching the ripples.
With the rising of a slivered, silvered moon (last quarter, he thought, feeling in his pocket for the Old Farmer’s Almanac that was his annual extravagance), the ripples were clear even after darkness was solid and set.
Not far behind him was where the B&O Roundhouse used to be, and further upstream the old Wehrle ironworks; nearby the stones only he and few others knew were part of the long-gone Ohio & Erie Canal, pacing the Licking River on down past Hanover to Black Hand Gorge. Strange, he thought, to navigate so often by where things used to be, but so much of his life was like that. He laid out his kit each morning as he had in rented rooms and even in homes he once owned, and he got up and followed a schedule no longer expected of him.
What he had never been good at was living in a world that was not yet, but could be. It really shouldn’t be that much different than imagining how things had been, working from just a few clues of brick and block. There were suggestions around about of how things might be, like the student girl had asked him about, and he could live into those hints, too. He wasn’t a river, stuck in the same course for thousands of years. Perhaps it was time for a change.
It would be a new moon, and a new year soon, and he might try again to leave the river bank for good. For now, the moonlight, the owls in the limbs above and the herons picking through the snags below, all felt like home.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; respond to the scenes of Licking County long ago through knapsack77@gmail.com.

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Faith Works 11-11-06
Jeff Gill

Islamic Tithing and Stewardship In General

As we all try to get a better sense of what Shia Islam, dominant in Iran, southern Iraq, and parts of Baghdad, means versus the Sunni school of Islam elsewhere, some subjects don’t change.
How religious groups teach about stewardship, or managing one’s material blessings, has some commonalities across faiths, let alone between groups or denominations within a faith tradition.
"Tithe" is a word literally (from Old English) meaning a tenth (10%), but has a generic import in modern usage: the obligation as a practicing believer to give a set percentage of their income to the church or to charity. Islam, it turns out, has it, too. There’s a number of points of contact, in fact, between the religions we know and those we don’t.
From the last few weeks, as we’ve looked in this space at the two main schools of Islamic religion, there is much most Americans don’t know about Moslem practices beyond the "hajj," or pilgrimage to Mecca, and the much debated concept of "jihad," which translates as "struggle," but is mainly internal to some traditions but is sadly best known today as the struggle against unbelievers, seen in terrorist groups.
The most frequent question I’ve gotten since starting to outline Sunni and Shia Islam is "so which is Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda?" That’s a bit of a puzzle, in fact.
Technically, they are mostly out of Saudi Arabia, which is home to a very conservative version of Sunni Islam called "Wahabi." Followers of the teaching school of Wahabism, which linked with the now ruling Saud family of the Arab peninsula look to the future re-establishment of the "Caliphate," a ruler of the government called a caliph who works in concert with religious scholars to implement Shariah Law, the civic order of Islam in practice throughout a community.
Sunnis say there has been no caliph since the end of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey in the 1920’s, if not earlier. Osama bin Laden says that he is trying to help re-establish the Islamic Caliphate, with Mullah Omar of the Afghanistan Taliban one candidate. Saddam Hussein considered declaring himself the Caliph, but was convinced not to do so.
Most Sunnis, and even most Wahabis, say bin Laden has pressed to far, too violently, and is effectively beyond the proper bounds of the traditions of Islam, or "sunna."
Meanwhile, Shiite groups were behind the Ayatollah Khomeini in his Iranian Revolution, where Church and State are combined. From our point of view in America, it looks like the same thing, but for Shia, the caliph is only a descendant of Mohammed the prophet of God, and to many he is a mythic figure in hiding called "The Mahdi," who will be revealed in the last days.
The current president of Iran believes that the Mahdi is soon to be revealed, and Moqtada al Sadr in Baghdad has a "Mahdi Army," working for the culmination of Church and State as one Holy Caliphate. Parallel, but distinct, is bin Laden’s desire to re-establish a secular but powerful Caliph who will free true teachers of his ascetic brand of Sunni to guide Islam back to world domination.
Yet both groups hold to an ancient teaching of Islam called "zakat," which is Moslem tithing. It is actually interpreted as 2.5% of your increase, with an additional gift to charity expected in Ramadan.
But even here the two school diverge, with the generally more austere Shia teaching that unexpected windfalls should be "tithed" as a fifth, or 20%. Income you did not expect, that was a "gift from heaven" if you will, should be shared with those in need at minimum as "khoms," or one-fifth.
This is the time of year many Christian churches wrestle with how they will teach and affirm principles of stewardship, the practice of giving a planned, intentional amount to one’s faith community. Some Old and New Testament verses point to a "tenth," with the import being the use of the Temple storehouses as the source of government and charitable assistance.
When the total taxes off of a person’s income comes off the top to the tune of 30% and more, does that effect your tithing obligation? I don’t know how your church teaches stewardship or tithing, but I’m sure of this: if most active believers just gave a consistent 2.5% after taxes to their faith community, we’d see a whole new level of activity from Licking County churches.
And I know I’m preaching alongside most pastors when I say: "have a personal budget, know your income, plan your giving, and set a goal to grow your giving and saving each year." If you don’t really know what your income or expenses are, I don’t care what you’re giving, because recklessness no matter how well intended is not good stewardship.
And some of you may be called by God to give more than 10%, maybe even a "khoms." So make all you can, save all you can, give all you can. Master those three, and you’ve got stewardship.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; talk to him about stewardship at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 11-12-06
Jeff Gill

Let’s Get This Party Started

Now that the election is over, maybe we can talk some political sense in the next few weeks.
Or at least until the presidential elections of 2008 start dominating the news cycles, and all rational thought.
Actually, as I’m writing this, the voting hasn’t even begun on Nov. 7, which is what often happens with columns, but in this case it is quite happily intentional. The following observations are intended to be entirely independent of party support or reaction, and I defy anyone to find a consistent R or D spin to my concerns.
In fact, most of them aren’t even tied to solutions, so I’m open to any party or candidate who offers a plan or proposal that addresses them.
First off, can anyone talk about the national crisis (a word I don’t tend to use casually) around personal savings and consumer debt? Denison University alum Richard Lugar started a run for president just talking about the subject as a problem, and got hammered even before he started talking about possible policy steps. With American savings rates in negative territory, credit card debt at close to $9,000 per household, and foreclosures racing bankruptcies to the bottom of Ohio’s barrel, can we discuss this at all?
And no, privatizing Social Security doesn’t count. That isn’t a savings plan and never was: it’s a catastrophic insurance program which pays current benefits out of current employees – which means we need to be building back up a real surplus for the easy to anticipate worker to retiree shortage coming soon.
Which brings me to: Unfunded obligations and future deficits. Public employees and private pension plans alike are expecting what really was a savings plan, their pensions, to come out of echoing caverns of empty trust (ha!) funds. Add the deferred maintenance in so much of public life, such as what Bruce Bain and Tim Weisert are facing in Newark, and that’s a pile o’ cash that’s gonna have to be spent somehow.
Somehow that seems to lead directly to the implosion of both educational system and public support of that vital civic resource. Demagoguing on both side of the political aisle have helped create a poisonous climate between voters and schools, to the degree that vile, unscrupulous gambling interests thought they could exploit that bile to sneak in personal profit as public service. You’ll know by the time this is printed if that worked for them, but however Issue 3 turned out, we still will have for the next few decades an overpriced, tragically underfunded state college system. Our local campus of The Ohio State University has received stellar private support, masking the depth of this problem statewide in crumbling buildings and missing resources.
After college, and if you can find a job, you’ll wonder how we missed responding to five decades of signals that steel-belt, auto-centric, resource-extraction based industries were heading to either irrelevance, or a new high-tech model. So we desperately hang onto the remnants of those industries, while states like Indiana, West Virginia, and (dare I say it?) Michigan do a better job of attracting the industries – and jobs – of the future. The Republican party is going to get, has gotten by the time you read this, an old fashioned whoopin’ at the polls because their only economic development plan is "cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes." Even tax cutting conservatives have started saying: "Y’all got any other ideas? No? Well, buh-bye then . . ." Good luck, Mr. Strickland, I mean "Governor."
And by the same token, those same Ohio conservatives are turning against a purely reflexive stand on "no federal involvement in health care." Our population is already largely served by Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and public employees’ health plans, and the employment based model is already being undermined in states like Ohio as more employers try to escape that imposed responsibility. The global marketplace is asking them to compete against economies where none of their competitors have to spend half their management energy managing health care costs. We owe it to entrepreneurs and growing industries in Ohio to be part of looking for a new way to do health care.
This is no longer a fringe benefit or luxury good in the America we've built in so many other ways so well. No one wants to live in a country where children having congenital heart defects make their parents unemployable. That’s just wrong, morally and politically.
All this, and I haven’t even touched the global scene yet. See you next week…

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; raise your favorite unaddressed issues at knapsack77@gmail.com.