Notes from my Knapsack 2-8-24
Jeff Gill
Taking a breath of fresh air
___
On Feb. 8, 1910, now 114 years ago, the Boy Scouts of America were chartered. Scouting had begun just over two years earlier in Great Britain, the brain child of Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, who wisely tended to go by "B-P."
A war hero in England, he came home invited to do anything, but decided he wanted to find a way to use his unexpected fame to serve youth. His experiences around the world made him wonder about what it meant back home for children to grow up in the steadily developing Industrial Revolution, in housing tracts we'd call suburbia today, with less and less contact with nature or the chance to roam and ramble about in it.
"Scouting for Boys" began World Scouting in 1908; girls asked to join early on and in 1909 he developed Girl Guides in Great Britain. A chance encounter with Juliette Gordon Low led to Girl Scouts in the United States after 1912.
Today, the Scouting Movement spans over 200 countries with some 35 million or more members. Scouting is one of the most formative experiences of my life, and I owe Pack 20 and Troop 7, Camp To-pe-nee-bee and Wood Lake Scout Reservation, all more than I can say in this one column. As a Cub Scout and Boy Scout, a youth member and adult leader since 1979, what I've learned through participation in the Scouting program has helped me in all manner of activities and life pursuits far beyond campfires and dutch ovens.
Many are familiar with the Scout Oath and Law, but you may not know as much about the "Aims and Methods" of Scouting. The four aims are Character, Citizenship, Personal Fitness, and Leadership. Those are the elements we aim to develop in young people who participate in the Scouting program.
To achieve those aims, Scouting utilizes eight methods: Our Scouting ideals (exemplified by the Scout Oath, the Scout Law, the Scout Motto, and the Scout Slogan); use of the patrol method; our advancement system (best known in Scouts BSA through ranks and merit badges); the opportunity for healthy adult association; an ongoing emphasis on personal growth; attention to age appropriate leadership development throughout the program; the wearing of a Scout uniform which unifies all participants through a common set of non-trendy clothes; and there's one more to make eight.
That last method through which Scouting delivers on those four aims is an expectation for everyone to participate in outdoor programs. It's that outdoor element I think is still as needed as B-P believed it was, back in 1907 as he was putting the program together for the first time.
Just to get up, and get out of the house. If you do nothing else today, just make sure to go look at some clouds passing, or if they're gone, go see some stars tonight. Walk if you can, get outside when possible, and take in a breath of fresh air. B-P wanted us to start there.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been in Scouting a while and hopes to keep giving back. Tell him about youth serving work you've seen be effective at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Friday, January 26, 2024
Monday, January 22, 2024
Faith Works 1-26-24
Faith Works 1-26-24
Jeff Gill
Work, food, and family
___
You've been traveling with me in search of shredded chicken sandwiches, those simple assemblies of deboned canned chicken, cracker crumbs, and perhaps a can of cream of something soup (to use the most basic recipe of the many that are out there, it turns out).
And we had a detour into West Virginia last week, to consider the homely delights of the pepperoni roll, a another simple meal very intentionally created to serve something filling in a way that travels and eats well for coal miner, even though they've developed far beyond those roots.
In seeking out the strange story of shredded chicken, it's worth repeating that they turn out to be a very location specific delicacy. People who grew up in Licking County or central Ohio have been shocked to move to Chicago or New Jersey let alone California and find out that as basic as the combo is, it's not everywhere.
Even within Ohio, somewhere around Ashland they stop showing up, and long-time local folk confirm you don't find shredded chicken on menus in Parma and definitely not in Cleveland. Towards Cincinnati, the range is maybe to Washington Court House but that's debatable: they definitely don't compete with chili over spaghetti in the Queen City area.
Yet they do run up through Toledo, and as far northwest as Wauseon. Which is where the story gets interesting, because of the opposite direction. I saw shredded chicken served at a few lunch counters in Fairmont, West Virginia — yes, the birthplace of the pepperoni roll — when I moved there in 1993.
I also was startled to see some familiar names in the obituaries, with ties directly back to Newark. It didn't take long to connect this through Owens-Illinois, glass manufacturing and bottle making. From 1910 to 1982, they had a plant there employing thousands, and clearly employees sometimes moved between sites. Newark Star Glass Works began in 1871, Edward Everett expanded their production taking over in 1880, becoming the Ohio Bottle Company and ultimately a part of Owens-Corning making fiberglas from 1934, as it continues to do so.
There's a whole complex corporate history glossed over in there, but between Shields and Everett here, and Edward Libbey plus Michael Joseph Owens up in the Toledo area, there's a web of connections (pulling Henry Ford in early on as they made automotive glass for him, and the Findlay area where Mr. Owens first figured out how to mass produce glass bulbs for Mr. Edison before branching out into bottle making technology). The common thread for me, though, is shredded chicken.
I can't prove it, and there no "miner's lunchbox" origin story, but the odd outline of shredded chicken territory seems to follow the glass making network, with interesting puddles in outlying places like Fairmont which to me seals the deal. Somehow, maybe with the gas burners always there to use in simmering a pot, I think shredded chicken began in bottle works and glass factories, and traveled with their skilled laborers as they moved about with the development of the mass produced bottle industry. Let's just say the data fits.
Yet within that well defined irregular splotch on the map of the Midwest, mostly within central and northwestern Ohio, there is a richness of variation. You could line up a dozen different shredded chicken sandwiches, and from a distance they'd look the same, but in the eating, they'd each have a unique recipe, process, and taste. They're the same, yet different.
Which takes me from lunch counters and football concession stands to church basements, and those deep roasters, and remembered scents, familiar flavors. All somewhat the same, each so very distinct.
Can you give me one last week on this delicious subject?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's feeling awfully hungry right now. Share your preferred recipe for shredded chicken at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Work, food, and family
___
You've been traveling with me in search of shredded chicken sandwiches, those simple assemblies of deboned canned chicken, cracker crumbs, and perhaps a can of cream of something soup (to use the most basic recipe of the many that are out there, it turns out).
And we had a detour into West Virginia last week, to consider the homely delights of the pepperoni roll, a another simple meal very intentionally created to serve something filling in a way that travels and eats well for coal miner, even though they've developed far beyond those roots.
In seeking out the strange story of shredded chicken, it's worth repeating that they turn out to be a very location specific delicacy. People who grew up in Licking County or central Ohio have been shocked to move to Chicago or New Jersey let alone California and find out that as basic as the combo is, it's not everywhere.
Even within Ohio, somewhere around Ashland they stop showing up, and long-time local folk confirm you don't find shredded chicken on menus in Parma and definitely not in Cleveland. Towards Cincinnati, the range is maybe to Washington Court House but that's debatable: they definitely don't compete with chili over spaghetti in the Queen City area.
Yet they do run up through Toledo, and as far northwest as Wauseon. Which is where the story gets interesting, because of the opposite direction. I saw shredded chicken served at a few lunch counters in Fairmont, West Virginia — yes, the birthplace of the pepperoni roll — when I moved there in 1993.
I also was startled to see some familiar names in the obituaries, with ties directly back to Newark. It didn't take long to connect this through Owens-Illinois, glass manufacturing and bottle making. From 1910 to 1982, they had a plant there employing thousands, and clearly employees sometimes moved between sites. Newark Star Glass Works began in 1871, Edward Everett expanded their production taking over in 1880, becoming the Ohio Bottle Company and ultimately a part of Owens-Corning making fiberglas from 1934, as it continues to do so.
There's a whole complex corporate history glossed over in there, but between Shields and Everett here, and Edward Libbey plus Michael Joseph Owens up in the Toledo area, there's a web of connections (pulling Henry Ford in early on as they made automotive glass for him, and the Findlay area where Mr. Owens first figured out how to mass produce glass bulbs for Mr. Edison before branching out into bottle making technology). The common thread for me, though, is shredded chicken.
I can't prove it, and there no "miner's lunchbox" origin story, but the odd outline of shredded chicken territory seems to follow the glass making network, with interesting puddles in outlying places like Fairmont which to me seals the deal. Somehow, maybe with the gas burners always there to use in simmering a pot, I think shredded chicken began in bottle works and glass factories, and traveled with their skilled laborers as they moved about with the development of the mass produced bottle industry. Let's just say the data fits.
Yet within that well defined irregular splotch on the map of the Midwest, mostly within central and northwestern Ohio, there is a richness of variation. You could line up a dozen different shredded chicken sandwiches, and from a distance they'd look the same, but in the eating, they'd each have a unique recipe, process, and taste. They're the same, yet different.
Which takes me from lunch counters and football concession stands to church basements, and those deep roasters, and remembered scents, familiar flavors. All somewhat the same, each so very distinct.
Can you give me one last week on this delicious subject?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's feeling awfully hungry right now. Share your preferred recipe for shredded chicken at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, January 08, 2024
Faith Works 1-19-24
Faith Works 1-19-24
Jeff Gill
Comfort foods and a culture of community
___
Don't worry, I'll get back to shredded chicken sandwiches here in a bit. Didn't think I was done, did you?
During the bowl games, when the West Virginia Mountaineers were playing in a mayonnaise themed contest, the booth commentators took a break from play to sample pepperoni rolls.
Now, WVU is in Morgantown; Fairmont, West Virginia claims it is the one true home of pepperoni rolls, but you can find them up and down the Monongahela River all the way north to Pittsburgh, and south a ways. There are pepperoni roll outposts down towards Parkersburg and even around Charleston, and the state has adopted it their state food.
The roots are underground: they were made as a simple lunch to take down into the coal mines. Sticks of pepperoni, beloved of the southern Italians who were recruited by the thousands in the early 1900s, baked into small loaves which you could put into your pocket. Some today still maintain a true pepperoni roll has sticks baked longwise into the roll, but you can find them with a sheaf of pepperoni slices or even ground pepperoni in the dough.
During the Mountaineer football victory, the on air crew ate pepperoni rolls . . . with mayo. This provoked the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia to strongly protest, suggesting penance was needed, while adding that the use of Miracle Whip on a pepperoni roll is an abomination. It was all in good fun, sort of. And yet said with a hint of seriousness.
Comfort foods are close to our hearts, and how to make them can be a ritual with religious overtones. They have a history, and we are telling a story to ourselves, and about ourselves, as we make and consume them. This is most obvious every Thanksgiving, and in many Christmas cookie recipes, but it's true all year long in certain ways.
Which brings me back to shredded chicken sandwiches. When I left here and we moved to Fairmont, West Virginia for six years, on the counter as a housewarming gift on our arrival was a bag of pepperoni rolls from Giuseppe Argiro's original bakery. We learned the story, and I came to understand the linkage to history and struggle and sacrifice every time one was eaten, even if I've never worked in a coal mine. And the core pepperoni roll territory tracks with the seams of coal and the mine shafts of West Virginia.
What's going on behind our fascination with shredded chicken sandwiches? One story claims that back a hundred years or so, every family raised chickens, and they laid eggs; you didn't kill a chicken until it stopped laying, by which time they were pretty tough, so you had to cook them down long and slow in a cream sauce. Yeah, I can see that.
But chickens are everywhere. We aren't and never have been the chicken capital of the world, or even Ohio. That doesn't explain the very precise footprint of shredded chicken commonality, exploding out of an apparent Licking County epicenter and sprawling north and west across the state.
We may never know the actual origin of the shredded chicken sandwich as we have it today, the core recipe of a can of boneless chicken, a tube of crackers crushed, and a can of cream soup, mixed together and simmered at length, served up on a hamburger bun. But I suspect I know how it spread as it did.
And my guess has to do with finding an unexpected outpost of shredded chicken . . . in Fairmont, West Virginia. The connection isn't coal mining, but something our two areas have in common besides crock pots and roasters.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's nearing an end (a temporary one) to his shredded digression into 2024. Tell him what foods keep you grounded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Comfort foods and a culture of community
___
Don't worry, I'll get back to shredded chicken sandwiches here in a bit. Didn't think I was done, did you?
During the bowl games, when the West Virginia Mountaineers were playing in a mayonnaise themed contest, the booth commentators took a break from play to sample pepperoni rolls.
Now, WVU is in Morgantown; Fairmont, West Virginia claims it is the one true home of pepperoni rolls, but you can find them up and down the Monongahela River all the way north to Pittsburgh, and south a ways. There are pepperoni roll outposts down towards Parkersburg and even around Charleston, and the state has adopted it their state food.
The roots are underground: they were made as a simple lunch to take down into the coal mines. Sticks of pepperoni, beloved of the southern Italians who were recruited by the thousands in the early 1900s, baked into small loaves which you could put into your pocket. Some today still maintain a true pepperoni roll has sticks baked longwise into the roll, but you can find them with a sheaf of pepperoni slices or even ground pepperoni in the dough.
During the Mountaineer football victory, the on air crew ate pepperoni rolls . . . with mayo. This provoked the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia to strongly protest, suggesting penance was needed, while adding that the use of Miracle Whip on a pepperoni roll is an abomination. It was all in good fun, sort of. And yet said with a hint of seriousness.
Comfort foods are close to our hearts, and how to make them can be a ritual with religious overtones. They have a history, and we are telling a story to ourselves, and about ourselves, as we make and consume them. This is most obvious every Thanksgiving, and in many Christmas cookie recipes, but it's true all year long in certain ways.
Which brings me back to shredded chicken sandwiches. When I left here and we moved to Fairmont, West Virginia for six years, on the counter as a housewarming gift on our arrival was a bag of pepperoni rolls from Giuseppe Argiro's original bakery. We learned the story, and I came to understand the linkage to history and struggle and sacrifice every time one was eaten, even if I've never worked in a coal mine. And the core pepperoni roll territory tracks with the seams of coal and the mine shafts of West Virginia.
What's going on behind our fascination with shredded chicken sandwiches? One story claims that back a hundred years or so, every family raised chickens, and they laid eggs; you didn't kill a chicken until it stopped laying, by which time they were pretty tough, so you had to cook them down long and slow in a cream sauce. Yeah, I can see that.
But chickens are everywhere. We aren't and never have been the chicken capital of the world, or even Ohio. That doesn't explain the very precise footprint of shredded chicken commonality, exploding out of an apparent Licking County epicenter and sprawling north and west across the state.
We may never know the actual origin of the shredded chicken sandwich as we have it today, the core recipe of a can of boneless chicken, a tube of crackers crushed, and a can of cream soup, mixed together and simmered at length, served up on a hamburger bun. But I suspect I know how it spread as it did.
And my guess has to do with finding an unexpected outpost of shredded chicken . . . in Fairmont, West Virginia. The connection isn't coal mining, but something our two areas have in common besides crock pots and roasters.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's nearing an end (a temporary one) to his shredded digression into 2024. Tell him what foods keep you grounded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Notes from my Knapsack 1-25-24
Notes from my Knapsack 1-25-24
Jeff Gill
Chickens and eggs and smartphones
___
Correlation does not equal causality.
It's a common statement around scientific endeavors in general and social science in particular. Just because something happens right before something else occurs doesn't mean the one caused the other. It could, for instance, mean they're both caused by the same as yet unmeasured trigger, but one phenomenon happens a little faster than the other.
Another funny way to make the point about correlation versus causality: there's a website by a guy named Tyler Vigen called "Spurious Correlations." His flexible brain working with modern data tools has been able to plot out graphs "showing" odd correlations such as how deaths by drowning in swimming pools closely follows by year the number of films Nicolas Cage appears in. Somehow, there is a statistical correlation, but surely not causation (I can hear some of you thinking furiously about how there might be, and you go right ahead).
An infamous version of this was a magazine story entitled "Bullying Can Make a Bully Healthier," that somehow picked up on data showing that bullies have a lower risk of chronic disease. Is there a connection? May well be, but causation? At the very least I hope not.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been getting a great deal of media attention, justified I would argue, for taking a wide range of survey data, and a global perspective, to demonstrate that starting in 2012 we've seen in the industrialized West a significant teen mental health crisis. His global view is important, because he is able to compare outcomes and changes within cultures and circumstances, and it's not a global shift caused by cosmic rays.
Or as Haidt said more recently, "(this crisis) was not caused by reality getting worse around 2012. Their material and physical health improved steadily." You can look up his work to see how he carefully demonstrates that aspect of what's going on. And then he says "(t)o paraphrase Epictetus: 'It is not events which disturb teens. It is the device through which they interpret all events.'" It's access on a personal, ongoing basis to smartphones.
Here's where I want to offer a note of caution, even as I've been standing with school administrators who are concerned that the incendiary effect of social media on personal devices are creating more intense, faster spreading tensions between students. They'd like to see smartphones limited in their buildings, more than they're allowed to in many cases.
Yet correlation is not causation. There's a growing assumption that the connection between smartphone enabled social media and increased mental health issues for teens is related to content, to challenges around self-image, invidious comparisons, teasing and taunting and bullying. That could be. We don't know.
But what won't get better, if we empower schools to decisively limit devices on school property, is if the decline in teen mental health and increases in anxiety and depression are all more connected to lack of sleep. The obsessive scrolling and clicking and gaming to 3 am most nights. Is sleep the true culprit here? We don't know.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; nope, he's not yet done with this subject. Tell him what you think, but not at 3 am, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Chickens and eggs and smartphones
___
Correlation does not equal causality.
It's a common statement around scientific endeavors in general and social science in particular. Just because something happens right before something else occurs doesn't mean the one caused the other. It could, for instance, mean they're both caused by the same as yet unmeasured trigger, but one phenomenon happens a little faster than the other.
Another funny way to make the point about correlation versus causality: there's a website by a guy named Tyler Vigen called "Spurious Correlations." His flexible brain working with modern data tools has been able to plot out graphs "showing" odd correlations such as how deaths by drowning in swimming pools closely follows by year the number of films Nicolas Cage appears in. Somehow, there is a statistical correlation, but surely not causation (I can hear some of you thinking furiously about how there might be, and you go right ahead).
An infamous version of this was a magazine story entitled "Bullying Can Make a Bully Healthier," that somehow picked up on data showing that bullies have a lower risk of chronic disease. Is there a connection? May well be, but causation? At the very least I hope not.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been getting a great deal of media attention, justified I would argue, for taking a wide range of survey data, and a global perspective, to demonstrate that starting in 2012 we've seen in the industrialized West a significant teen mental health crisis. His global view is important, because he is able to compare outcomes and changes within cultures and circumstances, and it's not a global shift caused by cosmic rays.
Or as Haidt said more recently, "(this crisis) was not caused by reality getting worse around 2012. Their material and physical health improved steadily." You can look up his work to see how he carefully demonstrates that aspect of what's going on. And then he says "(t)o paraphrase Epictetus: 'It is not events which disturb teens. It is the device through which they interpret all events.'" It's access on a personal, ongoing basis to smartphones.
Here's where I want to offer a note of caution, even as I've been standing with school administrators who are concerned that the incendiary effect of social media on personal devices are creating more intense, faster spreading tensions between students. They'd like to see smartphones limited in their buildings, more than they're allowed to in many cases.
Yet correlation is not causation. There's a growing assumption that the connection between smartphone enabled social media and increased mental health issues for teens is related to content, to challenges around self-image, invidious comparisons, teasing and taunting and bullying. That could be. We don't know.
But what won't get better, if we empower schools to decisively limit devices on school property, is if the decline in teen mental health and increases in anxiety and depression are all more connected to lack of sleep. The obsessive scrolling and clicking and gaming to 3 am most nights. Is sleep the true culprit here? We don't know.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; nope, he's not yet done with this subject. Tell him what you think, but not at 3 am, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Faith Works 1-12-24
Faith Works 1-12-24
Jeff Gill
Shredding my plans for the new year
___
Let's just say there's a serious level of interest out there in shredded chicken.
Yes, a few let me know that they would rather eat truck stop sushi past its sell-by date than have a shredded chicken sandwich again, but they are emphatically in the minority.
For many, shredded chicken sandwiches are a comfort food up there with grilled cheese and tomato soup, or mashed potatoes with gravy. Warming, filling, comforting.
More than a few of you touched on the Depression era roots of a simple meal which could be made with what was on hand, and there was usually an opened sleeve of crackers and a can of boneless chicken in the pantry. Or as some reminisced, there was a time when canning included chicken along with cherries and tomatoes in the Mason jars on the shelves.
What I did not realize was the rich, complex diversity of this simple entree. I had a sense of its geographic reach, and the reality that the beating heart of shredded chicken territory is Licking County, Ohio. That heart isn't quite a center, because the range stretches east up to but not quite along the Ohio River, south hardly at all, and to the northwest I heard from friends in Wauseon confidently assuring me that if I got up there to visit them, they could find me a menu with shredded chicken on it.
Columbus is within the realm of the sacred sandwich, but Cleveland is not and Cincinnatians are expressing horror at the very concept as I described it to them (but look at what they do to their spaghetti). Toledo is contested ground, but Lima and Clyde and Bowling Green are within the holy lands, so to speak.
There is, of course, a website: chickensandwich.info which has over two decades of data, sporadically updated. It shows an isolated outpost in Athens, but since it was at a Whit's, I'm guessing that's the Licking County influence at work.
The website also provides almost twenty recipes, and links to many more. Because it turns out there are even MORE ways to make the humble shredded chicken than I realized. When I posted last week's column on my social media, I heard from many former concession chefs for middle and high school events, which took my previous lore focused around church basements to a whole new level.
Roasters are the key element in making shredded chicken for the masses, and also why it's tricky to make just a few of them. Big families might be able to pull it off, but if you're just cooking for one or two, you're likely to do something quite different from mixing up large cans of boneless chicken, crushing and stirring in a box of crackers, and adding a significant amount of canned soup.
I suspect there's also something to the time spent simmering away in that roaster, and how experienced concession stand parents maintain their product. Evaporated milk had never crossed my mind as an element of shredded chicken sandwiches, but it has been explained to me that it helps keep your vat of shredded from drying out, but it cooks down nicely in the mix.
The cracker conundrum still hovers over this question: how best to make shredded chicken? A surprising number of folks told me they used half Ritz, half saltines, because just the latter is (no surprise) too salty.
Central to this whole issue is: why here? Why us? What makes Licking County the home and heartland of shredded chicken? I'm on a pilgrimage close to home as we try to understand: why.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's made a few roasters full himself. How long will this topic drive the "Faith Works" column? Tell him yourself at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Shredding my plans for the new year
___
Let's just say there's a serious level of interest out there in shredded chicken.
Yes, a few let me know that they would rather eat truck stop sushi past its sell-by date than have a shredded chicken sandwich again, but they are emphatically in the minority.
For many, shredded chicken sandwiches are a comfort food up there with grilled cheese and tomato soup, or mashed potatoes with gravy. Warming, filling, comforting.
More than a few of you touched on the Depression era roots of a simple meal which could be made with what was on hand, and there was usually an opened sleeve of crackers and a can of boneless chicken in the pantry. Or as some reminisced, there was a time when canning included chicken along with cherries and tomatoes in the Mason jars on the shelves.
What I did not realize was the rich, complex diversity of this simple entree. I had a sense of its geographic reach, and the reality that the beating heart of shredded chicken territory is Licking County, Ohio. That heart isn't quite a center, because the range stretches east up to but not quite along the Ohio River, south hardly at all, and to the northwest I heard from friends in Wauseon confidently assuring me that if I got up there to visit them, they could find me a menu with shredded chicken on it.
Columbus is within the realm of the sacred sandwich, but Cleveland is not and Cincinnatians are expressing horror at the very concept as I described it to them (but look at what they do to their spaghetti). Toledo is contested ground, but Lima and Clyde and Bowling Green are within the holy lands, so to speak.
There is, of course, a website: chickensandwich.info which has over two decades of data, sporadically updated. It shows an isolated outpost in Athens, but since it was at a Whit's, I'm guessing that's the Licking County influence at work.
The website also provides almost twenty recipes, and links to many more. Because it turns out there are even MORE ways to make the humble shredded chicken than I realized. When I posted last week's column on my social media, I heard from many former concession chefs for middle and high school events, which took my previous lore focused around church basements to a whole new level.
Roasters are the key element in making shredded chicken for the masses, and also why it's tricky to make just a few of them. Big families might be able to pull it off, but if you're just cooking for one or two, you're likely to do something quite different from mixing up large cans of boneless chicken, crushing and stirring in a box of crackers, and adding a significant amount of canned soup.
I suspect there's also something to the time spent simmering away in that roaster, and how experienced concession stand parents maintain their product. Evaporated milk had never crossed my mind as an element of shredded chicken sandwiches, but it has been explained to me that it helps keep your vat of shredded from drying out, but it cooks down nicely in the mix.
The cracker conundrum still hovers over this question: how best to make shredded chicken? A surprising number of folks told me they used half Ritz, half saltines, because just the latter is (no surprise) too salty.
Central to this whole issue is: why here? Why us? What makes Licking County the home and heartland of shredded chicken? I'm on a pilgrimage close to home as we try to understand: why.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's made a few roasters full himself. How long will this topic drive the "Faith Works" column? Tell him yourself at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Tuesday, January 02, 2024
Notes from my Knapsack 1-11-24
Notes from my Knapsack 1-11-24
Jeff Gill
Learning what from who, where, and when
___
Who was it that first said "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?"
Well, I'm typing this on a laptop connected to the internet, plus I have a smartphone next to me with a good cell connection. Hold on a sec.
Huh. It is from an essay in 1841 entitled "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
This is one of the huge advantages of the internet world we now live in. In school or even in seminary, I would have needed to not only have some research skills around how to use various reference tools to find the full source of that quote, I almost certainly would have needed to physically go to a library building, downtown or elsewhere, and possibly be sent from that library to a library at a college or other more distant location.
I remember when the rise of inter-library loan was seen as a massive transformation of the research process, that you could get books sent from another city or state to your local library for access. It was, truly, big stuff. (When? It was a college only thing when I was in high school, but . . . let's look it up. Oh my. So interlibrary loans between colleges began in 1876; the Ohio College Library Center began here in 1967, which grew to become the Online Computer Library Center, now based just down the road in Dublin!)
So when I talked at the end of last year about concerns around being too online for school age youth, I was echoing what an overwhelming plurality to school officials have been telling me these last few years. The constant checking and scanning and scrolling around personal platforms and messaging has, in their eyes, increased both anxiety and depression, as well as threats and conflict between students. None of us think the internet created these issues, but they've been an accelerant, like gasoline to a match, causing brush fires of interpersonal tensions to blaze out of control faster and more widely than they did just a decade ago.
Is a totally un-connected world feasible, in education or for parenting? I don't think so. It's a question of management, of guardrails and boundaries. And the everlasting question of how one family raises their child while a nearby family has different boundaries, if any at all, and what happens when they come together.
In the Scouting movement, it's become a requirement along with knife and axe safety and how to handle fires and flames, to take a sort of cyber-safety course. Many schools have begun to include online etiquette and ethics in their plan of study.
And I will continue in 2024 to note that many of the ills blamed on the online life may have more to do with the sleep that is lost to them than the content you find in it. Lack of sleep is plaguing both youth and adults, and we're seeing that loss in many ways.
Some of you have proposed solutions, and I plan to share some of those ideas as we roll on into 2024.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he spent too much time reading about Emerson & the OCLC while preparing this column. Tell him how the internet distracts you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Learning what from who, where, and when
___
Who was it that first said "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?"
Well, I'm typing this on a laptop connected to the internet, plus I have a smartphone next to me with a good cell connection. Hold on a sec.
Huh. It is from an essay in 1841 entitled "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
This is one of the huge advantages of the internet world we now live in. In school or even in seminary, I would have needed to not only have some research skills around how to use various reference tools to find the full source of that quote, I almost certainly would have needed to physically go to a library building, downtown or elsewhere, and possibly be sent from that library to a library at a college or other more distant location.
I remember when the rise of inter-library loan was seen as a massive transformation of the research process, that you could get books sent from another city or state to your local library for access. It was, truly, big stuff. (When? It was a college only thing when I was in high school, but . . . let's look it up. Oh my. So interlibrary loans between colleges began in 1876; the Ohio College Library Center began here in 1967, which grew to become the Online Computer Library Center, now based just down the road in Dublin!)
So when I talked at the end of last year about concerns around being too online for school age youth, I was echoing what an overwhelming plurality to school officials have been telling me these last few years. The constant checking and scanning and scrolling around personal platforms and messaging has, in their eyes, increased both anxiety and depression, as well as threats and conflict between students. None of us think the internet created these issues, but they've been an accelerant, like gasoline to a match, causing brush fires of interpersonal tensions to blaze out of control faster and more widely than they did just a decade ago.
Is a totally un-connected world feasible, in education or for parenting? I don't think so. It's a question of management, of guardrails and boundaries. And the everlasting question of how one family raises their child while a nearby family has different boundaries, if any at all, and what happens when they come together.
In the Scouting movement, it's become a requirement along with knife and axe safety and how to handle fires and flames, to take a sort of cyber-safety course. Many schools have begun to include online etiquette and ethics in their plan of study.
And I will continue in 2024 to note that many of the ills blamed on the online life may have more to do with the sleep that is lost to them than the content you find in it. Lack of sleep is plaguing both youth and adults, and we're seeing that loss in many ways.
Some of you have proposed solutions, and I plan to share some of those ideas as we roll on into 2024.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he spent too much time reading about Emerson & the OCLC while preparing this column. Tell him how the internet distracts you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Faith Works 1-5-24
Faith Works 1-5-24
Jeff Gill
Not to create a theological controversy
___
Rarely do I venture into the murky and deep waters of theological debate in this column.
The goal, as always, is to seek unity and shared understandings among those open to a faith based perspective, not to defend certain religious traditions or particular church structures.
Yet I've been intrigued recently by a subject which is on the teetering precipice of sectarian dispute. I've wondered about this for some time, and have never quite had the nerve to write about the subject. Here we are at the outset of a new year, and perhaps this is the time.
I'm talking about shredded chicken sandwiches.
Moving here from central Indiana in the fall of 1989, I'd never had them. Then I went to an early craft show that year, and the cafe to one side of the Christmas decor and other sale tables included "Shredded Chicken." It was a dollar, and fit both my budget and my current cash situation, and I was hungry. But what was it?
"Oh, everyone makes this around here." I was shown a can of Sweet Sue boneless chicken, and told you simply heated it up with crumbled saltine crackers and some pepper. I ate of it, and it was good.
But this was only the beginning. As the years scrolled by, I would sample shredded chicken sandwiches in a variety of homely settings: church basements, after funerals, at football games and basketball tournaments, in snack bars set up for choir and band contests. And I developed a cook's interest in asking when I could "how do you make it?"
This is where you get the second of the two interesting but fraught questions around the dreaded shredded (as some would say). The first is the boundary of the sandwich's domain — it's not everywhere, but it is everyone around here, if you can figure out where here is. Let's say from Urbana in the west to Mansfield in the north, and down to Portsmouth and over to somewhere this side of Steubenville and Martin's Ferry, but shredded chicken has made inroads up to the Ohio in a few points around past Marietta. This field needs further research.
The second and more truly theological question is what makes "true" shredded chicken. I learned early on that some will say "not saltines, but Ritz crackers." You get a buttery taste, 'tis true. Yet the saltine true believers hold Ritz to be an external imposition on the one true shredded chicken.
Adding to the denominational complexity: adding soup. There is a reformation of shredded chicken cooking which breaks out into many traditions, each certain of their own rightness. The mainstream is a can of cream of chicken to a much larger can of boneless chicken into the roasting pan. Others say the chicken on chicken effect is not useful, and prefer cream of celery; there are a few obscure sectarians who assert the ideal of a can of cream of mushroom (this may be a Great Lakes Lutheran influence, I don't know, again worth scholarly study).
Atop the soup/no soup distinction, there are the modifications of soup (but which one) plus crackers (saltine or Ritz, or even Club), plus I have had a perfectly satisfying shredded chicken sandwich which I learned had breadcrumbs added in, not crushed crackers.
Finally, in a liturgical flourish, there's the question of if the vat or roaster of shredded chicken should have pepper added, lightly or not at all, versus leaving the pepper quotient to the one stacking up their sandwich.
In central Ohio, these are existential questions. Where does your faith stand?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's eaten many shredded chicken sandwiches. What's your preferred recipe? Tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Not to create a theological controversy
___
Rarely do I venture into the murky and deep waters of theological debate in this column.
The goal, as always, is to seek unity and shared understandings among those open to a faith based perspective, not to defend certain religious traditions or particular church structures.
Yet I've been intrigued recently by a subject which is on the teetering precipice of sectarian dispute. I've wondered about this for some time, and have never quite had the nerve to write about the subject. Here we are at the outset of a new year, and perhaps this is the time.
I'm talking about shredded chicken sandwiches.
Moving here from central Indiana in the fall of 1989, I'd never had them. Then I went to an early craft show that year, and the cafe to one side of the Christmas decor and other sale tables included "Shredded Chicken." It was a dollar, and fit both my budget and my current cash situation, and I was hungry. But what was it?
"Oh, everyone makes this around here." I was shown a can of Sweet Sue boneless chicken, and told you simply heated it up with crumbled saltine crackers and some pepper. I ate of it, and it was good.
But this was only the beginning. As the years scrolled by, I would sample shredded chicken sandwiches in a variety of homely settings: church basements, after funerals, at football games and basketball tournaments, in snack bars set up for choir and band contests. And I developed a cook's interest in asking when I could "how do you make it?"
This is where you get the second of the two interesting but fraught questions around the dreaded shredded (as some would say). The first is the boundary of the sandwich's domain — it's not everywhere, but it is everyone around here, if you can figure out where here is. Let's say from Urbana in the west to Mansfield in the north, and down to Portsmouth and over to somewhere this side of Steubenville and Martin's Ferry, but shredded chicken has made inroads up to the Ohio in a few points around past Marietta. This field needs further research.
The second and more truly theological question is what makes "true" shredded chicken. I learned early on that some will say "not saltines, but Ritz crackers." You get a buttery taste, 'tis true. Yet the saltine true believers hold Ritz to be an external imposition on the one true shredded chicken.
Adding to the denominational complexity: adding soup. There is a reformation of shredded chicken cooking which breaks out into many traditions, each certain of their own rightness. The mainstream is a can of cream of chicken to a much larger can of boneless chicken into the roasting pan. Others say the chicken on chicken effect is not useful, and prefer cream of celery; there are a few obscure sectarians who assert the ideal of a can of cream of mushroom (this may be a Great Lakes Lutheran influence, I don't know, again worth scholarly study).
Atop the soup/no soup distinction, there are the modifications of soup (but which one) plus crackers (saltine or Ritz, or even Club), plus I have had a perfectly satisfying shredded chicken sandwich which I learned had breadcrumbs added in, not crushed crackers.
Finally, in a liturgical flourish, there's the question of if the vat or roaster of shredded chicken should have pepper added, lightly or not at all, versus leaving the pepper quotient to the one stacking up their sandwich.
In central Ohio, these are existential questions. Where does your faith stand?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's eaten many shredded chicken sandwiches. What's your preferred recipe? Tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, December 18, 2023
Faith Works 12-29-23
Faith Works 12-29-23
Jeff Gill
A local Christmas tradition that hasn't started yet
___
If you have read the last four columns I've done about how we've observed Christmas in Licking County, thank you!
We considered Christmas in 1800, 1844, 1864, and 1944. I know, it would have been nice if I could have found a cool Christmas story from 1804, but the Stadden-Green wedding on Christmas Day in 1800 was too good to pass up. Plus, I didn't see anything in 1804 from the archives that took us where I wanted to go.
Which was: reflecting on what's timeless, and what's changing, and how it might yet change further, about our cultural and religious understanding of the holiday itself. The holiday, or holy day, which is where the term comes from.
The birth of Jesus, or theologically the Incarnation, is the core concept that does not change. Incarnation, or the idea that God incarnate, or "in the flesh" would be with us, let alone in a humble form, worshiped by shepherds and laid in a manger: that's the heart of Christmas, or "the reason for the season."
Other aspects of a traditional (to us) Christmas are more fluid. Early Christmases in Licking County talk about candles in the long nights after the winter solstice, and "decking the halls" with fresh scented greenery like pine garlands and holly branches, not to mention discreet sprigs of mistletoe, but not trees. This seems to be a post-Civil War fashion which the returning soldiers made a common practice, but not until 1865 and after.
Likewise, a tree would be cut and brought in and decorated pretty much altogether, on Christmas Eve, and sometimes removed after Christmas Day or perhaps by some until Jan. 6, Epiphany. They were locally cut on common woodlots, and propped up by makeshift stands.
Historically, it's a recent idea that we can own a purpose made stand with a water reservoir and tree to keep a Christmas tree up most of December; when artificial trees became more common I don't know, but that's more post-World War II. Likewise electric lights, not candles.
Now with mail order pre-lit artificial trees, you can have Christmas decor up for weeks and months, and many do. But that's a change, you see, don't you? And each such change due to technology or cultural adaptations subtly changes our holiday sense.
As a person of faith and a religious teacher, the shift of imperishable decor and LED lights doesn't bother me per se, except for how Christmas has done two odd things: it's backed into November, if not October for some (and certainly in advertising), and it chops off ruthlessly at the end of the 25th.
When I served a parish, I enjoyed saying "now that everyone has given us back Christmas, we can make the most of it!" There's a season of Christmastide in the great tradition, which extends from Dec. 25 through Jan. 6. Even as all the decorations get packed away in deference to a flood of Valentine's retail offerings on Dec. 26, that's when a believer in the Incarnation should be gearing up to move from Advent to Christmastide, to celebrate twelve days at least of Christ's nativity and presence among us.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's enjoyed looking back at other ways to do Christmas, and hopes you have too. Tell him what you'd like to learn about in faith and hope during 2024 at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
A local Christmas tradition that hasn't started yet
___
If you have read the last four columns I've done about how we've observed Christmas in Licking County, thank you!
We considered Christmas in 1800, 1844, 1864, and 1944. I know, it would have been nice if I could have found a cool Christmas story from 1804, but the Stadden-Green wedding on Christmas Day in 1800 was too good to pass up. Plus, I didn't see anything in 1804 from the archives that took us where I wanted to go.
Which was: reflecting on what's timeless, and what's changing, and how it might yet change further, about our cultural and religious understanding of the holiday itself. The holiday, or holy day, which is where the term comes from.
The birth of Jesus, or theologically the Incarnation, is the core concept that does not change. Incarnation, or the idea that God incarnate, or "in the flesh" would be with us, let alone in a humble form, worshiped by shepherds and laid in a manger: that's the heart of Christmas, or "the reason for the season."
Other aspects of a traditional (to us) Christmas are more fluid. Early Christmases in Licking County talk about candles in the long nights after the winter solstice, and "decking the halls" with fresh scented greenery like pine garlands and holly branches, not to mention discreet sprigs of mistletoe, but not trees. This seems to be a post-Civil War fashion which the returning soldiers made a common practice, but not until 1865 and after.
Likewise, a tree would be cut and brought in and decorated pretty much altogether, on Christmas Eve, and sometimes removed after Christmas Day or perhaps by some until Jan. 6, Epiphany. They were locally cut on common woodlots, and propped up by makeshift stands.
Historically, it's a recent idea that we can own a purpose made stand with a water reservoir and tree to keep a Christmas tree up most of December; when artificial trees became more common I don't know, but that's more post-World War II. Likewise electric lights, not candles.
Now with mail order pre-lit artificial trees, you can have Christmas decor up for weeks and months, and many do. But that's a change, you see, don't you? And each such change due to technology or cultural adaptations subtly changes our holiday sense.
As a person of faith and a religious teacher, the shift of imperishable decor and LED lights doesn't bother me per se, except for how Christmas has done two odd things: it's backed into November, if not October for some (and certainly in advertising), and it chops off ruthlessly at the end of the 25th.
When I served a parish, I enjoyed saying "now that everyone has given us back Christmas, we can make the most of it!" There's a season of Christmastide in the great tradition, which extends from Dec. 25 through Jan. 6. Even as all the decorations get packed away in deference to a flood of Valentine's retail offerings on Dec. 26, that's when a believer in the Incarnation should be gearing up to move from Advent to Christmastide, to celebrate twelve days at least of Christ's nativity and presence among us.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's enjoyed looking back at other ways to do Christmas, and hopes you have too. Tell him what you'd like to learn about in faith and hope during 2024 at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Faith Works 12-22-23
Faith Works 12-22-23
Jeff Gill
Christmas not so long ago but very different all the same
___
Christmas in 1944 was by all accounts an unsettled time, both overseas and here in Licking County.
It was the previous December of 1943 that "I'll Be Home for Christmas" had launched onto the scene, embraced both at home and in the trenches as an anthem of heartfelt hope. If you've listened closely to it, you know the wistful twist that it concludes with: "if only in my dreams."
Bing Crosby is better known today for "White Christmas," but it was that new classic in 1943 that by the holiday season of 1944 had become a standard, one which made him a hero to many soldiers, sailors, and Marines. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" took unarticulated thought and gave it voice; it was requested constantly at Bing's USO shows, and during World War II had a profound impact for encouraging everyone who heard it.
They needed it, because even by Christmas 1944, the outcome was not certain. The original hearers of the song had invaded Africa, Sicily, and into southern Italy within the European Theater of Operations, then D-Day the previous summer and to Paris and beyond; in the Pacific after turning back the Japanese Navy at Midway there had been successful invasions of New Guinea and Tarawa, but at a savage cost.
And in Germany and Belgium, on December 16, 1944 there had been the launch of a new Nazi offensive, whose outcome was as yet hard to predict (unless you were Generals George Patton or Tony McAuliffe). As it turns out, the 101st Airborne, 969th Artillery Battalion, and elements of the 10th Armored Division would resist a final Panzerkorps assault on Christmas Day, and it was the last German success in the Battle of the Bulge.
On a personal note, I cannot count the number of stories I've heard over the years from elderly men who were young in 1944, and in the weeks leading up to and following that dire Christmas were on the front lines around Bastogne and in the Ardennes Forest. What all of their stories have in common is one word: cold. Bitter, biting cold. Cold so severe that it likely caused more casualties than weapons, on both sides.
And in those weeks after Christmas, as American troops pressed forward, I have heard stories of how some soldiers died seeking warmth. It seems the US uniform jackets were short, while the Wehrmacht winter uniform included a long greatcoat, one of the most coveted parts of their gear. Some of our soldiers put on those long heavy coats taken from the enemy dead, but at night when only silhouettes and shadows were clearly visible, they would be shot at as hostile troops.
Yet even as knowledge of these deaths spread, some chose to take that risk if they found a German greatcoat: it was that cold.
In that frigid Christmas and New Year season, if only to take their minds off the cold if not for a hundred other reasons, they would dream of being home for Christmas, and wondered if it would be next year.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; this weekend he will help with his father-in-law's funeral, who in later years served in the 101st "Screaming Eagles." Recall your loved ones gone on before us this Christmas to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Christmas not so long ago but very different all the same
___
Christmas in 1944 was by all accounts an unsettled time, both overseas and here in Licking County.
It was the previous December of 1943 that "I'll Be Home for Christmas" had launched onto the scene, embraced both at home and in the trenches as an anthem of heartfelt hope. If you've listened closely to it, you know the wistful twist that it concludes with: "if only in my dreams."
Bing Crosby is better known today for "White Christmas," but it was that new classic in 1943 that by the holiday season of 1944 had become a standard, one which made him a hero to many soldiers, sailors, and Marines. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" took unarticulated thought and gave it voice; it was requested constantly at Bing's USO shows, and during World War II had a profound impact for encouraging everyone who heard it.
They needed it, because even by Christmas 1944, the outcome was not certain. The original hearers of the song had invaded Africa, Sicily, and into southern Italy within the European Theater of Operations, then D-Day the previous summer and to Paris and beyond; in the Pacific after turning back the Japanese Navy at Midway there had been successful invasions of New Guinea and Tarawa, but at a savage cost.
And in Germany and Belgium, on December 16, 1944 there had been the launch of a new Nazi offensive, whose outcome was as yet hard to predict (unless you were Generals George Patton or Tony McAuliffe). As it turns out, the 101st Airborne, 969th Artillery Battalion, and elements of the 10th Armored Division would resist a final Panzerkorps assault on Christmas Day, and it was the last German success in the Battle of the Bulge.
On a personal note, I cannot count the number of stories I've heard over the years from elderly men who were young in 1944, and in the weeks leading up to and following that dire Christmas were on the front lines around Bastogne and in the Ardennes Forest. What all of their stories have in common is one word: cold. Bitter, biting cold. Cold so severe that it likely caused more casualties than weapons, on both sides.
And in those weeks after Christmas, as American troops pressed forward, I have heard stories of how some soldiers died seeking warmth. It seems the US uniform jackets were short, while the Wehrmacht winter uniform included a long greatcoat, one of the most coveted parts of their gear. Some of our soldiers put on those long heavy coats taken from the enemy dead, but at night when only silhouettes and shadows were clearly visible, they would be shot at as hostile troops.
Yet even as knowledge of these deaths spread, some chose to take that risk if they found a German greatcoat: it was that cold.
In that frigid Christmas and New Year season, if only to take their minds off the cold if not for a hundred other reasons, they would dream of being home for Christmas, and wondered if it would be next year.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; this weekend he will help with his father-in-law's funeral, who in later years served in the 101st "Screaming Eagles." Recall your loved ones gone on before us this Christmas to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, December 11, 2023
Faith Works 12-15-23
Faith Works 12-15-23
Jeff Gill
Christmas here has roots elsewhere, going deep
___
A few days before Christmas, 1864, a local lad made good, Lancaster's own William Tecumseh Sherman, sent a telegram to his commander-in-chief Abraham Lincoln saying to him: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton."
The 76th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, "The Licking Volunteers," had seen hard service from Chattanooga to Atlanta and then on the March to the Sea across Georgia, culminating in Sherman's gift to his president. Perhaps their worst day as a fighting force had been a year before, just as the Army of the Tennessee had set foot in Georgia, at Ringgold Gap where their colors had been taken by the Confederate opposition, and many brave soldiers had fallen.
You can continue to learn about the proud history of the 76th O.V.I. in Doug Stout's excellent columns about the soldiers, often telling their stories in their own words. But suffice it to say that of 900 some soldiers who marched out of the Great Circle Fairgrounds where they trained as 1862 began, there were no more than 300 of those original troops left by the end of 1864, between those killed or wounded.
What has me reaching over into this Civil War story is the reality of that Christmas in Savannah, as 1864 was ending, but the conflict far from over. They would still wear their uniforms halfway into 1865 before the Grand Review in Washington the next spring, and it would be summer before the soldiers and officers of the 76th would return to civilian life.
Christmas, 1864 that was all still uncertain. Many of the "old soldiers" had taken leave back home, but always so brief, then back to the front. Home was far away, and the encampments around Savannah in the respite before the new year's fighting were a home of sorts for the XV Corps and its First Division.
Around them in that year end encampment were other soldiers from Illinois and Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Troops from Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts weren't far off, digging in for a short season of stability, building their temporary homes around the perimeter of this southern city which did not love them.
So, the soldiers looked out for each other. They shared foodstuffs, coffee, tobacco, likely some rum or other spirits at times (but unofficially that last). Like soldiers throughout the ages, they told their war stories to audiences that best understood them, and who knew what was left unsaid. They sang songs and occasionally were satisfied with silences around their flickering campfires in the long nights through Christmas Eve.
It is said, by others who have delved more deeply than I into the records and accounts of American history around Christmas, that the roots of Christmas trees as a truly national custom go back into those encampments. Before 1864, there were groups, especially German ethnic communities, who marked Dec. 24th by cutting down a live tree and bringing it inside for decoration and the day of Christmas. But greenery, evergreen boughs and holly and mistletoe, were more widely used. Trees in the parlor? They were fairly uncommon . . . until after the Civil War.
It appears that on those cold nights, watching their Germanic fellows from eastern states or some of the Nordic troops around the upper Great Lakes all making a point of cutting down a pine and dragging it into their encampment, covering it with ribbons and streamers, and attaching what candles they could find: something struck a chord.
Come Christmas 1865, families all across the United States, and some Licking County veterans I am sure, chose to repeat the custom they'd first seen by firelight within their camps, now by lamplight in their homes. A Christmas tree, with connections now not just to the holiday, but to the fellowship of service in the Civil War.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a little tree up even amongst many distractions from the season. Tell him your decorating customs at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Christmas here has roots elsewhere, going deep
___
A few days before Christmas, 1864, a local lad made good, Lancaster's own William Tecumseh Sherman, sent a telegram to his commander-in-chief Abraham Lincoln saying to him: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton."
The 76th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, "The Licking Volunteers," had seen hard service from Chattanooga to Atlanta and then on the March to the Sea across Georgia, culminating in Sherman's gift to his president. Perhaps their worst day as a fighting force had been a year before, just as the Army of the Tennessee had set foot in Georgia, at Ringgold Gap where their colors had been taken by the Confederate opposition, and many brave soldiers had fallen.
You can continue to learn about the proud history of the 76th O.V.I. in Doug Stout's excellent columns about the soldiers, often telling their stories in their own words. But suffice it to say that of 900 some soldiers who marched out of the Great Circle Fairgrounds where they trained as 1862 began, there were no more than 300 of those original troops left by the end of 1864, between those killed or wounded.
What has me reaching over into this Civil War story is the reality of that Christmas in Savannah, as 1864 was ending, but the conflict far from over. They would still wear their uniforms halfway into 1865 before the Grand Review in Washington the next spring, and it would be summer before the soldiers and officers of the 76th would return to civilian life.
Christmas, 1864 that was all still uncertain. Many of the "old soldiers" had taken leave back home, but always so brief, then back to the front. Home was far away, and the encampments around Savannah in the respite before the new year's fighting were a home of sorts for the XV Corps and its First Division.
Around them in that year end encampment were other soldiers from Illinois and Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Troops from Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts weren't far off, digging in for a short season of stability, building their temporary homes around the perimeter of this southern city which did not love them.
So, the soldiers looked out for each other. They shared foodstuffs, coffee, tobacco, likely some rum or other spirits at times (but unofficially that last). Like soldiers throughout the ages, they told their war stories to audiences that best understood them, and who knew what was left unsaid. They sang songs and occasionally were satisfied with silences around their flickering campfires in the long nights through Christmas Eve.
It is said, by others who have delved more deeply than I into the records and accounts of American history around Christmas, that the roots of Christmas trees as a truly national custom go back into those encampments. Before 1864, there were groups, especially German ethnic communities, who marked Dec. 24th by cutting down a live tree and bringing it inside for decoration and the day of Christmas. But greenery, evergreen boughs and holly and mistletoe, were more widely used. Trees in the parlor? They were fairly uncommon . . . until after the Civil War.
It appears that on those cold nights, watching their Germanic fellows from eastern states or some of the Nordic troops around the upper Great Lakes all making a point of cutting down a pine and dragging it into their encampment, covering it with ribbons and streamers, and attaching what candles they could find: something struck a chord.
Come Christmas 1865, families all across the United States, and some Licking County veterans I am sure, chose to repeat the custom they'd first seen by firelight within their camps, now by lamplight in their homes. A Christmas tree, with connections now not just to the holiday, but to the fellowship of service in the Civil War.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a little tree up even amongst many distractions from the season. Tell him your decorating customs at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, December 04, 2023
Faith Works 12-8-23
Faith Works 12-8-23
Jeff Gill
Our local Christmas history, era by era
___
By 1844, Father Lamy had finally gotten a church building built for his parish of St. Francis de Sales in Newark, Ohio.
Jean-Baptiste Lamy had been born in France thirty years earlier, and over forty years later he would be buried as the retired first Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the crypt of the St. Francis Cathedral he helped build.
Sunday, December 22 of 1844 would be the sixth anniversary of his ordination. It was also the fourth Sunday of the month, and as the priest for now four congregations, he was based in Danville, Ohio where his first parish was already well established. St. Luke's by now had a building, and in Mount Vernon, Father Lamy had built St. Vincent de Paul parish, so dedicated as his favorite saint; however, in his seminary studies he had come to love the writings of St. Francis de Sales, and that was the dedication he asked for his Newark parish.
It was to establish new parishes that he had come, responding to a call put forward into Europe from Bishop John Purcell of the Diocese of Cincinnati, which at that time encompassed all of the state of Ohio. The newly ordained Lamy wanted to pursue his calling on a mission frontier, and he found Maryland migrants and Irish and German immigrants hungry for a Catholic priest's service.
In Newark, as John Horgan notes in his 1975 biography "Lamy of Santa Fe," the priest writes to his bishop that he has a largely German parish, "We have then a very good choir of German Catholics with some fair instruments. They sing very well, but almost all in German, expect the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo in Latin, till they get some books of church music." Unsurprisingly, he asks for some additional financial support to do just that from his bishop, noting "we have got a little help from the Widow McCarthy" so they don't all appear to have been German.
There was a church building, on the location where the 1887 sanctuary stands today, but it was as yet unplastered inside; due to some rounds of illness in Newark, Father Lamy decided to start building a rectory for his monthly residence, trusting in his bishop's retroactive permission and his confidence that very soon they would have their own resident priest.
But on that Christmas Sunday, Lamy's sixth as a priest, on his regular visit to Newark, we can trust that the sanctuary was ornamented "with garlands of evergreen all around with a kind of lustre" as he records was the case a few nights later in Danville; Lamy's good friend Father Machebeuf in Sandusky wrote him that they had greenery, three hundred candles lit, and parishioners had cut perhaps that many stars out of gold paper and affixed them to the ceiling.
So we can imagine that Christmas Sunday in Newark of 1844: garlands of green in contrast to the raw unplastered brick, myriad bright candles, glittering stars overhead, and carols sung in German of the Christ child's birth, "Die Geburt des Christkindes."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he wanders in other centuries from time to time. Tell him about times past that capture your imagination at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Our local Christmas history, era by era
___
By 1844, Father Lamy had finally gotten a church building built for his parish of St. Francis de Sales in Newark, Ohio.
Jean-Baptiste Lamy had been born in France thirty years earlier, and over forty years later he would be buried as the retired first Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the crypt of the St. Francis Cathedral he helped build.
Sunday, December 22 of 1844 would be the sixth anniversary of his ordination. It was also the fourth Sunday of the month, and as the priest for now four congregations, he was based in Danville, Ohio where his first parish was already well established. St. Luke's by now had a building, and in Mount Vernon, Father Lamy had built St. Vincent de Paul parish, so dedicated as his favorite saint; however, in his seminary studies he had come to love the writings of St. Francis de Sales, and that was the dedication he asked for his Newark parish.
It was to establish new parishes that he had come, responding to a call put forward into Europe from Bishop John Purcell of the Diocese of Cincinnati, which at that time encompassed all of the state of Ohio. The newly ordained Lamy wanted to pursue his calling on a mission frontier, and he found Maryland migrants and Irish and German immigrants hungry for a Catholic priest's service.
In Newark, as John Horgan notes in his 1975 biography "Lamy of Santa Fe," the priest writes to his bishop that he has a largely German parish, "We have then a very good choir of German Catholics with some fair instruments. They sing very well, but almost all in German, expect the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo in Latin, till they get some books of church music." Unsurprisingly, he asks for some additional financial support to do just that from his bishop, noting "we have got a little help from the Widow McCarthy" so they don't all appear to have been German.
There was a church building, on the location where the 1887 sanctuary stands today, but it was as yet unplastered inside; due to some rounds of illness in Newark, Father Lamy decided to start building a rectory for his monthly residence, trusting in his bishop's retroactive permission and his confidence that very soon they would have their own resident priest.
But on that Christmas Sunday, Lamy's sixth as a priest, on his regular visit to Newark, we can trust that the sanctuary was ornamented "with garlands of evergreen all around with a kind of lustre" as he records was the case a few nights later in Danville; Lamy's good friend Father Machebeuf in Sandusky wrote him that they had greenery, three hundred candles lit, and parishioners had cut perhaps that many stars out of gold paper and affixed them to the ceiling.
So we can imagine that Christmas Sunday in Newark of 1844: garlands of green in contrast to the raw unplastered brick, myriad bright candles, glittering stars overhead, and carols sung in German of the Christ child's birth, "Die Geburt des Christkindes."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he wanders in other centuries from time to time. Tell him about times past that capture your imagination at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Friday, December 01, 2023
Notes from My Knapsack 12-28-23
Notes from My Knapsack 12-28-23
Jeff Gill
Media tools and mental development in 2024
___
I'm continuing on the question I last started with: Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?
Teachers and principals in general say no. Most school districts and each building has a policy of one sort or another about use of smartphones or internet devices during class time; often that has to do with a requirement to keep the device in the locker, and accessible only between classes or during lunch.
There's variation out there, but what I hear an increasing academic chorus plead for is some way to treat phones on campus the way we do handguns, and they're not kidding. Many think they should be banned, in no small part because of the hazards they represent.
Parents often feel otherwise, and that's what has top administrators and school boards in a bind. How to support parent and guardian concerns while also doing what's best for the students. I have a few, tentative ideas, which I'll lay out in order of feasibility and practicality.
First, to those parents and families with school age children: to me, the biggest unambiguous challenge with smartphones is how they carve into sleep time. I know there are other issues (fights, self-image, bullying) people think of around students with phones, but in my experience out around our schools, that's the driver for many, even most of the negative effects. Your child's phone should not be in their room at night. Period. Charge it on the kitchen counter, or better yet in your room. No phone after bedtime. Lack of sleep could be creating or magnifying most of the negative issues Haidt and Twenge describe in their research (see previous column).
Honestly, I think that could help our schools and our students more than anything else. Having laid that on the table, I support the idea that phones be deposited in a secure space or blocking bag on arrival and only get it back at last bell. I'm also aware of the opposition that will impede ever getting there.
But I'll take it a step further. I think it would be of interest for some school, or even a district, to declare online tools and internet devices and screens to be limited to only certain parts of the day, in certain classes under clear restrictions. That's not a simple request, because the trends are overwhelmingly to ebooks and online texts and to be fair, that's the world they will live in after graduation.
If I had a million or two laying around doing nothing, I'd be tempted to set up a charter school that was explicitly book and paper oriented, all but one period a day, just to see how learning happened in that setting again. There is so much we don't know yet about learning on screens.
Yet I'm teaching a graduate level course three times a year online myself, to students I mostly never meet. It's amazing. It's not all bad. We just still don't know so much. Which makes me wonder…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's quite serious about the sleep thing, which is a boat anchor on students today. Tell him how you're sleeping at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Media tools and mental development in 2024
___
I'm continuing on the question I last started with: Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?
Teachers and principals in general say no. Most school districts and each building has a policy of one sort or another about use of smartphones or internet devices during class time; often that has to do with a requirement to keep the device in the locker, and accessible only between classes or during lunch.
There's variation out there, but what I hear an increasing academic chorus plead for is some way to treat phones on campus the way we do handguns, and they're not kidding. Many think they should be banned, in no small part because of the hazards they represent.
Parents often feel otherwise, and that's what has top administrators and school boards in a bind. How to support parent and guardian concerns while also doing what's best for the students. I have a few, tentative ideas, which I'll lay out in order of feasibility and practicality.
First, to those parents and families with school age children: to me, the biggest unambiguous challenge with smartphones is how they carve into sleep time. I know there are other issues (fights, self-image, bullying) people think of around students with phones, but in my experience out around our schools, that's the driver for many, even most of the negative effects. Your child's phone should not be in their room at night. Period. Charge it on the kitchen counter, or better yet in your room. No phone after bedtime. Lack of sleep could be creating or magnifying most of the negative issues Haidt and Twenge describe in their research (see previous column).
Honestly, I think that could help our schools and our students more than anything else. Having laid that on the table, I support the idea that phones be deposited in a secure space or blocking bag on arrival and only get it back at last bell. I'm also aware of the opposition that will impede ever getting there.
But I'll take it a step further. I think it would be of interest for some school, or even a district, to declare online tools and internet devices and screens to be limited to only certain parts of the day, in certain classes under clear restrictions. That's not a simple request, because the trends are overwhelmingly to ebooks and online texts and to be fair, that's the world they will live in after graduation.
If I had a million or two laying around doing nothing, I'd be tempted to set up a charter school that was explicitly book and paper oriented, all but one period a day, just to see how learning happened in that setting again. There is so much we don't know yet about learning on screens.
Yet I'm teaching a graduate level course three times a year online myself, to students I mostly never meet. It's amazing. It's not all bad. We just still don't know so much. Which makes me wonder…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's quite serious about the sleep thing, which is a boat anchor on students today. Tell him how you're sleeping at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Notes from My Knapsack 12-7-23
Notes from My Knapsack 12-7-23
Jeff Gill
Connections that short circuit communication, let alone learning
___
Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?
There's a familiar fatalism to the discussions I've been hearing the last year. It's akin to the "vast wasteland" worries Newton Minow first voiced sixty some years ago about television. But kicked up a notch, both in the level of concern and the basis for it, and as to the presumed inability of anyone to do anything about it.
Jonathan Haidt, a highly respected non-partisan scholar at NYU, has put forward some unambiguous data showing the link between common smart phone use and juvenile mental health. I won't walk you through too much of it, and it's easily findable online (yes, irony, hold that thought), but his point is something has happened, and it tracks closely with the spread of hyper-connectedness by juveniles mostly through their phones.
Correlation is not causation, true (I heard you say that!), and good people are working on that; you can look at Jean Twenge's work for first steps to nail down those links and triggers. What has my attention is the near unanimous opinion among educational professionals, teachers and administrators alike (and they do not always agree on everything, but they do here) that everyone would be better off, emotionally, psychologically, and academically, if personal phones were treated, and I'm quoting what a number have said to me all not knowing others said it the same way, "like we would a weapon on campus." In other words, no phones. None.
That's what they'd like. They also all quickly admit they know it's not going to happen. Wait, if they all feel that way, from the office secretary to the substitute teachers, plus the principals and assistant superintendents, why can't that become a policy, at least in some districts as a test?
The answer is parents. Even attempts to limit and manage student phone access during the day, such as a disciplinary action on a student who has admittedly broken school rules and been on their phone repeatedly without permission during class, in restrooms, etc.: the parents are all over administrators and the district office. In general, I'm told, school staff don't believe school boards would support it.
There's a complicator here: the school shooting issue of the last decade or two has parents wanting to be able to contact or be contacted by their child if something happens at the school. It's a mix of pragmatism and sentiment stirred up by strong parental emotions. My child needs to be able to call me at any time.
Those of us who readily recall one phone, in the office, used only with great necessity by a student and not always then, will sigh. That train has left the station. We are all used to constant contact and "find my phone" tracking and the like.
Meanwhile, good people with close attention to the issue have real concerns about the impact of smartphones on learning and emotional health at school. What can we do? I'll try to suggest some ideas in my next column.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not promising to solve the whole question, but he's been thinking about some solutions. Tell him your ideas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Connections that short circuit communication, let alone learning
___
Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?
There's a familiar fatalism to the discussions I've been hearing the last year. It's akin to the "vast wasteland" worries Newton Minow first voiced sixty some years ago about television. But kicked up a notch, both in the level of concern and the basis for it, and as to the presumed inability of anyone to do anything about it.
Jonathan Haidt, a highly respected non-partisan scholar at NYU, has put forward some unambiguous data showing the link between common smart phone use and juvenile mental health. I won't walk you through too much of it, and it's easily findable online (yes, irony, hold that thought), but his point is something has happened, and it tracks closely with the spread of hyper-connectedness by juveniles mostly through their phones.
Correlation is not causation, true (I heard you say that!), and good people are working on that; you can look at Jean Twenge's work for first steps to nail down those links and triggers. What has my attention is the near unanimous opinion among educational professionals, teachers and administrators alike (and they do not always agree on everything, but they do here) that everyone would be better off, emotionally, psychologically, and academically, if personal phones were treated, and I'm quoting what a number have said to me all not knowing others said it the same way, "like we would a weapon on campus." In other words, no phones. None.
That's what they'd like. They also all quickly admit they know it's not going to happen. Wait, if they all feel that way, from the office secretary to the substitute teachers, plus the principals and assistant superintendents, why can't that become a policy, at least in some districts as a test?
The answer is parents. Even attempts to limit and manage student phone access during the day, such as a disciplinary action on a student who has admittedly broken school rules and been on their phone repeatedly without permission during class, in restrooms, etc.: the parents are all over administrators and the district office. In general, I'm told, school staff don't believe school boards would support it.
There's a complicator here: the school shooting issue of the last decade or two has parents wanting to be able to contact or be contacted by their child if something happens at the school. It's a mix of pragmatism and sentiment stirred up by strong parental emotions. My child needs to be able to call me at any time.
Those of us who readily recall one phone, in the office, used only with great necessity by a student and not always then, will sigh. That train has left the station. We are all used to constant contact and "find my phone" tracking and the like.
Meanwhile, good people with close attention to the issue have real concerns about the impact of smartphones on learning and emotional health at school. What can we do? I'll try to suggest some ideas in my next column.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not promising to solve the whole question, but he's been thinking about some solutions. Tell him your ideas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, November 27, 2023
Faith Works 12-1-23
Faith Works 12-1-23
Jeff Gill
How Our Christmas Has a History
___
What I want to do this December is go back to a few particular years, and look at our local roots, which have a wide reach, for how Christmas came to be in Licking County: what we can easily think of as "how it's always been." 1800, 1844, 1865, and 1944. There are other points of interest along the way, but I'd like to visit, each in turn, a Christmas memory out of each of those four years.
1800 marks what is effectively the first Christmas observed as such in our area. We have some historical records of people passing through in other months during earlier years, 1751 and 1773 in particular, but not during December.
What we call pioneers were the first European American visitors to leave records; there were Native Americans here for thousands of years, and as I wrote previously, there were African Americans here through the winter of 1773, with a community presided over by a Shawnee woman who was chief of a mixed Delaware and Shawnee settlement, but we know nothing more about their story, or if they marked Dec. 25th in any way.
The first pioneer settlers out of Pennsylvania and Maryland that we have confirmation for arrived in the spring of 1800, most of them men without family at first, but not all. The initial work to clear land, plant crops, then build cabins came first, and for most the word would be sent back through the nearest post office at Zanesville to come on west.
Isaac Stadden and his brother, Col. John Stadden were among that earliest group of arrivals; Isaac is buried just east of the giant basket, in the Bowling Green Cemetery which holds so many of our early settlers. They worked to prepare a place, planting often in openings left by earlier Native American clearing and burning efforts for their crops, speeding the pioneer process.
Benjamin Green and his son-in-law Richard Pitzer had tried out some land for a year near Marietta, then came up the spring of 1800 to land about where O'Bannon Ave. is today, but Benjamin and Catherine had eleven children, some full-grown, so their whole family were involved from the start (they would have three more, after relocating to the Hog Run/White Chapel area south of Newark a few years hence).
Isaac Stadden left his brother in charge once the crops were in and the cabin built, and went back in person to escort his wife, also a Catherine, and their two children to what would become in 1808 Licking County.
By the time they arrived, fall was in the air, and so was something else. John was a widower, and Benjamin Green had a daughter Elizabeth, better known as Betsey. She and John were about the same age, and had determined to share their challenges together in marriage, had set a date of Dec. 10, 1800 to be married. By all accounts everyone was happy for them, including brother Isaac. As he had business with the territorial magistrate, Judge Henry Smith back in Zanesville, he offered to call on his services to marry the happy couple.
But the judge explained to Isaac that the law required notice be posted at three prominent places for a minimum of fifteen days before a marriage could be solemnized. As a good brother, Isaac took it upon himself to ride about, post the notices, and then on Christmas Day escorted to the bride and groom their officiant.
Our earliest history of Christmas is practical, functional, but not without a small note of romance. That's very much what Christmas was in the earliest days of settlement in Newark and Licking County.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows he could have picked other years, but believes you'll learn from the ones on offer. Tell him about your customs of Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
How Our Christmas Has a History
___
What I want to do this December is go back to a few particular years, and look at our local roots, which have a wide reach, for how Christmas came to be in Licking County: what we can easily think of as "how it's always been." 1800, 1844, 1865, and 1944. There are other points of interest along the way, but I'd like to visit, each in turn, a Christmas memory out of each of those four years.
1800 marks what is effectively the first Christmas observed as such in our area. We have some historical records of people passing through in other months during earlier years, 1751 and 1773 in particular, but not during December.
What we call pioneers were the first European American visitors to leave records; there were Native Americans here for thousands of years, and as I wrote previously, there were African Americans here through the winter of 1773, with a community presided over by a Shawnee woman who was chief of a mixed Delaware and Shawnee settlement, but we know nothing more about their story, or if they marked Dec. 25th in any way.
The first pioneer settlers out of Pennsylvania and Maryland that we have confirmation for arrived in the spring of 1800, most of them men without family at first, but not all. The initial work to clear land, plant crops, then build cabins came first, and for most the word would be sent back through the nearest post office at Zanesville to come on west.
Isaac Stadden and his brother, Col. John Stadden were among that earliest group of arrivals; Isaac is buried just east of the giant basket, in the Bowling Green Cemetery which holds so many of our early settlers. They worked to prepare a place, planting often in openings left by earlier Native American clearing and burning efforts for their crops, speeding the pioneer process.
Benjamin Green and his son-in-law Richard Pitzer had tried out some land for a year near Marietta, then came up the spring of 1800 to land about where O'Bannon Ave. is today, but Benjamin and Catherine had eleven children, some full-grown, so their whole family were involved from the start (they would have three more, after relocating to the Hog Run/White Chapel area south of Newark a few years hence).
Isaac Stadden left his brother in charge once the crops were in and the cabin built, and went back in person to escort his wife, also a Catherine, and their two children to what would become in 1808 Licking County.
By the time they arrived, fall was in the air, and so was something else. John was a widower, and Benjamin Green had a daughter Elizabeth, better known as Betsey. She and John were about the same age, and had determined to share their challenges together in marriage, had set a date of Dec. 10, 1800 to be married. By all accounts everyone was happy for them, including brother Isaac. As he had business with the territorial magistrate, Judge Henry Smith back in Zanesville, he offered to call on his services to marry the happy couple.
But the judge explained to Isaac that the law required notice be posted at three prominent places for a minimum of fifteen days before a marriage could be solemnized. As a good brother, Isaac took it upon himself to ride about, post the notices, and then on Christmas Day escorted to the bride and groom their officiant.
Our earliest history of Christmas is practical, functional, but not without a small note of romance. That's very much what Christmas was in the earliest days of settlement in Newark and Licking County.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows he could have picked other years, but believes you'll learn from the ones on offer. Tell him about your customs of Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, November 13, 2023
Faith Works 11-24-23
Faith Works 11-24-23
Jeff Gill
Advent is a necessary season
___
The four Sundays leading up to Christmas starts late this year; in fact, December 3rd is the latest it does come.
Most ministers, I believe, prefer Advent to start after the Sunday following Thanksgiving, just to buffer the chaos of travel and family events around the fourth Thursday of November, before diving into the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day (still the 25th).
I always felt odd when Advent began in November, but I also think it odd that the World Series now can extend into November, although the Rangers saw to it we only had one day of baseball into this month.
November 26th has a liturgical role all its own; I know many Christians are not liturgical, even a little, and there are non-Christian readers here. But aside from the Feast of Christ the King of Reign of Christ Sunday (have at it, if you so observe!), I'm wanting to nod in preparation towards a season of preparation, called Advent.
Liturgical purists will debate musical propriety and how or when ornamentation goes up and where. Some of this, I want to note, is because for long centuries we didn't have trees and garlands and wreaths made from mysterious plastics and polymers. All our decor was natural, and as is the way of all flesh, and of all greenery, it came to pieces fairly quickly.
So both churches and families tended to place and decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, and keep it up perhaps a few days, at most until January 6 and Epiphany. Lights were small clipped candles, and not a few of those candles helped speed the end of the decorations.
Now, just to bring everyone up to speed, we have electricity, and decor in stores from just after the Back to School displays come down. I'm neither defending nor endorsing manic holiday decorations, it's just a historical development. We used to couldn't, so we didn't. Now we can, so we do.
As to worship and spiritual disciplines, I prefer to operate from the other end. Rather than spend so much time on what we can't or shouldn't do in Advent, or trying to ban and exclude stuff, I just want to say: Advent is cool. You should try it. Let the full bore Christmas stuff wait a bit, and try out some of these Adventy ideas.
I'm not, for instance, entirely on board with "no carols until Christmas Eve!" but I do think it is a wonderful thing to always sing something with an Advent theme on those Sundays leading up to the celebration of Christ's birth. "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is an ancient classic, and has some fascinating contemporary settings; "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" is plaintive and eminently adaptable. "Breath of Heaven" by Amy Grant is to me a very Advent oriented song, and "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" is directly on point.
Until I started putting this together, I had in the back of my mind the idea that both "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light" and "Lo, How a Rose 'Ere Blooming" were by J.S. Bach, but I realize the latter is in fact a German carol, but the tune is by Michael Praetorius. Either one is majestic, brooding, and thought provoking.
Because that's the point of Advent. To enhance our ultimate celebration by thinking and praying and working through, very carefully, what it means to anticipate the coming of God-with-us into the world.
That's what Advent is all about, Charlie Brown!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not a purist in much, truth to tell. Tell him how you observe Advent at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Advent is a necessary season
___
The four Sundays leading up to Christmas starts late this year; in fact, December 3rd is the latest it does come.
Most ministers, I believe, prefer Advent to start after the Sunday following Thanksgiving, just to buffer the chaos of travel and family events around the fourth Thursday of November, before diving into the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day (still the 25th).
I always felt odd when Advent began in November, but I also think it odd that the World Series now can extend into November, although the Rangers saw to it we only had one day of baseball into this month.
November 26th has a liturgical role all its own; I know many Christians are not liturgical, even a little, and there are non-Christian readers here. But aside from the Feast of Christ the King of Reign of Christ Sunday (have at it, if you so observe!), I'm wanting to nod in preparation towards a season of preparation, called Advent.
Liturgical purists will debate musical propriety and how or when ornamentation goes up and where. Some of this, I want to note, is because for long centuries we didn't have trees and garlands and wreaths made from mysterious plastics and polymers. All our decor was natural, and as is the way of all flesh, and of all greenery, it came to pieces fairly quickly.
So both churches and families tended to place and decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, and keep it up perhaps a few days, at most until January 6 and Epiphany. Lights were small clipped candles, and not a few of those candles helped speed the end of the decorations.
Now, just to bring everyone up to speed, we have electricity, and decor in stores from just after the Back to School displays come down. I'm neither defending nor endorsing manic holiday decorations, it's just a historical development. We used to couldn't, so we didn't. Now we can, so we do.
As to worship and spiritual disciplines, I prefer to operate from the other end. Rather than spend so much time on what we can't or shouldn't do in Advent, or trying to ban and exclude stuff, I just want to say: Advent is cool. You should try it. Let the full bore Christmas stuff wait a bit, and try out some of these Adventy ideas.
I'm not, for instance, entirely on board with "no carols until Christmas Eve!" but I do think it is a wonderful thing to always sing something with an Advent theme on those Sundays leading up to the celebration of Christ's birth. "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is an ancient classic, and has some fascinating contemporary settings; "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" is plaintive and eminently adaptable. "Breath of Heaven" by Amy Grant is to me a very Advent oriented song, and "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" is directly on point.
Until I started putting this together, I had in the back of my mind the idea that both "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light" and "Lo, How a Rose 'Ere Blooming" were by J.S. Bach, but I realize the latter is in fact a German carol, but the tune is by Michael Praetorius. Either one is majestic, brooding, and thought provoking.
Because that's the point of Advent. To enhance our ultimate celebration by thinking and praying and working through, very carefully, what it means to anticipate the coming of God-with-us into the world.
That's what Advent is all about, Charlie Brown!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not a purist in much, truth to tell. Tell him how you observe Advent at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Faith Works 11-17-23
Faith Works 11-17-23
Jeff Gill
Thankful for what we do not yet have
___
Thankfulness is an art, and like any art, it must be practiced.
Anyone who has practiced, whether it's shooting free throws or sketching landscapes, turning wood on a lathe or diagnosing patients, knows that you can't just practice when it's easy or convenient. Sometimes the best practice in sailing is during a storm; when you can master a skill even as you're weary or distracted, that's a good sign you are at home in your art.
So it is with the art of thankfulness.
Our government is not in the best of order right now, on many levels; I am thankful that we have the outline and tools of democracy still at hand, and ready to be used more responsibly.
The world is not at peace; I am thankful for my awareness that some of the sense of war everywhere is because we can know things previous generations, even our parents's generation, could not, and there is more peace to work from than we might think from a quick glance at the news.
Members of our armed forces have challenges aplenty before them, whether you know any personally or not; I am thankful for the contrast I see looking at life for the average enlisted soldier in most of the great armies of the world, and for our troops. May they train hard so their sweat replaces the blood that might otherwise be shed, and have leave to remind us at home of their sacrifices as we honor their service.
Harvest time is finishing up; I am thankful that I do not have to spend long days and longer nights out in harvester machinery and transport trucks, bringing today's sheaves and selling them at elevators, balancing costs of fuel and taxes on their land against the high calling of growing useful crops. Blessings on our farmers and their families.
Schools face unprecedented challenges in today's world, and are expected to manage tools and technologies the rest of us still are baffled by, both in their use and how to react to potential abuse; I am thankful for teachers and secretaries and administrators and attendance officers and parents and grandparents and yes, thankful for students who keep reminding us, if you pay attention, that there are many fine young people who will exceed our every hope and expectation.
And churches. God bless all the faith communities and new plants and different belief systems all trying to fathom what the Eternal One is saying to the times and seasons we face today; I am thankful for having a religious tradition that feeds my soul and helps me stay connected, and I pray that more people find seek out such a connection in their lives, for I truly believe that in community there is both hope and strength.
If I were to list all the worries, doubts, and concerns that come to mind without much mental effort at all, I could easily fill this column and many more. What takes time and intention is to be thankful, to use Alex Haley's advice: "find the good, and praise it."
There is much good at work in our community this very day, and those who love and seek goodness continue to serve and witness. For them, and those about to join them, I am thankful both now, and in anticipation of more yet to be thankful for.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has to work at thankfulness from time to time. Tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Thankful for what we do not yet have
___
Thankfulness is an art, and like any art, it must be practiced.
Anyone who has practiced, whether it's shooting free throws or sketching landscapes, turning wood on a lathe or diagnosing patients, knows that you can't just practice when it's easy or convenient. Sometimes the best practice in sailing is during a storm; when you can master a skill even as you're weary or distracted, that's a good sign you are at home in your art.
So it is with the art of thankfulness.
Our government is not in the best of order right now, on many levels; I am thankful that we have the outline and tools of democracy still at hand, and ready to be used more responsibly.
The world is not at peace; I am thankful for my awareness that some of the sense of war everywhere is because we can know things previous generations, even our parents's generation, could not, and there is more peace to work from than we might think from a quick glance at the news.
Members of our armed forces have challenges aplenty before them, whether you know any personally or not; I am thankful for the contrast I see looking at life for the average enlisted soldier in most of the great armies of the world, and for our troops. May they train hard so their sweat replaces the blood that might otherwise be shed, and have leave to remind us at home of their sacrifices as we honor their service.
Harvest time is finishing up; I am thankful that I do not have to spend long days and longer nights out in harvester machinery and transport trucks, bringing today's sheaves and selling them at elevators, balancing costs of fuel and taxes on their land against the high calling of growing useful crops. Blessings on our farmers and their families.
Schools face unprecedented challenges in today's world, and are expected to manage tools and technologies the rest of us still are baffled by, both in their use and how to react to potential abuse; I am thankful for teachers and secretaries and administrators and attendance officers and parents and grandparents and yes, thankful for students who keep reminding us, if you pay attention, that there are many fine young people who will exceed our every hope and expectation.
And churches. God bless all the faith communities and new plants and different belief systems all trying to fathom what the Eternal One is saying to the times and seasons we face today; I am thankful for having a religious tradition that feeds my soul and helps me stay connected, and I pray that more people find seek out such a connection in their lives, for I truly believe that in community there is both hope and strength.
If I were to list all the worries, doubts, and concerns that come to mind without much mental effort at all, I could easily fill this column and many more. What takes time and intention is to be thankful, to use Alex Haley's advice: "find the good, and praise it."
There is much good at work in our community this very day, and those who love and seek goodness continue to serve and witness. For them, and those about to join them, I am thankful both now, and in anticipation of more yet to be thankful for.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has to work at thankfulness from time to time. Tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Tuesday, November 07, 2023
Faith Works 11-10-23
Faith Works 11-10-23
Jeff Gill
Asking myself some questions without answers
___
In 1923, Ohio had six ballot measures for voters on that century ago Nov. 6th; as has been our long standing habit electorally, four of the six were voted down.
But approved was an initiative to remove the words "white male" from the State Constitution's description of eligible voters. However, it has to be noted that 44% of Ohioans voted against it. It appears that a majority did not approve it in Licking County.
This is the context in which the Ku Klux Klan found a new footing in its second resurgence in the United States, with particular success in the Midwest. Changes were happening, and voters were uneasy. Some changes were approved, others were not. Some changes, say Prohibition, had passed, but there were rumblings to overturn it. And when the electorate is broadly speaking ill at ease, this opens up pathways for new responses, reactions, resistance.
The earlier Know Nothing movement, which was formally the "Native American" party of the 1850s, was a nativist reaction to a spike in immigration from Europe after the revolutions of 1848 and the better known "Potato Famine" in Ireland. Irish, Polish, German immigrants came in unprecedented numbers, and as the percentage of immigrants in the population increased, there was a reaction, the Know Nothings, who were largely anti-Catholic in Northern and Midwestern states. Issues around slavery and the Civil War collapsed the movement as a political force.
By World War I, a new surge of immigrants, now from southern and central Europe, appears to have helped raise concerns about crime, disease, and education especially in the rapidly growing industrial cities, and sure enough: the 1920s Klan.
In both periods of nativist reaction and socially acceptable hostility to Catholicism and parochial schools, religious bodies including my own particular Protestant tradition were front and center in supporting actions to limit or suppress both immigration, and immigrants already here.
This is where I find myself asking hard questions. My strong suit in many ways is that I've always been someone who tries to do what's expected of me. If there's a duty or responsibility that's on me, my goal has always been to fulfill that, and then some. I don't like letting people down. Yes, this can become "people pleasing," which is an essay on its own. But in general, I do think this can be a strength. However.
In the 1920s Klan organization, each county had a Kludd. This was the title of their chaplain, an Imperial Kludd the state chaplain. They wore a bright scarlet robe and hood with purple trim; they carried a ritual book called a Kloran. I know, it sounds so childish, doesn't it?
I found an online copy of the 1925 Klan robe catalog, which included a picture and description of the robes of a National Lecturer: "Made of satin, trimmed with military braid and embroidered with silk. Silk cord and tassels. Price, each $25."
That's about $440 in today's dollars.
Here's my uneasy question. Almost every one of the National Lecturers I find identified by name were national leaders in my particular church body. And while I don't know for sure, it appears the local Kludd in 1923 Newark was of my tradition as well. The fact that the relevant records are missing, with his predecessor and successor well documented, adds to that inference.
So if the members of my church, uneasy about increasing numbers of people not like them, were Klan supporters, and encouraged me to be their religious leader, their Kludd, would I have said no?
It is easy to say today we'd have nothing to do with such a clownish, ugly, mean-spirited and hateful movement. But in that moment, with those around us robed and ready, what would we do?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he tries not to talk to himself too often. Tell him what questions you ask yourself at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Asking myself some questions without answers
___
In 1923, Ohio had six ballot measures for voters on that century ago Nov. 6th; as has been our long standing habit electorally, four of the six were voted down.
But approved was an initiative to remove the words "white male" from the State Constitution's description of eligible voters. However, it has to be noted that 44% of Ohioans voted against it. It appears that a majority did not approve it in Licking County.
This is the context in which the Ku Klux Klan found a new footing in its second resurgence in the United States, with particular success in the Midwest. Changes were happening, and voters were uneasy. Some changes were approved, others were not. Some changes, say Prohibition, had passed, but there were rumblings to overturn it. And when the electorate is broadly speaking ill at ease, this opens up pathways for new responses, reactions, resistance.
The earlier Know Nothing movement, which was formally the "Native American" party of the 1850s, was a nativist reaction to a spike in immigration from Europe after the revolutions of 1848 and the better known "Potato Famine" in Ireland. Irish, Polish, German immigrants came in unprecedented numbers, and as the percentage of immigrants in the population increased, there was a reaction, the Know Nothings, who were largely anti-Catholic in Northern and Midwestern states. Issues around slavery and the Civil War collapsed the movement as a political force.
By World War I, a new surge of immigrants, now from southern and central Europe, appears to have helped raise concerns about crime, disease, and education especially in the rapidly growing industrial cities, and sure enough: the 1920s Klan.
In both periods of nativist reaction and socially acceptable hostility to Catholicism and parochial schools, religious bodies including my own particular Protestant tradition were front and center in supporting actions to limit or suppress both immigration, and immigrants already here.
This is where I find myself asking hard questions. My strong suit in many ways is that I've always been someone who tries to do what's expected of me. If there's a duty or responsibility that's on me, my goal has always been to fulfill that, and then some. I don't like letting people down. Yes, this can become "people pleasing," which is an essay on its own. But in general, I do think this can be a strength. However.
In the 1920s Klan organization, each county had a Kludd. This was the title of their chaplain, an Imperial Kludd the state chaplain. They wore a bright scarlet robe and hood with purple trim; they carried a ritual book called a Kloran. I know, it sounds so childish, doesn't it?
I found an online copy of the 1925 Klan robe catalog, which included a picture and description of the robes of a National Lecturer: "Made of satin, trimmed with military braid and embroidered with silk. Silk cord and tassels. Price, each $25."
That's about $440 in today's dollars.
Here's my uneasy question. Almost every one of the National Lecturers I find identified by name were national leaders in my particular church body. And while I don't know for sure, it appears the local Kludd in 1923 Newark was of my tradition as well. The fact that the relevant records are missing, with his predecessor and successor well documented, adds to that inference.
So if the members of my church, uneasy about increasing numbers of people not like them, were Klan supporters, and encouraged me to be their religious leader, their Kludd, would I have said no?
It is easy to say today we'd have nothing to do with such a clownish, ugly, mean-spirited and hateful movement. But in that moment, with those around us robed and ready, what would we do?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he tries not to talk to himself too often. Tell him what questions you ask yourself at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, October 30, 2023
Faith Works 11-3-23
Faith Works 11-3-23
Jeff Gill
Changes we can tolerate, others we cannot
___
As this year began, last January I started an intermittent series of columns outlining the events of 1923, one hundred years ago, in Licking County.
My focus was, and is, the effective Klan takeover of the political process in the county and in large part the state, along with other Midwestern and some Southern state governments.
Timothy Egan's "A Fever in the Heartland" came out last spring with this same history in mind, about how the second era of the Ku Klux Klan made a very serious run at taking over the country. The first Klan arose after the Civil War to turn back Reconstruction in the South, and in fact was successful in large part by 1877, so that original Klan went dormant.
During and after World War I, a book and a movie spurred the creation of a dues paying Ku Klux Klan, which only became a public entity by the first weeks of 1923 in Newark, Ohio, but in a level of organization and public display that shows their leaders had been at work for some time, perhaps as far back as 1919. Whatever their plans, they do not burn crosses and hold torchlight parades until the late winter and early spring of 1923.
Further evidence that there was some momentum behind the 1923 rallies and public ceremonies is that in the general election of 1923, on November 7th that year, the mayor and municipal judge candidates running as Klan supporters won office. A majority of city council was Klan endorsed, demonstrated by their actions to remove Klan opponents from the police department and fire department, for being Catholic and thereby, the Klan leaders insisted, opposed to Prohibition. Reporting in regional newspapers indicated that they were successful in "cleaning up" the police ranks, but the fire chief and most of the firefighters apparently were Catholic and stood together to resist legally and pragmatically any Klan intrusion into their staffing or operations.
The Klan responded by buying a horse for the police department, but gave nothing to the fire department.
H.N. Stevens, the mayor of Newark from 1924 to 1928, won re-election, and was not only very openly a Klan backed candidate, he was the Ohio legal counsel for national Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. This Klan leader over 23 Northern states owned a house on Buckeye Lake and a boat in Toledo harbor, and was charged with indecent exposure in Columbus: Stevens drove over to deal with Stephenson's multiple run-ins with the police over his treatment of women.
So I can speak freely about Mayor Stevens. Other names are implied or inferred, but the reality is that there was no Klan party. As in Indiana, where both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor were Klan endorsed, so they couldn't lose. In the 1923 Ohio election for governor, Carmi Thompson as the Republican accepted Klan endorsement where three years earlier Ohio-born presidential candidate Warren G. Harding had refused it; Harding of course won his election, while Thompson lost to Democratic Klan opponent "Honest Vic" Donahey.
What doesn't answer my many questions about "who" but opens up a window perhaps on "why" is what else was on the ballot on that century past Nov. 7. There were six ballot measures for voters across Ohio; four of them were voted down. One of the two approved was to remove from the State Constitution's description of voter eligibility the words "white male."
I'm very glad to see it passed; it worries me that 44% of Ohioans voted against it. In Licking County, a majority did not approve it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got questions for which there are no simple answers. Tell him what questions keep you up at night at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Changes we can tolerate, others we cannot
___
As this year began, last January I started an intermittent series of columns outlining the events of 1923, one hundred years ago, in Licking County.
My focus was, and is, the effective Klan takeover of the political process in the county and in large part the state, along with other Midwestern and some Southern state governments.
Timothy Egan's "A Fever in the Heartland" came out last spring with this same history in mind, about how the second era of the Ku Klux Klan made a very serious run at taking over the country. The first Klan arose after the Civil War to turn back Reconstruction in the South, and in fact was successful in large part by 1877, so that original Klan went dormant.
During and after World War I, a book and a movie spurred the creation of a dues paying Ku Klux Klan, which only became a public entity by the first weeks of 1923 in Newark, Ohio, but in a level of organization and public display that shows their leaders had been at work for some time, perhaps as far back as 1919. Whatever their plans, they do not burn crosses and hold torchlight parades until the late winter and early spring of 1923.
Further evidence that there was some momentum behind the 1923 rallies and public ceremonies is that in the general election of 1923, on November 7th that year, the mayor and municipal judge candidates running as Klan supporters won office. A majority of city council was Klan endorsed, demonstrated by their actions to remove Klan opponents from the police department and fire department, for being Catholic and thereby, the Klan leaders insisted, opposed to Prohibition. Reporting in regional newspapers indicated that they were successful in "cleaning up" the police ranks, but the fire chief and most of the firefighters apparently were Catholic and stood together to resist legally and pragmatically any Klan intrusion into their staffing or operations.
The Klan responded by buying a horse for the police department, but gave nothing to the fire department.
H.N. Stevens, the mayor of Newark from 1924 to 1928, won re-election, and was not only very openly a Klan backed candidate, he was the Ohio legal counsel for national Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. This Klan leader over 23 Northern states owned a house on Buckeye Lake and a boat in Toledo harbor, and was charged with indecent exposure in Columbus: Stevens drove over to deal with Stephenson's multiple run-ins with the police over his treatment of women.
So I can speak freely about Mayor Stevens. Other names are implied or inferred, but the reality is that there was no Klan party. As in Indiana, where both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor were Klan endorsed, so they couldn't lose. In the 1923 Ohio election for governor, Carmi Thompson as the Republican accepted Klan endorsement where three years earlier Ohio-born presidential candidate Warren G. Harding had refused it; Harding of course won his election, while Thompson lost to Democratic Klan opponent "Honest Vic" Donahey.
What doesn't answer my many questions about "who" but opens up a window perhaps on "why" is what else was on the ballot on that century past Nov. 7. There were six ballot measures for voters across Ohio; four of them were voted down. One of the two approved was to remove from the State Constitution's description of voter eligibility the words "white male."
I'm very glad to see it passed; it worries me that 44% of Ohioans voted against it. In Licking County, a majority did not approve it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got questions for which there are no simple answers. Tell him what questions keep you up at night at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Notes from my Knapsack 11-9-23 & 11-23-23
Notes from my Knapsack 11-9-23
Jeff Gill
That uneasy feeling you can't quite shake
___
We all know what "herding" is. Even if we don't call it that. You can call it manipulating, or see it as directing, but there's an element of herding that's what I'm thinking about.
At the grocery store, we've all made our rueful peace with the fact that pretty much wherever you go, you walk through produce first, but have to reach the very back of the building to get a quart of milk.
Maybe you're aware of it, perhaps not, but the items on the end caps are pretty carefully selected, those prominent aisle dividers along the main flow of traffic, and what's at eye level versus what's around our ankles? Businesses sometimes pay for placement.
We like to think we're not merely creatures of impulse, then we suddenly change our minds and order something in the drive-thru that was colorfully featured on the menu in a large, distinct fashion. The fact that the item doesn't quite look like it did on the menu board when it's unwrapped in the car isn't going to keep it from happening again, either.
Then there's online herding. And yes, news sites can be the worst, but the "one weird trick" sites featuring "news" can be even worser. You scroll past the opening banner ad, flick aside the pop-up, click "no" on the invitation to subscribe or activate notifications, then keep having to shut down or otherwise work around embedded video windows and further pop-ups. At a certain point, you stop to ask yourself "what was I reading that I'm trying to find the rest of?"
I call it micro-herding when the sudden overlay screen you want to move aside has a button that looks in color and typeface and relief as if it's the way to say "nope" when it's actually the "yes" or vice versa. Or when the X that's there somewhere for you to click to make the obscuring addition to your phone screen go away is cleverly hidden, shaded to near invisibility to trick you into actually reading the thing you're trying to maneuver past.
Some herding is well-intended and actually helpful. I was at a medical appointment and they'd rearranged the layout of the spaces from how it had been, and to some degree against how it was originally built. When I was done and ready to go back to the waiting area and lobby to exit, I went the wrong way, which a few months ago was the right way. The nurse said "no, just follow the footprints" and indeed there were big blue footprints on the floor to guide my steps.
Herding is sales, too, and where would we be without advertising in all its glory? [pauses to let you think about that imaginary world for a few moments] It's not going away, and we have to figure out how to live with and around and through it.
But I think herding is starting to bother us, and it's showing. The bother, I mean. I'll come back to this next time.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
=+=+=+=
Notes from my Knapsack 11-23-23
Jeff Gill
Herding cats, herding sheep, herding ones own self
___
When last we spoke here, I was going on about "herding."
Herding is what I call all those social and commercial and online ways we get nudged and encouraged and manipulated into doing something we didn't necessarily start out to do.
Like sheep wanting to pursue the next clump of grass when the shepherd wants us heading for the barn, we can be herded to our own good. My phone since the last update has taken to nudging me about exercise and steps and health. I didn't ask for it, but I'll admit I haven't worked too hard to shut it off. I need the nudges.
What is more irritating is the nudging to buy or spend or subscribe that piles up on us, even when we're trying to do better and manage our finances more consciously. You've noticed, no doubt, that there's nothing so simple as making certain online impulse purchases; have you tried to unsubscribe from a recurring payment lately for anything? It ain't easy, and they don't mean for it to be.
I've been helping an older family member shift their bill paying over to online (and that suggestion isn't herding, it's been club-over-the-head in the monthly envelopes for the last few years). It's started to irritate me that, since we need a couple of safeguards on the process, I want to NOT go online to pay and have it go auto-pay, but that's what each utility and payment recipient is set up to herd you towards. Just go paperless, auto-pay, and forget about it! Well, I don't want to forget about it, even as I see the upside for the vendor. They save all kinds of steps and time and expense on their end (while I'm paying a fee, eh?), plus they get an extra measure of security with me going to auto-pay.
So the herding is vigorous, like a good sheepdog, everything but the bite.
What I am starting to wonder about, though, is the ubiquitousness of the herding experience. In stores, in processes and forms, in our online experience. We get the not at all inaccurate impression that we are being herded constantly, and not for our best interests, but to increase profits, enhance revenue, improve someone else's bottom line.
And I think it makes us cranky. You spend all day being herded, and your first hour at home paying bills online and looking up the news and your latest updates feeling constantly herded, and you realize since the first unsubtle herding nudges during the morning news program to get you to download the station's app or buy something they're recommending for which they get a cut, and you find a certain pain behind your right eye, or maybe in your back, or somewhere further down. You squirm, and snarl a bit at those you love, and there's just an atmosphere of rebellion looking for an outlet.
Or are we being herded towards that mood, too?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
That uneasy feeling you can't quite shake
___
We all know what "herding" is. Even if we don't call it that. You can call it manipulating, or see it as directing, but there's an element of herding that's what I'm thinking about.
At the grocery store, we've all made our rueful peace with the fact that pretty much wherever you go, you walk through produce first, but have to reach the very back of the building to get a quart of milk.
Maybe you're aware of it, perhaps not, but the items on the end caps are pretty carefully selected, those prominent aisle dividers along the main flow of traffic, and what's at eye level versus what's around our ankles? Businesses sometimes pay for placement.
We like to think we're not merely creatures of impulse, then we suddenly change our minds and order something in the drive-thru that was colorfully featured on the menu in a large, distinct fashion. The fact that the item doesn't quite look like it did on the menu board when it's unwrapped in the car isn't going to keep it from happening again, either.
Then there's online herding. And yes, news sites can be the worst, but the "one weird trick" sites featuring "news" can be even worser. You scroll past the opening banner ad, flick aside the pop-up, click "no" on the invitation to subscribe or activate notifications, then keep having to shut down or otherwise work around embedded video windows and further pop-ups. At a certain point, you stop to ask yourself "what was I reading that I'm trying to find the rest of?"
I call it micro-herding when the sudden overlay screen you want to move aside has a button that looks in color and typeface and relief as if it's the way to say "nope" when it's actually the "yes" or vice versa. Or when the X that's there somewhere for you to click to make the obscuring addition to your phone screen go away is cleverly hidden, shaded to near invisibility to trick you into actually reading the thing you're trying to maneuver past.
Some herding is well-intended and actually helpful. I was at a medical appointment and they'd rearranged the layout of the spaces from how it had been, and to some degree against how it was originally built. When I was done and ready to go back to the waiting area and lobby to exit, I went the wrong way, which a few months ago was the right way. The nurse said "no, just follow the footprints" and indeed there were big blue footprints on the floor to guide my steps.
Herding is sales, too, and where would we be without advertising in all its glory? [pauses to let you think about that imaginary world for a few moments] It's not going away, and we have to figure out how to live with and around and through it.
But I think herding is starting to bother us, and it's showing. The bother, I mean. I'll come back to this next time.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
=+=+=+=
Notes from my Knapsack 11-23-23
Jeff Gill
Herding cats, herding sheep, herding ones own self
___
When last we spoke here, I was going on about "herding."
Herding is what I call all those social and commercial and online ways we get nudged and encouraged and manipulated into doing something we didn't necessarily start out to do.
Like sheep wanting to pursue the next clump of grass when the shepherd wants us heading for the barn, we can be herded to our own good. My phone since the last update has taken to nudging me about exercise and steps and health. I didn't ask for it, but I'll admit I haven't worked too hard to shut it off. I need the nudges.
What is more irritating is the nudging to buy or spend or subscribe that piles up on us, even when we're trying to do better and manage our finances more consciously. You've noticed, no doubt, that there's nothing so simple as making certain online impulse purchases; have you tried to unsubscribe from a recurring payment lately for anything? It ain't easy, and they don't mean for it to be.
I've been helping an older family member shift their bill paying over to online (and that suggestion isn't herding, it's been club-over-the-head in the monthly envelopes for the last few years). It's started to irritate me that, since we need a couple of safeguards on the process, I want to NOT go online to pay and have it go auto-pay, but that's what each utility and payment recipient is set up to herd you towards. Just go paperless, auto-pay, and forget about it! Well, I don't want to forget about it, even as I see the upside for the vendor. They save all kinds of steps and time and expense on their end (while I'm paying a fee, eh?), plus they get an extra measure of security with me going to auto-pay.
So the herding is vigorous, like a good sheepdog, everything but the bite.
What I am starting to wonder about, though, is the ubiquitousness of the herding experience. In stores, in processes and forms, in our online experience. We get the not at all inaccurate impression that we are being herded constantly, and not for our best interests, but to increase profits, enhance revenue, improve someone else's bottom line.
And I think it makes us cranky. You spend all day being herded, and your first hour at home paying bills online and looking up the news and your latest updates feeling constantly herded, and you realize since the first unsubtle herding nudges during the morning news program to get you to download the station's app or buy something they're recommending for which they get a cut, and you find a certain pain behind your right eye, or maybe in your back, or somewhere further down. You squirm, and snarl a bit at those you love, and there's just an atmosphere of rebellion looking for an outlet.
Or are we being herded towards that mood, too?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, October 23, 2023
Faith Works 10-27-23
Faith Works 10-27-23
Jeff Gill
Remembering the dead in the land of the living
___
"Coco" is an animated film, not a theology text.
The Disney Pixar production back in 2017 is a story woven around the Mexican traditions of the "Day of the Dead," and cultural practices to honor deceased relatives from marigolds and music to shrines with pictures and even favorite foods, all meant to help keep alive the memory of those who have died.
In the larger Christian tradition, it connects to Nov. 1 being "All Saints Day," and the lesser feast of "All Souls" on the 2nd. In our neck of the woods, more people may be aware of the evening before honoring all the saints, or "All Hallows," which has become Hallowe'en.
All Souls, or "Día de los Muertos" is an expansive celebration however you look at it, including all those who have gone on before. In "Coco," the traditional practices and communal beliefs are given some twists with a visit to a not-quite-Purgatory, a "Land of the Dead" which is explained, at one point, as being itself a stage along the way to a deeper mystery, a more lasting eternity. It's a-theological, while dealing very directly with last things.
Most compelling in the narrative is the idea that you vanish from that stage of afterlife once there is no one left who remembers you in life. Again, it isn't a theology text; some might argue it's not even all that Christian. The movie has trouble with the idea of whether or not it's good to move on, or not; to be forgotten and vanish from this post-death phase is most often presented as a tragedy, while it would seem to make more sense for the tragedy to be staying in that in-between state forever, or at least for too long.
Still, the story if you haven't seen it is a truly moving meditation on memory. The recurring theme is in a song, central to the plot in all the many ways it ends up being sung, by different people, to whom, and why. "Remember Me," written Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, is truly the heart of "Coco."
"Remember me/Though I have to say goodbye/Remember me/Don't let it make you cry."
There are aging family members losing their own memories in life; in death, there are memories the living seek to forget, or even erase. There is time, and distance, and pain, and hope, and the desire to be remembered which itself can take many forms.
"For even if I'm far away I hold you in my heart/I sing a secret song to you each night we are apart."
Being an animated movie, there is final plot twist, a flash of the right memory at the right time, redeeming a past almost forgotten.
"Know that I'm with you the only way that I can be…"
In an imperfect, one might even say broken world, there is hope for healing and restoration, a happy ending even when death is very near. I honor the movie, the intention behind a joyful and sometimes laughing Day of the Dead commemoration. And whether it's a Disney production or a Hallmark Christmas romance, who doesn't love a happy ending?
"Remember me." The tears that come for many watching "Coco," and with that song, is that memories don't always heal. Some memories have to be redeemed, and transformed, and occasionally just given over to a deeper mystery, a more lasting everlastingness where we can trust the Keeper of eternity with finding the solutions we do not have, who can tell us just what it is we can safely forget, and cast aside.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to laugh with the kids in costumes at death and decay. Tell him how you mark this season of memory at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Remembering the dead in the land of the living
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"Coco" is an animated film, not a theology text.
The Disney Pixar production back in 2017 is a story woven around the Mexican traditions of the "Day of the Dead," and cultural practices to honor deceased relatives from marigolds and music to shrines with pictures and even favorite foods, all meant to help keep alive the memory of those who have died.
In the larger Christian tradition, it connects to Nov. 1 being "All Saints Day," and the lesser feast of "All Souls" on the 2nd. In our neck of the woods, more people may be aware of the evening before honoring all the saints, or "All Hallows," which has become Hallowe'en.
All Souls, or "Día de los Muertos" is an expansive celebration however you look at it, including all those who have gone on before. In "Coco," the traditional practices and communal beliefs are given some twists with a visit to a not-quite-Purgatory, a "Land of the Dead" which is explained, at one point, as being itself a stage along the way to a deeper mystery, a more lasting eternity. It's a-theological, while dealing very directly with last things.
Most compelling in the narrative is the idea that you vanish from that stage of afterlife once there is no one left who remembers you in life. Again, it isn't a theology text; some might argue it's not even all that Christian. The movie has trouble with the idea of whether or not it's good to move on, or not; to be forgotten and vanish from this post-death phase is most often presented as a tragedy, while it would seem to make more sense for the tragedy to be staying in that in-between state forever, or at least for too long.
Still, the story if you haven't seen it is a truly moving meditation on memory. The recurring theme is in a song, central to the plot in all the many ways it ends up being sung, by different people, to whom, and why. "Remember Me," written Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, is truly the heart of "Coco."
"Remember me/Though I have to say goodbye/Remember me/Don't let it make you cry."
There are aging family members losing their own memories in life; in death, there are memories the living seek to forget, or even erase. There is time, and distance, and pain, and hope, and the desire to be remembered which itself can take many forms.
"For even if I'm far away I hold you in my heart/I sing a secret song to you each night we are apart."
Being an animated movie, there is final plot twist, a flash of the right memory at the right time, redeeming a past almost forgotten.
"Know that I'm with you the only way that I can be…"
In an imperfect, one might even say broken world, there is hope for healing and restoration, a happy ending even when death is very near. I honor the movie, the intention behind a joyful and sometimes laughing Day of the Dead commemoration. And whether it's a Disney production or a Hallmark Christmas romance, who doesn't love a happy ending?
"Remember me." The tears that come for many watching "Coco," and with that song, is that memories don't always heal. Some memories have to be redeemed, and transformed, and occasionally just given over to a deeper mystery, a more lasting everlastingness where we can trust the Keeper of eternity with finding the solutions we do not have, who can tell us just what it is we can safely forget, and cast aside.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to laugh with the kids in costumes at death and decay. Tell him how you mark this season of memory at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
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