Salvation Mountain, CA

Wade in the water

A tip of the bathing-cap to the aquatic theme of this week's Sepia Saturday.

My folks, pictured deep in the land o' lakes above (Michigan), bought me this record when I was a kid -- selections from the TV folksong revue, "Hootenanny."

I grew very fond of several of the more upbeat folky songs on it ("Katie Cruel" in particular), but my least favorite (at the tender age of 10) was Judy Henske's rendition of the gospel song, "Wade in the Water." Between the intense lyrics and her growling performance, it terrified me.

At any rate, 50 years later I love Henske's performance. She foreshadows by several years another powerful emulator of black blues hollerers, Janis Joplin, who I also simply couldn't bear the first time I heard her, in 9th grade. (I was a sheltered child in the '60s... in addition to this record, my parents bought me Miles Davis and Schubert...an attempt, I suspect, to lure me away from the likes of Elvis Presley.)

I was quite pleased when the great '80s American band The Replacements stole the Hootenanny cover design for one of their own records.

Here are some interesting other renditions.

• Traditional: Ella Jenkins
• Rocking: Big Mama Thornton
• Jazzy: Ellen McIlwaine
• Electro hip-hop! Rudy Jimenez

For more water wading of various sorts, don't forget to visit the afore-linked Sepia Saturday!

End of the Petroleum Age Pt. IV

In oblique honor of this week's Sepia Saturday theme of Bibles...

I recently spent a night in Long Beach, Washington ("World's Longest Beach," a dubious distinction). On the way out of town I happened to cast my eyes to the left as we passed a defunct Union 76 fueling station and I saw to my astonishment these frescoed gas tanks. I reckon you might call these "Gas Stations of the Cross."

Here they are in detail. The juxtaposition of abandoned petroleum infrastructure and Christian symbology blows my mind.

Annunciation

Baptism

Crucifixion

Ascendancy

Sepia Saturday: Religious Wars

Here’s an interesting sepia (well, old newsprint at least) glimpse into my own past, illustrating that the right-wing American fundamentalist Christian war on “liberal” intellectualism (cf. Rick Santorum et. al. ad nauseum) is not a new development. Cast your mind back to the fraught year of 1968. Here in our dank corner of the world a tempestuous teapot was steaming.

One of my “deeply Christian” (his words) father’s favorite classes to teach at the University of Washington was the popular “The Bible as Literature.” He used the class, as part of the English and Creative Writing program, to bring out the poetry, the humor, and the historical, sociopolitical aspects of the Bible, as well as its linguistic and thematic influence on the whole of Western literature.

Out of the blue, a couple of Presbyterian ministers decided to sue the University, claiming that the course was unconstitutional.

From the legal proceedings (which you can read here, and it's actually a pretty good read!):

Although the constitutional violations are urged, the major premise of plaintiffs' argument, as alleged in their amended complaint, is: That the manner in which said presentation is made [of English 390] is contrary to the religious beliefs of Plaintiffs, both individually and as church organizations and congregations. [emphasis mine] That said manner of presentation is in itself the presentation of a religious point of view, being one of several theological positions within the Protestant faith.

The trial, as one might imagine, went on for some time. So, to the sepia bit: here’s the newspaper article that appeared just before the verdict was given. First off, I love the bizarre coincidence of the story playing second banana to the infamous Jack Ruby.

Happily, with only two recusants and one dissenter, the majority of the court ruled in favor of the University.

The trial court found: that English 390 concerns itself with the literary features of the Bible and, as a necessary part thereof, the history of ancient Israel; the authorship and treatment of the various books of the Bible, and their interpretation from a literary and an historical point of view, employing the same techniques of scholarship used in the study of any other literary or historical text; that the course is offered as part of a secular program of education to advance the knowledge of students and the learning of mankind; that it is taught by members of the English department who are competent literary scholars, qualified to teach in their respective fields of specialization. The course is not taught by theologians. One professor uses the Revised Standard Version of the Bible; another the Oxford Annotated Edition of the Revised Standard Version; a third, the King James version. Each makes his choice of the English translation for his own professional reasons.

...The trial court dismissed plaintiffs' complaint with prejudice.

And I also love these caricatures. I have to say, the one of my father is spot on.

Here’s my favorite part:

There can be no doubt that our constitutional bars are absolute against religious instruction and indoctrination in specific religious beliefs or dogma; but they do not proscribe open, free, critical, and scholarly examination of the literature, experiences, and knowledge of mankind. If they did, many fields of scholarship — anthropology, zoology, the theory of evolution, astronomy, the germ theory of disease and medical cure, to mention only a few — would have to be removed from our university. It might be said that the objective examination of these theories conflicts with the religious beliefs of certain persons entertaining contrary beliefs based upon their religious convictions. This would, indeed, be true "sectarian control or influence," which is prohibited by article 9, section 4 of our constitution. It would, as Mr. Justice Brennan said so recently,

cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom. Keyishian v. Board of Regents,385 U.S. 589, 17 L.Ed.2d 629, 87 Sup. Ct. 675 (1967).

The result advocated by plaintiffs would be catastrophic in the field of higher education. Would plaintiffs have us strike the works of Milton, Dante, and the other ancient authors whose writings have survived the ages, because they wrote of religious theories with which plaintiffs quarrel? Our constitution does not guarantee sectarian control of our educational system.

In Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education,333 U.S. 203, 92 L.Ed. 649, 68 Sup. Ct. 461 (1948), Mr. Justice Jackson, in a concurring opinion, pointed out that:

Music without sacred music, architecture minus the cathedral, or painting without the scriptural themes would be eccentric and incomplete, even from a secular point of view.... Even such a "science" as biology raises the issue between evolution and creation as an explanation of our presence on this planet. Certainly a course in English literature that omitted the Bible and other powerful uses of our mother tongue for religious ends would be pretty barren.

Theme Thursday: Bikes

I was happy to see this week's theme, as I have lots of this subject to choose from.

In the winter and spring of 2007 we were in Italy.
I'd been shooting bicycles for weeks. Bikes were everywhere -- many, very old-fashioned, tended to be ridden by humped crones in anachronistic black dresses with heavy stockings on their rebar-like legs, the day's groceries in the wicker basket in front.

Then I happened upon this amazing scene in Lucca, Tuscany. Click for more detail of this fresco!




Every town had its own lovely multiciolored and skeletal bikes leaning against all kinds of shops and ancient walls, or standing balanced precariously against low curbs.

Here is another of my favorites of this series, from Florence (Firenze). The plaque on the wall marks the high-water level from the 1966 flood.