The Log Cabin Lady

And who is this Log Cabin Lady anyway? I never even heard of this book until today as I sit here rummaging through the detritus of yesteryear. It is not clear from the pages of her book whether this woman actually existed or whether the book is carefully constructed or deconstructed to conceal the author's true identity. Just because a diplomat's wife wrote to the editor of the Delineator telling her life story to help future young American women learn the importance of avoiding painfully embarrassing social gaffes whenever they go overseas, that does not connect her to me. After all, I am not my own grandma. It was my Grandma McClellan née Strickland who wrote to the May Delineator, a woman's magazine of the day, in response to some offer of personality analysis based on facial characteristics in a photograph no longer available because not attached to the faded letter, but her forecast was not that great in terms of future professional achievements, according to the editor of the May Delineator who kindly mailed the photograph back to her. Perhaps if my grandmother had been married to the incredibly wealthy Bostonian gentleman (only his first name "Tom" is given) who swept the author off her feet in the library and took her on diplomatic adventures to Great Britain, France, Austria and other parts of Europe, witnessing firsthand there the events of World War I, then perhaps my grandmother's travel forecast might have taken her to more important locales than just Central America. After all, Tom calls his wife "lovely" so that was enough to ensure her in to an audience with Queen Victoria. As the Log Cabin Lady says, "Motherhood is the great and natural event in the life of a woman in France, and no one makes a secret of it." What does that say about motherhood in America? Perhaps that you can run but you can't hide. They know who you are and what you've been up to.

Conspiracy

After I moved out of Cori's room, or rather was kicked out, I moved in with Dauna K. and Candice Higgins for a couple of months till the end of the year. Dauna said that she went up to the seventh floor to attend a meeting there at which she heard Cori conspiring together with Nicole and some other girls to make my life hell. Dauna did not go into detail on Cori's master plan to ruin my life so I am not sure what that was all about. I had no idea that Dauna would defect later to the devil's side because obviously these people are highly suggestible. Whoever is out there yapping loudly is the one that everyone listens to, it would seem.

Nicole?

Yes, I do vaguely remember that at the time I was rooming with Cori on the seventh floor there was someone living down the hall named Nicole who was some sort of reformed drug addict or prostitute or something like that. Christ had brought her out of a terrible life and redeemed her past and now she was planning to go from church to church telling her testimony. She offered to let me go with her and sing and then a few days later she said she felt like God told her she would not want me going out with her so I said something like Ok, fine because I never really wanted to do anything with Nicole anyway. It was her idea to start with anyway, not something I really cared about doing or ever volunteered to do in the first place. Nicole is a very troubled person with a lot of problems and that type of person is better left to present her bizarre testimony all by herself.

Sweat

I wonder why these nasty dogs have not yet figured out that I use deodorant. That is why they don't see me sweat, at least not most of the time. After all, never let them see you sweat, as they say, even though, well, I do sweat but that is why we have these modern conveniences, especially the strongest possible brand of deodorant for me. I wouldn't want to be confused with a smelly French person, or at least that is what I heard, not that I would really know anything about that.

The Pentecost Of Calamity

Although Ralph Waldo Emerson used the word "Pentecost" in his poem, "The Problem," for which I don't have a date but probably somewhere in the mid-1800s, Emerson having died in 1882, it was another author, Owen Wister, who borrows Emerson's poetic reference to "Pentecost" and throws it into yet another context, that of war. In a book titled "The Pentecost of Calamity," Wister, a friend and contemporary of Theodore Roosevelt, Wister is writing in 1915 to encourage America to get involved in World War II. He paints a disturbing portrait of the German people who have been "Prussianized" and brainwashed with a Germancentric map of the world. German textbooks teach that America consists mainly of three people groups: negroes, Indians, and Germans. Germans want to do away with the English language of pirates and elevate the German tongue which is thought to convey a blessing on the speaker. The Germans already in the early part of the 20th century believe in the ideals of building a super race, a super nation, a world run mainly by Germans, according to Wister. Wister says that the warfare already raging in Europe is purifying the motives of the French and English who are fighting to stop Germany's hostile advance.

Wister says: "But Calamity has its Pentecost. When its mighty wind rushed over Belgium and France, and its tongues of fire sat on each of them, they, too, like the apostles in the New Testament, began to speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. Their words and deeds have filled the world with a splendor the world had lost. The flesh, that has dominated our day and generation, fell away in the presence of the Spirit. I have heard Belgians bless the martyrdom and awakening of their nation. They have said: 'Do not talk of our suffering; talk of our glory. We have found ourselves.'"

Wister goes on to say: "These are the tongues of fire; this is the Pentecost of Calamity. Often it must have made brothers again of those who found themselves prone on the battlefield, neighbors awaiting the grave. In Flanders a French officer of cavalry, shot through the chest, lay dying, but with life enough still to write his story to the lady of his heart. He wrote thus:

“There are two other men lying near me, and I do not think there is much hope for them either. One is an officer of a Scottish regiment and the other a private in the uhlans. They were struck down after me, and when I came to myself I found them bending over me, rendering First Aid. The Britisher was pouring water down my throat from his flask, while the German was endeavoring to stanch my wound with an antiseptic preparation served out to their troops by the medical corps. The Highlander had one of his legs shattered, and the German had several pieces of shrapnel buried in his side.

“In spite of their own sufferings, they were trying to help me; and when I was fully conscious again the German gave us a morphia injection and took one himself. His medical corps had also provided him with the injection and the needle, together with printed instructions for their use. After the injection, feeling wonderfully at ease, we spoke of the lives we had lived before the war. We all spoke English, and we talked of the women we had left at home. Both the German and the Britisher had been married only a year. …

“I wondered — and I suppose the others did — why we had fought each other at all. I looked at the Highlander, who was falling to sleep, exhausted, and, in spite of his drawn face and mud-stained uniform, he looked the embodiment of freedom. Then I thought of the Tricolor of France and all that France had done for liberty. Then I watched the German, who had ceased to speak. He had taken a prayer book from his knapsack, and was trying to read a service for soldiers wounded in battle. And … while I watched him I realized what we were fighting for. … He was dying in vain, while the Britisher and myself, by our deaths, would probably contribute something toward the cause of civilization and peace.”

Thus wrote this young French officer of cavalry to the lady of his heart, the American lady to whom he was engaged. The Red Cross found the letter at his side. Through it she learned the manner of his death. This, too, is the Pentecost of Calamity."

So Wister makes a very convincing case for American involvement in World War I, which later came to pass, and yet his wartime Pentecost does not have very much to do with the Pentecostal movement and the Pentecostalism of the church. Wister's Pentecost is not the Pentecost of Acts 2 when the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit and preached the Gospel. Although many of the apostles later died a martyr's death, it was not by wielding swords that the early Christians changed the society in which they lived.

Wister's Pentecost is the sword of kings and emperor, something that is not commanded by the church. After all, the president as chief executive commands the armies of the United States, not the church. If the church were in charge today, who knows what holy wars and carnage would be carried on in Christ's name. Many people have their opinions about the Viet Nam War and various other armed conflicts, but we are fortunate indeed that the founding fathers put checks and balances in place so that we should not rush to judgment.

Clues

All of which makes me wonder what Rodger Gaskin might know about all of these events, but then again why would I bother to ask? Obviously, some Homecoming Queen has all of these people locked up and sewed up in her pocket. They all belong to her now so there is no going back there to waste time trying to make friends of people who are just a pack of liars.

Letters

Yes, I think I did write a letter to Cori Nipper's parents although I don't really remember what I said in the letter or why I wrote something. Maybe I wanted to explain to them what a horrible person their daughter Cori actually is so that no one would think that I actually agreed with anything that Cori says in her rambling rants about disbelief and rage or that I myself would accept any responsibility for having produced such a horrible person as Cori just because of the accident of being her college rooommate for a year or so. I tried to witness to that piece of trash but everything I ever said went in one ear and out the other so obviously it was a big mistake to have anything to do with Cori and her wicked friends and family. But I wouldn't want anyone to think that it was all my fault when actually Cori is just a huge mass of wickedness and stupidity, making it very hard for me to tolerate her constant verbal assaults, sort of like living with the enemy. So if Cori doesn't like the fact that I don't really like her, well, it's true. I think she is a worthless excuse for human being, just returning the favor. When I first started rooming with Cori there was some understanding that she was a horribly worldly person and that I would try to witness to her, like my Dad said, but it was a huge waste of time and effort, mostly fruitless. She really doesn't deserve anything from me. Anything said to Cori is liking casting my pearls before swine to be trampled underfoot by the District Swine because that is all Cori is, just a stupid mindless pig. If God wants to save her soul fine but don't ask me to witness to those vicious District Dogs because I am not equipped to negotiate the rich and powerful curve. I would just be killed point blank and there is no point to this stupid conversation, to be honest. I would rather be free and dead than to be a slave to the District Dogs.