Hold My Place
Originally, this email was to be a placeholder. Not in the sense of the gobbledygook Latin phrases web site companies use to populate text boxes, although I’m sure I could generate some great stuff in that medium.
The idea was to whet your appetite for a truck load of various dispatches.
You see, our recent travels out West were very different from our 3 week place-holding in Nashville. Down there, I had more time to read, think, and write.
But the last 3 1/2 weeks were mostly taken up with visiting our kids in Denver (and helping one of their families move), and sitting in the car.
We managed some very significant meet-ups, though, with new and old friends, and we saw some amazing things.
Consequently, I’ve got a queue of Dispatches waiting patiently, like debutantes, for their time to shine.
At the bottom of this email, then, is my placeholder: A list of Coming Attractions to The Row House Roadshow.1
Now For Crazy Horse
One of the amazements we experienced is the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota.
I figure since it’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day, this would be the perfect time to roll out some of our wonder, feelings, and thoughts on it.
Wonder
Mt. Rushmore, right up the road, has a firm grip on most Americans’ imagination. Experiencing it up close is even more stunning.
Rushmore is the Tom Brady monument. Crazy Horse is the wunderkind on the midget football field.
But a visit to Crazy Horse is more than stunning. It’s staggering.
You mouth-gape in wonder at what’s actively becoming the world’s largest stone sculpture.
Entering the gift shop, a fellow tourist excitedly told us that he and his wife happened to be looking up at the construction site the moment a controlled blast blew off rock, making a cloud of smoke.
The wonder is more than the physical immensity of the project; it’s the long-term vision.
Sculptor extraordinaire Korczak Ziolkowski ignited the first blast on the summit of the mountain in 1947!
Korczak, along with his wife and ten children and subsequent generations have been laboring at the transformation ever since.
Because they have kindly refused government funding, choosing to form a non-profit corporation, perhaps the progress has been slower than Rushmore’s.
But here’s the real wonder: This cultural statement is three times bigger than the monument.
Already on site is a The Indian University of North America and The Indian Museum of North America, both of which are slated to grow significantly.
The 3-D model of the entire project in the museum inspires awe and invites guests to return home to tell this story, just as I am.
Feelings
Taking in this memorial and listening to the audio book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, Becky and I were awash in feelings of utter sadness, wretchedness, and shame for the raw deal Indian peoples were often handed by our own ancestors.
But the fact that a native leader like Henry Standing Bear commissioned a poor, Polish, Bostonian to sculpt a mythic version of a native hero also elicits feelings of hope, joy, and anticipation.
The hills have already begun to sing the story of the inherent dignity of the American Indians to modern ears. And by the grace of God, perhaps, some form of reconciliation and healing will prevail.
Thoughts
Our American founders envisioned “a more perfect union” than has ever existed in world history. And we’ve memorialized a particular Fab Four in stone. I’m happy for that.
Still, it’s not anti-American to admit that commitments such as manifest destiny, rooted in the sin of European vanity, moved whites to enslave millions of Africans and to conduct war upon native peoples.2
All to settle this marvelous land.
It’s good and right to face these facts, and this memorial helps us do that in ways that are honoring both to indigenous peoples and white settlers.
I’ve been to Mt. Rushmore three times, and I commend every American to fall under its stunning spell.
But now I must add: Go see Crazy Horse…first.
Coming Attractions to The Row House Roadshow
(probable dispatches, no guarantees, no batteries included)
FACES
Our conversation with Sarah Joy Proppe, founder of The Proximity Project in St. Paul, MN
Story Telling: Anselm Society’s Christian Imagination Conference in Colorado Springs
The Roberts and their vision for a school for Pelicans in St. Louis
PLACES
A small town reversal: Sturgis, Michigan’s surprisingly active downtown
Ferguson, MO: An outdoor roller rink unites the neighborhood
A coffee shop with listening ears in Hayes, Kansas
AMAZEMENTS
Wait, are Jackalopes real?
Laundromats as “Third Places”
tomses
Why it’s harder to say goodbye when you’ve “loved well.”
The Best Best Western in the world?
Drawing fire from a red hot Minnesotan at a rest stop!
Maybe some prayers and poems if I’m feeling bold and open
Is it a recurring dream or a re-occurring dream?
Full disclosure: All the events took place in the past.
If this sounds extreme, take a walk around downtown Indianapolis, and let the monuments to the heroes of “The Indian Wars” sink in.