Mr. Johnson’s Head: Anti-Racist Pedagogy and the Insane Clown Posse

“How many times did I walk in and just sit?

And have to listen, and learn all this bullshit?”

                                         -Insane Clown Posse, “How Many Times?”

I met two "Original Juggalos" at the Insane Clown Posse Great Milenko show.  One confessed to me: "I used to be a hater.  Then I listened to the song 'Mr. Johnson's Head.' This song made me take a hard look at myself.  Now I don't hate anybody." 

The mention of the song "Mr. Johnson's Head" was a powerful omen for the start of a school year where, more than ever, I am trying to implement not just content, but teaching practices that help dismantle systems of oppression.   In the song, a student listens to a substitute teacher talk, because Mr. Johnson, the regular history teacher, is absent: "I can hear the teacher talking man, talking about Columbus/ He nothing but an old dead f--- with a compass/ Ran up on a beach and threw everybody off/ And then he claimed discovery and now we all applaud."  Until a few years ago in my 9^th grade Humanities class, we had students engage in a mock debate: “Should we still celebrate Columbus Day?”  We thought we were being very progressive, radical even, in questioning this national holiday and having students argue “both sides.” One day, the parent of a student from an Indigenous group asked if we would also be debating whether or not we should celebrate the Holocaust.  She said that for her daughter, debating the celebration of Columbus Day amounted to the same experience – for Indigenous people, the arrival of Columbus, who “threw everybody off,” signaled the beginning of genocide.

How had I not seen that?  I was supposed to be the teacher, the one with a “critical pedagogy” that, in the words of Ellsworth, “ supported classroom analysis and rejection of oppression, injustice, inequality, silencing of marginalized voices, and authoritarian social structures.” ("Why doesn't this feel empowering?") The narrator of “Mr. Johnson’s Head” feels just as unseen and unheard by the teacher, and by the other students, as my former student must have when we asked her to debate Columbus Day. “ I try to speak my word, it always goes unheard/I could chop my arms off and run around the class/I doubt they’d even notice, but I’d be dying fast,“ he tells us. In Ellsworth’s understanding, the classroom dynamic embodies “a highly complex negotiation of the politics of knowing and being known.” How voyeuristic had the dynamic become, where a student from the Tulalip community was forced to “debate” Columbus Day as the teacher “benignly” looked on and assessed her ability to be rational and disinterested, to produce critical arguments from “both sides?” 

The students tell the sub that Mr. Johnson has already taught the lesson about Columbus, so the substitute begins another: "If you'll turn your textbooks to Chapter Four we'll get started./America's the land of the free, all racists live together in harmony/and we are all treated equal, we all live together in the same wealthy community." The narrator of “Mr Johnson’s Head” tells us that, in contrast to the story of economic opportunity told by the teacher, “I got a couple food stamps folded in my sock.” While it is true that student experience often gives the lie to the content of the curriculum, changing the content is not a sufficient remedy. In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks asks “whether or not we subvert the classroom’s politics of domination simply by using different material, or by having a different, more radical standpoint.” She says that “different, more radical subject matter does not create a liberatory pedagogy, that a simple practice like including personal experience may be more constructively challenging than simply changing the curriculum.” (“Building a Teaching Community”)**

Again, the students insist that Mr. Johnson has already taught that lesson about equality. They ask when Mr. Johnson is coming back, and the sub says he doesn't know. But the student secretly knows - he has Mr. Johnson's head in his backpack.  He got sick of the racist curriculum: "I cut the bigot's head off and stuffed it in my bag."  This act of violence is not only reminiscent of Sartre’s defense of Fanon – violence as cathartic and empowering – but highly symbolic of the disembodiment required by traditional critical pedagogy. As Ellsworth points out, “Conventional notions of dialogue and democracy assume rationalized, individualized subjects capable of agreeing on universalizable 'fundamental moral principles' and 'quality of human life' that become self-evident when subjects cease to be self-interested and particularistic about group rights.  Yet social agents are not capable of being fully rational and disinterested; and they are subjects split between conscious and unconscious and among multiple social positionings.  Fundamental moral and political principles are not absolute and universalizable, waiting to be discovered by the disinterested researcher/teacher; they are 'established intersubjectively by subjects capable of interpretation and reflection.”  Mr. Johnson has never attempted to establish any sort of intersubjectivity with his students; he has instead relied on the banking model of education. In his attempts to transfer information to the students, he has seen them as passive objects, dehumanized and stripped of any genuine agency to act upon the objects of their learning. As Freire, quoting Erich Fromm, points out, this relation produces what he calls ‘necrophily.’  The teacher loves control, “and in the act of controlling he kills life.” (Fromm, quoted by Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

Mr. Johnson was not interested in the food stamps stuffed into the student’s sock; indeed, he was not interested in his own embodied experience as (presumably) as a white, cisgender, middle class male. He has cut both himself and his students off from their embodied experiences as authentic actors. He seeks only to dominate, to “fill” the students, as Freire says, “by making deposits of information which he considers to constitute true knowledge.” Thus, when the student confesses, “I left his f—ing body in the hallway/And in the morning they opened up the door/And seen his motherf—ing carcass laying on the floor,” we are confronted with an apt visual image of the dismemberment required to participate, either as a teacher or as a student, in a traditional classroom which, according to Freire, replicates the violent necrophilia of the banking model of education, and indoctrinates students “to adapt to the world of oppression” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 78). When the student cuts off Mr. Johnson’s head and brings it into the classroom with him, he has attempted to resolve “the teacher-student contradiction” which Freire believes is inherent in the banking model of education.  Unfortunately, of course, the school immediately arranges for a substitute who will continue to perpetuate this oppressive model, filling students’ heads with myths of the Founding Fathers even though the student knows “they owned a couple slaves but I guess it doesn’t matter.”

Juggalos are, for the most part, economically disenfranchised and socially marginalized. The references to surreal and supernatural violence in ICP lyrics such as the song “Piggie Pie” - “And then I watch the moon take the form of a devil/and pull it out the sky and beat it with a shovel” – are immediately followed by lyrics that point out real injustices - “People in my city, they fightin’ for their meals/He sleeps on a mattress stuffed with hundred dollar bills.” Unlike the ideal student in Friere’s banking model, the Juggalo student does not accept his own ignorance.  He has discovered a way to “educate the teacher.” Most important, the violent imagery in lyrics about a student cutting a teacher’s head off caused my Juggalo friend to “take a hard look” at his own racism and ultimately to abandon it, in an awakening of conscientizacao. The ability of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope’s music to unite Juggalos into a Family whose Clown Love transcends race, age and socioeconomic status is truly “wicked voodoo magic.” The Insane Clown Posse and the Juggalos thus “are both Subjects, permanent re-creators of reality.”

Religious Tourism

We visited three different religious tourism sites over the past two days.  The first we happened upon by chance, while taking a strange detour towards Mansfield, Ohio, home of Biblewalk, the largest Bible-themed wax museum in the country.  While driving through lush, flat Ohio farmland, where the Monsanto corn will be "knee high by the fourth of July," we saw a sign pointing us towards the "Sorrowful Mother Shrine."  This was a small shrine built by a Swiss priest, Father Brunner, at the beginning of the 20th century.  Sadly, the little Mary statue that he had brought with him from Germany was destroyed in a fire in 1912, but the chapel was rebuilt and since then about a zillion little grottoes to different saints have been put up, really randomly, by various families mourning the deaths of various loved ones.  The Sorrowful Mother is one of the many avatars of the Virgin Mary, as she mourns the death of her Son.  People love to honor her because they feel she can understand their own feelings of loss.  Only visit this site if you want to traipse across swampy ground full of poison oak and poison ivy, with tons of wasps trying to make their nests in the eaves of the shrines, and feel completely depressed and sad.

Our second religious tourism site was the exact opposite of depressing and sad.  It was kitschy, fun and strangely moving.  Biblewalk, in Mansfield Ohio, is an obscure museum filled with a combination of department store mannequins and used wax figures, arranged in pleasing scenes from the Hebrew Bible, the life of Christ, and various historical events.  It takes hours to see it all, and sadly we had to leave before we visited "Martyrs of the Reformation."  However, we did see the amazing scenes from the Life of Christ; my favorite was Jesus ascending into a cloud made of probably two hundred silvery wigs, glued together in a fabulous mass.  The finale of Handel's "Messiah" played as the Son of God floated into a giant cushion made of artificial hair.  Our entire experience was made more powerful because we were accompanied by two enthusiastic church ladies who joined me in raising our hands and shouting "Amen!" and "Yes, Lord!" as we heard the familiar words of various scriptures - the passages and scenes they had chosen reflected Jesus' ministry to the poor.  One important scene from Luke's Gospel showed him reading from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners  and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free."  The emphasis on service, on grace and forgiveness even in the midst of the recycled mannequins, was charming.  We tried to find wax figures which had been "repurposed" from other wax museums (which is how the church makes all these scenes), and I swear I saw Gandhi listening to the Sermon on the Mount - very appropriate!  I highly recommend you visit this place.

I highly recommend Biblewalk!

Great vanity plate!  

Of course, the culminating stop on our religious tourism journey was Ken Ham's Creation Museum, a 27 million dollar complex paid for completely with donations.  Ken placed the museum in northern Kentucky because it is within a day's journey of about 70 percent of the United States.  I also think he placed it here because of the high concentration of rubes.  We had the dubious privilege of hearing a talk by Ken, live, while we were there, and a oilier snake oil salesman I never saw.  I know his salary from "Answers in Genesis," his non-profit organization, is only around 160,000 dollars, but the gift shop makes millions more, and most of that is through selling Ken's "7 Cs" curriculum on books and DVDs, which the credulous take back to their churches so that they can learn what Ken called "Christian apologetics."  

There were hundreds of people there listening to him.  He spent a few minutes telling us about the Ark Encounter project, which will open next year.  This is a theme park, a for profit tourist venture, attached to the nonprofit Creation Museum.  Clever, huh?  He did a lot of market research and predicted that he could expect up to 2.2 million visitors.  They even told him that the recent Supreme Court decision on gay marriage could potentially increase the number of visitors by 400,000!  

For my liberal friends who can't imagine how someone could vote for Ted Cruz, I can tell you that every single one of these people will vote for Ted Cruz.  Or someone like him.  There were NO black people at this museum, despite the demographics of the surrounding area.  NONE.  I know you see that guy with brownish skin in the photo, but he is the adopted child of missionaries, and he did NOT come here of his own accord.  I asked him.  The exhibits themselves were pretty cheap and unimpressive.  The video we saw, "Men in White," made light of angels, the most fearsome creatures in the universe.  I don't think Ken Ham understands angels.  I don't think Ken Ham really believes in God at all.  I do think all these people do, and he is completely taking advantage of them and their credulity.  It is a true Vision of America, because no place else could an Australian huckster come in and do this - Australians would laugh in his face and send him on his way.  People in this epicenter of ignorance pay 30 bucks a head (plus lots of extra add-ons) to be herded through a building where they show you a diorama of dinosaurs and children playing together.  

As PT Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute."  Even Pat Robertson thinks this museum is ridiculous, that there is no way the earth is 6000 years old, but that doesn't stop the 250,000 plus visitors every year from coming and then buying  at least one of Ken Ham's DVDs for 70 more dollars, and also paying another 25 dollars for the fun photos.  Okay, so I paid for those, too.  Ken Ham got my money as well.  How could I resist a picture in front of Noah's Ark?

I want to come out here and tell you that I identify as Christian.  Ken Ham's museum makes me sad because he so misrepresents my faith. At one point during his presentation, he held up his hands to form a "V" and said, "You are either with us or against us.  There is no compromise.  No straddling the line."  In other words, if you don't take the book of Genesis literally, and believe that God created the world in six days, you will also not believe that marriage is between one man and one woman (as in Adam and Eve).  In eroding literalism, you will be eroding Christian doctrine.  Now, I'm not even going to point out that the book of Genesis also contains polygamy, incest, and all sorts of other things to make my argument against Ken.  Because I don't care about that.  What I care about is the "V" he made with his hands, because to me, that represents duality in thinking.  Either/or. And to me, that dualistic thinking gets in the way of the Christian message, which is constantly presenting me with paradoxes, almost like koans: "The last shall be first." "If you want to be great, you must be a servant."  "He emptied himself and took the form of a slave."

My religion students freak out when they would read Jesus' words on the cross: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"  They ask, if Jesus is God, how can he cry out to God?  The audience laughed disgustedly when Ken showed them a video clip of Neil DeGrasse Tyson (the coolest) saying "forget Jesus; the stars died so that we might live," and saying we are all made from different parts of stars.  I felt sad because it seemed the God of these people was so small that he couldn't make a universe so many billions of years old, make them from stardust, or cry out on the cross in fear and loneliness, fully God and fully Human.  Ken Ham's god is clearly Mammon, and his stooges believe in a God so beautifully parodied by  Ricky Gervais' retelling of Noah's Ark.    We had to watch it again to lighten our spirits after we got back from the Creation Museum.

This is a uniquely American religion, as so many critics have pointed out: anti-intellectual, fiercely populist, and so insular.  It doesn't resemble my beliefs at all.  My biggest challenge was not to be snobby and judgmental myself.  As Ken pointed out, so many people who write on his Facebook wall telling him he intolerant and judgmental are exactly that.  Yes, I know the dangers of the Church of Ken.  I know that homosexuals are being tortured and executed by religious fundamentalists in many countries.  I also know that despite his best efforts, Ken Ham is losing followers.  He himself told the audience that over 75% of 20-somethings raised in these kinds of churches leave and don't come back.  He said it was because they weren't taught properly.  I say it's because they don't find the spiritual nourishment they are seeking.   As I sat in the audience, the story of Zacchaeus came into my mind.  He was a money-grubbing, swindling cheating tax-collector, sort of the Ken Ham of ancient Judea.  Yet, when Jesus came to his town, he said, "I'm coming to your house for dinner today!"  When Zacchaeus saw the real Christ, he gave back all the money he had swindled.  He couldn't resist the awful, inexorable grace of God.  And neither, in the end, can any of us.

Hallowicked 2014 in Detroit with the Evil Clowns

My friend and colleague, Suzanne Bottelli, spent  this past week in Oaxaca, experiencing the preparations for El Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead.  Whatever you call your festivities this time of year –Samhain, All Hallows Eve – for many it marks the end of the pre-Christian calendar year, and thus a time when the veil that separates the land of the living from the land of the dead is at its thinnest and most permeable.  For this reason, we might have a picnic on the grave of our beloved relative, enjoying his or her company.  We might make sugar skulls, or an ofrenda with photos and mementos of our dead friends and relatives.  We might see spirits or skeletons, both friendly and menacing, dancing through the streets, waiting to be appeased with treats.  In the United States, of course, we celebrate Halloween – the children dressed in costumes, mildly threatening a “trick” if we don’t give them candy, are only mildly reminiscent of visitors from the other side, wanting something from us that we had better give them.

One of the most feared visitors on Halloween is, of course, the evil clown.  I spent this past week in Detroit, experiencing the preparations for Hallowicked, the end of the Juggalo calendar, a holiday older even than the Gathering itself. 

In Detroit's historic Fillmore theater

On this day every year, fans of the Insane Clown Posse gather in Detroit to celebrate the new year, anticipate a new “Joker’s Card” (or record album), reunite with old friends and join in a veneration of the Dark Carnival, the symbolic spiritual realm of the Wicked Clowns.  “It’s a full moon and the riddles are calling,” sings Violent J, a Falstaffian wicked clown of epic proportions who recounts his dream of the Dark Carnival every year at Hallowicked:

"I never been afraid of clowns 
But these clowns were different 
There was nothing funny about these clowns… 
They smiled, they juggled, they laughed 
But yet something was terribly, terribly wrong 
I didn't like these clowns for I could see through them 
I knew what they were really like 
I knew that this carnival that had come to my village 
Was an evil, evil thing."

During the song, “The Show Must Go On,” Juggalos welcome the “Dead dirty carnies, dead Juggalos” and exhort one another to “walk hand in hand with the dead carnival.” Many Juggalos paint their faces to resemble wicked clowns, and inspire fear in others who may not understand their intent.  But what is the root of this fear?  And what is their intent?  What do the clowns do to and for ordinary people? 

Despite their masks, clowns actually serve to unmask us, remove our illusions of grandeur and immortality, and remind us of our humanity.  Of course this is scary, since if I remember I am human, I have to remember that I am mortal, and therefore, as ICP reminds us in “Tilt-a-Whirl,”  “All you muthafuckas are gonna die.” 

The week before I left for Detroit, I went to see the Seattle Shakespeare Company’s production of Twelfth Night, which, like most of Shakespeare’s plays, features clowns. 

Feste and Toby Belch

The clowns of Twelfth Night are at times bawdy and drunken and at other times mysterious.  Much of the plot revolves around the clowns’ plot to bring the pompous and self-important Malvolio “down to earth.”  Malvolio is, as the clowns put it,

“the best persuaded of himself, so
crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is
his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him.” (Twelfth Night II.3) 

The clowns concoct an elaborate plot to humiliate Malvolio, eventually having him imprisoned as a madman.  In Seattle Shakespeare’s production, the director takes the imprisonment and torment of Malvolio to a darker level, involving straps and chains and the beginnings of dental torture.  While this is definitely not a choice I would have made, it made me think of the sinister nature of clowns in general, and of the Dark Carnival in particular, where the wicked clowns often sing about strapping people into freakishly violent carnival rides in order to strip them of their illusions about their lives.  

Click here to watch ICP sing "Halls of Illusion"

So shouldn’t I be afraid of these clowns?  Certainly, if I am like Malvolio, who spends his life in illusion and grandiosity, I will be afraid. Humility and mortality are frightening.  As the calaveras remind us, “as I am now, you soon will be.”  

costume for Dia de los Muertos

Juggalette

Even the drunken antics of Falstaff or Toby Belch can remind us of our own past mistakes and humiliating behavior.  But if I accept physicality, the flesh, and ultimately death and decay as part of being human, I gain a freedom from both pretension and shame.  “The Mighty Death Pop,” ICP’s latest album, reminds me that death is inevitable; both the Hatchet Man and the Greek goddess Atropos are symbols of the fragility of human life.  The words “humility” and “human” both have their root in “humus,” or “earth.”  If we remember we came from the earth and will return to it one day, we won’t be afraid of the clowns. They are the zanies, the rustics, with their hijinks, their schitcks, reminding us to lighten up, not to take ourselves so seriously.  To the lazzi of the commedia dell'arte we can add the lazzi of the Faygo. The Hatchet Man cuts through our bullshit and leaves us with an attitude like the Juggalos at their best, or like Feste, my favorite Shakespearean clown: “generous, guiltless and of free disposition.” 

Happy Hallowicked, everybody.

Battle Creek, Michigan: What do Sojourner Truth and Cornflakes Have in Common?

On my summer vacation, I am determined to read all twelve book of the Left Behind series, the Christian post-apocalyptic thriller set in the Last Days of the earth, between the "Rapture of the Church" (an event which some evangelical Christians believe will occur "in the twinkling of an eye" when Jesus Christ will instantly call his followers to "meet him in the air" and they will be taken up to heaven before the great Tribulation and the coming of the Antichrist) and the "Glorious Appearing," which truly marks the end of the world.  Why am I reading this series?  Because I am a religion teacher, and it is a vision of America.

American religions and apolcalyptic prophecies go hand in hand.  In 1844, William Miller, a Baptist preacher in Rochester, New York, carefully read and studied the Bible, especially the prophecies contained in the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation (the same books the authors and characters in the Left Behind series use to predict their "End Times" events) and told his followers to expect the return of Jesus Christ on October 22nd of that year.  In what has become known as "The Great Disappointment," followers let their crops sit in their fields unharvested and climbed onto the roofs of their homes to await the Lord.  Of course, He didn't show up, but out of those followers, who were then shunned from their former churches, grew the Seventh Day Adventist movement.  After Miller's death, an American prophetess (one of my favorite words), Ellen White, arose.  Ellen received visions from God, direct revelations in the manner of the medieval seers Hroswitha, Hildegard of Bingen and the wonderful Julian of Norwich. Ellen and her husband, James, moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where they began a small community.

For some reason, upstate New York was fertile ground for 19th century prophets and prophetesses.  Mother Ann and her protege, Mother Lucy, of the Shakers, had paved the way earlier for the likes of Joesph Smith (founder of the Mormon church), the Millers, and John Noyes (of the Oneida community).  Many of them later moved to the Midwest.  Maybe upstate New York is known for its open-mindedness (the Woodstock Festival) and progressive ideas (Frederick Douglass published the North Star there; the Seneca Falls Convention was held there, etc.), but if you want to be a modern day prophet, upstate New York is your place.

Matthew had been to Battle Creek as a child to visit the Kellogg's factory.  "I remember we had Fruit Loops at the end of the tour.  Fruit Loops had just been invented."  I had wanted to visit Battle Creek in February because the famous prophetess, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate,  Sojourner Truth, lived there at the end of her life and is buried there.  But in February, her grave was under about 6 feet of snow, so we postponed the trip until the summer.

I also found out they had built a 12 foot statue of Sojourner

Battle Creek is a strange convergence of abolitionism, Seventh Day Adventism, and wacky health/diet/hygiene practices.  In 1849, a group of slave catchers came up here to find an escaped slave and the entire town, after helping the family to get across to Canada, attacked and captured the slave hunters and put them on trial.  The entire state of Michigan was a huge set of stops on the underground railroad, and the behavior of the people of Michigan was one reason why, in 1850, the Fugitive Slave Laws were passed as part of the compromise of 1850.  Sojourner Truth, the powerful orator, ended up settling here, and she even visited Ellen White and her husband at their little village.

However, Sojourner never wanted to join any religion, despite her friendship with Ellen White.  Ellen herself didn't really intend to found a new religion; she just wanted to share her visions, along with her interpretation of the Scriptures, with the world.  Did you know that she is the most translated woman writer in the world?  I decided to buy a couple of her books about the Bible, God and health, and see what she had to say.  So far, her vision of God is much more kind, loving and pleasant than the Left Behind dudes would think.  She talks of God as an amazingly, infinitely loving father, and understands the death of Jesus not (as the Calvinists believe) as some sort of propitiation to an angry God for our sins, but as an expression of God's infinite love. Any depiction of God as wrathful and jealous is, in fact, a slanderous plot by Satan, the father of lies, to give Him a bad reputation.  The Adventists definitely believe the end of the world is imminent, but they do not think God will be responsible for the tremendous human suffering that "the Wrath of the Lamb" wreaks in the fourth book of the series (that's the one I'm on right now.  The Antichrist has taken over the United Nations and so God sends a huge earthquake that crushes a lot of stuff.  To be continued.)  Ellen White continued to have visions of God's love and to interpret Bible prophecies here in Battle Creek for many years.  I think her books are even bigger bestsellers than the Left Behind series.

The Adventists also believe in staying healthy; many are vegetarians, and most of them don't smoke or drink alcohol.  One of their most famous followers was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, whose younger brother, William, patented and sold breakfast cereal.  The Kelloggs and the Whites had set up a health farm/sanitarium in Battle Creek, and thousands of people flocked here for the fresh air, exercise, and the treatments provided by Kellogg.  The invention of breakfast cereal allegedly took place at this time, when Kellogg was trying to find a healthier, vegetarian substitute for bacon and eggs, but something that was easier to chew than dry toast.  He ended up inventing "flakes" for breakfast.  His younger brother was the one who ended up patenting it and selling it and making zillions of dollars, as did his protege, C.W. Post.

After the sanitarium burned down, the Whites and Dr. Kellogg parted ways because Kellogg wanted to build a giant sanitarium in its place, and the Whites were reluctant.  Kellogg had become a kind of a crackpot, even holding a eugenics convention here before he died at the age of 91.  

They are all buried in the same cemetery: the Whites, the Kelloggs, and Sojourner Truth, whose humble memorial sits in the shadow of C.W. Post's (I love Grape Nuts) magnificent mausoleum. (That's it in the backgroud of this photo)

I never knew, when I first visited Michigan, that there were so many interesting, and intertwined stories here. 

Click here to hear Alice Walker deliver Sojourner Truth's famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman?" 

Well, that's the end of my trip...

I got back last week, after a whirlwind visit to Montana to see my friend Laurie Ray, the bounty hunter/repo woman who saved my daughter's life in 2008.  We were lucky enough to be there to celebrate her grandma's 96th birthday with a group of Montana folks.

She's sort of like, "Back off, young man!"

We spent the final drive back from Kalispell to Seattle (On Matt's Birthday, which was the day after Grandma's) trying to wrap our heads around this 13,000 mile epic journey, trying to list the best, the worst (there really was nothing bad), the funniest, the most intense, the most intriguing...Here is the final summary list we came up with:

People we’ve seen and met:  Jack, Rowan, Coby; Stan and Liz Burroway; Thornton (aka Wattie) and Shirley Garrett; The Utah Shakespeare Players; Angie Leedy; the smiling Mormon teachers at the LDS seminary and the American Heritage School, especially Ruel, my evil twin Constitution teacher; Mike and Katie; Leslie, our Navajo guide; Kasey and Tonya; the fake “Marshall” of Dodge City; Tom Morris; Barry Marks; Leroy Thomas and Zydeco Trouble; Maynard Walton; Rachel Meyer; Julie Bradlow; Kris and Don Meyer; Laurie Ray and Grandma Jane!

Spirits we’ve encountered:  Francisco Coronado, the prisoners of Tule Lake;  Captain Jack, Rosie in Gold Hill, Mark Twain, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, Elvis Presley, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman; George Strait; Paul Raymond; John Brown; Angel Delgadillo; the Acoma People buried in the walls of the first Catholic Church; the Apaches in the Death Cave in Twin Arrows, Arizona; Billy the Kid; the rowdy ghosts of Canyon Diablo; BB King; Emmett Till; Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr; the Four Little Girls in Birmingman; Charles Pinckney; Button Gwinnett; Buck Owens; John Wayne and Owen Wister; the Donner Party; the Acadians; William Johnson, the Barber of Natchez; the Ute, Cherokee, Lakota, Acoma, Anasazi, Navajo, Cheyenne, Natchez and many other tribes

Writers we’ve enjoyed:  Robert Louis Stevenson; Annie Proulx; Flannery O’Connor; Michael Connely; St. Paul; Francine Rivers; Allen Ginsberg; John Steinbeck

Presidents whose libraries we’ve seen:  Dwight Eisenhower; William Jefferson Clinton; Jimmy Carter

Great events and we’ve experienced:  Wedding at the Las Vegas Wedding Chapel; Vegas! The Show; The Taming of the Shrew; The Mormon Tabernacle Choir; Zydeco Breakfast in Breaux Bridge, LA; Good Friday in New Iberia; Easter Sunday at St. Augustine; New Orleans Gay Easter Parade; Blues and Funk on Beale Street in Memphis; Loretta Lynn and others at the original Ryman auditorium; Vince Gill at the Grand Ole Opry; Cajun dancing at Prejean’s in Lafayette and Mulate’s in New Orleans; sunrise hot air balloon ride over Albuquerque; Grandma Jane’s 96^th birthday party in Kalispell, MT.

Hot springs and spas:  lalicious pedicure at the Spa Toscana at the Peppermill in Reno; private baths and body scrubs at the Quawpaw Baths in Hot Springs, AR; hot, cold and medium plunges at the Boulder Hot Springs in Montana.

Museums and Monuments, National Parks and Historic Sites: Crater Lake; Captain Jack’s Stronghold; Tule Lake Segregation Center; Reno Art Museum; Mark Twain Museum in Virginia City; Temple Square in Salt Lake City; Arches National Park; Monument Valley and the Navajo reservation; Zion National Park; The Grand Canyon; The Cadillac Ranch; Historic Dodge City; Hovenweep National Monument; Acoma Sky City Pueblo; Charles Pinckney Historic Site; Coronado Quivira Museum; Birmingham Civil Rights Memorial; Lorraine Motel; Edmund Pettus Bridge; Kelly Ingram Park; Money, MS country store; Pirate House and Slave Market Museum  in Charleston; Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum; Joseph Smith Historic Site; the African American Museum in Natchez; The Billy Graham Boyhood Home and Museum; Oral Roberts University with its Prayer Tower; the Christ of the Ozarks; Thorncrown Chapel; Paul Raymond Boyhood Home and Manhattan, KS Town Library; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Wichita Art Museum; Pea Ridge Battlefield; Vicksburg National Monument; The Woody Guthrie museum; the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum; the Alta Lakota Museum; the old Colonial Cemetery in Savannah; Pea Ridge and Vicksburg battlefields

Roads:  Historic Route 66; the Mormon Trail; the California Trail; the Great River Road; the Loneliest Road; the Redneck Riviera Road; the Salt Marshes of South Carolina; the Natchez Trace Parkway; the Blue Ridge Parkway; the Las Vegas Strip; Arkansas Highway 7

Cities: Reno; Las Vegas; Salt Lake City; Albuquerque; Amarillo; Wichita;  Topeka; Little Rock; New Orleans; Birmingham; Atlanta; Memphis; Savannah; Charleston; Charlotte; Nashville

Worst mishap:  Matt’s toe during the Arches National Park Hike

Lost items: neck pillow, wireless mouse, Sonicare toothbrush, laptop power cord, Matt's seven year coin (I got him a new one), some unmentionable items also

Best views:  Monument Valley, Mount Shasta, Crater Lake in the snow, Delicate Arch, The Grand Canyon, the mighty Mississippi, the Flathead Valley in Montana, the Nicholas Sparks Carolina coastline

Most relaxation: reading on the porch swing at Zion Mountain Bison Ranch, lying on Folly Beach, playing craps in Las Vegas

Best food: Navajo tacos with fry bread; Las Vegas Buffets; crawfish boil and gumbo; fried catfish and hush puppies; giant steaks in Elko Nevada, Amarillo, TX; ribeye at the Hive restaurant in Bentonville; Bison ribeye at the Virginian restaurant in Buffalo WY;  Bite Me Barbecue in Wichita Kansas and the Whole Hog BBQ in Little Rock AR. Tuna nachos with watermelon pico de gallo at Folly Beach.

Biggest (and pretty much only) fight:  over the newfangled coffee maker at the Museum Hotel in Bentonville

Matt’s most creeped out moment: near the Apache “Death Cave” in Twin Arrows Ghost Town; top of the Acoma pueblo with dead bodies in the church walls

Adina’s most creeped out moment: when the woman at the B and B said they used the fire hoses to cool down the marchers in Birmingham.  Runner up:  12^th grade civics class at American Heritage School

Total miles driven: 12,800

Best hotels: View Hotel , Monument Valley; Occidental Hotel, Buffalo, Wyoming; Hamilton-Turner Inn, Savannah

Thanks to everyone who read my blog.  Thank you to the sabbatical committee at Northwest for giving me this amazing gift.  Thank you to my parents, who provided additional funding for lodging.  Thank you to Matt Beall, my partner in travel, in recovery, and in life.  

What Next?  It's time to move into my new house, about which there will NOT be a blog, because it would be a lot less interesting.

Back in the West with all the Characters

I am writing this blog at the desk Owen Wister used when he stayed at this hotel.  I don't usually rave about hotels we have stayed at, although we have stayed at some great ones.  But this hotel is the best, on a par with the View in Monument Valley and the Hamilton-Turner in Savannah.  It's more like staying in a museum than a hotel.  We are in Buffalo, Wyoming after a very long drive from Chamberlain, SD yesterday.  Back in the West, in so many ways!

This morning, we visited St Joseph's Indian School in South Dakota.  I was a little wary, because of the horror stories of the American Indian Schools that were so abusive and practiced a form of cultural genocide.  But this school, on the surface at least, seems to be the exact opposite.  It's a boarding school, all right, but it's been redesigned and set up in a circular shape, to mimic the circles of the Native American Villages.  The students actually learn the Lakota language at the school, and are encouraged to speak it.  If you know anything about the history of Indian schools, this is the exact opposite of what used to happen.  Every September, they have a big pow-wow and invite everyone from the neighboring communities.  The teachers are Sacred Heart priests, and they seem like wacky Maryknoll or Jesuit Fathers, running around participating in sweat lodges and baptizing you with cedar branches and encouraging the kids to learn about their traditions and be proud of them.  You should see the phenomenal art that has been produced by the students and alumni - paintings, sculptures, bead and leather work, all based on the Lakota traditions.  They have now created a museum, the Alta Lakota museum, for the public to come view.

I asked them if they ever did exchanges, or had sister schools, and they said "NO!"  They were a little vehement, and when I asked why, they said it was because their school was unique and really unusual, and they wanted to keep it that way.  I  have to admit it was really rad, but I was a little taken aback at how isolated they seemed to be.  It seems like a lovely place of healing, of preserving culture and language, of helping the kids to succeed in this tough modern world while at the same time not letting them forget they are Lakota.  It made me see that teaching about Indians has got to be so much more than teaching about broken treaties and massacres and smallpox, even though that stuff is important to know about.

We drove and drove.  We were planning to stop at the Crazy Horse memorial down in the Black Hills, but I guess I hadn't really read or researched about it.  I thought it was some sort of Native American tribute to Crazy Horse, but it's a late Polish immigrant and now his family, who charge 27 dollars for you to see a view of the statue that you can see from the road, and then watch a video about the guy who started carving it and then died, and they spend the entire time talking about how they don't take any government handouts.  You should have seen the reviews on Yelp!  They were hilarious, all about how angry they were that they even went to the monument at all, how it's a rip off, how Crazy Horse's descendants hate it because it's carving into the Black Hills, and on and on.  We gave it a miss and stopped at Wall Drug instead.  For some reason, I thought this was just a drug store, but it's a giant city full of every made-in-China item, every piece of wall art with Buffalo and Eagles in it, some actual original paintings by great illustrators like N.C. Wyeth, a lot of cool Western Wear, some rides, some statues, some restaurants, and basically you could spend the whole day there without even buying anything, just browsing.  I highly recommend it, even though you think it's going to be all touristy with the millions of signs as you are approaching.

We were worried about the approaching thunderstorms, but we just had a few showers as we drove into our final destination for the night, Buffalo, Wyoming.  Full of antique furniture, taxidermy heads, and all kinds of artifacts from the writers, adventurers, outlaws, gamblers and US presidents who have stayed here!  I selected the Owen Wister suite, of course.  I love to teach about the triumvirate of Owen Wister, Frederic Remington and Teddy Roosevelt, who created the myth of the West although none of them spent much time out here.  What time they did spend, apparently, they spent at this very hotel!  We had dinner (bison and elk) at the Virginian Restaurant which is part of the hotel and saloon here, and it was great!  It's fantastic being back in the West and I think we're going to read an Annie Proulx story or two to celebrate.  Tomorrow it's on to Montana, my favorite state of all.

Back up the Great River Road with Mark Twain and the Reorganized LDS, aka “Hippie Mormons”

People in Missouri were not very creative.  For example, the people who moved west from Florida to Missouri named the town they settled in “Florida.”  That’s where Mark Twain was born.  Just down the river from Hannibal, Missouri, where he grew up, is a town called Louisiana, Missouri, named by settlers from Louisiana.  Well, they certainly have a tourist attraction in Hannibal, MO, the little town on the Mississippi River where young Sam Clemens grew up, and about which he wrote in Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and his most famous work, often called the Great American Novel, Huckleberry Finn.  There isn’t a lot else in Hannibal, Missouri, other than Mark Twain stuff.  There was the Mark Twain Riverboat, the Mark Twain Casino, Mark Twain State Park, Mark Twain Lake, the Mark Twain Hotel (and the Mark Twain Motel), the Mark Twain diner (serving Mark Twain fried chicken) and so on.

  In addition to the Mark Twain name, all the Mark Twain characters had their own commercial establishments:  Aunt Polly’s Attic, the Widow’s Antiques, Becky Thatcher’s Ice Cream, and so forth.  I looked for Jim’s Soul Food, but Jim didn’t have any business of his own in Hannibal, although I did learn about Uncle Dan’l, the middle aged slave who used to tell stories to the kids in Hannibal when Sam was growing up.  Mark Twain said he carried that man around with him, and put him into his stories, most famously as Jim, the slave who is Huck Finn’s companion.

It was prom night in Hannibal when we arrived, so we got to see all sorts of sweet looking teenaged couples with sparkly gowns and matching ties parading around having their photos taken by the river, which is definitely the centerpiece of town.  The few blocks down by the river have been restored to their 19^th century charm, and mostly focus on Mark Twain’s life, with the alleged cabin of the “real Huckleberry Finn,” who was Sam Clemens boyhood friend and son of the town drunk, with whom he was forbidden to play because he was the “wrong sort,” and who represented that freedom that a boy longs for, as the centerpiece.  We also saw “Becky Thatcher’s House,” with stories about the “real Becky Thatcher,” and Mark Twain’s father’s law office, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.  We used to teach the latter at Northwest, but it was too long, and too flawed, according to some colleagues, and then we started teaching Puddinhead Wilson instead, and then we stopped reading Mark Twain altogether.  I wonder if anyone reads him any more in high school. I was thinking of trying to have my Visions of America class read Huck Finn this upcoming year, especially now that there has been so much discussion of its  use of the “N-word” constantly – both Jane Smiley and Toni Morrison have written excellent essays, one criticizing and one defending the teaching of the novel in schools. It might be fun for the kids, not only to read Huck’s adventures, but to talk about the ongoing relevance (or lack thereof) of the book.  It’s another American Journey book, like The Grapes of Wrath, but it’s also a long-ish novel, so I would probably have to do the same thing that I do with the Steinbeck, and offer several different “tiers” of reading, only discussing selected sections.  Okay, I’ve talked myself into it.  I also want to add some sections from Roughing It into my Western course reader this year, now that I’ve been to Virginia City and all.

where, as a boy, young Sam Clemens hid while playing hooky from school and saw a dead body.  Story after story was presented to us about Mark Twain’s boyhood home, friends, and activities, as well as pictures from his later life, his travels on the Mississippi and farther afield, his many accomplishments and witty sayings.  It was very heartwarming, especially when they had Norman Rockwell’s original paintings that he created to illustrate both Tom Sawer and Huck Finn.

From Hannibal, we couldn’t resist driving up a final portion of The Great River Road before saying farewell to the Mighty Mississippi and turning West. The Great River Road winds right along the banks of the Mississippi, with a couple of sweet little restored 19^th century towns along the way.  During the 19^th century, they were “boomtowns,” prosperous river boat stops and centers of trade.  Now there is really nothing much in these towns except for maybe one old restored B and B and a brewpub, but they do have a ton of eagles!  Bald eagles, that migrate and live there for the winter!  So they have a bunch of preservation and interpretive centers, and eagle festivals during that time..  If you go a few blocks up from the river, however, the areas are really sketchy, depressed, with abandoned businesses and homes, and apparently lots of Meth.  The route from the fertilizer of Iowa to the meth labs of the Midwest is booming, and when you combine meth with urban decay, you get some pretty depressing vistas just half a mile or so from the quaint little restored 19^th century storefronts with tea cozies and local pottery and so forth.  That contrast is definitely another potent vision of America I have come away with on this trip; I’ve seen it all along the way, not just on the Great River Road. The Mississippi is a wonderful, American river, a vision of America in so many ways.  After this trip, I have many ideas about how to teach more about this river, its imagery and symbolism, and all the literature that has been written about it.  But never mind that now because I have to talk about our next stop, Nauvoo, Illinois, home of the LIBERAL MORMONS!

I was a little hesitant about going to another LDS site after Utah.  I was sick of the smiling young missionary women with perfect teeth, telling me their memorized lines about Brigham Young.  Matt was afraid I’d have “PTSD – Post-Traumatic-Smith-Disorder” and start ranting again.  I had seen enough giant Mormon art with shining blond angels to last me many years.  However, when we drove up to the Joseph Smith Historic Site in Nauvoo I didn’t know I would be in for Mormons of an entirely different color.  The first odd thing I noticed when I drove up was that there was nothing about “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”  Instead, all the signs said “Community of Christ.”  What was that all about?  We pulled up and were greeted by a silver-haired couple; the man had small round glasses and was NOT wearing a tie.  The woman was wearing slacks!  Okay, what was going on?  I asked them what church they were part of, and they said it was called the Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints, but they had changed the name because the organization didn’t like the term “Saints.”  (I suspect they thought it was a bit arrogant.)  I learned that they are a splinter group that formed around the son of Joseph Smith after Joseph himself was killed in 1844. 

Our mild-mannered guide at the graves of the Smiths

Joseph Smith III was only eleven years old when his father died, and so the adult male leadership (Brigham Young and his gang of 12, James Strang and Sydney Rigdon mainly) started fighting over the leadership of the church.  They had lots of disputes, some over polygamy (although most of them ended up practicing it anyway) and other doctrinal issues, but it was mainly “Joseph said I was supposed to be the leader!  No, I was!  No, it was me!  I excommunicate you!  No, I excommunicate YOU!”  You know how boys are.  Many prophecies were read, many proclamations were made, and eventually Brigham went off to Utah, Joseph went to Michigan and Sydney went to Pittsburgh.

In the meantime, Emma Smith, Joseph’s first wife, returned quietly to Nauvoo.  She had never liked the idea of plural marriage; while we were on the tour, we met some “real” Mormons from Idaho (you can tell real Mormons because they wear suits and ties, and the silver-haired older men carry themselves with an air of great arrogance, unlike the humble hippie Mormon tour guide we followed) – one of the men, who really did know a huge amount about Nauvoo history – told me that his great-great-great aunt had been “sealed” to Joseph Smith when she was 18 years old and had been a refugee in the Smith household with her brothers and sisters.  Joseph enjoyed the “access to the teenage girls” (this was coming from the mouth of an actual devout real Mormon, mind you) but he promised not to consummate the marriage until after they had “moved to the mountains.”  As you might imagine, whether he consummated the marriage or not, Emma would not have been happy about this.  It all was a moot point, because shortly thereafter Joseph and his brother Hyrum were killed by an angry mob while in jail over in Carthage, Illinois.  More later on why, exactly, they were there; I never got the full story from the not-so-informative official LDS movie we watched at the Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

Emma moved back to Nauvoo and in 1847 she married Louis Bidamon, who was NOT a Mormon, and not even very religious.  They had met when he was in the Illinois state militia, trying to defend the Mormon community from angry mobs.  I think he was something of a ladies’ man, because he’d already been married twice (once widowed and once divorced) and also had a couple of kids with other women to whom he was not married.  According to some sources I read, he thought Joseph Smith was a good man who had somehow been deceived into believing he was a prophet.  Anyway, Emma and Louis lived in the mansion house in Nauvoo that had been built for the Smiths, and Louis became the stepfather to Joseph III.  In 1860, when Joseph III was in his late twenties and still under the guidance of his mother, he presented himself to a community of church members who had settled in Amboy, Illinois, and said that the Holy Spirit had guided him there and he was now ready to assume responsibility as his father’s successor.  And so the Reorganized LDS church was born.

I asked the friendly guide a lot of questions about this sect of around 250,000 people who now call Independence, MO their church home.  Interesting, isn’t it? That was one of the main communities that the original Mormon Smithites had tried to found, but they were kicked out of the entire state.  According to the guide, they believe in the truth of the Book of Mormon BUT they do not practice plural marriage and never have.  In fact, it took the church leadership, which considers the church to be the real heir of Joseph Smith, a long time to admit that Smith had practiced polygamy himself – but they can’t deny it any more, especially when relatives of Smith’s other wives keep showing up.  Their main difference, however, in my opinion, is theological:  they believe in the Trinity (the main LDS church does not) and they are just more like mainstream Christians.  In fact, they are a part of the National Council of Churches.  They do believe in the priesthood, but they believe that women are called to the priesthood as much as men AND last year they voted to ordain homosexual members of the church to the priesthood, and to celebrate same-sex marriage!  So regular Mormons they ain’t!

What, you may ask, is the relationship like between the Community of Christ and the regular LDS?  I wondered if there was any animosity, but of course both my tour guide and the LDS guys on the tour denied it vehemently.  They are all friends, even if they don’t agree on major doctrinal points.  It makes sense that the church that was founded by Emma Smith, a woman, would be much more egalitarian and less ridiculously patriarchal, right?  The question that still remains in my mind is why Brigham Young got so many people on his side, and why his version of Mormonism is so much more popular and populated.  Once you start reading about the early history of the church after the death of Joseph and Hyrum, it’s like going down the rabbit hole.  After Sydney Rigdon, who had been one of Joseph Smith’s closest friends and followers, lost his bid to be the Big Cheese (Brigham Young had the Quorum of 12, five of whom were in Illinois at the time, to vote him down), he went to Pittsburgh with a small group of followers, and later moved to New York.  He is a fascinating character, and there is even a theory that he was one of the original authors of the Book of Mormon.  Meanwhile, James Strang, a newer convert but a very charismatic fellow (and close associate of Smith) took about 125 followers up to Michigan!  On the way, he went into the woods and discovered a NEW set of bronze plates, said to be yet another part of the Book of Mormon!  Hah!  If you can find one set of plates, why not another set?  There might be plates and Testaments buried all over this continent!  Strang set up a kingdom on Beaver Island, which is sort of next to Mackinac Island (a lovely place we visited last summer).  Not only was he the king, but he was later elected to the Michigan state legislature as well.  My favorite part of Strang’s story is that while he was publicly a staunch opponent of plural marriage, he later secretly married a second wife who traveled with his group disguised as a man.  Once he settled on Beaver Island, he did marry a couple of other women as well.  He was assassinated by some disgruntled followers, one of whom he had had flogged, or so they say.  Strang and Rigdon’s followers disbursed after their deaths, and really don’t exist any more (although I did meet a teacher on my Michigan study trip who said that her great great grandma had been one of Strang’s wives). 

Why has Brigham Young’s group flourished and grown?  I asked Matt this question and he said it was because they went WEST instead of north to Michigan or east to Pennsylvania.  The West drew them, and helped them to grow.  I think this is a great theory, along with the fact that Brigham did anything he could to silence dissenters after that.  His followers did not allow many “gentiles” even to settle the area  - see the Mountain Meadows Massacre, for an example of Mormon brutality towards white settlers and the Circleville Massacre for an example of Mormon brutality towards Native Americans.  Do I sound a little hostile to the LDS right now?  I guess they look even worse when set next to their gentler hippie cousins, the Community of Christ, whose beliefs in peace, divine worth of all persons, inclusivity and true diversity are laid out on their website.  Read about the Hippie Mormons.