Geometry assignment; Feb. 25

We continued working with the three trig functions today as we solved right triangles and went over a few word problems.  Defining angles of elevation and angles of depression was a key point in the lesson, as was being able to solve a right triangle for all of its sides and angles.

Assignment:  solving right triangle worksheet #1-11 odd;  section 8-7;  page 318-319;  #1, 2, 5, 10

Chapter 8 Review tomorrow for chapter 8 test on Thursday

Remembering Frederick Manfred--1912-1994 (vi)

Frederick Manfred remembered me from that second seemingly invisible visit, perhaps because he thought it was good of me to bring that beret-ed old aficionado up to meet him just months before the oxygen tank was retired. From that visit, Fred remembered me. Besides, he knew I taught literature at Dordt College.

Frederick Manfred stood 6’9”. In the late 20s, the basketball coach at Calvin saw this huge presence show up on campus and almost immediately recruited him to play ball, even though Feik had not played a quarter of high school ball at Western Academy. Back then, competitive athletics were basically aerobics for town boys. Fred wasn’t.

Aldert Venhuizen, a student manager for the basketball team in those years at Calvin, once told me that his job for half a season of practices was nothing more or less than teaching Feik Feikema to rebound, which he attempted to do by shoving him in the lower back whenever a shot would go up during scrimmage, creating a sense of timing Fred had never learned.

Tall and gaunt, his shoulders broad as a double-tree, Manfred’s sheer physical stature filled a room—and that was before he started talking. Because, in the late 70s and 80s, he knew me—and because he knew Dordt—he liked driving down highway 75 from Luverne to meet with my literature classes. With time, the sharp edges of the old scandal had dulled a bit, enough so that it didn’t seem an abomination for Feik Feikema to appear in a Dordt College classroom, at least it wasn’t as unthinkable as it might have been a decade earlier. Still, discretion advised me not to carry the news into local papers.

Mr. Abma’s questions about Fred’s soul, about his salvation, weren’t questions he alone had raised, of course; and there was that matter of sexuality—not to mention violence, loads of it in some of the "Buckskin Man Tales," Scarlet Plume, for example, buckets of blood and gore from the Indian wars. “Was that Christian writing?” people asked, rhetorically. Those books were nothing at all like the Sugar-Creek Gang.

Manfred used to tell me that there was, in the Middle Ages, Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, two significant English poets. Chaucer loved the miller and the wife of Bath, sinners and the saints, loved every one of them. Gower could sing praises only to God, not to life.

Fred said he wanted to be a Chaucer, chanting the tales of all the Siouxland pilgrims. He wanted to chronicle the joy of the very earth he loved between his fingers and toes. He wanted to celebrate life, not eschew it for dreamy visions of the hereafter. The good Christians of Siouxland didn’t know quite what to make of that. In a way, to their minds and souls, Manfred loved life a bit more than good Christians should. He used to say that his grandfather, an outspoken atheist, had the best answer of all to impertinent spiritual questions—“God is in me, and I’m smiling.”

I knew his grandfather’s answer would not have been what Mr. Abma was looking for, had he taken the time to ask the question he didn’t.

The first time Fred Manfred visited a class of mine I had no idea how it might go. I had spent some time having my students read passages from some of the novels and a few poems from Winter Count, and I’d promised him that his appearance wouldn’t require a thing—all he needed to do was field questions.

And those questions came. One kid raised his hand and brought up a scene in Green Earth, when, soon after his profession of faith, Free and his buddies hang out. In the novel, a couple of the guys, multi-talented, tune their expressive flatulence into music, if you can believe that—“The Star-Spangled Banner,” or so Manfred would have us believe.

“Mr. Manfred,” one of my students said, “in that passage, are you making fun of profession of faith by having them fart the way they did?”

I don’t remember how Fred Manfred answered the question, but what I’ll never forget is the way he grabbed me, shocked, the minute the hour ended. “That kid said the word fart right in class,” he said. I’d never guessed that Frederick Manfred’s sensibilities could be so easily violated.

It was one of those moments when something happens that blows our expectations into oblivion. I thought I knew Frederick Manfred. After all, I’d read many of his novels. But the man was even bigger than I’d determined, and there was more to him than I’d guessed—which is, I’ve come to believe, true of most of us.

___________________

Tomorrow:  A visit with the President

Algebra 10-12 assignment; April 28

We got back our factoring test today and went over it as the students had a chance to correct their mistakes.  We then got started on the next unit of study which involves working with radical expressions.  Today's lesson involved work on simplifying radical expressions and factoring out perfect squares.  After going over several sample problems together, the students then got started on their homework at the end of the period.


Assignment:  Simplifying radicals worksheet #1-20

Geometry assignment; May 13

We went over our test from last week, and then took questions about the homework.  The lesson today focused on calculating the slope of various line segments, and also being able to identify the different types of slopes  ( positive, negative, zero, and undefined ).  The students got started on their assignment at the end of the period.


assignment:  section 13-2;  page 532-533;  #1-21 all, 23, 24, 28

Morning Thanks--Anniversary

She was 22--that's enough of a start. 

There's a story here. Esther Helen Emal nee Claassen died very young, just 22 years old, and she died in 1945, which might prompt you to believe she left a husband in uniform; and that might be true if it weren't for the fact that her mortal remains are in the cemetery beside First Mennonite Church, a rural congregation in central Nebraska.

The war didn't take her, even though it took thousands of others her age in 1945. And it likely didn't take her husband either, although he was, in all likelihood, very much of age. Traditionally, Mennonites are pacifists, although calling them "traditional" pacifists makes the position they've religiously staked out sound far less difficult than it is or has been. Telling someone you're a pacifist with Hitler trying to take over the world couldn't have been a cakewalk.

I was out on a blue highway, on my way back to Beatrice, Nebraska, when there it was--First Mennonite, a tan brick fortress mid-prairie, its own well-manicured cemetery in the backyard. I have to push myself to make unplanned stops because my natural tendency--a vestige of original sin, I think--is simply to keep trucking, to get there, wherever it is I'm going. My internal capitalist reminds me I hadn't planned on a stop at First Mennonite. It wasn't on the itinerary. 

These days, that's when I remind myself I'm retired. 

I drove in. There's always life in a cemetery.

To be truthful, I didn't think much about Esther Helen Eman nee Claassen when I stood in the grass beside her grave and snapped this picture. What had stopped me cold was the icyness of what's on the cement beside her--three little somewhat scattered markers telling the world that there's a vacancy here; the space beside Esther Helen is open, you know, just in case. 

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls." That's John Donne. And Hemingway, later. "It tolls for thee."

Which is to say, me.

Memento Mori--memorials of death--abound in our world, although, quite frankly, they abounded much more richly in the age of Menno Simmons and John Donne.  Here's a couple of beauties I snapped in Holland a couple of years ago. 

One of the side doors of an old cathedral, a sticky note skeleton, to remind you not to forget that there's an end to things.  Just sayin'.

How about this bonny lass?  Naked as a baby, but that skull is, you might say, a dead giveaway.

I don't know--maybe I'm just susceptible. "Vacant," the three little slips said, as if space was on sale last Saturday. 

Look, today's our anniversary, not a time to be haunted by death, right?  

Well, maybe, maybe not. What all this marble intends is simply to say that death is real. 

So live. Get off the highway. Keep scratching items off your bucket list, and always add a couple more at the bottom.

That's not a bad rule of thumb for an anniversary--42 years today.  We'll have to see what we can do.

I don't know a thing about Esther Helen Eman nee Claassen, but I dare bet that were she sitting there at her grave site last Saturday when I stopped, she'd probably suggest the very same thing.

Keeping time

So, anyway, sometimes when we go to town (sounds so Depression-era, doesn't it?) we take gravel. It's faster, even though stones up the wheel wells get old and you can't keep the dust off the back of the car. But then, both of ours are old, not decrepit, just old.

Friday I got to thinking I was late, so I took the gravel four miles straight north to the blacktop, then west to town. It was windy (what else is new?) and I was in the Tracker which isn't much more than a motorcycle engine aboard a tin can. I'm no Iowa farm kid so keeping the Tracker from fishtailing on loose gravel isn't something that comes naturally, which means I was floating along dangerously, trying to make time because I fashioned myself late.

I'm going to walk in the graduation ceremony at the college, I'm emeriti, hence a guest, and I know I'm going to have to hike a country mile once I park the Tracker because the campus is going to be, like always, full of people. I don't want to be late, but neither do I want to end up in the ditch. At the same time, I'm feeling guilty because if I'd have started earlier, I'm telling myself, I wouldn't have to fly. What a cocktail!--fear and guilt on gravel.

Suddenly it hits me. I've been a ton of places in the world where I wouldn't be racing down gravel at breakneck speed just to get to something on time.  Seriously. I've been places where church start a half hour late because nobody gets there on time because most people don't "keep time" like a chapel full of Dutch Calvinists. Just one of the enemies in Walden is the clock, after all, because Thoreau says its infernal tick-tocking runs our lives, and it does. 

I'm risking life and limb because I can't be a minute late. I know good people who'd say that's flat out nuts.  So I'm angry too, on top of everything else. That's another blasted ingredient in this potent mix.

No matter. I'm in Sioux County, Iowa, so I keep the pedal to the metal. 

But then maybe I'm just getting old.

Not long ago I got to an appointment with the heart specialist right on time.  I walked into the office, signed in, and was directed to the waiting room, which was so full that I took the very last chair, sat down, crossed my legs, looked around, and texted my wife, telling her it would for sure be a while. 

Immediately--I mean just that fast--a nurse calls out my name: "Mr. Shaap."  

Nobody else moves. It's got to be me. 

I stand up and figure every last person in that waiting room hates this Mr. Shaap. I would.

Once we're out of ear shot, I shake my head. "You just made a couple dozen enemies," I tell her. "That room is full, and I'm the one who just got here."

She rolled her eyes. "They're all old people," she says. "They all got here an hour early."

I'll have you know I parked relatively close on Friday, closer than I thought I would, in fact. I carted my cap and gown over, even went to the wrong place for en-robing, and was directed across the street to the mezzanine floor of the chapel, where I put on the glorious trappings of academia, and stood there, at least ten minutes early, waiting.

Just like an old guy. 

The Story of Hugh Glass

Two other mountain men stayed with him, and one of them, Jim Bridger, would become even more famous than he. It was 1823, and they were part of a party of trappers, 200 miles from a settlement, when they stumbled on a she-bear who didn't take kindly to being disturbed, her cubs right there at her side.

He suffered greatly when she struck. There was no time for him to get his rifle, so he fought back with his knife; but a mad grizzly wasn't just a sparring partner, and soon enough Hugh Glass was lacerated and bloody and maimed. The bear was dead, Glass well on his way there himself.

The boss asked for volunteers to stay with the dying man because no man should be alone in his hour of real need. Bridger and John Fitzgerald kindly raised their hands.

But Glass didn't die. He wouldn't. 

Three days later, Bridger and Fitzgerald grew fearful, what with Lakota all over the place, most of them on the hunt for scalps. But Glass kept breathing, his wounds stanched but his body still a crumpled, broken mess. 

Finally, scared for their own lives, they left him behind, alone, bloody and dying, or so they thought. He had no more use for his rifle, his knife, his belongings, they figured, so they took all of that with him. There were Indians all around--what choice did they have? I mean, the man was almost scalped and his ribs poked out of his back where the grizzly had ripped away his flesh.

It's the stuff myth is made of, and this story is one of them, one of the great myths of the American west--the legend of Hugh Glass. He crawled, literally, for miles, subsisting on what he could find with his broken hands on the ground in front of him. Crawled. 

What sustained him, he said, was revenge. He was going to kill Bridger and Fitzgerald, who'd left him alone, unarmed, bloody and broken, at death's door. Each day, each hour, he took another straight shot of pure hate.

With the help of friendly Indians who fashioned a hide to cover his still-open wounds, with a diet of bugs and berries and whatever he could reach to eat, including a bison calf a pack of wolves had just brought down, Hugh Glass crawled all the way to the Cheyenne River, where he fashioned a raft and floated down to Fort Kiowa, four miles north of what is Chamberlain, South Dakota, today. He'd crawled for two long months and 200 miles.

It took him more months to recover, but he went back west, to the wilderness, still driven by hate. Some time later, he found Jim Bridger at a trading post on the Yellowstone. For reasons no one really knows, Hugh Glass, whose soul was black with hate, somehow let him live. What had sustained him during an ordeal that has become legend simply disappeared.

Just a few miles south of Lemmon, South Dakota, there's a monument to this unearthly survival tale, the story of Hugh Glass.

But if you'd like to read more, have a look at Frederick Manfred's Lord Grizzly, a runner up for the National Book Award in 1954, when it was published. Manfred told me, years ago, that once upon a time he'd sat on the back step of his family's farm house, the milking done, and asked himself what stories this land could tell. 

One of them, he discovered, was Hugh Glass, a story that became Lord Grizzly.

He also told me that he couldn't understand why the people from whom he'd come, pious Dutch and Frisian immigrants to Siouxland, a place he claimed to have named himself, didn't trust him. After all, he said, Lord Grizzly, his most famous novel, was all about forgiveness.

I read the Hugh Glass story again, first time in years, in Robert Utley's A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific and couldn't help but remember my old friend Fred Manfred, Feike Feikema, who died in 1994, twenty years ago, as mythic in his own way as was the old trapper.

I think he'd like me retelling it again. After all, it belongs to the land.