I’ve been writing columns for the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
since 2011. Every week for more than six and a half years. That’s some 335
columns, 225,000 words. People ask, “How do you come up with something to write
about every week?”
Usually it’s easy. Wyoming politicians provide fodder. It’s
like shooting fish in a barrel. But not this morning. I’m just sitting at my
desk, listening to Jim Croce sing “Photographs and Memories,” and staring at
the walls. Suddenly, there it was.
Have you ever walked around your home or office, contemplating
the art on your walls and the books on your shelves? Few things say more about
who we are. Psychiatrists and political scientists can discern a number of clues
about us by doing that.
On the wall above my computer screen, is a framed copy of
President John F. Kennedy’s iconic Inaugural Address. “Ask not what your
country can do for you…” On my bookshelves is a replica of Robert Berk’s
sculpture of JFK alongside many of the martyred President’s biographies and
those of his brother Robert. My interest in politics has its genesis in the
hope these two imparted.
On the wall to my right are two prints. Robert Koehler’s
“The Strike,” is an 1886 painting depicting a strike at a steel mill. Workers
gather round the boss. He’s trying to explain, I imagine, why the company can’t
pay livable wages, why an eight-hour work day is impractical, and why workers
owe more than their meager paycheck to the company store. In the forefront is a
man who has heard enough. He’s picking up a rock. To his left is a woman
holding an infant while another child clings to her ragged dress. I imagine
she’s fearing for her husband’s safety but aware their family’s well-being is
at stake in the outcome of “The Strike.”
I treasure it for its message about organized labor’s role
in building America and because it was a gift 40 years ago from one of
Wyoming’s great labor leaders, Keith Henning. Keith spent a lifetime fighting for
the belief that people working fulltime ought to earn wages that provide adequately
for their family. The painting reminds me that, sadly, not many fight that
fight anymore.
Then there’s Leonard Baskin’s portrait of General George
Armstrong Custer. Baskin’s painting, which is the cover of Evan Connell’s “Son
of the Morningstar,” reveals a deeply troubled man animated by the darker
angels of his nature. Shoulders slumped, eyes staring into a soulless
existence, Baskin’s portrait displays what he called a “hatred of Custer and
deep admiration for the Indians who destroyed him.”
Baskin explained his artistic-depictions of Native Americans
and their white tormenters allowed him “to indict our government and all of its
peoples.” The painting is a memento of a disturbing history and the ongoing need
of European-Americans to own it, atone for it, and to teach our grandchildren
its lessons.
A map of Nicaragua covers the east wall, a reminder of the
year my family spent there working with Habitat for Humanity. Next are photos
of Nicaraguan children. One shows a young girl with a torn, dirty tee-shirt
displaying a U.S. flag reminding me of the grinding poverty in Central-American
and the role of the U.S. in creating it. I wonder whether she is now one of the
Dreamers.
Across the bookshelves are
baseball memorabilia, an old photo of my father in the days dividing his migrant
field-worker days from World War II, and books on politics, history, and
theology. Many of the latter were written by scholars exploring linguistic,
cultural, and historical aspects of Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other
religious texts. There’s a small statue of Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante,
a gift from preaching-colleague Duane Ferchen. It reminds me of the importance
of forever tilting at windmills.
Take that stroll yourself.
The books we shelve and the pictures we hang say something about us, our lives,
and our uniquely diverse views of the world. What do yours say?
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