Michigan – The Pull Of The Land

Christmas 2024

December 25, 2024December 25, 2024 Richard Barnes

July 21 marked our fortieth anniversary. These have been years of joy and laughter along with periods of great sorrow and tears. We have been blessed by people — whether friends or short-lived acquaintances — each of whom played a role in molding us. I credit them for the positive impacts and blame myself for the negative.

For example, earlier this year, as I searched for a misplaced item, I found an old curio and immediately recognized it as a gift from an elderly couple whom we had met on our honeymoon. At one of the ports of call, they had gone to a curiosity shop and bought it, and gifted it to us at dinner. I had not thought of them for decades. But the item instantly brought them back to my recollection. Given their age in 1984, I can only assume they have long since passed away by now, but their sunny disposition and sincere care for us has been an encouragement and inspiration since the moment I again saw their gift. And it was a mild rebuke for my having forgotten them.

As Lillie and I thought about options to celebrate our anniversary, the choice became an easy one: why not return to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where we began life as a married couple and where we still have friends who continue to influence us to this day? As I wrote in Lullaby

“Whenever I count my blessings, I think of my parents and grandparents and the life and heritage they bequeathed me.

“I think of El Pao and childhood friends.

“And I always think of Kalamazoo.

“I vividly recall flying to that town for the first time in the early summer of 1984. As the plane approached and the green fields and lakes — so many lakes! — came into view, my heart was powerfully drawn to that small midwestern city that I had hardly ever heard about (except in a Glenn Miller song).

“The folks I met, my interactions with clerks, executives, factory workers, children, immediately brought El Pao to my mind. The Midwest became more than a geographical touchpoint: it immediately became a part of me … because it was always a part of me, only I did not know it. The ready friendship and transparency of our neighbors, church brethren, professional colleagues, mechanics, you-name-it, was a throwback to my childhood in El Pao and purlieus. It was coming home to a home you did not know you had.”

Thomas Wolfe titled one of his works, You Can’t Go Home Again. In the novel he expands on this, “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

Agree. However, one can return — must return! — to some extent: the extent of gratitude and recognition of the strong foundations. One can return to say “thank you” and to build upon that groundwork or to say “I’m sorry” and make things right as necessary. Living in the past is neither healthy nor helpful. Christianity does not worship the past; however, we should recognize it and appreciate it and build upon it.

It was good to be back — back to good people we have long missed but whom, seeing again, seemed like yesterday. Back to sights which never faded in our mind’s eye.

We returned from Kalamazoo to be met by 12 of our 13 children and five of our eight grandchildren, along with other loved ones, including nephews and grandnephews. It was quite a party.

And we are grateful.

__________________

I remember the first time someone reacted negatively when I wished him a Merry Christmas. It was 1975 and several of us were signing off for the year. As I headed to the door I saw two colleagues and offered them the traditional Christmas greeting. One replied in kind; the other, with a mocking “Ho! Ho! Ho!”. That only elicited laughter from me as I replied likewise, but in light hearted form.

It was only upon returning to the office in early January when the other colleague informed me that my greeting had offended the “Ho! Ho! Ho!” fellow, which came as a shock to me as I’d never heard of someone being offended by a Christmas greeting. The mining camp of my birth was peopled with folks from all walks of life, yet all enjoyed this special season as reflected in several past posts, for example, here.

There followed an era of hesitant well-wishing, but, thankfully, that ended not too many years later when I saw that some people were outspoken in their celebrations of what can only be described charitably as filth. And this hesitancy was buried even further during and after my years in the Middle East where my Muslim and Hindu friends had no hesitancy in wishing me a Merry Christmas and a Happy Easter even though they themselves did not believe in the Incarnate and Risen Lord.

Some people, sadly, are permanently offended and if we kowtow to them we allow the universe to be ruled by the dog in the manger. This does not give us license to be rude; however, it surely must not muzzle our joy in the Lord, which is our strength.

Our celebration has a Focus; it is not a celebration for the sake of a celebration; it is not a rejoicing merely for rejoicing. Such merrymaking is surely short lived and hollow. The Lord makes our rejoicing very real, indeed. We know Him and so we rejoice. And we sincerely desire and invite others to also rejoice with us.

In that spirit, we wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2025.

Elizabeth, Tyler, Jonathan, Joseph, Samuel, Nathan, Esther, John, Rachel, Rebekah, Andrew, Richard, and Christopher. Brothers-in-law Les and wife, Nancy, and David and nieces Emma and Olivia. Lillie’s mother: Myrna. Grandchildren, Grace, Emily, Beverly, Sarah, James. Not pictured, nephew Jordan and his family. Unable to be present: Charles, Essie and grandchildren, Ebenezer, Ada, Rosemary.

Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index

March 7, 2023March 7, 2023 Richard Barnes

In the mid 1980s I had the privilege of working with the Gideon’s organization. Every Saturday, rain snow or shine, a group of us would meet for breakfast in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, to review assignments and plan the upcoming weeks. Although our conversations covered just about everything under the sun, I’d often hear these men, all of whom were older than I, express gratitude for God, family, and country. In that order.

However, they were also realistic enough to gently tamp down my younger-man’s exuberance about America. In my naiveté I still believed that, if one would scratch beneath the surface across the country, one would tap into a vast reservoir of appreciation for our roots, both colonial and early republic. By that I meant, surely, the great majority of Americans understood that the truths we regard as “self-evident” are so because of the religious tradition undergirding our beliefs and our very lives and that to reject that heritage would lead to tyranny and ruin.

My colleagues would point to Scripture, which has plenty of examples of nations whose names now gather dust in forgotten manuscripts and unvisited libraries. Nations that knew the Triune God but did not honor him. The words of Daniel to Belshazzar come to mind. Even the nation of Israel was judged for her betrayal. Sadly, it is the nature of men and women to forget, to deny, to dishonor.

John Stuart Mill, the great relativistic thinker, assumed that Christian ethics are permanent and hence we can take them for granted. He provides yet another example proving that “great thinkers” are not often wise.

I recalled my friends from Kalamazoo when I read the 2022 Transparency International Corruptions Perceptions Index comments on Venezuela.

Venezuela’s foundations differed widely from colonial and early republic America. However, she did have a basis for understanding the source of her prosperity in the first half of the 20th Century, a time when she enjoyed high levels of economic freedom which produced an environment of numberless voluntary transactions and unprecedented years of well-being with high growth rates. In 1960, Venezuela’s per capita income, at 45% of the US per capita income, was the highest in South America while her growth rate was higher than even Germany’s.

Her great economic success fueled the transition to democracy in 1959. However, her democratically elected officials immediately began to curtail her economic freedoms in favor of Socialistic policies which eventually led to contractions and, by the end of the century, ushered in an authoritarian Socialist regime that, like a protean, angry octopus, has its tentacles in every nook and cranny of Venezuelan’s lives. By 2013, even the Carter Center, albeit belatedly, acknowledged the Venezuelan “elections” to be a sham (my word, not theirs; I don’t have to be diplomatic). By then the damage was done and the fix was in, and continues to be in, to this day.

Oh, but there’s more.

Transparency International’s 2022 report ranks Venezuela as the most corrupt country in the Americas. That’s “most corrupt”, as in more corrupt than Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Her rulers are reliably accused of leading massive drug cartels and having extensive ties to major international criminal organizations. Incredibly, illegal businesses account for 21% of Venezuela’s GDP. And her mining, especially gold and diamonds, are controlled by criminal groups who, with impunity, extort, enslave, prostitute, and murder the inhabitants, mostly defenseless indigenous peoples.

In other words, Socialists are grossly guilty of what they delight in accusing Capitalists and Christians (they purposefully interchange the two).

In my youth, I would often hear the older generation’s assurances that Venezuela would not go the way of Cuba or Allende’s Chile. That she understood very well that liberty created her prosperity. As for her dalliances with Socialistic policies since 1960, those were very limited and did were not slippery slopes. I wanted to believe such assurances, even though my own family history said otherwise. Cuba, where my father was born, was also an economic miracle which went the way of all flesh practically overnight. At the time I did not know enough to ask my elders what made Venezuela any different; what would keep her from doing likewise.

And I certainly was not aware of Venezuela’s deeply infiltrated military, in cahoots with Castro and determined to rule Venezuela in Communist fashion, tyranny and all.

Venezuela “understood” where her prosperity came from. However, she ditched it nonetheless.

The United States appears to be doing the same, with even less excuse.

Mourning the death of a child. In addition to the griefs which are the common lot of all, these peoples have been abused, murdered, displaced, and enslaved. Countless have fled to unknown destinies in Brazil.

Mother and children in Brazil after fleeing criminal attacks in Venezuela’s mining arc.

Plaza Colon in Caracas, Venezuela, circa 1950

Caracas boy, circa 1950

Permanent Things

September 30, 2022September 30, 2022 Richard Barnes

My career boot camp was Arthur Andersen, of which it was often said, “You can take the man out of Arthur Andersen but you cannot take Arthur Andersen out of the man.”

My wife and I lived the first 4-plus years of our marriage in Kalamazoo, Michigan. To borrow from the Andersen lore, You can take the family out of Kalamazoo, but you cannot take Kalamazoo out of the family. At least it is true for us, as I’ve noted in his blog over the years (I Remember, Lullaby, Evocation).

In 1984 I read in the local paper that Russell Kirk was going to deliver a lecture in town at Western Michigan University. Lillie and I arranged to attend, after which we chatted a while with the great man.

Dr. Kirk was a man of place. He was born in Michigan and died there in 1994 at age 75. He wrote about seeing aged men working mightily to uproot large stumps in their ground, knowing they were doing so for future generations. According to Kirk, this was a truly American motif for most of her history until the early 20th Century when the focus became more self-centered and less future oriented.

One of his definitions of what makes a good society came to my mind today as I contemplated my mother’s 92nd birthday:

“A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society — whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society — no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.”

Elsewhere he wrote of the “Permanent Things” of which the above quote gives an idea.

My mother was born in the interior of Venezuela, in a small village called Upata. She tells of her horror of hearing the men killing a pig for roasting. No matter how far she ran, the squeals and shrieks could not be escaped. She was acquainted with poverty but always had something to eat and was humble enough to learn American as well as Latin rules of society from wonderful people in El Pao who took an instant liking to her.

Other than my father’s conversations with friends and family about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Cuba and the obvious connections between Communists there and the military in Venezuela (see for example, Nexus), our home was not characterized by political discourses and debates. It was more defined by the “Permanent Things” of which Dr. Kirk wrote so eloquently: faith, home, hearth, immediate and extended family, friends, and more.

And my mother was a most critical key to that scene.

In 1978, I was working in Puerto Rico with Arthur Andersen. I had not visited Venezuela since 1975 and was determined to do so before the year was out. I told my parents about my plans to travel to the country of my birth in December.

A few weeks later I stopped by home on my way to a conference in Chicago. My mother promptly handed me a small, black address book and asked me to sit with her, which I did. She then asked me to open the book and as I — incredulously — slowly flipped each page, crammed with names, phones, and addresses, she insisted that it was my duty to visit each person or family in the book. And if that were absolutely not possible, then to at the very least call each number.

I mildly protested, “But, Mami, I’ll only be there three weeks. These names are spread from Caracas to Upata and numberless places in between. There’s no way….”

“¡Querer es poder!” she exclaimed with finality (roughly translated, “To want is to do!”)

I was a bit dejected, thinking my plans of visiting exotic places I’d not had the chance to do while living in the country had gone up in smoke by all these visits that my mother had demanded I execute.

I made every single visit, except one who could not see me due to severe illness. But I did speak with them by phone (“I’m not surprised Mrs. M did not receive you; she was always a bit cold, but you did the right thing in asking to see them.”)

And it was among the most memorable trips ever, for it honored the Permanent Things.

Thank you, Mami. Thank you very much.

God’s grace to you always.

Visiting with the Berán family, December, 1978

My brother, Ronny, and I visit with our mother, circa 2012

I Remember

January 13, 2022January 13, 2022 Richard Barnes

A friend sent me a note this week which I’d like to share with you as encouragement as well as challenge. If you have children or grandchildren, do your best to inspire them to love God and country.

That is easier said than done, of course. But reminiscences like those of my friend are a good starting point.

He alludes to the “shacks around Caracas”. For more on that, see my series on “ranchitos” beginning here: Ranchitos I.

Here is his letter:

Dear Richard,

Thanks for the info about Venezuela. It’s sad to see a beautiful country taken down by evil men. The people are the ones who suffer. I remember all the shacks in the area around Caracas and that the city was noted as the pick pocket capital. I know I lost all the Upjohn travel money I had to a gang of pickpockets. It makes me worry about the US and the direction we are headed.

I remember life in Kalamazoo when I would walk to school and to church, about 6 city blocks; we had no car. We would see the little flags with the blue and gold stars in the homes of individuals with sons in the war. But I still remember Sundays as a day of rest: no lawn mowers, no sports, no car washing. But the sound of church bells announcing the start of church services. There were 3 large churches in our neighborhood, and we attended the farthest away. We walked there 3 times a Sunday, rain or shine, seeing all our friends on the way.

Now, no church bells; they may offend someone. It’s all about sports, baseball, golf, basketball, football, and only one church service on Sunday.

And political corruption.

Are we headed in the same direction?

God bless you and yours.

J.V.

Looking north on Burdick St., Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1950s

Looking east on Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1950s.

(Although I found photos of individual Kalamazoo churches in the 50s, I was unable to find any panoramic prints that showed at least several of them in one photo)

Evocation

October 8, 2019October 8, 2019 Richard Barnes

Frank Reaugh painted a life he loved but a life that was already gone by the time he memorialized it. He painted from sketches he had drawn as a young man. He loved the big skies, the eternal prairies, the longhorn cattle, and the cowhands. He lovingly recreated these as best he could in paintings which are evocative and, to me at least, deeply moving.

Charles Goodnight was a giant of a pioneer. Far more exciting than the Rock Hudson and James Dean characters in Giant, the 1956 smash movie hit about early 20th-century Texas. And, of course, Mr. Goodnight and his friend, Oliver Loving, the characters who were fictionalized in Larry McMurtry’s novel, Lonesome Dove, were not filthy-mouthed but were much more colorful than those depicted in the novel and subsequent smash TV mini-series. And, yes, it is true that Goodnight returned his friend’s body back to Texas for burial in Weatherford, as in the novel.

At the age of 9 he rode bareback behind his parents’ covered wagon. At 14 he was hunting with the Caddo Indians beyond the frontier. At 25, he scouted for the Texas Rangers in the war with the Comanches and Kiowas. He preserved the Buffalo; founded a college; encouraged the settlement of the plains, and “led a long fight for law and order.” He died in 1929.

Both men, and much more, are featured in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas, about a twenty-minute drive south of Amarillo. If you are in the area, you might check it out if you have an afternoon to spare.

My father was born twelve years before Mr. Goodnight passed away and, looking back, I realize I knew men who grew up during that generation. I recall sitting at the El Pao bar or in the pocket billiards area in the presence of men now long gone. One, Mr. Marley, a Texan, would tease me saying he had more hair than my father. Mr. Marley was completely bald (naturally, that is; it was an era when shaved heads were not “in”). That would trigger me in defense of my father (in an era when triggers were something on guns). Mr. Marley would howl with laughter, and I would complain to my father, who would also be laughing. I can still see him walking from the club to the bachelor quarters, wearing his ten-gallon hat, the only one in the camp with such accoutrement. Mr. Marley was not a young man, but his expertise was in setting up mining camps and that was in great demand in that era.

I can see men like Mr. Marley growing up in the presence of men like Mr. Goodnight. Men of great stamina, good humor, and sterling character.

And, like Frank Reaugh, I am blessed to have the ability to remember a life that is no longer, but that can be evoked and which has lessons for us today, I believe.

A childhood friend met me in Caracas about fifteen years ago and in catching up on our respective lives, I spoke about Texas and it’s heritage of independence. My friend laughed, “Texas is just like [the Venezuelan western state] Zulia!”

Of course! There are some similarities between Texas and the land of my birth. Both are rugged lands with stark beauty, tempting landscapes, and beguiling skies. And, like Texas, Venezuela is an enchanting land but if you are careless, if you take things for granted, if you treat it as a sandlot or a plaything, it can be fatal.

Up to that conversation, I had seen great similarities between Kalamazoo, Michigan, and El Pao, the place of my birth. The friendliness and easy hospitality of southwest Michigan still enchants me, even after thirty years, and allows for easy and favorable comparison to the mining town of my childhood, including the fact that I made lifelong friends in both places. And the ruggedness of Texas (which, by the way, also characterizes the Michigan Upper Peninsula) allows for easy and favorable comparison to the striking landscape of Venezuela.