Tim Jenkins, Kerry Grant, and the Beautiful "Driftless Area" of Wisconsin

Tim Jenkins, playing fiddle on the right, at the Old Oak Inn, Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin

Two weeks ago I visited an old friend, Tim Jenkins, in a small farm community in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, not too far from LaCrosse Wisconsin and Winona, Minnesota. The Driftless Area was unglaciated, and it is full of green, steep hills, beautiful valleys, and fine farm fields. When we arrived, Tim took us to a music gig he had at The Old Oak Inn in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin. Tim and three of his friends essentially played for their suppers--played beautiful Irish and American music, featuring fiddles, guitars, banjos, and percussion. We had a wonderful family-style meal at the Inn, compliments of Tim, and we met some of his friends. I have read that this is, in some respects, the poorest county in Wisconsin, but it really is rich in culture, community, and cooperative spirit. Nearby Viroqua is the home of more co-ops than any other small community in the state. And the area is rich in music, alternative education (with their local Waldorf School), and various forms of communal life.

Unfortunately, Tim's wife Kerry was not there the day we visited (her 95 year old mother was in LaCrosse). So it will have to be another day when we see her again. She and Tim have created a wonderful life together, living simply and creatively on very little money. That's the way they have lived since I first met them in the early 1970s. In the mid 1970s they lived in an intentional community in Spencer, West Virginia. Many of my friends were in that commune, and I was able to visit it a couple of memorable times. Some friends associated with the Spencer Community include Kenny Przybylski (deceased), Wendy Rawlins Tuck, Sherry Lung (now deceased), Tom Harman (now a physician), Robin Wilson, Patsy Harman (now a successful author), and several others.

Here are a few pics of the farm where Tim and Kerry live:

Tim and Kerry's simple, beautiful home.

Ben, a physician, and Julee, a teacher, live in the old farm house. We slept in the attic of their house.

Barn dances, parties, and receptions are held in this barn.

Tim and Kerry's home, left, and the huge barn.

Tim ands Kerry have remained faithful to the spirit of the Peacemakers, Quakers, and Catholic Workers I first met in Cincinnati in the early 1970s.

Community Wrapped in Community Wrapped in Community

I wonder if Robin Williams, for one night about a week ago, felt completely alone, completely abandoned, as when Jesus on the cross "shouted in a loud voice, saying 'Eli Eli lama sabachthani?' which is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" We cannot know this for sure. We can not even know for sure things right in front of our face.

One thing I do know, as well as a human being is able, is that I am loved and enveloped in many communities, almost swaddled in love as a newborn baby. My first community was my family, initially my mother, father, and grandparents, Cora and Connie Coughlin. And I had lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. I joke that we didn't have friends growing up--we had family, relatives. This family expanded as Denny, Mary Ellen, Kevin, and Jim were born. And it keeps expanding!

Family is still very central to me, now with Linda, Julia, Carolan, and Emily, and my two sons-in-law, Ed and Brian, and my grandchildren, Colin and Robby. We have a  big family, and it still is the bedrock of my security.

I have several other families, and these have been more "dynamic" over the years, with people flowing in and out. One of the first important ones for me was my Notre Dame classmates, especially the 35 other guys I studied abroad with in 1967-68 (in Salzburg and Innsbruck, Austria). Many of these fellows remain very close friends, with some others a bit more distant.

Another fantastic warm and loving community -- the peace activists I met when I moved to Cincinnati from Euclid in the winter of 1971. These people were Peacemakers, Catholic Workers, Quakers, and other like-minded living in and around Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Some were around my age, give or take, like Chris Cotter, Kenny Przybylski, Chuck Matthei, Jack Shereda, Peggy Scherer, Anne and Clare Weinkam, Greg Haas, Joan Levy, Bonnie Tompkins, Henry Scott, Andy Meyer, Joel Stevens, Dick Crowley, Richard Gale, John Luginbill (and others), and some were "elders" like Ernest and Marion Bromley, Maurice McCrackin (Mac), Bill Wahler--and several more. Some of my Peacemaker friends have died--Chuck Matthei, Ernest, Marion, Mac, Kenny, Jack, Bill. But I remain close friends with many, despite living far away from them.

Another layer of community consists of my colleagues at Lakeland Community College. Many of these are professors and fellow members of our union, the Lakeland Faculty Association. But there are also plenty of staffers, administrators, and part-timers that I consider part of my work community.

And then there is one of the most wonderful, sustaining communities I belong to, at my church, St. Mary's in Painesville, Ohio, especially the people I work with in the Karpos Ministry to feed the hungry and homeless--Linda, Kathy and Dan Philipps, Pam, Judy, Ken Fitzsimmons, Chuck Hillier, Jim, Bernice, Karen, Jeff, Kathy Flora, and many others. We have found a common focus for our interests in social justice and we have found a common and important task. It is almost exhilarating to work together with these folks every week. This is a model of the Beloved Community that Martin Luther King and Maurice McCrackin spoke of!

There are other communities I prize--my Irish-Gaelic classmates, my Irish traditional music friends, and many others.

These communities sustain me, and I hope I that I can do a small part to sustain, nourish, and love my friends in these communities. Let them never, not for an hour, feel unloved and unappreciated. This is my prayer.

The Homeless and Hungry in America: A Meditation for Lent; Remembering Chuck Matthei

As part of the Karpos Ministry at St. Mary's Church in Painesville, Ohio, we try to feed the hungry and homeless. This winter we have offered many homeless people emergency shelter when the temperatures were bitterly cold. And if someone needs a coat, hat, gloves, or socks, we provide for them. We do not have huge funding; no paid employees; no big organization. What we do have is faithful and dedicated volunteers and the support of our church and our pastor. Some of our volunteers are Catholics, members of St. Mary's parish; many are of different faiths. All passionately believe in living and fostering the corporal and spiritual Works of Mercy.

Today in the mail I received The Catholic Worker newspaper--the one published by the Catholic Workers on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The March-April 2014 issue has a beautiful woodcut with the words of the Moroccan poet, Abdellatif Laabi:

"In these days of abstinence, it was a source of pride to me to be hungry and to disturb a little the shameful peace of those who starve our people."

A thought-provoking remark in the season of Lent. Who is it that allows, even fosters, the great hunger and homelessness we see in Painesville and throughout our country?

Abdellatif Laabi's remark makes me think of Chuck Matthei (1948-2002), the great Peacemaker, who once told me that he fasted every Friday in solidarity with the hungry of the world. Chuck was a kind of saint. He felt he was called to such extraordinary action. We are probably not called to that. But we all are called to the task of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless--and trying to cure our society of these problems.

Here is a site with a short bio of Chuck and some photos: Remembering Chuck Matthei.

My old friend Wendy Rawlins Tuck is currently researching and writing a biography of Chuck.

Chuck Matthei

The Death of Peacemaker John Leininger

Yesterday I received the shocking news that an old friend and fellow Peacemaker, John Leininger,  has died from an aggressive cancer diagnosed just weeks ago. Left behind is Alice Ann Carpenter, his partner for some 38 years, step-children Maureen and Jenny, grandchildren Jocelyn, Alaina, and Devlin, sons-in-law Chris and Donal, and so many other relatives and friends.

John was a courageous and active peacemaker and will be memorialized later this summer at a Cincinnati Unitarian church.
I first met John around 1973 at Peacemaker "foldings" (where the Peacemaker newsletter was folded and mailed) at the home of Marion and Ernest Bromley in Gano, Ohio. These foldings later moved to Alice Ann and John's home in the North Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati.

I have wonderful memories of these Peacemaker foldings (and other activities like the conferences and "gatherings").  A lot of courageous people came to these foldings: Greg Haas, John Luginbill, Kenny Przybylski, Mary Alice Shepherd, Chuck Matthei, Peggy Scherer, Chris Cotter, Annie Weinkam . . . .[I'll mention more people in further postings].

Here is a website that John Leininger and Alice Ann Carpenter maintained for their crime and murder mystery books business: http://gravematters.com/ Photos of John and Alice Ann can be found at that site.

Mansfield House in Over-the-Rhine (#2)

I'm not sure who established the Mansfield House Community in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine. My guess is that the founders were Greg Haas (currently living in Bloomington, Indiana) and John Luginbill (still in Cincinnati, I think). The impulse to establish this community probably came from the Gano, Ohio-based Peacemakers and the movement against the Vietnam War. Also connected to the Peacemakers was the war-tax resistance and draft resistance movements. As you might expect, people drawn to these positions, which could involve prison, were a bit unusual--to say the least! Indeed, most of them were the brightest, most courageous, most-principled people I've ever known.

Other people in on the Mansfield House included Caroline Bromley, Dan Bromley, Bonnie Tompkins, Kenny Przybylski, Jack Shereda, Andy Meyer, and many others I will mention in this blog entry or in another entry.

New Chapter in Bruce Wilson's Novel!

Bruce Wilson, an old friend, has just posted a new chapter in his autobiographical novel Justin's Foggy Night of the Soul. http://foggynightofthesoul.wordpress.com/ This novel is a work-in-progress, but I find it tremendously good and very interesting, partly because it's my own story and the story of every Catholic of my generation (let's say it will ring a familiar note to those born around 1960 and before).

Who is Bruce Wilson? Bruce is an older brother of one of my college roommates and friends, Brian Wilson. Brian studied with me at the University of Notre Dame between 1966 and 1970. I along with Brian, Chris Cotter, Mike Gerrity, Tim Forward, Tom Heinen, Mike Celizic, and about about 29 other Notre Damers studied together in Salzburg and Innsbruck, Austria during academic year 1967-68.

In the 1970's Chris Cotter and I de-tassled corn with Brian and Bruce Wilson (and the rest of his family) around Perry and Jamaica, Iowa. Also in the 1970's, Bruce Wilson was involved with Chris and me with Peacemaker and Catholic Worker (Dorothy Day et al.) activities. And there was one other hilarious (in retrospect) enterprise. These rocket-scientists, Bruce, Chris, Kenny Przybylski, Jack Shereda, and possibly Timmy Jenkins, decided to go into business cutting down dead elm trees (trees stricken by the Dutch Elm Disease blight).The plan was to underbid for the jobs of cutting down and removing trees, beginning in the Iowa City area. Ask any of the above how that went!

Back in the 1970's I would have guessed that Bruce would end up a priest or monk, an artist, or an inmate of an insane asylum (possibly all three of these choices!).

I hadn't heard from or about Bruce until about a year or two ago. He was living in Oakland, California, and working as a massage therapist and holistic healer. And he was writing a novel, chapter by chapter, and publishing it on a blog and a website.

The novel is very funny and very good, and it evokes that peculiar and fascinating time in the 1950's and early 1960's--a time in that for American Catholics will never come again.

Here again is the link to Bruce Wilson's novel in progress: http://foggynightofthesoul.wordpress.com/

I hope a publisher picks up this wonderful work!