April mornings are remarkable. The Robins are meeping or peeping or whatever it is they do. The sparrows and swallows are tweeting and twittering their songs. The blue jays are squawking and the occasional woodpecker drills. Below these melodies and accents, the mourning doves keep rhythm with their cooing.
In town the dogwood trees are finally blooming. They line the avenues with their pinks and mauves and “dusty-rose” pompoms. Their color breaks up all the green, which was a welcome break from the whites and grays of winter. The tulips and buttercups are standing tall, another accent against white houses and green lawns.
When it rains, we check our gages, pull weeds, and avoid stepping on earthworms. When it’s sunny, the hum of lawn mowers an lull nappers to sleep in the late afternoon. That doesn’t happen much though, gentle rains keep the earth muddy, so that the new lawns are almost overgrown, like deep shag carpets. Each day they’re darker than the day before. Rabbits and cats come out of hiding and explore the world that had been so inhospitable all winter.
In the country the last of the geese glide North, crossing flight paths with hawks, vultures and the occasional crane. Meadowlark calls reverberate off the rolling hills in a way that no digital surround sound stereo home theatre system could imitate.
Thanks to April showers, prairie grasses and the hay is coming in emerald as Ireland. One can finally make out a quilt of squares across the land. Green squares of hay and grass, tan corn stubble, gray soy stubble, and the deep, rich, dark brown of Iowa’s fertile earth where farmers still drag disks that plow it into rows.
The oaks are still bare, but budding. The ash trees have been leafy for a while and the cottonwoods are just uncurling their yellow-green leaves this week. They seem to just be waking up when you see them next to the spruces and firs that make up so many wind-breaks.
Crabapples present their pale blooms on the sides of the highways. Raccoons and coyotes criss-cross gravel roads, sneaking up from culvert to culvert. Testing the boundaries of the morning and evening, not content to rule the night.
Gangly young calves skip across the hillsides after their mothers who meander along sampling sweet new blades of grass, wet with dew.
I can’t help thinking about Grant Wood paintings with titles like “Spring turning,” and “Spring plowing” when I drive my daily commute through the countryside each morning. When I come home in the afternoon and see the older women working in their gardens, I remember William Carlos William’s poem:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
A walk around the block changes every day, whereas in California suburbs, tropical, temperate and lovely as the landscaping may be, each morning is like every other morning. My drive to work each morning changes every day and so does every drive home in the afternoon. The drive in the city was monotonous. Every drive was gray, every drive smelled like exhaust, not of dew or soil or manure or pollen or smoke, or rain, or sap, or dust- only exhaust. The only thing that may change for city drivers is the pace of the back-up, the news on the radio.
Every drive in the city is like winter, gray and white and brown, only warmer. Every day of spring in Iowa is a poem, a painting, a symphony, a work of art.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
My sister-in-law from Arizona emailed this to me today, I thought it was pretty cool.
A Parent's Daily Prayer Guide
by Don and Sue Meyers
Monday: Ask God to place a protective, solid hedge around your children so that Satan cannot reach in and lead them into temptation and so they will be safe from harm (2 Thessalonians 3:3; Psalm 33:20).
Tuesday: Pray that your children would use godly wisdom in selecting friends and peers that will make a positive difference in their lives. Ask God to give each child a discernment of people as well as knowing the difference between right and wrong (Proverbs 1:10; 18:24; Deuteronomy 13:6,8).
Wednesday: Pray that your children would stay pure in their thoughts and deeds (Psalm 24:4-5; Job 17:9).
Thursday: Pray that they will be caught if they wander into cheating, lies, or mischief (Hebrews 13:18-19).
Friday: Pray they will be alert and thinking clearly as they attend school and extra curricular activities and as they take exams. Ask God to help them be motivated to do the best they are capable of doing (Colossians 3:17; 1 Corinthians 10:31).
Saturday: Pray for the spouse each child will marry someday. Ask that they will come from godly homes and have an appetite to live the spiritual truth they've learned. Pray also that their goals and purpose will be the same as your own children and their future homes would be godly (Deuteronomy 5:29).
Sunday: Ask God to help them live their lives for Him and that He will use them as a testimony and witness for His glory. Pray that they'll be grown to full spiritual maturity (Psalms 78:1-8, 103:17-18; Isaiah 54:13; Ephesians 3:20-21).
Do not leave your children unprotected-that is, vulnerable to Satan's attack. The greatest shield of protection we as parents can provide for our children is prayer. It's never too late to start (1 Samuel 12:23; James 5:16; Colossians 4:2).
A Parent's Daily Prayer Guide
by Don and Sue Meyers
Monday: Ask God to place a protective, solid hedge around your children so that Satan cannot reach in and lead them into temptation and so they will be safe from harm (2 Thessalonians 3:3; Psalm 33:20).
Tuesday: Pray that your children would use godly wisdom in selecting friends and peers that will make a positive difference in their lives. Ask God to give each child a discernment of people as well as knowing the difference between right and wrong (Proverbs 1:10; 18:24; Deuteronomy 13:6,8).
Wednesday: Pray that your children would stay pure in their thoughts and deeds (Psalm 24:4-5; Job 17:9).
Thursday: Pray that they will be caught if they wander into cheating, lies, or mischief (Hebrews 13:18-19).
Friday: Pray they will be alert and thinking clearly as they attend school and extra curricular activities and as they take exams. Ask God to help them be motivated to do the best they are capable of doing (Colossians 3:17; 1 Corinthians 10:31).
Saturday: Pray for the spouse each child will marry someday. Ask that they will come from godly homes and have an appetite to live the spiritual truth they've learned. Pray also that their goals and purpose will be the same as your own children and their future homes would be godly (Deuteronomy 5:29).
Sunday: Ask God to help them live their lives for Him and that He will use them as a testimony and witness for His glory. Pray that they'll be grown to full spiritual maturity (Psalms 78:1-8, 103:17-18; Isaiah 54:13; Ephesians 3:20-21).
Do not leave your children unprotected-that is, vulnerable to Satan's attack. The greatest shield of protection we as parents can provide for our children is prayer. It's never too late to start (1 Samuel 12:23; James 5:16; Colossians 4:2).
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
A Poem about Poems
poetry is pretense
ballad or haiku
poetry is masquerade
sonnet or epic, true
poetry is our own world
me or her or you
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Go East, young man
I recently had a student at Boyer Valley visit Phoenix, Arizona, my hometown, to take a girl to her prom there, and visit a sick aunt. He enjoyed it, especially “Cooperstown,” a restaurant by the baseball park owned by seventies heavy metal rocker Alice Cooper, a Phoenix native.
“Mr. Mallory, that town is SO cool, it’s so modern and clean and there’s so much to do… why would you ever want to leave a place like that?” he asked me.
“A woman,” I answered. The real answer is certainly much more complicated, but I thought this one sounded edgy and mysterious and its certainly true in part anyway.
This kid’s girlfriend and her family had obviously only shown him the best parts of Phoenix because as much as I love and sometimes miss it, it’s far from Nirvana. For one thing, its several million people bigger than it was when I was a kid, not that there’s anything so wrong with that, but people change and so do cities. The Phoenix of my childhood still had dirt roads and was zoned for livestock, at least where we lived. The city mountain preserves provided plenty of desert wilderness for kids to play “Cowboys and Indians” without having to stretch your imagination too much. Especially my best friend when I was five was Juaquin Luna, a Maracopa Indian who lived two houses down in our Paradise Valley subdivision, up near the corner of Cave Creek Road where Cactus Road turned into Thunderbird Road .
For my birthday I’d beg my parents to take us to “Rawhide; Arizona’s 1880’s town,” a dude ranch complete with boardwalks, gun fights and stage coach rides. There was something cool about having all the businesses all on one street and not having to drive your car across town if you had to go to the barber, blacksmith and mercantile all in the same day.
A few years ago I read about how Wyatt Earp was actually from Iowa, originally, before he shot up the OK Corral in Tombstone Arizona- by way of Dodge City, Kansas, before he ended up in L.A., consulting on Tom Mix Westerns. I liked to imagine that I took the reverse path of Marshall Earp. Arizona to Iowa, instead of visa-versa.
Recently, I crossed paths with someone out on the frontier of the Wild Wild Web who knew what Charter Oak was like many years ago, perhaps not as far back as the wild west days, but certainly back in our town’s boom time.
Bob Lyons lives in Mesa, AZ. His grandparent lived around Second and Cedar in Charter Oak. He had found a picture of their house and wanted to do a little research, so he was on the internet and ran a “Google” search of Charter Oak, he found St. John Lutheran Youth Fellowship’s web page and decided to email me.
“With your church work I'm reminded of our Coach in Charter Oak,” Bob wrote. “Mr Evans, who also taught Sunday School at the Methodist church. He later became Superintendent of the school. Also reminded of my classmate Eldon Monte whose father was Superintendent of the Lutheran school. We graduated in 1939.”
The Charter Oak that Bob Lyons grew up in had two Banks, and a newspaper, presumably “the Charter Oak Times.” Charter Oak had a jewelry store, a post office, a lumber yard, and a bowling alley- sounds like Denison.
They had a pool hall- uh, oh, that spells trouble with a capital ‘T,’ and that rhymes with ‘P,’ and that stand for “pool.” I wonder if Meredith Willson had ever been to Charter Oak.
Bob mentioned a telephone office, electric office, and an opera house. That was more than Rawhide had.
Bob said that there was freight and passenger service at the rail road station. I knew they called it “Rail Road Street” for a reason. My farmer-in-law, Allan Neddermeyer tells a story about how he got on the train for his class trip to Chicago right here in town.
Bob’s Charter Oak had an ice house, I guess I’m not sure what one of those would be. There was a grainery, not surprisingly. There was a “produce house” where customers bought eggs, milk, cream, and chickens from farmers.
There was a ladies dress shop, Doctor Huber M.D., a Dentist, a drug store, and count ‘em- TWO grocery stores. Not to mention a meat market, a bakery, and a harness shop. There was a hotel, a soda fountain, two car dealers, and of course, an implement dealer.
Did I mention the Furniture Store? How about the Mortuary? Well, I guess we still have one of those. There was a Photo Studio, a restaurant and a café (well, at least we still have Citgo).
"The Smoke House was a frame building on the West side of Main Street,” Bob explained to me, “which was one large room with a small caged area in the back right hand corner. In the caged corner the owner made and sold cigars.” That got my attention, even though I haven’t lit up a stogie since college.
“The rest of the room was all open with tables used by clients to play cards,” he continued. “Needless to say, the room was always smoke filled.” Wyatt Earp probably would’ve felt at home, but Doc Holiday probably should’ve avoided it, what with his tuberculosis and all.
Bob retired after 40 years with the Valley National Bank of Arizona. That was interesting to me since my mother-in-law, Marge Neddermeyer has put in around 30 years at the Wells Fargo (formerly Norwest, formerly Northwest) in Denison.
Black Bart had held up the Valley Bank in Rawhide.
Bob got my start in Charter Oak cleaning the spittoons in that bank where his dad had worked until he died of lung cancer from smoke, even though he didn’t smoke. That sounded more like a cantina than a bank.
When Bob lived here there was both a Lutheran and a Catholic school, 1 thru 9. He told me that he took piano lessons from a Catholic Nun. For the time being we still have our public school and I for one want to hold on to our Lutheran preschool as long as we can.
We still have one bank, the Ag, a few seed stores, repair shops, trucking services, a cabinet maker, several hair salons, a graphic design studio, the Hoffman insurance Agency, and of course Staley’s Catering. We may not be booming, but I love that you can walk across town and almost everyone will smile, wave, and say hello. Without fear of a gunfight or of stepping in horse apples.
“Mr. Mallory, that town is SO cool, it’s so modern and clean and there’s so much to do… why would you ever want to leave a place like that?” he asked me.
“A woman,” I answered. The real answer is certainly much more complicated, but I thought this one sounded edgy and mysterious and its certainly true in part anyway.
This kid’s girlfriend and her family had obviously only shown him the best parts of Phoenix because as much as I love and sometimes miss it, it’s far from Nirvana. For one thing, its several million people bigger than it was when I was a kid, not that there’s anything so wrong with that, but people change and so do cities. The Phoenix of my childhood still had dirt roads and was zoned for livestock, at least where we lived. The city mountain preserves provided plenty of desert wilderness for kids to play “Cowboys and Indians” without having to stretch your imagination too much. Especially my best friend when I was five was Juaquin Luna, a Maracopa Indian who lived two houses down in our Paradise Valley subdivision, up near the corner of Cave Creek Road where Cactus Road turned into Thunderbird Road .
For my birthday I’d beg my parents to take us to “Rawhide; Arizona’s 1880’s town,” a dude ranch complete with boardwalks, gun fights and stage coach rides. There was something cool about having all the businesses all on one street and not having to drive your car across town if you had to go to the barber, blacksmith and mercantile all in the same day.
A few years ago I read about how Wyatt Earp was actually from Iowa, originally, before he shot up the OK Corral in Tombstone Arizona- by way of Dodge City, Kansas, before he ended up in L.A., consulting on Tom Mix Westerns. I liked to imagine that I took the reverse path of Marshall Earp. Arizona to Iowa, instead of visa-versa.
Recently, I crossed paths with someone out on the frontier of the Wild Wild Web who knew what Charter Oak was like many years ago, perhaps not as far back as the wild west days, but certainly back in our town’s boom time.
Bob Lyons lives in Mesa, AZ. His grandparent lived around Second and Cedar in Charter Oak. He had found a picture of their house and wanted to do a little research, so he was on the internet and ran a “Google” search of Charter Oak, he found St. John Lutheran Youth Fellowship’s web page and decided to email me.
“With your church work I'm reminded of our Coach in Charter Oak,” Bob wrote. “Mr Evans, who also taught Sunday School at the Methodist church. He later became Superintendent of the school. Also reminded of my classmate Eldon Monte whose father was Superintendent of the Lutheran school. We graduated in 1939.”
The Charter Oak that Bob Lyons grew up in had two Banks, and a newspaper, presumably “the Charter Oak Times.” Charter Oak had a jewelry store, a post office, a lumber yard, and a bowling alley- sounds like Denison.
They had a pool hall- uh, oh, that spells trouble with a capital ‘T,’ and that rhymes with ‘P,’ and that stand for “pool.” I wonder if Meredith Willson had ever been to Charter Oak.
Bob mentioned a telephone office, electric office, and an opera house. That was more than Rawhide had.
Bob said that there was freight and passenger service at the rail road station. I knew they called it “Rail Road Street” for a reason. My farmer-in-law, Allan Neddermeyer tells a story about how he got on the train for his class trip to Chicago right here in town.
Bob’s Charter Oak had an ice house, I guess I’m not sure what one of those would be. There was a grainery, not surprisingly. There was a “produce house” where customers bought eggs, milk, cream, and chickens from farmers.
There was a ladies dress shop, Doctor Huber M.D., a Dentist, a drug store, and count ‘em- TWO grocery stores. Not to mention a meat market, a bakery, and a harness shop. There was a hotel, a soda fountain, two car dealers, and of course, an implement dealer.
Did I mention the Furniture Store? How about the Mortuary? Well, I guess we still have one of those. There was a Photo Studio, a restaurant and a café (well, at least we still have Citgo).
"The Smoke House was a frame building on the West side of Main Street,” Bob explained to me, “which was one large room with a small caged area in the back right hand corner. In the caged corner the owner made and sold cigars.” That got my attention, even though I haven’t lit up a stogie since college.
“The rest of the room was all open with tables used by clients to play cards,” he continued. “Needless to say, the room was always smoke filled.” Wyatt Earp probably would’ve felt at home, but Doc Holiday probably should’ve avoided it, what with his tuberculosis and all.
Bob retired after 40 years with the Valley National Bank of Arizona. That was interesting to me since my mother-in-law, Marge Neddermeyer has put in around 30 years at the Wells Fargo (formerly Norwest, formerly Northwest) in Denison.
Black Bart had held up the Valley Bank in Rawhide.
Bob got my start in Charter Oak cleaning the spittoons in that bank where his dad had worked until he died of lung cancer from smoke, even though he didn’t smoke. That sounded more like a cantina than a bank.
When Bob lived here there was both a Lutheran and a Catholic school, 1 thru 9. He told me that he took piano lessons from a Catholic Nun. For the time being we still have our public school and I for one want to hold on to our Lutheran preschool as long as we can.
We still have one bank, the Ag, a few seed stores, repair shops, trucking services, a cabinet maker, several hair salons, a graphic design studio, the Hoffman insurance Agency, and of course Staley’s Catering. We may not be booming, but I love that you can walk across town and almost everyone will smile, wave, and say hello. Without fear of a gunfight or of stepping in horse apples.
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
A Prairie Home Companion: April 17, 2004
Great radio show, last week was their annual joke show. They had some great Lutheran jokes
Great radio show, last week was their annual joke show. They had some great Lutheran jokes
Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose
Holy Cow! fisrt time since Doonesbury debuted in 1969 that B.D. has ever had his helmet off and he has grey hair! And (college football coach that he is) he's lost a leg! Cartoons have come a long way!
Holy Cow! fisrt time since Doonesbury debuted in 1969 that B.D. has ever had his helmet off and he has grey hair! And (college football coach that he is) he's lost a leg! Cartoons have come a long way!
Arizona Diamondbacks News
I'm still a little angry with Kurt Schilling for moving to Boston, but you'll notice that Boston has beat the Yankees each time he's pitched for them so far this year!
I'm still a little angry with Kurt Schilling for moving to Boston, but you'll notice that Boston has beat the Yankees each time he's pitched for them so far this year!
Prayer for our troops
May 6- National Day of Prayer
May 16- 23- International Prayer Week
May 30- Pentecost
PLEASE SEND THIS ALONG, DON'T STOP, GOD DOES ANSWER PRAYERS. WHEN YOU PRAY FOR OTHERS IT MEANS YOU INTERCEDE ON THEIR BEHALF. IT WILL ONLY TAKE A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME.
> > >
Subject: Prayer Request
A prayer request from Cathy Mitchell. Her husband, Tony, is an Air Force Commander in Afghanistan. She received an urgent email from him this morning.
It said, "We need Christians to pray, pray, pray." Please pray for God's protection of our troops and HIS wisdom for their commanders. Pass this on to as many as you
think will respond. Considering the increase in terrorist
activity in Iraq, this prayer is more urgent than ever. PLEASE.
..pray always for our military men and women.
"Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. I
ask this in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and
Savior. Amen"
When you receive this, please stop for a moment and say a prayer for our ground, air and navy personnel in every area of the middle east. There is nothing attached... This can
be very powerful....
Just send this to all the people in your address book. Remember, you will be blessed too!
Do not stop this prayer chain, please... Ofall the gifts you could give to anyone in the US Military, be it Army, Navy, Marines or National Guard, Prayer is the very best one... Amen!
May 6- National Day of Prayer
May 16- 23- International Prayer Week
May 30- Pentecost
PLEASE SEND THIS ALONG, DON'T STOP, GOD DOES ANSWER PRAYERS. WHEN YOU PRAY FOR OTHERS IT MEANS YOU INTERCEDE ON THEIR BEHALF. IT WILL ONLY TAKE A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME.
> > >
Subject: Prayer Request
A prayer request from Cathy Mitchell. Her husband, Tony, is an Air Force Commander in Afghanistan. She received an urgent email from him this morning.
It said, "We need Christians to pray, pray, pray." Please pray for God's protection of our troops and HIS wisdom for their commanders. Pass this on to as many as you
think will respond. Considering the increase in terrorist
activity in Iraq, this prayer is more urgent than ever. PLEASE.
..pray always for our military men and women.
"Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. I
ask this in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and
Savior. Amen"
When you receive this, please stop for a moment and say a prayer for our ground, air and navy personnel in every area of the middle east. There is nothing attached... This can
be very powerful....
Just send this to all the people in your address book. Remember, you will be blessed too!
Do not stop this prayer chain, please... Ofall the gifts you could give to anyone in the US Military, be it Army, Navy, Marines or National Guard, Prayer is the very best one... Amen!
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Keep Noah's Ark Afloat- PLEASE!
As many of you may already know, Sandy has told the board of Education (Russ Maack, Steve Beeck, and Hoss Reddick) that she intends to step away from being our preschool director after this year.
This puts us in a pickle if we want to keep Noah's Ark open since the state deadline for filing for license renewal is June 1. Part of her reasoning is that she'd like to have one full time job instead of two part-time ones.
Her current salary is something like $300 per month. All of this comes from tuition funds, essentially Noah's Ark is "self-supporting," receiving virtually nothing from St. John, except the us of the building and just more than half the heating costs.
I feel that Sandy is a professional deserving at least $15 per hour. I consider Noah's Ark a major mission of our congregation. Sandy has brought the Gospel to hundreds of children. The preschool should also be a major way of reaching the young family (20-40 yr olds) age group that we need to grow and remain viable as a congregation.
Because St. John will be paying the interim pastor half of Pastor Gebhardt's current salary, I believe that we can not afford to let Sandy get away and Noah's Ark sink. I think it would be completely prudent and financially feasible to invest in our preschool.
I believe that the congregation should add at least $500 to the $300 that Sandy is currently receiving, bringing her up to $800 per month. over 10 months, this will cost St. John only $5,000 per year.
Rent or mortgage payments for most of us easily exceed $400 per month and utilities can cost any where from $50-150 per month. I don't know what the Bramley's financial situation is like or how much her other job pays, but I was ashamed to find out how little Noah's Ark pays her and that St. John doesn't contribute anything!
If Sandy's reasons for retiring have nothing to do with compensation, but are more personal- just being ready to retire, wanting to spend time with her own grandchildren, etc. we certainly need to honor her. But if that is the case, then I BEG you to pray that God will miraculously raise up a new preschool director for Noah's Ark between now and the end of May.
If you think that any of my ideas are viable, please pass them on to anyone you think should see them (elders, council members etc.)
In Christ,
Ted Mallory
________________________________________________
St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, Charter Oak, IA
Mission Statement:
Offering with open arms
the love of Jesus
Purpose Statement:
St. John Lutheran Church exists to offer God’s Word and Sacraments and to prayerfully...
• love God through worship and praise
• and joyfully serve others with love
• build each other up through love and fellowship
• reach out with the Gospel message of God’s love and salvation
• encourage growth in and study of God’s Word in truth and purity
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Letter about the old days
Ted,
"Bob's Charter Oak had an ice house, I guess I'm not sure what one of those would be."
I'm surprised you didn't think of an "igloo".
It just goes to show you that, regardless of how much education you get, there's more to learn. Everyone should know that an "ice house" is where they store the blocks of ice. The ice was harvested from a lake and shipped by rail (that's railroad train) for storage in the ice house.
Normally it's just below ground level where it's packed with sawdust. In the summer you went there for ice to make ice cream and, of course, the "ice man", with his team and wagon, delivered ice to the homes. The homes had a sign in the window which told him how much to bring in. He carried in the appropriate block and installed it in the "icebox". Of course the houses were not locked. The sign in the window was standard and we still used them when students at the Univ. of Iowa. They were about 12" square with diagonal lines from corner to corner which left "V" shaped sections where choices of quantities were designated such as 15, 25, 35, & 50 lbs. The numbers were printed in a manner so that the bottom section gave the requested number while the top section would "read" upside down, and the side sections were each lying on their sides.
"Bob's Charter Oak had an ice house, I guess I'm not sure what one of those would be."
I'm surprised you didn't think of an "igloo".
It just goes to show you that, regardless of how much education you get, there's more to learn. Everyone should know that an "ice house" is where they store the blocks of ice. The ice was harvested from a lake and shipped by rail (that's railroad train) for storage in the ice house.
Normally it's just below ground level where it's packed with sawdust. In the summer you went there for ice to make ice cream and, of course, the "ice man", with his team and wagon, delivered ice to the homes. The homes had a sign in the window which told him how much to bring in. He carried in the appropriate block and installed it in the "icebox". Of course the houses were not locked. The sign in the window was standard and we still used them when students at the Univ. of Iowa. They were about 12" square with diagonal lines from corner to corner which left "V" shaped sections where choices of quantities were designated such as 15, 25, 35, & 50 lbs. The numbers were printed in a manner so that the bottom section gave the requested number while the top section would "read" upside down, and the side sections were each lying on their sides.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
The taxman cometh
Why do they say that you should “beware the ides of March?” I think we should beware the ides of April. After all, April is the cruelest month.
Maybe the best thing about April 15th is that it’s the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). You remember Leo, he invented the bicycle…and the helicopter, the submarine, parachutes, machine guns… architect, engineer, pop singer, ring a bell? Maybe you know him better as the man who painted The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa.
Of course, for all his contributions to art and science, da Vinci was no above scandal and suspicion. He had a habit of borrowing cadavers from the local morgue so that he could dissect, study and draw them. He kept hundreds of notebooks, all written backwards and in latin. Many people feared that he was some kind of occult wizard, actually he was left-handed and wanted to avoid getting an arm full of ink. Then there were the allegations about his young male assistants which made da Vinci sort of the Michael Jackson of the Renaissance.
This is the day in 1970 when, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division withdrew from Vietnam as part of troop withdrawals announced by President Nixon. That’s good if you wanted our boys to come home or if you thought that Presidents Johnson and Nixon were wrong to commit so many U.S. troops to Vietnam for so long. But maybe it’s bad if you feel like we were cutting our losses and leaving the South Vietnamese at the mercy of the Communist North.
This is the day in 1912 when at two in the morning, the H.M.S. Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.. The massive ship, carrying 2,200 people, had struck an iceberg two and half hours before, and survivors weren’t rescued by another ship for more than another hour. Brrr.
In my opinion, the worst thing to happen on this day was that this was the morning, in 1965 that President Abraham Lincoln, died from a bullet wound inflicted the night before by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Just six days after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Southern army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, ending the American Civil War.
One conspiracy theory says that this led to even worse things. The internet-fringe claims that that’s why April 15th is “Tax Day.” See, in order to pay for the Civil War, Lincoln issued war bonds. Those bonds were known as “1040 Bonds,” because they were supposed to mature in 10 or 40 years. To collect the interest on these bonds, a “1040 form” was instituted and by the newly created office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, predecessor to the IRS.
A different theory is that originally, income tax was paid mostly by the wealthy. The “fiscal year” ends June 30, but the super rich, as everybody knows, spend their whole summer vacationing. So, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue figured, "we should make sure we collect early, before they leave town."
The Sixteenth Amendment permitting both corporate and individual income taxes was ratified on February 3, 1913. March 1, 1914 was the first filing deadline. They changed it to March 15 in 1918, leading to a dumb St. Patrick’s Day joke- “how can we be expected to celebrate the wearing of the green, when just two days ago they took it all away from us?” Thank Jack Benny for that one.
It got backed up to April 15 in 1955, so, so much for the Lincoln theory.
Various states have levied income taxes ever since 1789, originally to pay for Revolutionary War debts.
I would have loved to have seen whether or not Johnson’s “War on Poverty” would’ve been more effective if $25 billion a year wasn’t being siphoned off to pay for the war in Vietnam. Just one Hugh’s helicopter used in Vietnam cost around $1 million, enough to pay for sixty-six low-cost two bedrooms houses.
The cost of the war in Afghanistan is already around $20 billion. Some estimates put the price tag on the war in Iraq at $100 billion or more.
Since 1913, taxes have been the major source of revenue for the federal government. No President, including Lincoln, has been able to cut taxes during war time- until now, President Bush Jr, has cut them twice. Mostly for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. And we wonder why we’re running such massive deficits.
Ben Franklin once said “… an unjust peace is to be preferred before a just war.”
Because we have two kids, part of the Bush tax-cuts was a tax credit on each child. What a nice help. We could’ve applied it to our child care cost, since we can’t afford for either of us to stay home, we both need to have jobs to get by. Guess what? The state of Iowa taxed our federal tax break. I understand, Iowa has a revenue problem right now, but does Iowa understand that I have kind of a revenue problem right now too?
In 1789, Ben Franklin wrote a friend in a letter that “Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
Maybe the best thing about April 15th is that it’s the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). You remember Leo, he invented the bicycle…and the helicopter, the submarine, parachutes, machine guns… architect, engineer, pop singer, ring a bell? Maybe you know him better as the man who painted The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa.
Of course, for all his contributions to art and science, da Vinci was no above scandal and suspicion. He had a habit of borrowing cadavers from the local morgue so that he could dissect, study and draw them. He kept hundreds of notebooks, all written backwards and in latin. Many people feared that he was some kind of occult wizard, actually he was left-handed and wanted to avoid getting an arm full of ink. Then there were the allegations about his young male assistants which made da Vinci sort of the Michael Jackson of the Renaissance.
This is the day in 1970 when, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division withdrew from Vietnam as part of troop withdrawals announced by President Nixon. That’s good if you wanted our boys to come home or if you thought that Presidents Johnson and Nixon were wrong to commit so many U.S. troops to Vietnam for so long. But maybe it’s bad if you feel like we were cutting our losses and leaving the South Vietnamese at the mercy of the Communist North.
This is the day in 1912 when at two in the morning, the H.M.S. Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.. The massive ship, carrying 2,200 people, had struck an iceberg two and half hours before, and survivors weren’t rescued by another ship for more than another hour. Brrr.
In my opinion, the worst thing to happen on this day was that this was the morning, in 1965 that President Abraham Lincoln, died from a bullet wound inflicted the night before by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Just six days after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Southern army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, ending the American Civil War.
One conspiracy theory says that this led to even worse things. The internet-fringe claims that that’s why April 15th is “Tax Day.” See, in order to pay for the Civil War, Lincoln issued war bonds. Those bonds were known as “1040 Bonds,” because they were supposed to mature in 10 or 40 years. To collect the interest on these bonds, a “1040 form” was instituted and by the newly created office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, predecessor to the IRS.
A different theory is that originally, income tax was paid mostly by the wealthy. The “fiscal year” ends June 30, but the super rich, as everybody knows, spend their whole summer vacationing. So, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue figured, "we should make sure we collect early, before they leave town."
The Sixteenth Amendment permitting both corporate and individual income taxes was ratified on February 3, 1913. March 1, 1914 was the first filing deadline. They changed it to March 15 in 1918, leading to a dumb St. Patrick’s Day joke- “how can we be expected to celebrate the wearing of the green, when just two days ago they took it all away from us?” Thank Jack Benny for that one.
It got backed up to April 15 in 1955, so, so much for the Lincoln theory.
Various states have levied income taxes ever since 1789, originally to pay for Revolutionary War debts.
I would have loved to have seen whether or not Johnson’s “War on Poverty” would’ve been more effective if $25 billion a year wasn’t being siphoned off to pay for the war in Vietnam. Just one Hugh’s helicopter used in Vietnam cost around $1 million, enough to pay for sixty-six low-cost two bedrooms houses.
The cost of the war in Afghanistan is already around $20 billion. Some estimates put the price tag on the war in Iraq at $100 billion or more.
Since 1913, taxes have been the major source of revenue for the federal government. No President, including Lincoln, has been able to cut taxes during war time- until now, President Bush Jr, has cut them twice. Mostly for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. And we wonder why we’re running such massive deficits.
Ben Franklin once said “… an unjust peace is to be preferred before a just war.”
Because we have two kids, part of the Bush tax-cuts was a tax credit on each child. What a nice help. We could’ve applied it to our child care cost, since we can’t afford for either of us to stay home, we both need to have jobs to get by. Guess what? The state of Iowa taxed our federal tax break. I understand, Iowa has a revenue problem right now, but does Iowa understand that I have kind of a revenue problem right now too?
In 1789, Ben Franklin wrote a friend in a letter that “Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
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