Enjoy the Grass Shooting Up, and Maybe Tulips, Too

Tuesday, April 13th, 2004

Words for Today
"I'd love to see Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns. I'd also like just one more hit single."

​The words belong to Tiny Tim, that curious American entertainer of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" (in falsetto) fame. Born on April 12, 2004, he made it more than seven months past his sixty-fourth birthday before completing his passage in the middle world in late November 1996. You have to say this much for little Timmy – he was honest and unashamed to put his hope for world peace and personal success in the same short two sentences. Born with moniker Herbert Kaury, Tiny Tim accompanied himself on a ukulele made his big break-through on the "Rowan and Martin Laugh-In" – he became a regular. Tiny Tim loudly proclaimed his virginity and purity, and he caused something of a sensation when he married Victoria May Budinger live on the "Johnny Carson" television show during among the most turbulent of times in the United States and the world as the decades changed from the 1960s to the 1970s. She was his Miss Vicky (she was seventeen when he announced their engagement – thirty years older than she), and the world followed the couple through the birth of their daughter, Tulip, to divorce court eight years later. Born of a Lebanese father and a Jewish mother, Tiny Tim enjoyed great fame for a few years before disappearing from celebrity in the early 1970s. He played Las Vegas – and when things didn't go well there, he played a circus for eight months. He went down to live in Australia for a while before coming back to live in Des Moines, Iowa, and eventually in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he died – with his third wife, "Miss Sue."

Now, dear kola, I'll bet that there's not many North Dakotans woke up in their gloriously beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful place yesterday morning humming "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." There's always something. The Monday after Easter was indeed a grand day here at Arthur Drive and at my office on the eastern edge of Bismarck. 'Twas a very busy day that included a planning meeting for a grand Chautauqua week at the end of the summer at Ft. Abraham Lincoln State Park on west side of the Missouri, a few miles south of Mandan (August 6-10, 2004); lots of catch-up work on publicity for the many fine programs the North Dakota Humanities Council has brought citizens in the state for more than thirty years and various maintenance of the Council's computer system – so I didn't get a chance to write about yesterday's glories. When that happens, I feel that I've somehow not quite accomplished what I must on any given day to continue passage here in the middle world as long as possible – touching base with all of my friends and writing keeps me from dwelling on the insidious invader and Big C's progress – or, what I hope will continue – lack of major progression. 'The late hours of Easter Sunday and the first six of yesterday, the Monday following, were weirder than Tiny Tim – I was awake hourly dealing with reflux from my attempts to keep liquid protein down – and digestible. Eventually – late in the afternoon, I found some relief from the most mundane of maladies – with the help of a weest bit of Maalox. So as grand Monday, the 12th, moves to the first minutes of Tuesday, the 13th, I'm feeling ready to deal with more exciting challenges – especially intellectual ones in my professional work and in my many preoccupations. 'Tis one day at time – and as the days of my life progress, I find myself in ever-greater amazement at our wonderful ability to selectively forget the worst of feeling in the less than the finest of fettle. I do know this for certain, without qualification – although it's against all reason and logic. Critical to my survival heretofore has been the love and friendship that has come my way – and every day, my very soul learns a bit more about the nature of grace, that amazing grace that gives humans this incredible power to help out each other and look out for each other – despite the fact that those, as I, getting receiving such gifts are totally unworthy.

My beloved Minnesota Twins lost late yesterday afternoon to Detroit – and, so far, have lost one more game than they've won this year. Come on boys, 'tis time to focus, FOCUS, FOCUS Over in Minneapolis Twin City, St. Paul, my good friend Jim Smith seems to be doing well after receiving a new heart valve and undergoing bypass surgery on April 1 – he and spouse Cheryl Dickson are among those who so faithfully send the best of healing vibes my way – I'm so happy that Jim will be around for all those who so admire him and his work as a public historian. Cheryl retired from her job as the executive director of the Minnesota Humanities Council a few years past – at a rather tender age. I wish you the very best, this fine day, Jim and Cheryl: may there be years of days of laughter, music, and an awakening of folks to their true salvation – helping out each other as you two have done so well for so many decades. During the most trying of times, many of you, my special kola, have written me notes of encouragement that stir my soul – special kudos today to friends Jerry and Paula Tweton, Jane Ahlin, Jerry and Jean Waldera, Carrol Peterson, Ginny Tisdale, Deb Wallwork, Susan Gordon, Jim Lund, Robyn Neal, Therese Yeaton, Robert and Marilyn Cunningham, Brian Palecek and Arnie Lahren, Alice Thompson, Jeanne Jones Manzer, Ray Wheeler – and so many more (I'll never get them all written down, not even those from a mere week – forgive me if I've neglected any of you, dear kola). Ah, amazing grace you send, dear kola, amazing grace. How all of you find the right words for the most challenging of times 'tis a wonderfully empowering and healing gift you send – in fact, you make me weep for sheer joy – as did those emails and phone calls from my children, my family, and the siblings and children of my lovin' spouses' sisters and brothers.

There's simply no adequate homage I can pay to you friends – and all my dear family. Sunday last, for example, my nephew Jay Bleth cleaned the gutters around the roof on a brisk and crisp Easter (even a few snow flurries). We're ready for those April showers – Jay did work that I should have done more than two years past. Sister-in-law Janet, a nurse, redid dressings for me – how I enjoyed her and her three children's visit. Later, good friends Warren and Rose Marie Henke dropped over a little chatter and talk.

This day, April 13, 2004, marks the one-hundredth-sixty-first anniversary of one this nation's greatest wordsmiths, the third president, Thomas Jefferson. His spirit will never die. Of course, there's a huge distance between what Jefferson said so well about so many of the big questions that haven't gone away since the dawn of human consciousness – and the first development of a social conscience among those traveling in the middle world. I think that the 1791 portrait of Jefferson in his forties by Charles Wilson Peale is a glimpse of the troubled, but ever-optimistic soul of Jefferson. He continued to believe in the ability of humans to change for the better without the necessity of resorting to some sort of benign, benevolent government that attempts to deal with personal morality – such as the ilk of the Christian Right in America today and its hypocritical, smug "if you don't do as we say, this country is going to hell, for sure." I've been thinking about a line of Jefferson t-shirts – with such as this from an 1816 letter to Charles Yancey: "Every nation is liable to be under whatever bubble, design, or delusion may puff up in moments when off their guard." We haven't been doing very well, in spite of news coverage and scrutiny the ways of our government and society and its leaders that would completely overwhelm Thomas Jefferson, methinks. Jefferson (also in 1816) wrote to a French friend, "The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love." The greatest of human temptations well could be the omnipresent feeling that somehow we're right and the rest of the world is wrong, wrong, wrong – what Jefferson terms the "seductions of self-love." The problem is difficult to address – for we don't see ourselves as selfish or dominated by our needs and ideas. Up until his last year of passage here, Jefferson continued to write about the problem, as he did in a letter to Edward Livingston in 1825 (Jefferson died on the Fourth of July, 1826): "A regard for reputation and the judgment of the world may sometimes be felt where conscience is dormant." Driven by our need for recognition of what we come to think is deserved fame and a special place in the world, we substitute considered ethical judgment that is based upon our reflection and Socratic self-examination – put in its place what the world thinks about us. Beyond this, of course, is even greater self-centeredness – "The world may not agree – but I'm right – to hell with the rest of the world: here's to me."

Yes, indeed, there is enormous distance between what Jefferson said so well and his own conduct – he was most human. From our perspective, a slave-owner offering what Jefferson did in an 1815 letter to A.L.C. Destutt de Tracy this hard-hitting short sentence bespeaks for many hypocrisy of the worst possible ilk: "I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others." Despite his valiant efforts, Jefferson had to recognize that no human ever traveled here who was completely rational -- yet he remained convinced that such was something that could be realized through education. Yet his words remain – here's a few candidates from Jefferson's observations for what I would happily wear on a T-shirt and discuss with those who read my shirt:
Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Tiny Tim's signature song came from the late 1920s – don't know why I should be humming these words – hardly up to that "particular felicity of expression" that John Adams so much respected in Thomas Jefferson's prose. But here 'tis: "Tiptoe Through the Tulips"

1. Tiptoe through the window, by the window that is where I'll be,
come tiptoe through the tulips with me! Oh!

2. Tiptoe on the garden, by the garden of a willow tree,
and tiptoe through the tulips with me!

Knee deep in flowers we’ll stray, we'll keep the showers away.

3. And if I kiss you in the garden, in the moonlight, will you pardon me,
and tiptoe through the tulips with me?

Knee deep in flowers we’ll stray, we'll keep the showers away.

4. And if I kiss you in the garden, in the moonlight, will you pardon me,
and tiptoe through the tulips with me?

This is the day, back in 1943 during the worst of World War II, on the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, that that most-magnificent of monuments in our nation's capital city was dedicated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt – 'tis the Jefferson Memorial. I've taken many of my dear North Dakota Humanities Council members to the monument at night after dinner – I was just remembering with great affection the night the group including State Senator Tom Trenbeath from up at Cavalier – that's been a while. 'Twas the last time I had a cigar, walking with Tom down on along the Potomac Riverbank that night. Don't know about you – but I'm looking forward to another spring, damned-near-summer day here in beauuuuuuuuutiful Dakota – a great day to greet the sunrise and stick around for a glorious sunset. Do take good care of yourselves, my kola – may you find joy and delight in watching nature, learning something new and different at least a couple of times and day – and then be about the business of taking care of each other, the reason we're all here in the middle world. We may muddle considerably from time to time – but, like the eternal optimist, Jefferson, we continue to strive for the kind of social equality and justice necessary to truly being alive. Here's a last word from Jefferson: "There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me." Gonna be a good deal of grass shooting up today, methinks – ah, what a great day to be alive!

Ev Albers