I even had a poem picked out to post this week, and then I hit a glitch: no Internet connection at home. No, not in Costa Rica yet, still in Washington. The Universe is clearly preparing me for the place I am going. Being all proactive and such like, I called Century Link last week to request that my service contract be terminated on March 21st. They cut it off the moment I hung up the phone. I can’t see that this was anything other than a blunder in their part, as I would happily have paid for another 20 days of service.
Anyway. No Internet. I have Internet at work, but my computer won’t connect to it. A nice IT guy explained to me how to “update the driver” on my “wireless card” but to do that I need to, um, access the Internet. So. No luck.
Thank Jesus and the saints for Straight Talk and the unlimited data usage they offer! Big shout-out to Straight Talk. Whoot whoot! So I CAN post this uplifting tale from my phone by poking patiently at letters smaller than my fingers.
I hate typing on my phone.
So the posts may not be so plentiful just now, but the blog will go on. I will keep right on talking to myself as usual, and I’ll let you in on the conversation as I am able.
(How can typing on a phone make BOTH hands hurt? I don’t know, but it does.) Pura vida.
And just like that, we’re going home. Back to Costa Rica where my spirit has been waiting for my body to rejoin it. If I tell you exactly how it happened, I’ll lose you along the way; there are lots of false starts and lots of networking with people you don’t know. Or maybe you do know them. I try to avoid throwing people’s names around on the internet unless unless I’m furious at them for the disappearance of somebody I know.
The road back to Costa Rica started maybe a year ago with my husband trying to make a call on skype and accidentally calling the wrong guy. That led us on a circuitous route to a sudden opportunity for which we ALMOST packed up and moved just after this past Christmas. But it fell through. We were so disappointed. For days, I could barely move. Then it happened again in January—BOOM. A bolt from the blue: a Facebook message from a friend asking if we’re interested in managing a small hotel in our old hometown. Of course we’re interested! And then, as suddenly as the possibility exploded into our lives, the air sputtered out of it like a balloon, and it clearly wasn’t going to happen. Then neither of us could move. We couldn’t even talk to each other—not because we were angry, but because there was nothing to say.
And I decided that this might be God or The Universe (or whoever sends us messages) doing just that—sending me a message. Telling me it’s time. Telling me to take this seriously. Telling me that maybe we’ve done what we need to do here, taken care of what needed attention, repaired what was broken. That you can’t always listen to your heart—sometimes you have to listen to your mind—but that maybe the light is turning green.
So I called the Immigration office in Costa Rica. I could have done that on any day of the last five years, but I was too afraid. My question was, “Can we renew our expired resident status?” and if they said no, I knew that I would have to carry my dreams out the door and drown them in the cold lake. But finally my need to know was greater than my fear of disappointment, so I dialed the number. In short, the answer is yes. A complicated yes, of course, but entirely possible.
Then I sent out two messages to long-time friends. I got two encouraging replies. One of the replies included the suggestion that I contact a third friend. The third friend, who I’d thought of contacting but talked myself out of “bothering” him, was actually actively looking for someone to do what I do and someone to do what Pio does. And the price was right.
And we are going home.
We’d been thinking about visiting Costa Rica on vacation in November of this year, and I was afraid it would destroy me. I was afraid I would do something insane like refuse to leave, or something worse like leave.
Costa Rica isn’t paradise. It’s a place on the map. There are problems and potholes, mosquitoes, mud, cockroaches, scorpions and thieves. Paychecks are small, stuff is expensive. But it is home. I wasn’t born there, but it chose me when I was twenty years old and I can’t help it. I would be happy here if I could. It would be easier, more comfortable and in some ways, safer.
We’ll be leaving Washington State on March 23, flying to Pennsylvania for a week, and then continuing on home to Costa Rica at the end of the month.
To transpose the words of The Good Lord into words of my own: “What does it profit a girl if she gains the world but her soul is so sad that it withers into a dry little nut inside her heart?”
I did something on Friday that I’ve never done before. I went to a murder trial. On one hand, it wasn’t exactly an item on my bucket list. On the other hand, considering what happened to Barbara, it’s still on it. This trial has no legal link to Barbara Struncova or to Bill Ulmer, BUT it does have a personal link to them for me. I consider it to be one of the places Barbara has lead me. It happened like this:
Barbara disappeared, so I can’t very well ask her my questions in person. On my search for answers about what happened to her, I’ve had to follow in the footsteps of Bill. Those footsteps lead, as we all know, onto a plane with his brother Wayne’s passport in hand, and back to the USA. December 2010. Within months, those footsteps climbed into a semi and drove into the chaos of the oil boom in North Dakota. And there they stayed, more or less, hauling water back and forth to fracking sites, until the end of 2013.
I didn’t know anything about fracking and oil drilling. It’s never been a subject of interest for me. I find it all sort of violent, horrible, and terrifying—even minus the actual violent and terrifying human beings that seem drawn to it. So I called up my good friend Google with his sidekick Google Maps and we started chatting. Mother of God, did I get schooled. And meet some interesting folks.
Enter Lissa Yellowbird Chase. Click on her name and look at the link about what she does. I don’t want to re-write the article when you can read the original. Lissa looks for missing people—passionately, furiously, even somewhat madly. So I wrote to her. What did I have to lose? She answered me back. I didn’t expect she was going to tell me what happened to Barbara, but I reached out to her anyway. Some days I feel like I’m spitting into the wind with this, and I guess I hoped for a little hand-holding from a real bad-ass body-searcher.
I’m getting my hand held alright. Turns out that the case she’s worked on for the last 4 years, regarding the disappearance of Kristopher “KC” Clarke in 2012, is coming to trial NOW and only a few hours from where I live. So on Friday, I went with her to the first day of the murder-for-hire trial of James Henrikson. Click that link. This is the first time I’ve ever even entered a courtroom. I had no idea what to expect.
The defendant, James Henrikson, was unrecognizable. Did you see the picture of him on the link? Looking all buff and competent? The guy sitting at the table between two dark-suited lawyers was gaunt and yellow. I have never seen a human being that color. I swear. It was frightening. Terrifying. Sick. He kept his clearly-calculated demeanor calm and interested. Never flinched or demonstrated any reaction whatsoever during the entire court session. Smiled at his lawyers. Looked at Lissa and at me. I don’t have a word for that that glance felt like. “Chilling” is what I’m tempted to say, but that’s not quite right. It made me want to put my clothes in the washer and take a shower. I met KC Clarke’s mom. What do you say to a woman who has to sit there and listen to the story of how her son’s head was beaten soft with the handle of a floor jack? I came up with, “Nice to meet you.”
It was all quite a lot like courtroom scenes on tv, but with no glitz and no drama. Tom Cruise was nowhere to be found. No shouting, no crying, or anything like that. Lawyers on both sides mispronounced things that even I knew were wrong, and demonstrated a disappointing lack of basic acting skills. The judge, who was much less somber and intimidating than tv judges, gently scolded one of the jurors for nodding off.
Then they called in the first witness, a man named Timothy Suckow, who murdered Clarke (allegedly) at the bidding of Henrikson for 20,000$. I’m still trying to get my head around the experience of sitting in the same room with a man who is forced to admit out loud that, essentially, he knows he is going to die in prison no matter what the jury’s verdict is. He wasn’t the least bit surly, like you’d expect the burly tattooed guy in his mugshot to be. He had the high voice of a boy, the demeanor of an old man, the expression of something mortally wounded. He told us he has two teen-aged children.
I won’t be going back for the rest of the trial. I’ll be going to work as usual, learning about the proceedings from Lissa and from the media. Part of me is sorry to miss the intrigue. Most of me is relieved to have an excuse not to sit in the room with so much pain, sorrow and injury. Justice is so terribly painful. So necessary and so gut-wrenching.
It took me back to my History of Theatre class at Goshen College in the 1990s. I could hear Dr. Lauren Friesen’s voice explain to us the difference between modern melodrama and classical tragedy. In modern melodrama, when bad people get the bad things they deserve, we feel relief and even delight. In classical tragedy, the execution of justice fills us with fear and pity.
“New Year’s” is not my favorite holiday. I’m not sure what my favorite holiday is, unless my birthday counts. I like Christmas alright, or whichever thinly-disguised version of Winter Solstice you prefer. I like a holiday of lights in the dark part of the year and giving presents is a bonus—at least during the times of my life when I’ve been able to afford them. Having to tell your family “no presents this year” sucks, and I’ve done it on more than one occasion. It always bothered me a lot more than it bothered them.
I have two problems with “New Year’s.” One is that it comes at the wrong time of year. Um, hello. I’m sorry, but NOTHING is new in January. If you live in the northern hemisphere, it’s the middle of winter. If you live in the southern hemisphere, it’s the middle of summer and nothing is really new then, either. I think that the sensible time to celebrate a new year would be in the spring. Right? Yes. Right. I would even be open to celebrating New Year in the fall—when it’s spring in the other half of the world. I can be open-minded like that. But January? I’m sorry. No. I personally celebrate a new year on the first of May. I started doing that when I was 14, way before my Mennonite teachers spilled it about the Pagan celebration of May Day. When I say I “celebrate” a new year on the first of May, I don’t mean I stay up until the middle of the night drinking or anything. “Commemorate” might be a better word for it. “Observe,” even–I’m fairly passive about it. I just mean it doesn’t go unnoticed.
The other thing that annoys me about “New Year’s” is that it’s so often sappy. None of us have any idea what the heck is going to happen to us in the morning or in the coming year. Some wonderful things. Some terrible things. And we’ll congratulate ourselves on the good ones and try not to take the bad ones personally. We’ll post them on facebook so our friends can congratulate or commiserate. I can pretty much guarantee you all of that and nothing more.
I’m gloriously happy about all the attention Barbara Struncova’s story has gotten in 2015, apart from my voice howling from my little rooftop. I hope the “new” year brings more truth to light, but I try to be realistic about how difficult that will be. Difficult—not impossible. (Why oh why am I not a detective?) As you might guess, I don’t really do “resolutions,“ but I do hope for things. And I really hope that in the near future, some benevolent publisher accepts the book I’ve been sending out like mad. Quién sabe. I’ll keep you posted.
I have to go get in the shower now or I’ll be late to work on the first day of a “new year.” I will make a mess out of writing the date this week, that’s for sure.
So, here’s to you.
Here’s to me.
Here’s to everything that’s about to happen, whatever it is.
We have an elephant in the room. I’ve been talking around the elephant for almost a year, hoping that it will leave, shrink, turn into a frog—something. It hasn’t. It’s standing patiently right there in the middle of the room while we talk over and under it.
The elephant is the question of Barbara Struncova’s family. Eventually, everyone asks me about Barbara’s family, about what they say, about what they are doing, about where they are in all this. I am so loath to address this publicly that it has gotten to be a bit ridiculous. But let’s do it. Your questions are reasonable and rightly asked.
Yes, I have attempted to contact Barbara’s family. No, I have not been successful.
That’s what I can say for sure. Beyond that, all I can offer is “I heard…” and “someone (but I’ve promised not to say who!) told me…” I have not wanted to throw so much conjecture into this public conversation, but I believe it’s time for me to honor your questions. I will tell you what I know and what I don’t know.
I know almost nothing.
Somebody in Czech Republic is reading my blog. The posts about Barbara get a hit or two from Czech, sometimes up to 10. I have no idea who is there on the other end of the line. No one from Czech Republic has ever contacted me—neither to thank me, to correct me, nor to ask me to be quiet. I sometimes tell myself that their silence is their tacit approval, although, honestly, a silence so deep and so long sounds like something else.
When I began to talk about Barbara last December, I was afraid her family would ask or order me to stop, as they did with Barbara’s friends in Costa Rica 5 years ago. They haven’t. Whether because they don’t feel I pose the same kind of threat as the other friends or because they are afraid I will tell the entire universe if they ask me to be silent, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. It’s true: asking me to be quiet would be a very bad idea.
Barbara’s sister lives in Czech Republic. She did not respond to my attempt to contact her. I realize that English is not her first language, but it wasn’t Barbara’s either. Barbara and her sister were very close, from what Barbara’s roommates say, and the sisters talked frequently on skype. Of course they spoke in Czech, but the conversations sounded happy and contained lots of laughter.
During the Spanish lessons I gave Barbara, she and I talked some about our families. Both of us have a sister who chose a path in life that is more what our parents would have wanted for us than the one we each chose. We talked about how our parents don’t understand our decisions and how much we hate the pain and worry we cause them. Another thing we had in common is wealthy grandparents. Neither of our sets of parents were especially wealthy, and nobody was sending either of us money, but I remember speculating with her about whether we had inheritances that would one day come to us. That’s the conversation as I remember it, anyway. It was 5 years ago. And it’s not like we hammered on this every day.
After Barbara disappeared, I started asking questions. All put together, the answers make no sense, so I do not assume that any one of them is true, although each of them was told to me by someone who earnestly believes his/her story. I’m not going to dissect them. They involve a possible inheritance from a grandmother, and a rich uncle in Prague who, Bill seemed to think, was going to give them money.
On the flip side, many people (including Barbara herself) told me that no one sent Barbara money, and that she worked hard for what she had. There are lots of stories, lots of rumors, lots of very active imaginations (including mine!) and no Barbara to clear it up for us. In the end, all of that intrigue is beside the point.
Some things I do know:
On the day Barbara disappeared, no one suspected that anything had happened to her. There was no immediate reason to suppose she had not left the house to travel as Bill said she did. No one instantly suspected that he was lying. He’s very good at what he does. Red flags popped up one by one as the days passed.
Foul play was first mentioned when Bill left Tamarindo, Costa Rica on December 23, 2010, AND SIMULTANEOUSLY money was discovered to have been charged to Barbara’s credit card at the surf shop where he worked, and then withdrawn by the company ATM card that he carried. In the interim of 18 days, Barbara’s worried friends contacted her family and everyone was on the look-out for the first sign of where she had gone.
When the news of Barbara being a “missing person” and a suspicious connection to the actions of Bill Ulmer reached Czech Republic, (early 2011) what happened is not what I personally would have anticipated. Barbara’s family asked that the all contact with the news media be suspended, that the “Find Barbara” blogand Facebook page cease to be active and that the fliers containing information about her disappearance should please not be distributed. Barbara’s sister was aware of the facts surrounding Barbara’s disappearance, and yet for some reason Barbara’s mother learned of it from the newspaper. (That part of the story trips me, and I land flat on my face every time I get to it.) The blog degenerated into gossip and the family, deeming it unhelpful, requested that it be closed. Barbara’s friends and housemates complied with the family’s requests.
Investigators, which I’m told were hired by Barbara’s uncle, went first to Costa Rica to scope things out, and then they traveled to the USA where I heard they watched the house where Bill was living. I do not know if they attempted to contact him. That is all. The investigators went home. The end.
I wrote to one of the investigators, but he did not reply. I understand (second-hand reported conversation) that after the initial investigation, the family asked for him to leave the case alone. No requests for action on the part of the Struncova family have produced any that I am aware of.
I’ve heard it said that Barbara’s mother is not well and that this is the reason the family is unwilling to further discuss Barbara’s disappearance—that they do not want to re-open old wounds in the interest of protecting the fragile health and well-being of her mother. I do not know if this is true or false. I have very strong feelings about it, and no information. So the less I say about that possibility, the better.
What I do have is a I wild imagination, and in a situation like this, how am I supposed to control it? I can’t. I have gone through a million scenarios about the family’s (lack of) response and the reasons for it. I have imagined unspeakable possibilities that I would never dare to describe. But I must acknowledge that I have NO basis for these fabrications other than my own confused frustration.
I don’t know what’s going on in the lives or the hearts of Barbara’s family. I imagine that I never will. I have been very vocal about a heart-break that belongs to them, so I am sure that in their minds I am a loud-mouth American who is not to be trusted. I get that.
The world is big and cultures are different. Language barriers are just the beginning.
There are more things that I don’t know than what I do, and more things I can’t imagine than what I can.
It’s alright. I’m trying to be at peace, and live with my lack of comprehension. Sometimes my imagination shapes gargoyles in the blank spots that the silence of Barbara’s family leaves. I try to own the monsters as mine and not theirs. There is enough confusion and pain without me creating more by speculating. They are responsible for their choices; I am responsible for mine.
All of this is what I know and what I don’t.
September 20, 2008 Barbara Struncova with friends on the night before she left for Costa Rica
The other day, I had the most awesome idea. Oh man. It was a great one. It was such a great idea that it pains me to tell you about it. But I’m going to. My book, “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales from A Mennonite Childhood” turns one year old this month, and I thought we should celebrate, somehow. Somehow that does not involve me jumping up and down, trying clever new tricks to get you to buy my book without realizing that it was a clever trick. Something that might feel like a celebration.
So, I decided to read to you. How awesome is that? Man, I am smart. I decided to video myself reading from my book–the best and funniest parts–and post it right here. One, each week through the remaining weeks of August.
I picked passages from the book, divide them into 4, and sat down to video myself reading. It’s really cute. I make funny faces when I read that I don’t generally make in the mirror, so it kind of cracked me up to watch it, myself.
Too bad you’ll never see it. Wordpress won’t upload it. It says it doesn’t upload that kind of file.
I’m smart enough to get good ideas, but I’m not smart enough to trouble-shoot their technical problems. There’s probably a way to make it work. But I don’t know what it is. So–sorry about that. I guess I get to keep the birthday present I made you.
As a consolation prize, the following is the short segment from which the title is taken, since everybody wants to know what a Pyonder is. 🙂 So do I!
I don’t know what a Pyonder is. We have a song we sing in Church about When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder I’ll Be There. A roll is sometimes called a bun but I never heard anyone call it a pyonder. Or there are rolls like toilet paper rolls or rolls like rolling down the hill and I don’t know which one you’d call a Pyonder. It’s kind of a funny song. But I know it’s about Jesus coming back and I know we have to be ready for that any minute.
I’ve decided that I’m done with “The Open Book Test.” For anyone who was enjoying it: (graceful bow). If you don’t know what I’m talking about–don’t worry about it. I was going to continue it for the whole of 2015, but I changed my mind. That’s the great thing about having a blog. It’s yours. You can change your mind if you want to.
In place of that project exploring the past, I’m going to try come up with occasional posts about what’s going on in my mind in the present, and hope that they are reasonably interesting.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about a particular kind of annoying person and how I fear I might be turning into one. The ones I’ve met are usually ex-missionaries of some sort–people who once did something awesome and unusual, but then proceeded to live totally normal boring lives but continue to define themselves by the one interesting unusual thing they did 20 years ago. I hate that. It drives me crazy. The other day I realized that I think I might be turning into one. I felt like kicking a hole in the wall.
So.
So?
Well it seems like there are only two possible ways to avoid this or change it.
1. Do something interesting and unusual now (take it out of the past and put it in the present)
2. Redefine yourself (as in: use the mirror and not old photo albums)
I wish I could think of another option, but I can’t.
I’d like to do the first one. I am dying to do the first one. Honestly. And I’m sure you’re wondering what the hell is stopping me. It’s not like I have kids in school or anything. I am married, though, to a wonderful man who is about as different from me as a person can be. He’s unusual and exciting by nature. If you know him, you know what I mean. He’s also older than I am–not a lot, but enough–he’s had a significant number of health problems in the last several years, and he’s an Aries. All of these things add up to: he’s not in the mood to do exciting, unusual things that don’t involve full health insurance and regular paychecks. All things considered, I don’t blame him. And then there’s this: he IS doing something exciting and unusual. He’s an Italian living in America. This, for him, is as awesome as it would be for me if he took me to live in Italy. So, there you go. You get it. We were all amped to join the Peace Corp a few months ago, and for about three precious hours I felt like I came to life again. Then I discovered that he can never join the Peace Corp because he’s not an American citizen. So I let that go, too.
The second one is not as fun. It’s sad–or it makes me sad. How do you do that? I mean, how do I do that? I don’t want to be a middle-aged community health worker living in a redneck town in a cold desert when the world is full of places with oceans and languages and sunshine and open windows. In my mind, I am ready to take my surfboard and paddle out, but instead I take my scissors and walk around the house snipping off the heads of the roses that have bloomed. Again and again. Instead of packing suitcases I switch purses a lot.
It’s not easy. That’s all I’m saying. It would be a lot easier to do something hard, than to keep doing easy things over and over. I’m standing here with my machete, ready to swashbuckle through the jungle, and then I realize I’m in a field of daisies. It’s disappointing. Tennessee Williams said something about that.
I can’t tell you how I’ve resolved this, because I haven’t. I’m just posing the question. That’s the difference between me posting from the past or posting from the present. I can’t tell you how it turned out.
Gardening with a machete: Outside my house in Costa Rica, 2010
My plan for June blog posts was interrupted in the last weeks by two wonderful things: first the arrest of Bill Ulmer, and second, a two-week trip to Italy that my husband and I have been needing to take for the last ten years. I say “needing” because he is from Italy and it has been fifteen years since he has been back to visit friends and family.
As for Bill, my understanding is that he is being held in federal prison in Atlanta at this time, waiting for a hearing in North Carolina. This information trickled in to me through the fog of jet lag while I was in Italy, so I do not know if it is completely current or what, exactly, we are waiting for. I would love to hear from any of you who have a story to tell about your friendship with Barbara or with Bill.
As you can see, I have decided to use his real name at this point. He has not been convicted of anything I have suggested in “Remember Barbara,” but I think it is clear that I have not made this story up out of my head.
Only a few short weeks ago, I supposed that the only thing I would ever be able to do in honor of my friend Barbara’s disappearance is stand here waving this flag of her story, hoping that it might find its way to the people who need to hear it in order to remain safe. So for me to learn of Bill’s arrest about 10 days before I left for a vacation was like a beautiful gift from the universe. I know that as long as he is in federal custody, everyone is safe. I do not mean that I think he goes around with plans to physically harm people–I mean “safe” in a broad personal sense.
We had the best time in Italy! Jet lag is horrible and coming back through US Security/Customs is a dreadful experience even for US citizens with clean a clean conscience (!), but the trip was wonderful! We spent several days in Milan visiting brothers and their families, then we went to San Remo where we spent a few days with my step daughter. After that, we came back to Milan but flew to Sardinia where my brother-in-law has an apartment in a coastal town called Alghero. Definite highlight of the (too few!) days in Alghero is that we got to surf. The waves were terrible and the boards we rented were even worse (mine was a tri-fin missing the middle one!!) but the sun was hot and the water was close to warm SO CLEAR that you could see the rocks and sand in water too deep to stand in. Wow. I took hundreds of photos, walked for miles every day, ate like a horse, gained five pounds in two weeks, bought a whole pile of cheap, cute dresses at the markets and was pleasantly surprised at the prices of things. I was sure that with the Euro stronger than the dollar, everything would be terribly expensive. Not even. Go out to dinner at the beach: get an appetizer, two main courses, a carafe of wine, two coffees, a grappa, a zambuka, a tiramisu… you can’t spend more than 40/50 Euros. Amazing.
Now it’s time for me to get ready for work. Let me see…what still fits after 2 weeks in Italy? Happy Monday, everybody. Unless something incredible happens, next week we’ll be back to The Open Book Test and other revelations…
Random street in Milan. No, it is not a movie set. Yes, random streets actually look like this.
Il Duomo di Milano. Freaking scary. I get it about the art, but this place has a vibe that is TERRIFYING.
Public street in the old section of San Remo. Kind of blurs the lines between what is “inside” and what is “outside.”West coast of Sardinia. Punto Torres, maybe? Remains of old look-out towers on every point.
I have news to share! I had a different post planned for today, but it can wait.
Six months ago I posted the story of how my friend Barbara Struncova disappeared. The story contains some small errors, some speculation and an immense amount of research. Whereas, technically, it must be considered fiction, it is a result of my profound and continuing effort to understand the truth. The segments of the story, put together, have received thousands of reads—far beyond anything I ever imagined. I can only understand this as the world answering back to me and to Barbara, “You have touched us.”
Many of you wrote back to me. I heard from Barbara’s friends, past friends and acquaintances of “Jim,” and many who have no connection to the story at all but are moved by this tragedy.
It is therefore with great joy that I share with you this piece of public information: “Jim”was arrested on May 28, 2015 in the airport in Denver, Colorado. He is being held, as I write these words, on charges of passport theft and identity fraud. There are no other charges at this time and it is not in the best interest of justice for me to speculate or further comment on anything that is not related to the existing charges. But it is safe to hope and pray, and it is safe say that I am jubilant as his lies begin to unravel! I feel that it is important for me to continue to call this individual “Jim” in this forum, as what I am suggesting he as done goes far beyond fraud. If you would like to know his real name, your friend Google will be happy to provide that.
There a poem that I want to share on this happy occasion. I wrote it months ago when this day was only a dream. It is for all of who have reached out to me for the sake of Barbara. Words are power.
Crimson Flag of Silence
We will raise for you a monument of words. We will build a tower to the sky here in this city of Babel where all the voices gather into one language speaking your name, Barbara.
We will not be quelled. We will pile word upon word up to the doorstep of God, constructing for you a fortress a mountain an indestructible testament that we have not imagined your life or your death.
From its highest pinnacle we will fly the crimson flag of your silence.
Ever hear of The Drunken Menno Blog? Don’t miss it! It’s smart. It’s hilarious. It’s sometimes pissy and sometimes sweet, undeniably true and always historically correct. With an original Mennonite cocktail recipe to follow each post. Yes! Where has this kindred spirit been all my life? Um, somewhere in Canada.
I sent the author a copy of “When the Roll Is Called a Pyonder,” she read it and has come up with the perfect drink. It’s called The “Green Stick.” If the ironies are too much for you, my apologies. But you are over 21, aren’t you? Then you’re old enough to work it out.
My favorite part is this:
“No one ever really thought about applying our public pacifism to the private realm until the middle of the twentieth century and even then it hasn’t been done consistently. Children posed something of a problem to early Anabaptists…”
I would not have referred to my childhood spankings as “beatings,” although The Drunken Menno does. And I guess if you’re getting smacked with a stick for the purpose of making you cry over something naughty you have done, what you call it is a matter of semantics.
Have a read. Have a snicker. Scratch your head… Cheers!
The Green Stick, original Mennonite cocktail designed for you and me by The Drunken Menno. Click the link for the recipe.
I graduated from Lancaster Mennonite High School many moons ago, so I must have passed my Mennonite History class. Did they not explain the difference between “ethnic” Mennonites (think Canada and the western portion of the USA) and “religious” Mennonites (of the pious Pennsylvania variety)? Or did I not get the memo? Most likely, even the teacher didn’t get it. I get it now.
I thought I had no flock, but I do have a flock. Imagine my surprise. And I am not even the strangest bird in it.
The best part of all, was seeing a picture of myself reflected back by those around me, that looks like my own image of me. The other 361 days of the year, I am a WIC certifier with a weird pastime: scribbling in notebooks. But this last weekend, for 4 consecutive days, I got to be a writer with a day-job. This, of course, is what I’ve secretly believed all along. I just didn’t know anyone else was convinced.
It’s almost enough to make a girl start humming 606.
Are you still Mennonite? (click to read my answer) Do you attend church? Do you consider yourself a Christian? Are your sisters still Mennonite? What was your purpose for writing this book? What do your parents think about it? Why did you change all the names?
Last week I had the opportunity to answer a different set of questions related to “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder.” A friend of mine teaches 3rd grade at a local elementary school, and, skipping over unmentionables like the day I found out how Baby Michelle got into Mommy’s belly, and how it is that boys get to pee standing up, she has been reading my book to them out loud. On Thursday afternoon, we arranged for me pay a surprise visit to her class. She warned me that I should be prepared for lots of enthusiasm when I walk in the door, but I hadn’t exactly pictured getting mobbed by 23 bouncing, miniature people who are shouting out all of my secrets.
I knocked on the door, nervously, to be honest, and a little boy opened it to let me in. Mrs. Wytko looked up from their math lesson and smiled. “Look!” she said to them. “We have a special visitor today. Guess who this is…”
Somebody gasped, “Diana…??”
I said, “It’s me!”
They jumped out of their chairs and took two running steps toward me, then remembered that I’m actually sort of still a stranger, and stopped.
I sat down on one of the little desks, feeling entirely oversized, held out my arms, and said something like, “So I heard you guys like my book?”
That’s when I got mobbed—group-hugged by an entire 3rd grade class, everybody squealing, and jumping, and saying, “Remember when…?” and, “Why did you…?” then dashing to get their journals to show me the pictures they’ve drawn of my childhood escapades. They showed me their scars, and asked me if chocolate pudding still makes me throw up.
Eventually, Mrs. Wytko herded everyone back to their seats. I read a few pages from “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder” to them, while they wrote in their little journals about what I was reading, or drew pictures of what it made them think of.
After that, we had Question Time. I sat in the front of the room, and each child had a turn to come to me to tell me something, or ask a question. There isn’t a Mennonite gene in one of their little bodies, but they didn’t seem to notice. Here in the Wild West, everyone is a recent decedent of an outlaw, an immigrant, or both. Forget whether or not I go to church, or what my mother thinks about it. This is what 3rd graders want to know:
Did you ever your mom about the money you took? Why were the geese so mean? Did you really kill all the ducks? Why were the eggs rotten? Why were you drowning the kitties? How could you run faster than that truck? Why is your dad scared of thunder? Did you pet the snake? Is there still a hole in your floor? Why do you hate potato soup? Remember that mean teacher you had? Why did you want to kill your sister? Why did you think you could fly?
I left with a pocket full of love notes, knowing that my book succeeded in communicating the innocence of childhood that hasn’t got anything at all to do with adult problems like religion. And I agree that whether or not chocolate pudding still makes me throw up is much more critical than whether or not I’m still Mennonite.
Talking to Myself 