November’s poem

“The Nomad Harvesters,” by Marie De L. Welch:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The nomads had been the followers of flocks and herds,

Or the wilder men, the hunters, the raiders.

The harvesters had been the men of homes.

But ours is a land of nomad harvesters.

They till no ground, take no rest, are homed nowhere.

Travel with the warmth, rest in the warmth never;

Pick lettuce in the green season in the flats by the sea.

Lean, follow the ripening, homeless, send the harvest home;

Pick cherries in the amber vallies in tenderest summer.

Rest nowhere, share in no harvest;

Pick grapes in the red vineyards in the low blue hills.

Camp in the ditches at the end of beauty.

They are a great band, they move in thousands;

Move and pause and move on.

They turn to the ripening, follow the peaks of seasons,

Gather the fruit and leave it and move on.

Ours is a land of nomad harvesters,

Men of no root, no ground, no house, no rest;

They follow the ripening, gather the ripeness,

Rest never, ripen never,

Move and pause and move on.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I came by this in Carey McWilliams’s book, Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California.

Clarkson’s farm

A weekend of bone-tiredness. Karin is rather laid up, and I’ve been shouldering some extra burdens which have made my usual chores more difficult. This afternoon, it took an hour and a half instead of the customary hour to mow one of the fields; this was due to the length and dampness of the grass (the rain has wreaked havoc on the mowing schedule). After I returned inside I drank four bottles of water. Samuel wanted to sleep in my arms. Karin was too tired to start watching a new crime series with me, so I put on the first thing that looked interesting: a documentary series called Clarkson’s Farm. I’d never heard of Jeremy Clarkson, but in Britain he’s famous. He kept me thinking of the Kingsley Amis title “One Fat Englishman.” Clarkson is only sixty-one but looks seventy-five because he’s smoked so many cigarettes. In this show he has bought a farm in the Cottswolds, and after years of paying someone else to do his work, he’s decided to do it himself, even though he knows nothing about farming. He buys a huge, fancy Lamborghini tractor instead of a sensible second-hand tractor; it doesn’t fit into his barn. Then he discovers that a lot of farming consists of climbing up to and down from the cab of his very tall tractor. He tills the soil inefficiently. He wears rough-looking farmers’ clothes. Real farmers are summoned to advise him; as often as not, they’ve dressed as if to work in an office. I am not a gentleman farmer, but on a much smaller scale I can relate to all of this.

R.I.P. Grandpa

My grandpa – my mother’s father – died in his sleep yesterday, in Kansas City, Missouri. He was ninety-five. Many of his relations, who are scattered around the globe, will join my grandma at the funeral. Karin & I will travel to Kansas City on Friday.

My grandpa was known to U.S. evangelicals for discovering the bodies of the five slain “Operation Auca” missionaries. The “Operation Auca” story has been told by Elisabeth Elliot in Through Gates of Splendor and other books; in Steve Saint’s book End of the Spear, and in the movie of the same title; in the documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor, for which my grandpa was interviewed; and in my grandparents’ 2010 book, Unmarked Memories: Five Friends Buried in the Jungle of Ecuador. Many people also read my grandparents’ earlier book, Mission to the Headhunters: How God’s Forgiveness Transformed Tribal Enemies (1961; revised edition, 2002), which recounts their first years among the Shuar people.

My grandparents lived in Ecuador for thirty-seven years and then retired to the Missouri countryside. They helped out with various ministerial projects, traveling often. At home, my grandpa farmed pine and fir trees and beef cattle. I used to lend him a hand – bitterly, against my will. My grandpa didn’t understand why this teenaged grandson was so sullen. He enjoyed working with other people; he was naturally chatty and upbeat; as my other grandfather describes him, he was as confident as a person could be without turning downright cocky. Recreationally, he liked to fish … and to work (but I’ve already mentioned that) … and to be around other people who were fishing or working. He would attend a tractor auction for the fun of it.

He also could be very witty – even when he suffered from dementia (I describe this in a blog entry written during my last visit to him). A plain man, he enjoyed deftly pricking the balloons of pretense.

Here is a picture of him that I found on the Internet. With one hand, he holds his Bible, and with the other he greets a Christian of a warmer clime.