Our Moline High School Poet Laureate

"Perhaps it's true that

We are all fleeting thoughts in

The mind of God and

Maybe God creates

The present from the future

Rather than the past

Stranger things are true

After all God's Son was born

In a cattle stall."

Lawrence Eyre, Moline High School, Class of 1966

Thoughts about the King James Version of the Bible - From Classmate Lawrence Eyre

 "I enthusiastically recommend The King James Version by Gregory L Jackson:

The King James Bible

Remains without peer among

English translations.

Beauty and truth sing

With unmatched clarity in

Stately cadences.

Gregory Jackson's book

The King James Version tells

The blessed story."

Lawrence Eyre, Moline High School 1966, Yale College and Yale Divinity School

Book and Kindle - The King James Version

Review - The Haiku Books from Lawrence Eyre, Moline High 1966

 Lawrence Eyre's Heartland Haiku is available at Amazon - as well as Walmart.com.

Eyre's Haiku Country is also available at Walmart.com, as well as at Amazon.com.

Lawrence inscribed this in the copy of Heartland Haiku that he sent to me for review:

"Greg: Whoda thunk Garfield kids would end up writing books after reading MAD?"

At John Deere Junior High, teachers called us The Garfield Gashouse Gang, because we clustered together and had the best time laughing and being mildly disruptive. Mr. McAlister said, "The teachers can spot the Garfielders in each class."

 

 Garfield is now a condo unit, so it really needs a touch of Photoshop nostalgia.

The author and I go back to second grade, which was 67 years ago, when Lawrence's family moved to Moline and he matriculated at Garfield Grade School. Ann Johnson-Zander also went to Garfield and the three of us graduated from Moline High in 1966. The three of us lived in the same area of Moline and attended Yale at various times. 

I joined Salem Lutheran Church, after asking Lawrence where he attended. The next Sunday I got out of the car and went to Salem instead of First Christian Church, across the street. My mother said, "Where are YOU going?" I said, "Across the street," and I never returned to First Christian. As Tolkien observed in The Hobbit, we never know where that path will take us. I went to Augustana College, where I met Christina Ellenberger, whose birthday is this week.

Lawrence won a full scholarship at Yale College and joined the famed Whiffenpoofs singing club at Yale. 

Lawrence and I went to Yale Divinity, but at different times. We have stayed in touch, in part because of MHS reunions and Facebook. I have enjoyed posting his memorabilia in Moline Memories, and his mother's birthdays. Christina and I knew her at Salem and we saw his father at the Billy Graham event in South Bend, Indiana. Lawrence's parents went to Augustana College and were both in the choir, which may explain his singing voice.

It is a small world and haikus are small poems. Epic poetry and large novels can dazzle or puzzle the mind. Poetry demands so much more per word, and the haiku exposes one's lack of poetic gifts.

Lawrence went to a high school and a college where literature was taught with a deep appreciation for the authors and their contribution to Western culture. Although he earned acclaim for coaching tennis, Lawrence's haikus have been a staple in social media.

A haiku is a Japanese stanza of 17 syllables, three lines, 5-7-5.

The first stanza in Heartland Haiku - 

If trees are giving 

Their lives for this I'd better

Say something worthwhile

and also

Find your voice they said

I'm finding mine as many

Voices go silent

Heartland Haiku is one continuous poem, a challenge most of us would not want to address. The stanzas are humorous and ironic, also touching on the pain and tumults of life and death.

Quiet heroism

Lives on wherever people

Work for daily bread

Haiku Country begins

In haiku country

Extra syllables die fast

Seventeen or bust

Later

Beatles and Beach Boys

Wrote haiku songs long before

Anyone noticed

And

No haiku today

Five seven five drives me nuts

Well maybe one more

These books are a delight. They are ideal gifts for people who would like to explore the craft and see how much can come from supposedly simple stanzas.

Lawrence and Laurie have been married 40 years.

She is also a tennis coach. Their teams have been phenomenally successful.

 My father took us to the Yale football stadium, to see them demolish Princeton's team.  

Lawrence Eyre's Mom Is 91 - Happy Birthday

Colleen Peterson

Garnishing the Yard with Bird Baths and Solar Lights

My bird baths are not so elegant,
but they are filled with happy starlings.

Yesterday I added four little bird baths on the ground and filled them with water. The starlings began to splash in the bird baths and jostle to get in. Once in, they pushed each other out after a few splashes, got pushed out, and looked for a way back into the spa.

As I pointed out to Mrs. Ichabod, the baths are far more important than food. The birds need a place to bathe and preen their feathers. Starlings can find their own food in the spring, but they still enjoy competing with each other for the suet and cracked corn.

I put the cracked corn on four levels - the top of the old wooden filing cabinet, on the dry or protected shelf below, in the drawer, and the ground. The best part of this comedy is having a squirrel pop into the drawer to get some food. He will always sit on the drawer lid to have a good lookout for danger. When he heads inside to look around, a startling will glide in to land on that same spot where he eats his food. The squirrel pops up at the starling, "Get off my food drawer!" and the starling darts away.

I used to give the squirrels a fresh ear of field corn each day, but I switched to the composite ear, which they do not favor. In the last few days I saw one, then two perfectly clean cobs on the ground where I put food. Could they have brought old ones back for a refill? When I put the fresh corn on the ground to feed them, the squirrels took the full cobs away. They are clever beggars and thieves. If they were humans, they would make ideal Planned Giving Counselors (estate robbers).

My first thought about this is - trim around each one?
Maynard G. Krebs would not approve.

My solar lights in the crepe myrtle failed after one year, so I bought a new set that lasts all night -using a very slow blink. That made me think of using a longer string on the backyard fence, at least on Mrs. Wright's side.

I unraveled the bundle  of lights outside, when they arrived, and wondered, "How will I keep these lights from sagging on the fence?"

There is always twine, but that would rot as the soaker hose is used and the sun hits the fibers. I began to untangle about 50 feet of lights and look for something to hold them in place. Aha! The tiny lights fit into the fence apparatus every few feet, pointing some of them down. The rest lined up like soldiers along the top. That only took a few minutes, and they were working as soon as the sun began to set.

I asked Mrs. Ichabod to look outside, and she saw the entire fence top lit up.

I said, "The vines will grow up around them and be backlit at night." She immediately responded, "You can pick peas in the dark now. No trouble." Chris is so practical. Notice the all-important pronoun - you. Not "we can pick peas at night" or "I can pick peas at night," but "You can pick peas at night." And I probably will, until longing turns to loathing and I beg our helper to pick all he wants, day or night.

One last string will garnish the back fence; all the trees are solar lit. "What about the roses to be planted along Mr. Gardener's fence?" you wonder. I found some stand alone solar spotlights at Walmart that I can use there. They can be planted in the mulch and trained on the roses.

These can be pushed into mulch individually or in groups.
I am still using some from at least 10 years ago,
the same ones I used around the swimming pool.

---

PS - Fellow Garfield Grade School student Lawrence Eyre wrote on Facebook about bringing a magazine to John Deere Junior High (1960) concerning solar power in the future. Later we were at Yale Divinity, but not at the same time, and another Garfielder was at the Yale School of Music. We were from the same neighborhood around the grade school where my mother taught.

The prophet Lawrence Eyre:
"September 1960, John Deere Junior High School, Moline, Illinois. A bespectacled, buzz-cut boy, left hand holding note cards filled with facts and forecasts from a Popular Science magazine article, stands and enthusiastically delivers his first speech in Mrs Sandstrom's 7th grade classroom: "In the future, the world will be powered by the sun...." More than half a century later, I am still that boy, waking each day thrilled to witness long-ago dreams becoming reality around the world. It is a privilege to live in these brightening times."

After 54 years, choir director to bid farewell - Quad Cities Online. Famous Moline Boys Choir

Kermit Wells, temporary director for 54 years.

After 54 years, choir director to bid farewell - Quad Cities Online:


The annual Moline Boys Choir spring concert later this month will be extra special -- not only because the April 29 program will inaugurate the new auditorium at John Deere Middle School, but that the choir, alumni and community will bid farewell to its longtime director, Kermit Wells.

After 54 years with the choir, Mr. Wells, 75, will retire this summer. The beloved choir (now with 36 regular members and 14 younger cadets) was founded by Frederick Swanson in 1948; Mr. Wells joined as an assistant in 1958. The MBC has toured the country and overseas, made many recordings, and included as many as 200 boys in three separate groups in the 1980s.

"I still enjoy teaching the kids; I don't have energy for concertizing," Mr. Wells said. "It takes so much stress, physical endurance for the concerts. I just don't have the energy for it. "

Former music coordinator for the Moline School District and a junior-high and high-school music teacher (he retired in 1995), Mr. Wells has directed MBC since 1973. He leads five one-hour rehearsals a week at the Coolidge auditorium; singers -- from second through ninth grades -- are required to attend at least two each week, and three in the weeks leading up to a concert. Mr. Wells often doesn't see the whole choir together until the concert.

The holiday season is a busy time for the choir, with several concerts in November and December. Each spring's concert usually features alumni, and the 3 p.m. concert April 29 should be extra full, given Mr. Wells' announcement, said choir alum Steve Slininger, of Silvis, who serves on the board and is heading up the search committee.

"It was pretty amazing," he said of the director's half-century tenure. "When I was a boy, the transformation occurred from Dr. Swanson to Mr. Wells. He was planning to do this on a temporary basis. He's been doing it temporary for 54 years."

"He was very big on tradition," Mr. Slininger said of Mr. Wells, who also taught his three brothers, and his son, Brian. "We kept up a lot of activities we did when I was a boy. He has his own different style of dealing with the boys. It used to be we never got away with anything."

The choir has hundreds of people across the country on its mailing list, and would like to find an alumnus to succeed Mr. Wells. "It should be somebody who knows the boys choir procedure," he said.

Mr. Slininger said the goal is to hire a new director by August. As he's done for 50 years, Mr. Wells will accompany a group of choir members to a week-long camp in Green Lake, Wis., in July. During the summer, the choir doesn't rehearse regularly, but meets for the week before the trip, and performs while there.

Mr. Wells said he's proudest of getting boys interested and involved in music.

"It's something boys don't come by naturally," he said. "To boys, music singing is a girl thing. Once they get into it, get to know each other, they enjoy each other -- the music, the applause and the standing ovations."

Now it's time for their dedicated director to take a bow.

Quotes from Boys Choir alumni

Reactions to Kermit Wells' decision to retire poured forth in a strong, sustained chorus on the Facebook page "Moline Boys Choir For Life":

Matt Sedlak: "Mr. Wells, you taught me so much. You taught me to believe in myself and to not be ashamed of the voice and personality God gave me. Thank you for being my Moline Boys Choir Director."
Jeff De Leon: "An era is truly coming to an end. Thank you for everything you've done to inspire youth to pursue the arts in the Q.C. and for being an incredible teacher."

Chadwick Vogel: "There never was a more dedicated, wonderful director. Thank you for the years of discipline, and beautiful music you gave to each and every member of the choir."

Tom Mahalla: "But how can one replace that which is irreplaceable?"

Peter Holst: "Thank you is not enough. You have been such a guiding influence in so many young lives. Thank you Mr. Wells!!!!!"

Steve Van Daele: "Kermit, you have been such a positive influence to 'your' boys over the years. One can tell by the following you have from afar on FB. Your dedication has given many the 'escape' they were always looking for. I am proud being an Alumni of the MBC."

Andrew Swenson: "Kermit, Many thanks for your years of service to MBC! My MBC experience provided a solid foundation for almost 40 years of choral singing, an indispensable part of my life. You were a big part of that MBC experience."

Bruce John is in the center, fifth row,
and John Robeson (redhead) is fourth row, on the right.
Dr. Fred Swanson is directing this Christmas concert, probably 1960.

'via Blog this'








Larry Eyre's mother kept this certificate for 50 years. The fine print is worth reading - "not for pecuniary profit."

John Robeson, MBC member from the same year, sent some scans which were posted.

---

churchmousec (http://churchmousec.wordpress.com/) has left a new comment on your post "After 54 years, choir director to bid farewell - Q...":

These retrospectives are great, Dr Jackson. Thank you for sharing them with us.

A great way to learn (or, in my case, reminisce ;) ) about social history and find out more about Moline!

Churchmouse

***

GJ - You are welcome, ChurchMouse. Leo Brunner was a classmate who knew all the stats of all the men in professional baseball, year by year. We also went to college together. He was in the Moline Boys Choir too. Leon became a phenomenal teacher, simply loved by the kids, and a great coach too. He always had a weak heart and died young. They named a tournament after him.

I remember him at a reunion, grinning about how all the boys tested him on statistics and he never got them wrong. He told me how that earned their respect and made them receptive to teaching.

Leo never lost that huge grin in talking about baseball.
The photographer, Karl Huntoon, another classmate, also died young.