SEMINAL CHICAGO
No one is very sure what began or ended glacial periods, but we date them with more confidence. This one ended about 11,000 years ago and changed the populations of the continent.
“The Last Glacial Period (LGP) occurred from the end of the Eemian to the end of the Younger Dryas, encompassing the period c. 115,000 — c. 11,700 years ago. The LGP is part of a larger sequence of glacial and interglacial periods known as the Quaternary glaciation which started around 2,588,000 years ago and is ongoing.”
“The Western Interior Seaway (also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, the North American Inland Sea, and the Western Interior Sea) was a large inland sea that existed during the mid- to late Cretaceous period as well as the very early Paleogene, splitting the continent of North America into two landmasses, Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. The ancient sea stretched from the Gulf of Mexico and through the middle of the modern-day countries of the United States and Canada, meeting with the Arctic Ocean to the north.
The North American continent, pushed up by the bulging cordillera of the Rockies, creased in the middle so that all the water from the ancient sea and melting glaciers, formed a complex of drainage — the Missouri/Mississippi watercourses — except that the Great Lakes did not drain. There were continuing consequences. Along the receding waters lagoons formed and marshes full of growing things that were eventually compressed into coal and oil which drove human population during the Industrial Revolution.
Across the dry prairies under the grasses was residual bitterness from the inland seas, mineral deposits sometimes shining white with calcium from the shells of tiny organisms, other times red with iron concentrated by bacteria, the sienna sacred red of the autochthonous people because it is the land that shapes the people.
At the toe of Lake Michigan in a marshy place formed the great city of Chicago, a concentration of people like many others that gathered along water before land travel was dependable. When humans become numerous, natural phenomena develop that we call culture and specialization. Great universities, fine museums and libraries, and merchandizing trade of all kinds.
When I got to Browning in 1961, I was coming from Chicago (with a pause in Portland). Bob Scriver had last been in Chicago in 1950, just before he gave up teaching music in order to open the Scriver Taxidermy and Curio Shop which developed into the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife. That first August day I paid my fifty cents and went in.
The puzzle on the reservation is always how to make money from sources off the rez without leaving. Bob’s puzzle was how to make a living after being excluded from the Browning Merc because there was only enough income from it for the father and older son. If he didn’t teach, where would money come from? Tourists and trophy hunting. And that was boosted by the Al-Can highway becoming popular. People were rebounding from the hardships of rationing gas and oil as well and cxploring the idea of opening the wartime construction of the highway in 1948, access to Alaskan hunting.
I had graduated from Northwestern University because my high school drama teacher was Melba Day Sparks who had graduated from there. She didn’t tell me she didn’t like Alvina Krause because she was so demanding. She talked about the lakeshore where the scene shop for constructing sets was located. Without realizing it, I made the jump from high school plays to rigorous psychological self-search. And I had a full-tuition scholarship. So did Ivan Doig who was in my class. His roommate dated my roommate but we didn’t know each other. We never got acquainted. He never lived in Montana again.
When I came out of the Browning museum, impressed, Bob was alone in the shop, skinning a bobcat and invited me to talk while he worked. We both loved Chicago. Both of us had haunted the complex of museums and aquarium, that were in a sense “remains” of the Columbian Exposition in 1893. We were both deeply engaged in the career of Malvina Hoffman and both of us owned her books about creating the “Hall of Man.”
“The Columbian Exposition, or the Chicago World’s Fair, is often called the Fair that Changed America: it spanned 600 acres and introduced fairgoers to wonders of electricity such as elevators and the first electric chair; products we now take for granted like the zipper, Cream of Wheat, and Cracker Jacks; and presented viewers with a look at Edison’s kinetoscope and a listen to the first voice recording. The Midway Plaisance, from which we get the term “midway,” included George G.W. Ferris’s new Wheel.”
One could say that we came together not because of accident or fate, either one, but as the result of time and geology interacting over space to affect humans. Bob’s other love in Chicago was Rush Street where jazz began to challenge his love of brass bands.
“As the Depression’s early days brought Southern musicians to Northern cities, the Chicago blues scene absorbed and incorporated these new arrivals. Ensembles grew, the blues became more popular, and individual musicians’ styles combined to form a sound that reflected musicians’ familiarity with each other and the creativity each brought to the session.”
After the Sixties had ended and so had my relationship with Bob Scriver, it took me years back in Portland to figure out what to do. For decades I had merely passed Garrett Methodist Theological School and heard the carillon of Seabury Episcopal, both on the NU campus, until I was finally in the shadow of Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, where I slipped in the backdoor of the Div School and Meadville/Lombard Theological School. By now Bob was much more famous and had money. When I told Bob I had graduated, he was proud of me. I “rode circuit” in Montana and visited him occasionally.
Then I left ministry and finally he died, worn out. Living in Valier, enabled by computers, the internet, and the vast landscape that told me every day that geology was next to theology, I read and write, re-creating seminary. At night in this place one can see the satellites crossing the sky and occasional bits of their debris fall like meteors. Wind farms are at the end of the street that runs past my house. People are merely moments in space and time. We are as grass.
