Gayla Marty

Barn salvation

 

Saturday I attended the annual meeting of the Friends of Minnesota Barns. I found the group back in the 1990s and recognized kindred souls. Most of these men and women have a barn in their lives that they've helped to save from destruction or demise. The only way I could save the Marty barn was in a story, but they understand my story.

It was in Michigan that I discovered the barn preservation movement. There's even a National Barn Alliance. That made me wonder what Minnesota had going, and sure enough, I found the Friends. Yesterday, we watched a slide show of a house-raising from barn timbers given by the restoration contractor. A lot of old barns are finding new purposes, from houses to churches to event centers.

It's true that the small farms of the future usually don't have a classic barn, though some do. Barns like the one on the Marty farm were a product of forests when wood was the only material available. They are difficult and expensive to maintain. They are hard to fill with hay, and hard to clean. Old barns take a lot of resources that today's small farmers need to use for other things.

It's also true that a thing of beauty to me could be considered a blot on the horizon to people who knew this place before plows tore the earth open.

Neverthless, these barns made of mighty trees have served us well, architectural workhorses and wonders. Inside the Marty barn, I felt the holiness of the earth—forests, animals, and shelter under the sky.

The Oliver H. Kelley Farm was a worthy place for the group to meet. One of the staff members had come to feed the animals and do the chores. He told me a barn story from western Minnesota. I haven't been to the Kelley Farm for many years, but it's time to go back. This summer, I'll take my granddaughter.

Photos of the Marty barn, 2005. Top: hayloft, east end. Bottom: exterior, north side. Kodacolor by Gayla Marty.

Bou Cornine

As waves of protest and revolution have swept across North Africa and the Middle East in recent weeks, waves of emotions have swept through me. Beginning in Tunisia in December, common people have risen up against dictators and despots to demand dignity.

Wonder—that is what I feel above all. But also in turn joy, relief, worry for people I love, anger at the arrogance of dictators, dread of violence, sorrow for lives lost, gratitude for the determination and ingenuity of so many people.

Thirty-one years ago this winter, I was a student in Tunisia. Habib Bourguiba was the president and Zine Ben Ali was a general who specialized in military security in Bourguiba’s government. Meanwhile, the world had been surprised by an upset in Iran, first a revolution, then the return of a religious leader, then a storming of the U.S. embassy in November 1979, hostages taken, a crisis stretching into weeks and then months. Embassies were on alert. Airport safety procedures began to change.

In central Tunisia near the end of January 1980, about 300 Libyan soldiers occupied the mining town of Gafsa. Nearly 50 people died in gunfire before the invasion was put down.

At the time of the Gafsa incident, I was in Egypt. My roommate had pressed a loan upon me to accompany her on a pilgrimage to honor the memory of her late father, a professor and linguist. As Americans, we were greeted warmly that week by Egyptians under Sadat, who with Menachem Begin of Israel, brought together by our president, had concluded the Camp David peace accords 18 months earlier.

Everywhere we went, the long history of agriculture confronted us. In Egypt, we were transfixed by the Nile, that great river of seasonal flooding and farming. I mulled over the story of Joseph, the seven years of bumper crops followed by seven years of famine, the invention of national granaries. In the news, we read about the Soviets in Afghanistan and the U.S. protest in the form of a grain embargo. Our daily meals were defined by the seasons. The backdrop of ancient civilizations and current events gave new meaning to familiar, common things.

When I see pictures on TV now of Tahrir square, I remember strings of little colored lights in Cairo’s night-time bazaars. It was the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday. I remember, too, a hotel terrace in Aswan where we couldn’t afford to stay but we celebrated my 22nd birthday with a cup of Arabic coffee in a porcelain cup under a cloudless blue sky.

I remember coming home to Tunisia, the plane touching down in Carthage, seeing the familiar double peaks of Bou Cornine across the Gulf of Tunis, that ancient volcano that formed the signature skyline of the country I had come to love.

Bou Cornine reminds me that fire can stay alive underground for a long time. Fire burns inside the hearts of people waiting so long for justice and freedom.

Events of the past weeks have revealed to me a vast movement of nonviolent resistance in which Tunisians have taken a role of leadership and great courage. Being a fellow Baptist to Martin Luther King, Jr., who brought this practice to the U.S. civil rights movement and changed America forever, you could say I came late to the meeting. It was only in the 1990s that I began to read about nonviolent resistance, thanks to Barbara Ehrenreich (Blood Rites), Walter Wink (The Powers That Be), Jack Nelson Pallmeyer (Jesus Against Christianity, and Is Religion Killing Us?), and Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker (Proverbs of Ashes, and Saving Paradise).

Now Tunisia has joined the company of witnesses, path breakers, and teachers. This afternoon I heard the nation opened its border to those fleeing the violence of the Libyan dictator determined to extend his 40-year rule. I am full of not only wonder but gratitude. I am praying for the people everywhere who are rising up, and I am praying that their spirit of innovation will persist and prevail. I am praying that my own nation will be faithful.

Photo: Bou Cornine, view from Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, 1979, by Gayla Marty.

Cool

Auntie Lou, my mom's younger sister, married my dad's older brother when I was two years old. In this photo, taken at our house, I am only about one year old, so it was shortly before she graduated from Rush City High School in the class of '59.

Auntie was a boon to the Marty family, which was a pretty serious bunch. She was not only smart, talented, and skilled, but funny, too. She was cool.

That Noble accordion came in very handy when the two brothers and two sisters sang quartet at church and around the community for various functions. Mom played chords on a lap-slide guitar (a modified Beltone) and they sounded great.

Auntie Lou and Uncle Gaylon drove a series of Pontiacs and furnished them with stuffed animals—the one I remember was Reddy Fox. She loved real dogs and took over the role of mistress to those that protected the farm, beginning with a puppy named Lassie in 1962. She loved cartoons and quoted her favorite characters with perfect timing. When I outgrew the toddler nickname Uncle gave me, she started calling me Hannah Banana just because it made no sense and it made me smile.

She kept tabs on fashion, loved accessories, and teamed up with my mom to give us all Toni permanents, a messy, smelly, painful kitchen experience that I hated.

"Hurts to be beautiful!" Auntie remarked. She knew what she was talking about, too—she had overcome a congenital hip condition to live a life that included spike heels.

Auntie was a working girl at the Rush City Hospital, a switchboard and office job she held for most of the 1960s, so she became a working mom who always knew what was going on in town. Her experience receiving the sick and wounded who walked in the front doors of a rural hospital made her fearless. She also followed the rules of professional conduct and didn't talk about things until they were public, which added to her wise and steely reputation.

She and mom both drove tractors for their dad when they were teenagers, but Auntie Lou never stopped, and she kept up on the latest models of John Deeres (the green of her youth) as well as International Harvesters (the red of the Marty fleet). After her second baby was born and my mother turned the farm books over, Auntie took on a bigger role in managing the farm and keeping it running.

Whatever your parents are like, it's a gift to have alternative role models so you know there are other possibilities. My mother was constantly in motion, a flurry of lists and activity, who loved to entertain and loathed causing discomfort. Auntie proved you didn't have to operate at high speed, respect tradition, or maintain everyone's comfort to contribute and have fun. She administered first-aid to my brothers and me when my mother's nerves failed her and ruled on whether a trip to the hospital was required (almost never). She didn't apologize for sitting down to watch TV. She had no qualms about saying no or locking her door when my brothers and I got old enough to think we could wander into her house.

"What's up, Doc?" she'd say when she answered the door.

I could see that Auntie was a sharp observer who wasn't afraid to speak her mind or state the obvious when no one else would.

"What a crock," she'd comment dryly, or, "Whatever works."

She expected us all to use our brains, keep a sense of humor, and fear only God.

Through the 1970s, while Mom kept an eye out for the newest thing, Auntie Lou developed her eye for antiques. Mom drove to the Cities to shop and see plays with me when I was in college, while Auntie gladly accompanied Uncle to the northern woods and Canada to fish and camp. Auntie took over the family recipe for Swedish potato sausage when her mother died, preserved practices too time-consuming for the rest of us, and became a master scrapbooker.

These days, the sisters still talk to each other almost every day. They accompany each other to appointments and on occasional day trips. Together, they have the bases covered.

Auntie never gave up the accordion, either. After the Noble, she had a Morbidoni, then a Titano, now a Stanelli. In our city living room are copies of her sheet music—Patrick is learning to play fiddle parts so he can keep up with her when we visit. She's still cool.

Photo: Lorraine Anderson and baby Gayla Marty in the Marty living room, winter 1959, by Gordon Marty. Ektachrome.