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When I set out on my walk Thursday night at 7 o'clock, the thermometer in our yard still read 95� F, so I decided to slow my usual pace of a little over four miles per hour and to extend my range farther than my usual two miles. Since this would be a comparatively leisurely stroll for me, I decided to take the camera along for a specific photo I had in mind.

I walked through the neighborhood to the KSU campus and beyond to the campus of Manhattan Christian College, a small fundamentalist college located on the fringe of the KSU campus. Here I hoped to photograph the new site of the ten commandments monument that had caused such a stir in town last year and early this year.

When I found the site along our other main drag that marks the southern border of KSU, I found that a few tons of limestone had been erected at the site, but that the actual monument wasn't yet in place. In Friday's paper, a brief article appeared explaining that the college had hoped to complete the project by mid-summer, but that delays in completing all the "specialized carving work that needs to be done to inscribe things in the rock" has caused a postponement until at least October 15th.

A year ago, I was one of seven plaintiffs in a suit against the city of Manhattan demanding that a monument engraved with the ten commandments be removed from city property. When the movie The Ten Commandments was launched in the late fifties, Cecil B. DeMille had donated the monument to the local Fraternal Order of Eagles, as he had done in many other cities across the country. The Eagles in turn had given the monument to the city, and the city had accepted it. After all, it was the fifties. The supreme court decision on the Madelyn Murray O'Hare petition on school prayer hadn't yet occurred, and Eisenhower had recently returned the words under god to the pledge of allegiance, albeit without the comma between "one nation" and "under god" that so many observe with a superfluous pause.

The city placed the monument somewhere on the grounds of city hall, planted some evergreens around it, and allowed the shrubs to flourish without trimming until they obscured the monument. Forty years later, very few folks here remembered that the monument was there.

Last year, when a multi-million dollar renovation of city hall was completed, the rediscovered monument was placed prominently facing the street at the entrance to city hall. When objections arose in the local press, the then city-manager passed responsibility to the building contractor (as reported in the local paper), indicating (in my opinion) that the possibility existed that either he or his staff was not in control of the project as he should have been, or that he was dissembling. When a group of locals (the usual folks in comfortable shoes) raised objections at city commision meetings, the commisioners eventually voted to settle the matter by rotating the monument ninety degrees so that the monument would not face the street, but would instead face the walkway to the front door. It was also mounted on a concrete pad; no plantings would obscure the monument this go 'round.

The commission chose merely to reposition the monument despite the gracious offer by the local Eagles chapter to accept the return of the monument so that they could find a new home for it. Our main street, like main street in most small towns in the Midwest, is not short of churches, and a new (and suitable) home for the monument would have been easy to find within an easy stroll of city hall.

For those of us who wished to see our local government remain neutral in matters of religion, the matter was far from settled. I'm not sure what the tally of votes for that wasteful move was, but I do recall that our five-member city commission was at that time comprised of two liberals, one moderate and two folks widely regarded as social conservatives, so I would guess that the vote to retain the monument in place fell out at 3-2. The next city commission election in the fall could change things, but our friends on the commission were feeling some electoral pressure and they had important agendas of their own. Court intervention seemed to offer the best chance to remove the monument from the city's property.

We had contacted Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They agreed to investigate the local goings-on. After investigating, they quickly agreed to join our cause. Barry Lynn, the director of Americans United, had recently spoken at KSU, and many folks in town were acquainted with him. That might have helped, but I think the strength of the case and the cause decided the matter for Americans United.

Americans United qualified the seven plaintiffs based on the prospective plaintiffs' objection to the placement of the monument on city property and on their need to visit city hall occasionally. We were drawn from various faiths and non-faiths. Although most were sympathetic, no Jews became plaintiffs. Perhaps their reluctance to participate was understandable given the virulent tone of many of the letters to the editor and the local political climate of those days. Some expressed fear of retribution by vandals. Another, a friend with a masters in public administration, said that she agreed with our cause, but that she might need to work for the city one day and she feared that her faith, combined with her participation in the suit, might kill her chances. It was not a little frightening to think that this sort of intimidation � even the perception of such intimidation � was still possible in the shadow of our ivory tower.

to be continued...

This entry is becoming a bit more historical than I had intended it to be. Longer too.

Watched: Oliver's Travels, a BBC/PBS folly I taped a few years back and which I still enjoy occasionally. Sinead Cusack is scrumptious in it, but Alan Bates is unctuous. He is long past the age when acting precocious is attractive. Nevertheless, I enjoy the show's romantic whimsey and I watch it as a child might watch The Little Mermaid, repeatedly and uncritically. It also has a good soft jazz track.

Reading: Nope. Nothing. Been preparing for classes that resume next week.