Uncle Zech’s Amphibious Gestalt

Frog Talk Seriously, Rick Bartow, 2015

“When a difficult time is upon us, our joy must fill the air.”
– Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

Blessed are these elder peeps who spring us from chilly forecasts. Praise be their green primordial songs.

Science claims the artists commonly known as “chorus frogs” began composing around 200 million years ago. These seemingly meek musicians inspired thundering crowds, long before mammon’s apes marched onto Turtle Island. They’ve been Turtle’s friends since the beginning, leaps earlier than wampum or blood quantum.

As an Appalachian child I was serenaded by the tribe that biologists called Pseudacris crucifer. Spring peepers. They’re a climby treble-tone choir from the Hylidae line, distant cousins to those Ranidae croakers. Their revivals coaxed me out to creeks and ponds where I’d unwind from city liturgies. Echoes of bullies vanished with sublime aquatic plops and eggy blobs.

I embraced the faith of tadpoles in God’s ecotonal space. There I could believe life would always grow back, no matter how much fat we humans snatched, regardless of the innocence we stole. Abundance would return, sure as Easter.

Nature invited me into her jubilant muck, and dang if I didn’t respond with the anthropoid urges of a trained American boy. What could I make from those moments to advance my social standing in the everyday world? Colonial haints possessed me with dueling choices.

My left hand hankered to catch and keep these beauties in a covered wash tub behind our garage. Over time more captives would accrue. My zoo would become a cool tourist destination.

Yet I also wanted to be part of a big gigging expedition. Our right-fisted crew of mighty hunters would secure the booty, then grateful friends would gather round a communion of yummy fried conquest. Fun lore: frog flesh first became popular in medieval times, during Lent, when devout sacrificers reckoned it didn’t count as meat.

The soundtrack to both these mini-bro dreams featured phenomenal bluegrass with killer banjo solos.

There were certainly humbling lessons in my childhood frog fantasies. For example, that scare-the-chick schtick did not work as advertised on television. Turned out most girls I knew were far less afraid of frogs than I was of having a real girlfriend.

Yet my first reciprocal crush was in fact blessed by frogs, at church camp in North Carolina. After a week of fatuous courting, goaded by other larval Christians, she and I were finally alone. How did we use those precious minutes to consummate our rainbow connection? We looked for frogs near the parking lot where our parents were picking us up.

I found one and put the frog in her hand, or maybe it was the other way around. We returned to our homes in separate Tennessee towns, exchanged letters. Fifty-odd years later we remet on Facebook. She’s an awesome singer-songwriter now, and also posts videos on how folks can enjoy the company of other animals.

Human relationships with the living world have been reduced to a binary choice between pets or meat. There are other options, of course, some of which have been accompanied by classic hit songs. My peers and I helped circulate this idea through the halls of hillbilly grammar schools back in 1971. A bolt from beyond the binary struck us that year when a long-haired rocker belted out four freaky words that we chanted over and over.


“Jeremiah was a bullfrog,” proclaimed Chuck, lead vocalist for Three Dog Night. The declaration blew open the either-or door that regulated our imaginations. It encouraged kids of all ages to jump off the banks of duality into a swimming hole of silly joy.

The song revved up boomers. Four years younger than Chuck, Cher crooned those four words in a duet with Sonny. Donald surely smiled at the tune as he grabbed the reins of daddio’s real estate empire. I bet Oliver nodded approvingly at NYU while screening his first film, “Last Year in Viet Nam.” Maybe Bibi sported a handsome grin while training with elite military forces in the Sinai Peninsula. Vladimir probably snickered with interest at Leningrad State University, part of his studies of Western culture in prep for a career with the KGB.

Gens X, Y, and Z would hear those words too, linking future leaders to the frolic of 1971. That year Rubio and Elon were surfing the amniotic waves out into migrant Miami and South Africa’s bright white sun. The yet-to-be-born JD was just a lick in the schwing of heaven’s hedge fund. Olaf had directed a Swedish TV drama, four decades before the rainfrog Pristimantis gretathunbergae would be named after his activist granddaughter.

Three Dog Night’s hit delighted many who heard it. The creation hatched in heart of a singer-songwriter named Hoyt. It swam around the musical ecosystem a bit, then those opening words hopped perfectly from Chuck’s mouth. He and his seven bandmates needed a silly song to bring them closer together. Thus a prophet became a bullfrog, and “Joy to the World” was recorded with all the boys singing in harmony.

This reminds me of something a hillbilly wise-woman told me, about how the word “silly” holds some of the same root meaning as the word “holy.” Medicine can emerge from the deep if we stop separating life into boxes, imagine how things are related.


And lo, there is logic in the idea that a frog family would name their offspring after a Hebrew prophet. Adherents of Judaism abstain from eating amphibians, after all. So do Muslims, though apparently there’s some debate within Islam as to whether Jeremiah was an actual prophet or just a prominent religious figure.

Either way, the name is strangely chosen for this song. What we know about Jeremiah from the Bible does not spark immediate feelings of joy. In fact religious scholars refer to him as “the weeping prophet,” since he was handed the thankless task of warning Judean leaders about the consequences of their grievous behavior.

Leaders of all stripes scorn criticism, regardless of source or intent. So Jeremiah endured accusations, assaults, imprisonment, and attempts on his life. According to one story, he was stoned to death by fellow believers. This follows a woeful script that still plagues society. If this grieving Jewish hero were alive today, he would be branded as a self-loathing enemy of the people. He’d be framed as a traitor for protesting the corruption and injustices of Judeo-Christian rulers.

“Joy to the World” topped the charts at a time when countercultural concerns were becoming mainstream. Public tumult of the 60s and early 70s took a toll on souls – wars, assassinations, the killing of student protesters. The wickedness of leaders was made explicit in the Pentagon Papers, leaked and published the same year “Joy” hit #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Folks need fresh creative light to help dispel the darkness. That same year, it’s significant to me that a now-iconic musical about a rock-n-roll rabbi opened on Broadway. “Jesus Christ Superstar” took a much more solemn tack toward light than Jeremiah the frog, yet both appealed to audiences who questioned authority. One exposes empire’s brute oppression of holiness. The other just wants to shed the world’s weight and party.

I get these twin impulses. My heart was blown open at age 10, when I watched them square off in a scene from the big-screen version of “Superstar.” Jeremiah prefigured Jesus in several ways. Both were consecrated by grace before birth, both offered messages leaders didn’t want to hear, and both suffered cruel retribution. Surely they also experienced joyful glimpses of humanity’s God-given potential for lovingkindness.


As a child I soaked up the indulgences of older baby boomers who overwhelmed the terrain of adulthood. If I could time-travel to a moment in that morphogenesis, I’d offer another four-syllable moniker to help launch a collective song.

Zechariah would make a cool name for a frog, or any creature for that matter. The word means “God remembers.” From what I’ve read, three key Biblical figures who bore that name carry combined relevance to humanity’s relationship with creation.

The first Zechariah was a Hebrew priest. Like Jeremiah, he was called by God to admonish his leaders and suffered as a result. Judean rulers murdered him near the temple altar during Shabbat, reportedly on the Day of Atonement. To preserve their dominion, authorities sacrificed him on their most sacred day of the year.

The second Zech fared better than his predecessor. In the Old Testament book that bears his name, Zech admonished people in ways that didn’t invoke wrath. Instead, he delivered messages by way of cautionary dream visions and poetic imagery. I really want to believe Zech experienced ample moments of joy amid his life of very strange writing. He’d make a great namesake for a hippie frog family, because his words are profoundly trippy to this day.

And then there’s the New Testament Zechariah, Z #3, whom Muslims recognize as a prophet and Christians just plain dig. In addition to being John the Baptist’s preacher dad, Islam teaches that Zechariah was asked by God to protect his cousin Mary, mother of Jesus. This makes sense, because both Z and Mary knew what it was like to be visited by an angel with magical birth-news.

From a Christo-Islamic perspective, Z and his Jewish family played a key role in humanity’s spiritual evolution. Their intersecting story got gravely interesting when I read about Z’s death. According to one source, Z was killed for refusing to remove Mary from the temple area reserved for virgins. Another says he was slaughtered in that sacred space when Judean military forces came to kill Z’s infant son (part of Herod Sr’s order to sacrifice all male children of a certain age who were born in the vicinity of Bethlehem).

Other gruesome accounts seem equally incompatible. Yet for me these stories point to a common pattern with political power, when change agents are tyrannized and killed to preserve a particular regime. Their deaths are directed by top-down command, or they’re conducted in a more horizontal fashion, through the actions of rank-and-file peers. These methods can work hand in hand. Often they involve the re-enforcement of religious dogma, social segregation, and economic hierarchies.

It’s easy to get distracted from this common dynamic, instead focus on conflicts in narrative. Also accounts of state-authorized bloodshed get blurred because institutions that publish them are complicit in that sacrifice. The search for wisdom is further confused when fealty to powerful figures trumps our devotion to the well-being of everyday folks who live in community.


Simple joys remind us of love’s deep through-line. Z and Elizabeth must have felt this common thread at family gatherings. Scripture tells us of one moment, when John leaped inside Elizabeth’s womb upon hearing Mary greet his mom. My wife Jennifer, a seasoned birth-worker, says this beautiful phenomenon is common.

Some folks put John and Jesus up on towering pedestals. Yet for me, the miracle of their holiness is magnified by their humanity. Surely they played together when they were growing up and had time to enjoy being boys. I imagine them exploring the countryside, marveling at critters, singing silly songs.

Did these beloved Jewish cousins call up joyful childhood memories as they awaited death at the hands of Judeo-Roman authorities? Were flashbacks of tender friendship clear and strong?

I need to believe, so my heart might summon something fit to read beyond these end-times.

Power-mongers have made Jesus into a religious mascot. Their ceremonial cooks turned his violently desecrated body into a happy meal. The emperor broadcast four words to accompany that feast along with a cruciform emblem for his servants in uniform.

“In hoc signo vinces.” By this sign, conquer!

The historical context of that decree is rarely considered by believers. Basically, Constantine used a mark signifying the crucifixion of Jesus as cover, to advance the success of his martial forces and thereby expand his authority. Before that point, many Christians were put to death for refusing to obey the emperor’s orders to serve in his military.

Subjects stamped with this sign were no less susceptible to ravenous pursuits than those who followed Herod’s orders. Yet the emblem provided a potent sense of moral protection for those tasked with the work of subjugation. They could do their job with the assurance of forgiveness.

Brands can disseminate mindsets. In this case, the empire’s killing of a superstar rabbi was later used by empire to sanctify conquest. In subsequent years it was used as a religious prop to accompany colonization of Turtle Island, often by violent means. It was used to sanction the trade of enslaved humans. It was used by those who scapegoated and slaughtered people during the Shoah.

Empire continues to numb our remorse with the blood of prophets. This is not the “mighty fine wine” Chuck sang about. It’s an abominable head-trip that continues to provide sacralized cover for predatory behavior, like the blasting of hospitals and schools and refugee camps filled with undernourished families in Palestine. Any who oppose such acts face shame for allegedly dishonoring the sacrifice of previous victims.

Of course no neighbor is above the rule of love. People are people, as they say.

So are frogs, according to wise observers. Cultures native to Turtle Island consider frogs to be among the “first people.” Could this be a way of acknowledging elder relatives who can help humans jump back from desolation?

Joy wriggles inside when I hear their chorus, and spirit swims up through all the soul-dipped DNA. Life kens this call of freedom, beckons a return to oneness.

Did a prophet sing of endless joy, by a creek in the childhood of Eden?

We can only imagine, and share the songs written on our hearts. Maybe Donald and Bibi and Vladimir will listen in.

God remembers everything.

~ for Carol N.