Category Archives: Personal and family life

February 25, 2024 · 5:48 pm

February Doldrums

“The “doldrums” is a popular nautical term that refers to the belt around the Earth near the equator where sailing ships sometimes get stuck on windless waters.” From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Summer relinquishedFebruary is that sort of month. We’ve transited from the early bright lights and joy of the beginning of a New England deep winter in December to a grayer, resigned wait. The chores of winter are wearing and tiresome. The dust and mess on the floor from the woodstove are grinding me down; every evening ends with banking up a load of oak and maple for the night burn, and every morning starts around five with a few coals blown back to life with small wood and a hot start to keep the creosote buildup in the chimney to a minimum.

The snowblower is still covered with a tarp at the head of the driveway, gassed, and ready. New England Road salt is incrementally eating our car, slowly reducing it to rubble. Snow drifts quickly change from pristine white the morning after a night’s storm to grubby gray and randomly stained with occasional brown and yellow blots which we learn young not to use for snow cones. The shrubs and trees still await the greening, the winter snow load has broken them down a bit, and small branches stick up from the snow on the ground where the wind and freeze struck them off the Norway Maples, Eastern white pines, and our sole canoe birch tree. They await the spring clean-up and new mulch. The leaves that the fall raking missed linger under the snow, dark, wet, and growing mold.

February is a month of rumination, self-examination, and contemplating long thoughts. I remember Carl in Mount Vernon, Maine, where we lived for ten years before we moved to the tropics of Rhode Island. West central Maine in hill and lake country set our standard for long, cold winters. Carl was a skilled artist and a professional sign painter for local enterprises. He usually overwintered in Arizona after a long semi-annual migration in his old GMC pickup. One November he neglected his migration prep, got busy with work, and stayed. He had a large barn next to his house that doubled as his Maine studio. A wood burning furnace kept the old structure minimally functional all winter. I visited him one day in February when he was hard at work. A new ten-foot sign adorned the tall wall over the barn door. It was a spare winter scene with three-foot-high letters beautifully formed, that simply said, “It’s really bad!” When I stood admiring it, he told me that he painted it one miserable day with drifts piling up against his windows to remind him to never, ever neglect his fall migration prep again.

Some optimistic and courageous green shoots appear through last year’s mulch only to be covered by an icy, brittle white in a surprise Nor’easter. Cold nights in the twenties remind us, “not yet – not yet.”

“Gather gladness from the skies

Take a lesson from the ground

Flowers do ope’ their heavenward eyes

And a Spring-time joy have found

Earth throws Winter’s robes away,

Decks herself for Easter Day.”       Gerald Manley Hopkins, “Easter”

Signs of spring are here though: the more stalwart robins are returning, fat and feathered thickly; some redwing blackbirds have shown up. Buds are swelling a bit on the early bloomers. We heard doves cooing yesterday evening. No goldfinches or yellow warblers have yet joined the sparrows, wrens, and cardinals at the bird feeder, but they’ll soon be here. Canadian geese are flocking up. Hundreds of them here on the island are now overhead one flight at a time, some already headed north to their summer breeding grounds. Not many sights are as beautiful as a large flock of twenty or fifty or a hundred geese honking in graceful, coordinated movement with their powerful wings beating the air tip to tip or in a final swooping glide into a winter corn field.

The most promising February harbinger is the opening of spring training: first pitchers and catchers, and a week later the boys of summer all show up. The Red Sox of the wonder years of Pedro, Manny, and Big Poppi have faded, and fans have retreated to the losing days of my youth. My father lived for sixty-six years and never saw a World Series win. But we are Sox fans in all weather. Some call it a mental illness, but there you are. Every spring hope and the greening rise in us, maybe to be dashed once again in September, but in February, there is only the joy of new beginnings. A couple of pitchers would help.

February doldrumsLate winter skies are startling blue, and the clouds look like they were painted with a pallet knife, almost unnatural. The sun is two months warmer than December, and with the windows up in the car the glare feels hot against our face. Hope is upon us, the promise of March and April unmistakable. Soon and very soon, the cascade of blooming will begin. First the crocuses, then the yellow profusion of daffodils and forsythia, followed by everything, the pink cherry blossoms, the white of the Bradford pears, magnolias, dogwoods, flowering crabs, azaleas, later the lilacs and rhododendron. The island’s splendor is persistent for months almost into autumn with the Montauk daisies.

Long, cold January and dreary February are intrinsic to the spring explosion of color and light. For me, it has always been and will remain a tradeoff well worth the price. Except for one year in Colorado, we have chosen to live our lives here in Massachusetts, Maine, and now in Rhode Island.  We’ve travelled the country and always come home. The wonder of it is in the profound changes of the seasons, majestically sequencing like a liturgical procession year after year.

We talk sporadically about moving somewhere south where the winters are not so demanding, and the cold is not so penetrating when the wind blows hard off the North Atlantic. But the discussions are never long. The loss would be unbearable.

“Let the earth bless the Lord.

Praise and exalt him above all forever.

Mountains and hills, bless the Lord.

Everything growing from the earth, bless the Lord.

You springs, bless the Lord.

Seas and rivers, bless the Lord.

You dolphins and all water creatures, bless the Lord.

All you birds of the air, bless the Lord.

All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord.

You sons of men, bless the Lord.”  Canticle of the Three Children from Daniel 3: 74-81

4 Comments

Filed under Personal and family life

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 24, 2023 · 8:54 pm

Christmas Letter 2023

Creche.jpg

“Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th’encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.”

St. John Henry Newman

—– Psalm 46:10 Be still and know that I am God —–

Seems like we just sent one of these out, yet here we are a year later. We’ve recently returned from Thanksgiving with our most hospitable California daughter Meg, her much loved husband Marty, and our West Coast grandkids: sensitive and beautiful Adelaide (now 6!), the magic Charlotte (4), and Koufax the German Shepherd wonder dog who will fetch until our arms give out. Marty’s extended family, as always, made us feel welcome and loved. His brothers and sister with their children fill any house with joy and good conversation. His Mom, Gloria, as always, puts on an unmatched feast in a home full of laughter and love. And any unfortunate side effects are nothing a few weeks at the gym can’t remedy.

We missed this year’s Nutcracker at Stadium Theater for the first time ever with four of our amazing home-schooling daughter Angela’s kids dancing multiple roles and her also much-loved husband, Peter, recruited as one of the fathers in the opening Party Scene that always ushers in Christmas for us. Angela and Meg themselves danced in Nutcrackers in various roles for many years. The performance never ages and enchantment proceeds. Even their most active three-year-old Lil’ Pete, held almost in check by his mom, goes quiet when the curtain goes up. To experience such beauty, color, Tchaikovsky’s timeless music, and the soaring, graceful action as a three-year-old is a wonder we can only imagine and envy We’ll watch the DVD, but we will definitely be there next year with a rebuilt budget for multiple bouquets.

We had an atypical wet summer in paradise this past year, both during our stay on the lake in Weld, Maine, and on our local Aquidneck Island beaches, but that didn’t prevent us from much great family time, swimming in fresh stream fed water of Webb Lake and the healing salt water of Narragansett Bay. A few rounds of body surfing are always exhilarating, and it doesn’t matter if the air is full of water too. The rousing competition of board and card games on the porch overlooking the choppy waters of the lake helps when things get slow on a rainy afternoon. Papa sometimes cheats and always gets caught; justice is quickly and mercilessly administered by sharp-eyed granddaughters.

An even better cloudy day pastime is gratifying the architectural imagination of cousins playing together and creating a detailed construction project – not merely sandcastles, but whole villages and forts, populated with an eclectic unlikely menagerie from horses to a T-rex and a few Lego personalities in primary colors. Often, the steep sand walls are decorated along their elaborate crenellated palisades and towers with scavenged seaweed and stick flags, scallop or quahog shells, and an occasional gull eaten crab. Great anticipation and surprising patience are shown by the abovementioned three-year-old, standing poised and ready with a truck or excavator in hand. Finally, after a half hour of painstaking construction with numerous design challenges resolved by the committee, and secret tunnel entrances are carefully dug under the moat by his doting sisters, the grand citadel is declared ready. After a picture is taken to memorialize the marvel for perpetuity, they signal, “GO!” to the relatively giant one-man wrecking crew. Sometimes a video is taken of pure glee with delight shared as much by the architects and contractors as it is by the demo guy. Not a mole hill sized mound is left standing for the wind and tide to finish off.

So cloudy days do not diminish joy when the afternoon is lighted by glories of children playing.

Fall came, and the wet warm season sparks an autumn splendor more magnificent than the previous year after its summer of drought. The winter will soon be full upon us, but Christmas lights will fend off the darkness, the cold will be defeated by a good woodstove and a well-stocked woodshed, and much-loved music that never fails us will fill our churches, homes and hearts. And joy will not be diminished.

May God’s rich blessings pour down on you and yours with a most Merry Christmas and the new beginnings of 2024,

Love in Christ,

Jack and Rita

3 Comments

Filed under Faith and Reason, Personal and family life

Tagged as , ,

October 6, 2023 · 12:19 pm

Church Guns

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” (Mr.) Fred Rogers

When we lived in Farmington, Maine, happily we were parishioners in the wood framed, off the main street, St. Joseph Church. Sunday after Mass, we often helped with a coffee and snacks gathering in the basement church hall across the street. As well as a venue for parishioners to share stories and freshen friendships, newcomers could meet the regulars and ask questions about the parish, the town, and be welcomed into friendly fellowship. Everything from where the town dump was and good sources for the best local plumbers and electricians as they made unwelcome discoveries about their new house to how many children do you have and where do you work.

For the kids, though, there were different priorities that took over right after the weekly cookie and donut raid. Our son, Gabe, and his two platoon members, Jason, and Paul, all about ten years old, immediately went looking for the toy bin under the stairs for their weekly games, then having secured what they needed, bolted outside to get sweaty and dirty for the ride home. If we were lucky, their church clothes survived for another week with just a little stain remover. One late summer Sunday morning, we were conversing with two folks new to Franklin County, both of whom had moved to town to teach at the Farmington campus of the University of Maine.

The conversation, as conversations with new acquaintances of an academic bent sometimes go until we get to know one another, was a bit formal with some careful probes to establish the guidelines and borders. It was quite clear quite early that our newly welcomed folks were unlikely to be National Rifle Association members or deer hunters. Having never lived in a rural area or in truth very far away from an academic enclave, they carefully shared some concerns about the local folks who weren’t members of the university.  Did they hunt? Did they wander around unsupervised and armed on to other people’s land?

I was trying to reassure them that most hunters I knew were respectful of other people’s property, responsible, careful, and skilled. The native-born Maine residents that we had come to know, trust, and love could be counted on for affable conversation, a devastating creative dry wit, advice both practical and theoretical, and in an emergency, they were self-sufficient, resolute, calm, and completely reliable. They just needed some venison in their freezer. Deer, as well as pastoral, beautiful, fast, doe eyed, and all the rest of Bambi lore, were ambulant meat after all. Since the predators were mostly gone, if the herd was not controlled, the deer would first strip the young trees of any bark they could reach and then starve in the winter. Our conversation partners discreetly exchanged skeptical looks. Maybe deer birth control would be a better method? Condoms were a problem, I suggested. The bucks hated them and could not be trusted to use them consistently. Doe were notorious for forgetting to take their pill. But I digress.

Suddenly, as enthusiastic boys are inclined to do, Gabe, Jason and Paul burst into the conversation with an urgent and deadly serious interruption. “Dad, Dad, the door to the closet is locked!  We need the church guns!”

I think our new friends returned the next week, but my memory is fuzzy after so many years.

“The Pope? How many divisions does he have?”   Joseph Stalin

Iosif_Stalin

The Russian tyrant and “Man of Steel” was right of course.[1] But more right was St. Pope John Paul II.[2] He knew the military might of the Soviet Union could not be resisted, but his battle could be waged by spiritual and cultural weapons. Karol Wojtyla understood that culture was the most dynamic force in world history, and it was there he and the Holy Spirit could prevail.

The man who would become pope and saint grew up in the most difficult of times. After the Warsaw Pact, his beloved Poland was invaded from the east and west and divided by agreement between two of history’s most ruthless tyrants: Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. After Hitler broke the agreement by invading Russia, Poland was brutally ruled by the Nazis. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were murdered, including twenty percent of its Catholic priests along with many of its writers, poets, artists, academics, and intellectuals. Both Nazis and Communists crushed any resistance by trying to destroy its culture. In the Eastern sector before Hitler broke his word, and not to be outdone, the notorious Russian secret police NKVD murdered 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia in the Katlyn woods — one at a time with a bullet in the back of the head in April and May of 1940.  However, the Polish culture was deeply embedded in the hearts of its people after a thousand years of Catholic thought, writings, art, theater, and poetry memorized as children. Obliterating it proved to be a thorny thicket for both the Reds and the Nazis.

Young Karol Wojtyla was part of a widespread secret resistance, but his part was non-violent. His group frequently held clandestine performances and readings of Polish literature, poetry, and plays to pass on tradition and help the strong Polish culture to endure. When the Church was harshly suppressed, he heard the call to the priesthood and secretly entered the underground seminary of Cardinal Sapieha. Father Wojtyla was ordained on the Feast of All Saints in 1946.

Towards the end of the war at the Malta Conference, the allies on the brink of defeating the Third Reich met to decide the fate of Eastern Europe. The Poles had no place at that table; they were divvied up like the garments of Jesus. To placate their former ally, Joseph Stalin, Great Britain, the United States, and other allies agreed that many of the former independent states like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, East Germany, and Estonia would remain under the domination of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) behind the Iron Curtain as Churchill explained.  Poland mourned that in World War II their beautiful country lost twice. One oppressive and murderous regime was replaced by another.

The Soviets destroyed churches and church schools, making them warehouses or vacant lots, persistently suppressing the authority of the Church. Many Catholic clergy were exiled to Siberia. The puppet government installed an Orwellian system of secret police, informers, and a formidable propaganda machine. Schools were taken over to indoctrinate the children into Communism starting in kindergarten. Soviets deliberately set up social and work structures to undermine family life with small mandatory apartments and staggered shifts to make family dinners less likely. The children ultimately belonged to the state. The Church and the family are where culture is sustained, and they were recognized as the greatest impediment to full implementation of the Communist Marxist ideology.

Throughout his early priesthood, Father Wojtyla organized young people, especially couples and through camping and ski trips into the Polish hills and canoeing on its rivers. Mass was celebrated on the altar of an overturned canoe. His focus from the start was to imbue and sustain Polish culture and most importantly its faith in the hearts of its people, always emphasizing the innate freedom and dignity of each individual person as created Imago Dei. He taught and discussed around the campfire that human rights were not conferred, nor could they be destroyed, by the state. He was regarded by the Communists as a thinker, not a doer, and was to some degree left alone as not dangerous to the regime, which allowed him without protest to become first an Auxiliary Bishop then Archbishop and Cardinal of Krakow. They permitted him to attend all the Vatican II meetings from 1962 to 1965, and he wrote the bulk of one of its most significant documents, Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope.)[3]

But the Communists soon learned of his resolve during the prolonged battle from 1967 to 1977 over Nowa Huta (New Steelworks)[4], their planned “worker’s paradise” and factory community outside of Warsaw. Communist planning omitted the construction of any church. No need for the old superstitions in the paradise of the worker. Archbishop Wojtyla fought for years to disabuse them of their illusions that such a thing could pass on his watch.

I remember the pictures of the Ark of the Lord Church in Life Magazine when it was finally built. Prior to its construction, Mass was celebrated in all weather in a large field with a resilient large steel cross dug into the earth from the very beginning of the “worker’s paradise.” The world began to take note of this handsome and forceful leader with the theater trained voice who preached non-violent resistance and the dignity and innate freedom of Polish men and women. He was unrelenting.

When the world was surprised in 1978 by his elevation to the papacy as Pope John Paul II, the first non-Portrait_of_the_Pope_John_Paul_II in PolandItalian in four and a half centuries, the Politburo started to understand fully the worst mistake of its sixty-year history of brutal rule. When he was elected Pope, he immediately announced that “the Church of Eastern Europe was no longer a Church of silence because now it speaks with my voice.”

“Open wide the doors for Christ. Do not be afraid.”  His first homily as Pope spoke directly to the people and as a challenge to Communists everywhere.

In 1979 he made his first visit as Pope to his homeland. The impact was world changing. In Poland, the regime had fostered isolation and distrust, so no one knew how many were dissatisfied outside of their immediate circle of trusted friends, and how many mourned the suppression of their ten centuries deep Catholic culture and longed for its freedom and sanctuary.  All feared exposing their hatred of the tyrant because informers were everywhere, and dissent earned you a long cold train ride to Siberia. If you were lucky. When Pope John Paul came and spoke tirelessly – fifty talks and homilies in nine days, celebrated numerous Masses, and led them in many prayers of hope, many witnessed after that visit for the first time they felt safe, accepted, and united. And there were millions of them.

In Victory Square in Krakow, hundreds of thousands of people chanted and sang, “We want God. We are Your people. He is our King. He is our Lord!” John Paul put his hand on his heart and wept quietly.

He spoke and it was the turning point, the first domino to the fall of the Soviet Union. “And I cry. I who am a son of the land of Poland and who am also Pope John Paul II. I cry from the depths of this millennium. I cry on the vigil of Pentecost. Let your Spirit descend! Let your Spirit descend and renew the face of the earth, the face of this land. Amen.” 

He never spoke once in fifty talks of those nine days about government or ideology or economics. His challenge was individual and human, one heart and mind at a time. He simply told them in essence, “You are not who they say you are. You are a Christian people united in faith and freedom and culture.” His often-quoted favorite scripture was from the Gospel of John, “The truth will set you free!”

He instilled hope in a non-violent ‘revolution of conscience.’  He called himself the Slavic Pope signaling he was speaking not just to Polish people but to all the enslaved people of Eastern Europe.

In 1980, the Solidarity union was formed in the Gdansk shipyards and led by electrician Lech Walesa as a direct reaction to the Pope’s rallying cry. He led a strike that almost overnight became national for grievances against the workers by the state. When the government eventually offered new benefits, freedoms, and fair treatment for the Solidarity workers in the shipyards who were barricaded in their warehouse, Walesa refused until the offer was extended to all the workers in Poland. Twenty thousand people gathered around the besieged warehouse in support. The government folded, and for the first time a Communist government acquiesced in the just demands of workers. All the workers.

For the next ten years, the unrest spread throughout Eastern Europe. The fire of hope and the truth about the nature of human beings was ignited and could not be extinguished by force or lies. A severe martial law was imposed in Poland. The pressure on the government went underground but persisted. Pope John Paull visited again 1983, 1987, 1991 (twice), 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2002. When Ronald Reagan saw the video of the Pope kissing the ground of Poland on his first visit, he remarked that the world had changed in that moment.

After the lid came off and Solidarity was created, the USSR through their surrogates in the Bulgarian Secret Police[5] tried to stuff the genie back into the bottle and hired an experienced Turkish assassin, Mehmet Ali Ağca, who shot at the Pope four times in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, hitting him twice and severely wounding him. His wounds troubled his health for the rest of his life. Ağca was caught and sentenced in Italy then deported to Turkey where he was convicted of a previous assassination of a left- wing journalist.

Several years later the Pope visited and embraced Ağca in the Turkish prison as well as reaching out to his family and mother. He publicly and privately forgave Ağca, and a picture exists of Ağca kissing the ring of the Pope during the visit. In 2007, two years after the death of the Pope who had befriended him, Ağca converted to Roman Catholicism. Like the founder of his beloved Church, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope John Paul responded to violence, hatred, cruelty, and vengefulness with forgiving love. Every soul, every human being precious, unique, unrepeatable, capable of transformation. Even assassins.

There was little violence in the ‘revolution of conscience’ other than what the government perpetrated. Demonstrations. Protests. Courageous stands. Way too many ups and downs for a blog post.[6] See the footnote for a great video resource readily available. It took another decade until 1989 for free elections to finally finish off the regime.

To be sure many other factors contributed: the leadership in tandem with John Paul of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The leadership of playwright Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia and Walesa in Poland and many others in Lithuania, Hungary, East Germany. But this was the Lord’s battle too and that of His shepherd, John Paul II, and it was definitive.

Between 1989 and 1990, they fell one by one. Poland first, then the rest: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the infamous Berlin Wall came down in November of 1989. The guns of the Church had sounded, and the walls came down.

“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.”  Vaclav Havel

[1] Unidentified photographer – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID 2003678173. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing.

Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (1878-1953), leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953

[2] http://karnet.krakowculture.pl/en/18092-krakow-john-paul-ii-in-poland-photographs-by-chuck-fishman

[3] “Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths. In a wonderful manner….”  Gaudium et spes.

[4] Perhaps a tribute to Joseph Stalin. Stalin, his adopted name, is a derivation of the Russian for Steel.

[5] There is great controversy and much conflicting evidence supporting the claim that the USSR through the Bulgarians hired Mehmet Ali Ağca. But sufficient collaborative testimony and investigations lay the blame clearly at with the Communists. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Pope_John_Paul_II

[6] Great coverage of this in the 2018 documentary:  “Liberating a Continent:  John Paul II and the Fall of Communism” by Executive Produce Carl Anderson, former Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus. Video clips in abundance and excerpts from Mr. Anderson, George Wiegel, definitive biographer of JPII, Reagan administration National Security Advisor, and many others. Streaming on Amazon Prime and other services. https://www.amazon.com/Liberating-Continent-John-Paul-Communism/dp/B01MS4VIGH

2 Comments

Filed under Faith and Reason, Personal and family life

Tagged as , ,

September 29, 2023 · 8:04 am

Body Surfing

“Always marry a girl from Texas; no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.” I first heard this from Pete Seeger during his concert at Symphony Hall in Boston in the late sixties.

~1967 Red Sox program

The latest generation of fear filled waders with their water shoes and 50 SPF might well miss their big chance. Sometimes you just jump into the wave and ride it out. We married way too young at twenty and fifty-seven years later we’re still trying to work things out. According to current standards we did everything wrong. No pre-nup, no separate accounts – bills paid in cash out of envelopes without one for savings, no student debt because we were paying as we went with tuition paid from my summer tree climbing job. Rita was working as a registered nurse while I finished school. All in. One old beat-up car we shared with no payments, third story walk up railroad apartment, no savings account, nothing held back, in love and glad of it. She wasn’t from Texas, although I’ve known some strong women from Texas, so I’m pretty sure the quote above is true. No, Rita was a nurse, and the saying applies: Always marry a nurse because no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.

We had no carefully planned house carefully furnished, or even a budget outside of hastily scribbled categories and weekly amounts on the envelopes, and no plan for every contingency we could worry about. Twenty-five bucks a week into the “Rent” envelope. Ten into “Food.” Five into “Electric” Five into “Phone.” Five into “Entertainment,” which was spent for an occasional movie downtown or an impulse trip to the State Street Fruit Store for a fifty-cent hot fudge sundae. Sometimes when the urge struck after we went to bed, I was sent out to bring a couple of them home – whip cream, nuts, and a cherry included. Everything cost much less, and wages as always barely kept ahead of them.

Our one extravagance was the KLH stereo and turntable we bought with our wedding money. Vinyl. Eclectic. From Van Cliburn’s Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Dave Brubeck, Doc Watson, and Mozart. Stupid happy. Lots of hugs. Lots of cuddles. Still a lot of hugs and cuddles, sleeping like spoons. Some hard times later. Mistakes and some heartaches. And good times. Many more good times. Some challenging waves; some thrilling ones too. Very few regrets. Wouldn’t change a thing.

The first summer after we were married at Blessed Sacrament Church, which is where we both had our First Communions, the Red Sox won their first pennant in twenty-one years. The time before that was in 1946 when Ted Williams returned to Fenway from WWII. Before that it was two years after my father was born in 1918 when they traded away the Babe. No series win for another 34 years after that pennant. My father, a lifelong fan, never saw a series win. But he and my mother were visiting us in Northampton when they clinched the pennant in 1967. Yaz. Rico Petrocelli. Reggie Smith. Jim Lonborg. Tony C. George Scott.

Everyone came out of their houses. All the church bells in town were ringing in jubilation. Rita climbed up on my shoulders, and I started to sprint down the sidewalk dodging the crowd like a running back. She pulled my hair to stop and started to laugh. Laughing so hard she wet her pants and warmed my neck. Got angry at me for the wet pants. I loved her so.

Ah yes, All in. Jump in the wave with some good timing and the ride is exhilarating. From a distance, the observer doesn’t perceive very rapid motion, but inside the break is very different. The sound of the surf and the rush of the water in your ears, the power of the thing. You’re flying, carried along by a surge of energy that built up for a hundred miles, then breaks when gravity overcomes speed, and the shore slopes shallow. Some rough rides, some smooth, occasional misses and the wave passes over you. But, God, jump in. Hesitate when the right wave comes, and you will never see another one like it. There is no substitute.

“Sing me a melody,

Sing me a blues

Walk through the bottomland without no shoes

The Brazos she’s running scared

She heard the news

Walk through the bottomland without no shoes

Won’t you walk through the bottomland without no shoes?” Lyle Lovett[i]

We rode many waves over the years. Some tested us sorely. One memorable ride was in 1983, the year after our third child was born in April and my father died on his birthday in December. We learned once again what it was like to ride a wave that was an invitation from God.

We visited a Catholic community while at a conference during the winter in Providence, Rhode Island and met some folks who later would become close friends. We sensed a strong sense of belonging, but we already had that in Maine and could have stayed for the rest of our lives.

In the spring of 1983, all our little family – Rita and I with the three kids (only Meg who wasn’t born yet was missing) went on a four-day Easter retreat in Augusta when we were living in Maine. We had felt a prompting of the Holy Spirit to move back closer to our parents who were aging: my recently widowed mother and both of Rita’s folks. And perhaps a call to dive into a wave carrying us into deeper waters in our faith. We loved small town Maine, our parish, my job; I resisted. But in the prayer journal I kept each morning, the readings kept coming. About caring for parents. About God gathering His people. About journeys of faith. Give me a break, Lord. I like it here!

Finally, after much hesitation, on Holy Saturday, I managed to meet with the retreat director, Father Bourque (no relation to the Boston Bruin All Star defenseman.) We talked for a half hour around eleven o’clock after everyone was in bed. He had a pronounced French-Canadian accent. I showed him my journal, hoping that he would tell me to get real and stop making myself crazy. The job market was terrible, we were just coming out of a recession, and the real estate market was worse. Houses in our county were lingering for up to a year until the sellers got tired and cut their prices severely. He looked at me with startlingly deep blue eyes and said, “I think God wants you to move.” My heart started pounding. Not my plan.

He suggested that since moving a few hundred miles with my family to uncertain places in uncertain times was serious business, I should do some testing to make sure of our discernment. Ah, I thought. A good out. But his test turned out to be not trivial. Father Bourque looked at me again, “Since times are hard, test the waters for a job down there, and if that looks promising, put your house on the market.” How about something a little safer like a wet fleece[ii], Father? This test is a commitment to the wave before it breaks. “Look for the job, sell the house,” he said.

We do understand that we don’t always understand; responding and traveling in the Will of God is always in the end faith in the unknown trail, and there are brambles, stumbling stones, and blind corners. On our return Monday, I called my boss in Boston. I was on the road selling commercial projects for a large regional lumber company, making Boston wages, but in a much less expensive cost of living situation in rural Maine. Life was settled and going well. But the invitation and wave were calling. Since I was in good standing in the company, the most comfortable testing of the job waters was calling the office. “Warren,” I said, “Just thinking of maybe exploring a larger market. What have you got in say, Southeastern Mass, or Rhode Island or even Cape Cod?” “I like what you are doing in Maine,” he said, “but if you need to make a change, I’d love to have you in Rhode Island. I just fired the guy there on Friday.” I remembered what a skilled veteran told me once: don’t bother to learn their names until they’ve been here at least a year. It’s a tough business.

Be still my heart. That’s one of Father’s discernment keys, but houses stay on the market here for a long, long time. We’re still safe. I called a friend who was a real estate agent in town. Ed was my tennis buddy and not encouraging about us moving, but he said he would put a satisfactory price on it from a seller’s perspective and list it if I insisted and had lots of patience. I did insist and would be happy if my patience was infinite. We had a full price offer in five days. The wave was breaking and moving much too fast for comfort.

When we made a second visit to confirm the community, we were invited to stay with a family who would soon become dear friends we love to this day. On a walk in the neighborhood with the baby, five houses down the street, we came upon a realtor nailing up a “For Sale” sign on a less than thriving street Norway maple tree. The owner had died two weeks before, and his sister who now owned the house was selling it quite a bit below market because, while solid and well built, it was sixty years old and needed major updating – needed a new kitchen, a new bathroom, refinishing the oak floors, painting all the walls, rewiring and replumbing. But the roof was good, the furnace sound, the full Douglas fir two by four framing superlative. Made an offer. Accepted in a day. Done deal.

Easter retreat. By Pentecost we were living in Providence with a lot of work to do. That’s what body surfing can be like. The rush of power is beyond your ability to control. Moving faster than you thought you could. Twenty yards closer to the beach in five seconds.

That’s what body surfing with God can be like.

Sachuest Beach Surfers end

One more recent short body surfing story that ties back to the opening quote from Pete Seeger about girls from Texas (and nurses). Earlier this year, I was body surfing at Surfer’s End on Sachuest Beach (See picture from my cell phone). At 77, Rita was reading a book and sort of keeping an eye on me. She was skeptical that body surfing was the best use of my time at our age.

The key to body surfing is timing. It’s all timing. Hit the wave just as it breaks, and you can go a long way. Jump into it too early, and it passes you by. Too late, and it breaks ahead, rapidly fizzling out in front of you while you turn to wait for the next one. Thrashing and frantic swimming to catch up is useless. There are other possible outcomes. Lose sufficient attention and the wave smashes your face into the sand. Forehead scrapes that look like someone touched up your forehead with a belt sander loaded with a 24-grit belt. They can bleed profusely but without any real lasting injury other than cosmetics. I bled. Came up out of the water. Good thing there were no sharks about. Waded toward shore splashing the cleansing and cooling salt water on my head. Blood running down my face.

Rita glances up and looking concerned walks down to the water. “Always marry a nurse because no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.” It’ll all be OK now. My nurse will assess the damage. Her face goes from concern to something else. I am starting to worry about spending the evening in the emergency room. She struggles to control her emotions. She tried to resist; she really did. Then she bursts into laughter. “I told you, dummy.”

“To me, when you go body surfing, it’s a way of simplifying everything. It’s just you and the wave and the experience. Life is a balancing act.” Mike Steward, champion body surfer. From a Surfer Today article.

[i] Superb video with the incomparable Emmy Lou Harris providing in the harmony. Walk Through the Bottomland

[ii] See Judges 6:33-40 in which Gideon tests God’s promise of victory over overwhelming enemy forces by laying out a fleece for dew.

2 Comments

Filed under Faith and Reason, Personal and family life

Tagged as , ,

September 21, 2023 · 11:02 am

Every Once In A While

“No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.” Dorothy Day

~Courtesy of wayne evans

Open source courtesy of Wayne Evans

Every once in a while, I hear a story that restores my hope and saves me from a descent into disappointed cynicism. We know a young woman, let’s call her “Virtue,” who is suffering through a dark period in her life, and there have been more than a few of those she has suffered through in her life, most admittedly through her own bad choices. In former relationships, she was physically and emotionally abused. She’s more careful now in her choice of partners, but as it turns out not careful enough.

Last year “Virtue” made a mistake by choosing to engage in the baby making act with someone who didn’t love her and marry her and commit his life to her. Let’s call him DB for short. And sure enough, a baby was conceived in the baby making act. After all, that is what the baby making act is devised to do.

They were living in an apartment with a friend of the unloving male lover. When it was discovered that she was with child, the friend of the father’s, whose name was on the lease for the apartment, stated unconditionally he would tolerate no troublesome little human beings in his life. Since they enjoyed the apartment, DB, the irresponsible[i] father-to-be made the decision for all three of them: father, mother, and baby: the kid had to go. Or DB would go. She knew that her connection to the tiny human being within her womb would not allow her to “terminate the pregnancy” as the euphemism goes. So, her original mistake was not to be compounded by a tragic new one. But that is not to say it wouldn’t be difficult, very difficult.

DB was true to his word (if nothing else), and after persistent harassment failed to loosen her resolve, he left in the night with a new girlfriend to an undisclosed out of state address. “Have a nice life.” This scenario is now commonplace, especially among the poor, compounding their misery.

“And what if—what are you if the people who are supposed to love you can leave you like you’re nothing?” Elizabeth Scott, The Unwritten Rule

We met “Virtue” last winter when she was eight months pregnant and a week short of living under a bridge with no place to go. A friend introduced us. After some hectic scrambling with some good-hearted friends, collectively, we were able to secure a spot in a homeless shelter for expectant mothers – a kind of miracle given the abysmal shortage of such havens for those without options. But the time has now run out there, and the shelter needed space for new desperate clients.

We met with one of the same friends and “Virtue” recently to discuss options and help find a more permanent situation for her and her baby, now seven months old. Her situation is still far from secure. The baby is healthy, happy, relaxed, and curious about everything going on about her. She has beautiful dark hazel eyes that follow every move, eyes that stare unblinking at you in trust and candor. No pretense with babies. She is patient while the adults talk with all those strange sounds. Rolls of baby fat dimple her elbows and knees, plump that will burn off as soon as she gains her mobility and starts crawling, crabbing, walking, running, climbing, exploring, and testing her mom’s ability to keep up.

The almost toddler laughs a lot when old guys rain raspberries on her arm, and she seizes anything within range of her chubby hands. She has a minor issue that requires physical therapy, but her mom is diligent with getting her to her appointments and relies on the kindness of volunteers in her church congregation for rides to and from. Her prognosis is excellent for full health.

Her mom told us this story over coffee.

She left the baby for a short time with her parents while she ran some errands and picked up some needed groceries for them. She was able to stay a short while with her parents, but the rules of the elderly housing project where they live preclude a longer stay.  She went shopping on foot. She has no car.

As she walked on the sidewalk in her small city, “Virtue” encountered a disheveled, unshaven man prone on the concrete. All the pedestrians carefully averted their eyes and eschewed intervening with his obvious predicament. Not “Virtue.” She stayed.

She knelt next to his head. His breathing was shallow. “Sir, are you alright?” No response. Roll him out of his vomit. “Sir, are you alright? I’m calling nine one one. They’ll be here soon.”  Check breathing again. Make sure he is still doing that. Flag down passing pedestrians dressed in hospital scrubs. They join her and check for a pulse. A bit thready.

The rescue crew shows up within five minutes or so and takes over. “Virtue” left her name and contact information as a witness with the police officer who soon joined them. They determine acute alcohol poisoning. If left unattended and ignored the stranger on the sidewalk could have lain there until he stopped breathing.

“Virtue” told us her story in a matter-of-fact manner but was pleased she had been able to help. Sure. That’s what human beings do for one another. “What else could I do?” Without hesitation or doubt.  A week short of being on the street herself with an infant, she was the one who took notice instead of stepping over the guy like all the rest hurrying to their urgent destinations. She was the one who did the loving thing for a stranger.

The French poet killed in the first World War, Charles Peguy, wrote, “The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope.” A homeless mother taught me that last week.

Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 

On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you.’

Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”  And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”  Luke 10: 30-37 (New American Bible translation)[ii]

[i] An all-too-common adjective for hormonal, negligent sperm donors in recent decades. As it turns out, the sexual revolution didn’t liberate women as much as it liberated and enabled irresponsible men – going on three generations of them. The unwritten rule today is that if a baby results from the baby making act, it’s the woman’s responsibility to ‘take care of’ because of the failed contraception (anti conception), and the expectation for physical coupling in a hook up culture is a given. The male may choose to pay for her in getting rid of the baby. Or he may just evaporate. No opprobrium attaches to the man who was once expected to “do the right thing” after he did the wrong thing. Increasingly rare is the man who “does the right thing” before, during, or after the hook up.

The ‘hook up’ culture is an appropriate metaphor. Sexual coupling with virtual strangers who have no commitment, no love, no sense of self giving to the other person has all the love and tenderness of a beat-up, faded tow truck backing up to a Rent A Wreck auto with a blown engine.

Great book on the topic: Global Sexual Revolution: Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom, 2015, by Gabriele Kuby

[ii] The Samaritan was despised in first century Israel as an apostate and treated as a pariah. One of the lessons from the parable is that Jesus came for the despised, the poor, the alienated and not for the perfect and sanctimonious. “Virtue” is among the poor, the sinners like all of us trying the best we can to live in a fallen culture, the abandoned, those with few options,  yet it was she, and only she, who reached out to the stricken man on the sidewalk. There is hope in that, and a lesson for us all.

2 Comments

Filed under Faith and Reason, Personal and family life

Tagged as , , ,

September 18, 2022 · 6:49 pm

Swordfight On the Lake Redux

For a second week I’ll repost a very slightly edited ten-year-old edition of this blog. After many thousands of visits, many of the readers today were not around when it started. This is one of the early Maine Tales, a time which redefined our lives if you care to look back at that topic.

Once again, this week, the prompting for this choice was that my friend Rick, who has since passed away and was an early reader, commented on the post. If you want to get to know him, last week’s post introduces him and included a link to his work.  Here is a link to the original post, so you can read his comment if you’d like to. I always get hit emotionally when I read them: https://quovadisblog.net/2012/05/06/maine-tales-iii-swordfight-on-the-lake/

Pam Jones, who played an irreplaceable role in our lives, makes a brief appearance in this post. She has since joined Rick, and we will miss her as well. Our last few visits with her were in a nursing home north of Portland where we reminisced and laughed a lot.

I had a good friend from those days tell me once that we were not respecting the good men of the Mount Vernon Fire Department in this post. If that is how it comes across, I apologize, but I’ll let it stand as it was. They gave of themselves, their time, and put their lives at risk for no pay to be there for the rest of us. That they were underfunded, lacked all the equipment of a city, and could only train on their own time off, usually on weekends, was a function of living in a town of 600 souls, men, women, and children. They made the most of what they had and always showed up to help others deal with their tragedy. The good folks of Mount Vernon, Maine were among the finest I ever encountered. Or ever expect to.

They changed us in ways we could never have anticipated.

***********************************************************

Swordfight on the Lake Redux  

HouseFire_2The red pumper bounced onto the driveway of the large ante bellum colonial with siren blaring.  The house had once served as an inn, and currently was occupied by a half dozen mostly benign refugees from other late sixties communes.  The flames fully engaged the structure and were seen through the windows.  Everyone got out.

The source of the fire was a fifty-gallon drum woodstove laid on its side with a fire door kit cut in one end and a stove pipe emerging from the top, not an unusual heating system for rural Maine that can be assembled from a kit for under $100.  If it was a typical set up, sand would cover the bottom to keep the coals from burning through.  Overheated, it could glow cherry red.  Something had gone amiss.Oil Drum Woodstove from kit

A small fleet of private pickup trucks driven by the rest of the fire department followed the pumper.  The chief’s truck had a prominent flashing light bar on the roof.  A 3” hose with a nozzle was quickly deployed, but the tank rapidly depleted and the stream of water dwindled to a dribble.  An intake hose was unfurled, and several fire fighters started rolling it out towards a source of supplementary water, coupling on more hoses as they went.  Back at the truck end, the chief, Dana, bent to hook up to the intake valve and discovered the others were approaching the lake 500 yards away with the wrong end of the hose.  By the time things were reversed, the fire broke through the roof, which fell into the basement a half hour later.  These men were dedicated and courageous; they had saved lives, but all were volunteers, and practiced as they could.  Practice was customarily followed by much truck polishing, hose rolling and beer drinking at the station. Occasionally, they got to burn down a condemned barn to work on their skills. Common wisdom was to get out of the house, and then call your insurance agent and the fire department from a neighbor’s house – in that order. Town residents were fond of saying that the Mount Vernon Fire Department had never lost a foundation.

Official authority and municipal services in a small rural town are a unique experience.  In Mount Vernon circa 1976, there was no police department.  A local constable appointed by the court would serve subpoenas and divorce papers.  The nearest law enforcement was a Maine State Police trooper, who lived 15 miles away in the next town, Readfield.  Once when Rita was involved in a car accident, he came to our house the next evening dressed in jeans to help us fill out the paperwork.  Things were casual.  Only the game warden had true authority.  He was known to shoot a dog if they packed up with others and ran deer.  No appeal, no live trap, no deliberation whether it was a mutt or a Golden Retriever with papers: justice was swift, administered uniformly and accurate.

The only time I remember talk about engaging the police was on the Fourth of July during the bicentennial celebration in 1976.  Other than a few bottle rockets and cherry bombs from New Hampshire, there were no fireworks.  Jeff, a young twenty something native Mount Vernonite, took to drinking beer with a truck full of buddies and dragging an old car hood behind his pickup up and down the roads.  The hood presented an impressive display of sparks and plenty of noise, augmented by custom horns that sounded like a submarine klaxon dive alarm, mounted on the cab roof.  After three hours or so into the wee hours, some of the more sedate residents had had enough.  No one called the cops though; one of the dairy farmers who had to get up in the morning told Jeff he would shoot the engine block of the pickup.  We weren’t sure if he had the firepower or the marksmanship, but neither was Jeff, so he pulled the truck into the fire station and drank some more beer.

Bowie Knife A “domestic disturbance” was treated like this: no police involvement because they were too far away to help.  Bia, a recent resident, had moved into an apartment next to a small store front downtown, where she opened up a sheet metal artisan shop, welding and cutting small decorative pieces sold at craft fairs.  Her boyfriend was an odd, slender, bearded, pony tailed archetype prone to buckskin jackets, cowboy hats, silver buckles and a 14” Bowie knife carried in a sheath on his belt.  Bia’s daughter was my daughter’s age, and they became friends during the few months since Bia arrived in town.  In January, our phone rang about eleven one weeknight, long after our bedtime.  She called because we were one of the few she had gotten to know.  The boyfriend, whose name fades, let’s call him Jim, was drinking, smoking dope and hitting her.  Could I come down to help?  Sure, I agreed, groggily.

 As a twenty-nine-year-old, fit, tree climber, I had an exaggerated confidence in my own invulnerability; I grabbed a three-foot hickory handle half whittled down to fix my splitting axe and jumped on my trustyHickory axe handle steed, well actually, an F150.  What could be better for a chainsaw guy than getting to play knight errant?  On the way to her place, I practiced some tough threat lines involving emergency rooms, reconstructive dentistry and eating through a straw, all of which turned out quickly to be completely inadequate to the situation.  The denouement was less than noteworthy.  Jim had fled out the back door on the snow over the ice of Lake Minnehonk.  I followed his tracks into the dark, axe handle in hand, and found him seventy yards out on the ice in a tee shirt disconsolately sitting and shivering in the snow, his knife still in its sheath.  I asked him if he had a place to go.  He said he did, in Waterville.  I told him that’s where he would be staying.  He started to cry.  Bia packed a duffle bag into his dented Saab with Boulder County Colorado plates, and that was the last anyone ever saw of him.  I went home to bed; Rita was glad to see me.

Thirty years later, we were visiting an old friend, Pam Jones, who still lived near Lou’s store, which was now not Lou’s store.  Bia had long since moved out, but we learned for the first time that a local legend had grown around the “Swordfight On The Lake” with much dramatic license taken. Pam laughed huskily in her smoker’s voice telling us about it.  Entertainment and storytelling are at a premium in a small town.

I hate small towns because once you’ve seen the cannon in the park there’s nothing else to do.
Lenny Bruce. (Mr. Bruce obviously never actually lived in a small town. There’s a lot to do.)

1 Comment

Filed under Maine Tales, Personal and family life

Tagged as , ,

January 11, 2022 · 6:23 pm

Snow Ball Fights: Passion and Peril

“The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.” Doug Larson

800px-Rhode-island-mapIn the beginning, there were snowball fights after every storm, even though they presently are illegal in eight towns in Rhode Island, including nearby Newport and Jamestown. Not illegal here in Portsmouth, however, our town has a long history of dissent and rebellion against unjust laws and was founded in 1638 by Anne Hutchinson and others who wanted freedom from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Portsmouth was the site of the largest Revolutionary War[i] battle in Rhode Island. After the French Navy assisting in the effort to free Newport from the occupying British Army were scattered by a huge two-day storm and limped back to Boston to regroup and repair, the colonials were forced to withdraw.

The British occupying Newport attempted to overwhelm the Colonial Army retreating from Aquidneck Island. A series of bloody, but ultimately indecisive skirmishes with the British and their Hessian mercenaries were fought on August 29, 1778, on nearby Turkey Hill and behind stone walls that still exist on Quaker Hill where our home is now. Some mornings I’m struck with the realization that desperate men fought and died right here to help defend our freedom.  After successfully holding off the attacks, General Greene’s troops were then able to evacuate in an orderly manner and without further loss back to the mainland in North Tiverton.  But I digress.

Snowball fights in Portsmouth have so far escaped the oversight of the town ordinances, however, I think there is a state law on the books that prohibits throwing snowballs at a moving car, an offense which is punishable by up to a year in prison. I have not heard of it ever being enforced. Late last week two approximately five-year-old boys recklessly broke the law, but we declined to charge them. We were driving on Wapping Road to get to our walk along Second Beach and view the aftermath of the morning snowstorm when the two miscreants jumped up on the old stone wall behind which they had been hiding and accompanied by loud, wild war cries, let fly. Fortunately, we survived intact as the missiles fell about fifty feet short of their intended target.

Rita warned me about the attack after we had passed by them. I might have pursued the villains, but she talked me out of it. I wanted to tell them that leading the moving car properly was the key to success. Throw ahead of it and let the car run into the trajectory of a well-timed strike. As I remember when we often threw at cars and trucks as kids, at least half the thrill was being chased by our victims after we pummeled their vehicles.  The second key to success throwing snowballs at cars is not to do it from your parent’s yard and flee as soon as the brake lights go bright. I should have stopped and conducted some much-needed advance training.

We spent many determined hours building snow forts preparing for battle in the plowed embankments of our street while growing up in Massachusetts when snows were more frequent and deeper. Elaborate ramparts, observation, and attack towers and after a big storm, we could burrow some escape tunnels. If one of our architectural wonders caught my father’s eye, occasionally he would help after he got home from work and finish hardening the citadel with buckets of water to ice it up solidly. Construction was followed by many hours of snowball fights until the early winter sunsets overtook us and mothers called us home. Most frequently our retreats under cover of darkness were as indecisive as the Battle of Rhode Island and we withdrew in an orderly manner, tired, wet, and cold, but without further damage.

A second big thrill of our winter was sliding down Killer Hill on sleds both manufactured and improvised. The hill never killed any of us to my knowledge, but one naïve young friend broke his leg after we dared him to try it in a barely controllable flying saucer. Teddy struck the big oak tree at the bottom of the hill smack on at about two hundred miles an hour. Or so it seemed. As we ran down to help him, we were terrified that by challenging hapless Teddy, we had justified the name of the hill.

We never outgrow our primal impulse for snowball fights. One favorite was a memorable encounter at the UMass Amherst. The grand evening began as we slid down one of the steep slopes on campus on sturdy plastic trays purloined from the cafeteria.  Well before social media crowd sourcing, a big storm drew two large rival men’s dormitories out into the cold with very little provocation. We clashed in a major battle after the six-inch heavy, wet, snowstorm provided like a godsend the makings for perfect snowballs – must have been at least a hundred guys on a side.

One splinter company broke off and tried an ill-advised assault on a sizeable women’s dorm. The besieged occupants wisely stayed behind their stout red brick walls. Laughing and pointing at the pitiful attackers, they could be seen in sweatshirts and bathrobes through the windows strategizing their defense. The attacking force was easily repelled with wastepaper buckets of ice-cold water, poured like boiling, flaming oil from the parapets upon the hordes.

Eventually, campus police sent a couple of troopers in a patrol car to break up the conflict. The cops remained safely in their mobile unit when two hundred snowballs released on a count of three buried their car. Since there was little risk of a riot breaking out, they drove back to their warm office shaking their fists and laughing. Cold hands, undone papers due in the morning, and the late hour quelled the ardor of the combatants, and we retired back to our rooms to nurse our wounds and fire up the illegal hotplates to make hot chocolate and coffee.  I learned it is very difficult to evade a hundred snowballs thrown in unison.

“Every man should lose a battle when he is young, so he doesn’t lose a war when he is old.” George R Martin

[i] Battle of Rhode Island

Illustration by: Michel Capitaine du Chesnoy, A.d.C. du Général LaFayette, Public Domain, Wikipedia

1 Comment

Filed under Personal and family life

Tagged as , ,

December 28, 2021 · 6:38 pm

Christmas Letter 2021

                                                                                                                          

“Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th’encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.”                                                                     

St. John Henry Newman                                                                                         

Christmas 2021

NativityA rainy December Saturday is the perfect time for reflection and to get a short Christmas letter together. We said last goodbyes to some good friends in 2021, three in the last two months. We’ll miss their company and just knowing they are there. We’ve joined in prayer for each that they have been welcomed home. “Well done, My good and faithful servant.” Each one was unique and precious and unrepeatable and irreplaceable. As we turn the corner into our fourth quarter century, this Christmas and end of year season, natural for reflection, has special poignancy.

Not to lapse too deeply into Irish maudlin, but at nearly seventy-six, we are mindful that the road ahead is nowhere near as long as that which is receding in the rearview mirror. This stretch of road is not a regret; but as Bill Belichick would tell us, “It is what it is.” We benefit greatly from the perspective of how dear each new sunrise is. Another Belichick aphorism is, “You are what your record says you are.” Again, not as troubling as it once might have been. Well into our eighth decade, what once seemed so critical to happiness, success, keeping score, and keeping on track has simplified and become less frantic, more at peace: small acts of kindness are not so small, a smile from a stranger, a smile from a friend, a smile from our beloved so much more meaningful. And each of you ever more significant to us.

Our former pastor at St. Patrick Church on Smith Hill in Providence, Father James, presided over one such funeral this week. He reminded us that happiness comes not from temporal achievements or the praise of others or the accumulation of stuff or success at bending the will of others. Happiness is derived from virtue, wonderment and gratitude. Wonderment at the true and beautiful that envelops us with natural marvels and good companions for the journey. Gratitude in our hearts as often as we can gather it to ourselves. None of it limited by time.

We have much to be grateful for surrounded by the wonder of natural things here on Aquidneck Island. Not the spectacular Colorado mountains where we lived so many years ago or the mountains and lakes of Maine where we lived many years after that, but the salt marshes, farmland and wooded trails, and, of course, the river and the ocean beaches. We scarce can take it in.

And more. So much more. Four grown children who have made many more good choices than lamented ones and matured into decent, loving human beings. Seven grandchildren from one to thirteen, each rare and wonderful with their own grace, eccentricities, goofiness, wonder of life, and childlike beauty. A parish church we can walk to with plenty to keep us spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally well-nourished with purposeful activity, friendships, worship, and life. And our greatest blessing right here in our two-bedroom downsized bungalow: fifty-five years shared together in our cherished marriage next month. The radiant heat from the woodstove heats our home on blustery cold New England winter days, and plenty of wood is cut and split in the woodshed. Twinkling, joyful, brightly colored lights around the doors, in the windows, and along the rail of the deck. The wooden creche made for us with careful attention by Rita’s Dad and filled with the exquisite ceramic figures of the Nativity made by Jack’s mother so many years ago.

Life is full here in Portsmouth.

Let us resolve to be makers of peace, gratitude and love for one another; may we be welcoming havens for each other and unafraid of the future and not regretful of the past. God is good.

God’s blessings on you and yours and a most Merry Christmas,       

 Love in Christ,

—– Psalm 46:10     Be still and know that I am God —–

3 Comments

Filed under Faith and Reason, Personal and family life

Tagged as ,

December 23, 2021 · 7:03 pm

All of Nature is God’s Art

“All of Nature is God’s Art”  Attributed to Dante Alighieri.

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”  Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Norman Bird SanctuaryA local townsperson from forty or so years ago in Mount Vernon, Maine, taught in the English Department at the University of Maine. She grumbled to us once at one of her parties that the brilliant fall gold and red display of maples and birch and poplar was disturbingly garish, a vulgar excess that lures the tourists. The leaf peepers travel by the busload to northern New England and upstate New York each year to gawk and to raise the rates in the hotels and restaurants, filling the hospitality business gaps between the summer lakes splendor and the ski season. The leaf colors are enabled by the slow final ruin of the chlorophyll [ii]at summer’s end. The splendid trees benefit the local economy, but their beauty backs up the lines at the breakfast haunts of the regulars, so I understand her peevish response. Small inconvenience, really, though, and a good trade off anytime.

I have come also to appreciate more the muted burnt umber and crimsons of the late oaks and the more refined yellows of the beeches of late fall. The maples, ashes, birch, and poplar have abandoned their now brown leaves to lawns, gutters on our house, and forest floors. The oaks too slowly give up their summer, and the winter branches appear with their intricacy, delicacy, order, design, and strength displaying ever more clearly. The latent beauty in the structure of the tree emerges, the form developed year over year, cell by cell, a miracle of biology and geometry and design. Rarely in nature are purpose, structure, and function unrelated; what serves beauty, serves also for essence, form, and survival. The winter sky provides a perfect backdrop to feature the winter bare tree branches. As much as I take delight in the fragile spring green and flowers, the lush summer foliage, and the autumn brilliance, the spare precision of the naked branches is most welcome. Their quiet and deep peace signal the annual winter retreat.

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”  Galileo Galilei   

Ellie's winter tree in pastelsIt has been written that the Holy Spirit is the Love proceeding from the Father and the Son within the Community of Love that is the Trinity of the Godhead.  One of the key stories in the Christmas narratives occurs when Mary comes to help her also pregnant cousin after Mary began carrying the Christ child within her. In the presence of the baby Jesus, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit; she was participating in the mysterious inner life of God. Human beings as their most noble calling possess the capacity to share in that inner life.

So how do these seemingly unrelated thoughts connect to the fall displays in New England and our capacity to be taken by them?  I suggest this: that human beings possess the power of creating beauty and appreciating natural beauty by the same capacity that was imbued in them as being made in the “image and likeness of God.” This capacity is not simply a function of neurons and synapses but is spiritual in its origins; our relation to beauty is miracle.

An eleven-year-old girl[iii] has the same spiritual capacity as Michelangelo or Da Vinci or you and me.Ellie's chipmunk None of us likely has the same degree or skill or eye, but the capacity for beauty exists by our nature. Imago Dei, in the Image of God, are undeserved gifts to us in our nature and our souls. The senses are there; the mind is there; the heart is there; the soul is there for all of us.

Let us rejoice and wonder and be grateful as our eyes, our hearts and our souls are full.

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl”

[ii] As the days shorten and the nights lengthen at the end of the summer, this signals the trees to create an abscission layer which hardens the tender ends of the twigs to protect them when the leaves finally fall. This response to the diminishing light cuts off the supply of nutrients necessary to replenish the chlorophyll in the leaves. When it stops replenishing, the leaf begins to die. Chlorophyll constantly breaks down as it participates in the photosynthesis that produces nutrients for the tree and remarkably replenishes the sweet air that we sense near them as the photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide and water on the input side and “exhales” pure oxygen along with the glucose that provides the tree with all its energy. Chlorophyll also makes the leaves green. As it breaks down toward the end of the season, the carotenoids and anthocyanins show forth. Carotenoids were present all summer but were masked by the power of the green. In the fall, they get to show off their stuff before the leaves wither and fall.

[iii] Drawings by Elena Barek, who is eleven. Granddaughter with an eye, a heart, and a soul. Winter tree in pastels and Chipmunk in pencil.

3 Comments

Filed under Faith and Reason, Personal and family life

Tagged as , , ,

October 10, 2021 · 8:31 pm

Well Scripted

laurielipton_brave_new_world“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World[i]

Back in the mists of the early seventies for about a year I was a correspondent for a regional daily paper in Boston. I remember well the cigarettes smoldering in our ashtrays and cold coffee and typewriters at eleven at night trying to beat a deadline with coverage of a local town’s selectmen or planning committee meeting or a story about a local politician’s failings. Two fingered typing rapidly to fit in with the newsroom – men typed two fingered staccato; women reporters used all ten. They were faster.

The editor was young, male, and long haired, as was I. He wielded a good red pencil and sharpened our writing skills. He was also an ideologue who made it clear that stories favoring progressive issues would be given a pulpit; those that did not would suffer a brutal red pencil until we left out anything favoring opposing opinions. We took the message quickly to heart without it ever being clearly stated. It was not that we fabricated facts, but that we selected those facts that helped the cause and neglected those that didn’t. Since at that time I was sympathetic with the editor, I found no fault with the editing.

One of my most vivid memories of the job is a phone call I received from the wife of a planning committee member and local prominent conservative with whom I had had some run ins. Her husband was a condescending patrician with his reading glasses normally perched on top of his fashionably cut blond head and possessed of an expensive private school whiny drawl. I’d long harbored an aversion to the type. As he was a local developer, I found a conflict of interest in his decisions and comments during meetings when they jumped another builder through many hoops. The applicant was a rival of my planning board guy and was trying to get a subdivision approved that would compete with one in which the committee member was selling lots. Predictably, in my judgmental crusader persona, I savaged him in a couple of articles while my editor cheered me on.

His wife called my home, not screaming, but hurt, outraged, and in tears about the generous unpaid long hours and expertise that her husband graciously donated for the well-being of the town. And how could I do that to him and tell those lies so publicly? I didn’t understand his refined nature or his decency and goodness. Now, I didn’t share her view of him, but she did whole heartedly believe it.

I learned viscerally that while I was feeling self-righteous and clever, real people were affected and embarrassed. She was a good-natured, unpretentious woman with whom I had shared pleasantries before at an event; she thought we got along well. My ideological convictions conflicted with my feelings. But I soldiered on, nonetheless. My facts were right. The goals of my ideology overtrumped my emotions. The ends justified any necessary means. If I could short circuit the nascent political career of this man, well, all’s fair. Objective journalism was not my intent, nor my ideal. I may have been able to string together cogent sentences, but I was a bad reporter.[ii]

“It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free –to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

A Gallup poll[iii] this week chronicled the level of public trust in the media (or rather the lack thereof). It was the second lowest such poll ranking for this metric on record. Journalists compete for truth telling trustworthiness with back of the truck health supplement hawkers. Thirty six percent of the public retains a “great deal of” (a meager7%) or a “fair level of” (29%) trust that what they read in the newspapers or see in their evening news is reliable and accurate. Which, of course, means that sixty four percent do not trust what they read or see to be truthful, unbiased, and free from ideological distortion. The breakdown is more revealing: thirty one percent of independents, eleven percent of Republicans, and sixty eight percent of Democrats have confidence that what they see and hear in the mainstream media (MSM) is honest and factual. That seems to show that Democrats are dimwitted, incredibly credulous, or that their confirmation bias is operating on full wattage. I believe the last explanation to be most likely among them.

Other data show that over ninety percent of MSM reporters and editors that contribute to political campaigns contribute to Democrats and progressive causes. The seemingly obvious conclusion is that what we read and hear and see that passes for news is progressive indoctrination – we are regularly and consistently submitting to what Huxley called a “conditioned” state. No doubt this suits sixty eight percent of Democrats just fine. And sixty nine percent of independents and eighty nine percent of Republicans are not happy about it.

But the indoctrination gets worse, much worse. More to follow in the next post.

“The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass-communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely, to impose necessary illusions, manipulate and deceive the stupid majority, and remove them from the public arena” Noam Chomsky

[i] [Image credit: (“DELUSION DWELLERS”, charcoal & pencil on paper, ©Laurie Lipton)]

[ii] I was not a bad reporter because I was telling lies – I was not. I was not a bad reporter because I was deterred by the hurt feelings of a subject – I was not. I was a bad reporter because I allowed my ideology to determine my subjects and the facts that I chose to include and not to include. There were plenty of other target subjects available and plenty of other facts. As the cliché goes, watching local politics is a target rich environment. But I focused that week on this planning committee member because I didn’t like his politics.

[iii] October 7 Gallup poll on the public’s trust of the media.

3 Comments

Filed under Personal and family life, Politics and government

Tagged as , , ,