Brrrr!...Ahhh!

This has been quite a week. I mentioned in an earlier post problems with creosote build-up in our wood stove flue. Well, it got bad enough that I felt that it was no longer safe to run the stove. So I shut it down. I did not want to fill the house with carbon monoxide and other toxic gases. The downstairs got pretty cold as a result, but we had both electric heat and the propane fireplace insert  upstairs. But then the thermostat stopped working on the propane stove - I couldn't turn on the stove! Heating the living-room electrically is really expensive. So we survived much of the week with electric heat on in just the bedroom. We'd come out to do other things - like cooking - into a cold house; 50 degrees or even the 40's. Brrrr!   But today that all changed. The Chimney Doctor came and cleaned out the flue. It was as I thought - a build-up of creosote up at the top of the flue. Ian, the Chimney Doctor, has a gizmo he can run up from inside that rotates a bunch of metal flails that beat up the creosote. But it wasn't good enough to clean out the top where there is a cap that prevents rain from coming down the flue. That was clogged and the creosote was like cement. So he had to go up on to the roof and beat it out with a hammer. But now it is great. I built a good hot fire and the stove is working beautifully. I also took the thermostat to Friends of the Sun, where we got the propane stove, and got a new one, and it works. So we are totally back in business heat-wise. Ahhh! Good thing too - it's supposed to get down into the single digits tonight - maybe even below 0 degrees.

The Chimney Doctor has arrived!

Ian with his gizmo

A nice fire!

Last night we went to the first session in the new Concert Choir season, which includes music by J.S. Bach (the motet Jesu Meine Freude), and Herbert Howells (Requiem), and two others. I think it will be a fine concert, which will be at the end of April.

Monday was the final session in the OSHER series on art. We looked at work by Joseph Diggs (who is based in Falmouth, MA on Cape Cod), Emily Mason (who recently died, but had summered for years in Brattleboro), Roger Sandes (who is also local and whom I used to work with on the board of the Brattleboro Music Center) and especially Kara Walker, and her phenomenal work Sugar Baby at the old Domino Sugar factory in Brooklyn - you can see a video all about it on YouTube. We watched the video. It is literally unbelievable. This was a really fascinating course and left us wanting more. So we can be more regular visitors at our own Brattleboro Art Museum, where Mara Williams is director and does teaching tours, and which is housed in the old train station.

A work by Roger Sandes

Kara Walker's sphinx-like Sugar Baby -made entirely from sugar. It, and the abandoned sugar factory in which it was created, have since been demolished. All part of the plan. Watch the video!

Tomorrow night I have a choir rehearsal with the Dummerston Choir. We are doing an arrangement of the hymn Children of the Heavenly Father which I did for the Guilford Choir about 30 years ago. I am eager to hear it again.

Degrowth

Friday evening, Ellen and I went to a lecture sponsored by our local World Affairs Council, at Centre Church. It was given by Dr.Julie Snorek, an environmental researcher at Dartmouth Colllege,  on the topic, Degrowth: How Our Blessings Have Become a Curse. The topic addressed the very urgent controversial  issue of reducing our carbon footprint not through technology - i.e., substituting renewable energy sources like solar and wind for our present dependence on fossil fuels - but rather through a entirely new understanding of our economy which does not assume growth. We are eager to hear someone who has thought this through. I have struggled with it in my own little way- cf. an earlier post in which I reported on a sermon I gave at the Guilford Church in which I suggested that a group of us might sell our homes and cars and live as a kind of commune at the church, with each having their own bedroll under a pew, and building our lives around that community. It was sort of a whimsical suggestion with the serious purpose of getting people to think about a kind of degrowth (I didn't call it that back then).  I feel we really need to be imagining new ways of living lives that are meaningful and satisfying, but consume way less of everything. I was hoping Dr. Snorek might offer something along those lines.  It was disappointing in that regard. She had lived for years in southern Africa among tribes whose lifestyle was totally other  from ours, and certainly way less consuming of energy and things, and she urged the need to learn from such peoples a new way of thinking about our economy, but it was too general. I did learn something about the "Degrowth Movement" which has been around for a while.  Some of what she had to say was provocative, and some was confusing, at least to me. I need to learn more.

Dr.Julie Snorek

 Last night, we tried to go to the Northern Roots concert but the weather was so awful that we turned back. We were afraid it would be solid ice when we tried to come home. So we had a nice time at home instead. Today I went to Guilford to church and Ellen went to Dummerston to sing in the choir. I had been asked to talk about "temptation" in the Sunday School. It turned out to be a very small audience of children - one - but we had a good time anyway. I stayed for an information session after church on the upcoming transition to a new pastor. Lise expects to be gone by June, which is not far from now.

Black Elk and Nature

Last night I went to a talk on Black Elk at the Westminster West church. The speaker was Damian  Costello, author of a book on Black Elk: Nickolas Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism. Who knew that Black Elk was a Catholic the last 50 years of his life? The famous book Black Elk Speaks did not mention this because its author was not interested in it. Costello attended a Catholic liberal arts college and he leaned about Black Elk and his Catholic faith there, and he became obsessed, if you will, with everything Black Elk. He believes that Black Elk's native spirituality, and particularly his understanding of the human species' relation to non-human species (a deep spiritual connection) can revolutionize our understanding of our relation to nature. He is also promoting the elevation of Black Ell to sainthood. It was a multi-layered talk, complex, but very interesting. I sat with John who is very interested in this subject and shared in a Q&A his experience of connecting with non-human species through sound, through listening. The turn-out for this talk was high - the church was standing-room only. Clearly, this touches on something people are concerned about, in these parts at least.

Dr. Damian Costello

You Tube video about Costello's book

Analysing art

We went to the second session of a 3-week series on analysing art, led by Mara Williams, director of our local Brattleboro Museum of Art. Her method was to show a work of art - this week they were projected on a screen because she realized last week that the group was too large to use prints - and invite responses from the group - of any kind. She would typically ask, "what's going on here?" She usually did not at first identify the work as to artist's name, title, date of composition, etc., but just invited responses to the work itself - form, color, emotion, narrative, context, etc. Eventually she would identify the work and that allowed me to look them up online and download them. The group of 60 well-informed seniors that constituted the audience provided a wide range of responses, as you can well imagine. Some in the audience were artists themselves, and brought that background to their observations, which added to the richness of the analysis. But often a very insightful observation would come from a person with no particular background in art.

Here are three of the paintings:

What do YOU see going on in each of these paintings?

After OSHER we went to an MLK Day event. It was pretty long - 2 hours - but it was powerful as well. The "keynote" address was given by Dr. Dottie Morris, who is a diversity coordinator at nearby Keene State College, and who has been doing diversity training with our local town officials and staff.  It turned out that John was there too - he had been alerted to the event by an earlier blog here! - and he had worked with Dr. Morris at Antioch. Overall, the event really drove home the work that we white folks need to do to overcome racism in our thinking, speech and actions.

Dr. Dottie Morris, Assoc. V-P for Diversity and Equity, Keene State College, NH

This week has been dominated by the impeachment trial, which began on Tuesday. We have watched much of it on PBS. It is a course in civics for sure. But it is disheartening also, because with the exception of Senator Collins of Maine, on just one vote on an amendment dealing with a relatively neutral procedure on the time allowed to  assess new information, not a single Republican senator has broken ranks on amendments dealing with witnesses and evidence, and thus all are in effect registering support for presidential behavior which one would think they would find utterly unacceptable. Nevertheless, I have indulged the fantasy that ultimately,  four Republican senators will break ranks and vote for removal from office, and Trump will declare the trial a sham, invalid, etc, and refuse to leave office, refuse to move out of the White House.  Then what? Will the Republicans support him in that?!

The other drama this week was more local. Our wood stove was giving signs of creosote buildup in the flue; viz., when I opened the door when starting a fire, smoke would come out, which doesn't usually happen when it is drawing well. I had recently cleaned out the trap at the bottom of the flue, but not the stove pipe that connects the stove to the flue. So with Ellen's help, we took the pipe off and cleaned it out. It wasn't that bad, so that probably was not the problem. But when we tried to put it back, it wouldn't fit onto the sleeve. Somehow, in banging it to get out the creosote, we had shifted the pipe and the angle.  Try as we might, we couldn't get it on. It was late at night, so we had to just leave the stove until morning. No heat from the stove. And it was near 0 degrees outside! We have electric backup heat, but we use it sparingly. So it got very cold overnight in the house. Fortunately,  Zach was able to come the next morning and he got it reconnected, and I have a date with the Chimney Doctor to clean out what I suspect is a partial creosote blockage up at the top of the flue. He has a gidget he can run up from inside. As long as we run the stove hot, it draws ok for now. So we are back in business and in a few days should be completely fine.

Kathy and Tom were going to come for supper tonight but Tom has a bad cold, so we are postponing that. We are thinking seriously of attending a talk at Centre Church tomorrow evening on "De-growth-ing" - i.e., can we envisage an economy which shrinks instead of constantly growing and actually reduce our consumption of energy, not just  get off fossil fuels and switch to renewable sources. This is the key question!

A successful concert!

We have had our Concert Choir Concerts, last night and this afternoon, and I think the general feeling is that they were successful. Saturday we had a pretty good snow storm which started at about 5pm. A decision had to be made by 3pm whether to cancel the concert (based on forecasts), and the decision was made to go with it. The snow definitely reduced the size of the audience, but it wasn't bad considering - maybe 100 people or so - and we performed reasonably well - Jonathan, our director, said he got very appreciative comments afterward. I would give the Saturday performance a grade of C+ myself.  The ride home after the concert in the snowstorm was WILD but we made it ok. The Subaru made it up the unplowed driveway just fine. Zach plowed us out at about 1:30a.m. this morning! He probably plowed all night.

Today's concert was better - more like a B+. John, Cynthia and Katie were there from our family, and they concurred. The Ojeillo Dreamweaver was the better of the two, and much enjoyed. The Pärt, Adam's Lament had beautiful and powerful moments in it. Both Ellen and I felt better about it, and Sunday's audience was probably over 200 people. So all-in-all, pretty good. After the c0ncert, J&C joined us for supper (Katie had to get home) at the SuperFresh Cafe which is just a few doors down from the Latchis Theater (the concert venue).  It is the one place where John can order anything off the menu - it is vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy free, soy-free - you name it - and it is also delicious. We started with a bowl of fried potatoes to share - unlike your usual fries for sure -  and they were go-ood. We lingered over the meal and had a good visit. Ellen and I did not go to church today - it was just too much. So we had a restful morning - which I needed especially because I didn't sleep well during the night. But I felt good for the concert. I actually was able  to sing pretty well for both concerts. So - a good weekend!

Setting up the Latchis Theater stage for the dress rehearsal - note our new back panels which did a good job of projecting sound forward.

A zoom-in on our director, Jonathan Harvey, caught in a reflective moment. We like him very much.

Saturday, at noon, we had lunch with Clif and Eliza Bergh and their family (Sarah and the two girls, Phoebe and Maggie) - Ellen brought the lunch (fritos with chile on top) and I got a chance to see a TarHeels basketball game against Pittsburg. It was sort of a pathetic game. They lost by about 14 points- behind at the half by 20, they got it down to 10 in the second half and then slipped again. The Heels are having one of their worst years in a long time. That is partly because about 6 players are out with injuries, including their star freshman, Cole Anthony. It's possible they will not be invited to the "big dance" in March. That has happened only once or twice in their entire history as a team. We'll see!

Thursday night, we had a Hallowell rehearsal - a particularly nice one, singing a lot of songs we don't usually sing. And Tuesday we went to Burdick's Restaurant in Walpole with Katie and Savanna. We were celebrating getting a gift card from Paul. That was great. I had steamed mussels, which is a real treat for me.

Burdick's Restaurant

Wednesday, Ellen went to Northampton to do things with Tamar, and I stayed home. As usual, Ellen prepared food for me to eat for lunch, and it was so good I took a picture of my plate.

Casserole (pasta, cheese, mushrooms, etc.),  beet salad and brussell sprouts

Tomorrow we have our second Osher lecture on art analysis and an MLK Day service in which we are singing in a community choir organized by Peter Amidon (who missed our BCC concerts because he was sick. Hope he is ok!).

A successful campaign

The Guilford Church celebrated a successful conclusion of  3-year capital campaign - the goal was $250,000 and they raised 276,000. A video was shown depicting what the money had been used for and then there was a big pot-luck luncheon. It was a joyful event.

The pot-luck luncheon at GCC

This morning, Zach and a helper came to finish up a job of clearing brush and small saplings at the house. Earlier they had cut down saplings using a chain saw. Today they used a small brush hog and a huge brush hog - one capable of reducing a small tree to chips! It is Zach's newest toy!

The BIG brush hog

The small brush hog

This afternoon we went to OSHER for the start of a 3-week series on viewing and understanding a work of art. The teacher is Mara Williams, who is the head of our local Museum of Art. She brought large prints and invited people to respond to what they saw in any way they wished to. A very wide variety of responses was elicited on many different levels. Some responded to form and color, others talked about their emotional response, some were interested in the implied history. Very interesting!

The three works we looked at were:

John Singer Sargeant, Black Brook

Hale Woodruff, Poor Man's Cotton

Pamela McCabe, Cotton Field

A University of Massachusetts Day

We took in two events at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst today. We were there primarily for the Western District Music Educator's Concerts - students from schools from all over Western Massachusetts  came together in four ensembles: Jazz Band, Chorus, Orchestra and Concert Band. Close to 400 students in all participated and Max Feinland was one, playing the flute in the Concert Band, a 75-member group. We heard all four groups and they were good. The Jazz Band was especially good, and an African-American drummer, Jacob Smith,  from Northfield-Mount Hermon School was super-good (see below).  Max's group played a piece titled Fortress by Frank Ticheli that Max said was his favorite piece in today's concert. "I like anything by Frank Ticheli," Max said.  (Also, see below).

The Concert Band, warming up

We also got the news from Max that he has been admitted to the College of Engineering at Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, and they offered scholarship aid. That is exciting! He is not 100% sure that is what he will do - he still needs to hear from Georgia Tech and MIT, but it looks very possible that he will go to Boulder next fall. As I think I have mentioned before, my late daughter, Betsey, worked in the Development Office of the College of Engineering at U Col., Boulder, and helped raise money for scholarships.

Before the concerts we took in the 2nd half of the UMass Women's Basketball game against St. Joseph's (Philadelphia). They won the game and are in a 10-game winning streak. By contrast, my team, the North Carolina TarHeels, lost to Clemson today - and they have lost almost ten in a row (not quite - they beat UCLA a couple of weeks ago)  This is most unusual. I think the TarHeels are setting records this year they don't want to set!

U Mass is in white, and a player just took a shot (it missed).

Tomorrow, the Guilford Church celebrates the completion of a very successful 3-year Capital Campaign. I think they raised over $250,000. There is a special pot-luck lunch after church.

I mentioned above a drummer we heard today - Jacob Smith. The Jazz Band director, Dr. Carl Knox, introduced him today as "the famous Jacob Smith." Well, he is sort of famous - especially for a 16-year-old. Here is an article about him from the NMH Newsletter:

Jacob Smith, Jazz drummer at Northfield-Mount Hermon School

                                         Next stop: the Newport Jazz Festival

 

Aug. 3, 2018 — The first Newport Jazz Festival, 64 years ago, featured legends such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, and Dizzy Gillespie. This year, the three-day festival included not only a 21st-century lineup of greats — Christian McBride, Charles Lloyd, Andra Day, Pat Metheny — but also up-and-comers like NMH’s own Jacob Smith ’21, a drummer who played with a Berklee College of Music ensemble the first day of the festival.

“It feels crazy,” Jacob says. “All these great musicians that you hear millions of stories about, they all played [at Newport]. And the fact that you get to be a part of it — it's amazing.”

Jacob, 15, is one of a few dozen high school and college students invited to participate in Berklee’s 2018 Global Jazz Institute. The five-day, all-expenses-paid workshop at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island culminated with an appearance on the festival stage. During the week, the students took classes and played music together for more than 12 hours each day, but the intensity didn’t faze Jacob. “The more I found out about it, the more I was thinking, ‘Wow, I get to do that. And I get to do that, too.’”

Jacob, who started drumming — on a real drum set — at the age of 2, describes himself as an “aggressive” musician. “By that I mean I want to learn as much as I can, as fast as I can, and if I run into a roadblock, I'm going to figure it out,” he says. During the school year, he studies with a drummer in New Hampshire, and plays in NMH’s jazz and percussion ensembles under the direction of his father, music teacher and saxophonist Ron Smith; Jacob also plays hockey and runs track. Before the summer Berklee Institute and the Newport Jazz Festival, Jacob participated in week-long jazz workshops at UMass–Amherst and the Vermont Jazz Center. He also packed his drumsticks for a family trip to Memphis, Tennessee, to visit relatives — in case any jamming opportunities arose. He says, “My dad tells me to bring them every time we go.”

It’s part of Jacob’s routine to have them at the ready. He practices daily, either on his home drum set or in NMH’s Rhodes Arts Center, “to keep my hands loose and warm, so I don't freeze up and get rusty,” he says. “One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to think, ‘OK, I'm good enough, I can relax, and kind of just coast.’ Music is the type of thing where we’re all beginners and we’re all still learning new things. It’s just a matter of what we learn next.”
                                      ************************************

Frank Ticheli, who is Max's favorite concert band composer, is 61 years old and Prof. of Composition at USC. His works are part of the standard repertoire of concert bands today.

Frank Ticheli, composer

Looking back through the week

Going back to Monday, the 6th - Epiphany - we had a really nice Twelfth-night party. Three of the expected fourteen people were unable to come, but we had the unexpected presence of two of the Amidon's grandchildren - Desmond and Arthur - and they ended up having a good time too! They hung out in the upstairs TV room, watched kid's videos, played games, came down when they wanted to and helped themselves to treats and had a perfect time of safety with adults nearby but a lot of freedom to do what they wanted to without an adult looking  over their shoulder. Meanwhile, the adults sang a lot of "out of the way" carols and enjoyed Ellen's wonderful food (two soups - a salmon chowder and a chicken/barley chowder, and a lot of special breads, cheeses and crackers, veggies and humus and an apricot/date-nut tart). Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time and enjoyed being in our home, which I have to say is a lovely party venue. We fit nicely into the space.  Here are some "before the party" photos.

The view from the balcony above the living-room - one of my favorite views in our house

The view from the west end of the living-room - we put the dining table against the wall to make more room for a circle of chairs

Another favorite view that includes the fireplace and kitchen

Tuesday, we recovered from the party by sleeping in late. Most of the clean-up had been done the previous evening, with Robin Davis' wonderful help. I think we ran some errands, but in the evening, we drove up to Norwich, VT, to attend a Village Harmony Alumni Concert. I have a long history with Village Harmony: Ellen and I met at a Village Harmony Camp in 2003, and I also toured with Northern Harmony in 2001 in Germany and England with the two leaders of the concert we attended Tuesday - Larry Gordon and Carl Linich. The concert was in the UU Church in Norwich, which we had never been to before, but we had the address and put it into our phone's GPS app. It took us north of Norwich to an isolated area where there was one house and not a church in sight! Nevertheless the voice told us confidently that we had arrived! Back to square one! We went to a general store in the village and asked. Turned out that the UU church was south of Norwich about 2 miles. By the time we found the church, the concert had been in progress for fifteen-twenty minutes, but we heard most of it and enjoyed it. And I had a chance to reconnect with Carl Linich, who had been my roommate on the Northern Harmony tour almost 20 years ago!

Carl Linich explaining a feature of Georgian music - his specialty - to the audience

Wednesday we spent some time working on music for Concert Choir at home and had a rehearsal that evening. We were configured as we would be at the concert, and since I use a stool and want to be on the floor, not on a riser, I found myself in the front row among first basses (I'm a second bass) and right in front of Jonathan Harvey, our director (normally I sit in the back at rehearsals). It was a little intimidating, but I think I did ok. Next Wednesday, we'll be in our concert venue - the Latchis Theater - and with the orchestra for the first time. And then the concerts on Saturday and Sunday. - we will not be over-rehearsed!

Also on Wednesday, a couple of Zach Grover's helpers came up and started a project I have wanted done for some time - clearing out a bunch of little saplings that have grown up west of the house. When they are done it will open things up, allow ferns to fill in, and look really nice, I think. It should enhance our "curb appeal," when it comes time to sell the house.

Thursday was a "3-star" day so to speak - an appointment at the Key Bank at noon, a funeral for a homeless man at four, where we sang, and a Hallowell sing at Holton Home nursing home at six. We picked up Calvin before the funeral and brought him home after the nursing-home sing. The bank appointment had to do with doing some things to build up my credit score (we discovered when we bought the car that my score was "0" - I use only a debit card). The other two singing events were special and moving as usual. We are very blessed to have these opportunities.

Today, Friday, we went to Amherst Regional High School to an alternative "sub-section" - the Summit Academy - where Brendon is a student. He was both performing on drums in a little band and acting in a 7-minute opera, titled, Transpiration, composed by a fellow student. The opera's plot is that he is hired by a woman to water her house plants while she attends a two-week professional conference, but he is seduced by the HD TV and forgets to water the plants; the woman returns to find her plants withered. The conclusion deals with forgiveness and new birth. Three characters in the opera:  the woman, the plant-waterer (Brendon) and a plant.  It was brilliant in conception, hilarious and well-done. After  the performance we went to a Chinese Restaurant, Oriental Flavor, with Katie and Savanna, for lunch.

After lunch, Ellen and I did some shopping errands at stores we don't have in Brattleboro - like a good stationery store (Hastings),  and a lighting store (Home Depot). I needed fountain pen ink cartridges (which I got) and a new lamp for beside the bed - a wall mounted lamp that swings out. We found just the lamp I wanted at Home Depot, but it was out of stock    : (     Then we got into rush hour Northampton traffic and lost a lot of time. Oh well!

Finally: a scene out our east living-room window at home which I like:

The woods east of our house

Stewart Letter #19

Letter # 19: January 8, 1945i
A letter from Stewart, in Lincoln, NE, to mother.

Dear Mother,

Only three weeks left now, and it seems that I have been here a lifetime.ii Only two weeks of classes left, for the last week consists entirely of college tests and the National Army Achievement Tests, on G.I.'s.iii

My average for the eight weeks mark is 84 without counting my P.T. grade, which was only sixty, just passing. iv My strongest subjects are math and English, and these are the subjects I had the most of in high school. The main trouble is trying to regulate my study and sleep.v

I'll need twenty dollarsvi for my round trip fare on the Rocket. I made my reservation yesterday, and I should buy my ticket as soon as possible.

I felt rather bad immediately after coming back, vii but it wore off with time and work. After being home for a week, I wonder how homesick I will be.

Incidentally, we will receive our first typhoid shots tomorrow, Jan. 9th, and that will mean that we will receive our third typhoid vaccination and also a smallpox vaccination just about the day before our furloughs begin.

On Jan. 4, I was Cadet Officer of the Day and got to sleep in the office. Also, I had to get up at 5:30 by alarm clock, wake the cadet Charge of Quarters and the cadet Hall Orderly so that they could wake up the other men , and wake up the administration O.D.

We have had a number of good training films in our military classes lately. Last Saturday, we had a reel on first aid procedure. Also, the ERC's in our bunch are learning infantry fundamentals. 
 

This building may include the necessities of life, but some details are missing insofar as convenience is concerned. There is not much room on the shelves, especially since two have to share a locker. The beds are not wide enough, and the springs sag in the middle. But, however, I do not believe that I would want to quit now, because I can see that this life won't finish me, although at times it is a little trying. 
 

I'll need about five dollars besides the twenty so that I can get my laundry back, buy some toothpaste, hair tonic and send some other clothes to the cleaners. If necessary, draw some money out of my savings account to send me. 
 

Don't worry about the typhoid shots, because I have gone through them before without mishap.

Your loving son, Stewart 


Marginal note written by mother to dad:
Barney, I thought I would send this to you it sounded to me as if Stewart was none too happy in this. I wonder sometimes if he should have gone into this; it is so hard to know what one should do and say.viii 

Notes:
i This letter is over a month since the last one. We can assume that since the Christmas and New Year's holiday have taken place, that Stewart did go home, if but briefly, and thus did not need to feel the need to write. In 1945, he will write fewer letters than he did in 1944 about half as many. Also, as mother's marginal note makes clear, this is the first letter that is not pretty upbeat. 

ii This is not said in a positive sense, I think. It's not "I'm living an incredibly full and interesting life here," but more, "I'm struggling so much that a few weeks seems like a lifetime."

iii I'm not able to find anything about these tests specifically. 

iv This must have been discouraging for Stewart who was accustomed to getting top grades in high school. 


v I'm sure Stewart was plenty smart enough to handle his courses, so it must have been that he wasn't able to sleep/and or concentrate, probably because of noise.


vi This was a lot of money: $276 in today's $$ according to one inflation chart online. That seems like a lot for a train ticket and I have no idea how mother could have come up with that. The Rocket was a train that ran from Minneapolis to Texas on the Rock Island line and went through Kansas City. I don't know how Stewart got to the train. Maybe there was a bus.

vii I think Stewart is saying that he was depressed, or as he says, "homesick."

viii Mother was right to read between the lines and send this to dad. I would love to read what he wrote back to Stewart. He was pretty good at seeing into a situation from a distance and offering some insight. 

The Rock Island Rocket

In the home stretch with the Concert Choir!

Today we had a special Saturday rehearsal with the Concert Choir, and we first worked on specific problem spots and then sang through the entire program:  the Arvo Pärt, Adam's Lament and the Ola Gjeillo, Dreamweaver. The Gjeillo sounds pretty good, but the Pärt still needs work. The tenors especially. We've got our fingers crossed! Our concerts are January 18-19.

Right now, Ellen is at Hannaford's shopping for our Twelfthnight Singing Party - next Monday we'll have 14 singing friends at the house for a party "to sing the carols we didn't get to sing during the holidays" as the invitation says. Everyone is asked to bring a few things to sing - to share. We did this last year and it was fun and well received. We're hoping for good weather!

New Year's Eve was a great concert by the Amidon family and the Becky Tracy/Keith Murphy family. This is a Brattleboro tradition; it is always great.

The Amidon Family

Amidons joined by Keith, Becky and their son Aiden

Reflections on a decade just ended:

 I started this blog in June of the first year of the decade just ended, June 2, 2010, to be specific. As I recall, I started it when Sover.net (my email server) got upset with me because a group email I had sent out had been treated as SPAM by many of the email servers of the persons I had sent it to. When this happens, Sover.net stood to lose something that was very important for them (I forget just what that was) and consequently if it happened again, they would cancel my account. What I needed to do was to get written permission from each recipient to receive a group email from me. I actually did that, and sent out at least one more group email from the road (we were making a trip to Alpine, WY at that time), but someone recommended that I start a blog as an alternative to group emails, and that is what I did. The advantage is that I have avoided the above problem; the disadvantage is that not everyone in the original group email list bothers to read my blog. So a big thanks to YOU, my faithful readers.

June 2010 was a momentous time. The Deepwater Horizon oil gusher off Louisiana,  which ultimately released 5,000,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, was in progress and in June, no end was in sight. It looked like an apocalyptic time - what if it never ended? - and my earliest posts dealt with "thinking the unthinkable." I had also just read a biography of John Brown which I had found on a visit to Harper's Ferry on the way out to Wyoming, and I was struck by the parallels between Brown's fight against slavery and the fight that needed to be mounted against the burning of fossil fuels.  Would Brown's militant tactics against slavery be justified today?  Ten years later, it is still a question. We have in many ways slid backwards in the intervening time.

A lot of other things were happening that year in my life. My granddaughter, Katie, graduated from high school and went off to college, and I started a project of sending her the transcribed and annotated letters home of her grandmother, Shirley, who had gone off to Wellesley 60 years earlier that fall.  I continued that project for over five years - past Shirley's  graduation, and Katie came to feel that her grandmother was a friend. That fall we also discovered the connection of Ellen's family - the Tolles family - with Wethersfield, VT where I preached a sermon on John Brown! Three generations of Tolles ancestors are buried in Wethersfield that  Ellen had previously known nothing about.

Ten years later - I'm sort of amazed to still be here, still writings posts, still working on projects, still trying to fight the good fight in whatever ways I can. Much has changed dramatically, especially in the national political arena, but much is also unchanged, and even more, much has been revealed about the nature of our country which was true ten years ago but we were rather naively unaware of it. Getting things out into the open is ultimately for the good, I think, but it makes clear what a huge task we have to make things right! I still have hope that we can, but it is also true that much has been broken that may indeed never be the same again. That's the way it feels right now, anyway.

So -- "Happy New Year "  feels a bit glib. How about "Courageous New Year!"  ?  That the decade opening before us will prove to be momentous, I have no doubt.  But in what  way?

One interesting little footnote. Ellen and I watched an Orson Welles movie back in 2010 titled, The Magnificent Ambersons, (1942)   and it contained this dialogue (quoting my post at the time) :

" George Miniva (arrogant young heir of the Amberson fortune), speaking to George Morgan (auto inventor, manufacturer, very nice guy, who is in love with George Miniva's mother and wants to marry her, but son George hates his guts): "Automobiles are a nuisance, they had no business being invented." George Morgan (after a shocked silence around the table at this offensive remark made right to George Morgan's face): "Well, I'm not sure but what he may be right about automobiles. For all their speed forward, they may be a step backward for civilization. Maybe they will not add to the beauty of the world or the life of men's souls, I'm not sure. But automobiles have come, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed because of the automobile. But you can't have the immense outward change that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for us. Perhaps 10 or 20 years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him, that automobiles had no business being invented."

Amazing words for 1942! Bravo Orson Welles! Well, now, almost 70 years later, with consequences Orson Welles could not have imagined, all the more pertinent words. Will this utterly catastrophic oil gusher be the thing that finally causes us to change our behavior and end our dependence on oil? "

Ten years later, we know that the answer to that question was, sadly, was a resounding "No!"

So...


               Courageous New Year!



A further P.S.

John and Cynthia have created a video with beautiful winter scenes and music from their recent Into the Silence program. It is stunningly beautiful.

Try the following link:


https://youtu.be/6Dw8YkN5diU

A scene from the Into the Silence video