Jemima

Jemima Farwell is Calvin Farwell's younger daughter. She was born just a year before Shirley and I built the house here in Dummerston, and so was a little toddler when I first got to know their family. She was a feisty litle girl! A little later she was part of the Junior Choir at the Guilford Church which I led at that time. This would have been in the 1980s. There was a memorable moment at a Christmas Eve service back then when someone standing next to her wasn't paying close attention to the burning candle they were holding and accidently set fire to Jemima's long, red hair. It was put out very quickly, but it filled the sanctuary with the odor of burnt hair! If you have ever smelled burnt hair you know how shocking that moment was! Jemima has a son, Simeon, who is just a few months younger than my Katie. They have been living in the Berkeley, CA area for several decades, but now, at age 50, Jemima is reforming her life. She has given up her home in Berkeley and has come back East. She has been house sitting in various places, trying to decide just what comes next. This week she was staying with Calvin (who lives with his son, Sam, and his family) and I took advantage of the opportunity to see her this afternoon. I have long been very fond of Jemima and had not seen her for many years. So it was really great to see her again! We didn't have a lot of time - Ellen is still working on the big meal - but we had a chance just to see each other and catch up a little bit. She is going to be living with a friend on Bunker Road starting next week, so she will still be in Dummerston for a while, and I hope we'll have a chance for a longer visit in the near future.

Me and Jemima************************ This morning we actually went to church! Guilford has resumed services in-person, with masks and social distancing. But it felt really good to be back with others again. Ukraine was very much a part of the service - a more somber service than other years when Mardi Gras was more in the forefront. "Planting seeds" was the theme, and we were each handed a sunflower seed when we came into the church - the sunflower being the Ukrainian national flower. According to Pastor Eiisa, she had planned to hand out sunflower seeds today long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine! The Holy Spirit was at work! This will be a big week - John and Cynthia are coming over Tuesday evening and Wednesday is my birthday! It is also Ash Wednesday. When you turn 89, being told "you are dust and to dust you will return" makes a lot of sense!

Cooking galore!

Today was a day devoted to food preparation here at the house. Ellen agreed some time ago to prepare a meal for the homeless shelter which will be delivered Sunday afternoon. It consists a turkey casserole, dressing, waldorf salad, cranberry-apple sauce and pies. Quite a feast! A bit like Thanksgiving. It is for about 40 people. This is in addition to the cake Ellen has been making three times a week for Afghan refugees. She made the dressing yesterday. Today was the day she roasted butternut squash and two large turkeys. She asked that I be available to help, and I was, and I did help some, but it turned out to not be that much. The first thing I did today was to deliver cake to the SIT campus so that she didn't have to do that. After that I helped Jerome do some shopping again and mailed some of ELlen's post cards. Then when I got home, I helped remove cooked squash from the skins and removed the meat from one of the turkeys. I also did some clean-up. Ellen has been so well-organized that it has all gone pretty smoothly. She is getting some help from others with the pies. There was a point today when I wish I had takena picture of the kitchen and dining-room - it was so full of food! But when I'm involved in something I often forget to take pictures. It's all pretty much cleaned up now. Maybe tomorrow when it's ready to be delivered, I can get a picture of that. AFter I did my food work I downloaded the next set of readings for our Uncanny Journeys course, this time the works of Sigmund Freud. There is an essay on "The Uncanny" by Freud; and his Civilization and It's Discontents. I started reading "The Uncanny" out loud while Ellen worked. It's pretty interesting. Our class last Wednesday on Nietzsche was ok, but I was a little disappointed in it. Our teacher, Phil Weinstein, had obviously made the decision to "accentuate the positive." I.e., focus on what makes Nietzsche a highly regarded figure, rather than tackling head-on the aspects of his thought that are repellant. He did not ignore the latter, but he didn't dwell on them. As a result, I think the session failed to really address the depth to which I, and I suspect others as well, were very disturbed by what we had read. I respect the effort to help the class to get past their negative reactions and see things they might not have seen, but I think the negative needed to be given its due. Maybe in the finsl analysis I'm saying that one class session was not enough to deal with Nietzsche adequately. Tomorrow, Guilford is returning to "in-person" church, with some protocols observed. But the new CDC guidelines do affect us - we are in a county where numbers are low and we do not need to wear masks anymore. But I think we will.

Bigger pots than usual on our stove!

Catch-up time

The days slip by quickly! We got home from Katie and Savanna's pretty late Saturday evening and the house was COLD. It took a while before we got the bedroom - and the bed itself! - warm enough to be in. But eventually it was fine. Sunday morning the Guilford service was a "day off" for Pastor Elisa - the service was led by students at Andover-Newton Theological Seminary at Yale University. We have had one of their services once before, and it was generally liked. The sermon this time was a fairly thoughtful reflection on how things will be different in the churches when we finally emerge from the pandemic. We went to the Davis' for supper Sunday night and watched a movie together - Belfast - and wow! it was quite a movie. Beautifully photographed, it was a kind of memoir of life in Ireland during the "Troubles" and especially what it was like for a young boy living in a mixed Protestant/Catholic neighborhood. The actor who played the young boy was amazing. It was a powerful film. I think Andy was streaming it from Amazon Prime. Before the film we had a supper that Ellen brought - finnin haddie chowder and cole slaw with corn bread - yummy - and with apple pie and cheese for dessert.

Pie, cheese and tea - what a treat!***************************** Yesterday I worked again on tbe Merry Lyin liner notes. To make a booklet that can be folded and stapled in the crease, you have to re-order the pages. Basically, you set up the sheet of paper horizontally with two columns, and put two pages on a side; the first sheet has pages 24 and 1 on one side, and 2 and 23 on the other side, and so on. It takes a while to set it up that way, and you need to mind your "p's and q's" so to speak. But I got it done. So I'm ready to print. The other thing I've been doing is reading Nietzsche aloud. He's a brilliant writer, but I don't buy the argument and I have a lot of questions. The class is tomorrow night. Today I took Jerome shopping and took care of some business at the bank. Right now it is raining hard - it wiped out our TV reception this evening. So we watched the news on the phone - which is not affected by weather - and then watched a movie - an older movie called Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington in their younger years. It was about a lawyer with AIDS. It was good - but it was noticably dated in its attitudes! A lot has happened in the past thirty years since that movie was made!

Just a little frustrated

I am at the house alone while Ellen and Brendon are at the movies. Brendon set up the TV for me to watch the Tar Heels play Virginia Tech, but when I tried to go there, I couldn't find it. I finally found the game icon, but when I click on it, I get a screen that tells me to activate my TV account on my phone. Of course I don't have a TV account. I have the game on my computer - just audio - so I am listening to the game but I was hoping I could watch it.

This is what I'm seeing. Maybe Brendon will be able to help me when he gets home. Later Brendon couldn't figure it out either. I think that their TV service simply does not include ESPN2.

A full day spent on one project!

When we come to Katie & Savanna's, we have the advantage of WiFi. So I usually bring wiith me a project of some kind that needs WiFi. This time it was the liner notes for the CD I'm making of The Merry Lyin' - the vocal trio Tony Barrand was in when he was a 22-year-old exchange student at Swarthmore College in 1967. I have a very full post on this on February 3, 2022 titled "Working on another CD." I decided that I wanted the liner notes to have basic information on each song plus the lyrics! That, of course, requires going online and doing a search for each song. Amazingly, I found lyrics for every song, despite the fact that some were not well-known, and it was 55 years ago! But it wasn't just finding lyrics, it was finding the right lyrics. Often there are several versions of a folksong, and Merry Lyin' often did a more "out-of-the-way" version. However, I found that they always did a version that was recorded by someone. A good example is the song So early, early in the Spring," which goes back to 1690 and has been recorded by a lot of people, including Judy Collins. Merry Lyin's lyrics were different from everyone I could find. I must have looked at a dozen. But I finally found a recording made by Cyril Tawney in 1965 that had been archived on YouTube. It was buried in a file of 30 or more songs by Tawney. It had exactly the lyrics Merry Lyin' used. I don't know if they had heard his recording, or they had found the source he used. However, Merry Lyin' also often made minor changes in whatever lyrics they used. So in every case, I have had to find the lyrics, paste them into a file, and then play their recording and compare their words with what is in the file, making revisions as needed. Doing all that for 16 songs took all day. Plus I had to do formatting. But I think I now have basically a usable little booklet that will accompany the CD. I can't really print it out here at K&S's - I'll have to wait until I get back to my printer. But that is a good accomplishment. Thanks to Laura Hassler, one of the members of Merry Lyin' who is now living in the Netherlands, I have some pictures of the three members of Merry Lyin', not from 1967, but from their reunion concert which - wonder of wonders - took place in the Guilford Community Church in the summer of 2006! And Ellen and I were there! I had forgotten that until I saw the photos and began to remember things. How could I have forgotten that!

Laura Hassler, Tony Barrand and Mike Greenwald, at a 2006 reunion of Merry Lyin' at the Guilford Church. I've tried to find out the whereabouts of Mike Greenwald, but he has disappeared. Laura Hassler doesn't know where he is either. *********************** Tonight, we had a nice supper - the Mac & Cheese plus squash and broccoli that Ellen brought - and I did the dishes and now we are watching the Olympics. First the pairs skating and now the half-pipe skiing free-style. Amazing what they can do!

Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier, American pairs skaters - they were fantastic!

Gus Kenworthy, a dual citizen of the U.S. and U.K., competing for the U.K. in the half-pipe to honor his mother.

And now we're in Amherst !

We have just come to Amherst, MA to pick up Brendon - he was involved in a rehearsal on the Amherst Commons - for a movie he's going to be in. We are "taking care of him" - if that is appropriate to say for a 16-year-old - while Katie and Savanna have gone to Maine so that Savanna can visit an ailing half-brother. We'll be staying at Shutesbury through Saturday evening, when K&S will return. Ellen and Brendon have just gone to Antonio's Pizza for our supper. Ellen brought Mac&Cheese, but we decided that since we are right here, we'll do pizza tonight and eat the Mac&Cheese tomorrow. Before we came down, Ellen delivered a box of cake to the Afghan refugees and also a contribution of baked goods to someone connected to a theater program in Brattleboro who are running a fund-raiser bake-sale at the Vermont Welcome Center on I-91 tomorrow.

Sample pizza slices from Antonio's*************************** Later. We are now at Shutesbury; we've had our pizza, we just watched the PBS Newshour and now Ellen is watching the Olympics. I'm in the living-room where it is a bit warmer, because this is where the wood stove is. Nothing like a wood fire!

This time it's Nietzsche

Our next class in the Uncanny Journeys course is based on Frederich Nietzsche's A Genealogy of Morality, so we are reading that -as usual, I am reading it aloud while Ellen is cooking or driving. I have read very little of Nietzsche in the past. I know something about his thought, so what we are reading doesn't come as a complete surprise. But I'm getting a much more detailed and specific sense of his argument. In a nutshell, he feels that the origin of the concepts of "good" and "bad" are in the distinction between the nobility and the common man. They are not originally MORAL concepts, but distinctions of class and power. And that is how it should be, according to Nietzsche. The "good," for him, should describe what characterizes the aristocricy - and for him that means strength, health, physical robustness, power, cheeerfulness, and even cruelty and war! "Bad," describes the lower class, what is inferior, submissive, weak, timid, sickly, etc. He blames the Jews for turning this valuation on its head: the wealthy and powerfful are "bad," and the outcast, lowly, poor are "good." E.g. Is. 61.1- "The spirit of God is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor," etc. Christianity took it even farther. "Blessed are the poor." It is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." That is probably an over-simplification, but it's close. This leads Nietzsche to his "superman" concept. It is easy to caricature Nietzsche. E.g., his discussion of the Jews might lead you to think he was an anti-semite; yet there is evidence that he was not. But at this point, I am inclined to reject his argument. I would not want to live in the world he seems to be advocating.

Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Visiting Tamar

We have come to Northhampton to see Tamar. Actually, Ben and Julie are here also. Julie just came in, but Ben has been here from the start, and I have enjoyed visiting with him. He is doing some substitute teaching and is actually now making plans to apply for Master's Degree programs in Education. He is looking at programs in Philadelphia and Georgia! Interesting! Tamar has been showing Ellen examples of K-Pop bands on her phone. I guess K-Pop is THE thing for young folks today. I am totally ignorant of it. Well, I know it's Korean, but that's about it. We learned that the Feinland family are all going down to Florida to be with Doris for a few days next week. I guess they want to provide a buffer for her so she won't be suddenly completely alone when she returns to Florida. That is very kind. So, there is a lot going on in this family. Tamar's class is holding a fund-raiser at Local Burger so we are going there for supper. Ellen and I will share a veggie burger.

In the Feinland living-room.

The K-pop band BTS

Notes from the Underground

Notes from the Underground was the subject. of our Swarthmore course Uncanny Journeys last Wednesday. It is an early novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I had never read it before. At a certain stage of my life I read Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, but not this work. Back then, I was reading on my own, so I had no teacher to provide background. So this work. and the discussion, was something of a revelation. Notes is primarily the ravings of "the Underground Man," a very disturbed person. The opening lines are: I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. What is disturbing is that the more the Underground Man raves, the more you begin to see that he is not all that different from us - from people I know and even myself. Maybe his extreme views are not all that extreme - he is just saying things out loud that we have all thought at times, but kept to ourselves. What was particularly interesting is how at times it felt like I was looking into the heart of an avid folllower of Donald Trump. Take this outburst: "....that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests, and sometimes one POSITIVELY OUGHT (that is my idea). One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy—is that very ‘most advantageous advantage’ which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply INDEPENDENT choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice." In other words, when circumstances (economic, social, cultural, personal) have pushed you into a corner, you are not going to do the rational thing. You are going to do what you want to do! There was a lot packed into Wednesday's session, so much so that both Ellen and I feel we would like to listen to it again. It was recorded, and that is probably an option, once we figure out how to do it!

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

The Return of the Prodigal Son

We got home from our trip to see Doris Feinand just in time for our visio divina session last Wednesday afternoon. Pastor Elisa had asked for suggestions for an image, and I had suggested the painting by Rembrandt titled, The Return of the Prodigal Son which is housed in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. I knew of it mainly from the writings of Henri Nouwen, who devoted an entire book to a meditation on this painting, a book which I had read and was very moved by back when I was still an Assistant Minister at the Guilford Community Church - the late 1980s and early 90s.

Nouwen's book************************************************* Pastor Elisa sent out the image ahead of time and people responded to it. I think everyone found it to be a powerful image, responding to the love, forgiveness, compassion that it expresses, and various details: the father's hands, the son's bare foot, the father's eyes, the contrasts of light and dark, the impoverished clothes of the son and the rich robe of the father, the enigmatic figure standing at the right, etc. We did not have time to go into it in great detail, but it was a good discussion. Here is a better reproduction of the painting:

The original painting is more than life-size - 8 feet high by six feet wide. Judging from Nouwen's description, it is incredibly moving to stand before the original painting - very different from looking at a little picture. I, of course, have never been to the Hermitage in Russia and seen the original, but I feel I have had a somewhat similar experience. In Glen Falls, NY, at a museum called The Hyde Collection, , I have stood before a life-sized portrait of Jesus ( The original is c. 4 feet high by 3 feet wide), attributed to Rembrandt (the curator of the Hyde Collection seems to feel it is authentic). Here it is:

It hangs in what was the original Library of the home of the Hydes, a local well-to-do couple of the early 20th century, whose donated art collection served as the core of what is now the Hyde Collection, including this Rembrandt. It is the only painting hanging in the Library. To stand before it and look directly into the eyes of Jesus, who is himself looking directly at you, is quite a powerful experience. So I can at least imagine what it is like to stand before The Return of the Prodigal Son.

Isaac Woodard

There is a lot to report today. I want to say something about a TV program we saw on PBS, and also report on both the visio divina session and the Uncanny Journeys course last Wednesday. The TV show was The Blinding of Isaac Woodard, which was on American Experience. It was very well produced and it was about a piece of American history that I knew nothing about, but should. We all should. Isaac Woodard should be a household name - like Rosa Parks. His contribution to civil rights in this country is at least as important as hers, and he paid a higher price for it. Isaac Woodard was an African-American veteran of WW2, a decorated sergeant, who was discharged from the army 76 years ago today, Feb. 12, 1946, in Augusta, Georgia, and who boarded a Greyhound bus headed for his home town in South Carolina. Soon into the ride from Georgia, Woodard asked the bus driver if he could use the restroom at the next stop. The white bus driver initially refused his request, but later in the trip he begrudgingly stopped in the town of Batesburg, SC. The bus driver, still furious over having to stop and reportedly not being addressed as “sir” by Woodard, told the white police chief of Batesburg, Lynwood Shull, about Woodard’s behavior. Shull and a few other police officers forcibly removed Woodard, who was still in his Army uniform, from the bus. Inside the jail, Shull brutally beat the WWII soldier, permanently blinding him. The next day, Woodard was convicted of drunk and disorderly conduct. He didn’t receive any medical attention for three days after the attack and his family did not find out about the attack until three weeks after it happened. This outrageous event eventually received national attention, largely through the NAACP and in particular the efforts of Thurgood Marshall, the Dir. of Legal Affairs. President Harry Truman was so angered by the reality of an army veteran being brutally beaten by a police officier that he was aroused to take action: by Executive Order, he formed a bi-racial Civil Rights Council to investigate violations of civil rights, and he de-segregated both the armed services and the federal workforce. That is already a lot, but there is more. The police chief, Lynwood Shull, who brutally beat Woodard, was tried in a federal court in Charleston, SC, and acquitted by an all-white jury. The presiding judge, J. W. Waring, was so appalled by the blatant racism he saw displayed in his courtroom, he experienced a conversion to the cause of civil rights. He and his wife, Elizabeth, educated themselves and it was he who initiated a case which did not just challenge the inequality of the education of black children in South Carolina, it challenged the legal notion of "separate but equal" and the system of segregation it supported. That case went to the Supreme Court, and bound with other cases became Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Court, by a 9-0 vote, declared segregated education in the U.S. to be unconstitutional. All that we owe to Isaac Woodard, and of course, all those moved by what happened to him, and outraged by the systemic racism that made that not only possible but acceptable and to most white Southerners, even justifiable. Woodard himself was a gentle soul who did not let his blindness deter him from becoming a warrior for civil rights: he toured the entire country, telling his story, sponsored by the NAACP. Eventually he was honored by a roadside plaque in Batesburg, SC. He died in 1992. We owe him a great deal.

Isaac Woodard standing in front of his commemorative plaque.

Visiting Doris Feinland

Today, Ellen and I drove down to Stamford, Connecticut to visit Doris Feinland. She has been sitting Shiva this week and she has had three of her children with her: Jerry Feinland, and her two daughters Laura and Robin. They were all there today and we didn't have a lot of time but we had a good visit and it was really wonderful to be there with them during this time of really missing Ray very much. They had a life-sized portrait of Ray, a photograph which Laura had taken last summer, sitting on a chair in the living room and it was really so touching to feel that Ray was right there with us. There was lots of food, so we had lunch with them, and they loved the cookies Ellen brought. Next week, Doris will return to Florida, because she hates winter, but she will be alone. She has always depended heavily on Ray, so only time will tell how that is going to work out. Jerry had to get back to his medical practice after being away for a couple of weeks - he went to Florida when Ray went into the hospital - so we took him home to Northhampton on our way back to Vermont. That gave us a chance for a good talk in the car. We got home in time for a second session of visio divina, this time with Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son, and also our Uncanny Journeys course, this session on Dostoievski's Notes from the Underground. I'll try to report on those sessions tomorrow.

A remarkably life-like portrait of Ray!

Doris' apartment with Laura in the foreground

Afghan refugees

Brattleboro is taking in over 100 Afghan regugees. This is a huge commitment and several organizations and churches are involved in making it happen. Both the Guilford Church and the Dummerston Church are involved. Ellen is involved - cooking and baking (of course). She made two lunches last week and this week is taking a large sheet cake on three separate days. The campus of the School for International Training just happens to be unused right now, and so the refugees are living there, eating there, taking courses in English, American culture, etc. - all with local volunteers. Quite an undertaking. Eventually, these families will find housing, jobs, and be integrated into the community. Local people are donating clothes, housewares, furniture, and of course, money and time.

Above: Ellen's food and the SIT Dining Hall.

More sadness

We got word that Margaret Dale Barrand died peacefully Saturday afternoon while her children were holding her hands. Our hearts go out to the five children - one from Tony's previous marriage and four from Margaret Dale's previous marriage, who have lost these two parents or step-parents within just a week of each other. We are all feeling the loss of Tony and Margaret Dale very deeply. This morning at church, in a very touching tribute, two prayer shawls were coiled on the front pew where Tony and Margaret Dale always sat - Tony in his electric wheelchair and Margaret Dale next to him. It just won't be the same without them!

Margaret Dale Barrand

The two prayer shawls marking the place where Tony and Margaret Dale would normally be sitting.

Working on another CD

For the past few days I've been working on another CD. This one will use some tracks I have had on my computer for several years which are of a trio called The Merry Lyin'. The recordings were made back in about 1967 in Philadelphia - over 50 years ago! The wonderful thing about The Merry Lyin' is that one of its members was Tony Barrand. Tony was at that time an exchange student for one year at Swarthmore College. The other members of the trio, Laura Hassler and Mike Greenwald, were freshmen students at Swarthmore. Tony was in his early twenties, but his voice is unmistakenly the one we are so familiar with as we have heard it again and again for over 30 years (I actually first met Tony at Marlboro College in the mid-1970s and first heard him sing not too long after that). As my regular readers know, Tony died a few days ago and I want to do something to honor his memory. I don't think many people around here have heard these recordings, so it feels like a good time to make them available. The embarassing thing is that I can't remember who gave me these recordings. I don't think it was Tony himself. I think it was someone in Ellen's circle of Swarthmore friends. If one of my readers is that person, let me know - and forgive me for forgetting! It hasn't been easy putting this playlist together because these tracks (of which there about 16 or so) were on my older MacBookPro, which crashed a few months ago, and while I had a backup external drive that restored the data, it totally transformed the iTunes app into something unrecognizable. These tracks were a playlist on iTunes before the crash - all nicely in their folder. Not now. They are all there, I guess, but they are scattered and hidden in with hundreds of other songs. So I have had to search them out and regroup them. And not only that: since the crash, iTunes no longer works on the MacBookPro. The data is there, but when you click on a song, nothing happens. You can't play it. So I've had to use a thumb drive to transfer all these tracks onto my other laptop - the MacBookAir - which has a working iTunes app. All that has taken a LOT of time. But, WELL WORTH the effort. There are some wonderful recordings here. One of the best is a ravishing solo rendtion of Bob Dylan's North Counry Fair, sung by Tony. He already knew how to deliver a song! The concert as a whole is a cultural time-bomb. It's fantastic - American and British folk songs, some well-known, some not: Tom Paxton's Letter from LBJ,, Bert Jansch's Needle of Death, Dylan's If Only my true love, Buffy St. Marie's, You're Not a Dream, Ewan MacCall's Ye Jacobites By Name and Bonnie Moor Hen, No John, No, So Early, Early in the Spring, Ballad of Bethnel Green, etc. It's a wonderful collection, and The Merry Lyin' were good! Their name is a play on the name of a dormitory at Swarthmore, "Mary Lyon," named after a famous (in her time) educator who was the founder of Mount Holyoke College. A private school was named for her in the town of Swarthmore and the college acquired their buildings; one (ML#4 as it was known) became a dorm, and it was also a venue for folk music concerts because it had a very large lounge. The group was going to use Tony's background in Britain and call the group The Merry Lion (after the British Lion), but that didn't take, and someone suggested that "Lion" become "Lyin' " as a clever nod to the group's outrageousness. That stuck. The tracks I have turn out to be from two sources (it took me a while to figure that out). Evidently, in one evening (date unknown), the group played a concert at a small but famous folk music coffee house in Bryn Mawr, PA (near Swarthmore) called The Main Point. After finishing there, they scooted to a Philadelphia radio station, and close to midnight, they were interviewed by the well-known host of The Folk Show, Gene Shay, and sang several of the songs they had just performed. That much I have gleaned from listening to the patter between songs. The tracks I have are a mix - some have applause (at The Main Point), some just have Gene Shay commenting after the song. It has been challenging to put all that together so it has a good flow. Also, I have a little more than will fit on one CD, so I'll have to edit it down. It is a project, but a good one!

The Main Point Coffee House

A bit of information about The Main Point

Visio Divina

Our Wednesday Contemplative Prayer, which is currently held on Zoom, used the ritual of lectio divina during the Advent season, but in addition to biblical texts, we used poems by Mary Oliver that had been chosen to accompany the scripture readings. That was extended to continue through the Epiphany season in January. Lectio Divina is what you could call a more intimate way of reading the Bible, or another text such as a poem. It is less "intellectual" and more "heart-oriented." Instead if asking, "What does this text mean," you ask, "How does this text touch me personally?" "What moves me in this text?" "How do I hear God speaking directly to me in this text?" Today we started a new kind of lectio divina which is called visio divina. Instead of reading a text we looked at an image. This first time, Pastor Elisa chose the image. This was the image:

We were invited the contemplate this image and ask essentially the same questions we would ask of a text - how does this image touch me? What do I especially notice and how does it move me? I was struck especially by the ambiguity of the image. The gender of the figure is uncertain; their ethnicity is also uncertain. It is a person of color, but are they African-Americam or Native-American? Or something else? Is that a headband or a crown of thorns? Are they clutching their robes protectively or are we being hugged in that enbrae? Do the eyes hold pain or peace? Are we being jedged by that gaze or welcomed? Are they standing in front of a window, or are they part of the window? Is that a feather or a spear? Is that globe our planet earth or the cosmos? I found this ambiguity powerful rather than confusing. If this is an image of deity, it opened into a huge space. We learned later that this is a painting created in 1999 by a Vermont artist, Janet McKenzie, shich she titled "Jesus of the People." Here is some information about it: Late in 1999 Janet McKenzie's painting "Jesus of the People" was selected winner of the National Catholic Reporter's competition for a new image of Jesus by judge, Sister Wendy Beckett, host of the PBS show "Sister Wendy's Story of Painting". In the words of Sister Wendy, "This is a haunting image of a peasant Jesus - dark, thick-lipped, looking out on us with ineffable dignity, with sadness but with confidence. Over His white robe He draws the darkness of our lack of love, holding it to Himself, prepared to transform all sorrows if we will let Him." Ms McKenzie's position as winner has been life-altering as well as humbling. Her goal was to create a work of art in keeping with her beliefs as a person and artist, and inclusive of groups previously uncelebrated in His image especially African Americans and women. She hoped "Jesus of the People" might remind that we all are created in God's likeness. The worldwide welcoming celebration of this interpretation of Jesus and the gratitude expressed to her, as well as the onslaught of negative responses, affirm her belief that this work, this particular vision of Jesus, was meant to exist now.

Some odds and ends

Today is Candlemas day and yes we will be taking down our Christmas tree. Ellen is already busy taking down and putting away other Christmas things, like the front door wreath and the Advent wreath. Otherwise, we're just hanging out and keeping warm during a very cold spell. Looking back, I see that there are some unused photos. When we were at Jim and Mary's last week, they made a "mystery" meal - they were very secretive about it - just said it would be special. It turned out to be a seafood dish - five kinds of seafood cooked in cream: lobster, scallops, shrimp, cod and halibut. I think it replicated a dish described in the Master and Commander series,by Patrick O'Brien, one of Jim's favorite works. It was special indeed! And very photogenic as well as tasty!

Seafood galore!***********************
Mary Cay Brass has instituted a Tuesday special - she sends out a video from the River Singers archive of a song we sang in the past. She includes lyrics so we can sing along with the video. Yesterday it was the South African song Mangisondele Nkosi Yam. We performed it at First Stage in Putney. Haven't done anything there since the pandemic started - last time was probably Dec., 2019.

Singing Mangisondele************************************************ LATER While Ellen did some errands, I took the ornaments off the Christmas tree, packed them away, took off the lights, stored them on cardboard strips, put the tree out on the deck and swept up under the tree. It always feels sort of bare and bleak after taking down the tree. But it was getting pretty dry, though it hadn't dropped many needles.

Ornaments off and tree gone