vividreports: Saving Stuff

Today is "Savanna Day," so we got up early and came to Shutesbury. Ellen is off with Savanna, and I am here at the house. Katie and Brendon left shortly after I arrived to attend the premier of a movie Brendon is in that was made by Amherst High School students. Brendon played a gangster in the film. It was being shown at the Amherst Cinema, which is a pretty big deal! They came back a bit ago and said it was great! There will eventually be a link and we can see it on YouTube. Right now, Katie is stacking wood with Dorothy, and Brendon is hanging out. While I was here alone this morning, I worked a bit on a long-range project of digitizing files. I have a red bag which has been sitting in my study at home for months, full of folders waiting to be digitized so that I can throw out the paper. A few weeks ago, I ran into a glitch with using my iPhone to photograph pages - the pictures would not upload properly onto my computer. Reasons unknown! So today I brought the bag and an old iPod that has worked well in the past. The only problem with the iPod is that it has to be plugged in all the time - the battery is totally shot. But that is a small problem. And, in fact, it worked fine - all the photos of pages that I made with it uploaded onto the computer, no problem. So - what did I save and why did I save it? Well, the first thing I did was save some pages that failed to upload last time. The two categories were (1)a folder of letters to and from Brown University faculty relating to the issue of refusal to register for the draft. This goes back to 1967, when I was a chaplain at Brown, and students were struggling with the moral issue of the Viet Nam war. Faculty were responding to a joint letter students and chaplains had sent to President Johnson, signaling their refusal to register. We no longer have a universal draft, but the issue of civil disobedience is still a live one and the letters arguing one side or the other are very thoughtful, coming as they do from some very fine people. So this seemed like a "save" file. It has been very interesting to re-read these letters. The second folder is labeled "Betty Greenhoe." It contains materials relating to Betty's memorial service and committal, which was back in September, 2017 - almost 5 years ago. That includes a eulogy which I gave, which expresses my feelings for Betty. When I tried to upload this a few weeks ago, several pages did not upload. Betty is, of course, the mother of Eliza Greenhoe Bergh, and these pages are precious to me. I also need to make sure that Eliza has copies - I suspect she does, but I would not throw them out without making sure.

Betty Greenhoe - in earlier years********************************** There were several folders I did today which were starting from scratch, so to speak. I'll just list them here: 3)Four pages which list all the places Ellen and I have lived in our entire lives! We have both lived in a lot of places! This includes places we might have lived for only a few months. This goes back to when we made an extensive cross-country trip visiting as many of these places as we could. That was a fun trip! It happened before I started this blog, so there is no blog record of it. Maybe I'll devote a blog post to that topic at some point. I'm saving this for obvious reasons - it's important personal information that I might want to refer to or be reminded of, and it might be of interest to our children, grandchildren, etc. 4) Notes made in graduate school on books and articles about the Dead Sea Scrolls. The DSS are, of course, among the most important documents relating to the history of the New Testament. They were first discovered in the mid-20th century, and their discovery was like a bomb shell dropped into New Testament studies. In the 1960's, when I was in graduate school, they were just beginning to be translated and studied in some depth. Both Jesus and John the Baptist are thought to have had some connection with the Community which produced these scrolls, widely understood to have been Essenes, one of the many sub-cultures within the larger totality of Judaism of the 1st century, A.D. They were a radical community which had withdrawn to live a life of holiness on the shores of the Dead Sea, opposed to what they considered to be the hostile influence of Greco-Roman culture of the time, opposed especially to the Roman government, believing themselves to be living in the "end times," i.e., an eschatological community. In all these respects, they are similar to the early Christians. My reading notes are on about 6-8 books and articles that had been resently published at that time. Some of those articles were written in German! I guess my ability to read German was a bit better 60 years ago than it is today! These notes are, of course, a mere drop in the bucket compared to what was being published even then. And today - omigosh! There must be thousands of books and articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls. If I were to lead a bible stufy group again (I have been asked to do so at the Guilford Church - still deciding whether I will), thse notes would come in handy. So - Save!'

A fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls********************************** 5) Copy of an article by Jsmes Deetz on 17th century Tombstone art. (James Deetz, "Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow,"Natural History, 1967). This article is both ground-breaking and fascinating, and extremely helpful in providing background for the interpretation of any cemetery in New England which contains headstones from the 1600's and early 1700's. James Deeta was in the anthropology department at Brown University - one of the mentors of my friend, Phil McKean. This is an article I always want to have handy. Save!

A detail of a headstone in Plympton, Massachusetts******************************** 6) Romantic Movement. This folder goes back to my senior year in college, when I was permitted to take a Senior Seminar in English Literature, normally open only to English majors (I was a Sociology major). I wrote two major papers in that course, one on the poetry of Robert Burns, and a second one comparing the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley with the thought of Walter Rauschenbusch, the "father" of the Social Gospel Movement. The point behind this comparison was that Shelley's poetry is full of "utopian" ideas - images of a future, ideal, harmonious, humane, community. I'll have to confess that I had completely forgotten this paper! I express very strongly in this paper how important Rauschenbusch was for my own thinking, which is why I had chosen him. I also comment on Shelley's view of woemen - in his utopian vision, women have equality with men and the full opportunity to express theselves and achieve self-fulfillment in their own right. In that respect, I suspect he was ahead of Rauschenbusch! I don't actually say that at the time!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Walter Rauschenbusch****************************************** The paper on Robert Burns is labeled "Good" by my professor (Dr. Clippenger, who was also Dean of Men). It was good - I put a lot into it. One special feature was that I had recorded a Scotsman, a man who was in a congregation I was serving in Pleasant Hope, Missouri, reading the poetry of Robert Burns, with his natural Scots'dialect. I had found a tape recorder somewhere (they were not common then), and played it when I presented the paper in class, which was very effective. I probably am not going to ever "use" these papers ever again, but I wrote them, and I thik they are worth saving. Why not? 7) A "throw-way file" has been saved because something on the verso side of the pages is worth saving. The "throw-away" is the draft of a letter I wrote to the Editor of the Brown Daily Herald," the student newspaper at Brown U., explaining a comment that had been made at a graduate student discussion I had organized. The comment was that "Brown was not a "top-name" graduate school. Obviously, that comment could be interpreted as "bad-mouthing" Brown. Actually, in context, it was part of a discussion of the negative influence that mass-media rankings of academic institutions have on public perception of colleges and universities, and a more philosophical discussion of what actually constitutes a valid evaluation of graduate education? Is the "fame" of faculty members really relevant to the quality of education? This is interesting, but probably not something needing to be saved. However, on the back side are lecture notes I made on a course I was taking at Rhode Island School of Design in 1966 in my role as a chaplain there. The course was taught by an outstanding RISD prof - Barry Kirschenbaum - on "The History of the Figure in Western Art," a fascinating course! These notes are specifically on sculptors Aristide Maillol and Henry Moore, and the role of the concept of "Arcadia" in art history. These handwritten notes are very interesting, and I want to hold on to them.