Minor Family History

Made weak by time and fate,  but strong in will
To strive, to seek to find, and not to yield.
                                               
                                              Tennyson


I was, on ancestry.com, able to find the census document from 1940 of the street my father grew up on which listed him, 3 brothers and his mother and father as residents.  He was 16 at the time and his best friend "Colley" lived next door.  Colley was killed in the war.

I met with my 83 year old aunt today in Middletown CT.  I asked her for a little family history as she is the last relative I have on my mother's side, the O'Keefe side who was actually born an O'Keefe.  She told me that two of her mother's brothers had been gassed in ww1 and had never been the same after the war.  She also said that her uncle Bob was born 13 years after my grandmother and that he always considered my grandmother as his mother because she had taken care of him.  Frank, the one most severely wounded was an alcoholic.  He had married a women who was heir to some of the Dodge family fortune and had a daughter Rosie born to him.  Rosie was about my aunt's age and they had played together whenenever my aunt and my mother went to Illinois to see the Hickman side of the family.  Rosie's mother died shortly after she was born and because her father would not or could not care for her she stayed for a while with my great grandmother and then was adopted by a family named Fletcher.  The lawyer in charge of the trust left to her by her mother stole most of the money from the trust,  some of the land she had in the trust was sold to create OHare airport.  Rosie's adopted brother was so angered by this that he set out to become a lawyer and bring the man to justice.  He actually did succeed in becoming a lawyer and brought suit against the man who had robbed the trust.  This man committed suicide before the court date.  Rosie did receive some money from the life insurance that the man had.  Interestingly enough he had bought the insurance through my grandfather at my grandmother's urging.  I had never heard this story before.  Rosie had been injured as a child when a large tire fell on her and crushed her hip.  She never married and has since died. 

My grandfather was an accountant for an insurance company in Boston.  I guess he was the head accountant and the firm had offices all over the country.  He also studied for the bar but never took the exam.
On my grandfather's side,  I had asked about his brother Harry who had died when I was a child and I remember my grandparents inherited a cadillac and a collection of cut glass from him.  I believe my grandfather was also the executor of the estate.  Harry had made a fortune providing heavy equipment for the city of Boston.  He was a friend of James Michael Curley. 
Another thing my aunt told me was that my great grandfather OKeefe had been killed when he fell under the wheels of a trolley when my grandfather was 16.

para esto aperecio el hijo de dios, para deshacer las obras del diablo

Last week we were working on a house half way down the slope of monument hill, in sight of the bay and the distant beach.  About 5 pm I happened to look up and saw an amazing sight.  High above were hundreds of seagulls circling in a great flock in the light of the setting sun.  Their wings glinted white as they wheeled and turned in slow, graceful interwoven patterns.  They were at such a height that at first I only saw bright flickering white lights before I realized it was birds.  When  I was a boy living a stone's throw from the Charles River I remember the gulls would also congregate in flocks high above the river at the end of the day.

Es, pues, la fe la certeza de lo que se espera, la conviccion de lo que no se ve.


I am beginning a new course at Umass Boston and I will occasionally post bits from the writing I do for that course.  The first one is below.

Culture is probably as complex and multifaceted as language, deeply engrained in every individual save perhaps feral children.  As such, a definition is going to be hard to come by without some serious consideration.  But what we immediately think of when asked to define culture is the particular way that a particular group of people do things.  Culture has to do with group identity, it is a set of shared characteristic behaviors.  On one level cultural differences are easy to detect,  language is probably the principal identifier of culture, followed by cuisine, social manners, music, shared mythology, taboos, religions, world views, religious views, rituals and rites surrounding festivals and feast days, coming of age, marriage, childbirth and death.  As part of our nature, we human beings form cohesive social units that enable our survival in the primitive world, fortify us against enemies, let us overcome obstacles impossible to scale  individually,  that constrain us on one hand and on the other release immeasurable creative potential for all manner of things both good and evil.  Culture is the glue that holds us together as a tribe, a people or a nation, and perhaps, transcending tribalism at some ethereal level, as human beings.

Tu le peux si tu le veux, lui disait-il
                          
                               Marcel Proust

You can get it if you really want
                          
                               Jimmy Cliff

锄禾日当午

汗滴禾下土

谁知盘中餐

粒粒皆兴苦

To the Farmers

Plowing in the midday heat                  

Sweat drips into the tilled soil
Did you know in a bag of wheat
Every grain is gained by toil.

By Min Yong,

My translation

I have started another blog where I will attempt to write political and social commentary.
franmaloney.blogspot.com

I am therefore precisely a thinking thing
                                               Rene DesCartes


The following is excerpted from a paper I did for a course in applied linguistics I am taking at UMB

For the philosopher or the theologist, there might be no compromise on the issue, but when it comes to human behavior, most scientists take a stand in the middle and admit that nature and nurture function together to determine the behaviors we exhibit. No child is born with a propensity to speak German over Chinese but that child will speak one or both of those languages depending on the environment he or she is born into. On the other hand, no one would deny that many traits we have are exclusively genetic. The distinction is less clear when we address language acquisition itself. There are many universals common across all cultures which some attribute to genetics as do Chomsky and other Innatists. Because the scope of language research ranges from the microscopic biochemical level of genes to the macroscopic level of socio-cultural environment, it is necessary to narrow our focus with a discussion of the nature of language itself.

All animals seem to be endowed with specialized anatomy perfectly suited to their role in the environment and to the ecological niche in which they exist; ants have mandibles for biting and carrying food, mosquitos have probosci for extracting blood to feed their eggs, sharks have rows of razor sharp teeth for ripping flesh, the sandpiper on the beach has little legs for running along the water’s edge and sharp eyes to spot tiny crustaceans which it stabs with its specialized beak. Human beings, in many respects similar to the other animals, have two highly specialized traits which are also adapted to highly specialized roles; these are two hands with opposable thumbs and the ability to use language, each connected to a neural array in the cortex without equal in its complexity and adaptability. As marvelously designed as a mosquito’s proboscus is for extracting blood, it remains, in essence, a simple tool. This is not true for language; unlike the mosquito, there is no exchange of fluids involved or extraction of material sustenance. Language use is not even primarily utilitarian but rather its purpose is to construct and to communicate identity. Descartes verified his existence by reference to his thought processes; “Cogito ergo sum”, “ I think therefore I am.” Language is used to exchange the essence of our existence, that which what is in our minds.

In order to discern how biology relates to culture in language acquisition, we need to begin with the basic biology behind this specialized trait. At first glance, we seem to have the same facial anatomy as many other mammals; tongue, teeth, voice box, nasal cavity, nose. Notwithstanding that they might have little to say, with appropriate training, one might expect chimpanzees to form words if only for the banana they would receive. If this were possible, we would be inundated with showmen and their talking animals. However, it is not. No animals can speak in any sense of the way that humans speak either through intelligence of discourse or intricacy of phonetic expression. The anatomy behind language in humans is extraordinarily specialized and complex. Sound is produced by air passing up from the lungs through the vocal cords, the sound is then modified by the action of the tongue, and lips and by the shape and resonance qualities of the oral cavity and the nasal cavity. Hundreds of muscles work in coordination to achieve the multitude of sounds required by speech, and the muscles are controlled by areas in the brain, Broca’s area being the chief area of the cortex associated with speech production. Speech production is only half of the story, however, the other half is comprehension; there has to be a part of the brain that initially processes the linguistic information coming in through the ears before, another part of the brain formulates a response. But, on this level, we are still only talking about mechanical aspects related to making and receiving the sounds that make up language. We still need to answer the question, “what is language?”.

Is language simply a code for the transmission of information through sound waves? “There are three cows in that field” is a simple sentence, but only a human being could be consciously aware of the reality of three cows in a field. A machine could add three more cows, it could translate the sentence into another code, it could store the information, send it around the world to another machine, but could it wonder, “what is a cow?”, could it understand a sentence like:

So much depends upon a red
wheelbarrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
             
                William Carlos Williams.

 A joke is funny to the teller along with the hearer because they both discern in the words a commonly understood reference to something comic and absurd that goes beyond the information carried by the words themselves. That is where we begin to move into the cultural aspect of language.

Generally when we learn a new language, we are attempting to learn the code consisting of vocabulary and grammatical words, and desire to acquire that code as part of our verbal repertoire, that is to say to be able to fluently express ideas using that code and to understand what is written or spoken in that code. Much of the accompanying cultural information cannot be taught in a classroom and, in fact, may not need to be taught in the classroom. Many Americans take a foreign language in High School or College they are taught by an American teacher who speaks English as his or her first language and they learn surrounded exclusively by other English speaking students, yet most do acquire some ability in the new language. Throughout the world English is recognized as a lingua franca and many people learn English as a second language entirely within their own culture and will commonly speak English outside of any English language culture. To conclude this introduction then, let us define language as a highly complex audible code originating in the neural and physical anatomy of human beings and designed to communicate thoughts and ideas between human beings; the higher level meta-communication associated with language is not here included as part of language itself. We can now take a look at some of the current research in the field of language acquisition.

For the Pickin'

Every evening near Hall's Corner as the sun sets this tree or one nearby fills up with turkeys.  In the day they wander in the neighborhood yards afraid of nothing but when the day is done, one by one gobbling on their way they flap up into the tree for the night.  It is an unusual sight.

I Don't Mind Winter

One must have a mind of winter
to regard the frost and the boughs
of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

Wallace Stevens

I have not been writing.  It hardly seems important to me, although it is the one thing I keep coming back to.
There is so little that I write that has any importance or lasting significance.  My friend has finished a novel and it will soon be published by Paragon House Publishing.  He has worked long and hard on this project and he has endowed the story with meaning from a deeper struggle about faith.  Stories have the most significance and are along with poetry the only writing that lasts more than a generation in the minds of men.  This post is just to ramble on and perhaps to take up with writing again or should I call it the attempt to write.  I have been laid up with a herniated disc in my back for 3 weeks.  I am someone who loves to walk and who works with his body.  So I have been really set back, unable to work in the most difficult time of the year for a carpenter.

Wyoming

Passing through Cheyenne Wyoming, we ran into a hail storm that caused the car to hydroplane badly.  We did not go out of control but a car and a tractor trailer were off the road.  The trailer ploughed into the median strip and into the car in the oncoming lane.  Cheyenne seemed dark and dirty in part because of the rain.  We passed an oil refinery.
     Approaching Laramie, it was nicer, snow was still visible on the mountains.  We arrived in Laramie about 5 pm.  First impression : Nice little college town with tree lined streets and nice buildings.  There are lots of people and shops, many book stores, just the opposite of  DesMoines.

Sunday morning, October 17.  I sit alone in the upper room typing on the laptop and looking out the window at the maples across the street, and at the fallen leaves and the still green grass.  A tangle of power lines passes through the branches.  I have time to think this morning instead of running off to another hectic day of work and obligations.  I think God wants us to rest on Sundays for this reason, to contemplate and reflect, to enjoy his creation and to trust in his provision aside from our own efforts to keep ahead.  We need to remind ourselves that our lives are entirely in his hands.  He gives us the strength to work and the opportunities but commands us to be aware that, as it says in the book of Psalms,

Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.


In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.


  

Here's the gang at Applecrest farms in Hampton New Hampshire on our annual apple picking day in September.

Last night we attended the feast of Saint Anthony in Boston's North End.  It is quite an experience and one that anyone visiting the city in August should not miss.  But this Saturday night it was just too crowded to be enjoyable.  More people could not have fit into those narrow streets; moving from place to place was almost impossible.  There is plenty of good food and the immigrant flavor of this neighborhood survives strongly along with traces of colonial Boston.  There were surprisingly few police and good order in spite of people packed six inches apart for blocks around.  The  blue "Direct TV" blimp circled overhead in the night sky with its sides lit up with high definition tv images and advertising.

Who thought I would still be alive for the year 2010 back when I could barely imagine crossing the millenial divide. And yet I am here today with a good life ahead of me. In fact with my son Scott and Pam and her girls I have wealth beyond imagining. And I believe there is more to come although I could scarcely ask for more. I do still ask for financial security. And yet God has always provided and I know He will continue to do so abundantly. I could ask for a more distinguished career, I am hoping to become an excellent teacher and I have never given up a desire to be a writer. But in this as well, I believe God will open doors of opportunity that I scarcely expect now. I cannot complain at all about my health. And above all I am at peace with God. I would not mind being young again and undoing all the mistakes of my life, and I am not looking forward to old age and death. I think less about death now than I did as a young man, in part I think because I have come to believe that death is not the end and to know that I have eternal life in Christ. This might seem trite and formulaic on the surface but I assure you that belief did not come easily or without supernatural inner changes.

The Stewart Brothers

Two elderly gentlemen, now deceased, once lived in this house pictured above.  The building to the left was their home and the one  to the right was their shop where they worked on cars, especially old volkswagens.  They were machinists and  when I worked in Duxbury in the eighties, they were the ones to go to to have something made or repaired.  They used to ride around town in modified volkswagen bugs and sometimes one would hang out at the bottom of the road sitting on the stone wall.   I did not know much about them.  I remember when there was only one left, and then I remember noticing that the second brother was gone too.  I am not sure why but their property remains well cared for but unnoccupied.  It is prime real estate near the bay with a considerable amount of land.

Near the end of fourth grade, I was assigned my teacher for the following year. I found out that it would be Mrs. McDonough, the dreaded. I remember saying to myself on the way home that day that I couldn't believe that I was going to have the Old Battle Ax. I do not know where I got that name for her but I know that is how I thought of her.

She was old, her hair was white and all but gone on top. She was very strict and her favorite punishment, administered at the slightest infraction was to be made to write the same sentence such as, "I will not talk in class", over again until your hands were cramped in pain. She spent a part of each day reading aloud to the class from some work of literature or tell stories from her life and knowledge. She was strict but fair, ugly but with a depth of knowledge and character and a true passion for teaching.

My fifth grade year was her last year of teaching and, near the end of that year, the Phillips Elementary School of Watertown Massachusetts held a special assembly to honor her. We, her last students, participated. I remember thinking and telling my parents that she was the best teacher I ever had. I have not had a teacher since then or before who I felt that strongly about.

Real education must be limited to men who INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheepherding.
Ezra Pound

When I was in High School in the early 1970s, I took, as an elective a one semester course in Anthropology. My mother used to have us watch Channel 2 in Boston which did a series filmed by an anthropologist in the twenties. There were two silent films; one was about an eskimo, the other about south sea islanders. I remember the eskimo hunting seals through a hole in the ice and building an igloo; the south sea islanders filed their teeth and tatooed their entire bodies. Later, I was fascinated with a book we had in our house called Four Ways of Being Human, which featured four different cultures. So, out of that interest, I elected to take this short course in the subject.

Our teacher's name was Mrs. Kramer. She was a student teacher or a first year teacher, I don't remember exactly but she was young and I think, still attending one of the Universities near Boston. She was plain, not beautiful in the conventional sense, not vivacious or remarkable in her personality. But she was intelligent and diligent in her work teaching us. She, in one incident, made an impression on me that I have never forgotten.

She had brought a movie for us to watch. It was about negative stereotyping of blacks in Hollywood and it started with clips from Birth of a Nation and showed young black school boys struggling with their self image. The class, our class, was not paying any attention at all to the movie. Kids were talking and generally did not have any interest in it. That was when Mrs. Kramer stopped the film. She was furious. She yelled at us and told us that this was an important subject that we ought to care deeply about and she expressed such disappointment in us and so much passion about the movie and its subject that we were struck dumb and watched the rest of the movie in silence.

I have never forgotten that teacher and it has been almost forty years. And I went from uninformed and disinterested in racial injustice to passionate about it.

Enee hymself ane zow was blak of fleece
Brytnit with his swerd in sacrifice ful hie
Unto the moder of the furies thre.

                                 

Around one in the afternoon I decided to take a look at the beach.  It was high tide and a strong wind was blowing out of the northeast.  An icy wind-driven rain was my escort over the bridge.  The surf was strong, up almost to the snow fence before the dunes.  It was too cold to stay long so I just snapped this picture.  When I got back to my truck, I was soaked to the skin.

                                    

Here are some old photos I took as a boy in my neighborhood in Watertown.This is a picture of my mother and my two oldest sisters, Janice on the left and Nancy in the middle, in our car in 1964 when our Dad was running for state representative.

This is a picture of my three sisters, Judy in front, Nancy behind on the left, Janice behind on the right.  In the middle, are Bobby and Patricia D'amico who lived across the street.  In the distant background you can see the smokestack for Lewandos by the Charles river.

This is a picture of Nancy, Bobby, Janice, Patricia and on the right Peter D'amico all are standing in front of the house directly across from ours at the head of Dana Terrace.  An old woman lived here who was over one hundred years old.  She used to sit on this front porch in a rocking chair.   Her son continued to live there for some time after she died.  There last name was Ferris.

There are bees in this wall.' He struck the clapboards, fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivioted.
                                          R Frost

This house still stands behind the police station in Watertown.  It is magnificent but beyond repair.  When I was a boy, there was a row of victorians here one to the right and one to the left of this one.  I had friends who lived in both of those houses.  I remember playing in their yards and homes.  Even then, in the sixties, they were pretty much beyond repair.  Saltonstall park had been ringed by such houses.   They had been built within walking distance to the railroad station and in the center of town; this was once a choice location to live before the automobile made it possible for high income earners to move farther out into the suburbs.  To the right of the house pictured above is the corner of a red brick apartment building.  The economics or the architecture of the sixties seemed to demand that every time an ornate victorian home was torn down it would be replaced by a square apartment building.

I sat for an hour in Watertown Savings Bank looking out at the Square while a customer service rep named Rachel transferred my dad's account balances into an estate account. On the wall to my right is an old painting of the very scene the window looked out on, now facing directly on the Armenian museum.  In the picture, the spot is occupied by a large federal style building with steps coming down front.  I believe this was the old town hall.   I remarked to Rachel that my dad remembered sitting on those long-gone steps as a child.  I did not say but I remembered sitting in a nearby pine tree, now twice as tall and watching the old victorian train station also in the painting behind the town hall burn to the ground.  And behind that in the picture was the top of the old wooden church torn down in the seventies. I could have told her I remembered sneeking into that church and climbing up into the bell tower and onto the roof.  On the other side of the street facing our window was the old Federal Savings Bank building I remembered that being built in the early sixties.  And I could have told her that my dad used to send me down to Mum's doughnuts on Sunday mornings to get a dozen doughnuts; it was a little shop directly across the street briefly occupying the space before the Armenian museum was built.   By the way, the Armenian museum building was originally built for Watertown Savings Bank and I had my first bank account there.

Once when I was leaving Pam’s house late at night I was startled by a large buck standing in the driveway. He bolted down the driveway with a clatter when I surprised him in the dark.


Today there were tracks of a large buck in the snow in the backyard. About 4 o’clock I followed the tracks out into the woods. I found a bedding area near the stone wall that borders the yard. It was an area of ground roughly the size of a deer completely devoid of snow and surrounded by deer tracks; there is eight inches of snow on the ground everywhere else. I followed the tracks through the woods to the open meadow behind the soccer field. There were multiple deer trails in the area, skirting the houses on one side and the soccer field on the other.

January 10, 2010


It is Sunday morning and 9 degrees above outside. I have an interview with the Norwell schools sub coordinator following my application to be a substitute teacher. I do not know how I will be able to coordinate teaching and continuing construction work. Some work is beginning to line up for the next month, unlike December when there was nothing at all in the works. This month, following Christmas, I am in financial trouble. I worked for pay a total of six hours last week. For the first time since I sold the Watertown house I have not paid my credit card charges in full or paid my lumber bill on time. I am also not sure how much I am going to owe in taxes this year. I made almost no estimated payments. I am extremely worried.

January 9, 2010

Today is Sophie’s birthday. Last night we took eleven girls roller skating at the Carousel Family Fun Center in Whitman. Following that, the girls camped out in P’s living room watching movies and playing games and talking late into the night. P got very little sleep. Today Larry and Sue and Scott and Erin came to dinner. P was mad and resentful of me most of the night without saying why.

The walkway on the Powder Point bridge is covered with snow and ice making walking difficult. There was a flock of eiders in the water and the usual pigeons seagulls and crows hanging out on the railing. It was not too cold only about 28 degrees but the strong wind made my ears and face cold. Another new sign at the beach end of the bridge warning that there are now infrared cameras watching the beach at night.  Heaven forbid a young couple might sneak onto the beach at midnight or a group of boys hang out behind a dune, or an insomniac or poet be driven to walk the beach in the dark. More cops, more equipment every year to protect Duxbury Beach from terrorists and evildoers.

Grey Monday

I got a close up look at a loon in the bay in its winter colors.  It was an incredibly graceful bird and dived smoothly into the water when I stopped to stare at it.  I did not see it come back up.  It was a  still grey day and not too cold.  I walked the bridge and back at lunch time.

Among my father’s personal effects was set of rosary beads that had been given to him by an Englishman who had found them on the battlefield during World War I. My dad had been billeted with an English couple before he was sent to France during the war. When he told the story of the English couple, he always spoke with amazement that the English who he had been taught to hate could be so good to him. They would take him once a week to a neighbors house for a bath, they having no bathtub of their own. My dad told them of his Catholic faith and the man, not being Catholic himself and having no real use for them, and knowing that my Dad would soon be in the war, he gave him the rosary beads. They stayed in touch for many years after that.

A very high tide just going out, a breeze from the east, some crows, ducks, walkers. The temperature is mild, the sky clear. In the bay are a couple of trawlers and a large red tugboat anchored off of Green Harbor. It probably towed the large barge with a crane into the harbor.

Notes on My Father’s Death

The night I left after being with him all day, Sunday the 6th of September, I held him in my arms for a minute and looked deep into his eyes. He was still completely mentally aware although his body was slipping away. We were not physically close in my memory, but there is a picture of me hanging on his pant leg as a little boy and one of him holding me when I was a baby so I know at one time we must have been. That embrace was an impulsive act on my part but it is a connection with him I will never forget. The next day he was just suffering and unable to talk clearly, then on Tuesday he died. Pam, Cynthia, Caty and the nurse were with him when he died.

A few more observations about that time:
I lost an awareness of him being old. It seemed that I was relating to his spirit rather than to one who was old, or sick or dying. And I saw him clearly, no different than as if he was still a boy or a young man. His essential being that I knew so well had no reflection of decay or death although it seemed that he was depressed and afraid at times.

There is nothing beautiful about death. He suffered, especially those last few days, pain, thirst, fear, loss of basic abilities to even reach out and control the events and circumstances around him. He began to see things that weren’t there, to reach out for things, groping, frustrated.

That Sunday before he died, Pam and I, Scotty, Paige, Corinne and Sophie all came up to see him. He was still able to get up and walk a little, he sat outside for a while, he could talk but his voice had become hoarse. The girls were very affectionate with him and I am sure those final goodbyes meant a lot to him. They meant a lot to me.

Two weeks later I am still processing everything. I do not think he was a Christian in the sense of it that I have, putting my faith in Christ, his deity, his death and resurrection. He prayed the rosary all his life, but would not attend church. But he was kind to my mother to the end of her life. And Jesus said that anyone who offered a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because they are believers would not lose his reward, and Paul says that the unbelieving spouse shall be saved by the believing spouse.

It was a surprisingly warm day following a drenching rain. There was a flock of Eiders floating in the bay, two males and nine females, as well as a few gulls that seemed to be harassing them. Perhaps due to the rain there were few people on the beach and only one boat in sight on the ocean. It looked like a tugboat, moving slowly off of Green Harbor

On the Edge of Winter

I got a chance late this afternoon to walk out over the Duxbury bridge to the beach. Work is very slow and the winter looks to be a lean one. The air was surprisingly warm and the walking pleasant.

I saw several older couples walking the bridge, several young women walking or running their dogs, I saw a cormorant fishing in the bay, and sandpipers in their winter colors feeding between the beach stones and the surf. There were about five crows at the beach end of the bridge. A bright green grasshopper caused me to stop suddenly on the way back and stare into its oddly blank eye, the intensity of its greeness shining in the late afternoon sun.

Pumpkin Moon

I have been one aquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain-and back in rain
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

Last night I walked my old route out to Cove street and back down Lover’s Lane in the dark. The moon was rising over the far beach a great orange globe suspended over the bathhouse. This evening I did it again and walked further around the circle of Cove street which is a hidden little neighborhood on a peninsula surrounded by the marshes of the back river. There was a football game in progress, the football field for Duxbury High School backs up on the marsh just off the little peninsula and in the dark the sounds of the game seemed to be not more than a backyard away.

In my father's color slides taken during the sixties, there are two photos; one my Dad took of me standing on a country road on a fall day with a shotgun across my arms, and another that I took of him in the same pose. That was a scene from one of the best times of my childhood. My Dad used to take me hunting in the fall to a place in Littleton, Massachusetts.
Leaving my mother and sisters behind, we would leave early in the morning from our house in Watertown and drive through Belmont, past McLean’s Hospital and onto Route 2, passing, each time, the familiar landmarks which were, for a boy, the opening up of the wide world, passing the granite walls of the road cuts oozing ice, stopping at Howard Johnson’s for coffee and doughnuts, going around the rotary at the Concord Reformatory and then driving west to the woods and farmland of the Nashoba valley.
We would always park the car at the same spot at a farm where there was a dirt access road through the fields leading to the woods beyond. We would take the guns out of the trunk of the car, careful to leave the shotgun unloaded and open and walk down the road between barbed wire fences and manure piles. We walked on cornstubble, crunching the stalks and frozen, half rotten apples, and fallen leaves, between juniper trees and under the great old pines into the wild to walk all day and see, as Thoreau said, what men who stay at home in parlors never dream of.
It was cold starting out but I would soon warm up from walking. The sun would rise up and the ice in the edge of the dirt road would melt. The little ponds would sometimes make whooping sounds like someone striking a large piece of sheet metal. When we stopped to rest, the chickadees would fill the branches in the pines near ground level calling chee dee dee to each other and the bluejays would call from higher up. I became attached to the sounds and sensations of the woods and to the easy measured pace of traveling by foot, fortified against the cold by an inner furnace. The woods were a place of escape, a place of freedom and peace. There were old stonewalls, overgrown gravel pits, rusty farm machinery; harrows and plows, and abandoned cars usually filled with rusty bullet holes. They were relics, to me, of a distant and mysterious past; these signs of a long history of people working the land gave me a sense of place in time no less than if we had walked through the ruins of Rome and Greece.
He was careful to teach me to carry and use a gun with great care and responsibility. He told me, never point a gun, loaded or unloaded at another person. The first time I shot it I aimed it at a little dead tree as he stood behind me to brace me. I still remember the copse of woods and the uneven ground under my feet and the feeling of dread and anticipation, the squeeze of the trigger, the leap of the barrel and bang of the gunstock against my shoulder, dead leaves fluttering, and the giddy feeling as my brain tried to piece together what had happened; the blast by my head exploded the world for a brief instant. It was a thrill I’ll never forget, I think I was seven years old.
He knew what gunshot wounds could do to the human body. He had served in Graves Registration in the army during the second world war, which meant that he had to take the bodies off the battlefield, prepare them for burial and bury them. The war to me was like those old cars from some lost age, but was, no doubt, hardly passed to him. The boots that he wore only on these trips were from the army; he had worn them in France and in Belgium. And his field glasses were a German officer’s, for they buried German as well as American dead, taken from the battlefield, an officer whose brothers and sons and parents were likely still living. Older men stack up decades in their memories like old newspapers but I had little perspective on time and place when I was scarcely ten.
By noon, we were pretty hungry and had walked probably for four hours, so we would make our way back to the car and drive into Littleton to an old time diner in a silver-bodied railroad car to have lunch. My dad's favorite was liver and onions, I would have a hamburg or a clam roll and a chocolate frappe. There is nothing like good food after working up an appetite.
After lunch, we would hunt on the other side of the road where we parked where there was an apple orchard. My dad explained to me how the pheasants would run ahead of you in the grass until they ran into an obstacle and then they would take flight. I remember many times scaring them up into the air with their loud drumming wings, and then the blast of the shotgun and my heart pounding. He sometimes came home with a pheasant or a duck when he went hunting with his friends, but I don't remember ever bringing one home when we went together, and I don't think I cared. We rarely, if ever, shot an animal just tin cans and dead trees.
We estimated we walked ten or twelve miles a day, so by the late afternoon, I was tired, the light and my energy fading rapidly. There are two things that mean a lot to children; one is routine or repetition because it creates anticipation and a sense of security, the other one is candy. My father knew how to provide both. A short way up the road heading home we always stopped at the country store. It had real cracker barrels and cheese wrapped in cheesecloth and it had a glass display counter filled with bins of different candies for a penny a piece. He would let me pick out what I wanted and I would eat it all on the way home. We sat quietly in the car and hardly said a word retracing our route to Watertown, looking out at a long line of red tail lights, going home to a smaller more confined world.
That was what we did each autumn, from the time I was 5 or 6 until I was in my teens. I scarcely think about it now, about how much that simple activity meant to me. About the age of fifteen I lost the ability to talk easily with my parents. I entered adulthood with mixed feelings of anger and love for my parents which took me years to sort out. But I had something I think many boys never had and that's a father who spent time with him and taught him about the world and his place in it and who taught him about himself. And who gave his son the things that boys need from their fathers and who really knew how to make him happy.

The Problem of Distinguishing Good from Evil.

to say all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds is to say we cannot distinguish good from evil. Quoted from the CED mailing list

I have trouble trying to understand why so many Christians support the war in Iraq, which, to me, seems unequivocably wrong. It is true that some good could come out of it, the fall of Saddam, the re-building of the country etc. And it may also be true that it is part of God’s plan, as in the book of Revelations we see Him visiting war on humanity as just punishment for evil. Can it be then that George Bush is God’s instrument of vengeance. On one hand I can see that possibility, however, for the most part, for the apparent motivation, and manner of the attack on Iraq, I do not see the hand of God at work myself, perhaps others do. Yet the possibility alone leaves me baffled and unsure of what is evil and what is good as the atheistic contributor to the mailing list uses just the same stumbling block to justify his atheism.

In an an attempt to reply and to clarify my own thinking I made the following notes.

All of us can innately distinguish good from evil. This is my first premise and what I actually believe to be true.

The question is, does it matter? If there is no God, it does not matter if we do evil or do good. Debate about the matter becomes irrelevant because good has no intrinsic worth and evil no intrinsic harm. If the rapist rapes, it does not matter that he is doing evil, at least from his perspective. We should say that without God, good and evil are irrelevant because the consequences are relative, and not say that good and evil themselves are relative because even the rapist will acknowledge that his actions are evil, although he might rationalize rather than admit.

If God punishes an evil world with evil, is God evil?

The world generally is about evil on evil.

Human beings innately know good from evil and they have an innate system of justice expressed as a craving for vengeance when evil is done.

My biblical reference for this is Deuteronomy 30:11-14

Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?” Nor is it beyond the sea so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?” No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so that you may obey it.


And in Romans

8:28:

All things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.

1:32

Although they know God’s righteous decree, that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.



Topic: The Distinction between Good and Evil

Thesis: We are all innately capable of distinguishing good from evil.

Discussion:


The argument that the contributor to CED gives for his conversion to atheism for stumbling on the block of Good versus Evil are:
1. In the Old Testament God occasionally commands men to kill, yet he also gives the general command, “Thou shalt not kill”.

2. Bad things happen to good people. And we say it was the Lord’s will or that all things will work together for good, apparently unable to distinguish good from evil. And then he says,

“But if we cannot distinguish good from evil, then all our moral judgments are
compromised -- including any trust in any so called covenant with the deity that created that condition”.
3. God has shown that he will break his promise because that is what is really good for us.

This man is saying that :

1. God is a hypocrite.
2. God is a shallow ingrate, not rewarding those who do his will or punishing those who do evil.
3. God is a liar.

These personal impressions are what lead him to state that we cannot distinguish good from evil, therefore we cannot know that there is a God, therefore he does not believe there is a God.

Or perhaps he is saying that if there is a God, based on his personal observations and reading of scripture, he is a hypocrite, an ingrate and a liar and he chooses to have nothing to do with him.

Questions:

Is the pain one experiences at the dentist or the doctor good because the end result is good?

Is pain good because it warns us forcefully of damage occurring to our bodies?

The real evil is the damage, the pain is symbolic.

…
In the case of the war in Iraq, either I am misinformed and my conclusion about the evil nature of our part in the war is wrong or I am not misinformed and my conclusion is correct. There is no possibility that Bush is doing good but disguising it as evil. In other words it is possible to distinguish good from evil.

My Dad has signed the hospice care papers and agreed to move into my sister's house. She does not expect him to live much longer because he is not eating. I know he does not want to live as an invalid, or have extreme procedures done to prolong his life. He has even stopped drinking Jack Daniels.

I bicycled out to the beach this evening, strong wet winds, heavy surf, there was seaweed all the way up to the snow fencing and it appeared that the last section of walkway had been swept away.

Old men ought to be explorers

T.S. Eliot

I stayed in town tonight and went to the beach for the first time in a long time. It is Spring finally and all the flowers are in bloom including the roses on the beach. There is fragrance in the air. There are not too many people out this evening. The guard shack has had a makeover. The upper beach has a solid bed of rocks, there is almost no sand at all above the high water line.

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh" Genesis 2:24.

This is something I wrote ten years ago to help clarify my own thinking before teaching a class for young people.

Our culture glorifies sex, we make it the center of our lives and its attainment our life's highest purpose. It is not related to intimacy, or commitment, or love. It is a light subject, like Bud Lite, another product to be consumed with much gusto but not much thought. Movies, songs and tabloids have discarded the concept of marriage. The magazines in the supermarket all feature on their covers women whose breasts virtually spill out into the checkout aisle and their lead articles focus on sex technique the same way that Bicycle magazine focuses on tightening spokes and waxing seat covers. The church, however, teaches that sex has transcendent meaning and commands us to refrain from immorality and remain abstinent until we are married. Sexual activity by the unmarried is sin. How then do we as Christians reconcile these two ideas in our lives, one from our culture and one from our faith, especially when we are likely to face long years of singleness?
The impulse to seek a wife or husband is a fundamental part of our nature. We all crave sexual contact with a suitable and permanent mate, and that is a natural and God given inclination and the very persistence of this drive is a clue to a mystery not to be understood in this life. It is more than a biological imperative to reproduce, although that is the simplest and easiest to understand explanation. Our bodies have a physical aspect that demands to be shared with another person through their body, but sexuality goes far beyond the physical differences and the wonder and mystery of romance and love go far beyond the mechanical act of coupling.
It is imperative that the unmarried Christian be able to live happily and independently because there are times in our lives when God will call us to be single and because only from a position of independence and contentment can we enter into a healthy marriage.
It is easy to see all of our needs met in someone of the other sex. After all, in our imagination, she or he can not only meet our sexual needs but provide us with affection, intimacy and purpose. But, we are to look to God, not another person to be the source of all the good things we want in this life. He says He "will meet all our needs according to His riches and glory". Now God's riches are not the world's riches and His standards are not the world's standards.
The desire for sex is not overwhelming in itself, it is only when it is mixed up with other feelings that it seems to be overwhelming and temptation impossible to control.
We all have a need for intimacy, which is the desire to share our deepest thoughts and feelings with another person. We have a need for affection and appreciation. We all have a need to fit in with our group and to measure up to the standards of society. When society puts such a high emphasis on sexual experience and physical appearance it swells our perception of our sexual needs far out of proportion to what they really are.
When we strive to walk in the Spirit and focus our attention on the Lord and not on self gratification, we find riches all around us. Riches, principally, of Him working in and through us and visible in the people he loves. He may give us close friends or one close friend, someone who is closer than a brother and who is around and faithful long after wives or husbands have come and gone. He may give us a warm loving family, brothers and sisters or people in the church who love us and appreciate us on a level that often is never achieved in marriage and seldom in a purely sexual relationship. And He gives us insight into reality far deeper than those who claim wisdom and experience with wordly things, so much deeper as to make their wisdom pure foolishness. And he gives us knowledge of the truth that sets us free from the enslaving standards of beauty and performance that the world sets.
So some practical suggestions to living the single life are; Cultivate friends of both sexes, take the time to get to know people really well, whether it leads to marriage or not it will be a treasure you will have for a long time. Don't believe the big lie the media tells you that looks and sex are the center of life. Be friendly, reach out to people, be interested in people, walk in the Spirit, consider the Lord in all you do and say. Do not forsake your family, don't forget to continue to build relationships with your parents and brothers and sisters. Get involved in things that challenge you and develop you and bring you into contact with people. You may have to wait and do without for a time, but you will have a much better chance that marriage will work when it comes.

The chief end of man is to glorify God
And to enjoy Him forever.

I walked the bridge to the beach this morning. The wind was out of the northeast blowing cold and damp. I am taking my father for radiation treatment again this afternoon. Work has completely dried up.

3/25/2009
I filled the truck with gas at Barney’s Gulf in Duxbury this morning. Barney’s is run by the man whose father and grandfather owned the lumber yard on railroad ave. His father also owned property throughout town most of which has been sold off to developers. The four buildings around the old train station are still in the family as is the Gulf station. He has one sister who lives in Ontario and a brother who died several years ago.
I asked him about one of the buildings that looked like it was having repairs done to the roof. The side of the building has the outlineof an old loading door that I knew was from the time when the railroad ran right next to it. He began to tell me a lot about the land and the buildings. The building that recently housed the fish market is basically a nondescript one story ranch, so I thought. But it is actually the old train station that has had the passenger platform filled in and been re-sided and painted white.
Walter Prince bought the building in 1940 after the rail lines were taken up in 1940 and remodeled it. The steel rails were sold to Japan, ironically just before the war.Their are still two steel rails under one of the buildings that the grandfather had kept. And there is a film from 1938 or 1939 of one of the last trains pulling into the station with the grandfather standing in the loading door of the old grain building.

I hope to post the notes from the eulogy I gave for Liz shortly.

I walked over the bridge at lunch time for the first time in a long while. The whole community seems to be hunkered down for a long winter. Except for the work on the Leahy's old house there is little new construction. Last winter a number of big remodeling jobs were starting, this winter all is quiet on the waterfront. And so all is quiet on the business front for me. I looked in the Clipper today to see a half a page of contractor advertising. I wonder if I should add my name to it.

The wind is out of the northwest, it is cold but, once warmed up from the walk, not uncomfortable. There are a few people on the beach and on the bridge, but not many for a holiday.

We went to the Marshfield Fair Sunday and E and I went on the ride named Freakout. It is merely a steel rod swinging from one end with a rotating piece on the free end. There are sixteen seats around the perimeter of the rotating end in groups of four. The floor drops from under the seats before it starts to swing and it begins gently and then gets a boost that causes it to swing to about 4 o clock. The rod is 43 feet long and the end with the people on it swings up to 73 feet off the ground. I remember the height, the fall with the air rushing around me, and the centrifugal force. There was a feeling of being in the grip of a powerful mechanical force and a terrifying free fall. It was like being in an out of control airplane about to crash. And for the first time I experience the feel of a fall from a great height. E seemed to be not at all phased by the whole thing.

We saw four deer in the parking lot of the Alden museum yesterday about 4 o clock. My son spotted them. I turned the truck around at Railroad ave to go back. They were still there when we drove into the parking lot. A doe and three fawns, two male and one female. The fawns were fairly grown and all four gracefully ran off to the woods behind the building.

June 5, 2008
North wind, wet, grey, cold. The surf driving in hard onto the beach, one solitary tern.

May 30, 2008
8 pm

The tide is at its peak. There is a wind out of the south south east. Black clouds blanket the sky in the west and the sea is grey and choppy. Crossing the bridge I pass two girls walking, and a young Chinese couple fishing. There are a few power boats out in spite of the cold. Again I saw only one tern, a few sandpipers, a flock of geese or ducks high over the inland shore of the bay and a solitary gull floating above the bridge in the stiff wind.

May 28, 2008

The water in the bay is a muddy green today. The water in the sea dark blue. A cool wind blows from the east. One tern circles over the bridge. The guard is at the gate; The summer season has begun.

I walked out to the beach today after looking at a job I have going on powder point.
There was a strong smell of rotting seaweed on the beach end of the bridge and a smell of manure on the land end of the beach. Yesterday I noticed the smell of wind blown sand.

buenos dias muchachos, aqui estoy esperando el dia. Me quedo aqui en la casa de mi mujer. Ella se duerme en tristeza asi que sus hijas estan con sus padre y las estrana mucho.

He decidido que la unica cosa que merece mi esfuerzo es escribir un libro. Y el libro que quiero escribir es uno de la naturaleza que glorifique a Dios.

Los domingos es importante que me descanse y que alabe a Dios. Pero hoy yo he trabajado en considerar una compra de una propriedad. Por eso tienes mi vida. Que va?

I have been listening to Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea on tape borrowed from the library. It is an interesting story, poetic in a sense. He dreams of lions on the beach. It is existential, a rich tapestry without meaning, The Life and Death of a Fish. A crazy old man, alone but loved by a boy, an old man with experience and skill and knowledge of the natural world engaged in a life and death struggle.

October 12, 2006
Alces alces The Uncommon Moose
One morning at about quarter to six last July, My son Scott and I were driving down route 3A towards Kingston when we saw the moose. As we came down the hill towards the mill pond, I saw the figure of a large animal, like a deer but bigger, run across the street at the bottom of the hill where the road goes over the outlet from the pond. I slowed the truck and said to Scott, "look in there," pointing to the driveway where the animal had gone. Scott looked up, he had been half dozing. Standing in the driveway was the oddest looking deer we had ever seen.. It was as big as a pony but with legs twice as long. It stood with its feet planted. We stared at him and he stared back at us. It was young, and its antlers were small. They were mitten shaped, covered in a light brown velvet. "It’s a moose!" I said.

This is the second story addition we are doing in Norwell.

4 September 2006
My Dad has recovered from surgery after a long trial. He has been talking more about his past more than he ever has before, at least to me. He was telling me about his grandfather.
John Cook (Koch), was born in Germany, probabably about 1850. He served in the Prussian army before coming to America with his wife. Their first child, Helena, my grandmother, was born in New York city in 1880 and came to Watertown at the age of four. John worked at Lewandos in Watertown square as a master dyer, my Uncle John says that he was the owner for a short time although I am not sure how he would have come to own it or how he would have lost ownership. He had a son Phillip whom I remember from my childhood as Uncle Philly,who owned a cottage in Hampton Beach and also owned my current house where we Maloneys grew up on 15 Dana Terrace. He also had another daughter, Barbara, who married and had two sons, John would never talk to her again or acknowledge her existence because her husband was Jewish, and their sons were raised as Jews. My father remembers they always came to family events like funerals and remembers that they were friendly; he would talk to them but could not tell his mother that he had. John’s wife left him for another man after they had eight children together. She had a son with the new husband. John lived near Newton corner off of Galen street, my grandmother used to serve him breakfast, which he would refuse to touch until she put a beer on the table to go with the meal. My grandmother was living in Watertown square when she met my grandfather who was a mail man and a volunteer firefighter. My grandfather Thomas was born in 1878 and died when I was a child. He is buried in Saint Patrick’s cemetary in Watertown. His father James was born in County Mayo Ireland in 1858.
One of my earliest memories is of my father’s aunt another of John’s daughters and her husband. They lived off of Watertown square across River Street. I remember going there, and I remember them as a friendly old couple with flower gardens around their house. Strangely, one of my father’s earliest memories is also of this same couple in that same house a generation earlier.
Some of the traits ascribed to John Cook are familiar traits of the Maloney family; such as severity and stubbornness. I remember visits to my grandmother’s house on Green street. Everyone, including the children sat around the living room with the backs of their chairs against the wall, my grandmother in her rocker by the window.

PTown
Some Years Back

Labor day my son Scott and I bicycled to Plymouth to catch the ferry to Provincetown. I had bought him a new bike this summer and we had not had a vacation or done anything for a while so I thought we could go try the bike trails in the National Seashore and climb the P-town tower. I checked the weather before we left and there was a block of thunderstorms south of the Cape moving north but they seemed to be going to pass out to sea beyond us. The captain of the ferry warned us it might be a rough ride. It was foggy and windy and starting to rain when the boat pulled out of Plymouth harbor. But once underway the fog lifted and the rain stopped. We sat up on the top deck in the open with most of the other passengers. There are always foreign tourists in Plymouth, in particular Japanese tourists. The Pilgrims seem to have meaning for the Japanese. On the ferry. there was a group of Dutch or German tourists I couldn't tell which and their English was good enough that they spoke it almost as well as their own language. The boat is fairly noisy but my first thought was Dutch, I don't know why. One young woman sat in front of me she had a graceful neck and blonde hair tied in a pony tail, the curve of her hips was in my view on the edge of her seat, I could picture myself coupled with her, my face buried in her long smooth neck.
It is quite a sight to see land , thin, sandy land, lighthouses, churches appear out of the sea, the last solid earth before Gibraltor. The sand spins around the tip of the Cape. The boat followed it into the harbor. The captain said this was one of the finest harbors anywhere, deep water and complete protection from the northeast winds. But this one is only attached by a long spindle to the mainland, there is no room for a city of any size here, just the main street and rows of beach houses and inns. He pointed out the big grey building on pilings we were to tie up at and return to at 4 pm. Scotty and I carried our bikes off the boat and decided to head first for the Provincetown tower, or Pilgrim Memorial tower which dwarfs everything else in town even the hill it stands on. I had been here twice before, once as a child on a summer vacation drive through the cape and once when I was fifteen and staying with two friends in Chatham at a motel owned by my friend Kevin's brother in law. Then we had not bothered to pay for admission but had hopped the fence. Then too we had bicycled from Watertown to Chatham in two days. This time the short ride from Duxbury to Plymouth had taxed my strength. And this time we paid admission. The clerk was very obviously affected, that is, with flowery shirt and florid face, flaming, care free and happy, in short gay and proud of it. The tower is about 250 feet tall, an elongated granite rectangle one stone thick with gargoyles and the semblance of a bell tower, but no bell at the top. It is copied from a tower in Italy. The observation deck is enclosed all around with wire and clear plastic; it is too perfect a place for suicide. There were tourists here too and several languages, little kids, and some from Revere or Everett I would guess the way they talked and the way they recognized the towns of Massachusetts engraved in the granite blocks. Scotty and I scoped out how we would get to the National Seashore. But first it was time for lunch.
We were not familiar with the restaurants, I commented to Scott that if we went into the wrong one I might have a sudden attack of homophobia. It was easiest to go to MoJos on the pier by the big grey building. It was one of those places where you order at the window and eat at an outside bench. Everywhere there are openly gay people, mannish women, womenish men, the world turned upside down, men holding hands, girls striking marlboro man poses. Inside the window there were two teenage girls taking orders and a middle aged man with a long grey mustache giving orders and I guess cooking. I went to place our order. The girl had a cute but ordinary face with brown hair and a low cut tee shirt her breasts were big like ripe white melons I wanted to look into her shirt as she leaned close to take my order; I looked at her face and then off at the ice cream machine. I had a fried fish sandwich with guacamole Scotty had a swordfish sandwich. Once I was young and such temptations were not irreconcilable with the facts of my age, but once also I knew of no heaven more real than a beautiful girls body, that has changed, I know there is a larger heaven, a better heaven but I still remain fascinated by girls.
After lunch we headed out down Ptown's pedestrian-crowded main street. I wanted to find a map so we could find the bike trails at the national seashore. Main street is all kinky little gift shops, for practical purchases we had to go back into trafficland and find a combination gas station convenience store. The girl at this counter was blonde, young and pretty and she did not speak English very well. I got a map and Scott and I headed off to find the other wild side of the cape. The once barren desert described by Thoreau now museumized with trails, parking lots, bath houses, ranger stations, and visitors centers. Genesis 1:28 says:
God blessed them and said to them, "be fruitfull and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue
it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves
on the ground."
This is the fate of the man-dominated earth. I would, wrestling with God, leave some of the earth unsubdued, dangerous, for the sake of adventure and romance, but I cannot deny that this mandate is inexorably fulfilled everywhere even in my short lifetime. And to think this is preparation for a fiery end to all of creation and all the works of man.
It did not take long to bicycle from the town shore to the seashore. We rode a short way to find the beginning of the bike trails and followed them up through the sand hills, there were pines in the hollows and sand higher up, many footprints ran into the dunes from the bike path, and I saw some of the strangest mushrooms and fungi growing among the pines. At the crest of one dune, we could see the ocean. We stopped at the visitors center and climbed the stairs to the observation platform. Scott bought a b'osun's whistle at the gift shop, I thought about buying a book on seashore botany, I should have. We looked out to the sea and I was beginning to wonder if I was going to make it all the way. In my twenties I used to ride 70 miles a day, I never got tired, I flew over the highest hills, but now I struggle. It doesn't seem so long ago or part of another life yet twenty five years have gone by since then. My body is only now slowing down and my dreams are virtually the same and still largely unfulfilled, to be a writer, to have a good marriage. But I have changed on the inside, gone from death to life, from darkness to light, from despair to hope, and that in Christ.
We get to the beach and sit on the warm sand, the sea is deep and churning, a young couple man and woman play and laugh in the surf, another couple, a man and a man dressed identically, hold each other looking at the sea. Later the young woman comes over and asks if I have seen her daughter, we all look for her hoping that the worst has not happened, but then she appears in the grass on the hillside a little child in a vast landscape quietly playing in the grass and thankfully not swallowed by the sea.
We need to return to town by four to catch the ferry home so we head back down the same bike trail until we are again walking our bikes down the crowded main street, there is an incongruous mix of children on scooters, and bicycles and gay people. I enjoy the pedestrian dominated street; autos annoy me to no end, but I like people and I am interested in the human condition and here it is all laid out but perhaps still wanting interpretation. There is a huge white wooden church, one of the most notable landmarks seen from the incoming ferry. It has been converted into a museum. In this city of sin the church is no longer central or foundational to society, if it exists, it is without public prominence. What a city ripe for evangelization; so many lost souls filled with anger toward God and toward those who dare question the validity of their sexual persuasion. There was, on the sidewalk in front of the church, a mime dressed as a mechanical doll. She, it appeared to be a she, moved mechanically to a whirring sound coming from a basket in front of her. She looked just like a doll, her body was sexless, her face pretty like a young girl, her hair a mop of bright yellow curls, her eyes as blank as a machine but written across her face was the brightest, friendliest smile. I took a picture of her and of the church, then we walked on. We came next to a store that sold salt water taffy we went in to buy some, I remembering how I used to watch it made in the storefront at Hampton Beach when I was a child. When we stepped outside the same mime was walking by. She moved close to me, I was not conscious of her approach until, from the corner of my eye, I caught her broad smile. I instinctively looked up and said, "Hello", and looked into her eye as I have done many times when I was fortunate enough to receive a smile from a pretty woman. Catching a woman's eye and reading her approval is something I sometimes think I live for. But these eyes did not respond, no trace of bashfulness, or flirting or anger. There was nothing in those eyes. I instantly knew this was not a woman. She or he walked on swaying and smiling down the street. And I, puzzled, watched her go. Her gait was strong, light, agile and manlike in the sense of a male ballet dancer. The smile on the outside, the lifelessness inside; this was a tragic figure, definitely male, definitely making a personal statement to the crowd. I sensed an invulnerability that can only come when one embraces death.
We got back to the big grey building on the wharf early to wait for the boat to leave. There was a young woman with a bicycle and a backpack with flags from all over Europe on it. She was traveling alone. Twenty five years ago she might have been the perfect one for me. I don't remember meeting any woman traveling or walking or running alone on my many excursions, young, free and lonely. The captain warned us the seas might be rough so I went downstairs for dramamine for me and Scott. It was a little rough but we didn't have any problem with sea sickness. The boat pitched and rolled and the spray reached us on the top deck. The weather was pretty clear now and we could see both P-town and the mainland. With the sun low in the western sky, the mainland was dark, we were headed toward the Manomet Hills, with the power plant on the canal visible to the south and the headlands of Marshfield or Cohasset to the north. But P-town, catching the direct sunlight shone golden on the water like a mythical city in the middle of the sea; the tower so out of proportion to the rest of the town and the sand so golden and the water glinting around it. When Thoreau described it one hundred fifty years ago there was no tower but he describes the same sight of being halfway across the bay. In his day the mackerel fishing boats encircled it with their white sails the last thing to be seen as the boat moved away.
When the boat tied up in Plymouth, Scott and I and the young woman with the bike were the last down the gang plank with our bicycles. We headed home riding up route 3A. We were tired now and just labored along, it started raining a little again, we got back to Duxbury about 7pm. I think this would be a good trip to do again now that we know where we are going and if the weather was a little better for the beach. We could head directly to the National Seashore and swim and lie in the sun. The surf was high and the water warm but the air was cold and windy and by the time we got to the beach, with diversions to the tower and to eat and find our way, it was almost time to turn around. This would also be a good trip to bring company on who come to visit our area. Its a trip we'll always remember.

Natural selection is self limiting. As non-random selection occurs from generation to generation the inherent variation from which the selections are made decreases naturally limiting how far things can go. Random mutation is the hypothetical mechanism of creation of new variation that biology teachers invoke to cover this gaping hole in the theory of evolution. They spend little time analysing the science that supports the viability of such a mechanism.

It rained all day. I went to Watertown this morning for my Uncle Ed's burial service at Ridgelawn cemetary, where my mother is also buried. Funny, I had trouble finding it.
Later there was a gathering at the Verona restaurant.

In the afternoon I went to work on the house. I put in two windows and worked stripping paint from the columns on the porch. I stopped by my friend Rick's house just before going home. He is almost done with his book.

Now I am at Angela's house. Her daughter's friend is sleeping over. I am playing on the computer.

Rainy Sunday

I have just finished listening to the story of the Mutiny on the Bounty written by Caroline Alexander. It is a book worth reading or listening to on tape as I did. The film starring Marlon Brando was the first movie I ever saw, my dad took me to see it in the sixties at the theater on the Cambridge-Watertown line. I still remember the scenes of keel-hauling, whippings, and the tyrannically cruel Captain Bligh. In this book Bligh, while not a hero, is not altogether bad, not nearly as old as in the movie, he just seeme to be a little poor at interpersonal relations and had not been given sufficient support to his authority. In the end, they burn the ship as they did in the movie. The book tells a fascinating story, revealing the complexities of the case and its mysteries. It follows in particular the story of Peter Hayward, who was sixteen at the time of the mutiny, who did not go to Pitcairn but lived on Tahiti with a tahitian wife until discovered and arrested by the royal navy. He was returned to England in chains, tried and convicted to death, but then pardoned by the King and went on to a long career in the navy, as did Bligh. Several others tried with him were hanged. The mutineers who went to Pitcairn left many descendants but all but one disappeared, or were killed by the tahitians that they took with them.

4/16/01
We leave Logan airport at 9 AM, the plane heads out over Boston Harbor. We can see all the harbor islands below, the sky is clear, Duxbury bay and the thin edge of Provincetown are visible in the distance, most of the experiences of my life are encompassed by the view from this airplane window as it turns to the north and we pass over Lynn and Nahant beaches where my mother used to take us when we were kids, then we pass up the coast along Plum Island and right over Rowley where my mother spent here last days in the nursing home. We turn back to the west and Hampton beach is visible to the north where our family vacationed every year. We fly to Cleveland and then on to Phoenix. I try to read my Chinese Bible. We arrive in San Luis in the evening.

I seem to have recovered my blog from sparclinux, although I've lost my picture of the madhatter.

I had a strange dream Friday night . I woke up from the sound of a large fly buzzing around my head. Still more asleep than awake, I turned on the light to try to kill it. The clock read 2:45 am. I could not see the fly although I looked and listened. Giving up I went back to sleep with the sound still over my head. The next morning P called with the news that S had woken at 2:40 that night screaming and throwing up, then C woke up covered in hives and P herself began to experience the symptoms of a urinary tract infection. She was up all night. I thought of the story of Job, and of Beelzebub, the lord of the flies.

We framed the Roof on the job we're doing, again very hot to work.
P and the kids are down at the beach waiting for me.

For a journey and such a long journey

Random Thoughts

In an entirely different way, some philosophers have always found something fishy in the Darwinian theory of evolution. An obvious sticking point is the concept of fitness itself. If by the fitter organisms, biologists mean merely those that survive, then the doctrine that natural selection winnows out those organisms that are not fit expresses a triviality. This is a logical point and not a matter of experiment or research. The biologist who wishes to know why a species that represents nothing more than a persistent snore througout the long night of evolution should suddenly or slowly develop a novel characteristic will learn from the neo-Darwinian theory only that those characteristic that survive survive in virtue of their relative fitness. Those characteristics that are relatively fit, on the other hand, are relatively fit in virtue of the fact that they have survived. This is not an intellectual circle calculated to inspire confidence.... The doctrine that survival favors the survivors is what logicians call a *tautology*, a statement that is all form and no content. For obvious reasons, the evolutionary biologists are uncomfortable with the idea that the chief claim of their theory is roughly on the intellectual order of the declaration that whatever will be, will be" (Berlinski, D., "The Evidence for Evolution," in "Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic, Luck,")

Little Wonder

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd__
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go".

from the Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam

I really screwed up today; I called P Liz when I talked to her on the phone. I desperately do not want to self-sabotage another relationship, but I do want this relationship to be God’s will or not be at all, so I will have to let this gaffe ride out and hope it didn’t too much damage. And I will have to put more distance between myself and Liz, first because I might inadvertently give her the false impression I am still hers, and because, as has already happened once, I might drive away someone who I could actually be happy with.

P and I walked on the beach last night with a thunderstorm flashing to the north and east. The tide was out enough that the walking was fairly easy on the sand flats. Little birds wheeled around us in the dark and the wind blew strong and constant from the direction of the storm.

B called yesterday. I am not sure what exactly he wanted but basically he called me a scumbag which, from his perspective I probably am, God help me.

The paper work is starting to pile up around my ears in my room. It is good to have a night to catch up a little on it.

Memories and Great Expectations

Where, like a pillow on a bed.
A pregnant bank swelled up to rest
The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one another's best.

from The Ecstasy by John Donne

Scotty graduated from High School today and we had a party. P made all the food. Fred Byrne helped set up at the Beans and ran the grill. The guests were: My dad, my sister Cynthia, her daughter Caty and son Jeff, my sister Judy and her son Rick, my friend Rick Tulipano, his wife Lane and his son Gabriel, Scott’s friend Nathan and Nathan’s girlfriend Sue, Fred Byrne, Joyce Bean, Scott’s friend Annie, and Paul Yoon, Liz, Bob Friend, Cynthia’s boyfriend Dave and his two daughters, the neighbor Joe and his kids Emily and Ben. It was a good party thanks especially to P and Fred.

Tomorrow Scott and I have to go to the U of H for orientation. Liz wants to come, but I am hoping she is too tired to get up. June 15 Scott and Liz leave for England, June 11 John leaves for the track for ten days, June 18 and 19 my sister Nancy is visiting from Washington, Cynthia will be having a cookout the 19th. Rick and Lane want to meet P, I think especially Lane.

After the party and after cleaning up everything and taking a shower, I went to the beach. There was a long jagged line of purple clouds in the north off the setting sun, the tide was out, it was a beautiful time to walk, rain is on the way. I need to get to bed early but I am still hoping to hear from Pam even tonight when I don’t expect to. We sat together in the kitchen last night talking by candlelight. I still sometimes feel really awkward with her; she is so beautiful.

Jesus is My Homeboy

Fold of Valour, sleep a little, Glory of the Western world;
I am wondering at thy beauty, marvelling how thy locks are curled

It was a very emotional service this Sunday. Ray’s whole family was there. His funeral was only Friday. Our new Pastor preached well again, making some changes in the order of the service. Brenda and Jack C were there today. I think they will start coming again. I have really missed them. And Russ H came in the evening.

I bicycled to the evening service. 10 kids were baptised, most of whom I know well. It was quite a thrill to see so many profess their faith: Justin, Alex, Mark, Collette, Kelly, James, Bobby, Corey, Vincent, and David. Their parents were also thrilled; it means everything to us as parents, more than college or good health, or anything in this world to know that the ones we love the most are walking in the Lord’s will.

I did not get to Watertown this weekend as I had planned. S went to the Prom last night with a girl named Annie. They rode in N’s dad’s purple cadillac. S was in last night but long after I was asleep.

My dad is thinking seriously of selling his house. It is really run down and I think the best thing may be to tear it down and re-build, but the lot is so small it would be difficult to do. The buyer would also have the option to renovate it entirely but all systems are at the point of failure. It may be an opportunity for me but I will have to move fast or lose it. I don’t know where to look for financing, I don’t know the zoning by-laws, or any local contractors, I don’t know the appraised value or the rental rates. There is a lot of work to do but someone will buy it and make it into a usable home. It may as well be me.

Black Marigolds

Even now
My thought is all of this gold-tinted king's daughter
With garlands tissue and golden buds,
Smoke tangles of her hair, and sleeping or waking
Feet trembling in love, full of pale languor;
My thought is clinging as to a lost learning
Slipped down out of the minds of men,
Labouring to bring her back into my soul.

I am too tired to put anything into this tonight. L is on the warpath again. Everything she says about me and now about P as well is really exactly what she herself has been and is. Sometimes I still feel bad about divorcing her especially when everything is going so badly for her now, but when she calls up and swears at me I know I did the right thing. She is so venomous and hateful and self-deceived. The bible says rightly that Christ has no fellowship with Belial. As for P, I am still baffled why such a young, beautiful woman would be interested in me. I hope I can do the right thing by her in every way.

Prayer List

Because of that great nobleness of hers;
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs
Burns but more clearly.

W.B. Yeats

That all the subs get to the Williams next week and that Mike and I finish the carpentry.
That I get organized to make the most of the summer.
That P and I grow closer, if it is the Lord’s will, especially spiritually and emotionally.
That she and her husband arrive quickly at a fair settlement, again, if it is the Lord’s will.
I pray that God will give her and me the wisdom to know what his will is and that if he will not bless this relationship we would not go too far before finding that out.
And that I not add to P’s already excessive burdens. Even more, that I might be able to make this week easier for her.

Lights Out

Pensaran vuestras mercedes que es poco trabajo hinchar un perro?

Cervantes, from the preface to the 2nd ed of
Don Quixote

Amanda has been here for several hours with S. It was good to hear them talking and laughing in the kitchen; they have been friends since they were kids. Now they have gone out for a walk. L is still missing, I haven't been able to find out where she is. She does not answer her cell phone. I am looking forward to getting a full night's sleep tonight although I would not trade the last few weeks for anything.