They wonder which airline will next see bankruptcy and yet they know their problem: they are selling seats at a loss. They are trapped in a bad marriage from which there is no escape. That the modern American believes getting from Vermont to Kalamazoo in two hours for $200 is reasonable speaks more of depravity than decadence.
I’m sure I’m taking Philip Larkin out of context here, but when he said, 'I wouldn’t mind seeing China if I could come back the same day,' I like to believe he wasn’t advocating faster transport but lamenting the lost art of deriving pleasure from backyard travels.
When I’m in need of a good journey, I walk up Cemetery Road, past the ruins of the Methodist church, and visit the graveyard. There I always find Tryphena and Asper and Sophona and Lydia, nineteenth century people with short, spare biographies, whose now illegible stones say all you need to know about lives worn down by work and worry. There is Harrison Smith, dying at age sixteen, for his country’s cause in the Great Rebellion of 1861. Towards the back, is a rugged tongue of ledge poking from the earth, professionally engraved with Ronald Ricker 1948 – 2003, and beside that a wooden cross upon which Ron is carved by hand. Near that is Jeffrey Babcock’s plot. He died this year and his family gave him a big, glossy stone with a sort of painting in varying grays of the local landscape. This would be a mere curiosity if you didn’t notice that propped against its base is a small, flat rock, with Dad hand-chiseled on its face.
And since no journey is complete without poetry, there is my favorite marker:
Myrtie Faye
Died June 20, 1883
20 years
20 days
God hath early called thee home
Thanks for that, Bobby.
Can you tell us about moosewood? I only know it as the name of a natural foods cookbook.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 2, 2005 11:50 AMRe: airlines, yesterday we spent eleven hours unable to leave a Southwest Airlines flight from Hartford to Oakland via Baltimore, Chicago and Phoenix. They wouldn't let us leave the plane to buy food at any of the stops because boarding started nearly as soon as the last departing passenger was off. All they offered on board was peanuts (which not everyone can eat), drinks, and the kind of weird overprocessed carbohydrates that only make you hungrier for solid food. We'd boarded with provisions and bottled water but the last several hours were no fun.
A couple of stewards were bitching about scheduling hassles during one of the stops. They were also saying the Great Christmas Day Luggage Mixup was the fault of weather, not sickouts -- but if bad weather can cause a system to get badly backed up in a hurry, doesn't it mean it's scheduled just a little too tight?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 2, 2005 12:10 PMMoosewood is really striped maple. You see it a lot as part of the first growth after a forest has been logged. Big leaves. Think it's called moosewood because the shoots are at a good height for deer and moose to munch on. Must have been tons of it in Western Mass.
Posted by: bobby farouk at January 2, 2005 12:48 PMThanks. Never knew it. We have mostly pine, aspen, oak and black birch where I grew up, with a few sugar maples that have been mainly not worth tapping since the weather warmed. Not sure if we've got moosewood. Sure we haven't got moose. Do you mean striped as in tiger grain?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 2, 2005 01:08 PMMy favorite inscription from the family burying ground is "She never bored him."
When I've asked relatives about this, they grin and say something like "Ain't that the truth!"
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at January 2, 2005 07:04 PMMore striped maple knowledge available here. Turns out they are the source for the "helicopters" of my childhood.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at January 3, 2005 08:25 AMOh, right, those things. Wasn't ever entirely sure they were "real" maples. Many thanks.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 3, 2005 10:35 AMB and I visited Selby Abbey last week, an 11th Century Benedictine chapel that narrowly survived the Pilgrimage of Grace, was the birthplace of Henry I, and has a 14th Century stained glass representation of the Washington family's coat of arms - the oldest example of what ultimately became the Stars and Stripes. There's a couple of good comic gravemarkers within the church from the 1700s - I'll have to see if I can dig out the exact wordings.
Alan (in haste - no regular posting for another week, sorry).
Posted by: Alan Allport at January 3, 2005 11:35 AMThanks and merry etcetera.
Funny typo at that link: "'The decorated choir of seven bays,--the knave has eight...'"
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 3, 2005 01:39 PMInteresting -- I think that the bit of the stars is off base, but do remember that Washington's army had a red and white striped flag, which might have had something to do with the arms.
I'm about 90 pages in to the latest David Hackett Fischer book, and will post about the flag connection when he gets there. (Currently I'm at hornet's nests as symbols of liberty, which I like quite a bit.)
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at January 3, 2005 02:39 PMNot finding any comedy in my little cemetery. Grief, relief, and the belief that the deceased has gone on to better things ('gone home', 'gone to rest').
Found this one where the straight facts tell the story (or maybe there was no one left to tell it)...
John E. Jones 1812-1868
his wife Mary 1825-1867
their children
Ellen Jones 1858-1859
Olive S. Jones 1860-1862
Frank Jones 1864-1865
Perry Jones 1866-1867