Death Halves the Hearth

September 3, 2021JT Twissel 24 Comments

I’ve just finished complying the various genealogies, ancient documents and photos I inherited into one document and all I can say is: Don’t do it! Let some other poor relative take on the task of making sense of family history. It’s like opening a Pandora’s box. So hard to close.

It wasn’t so bad when I was writing about folks who lived hundreds of years ago but as I drew closer the present and began writing about people I’d met, no matter how briefly, it got painful. When I got to my parents, I just couldn’t do it. They lived, got married and died, the end.

I wish I could say I discovered many fascinating tidbits about my ancestors but alas, I didn’t. Probably the most amusing “find” was the official reason why my most famous ancestor, Deacon Samuel Chapin, was important to the colonial settlement that became Springfield Mass.

Deacon Samuel Chapin’s “delicate duties.”

Yes, the appropriate seating of the “Goodwifes” on the Sabbath was apparently the only thing that kept law and order in the colonies! Heavens, you simply can’t have Goodwife Chapin “sitt in the Seate” alongside any other lady than Mrs. Glover, the minister’s wife. (Don’t ask me why some ladies are referred to as “good wifes” and others as “Mrs” because I do not know!)

Thanks to a wonderful blogger from Finland, The Snow Melts Somewhere , I did solve one mystery: What was in the Swedish Letters that my great-grandfather didn’t want to reveal to his daughter. From what Snow was able to decipher, Great Grandfather Nelson wasn’t trying to be cruel. He was trying to shield his daughter. She was only sixteen when her mother died. He probably felt she did not need to know the heartbreaking side of immigration.

2b. But before I write more, we would like to let you know that we have received the money that you sent us, 17 kronor and 65 öre, for which we now present you our heartfelt gratitude. And we think it is nice since it is in any case of an assistance to us old people. We always think it is fun to receive your letters but even more fun when you think of us with donations. But we can’t send you anything except for our loving thankfulness and we shall pray for you and for all our children, for you are all equally dear to Him. May He give you good health and blessings and may He keep you from sin, for sin is an abomination to God. Instead, God loves (us) and offers (us) everything and we will hope for Him to give you everything.

4a. And I cannot be alone. (…) It isn’t nice for me (…) but I must ask the Lord for good health. (…)
Johanna, she won’t be home with me more than yesterday, she can’t come home with me, she gets nothing from it. She can ask the master (?) to make a little bit more but she is young.
Now (.…) is having (…)+ (…) and growing, but we are having bad times here, I don’t ponder it much but I’ll take what I can++ 344 and death halves the hearth, my friend by my side, out of grief (…) I ask God (…), I am weak, save me from (…)+++
…parents, children gone away… so empty, watch out for the soul’s wellbeing…

To families left behind in the mother country, hearing from children who have traveled thousands of miles from home to achieve a better life must have been bittersweet indeed. I’m sure they were proud to know that their children had found communities to be a part of and did well enough to send money home. But the cost, from these letters, was very high.

Thanks again to Snow for helping me solve the mystery and giving me more appreciation for my great grandfather’s struggles.

Roads And Borders

August 28, 2021JT Twissel Leave a comment

Reads like the beginning of a novel, doesn’t it?

tin hats

He was sick. Something vague, but growing. He had nearly always been sick. Not as a baby, but by three he had real trouble breathing. Oxygen tents and concerned people. The lung difficulty stayed with him as an adult, until he stopped eating certain foods. Innocent breads and cakes delivered the allergy. Poor breathing eventually gave way to other diseases, other injuries, but he didn’t mind so much. Everyone was hurt around him, a constantly changing hospital or sometimes a morgue was there, just outside his door. Illness and death were part of his lifestyle away from home.

It was 5:00 in the morning. He was just waking in the partly destroyed trading post. He could imagine the Englishman behind the counter, barking at the tribesmen. The driver and vehicle were both asleep. He looked at the dead fire. He felt safe. No one would kill you this early. The…

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A Change Of Gear #thoughts

August 25, 2021JT Twissel 2 Comments

A solemn reminder …

Only Lived and Died

August 9, 2021JT Twissel 13 Comments

I haven’t been blogging much of late because I’ve taken it upon myself to transcribe a thirty page, hand-written history of my grandfather’s family tree that dates back to 1590. It was written between 1910 and 1925 by a lady named Daisy Jameson who was my great uncle’s wife until the dirty dog left her for another woman. Of course, this bit of sordid family history was never mentioned while my mother was alive. And so I had to figure out it myself. Hum, why is Daisy buried in Chicopee Mass but Henry is buried in Virginia and who’s this Marie Ange woman buried in the same plot as great uncle Henry? That kind of thing. Thank goodness for google and funeral registries.

Anyway, it’s easy to understand why the document is just a collection of births, marriages and deaths (taken from church records) and snippets from letters and bits of family lore passed down through the generations. After old Henry dumped her, Daisy probably wanted nothing more to do with the Jamesons! Making sense of this document is further complicated by the huge number of offspring on both sides who lived to adulthood and propagated like rabbits. Especially in the coastal seaports of Maine and the town of Chicopee Massachusetts. It’s depressing to know that I am not a rare bird from an unusual family but just a chickadee from Chicopee. But, although they might have been just common folk, they did live through some interesting times: The Siege of Derry, voyages to America, battles with the Indians and French, injuries during the Civil War, etc, etc. And so I’m peppering the narrative with accounts of what it must have been like to live during those times. Then I can seal the document away and forget about it.

So I will be blogging less than usual but here are some pictures of a winery near Santa Rosa, beautiful even in the smoke. And my attempt at an artistic peach.

Down the rabbit hole once again

July 28, 2021JT Twissel 17 Comments

Today, by way of a church liturgy from 1945, I bring you this puzzle: What do these three things have in common?

The so-called Romance of the Worms*
A commune comprised of runaway slaves, abolitionists, and utopians
Theodor Geisel

Here’s a clue: It involves a “mania” that swept the USA in the 1830s driving the price of a certain tree up to astronomical heights.

*newspaper article written about the “mania”

A house on a street in Springfield Mass named after the tree (although the tree in the photo is probably not the type of tree in question)

Here is the document that inspired my trip down the rabbit’s hole.

I found this liturgy in a bible that belonged to my mother’s cousin. She died childless and, because her care had been turned over to the state, they sold everything not reeking of cigarette smoke. Except her bible. That was sent to my mother.

My first thought was “What was Cousin Gloria doing in Florence Mass?” Not that it was any of my business but let’s be honest. Writers are busybodies who are constantly sticking their noses in where they don’t belong and following clues to mysteries that are probably only mysteries in our overripe imaginations. It’s a writer’s curse. Anyway, my mother and her cousin were polar opposites. The only thing they had in common was they both attended UMass in Amherst and guess what? Amherst and Florence are sister cities. So I had unearthed a fascinating fact: In December of 1945, a young woman named Gloria attended services at a church near her college. Big deal. However, when I found out what the village was famous for, well, I was intrigued.

The town started taking shape in the 1830s when a local entrepreneur planted 25 acres of … you’ve probably guessed by now … mulberry trees in a meadow north of Springfield Mass. And the reason: “The Great Mulberry Mania” which griped parts of the country and drove the price of these trees up to astronomical levels. Why? Because silk worms like mulberry trees. Why not challenge the Asian market on silk goods?
- Okay … I’ve acted on stupider ideas. But this fellow knew someone who’d invented a way of spinning silk thread that was smooth enough to use on a sewing machine so, hey. Not so stupid right?
Apparently the entrepreneur and the silk thread spinner were chugging along successfully when in 1843, David Ruggles, described as “an African American printer,” came to town to practice hydro therapy. Turns out he was actually one of the first conductors for the Underground Railroad and had put his life at risk by writing and publishing anti-slavery articles in NYC papers.
Now, here’s where it gets interested. The silk thread spinner soon became involved with the abolitionist movement and in 1845 Sojourner Truth moved to town. Together the three helped form a utopian commune where all people regardless of color, would have equal rights and opportunities, even women.

Eventually the silk industry in the US ran its course. Silk worms are finicky creatures, taking care of them is extremely labor intensive and mulberry trees only have the life span of an average human. The commune also dissipated however, you can still take a guided tour of their grounds via the David Ruggles Center for History and Education in Florence.

Of course all of this has little to do with Theodor Geisel Seuss, aka, Dr. Seuss. Except, of course, the mulberry tree.

Anyway … that was my trip down the rabbit hole this week. Oh, I forgot about the fictional superhero quartet of anthropomorphic turtle brothers who also call Florence home from time to time. Can you guess their names?

The Bummer Speeds Up

July 23, 2021JT Twissel Leave a comment

tin hats

“He woke up most days before dawn. Two sleeping dog faces near his head. The three bodies formed a breathing blanket that stretched over the mountains and the snow and up to the northern climes. The fire was down to coals and the room was icy. He could see the red glow reflect off the breath of the dogs. He could see his own face in the coals. It looked troubled, like most faces burning in a fire.

Usually, he felt good enough at the beginning of the day, but after a few hours the depression set in and the interconnections of life on Earth weighed down upon him. He would often think of his wife and daughter. Dead was not a very difficult word for him to say. It never had been. The two women had found pleasure in the small things of life, even as humanity had become…

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I don’t think the mad dog will care

July 18, 2021JT Twissel 33 Comments

There are many scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird that are disturbing but the first time I saw the movie (I was probably around fourteen) the scene that really upset me was when Atticus shoots the rabid dog. I didn’t understand why the dog couldn’t just be captured and nursed back to health. My father explained that there is no cure for rabies. That an animal with rabies cannot be controlled and will mostly likely die a horrible death and that if he bit or even scratched one of the townsfolk, they would most likely also die a horrible death. So even though the dog couldn’t help his illness and didn’t deserve to be shot, the community had to be protected.

When I hear people saying they are not getting vaccinated and they are not wearing a mask and they are not socially distancing, I remember that scene. The corona virus is like a mad dog roaming the streets. You can protect yourself from getting it and infecting other people … or:

You can go out in the street and tell that mad dog you don’t believe he’s really rabid.
You can say to the mad dog, “God gave you the rabies because you were a bad dog but God will protect me.”
You can tell the mad dog he’s infringing on your constitutional right to run free without a vaccination.

Either way I don’t think the mad dog will care.

And to those who say: “It hasn’t been tested enough.” Well that’s kind of like saying: “Even though the Titanic is sinking, those life boats haven’t been fully tested in ice water. I’m going to wait on the deck and listen to the band play until I’m sure.”

Now before you lambast me for being a nincompoop, let me tell you that I have had covid although at the time (January 2020), I thought it was just a killer flu. The first night I spiked such a high fever that the queen size bed I was sleeping on was soaked right through to the mattress. Despite anti-histamines and nose sprays and Vicks Vaporub, I struggled to breath. Then, when the newspapers started to list the symptoms, I began to wonder. Especially when, come summer, I had no feeling in my feet and had lost all sense of balance.

If this post sounds a little angry, it is. You can be like Atticus Finch and protect your community by getting vaccinated or you can try negotiating with the mad dog and put yourself and others at risk.

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
Atticus Finch to Scout

Reasons to get rid of old diaries

July 11, 2021JT Twissel 40 Comments

Holy Cow, it’s sizzling out here in the West, as in “fry an egg on the pavement” hot! The cat is curled up in a ball, the birds are hiding in the trees and nary a car passes our house. And so I’m reading and throwing out journals I kept from 1976 to 2003. I’ve seen what happens when you die. The kids come into your house and toss everything they deem of no value and I’m positive the thoughts of a mother they consider a boring drip with a meaningless life will have no value whatsoever.

For the most part, the journals are filled with the frustrations of an artsy-fartsy, hippie-dippie woman raising children in a status-hungry suburb. It’s sort of a Stranger in a Strange Land scenario. Eventually she starts to drink during the day, gets addicted to soap operas, takes up macrame and bitches and whines a lot. On top of all that, the journals are filled with the names of neighbors who came and went. If I don’t remember those people, my kids certainly aren’t going to.

I was apparently into calligraphy at one time.

Every now and then I do run into a keeper. This one from November 2, 1999:

Tonight Joel was into role playing as a way to spice up our love life. Our conversation went like this:
Joel: “I’m seventeen and my parents are out for the night and I don’t know when they’ll return. So we …”
Jan: “Wait a minute, when you were seventeen, I was ten. I didn’t have boobs when I was ten and no body hair to speak of. I don’t even think I knew what sex was.”
Joel: “Okay. I’m the pilot of a jumbo jet flying at thirty thousand feet and you’re a stewardess. So I put the plane on auto pilot and we do it in the bathroom.”
Jan: “Are you kidding me? You’re going to leave the plane on autopilot at 30 thousand feet when you know I’m scared to death of flying?”
The third one was the funniest: “I’m the Fire Marshall and the building is on fire and we get all hot (excuse the pun) and do it on the 16th floor as the building is burning down.”
Where do men come out with these fantasies? When I laughed off all three, he suggested a fourth: “I’m a doctor and I need to give you a shot on your bare bottom.”
I hate shots. Enough said.

My normal hand-writing/printing

And then came the bagpipes!

July 4, 2021JT Twissel 14 Comments

I didn’t know what to expect from our small town Fourth of July parade as the decision to hold it was made only about a month ago. I thought maybe a couple of special interests groups would get it together. I certainly didn’t expect almost a dozen musical groups, some marching and the others on the back of flatbed trucks! I guess they all couldn’t wait to get out and celebrate. The town council requested everyone wear a mask and socially distance but guess what folks? That did not happen.

It began with the Fire Department.