RiverSing is accompanied by large butterflies and other imaginative creations from Moonship Productions and the Puppeteers Cooperative. Here’s one by daylight.And if you’ve ever wanted to converse with a butterfly, here’s your chance.Once the sun goes down, the butterflies take on a new look as they swirl at the margin of the audience.
Best known for its 16 packed shows in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre each Christmas, Boston’s Revels organization also presents many other activities of community-enhancing music, theater, dance, and storytelling for family audiences through the year.
Each autumn, for instance, it welcomes the equinox with a free Sunday evening concert along the Charles River in Cambridge, which takes place tonight with activities beginning at 5 p.m. in Winthrop Park at Harvard Square. A police-escorted street procession leads down to the riverside, where thousands settle in for a two-hour high-energy performance.
The marvelous Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band plays a lively set in Winthrop Park before it escorts a large procession to the Charles River. I’ll refrain from telling stories about the trombonist on the right, whom I’ve known long before he even knew about trombones.
Last year’s concert featured Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame, and I was part of the chorus of 120 behind him. It was a blast.
Here we are, with Noel Paul Stookey beside conductor, arranger, and master of ceremonies George Emlen in the white tie-and-tails.After the show, this puppet quickly filled with children.
The stage also provided some great views of the sunset and audience, which was ringed by glowing butterflies. It was a magical experience.
My wife took these photos with her phone. For some showing my face in the choir, though, go to the Revels site.
If you’re in New England, consider showing up tonight. The more, in this case, the merrier.
We’d get the phone call. “You promised a story.” We knew we’d been very careful not to do that. Instead, it was, “I’ll look into that” or “I’ll pass that along to the appropriate editor for a decision.”
My favorite was the caller who claimed to be good friends with the publisher, who had promised the coverage. Followed by our response, “You know she died twelve years ago?” And their embarrassed silence.
Of course, it’s not just stories.
People read into the most carefully crafted texts and then respond to only the parts they want to hear while tuning out the rest. Or they just plain tune out. It’s called the theory of cognitive dissonance. If they think you’re agreeing with them, they’ll bend the message their way. If they think you’re critical, they’ll shove you out altogether.
Often, all tripping over a tiny detail or two.
~*~
Oh, how I came to hate the telephone when I worked in the newsroom! If you want further proof, just go to my novel Hometown News.
You asked about my handle, Jnana. In essence, it’s Sanskrit for the spiritual “path of the intellect,” but that knowledge comes into fullness only when it finds harmony with the other forms of devotion – passion and compassion, physical labor, humility, charity, and so on. “Theoretical knowledge” misses the mark; rather, the name was given to me, in the ashram, only when I came to appreciate all the other spiritual gifts people have. Eliade calls it “the knowledge of ultimate realities” as well as “philosophy.” Perhaps “discernment” would be its equivalent in Christian practice. Whatever, I do tend to dwell in the mind and to dance in a field of ideas; I become grateful for those around me who help ground me in everyday applications.
Here it is, two months after hearing of your decision to shutter the place. (Hmm, was it a rooming house, bed-and-breakfast, or mountain inn? – so many possibilities!) Six years is a respectable run and for that, our gratitude and respect.
I once heard that before Caterpillar was launched, its editors had resolved that a journal has only three years of fresh insights to offer, and so they limited its life span to that – truncated, in my opinion, though I have my own theory of being in the public eye, which I first saw when I was pushing new comic strips and text features to newspaper editors: I see the “talent” as having a 10-year creative span – two years for readers to catch on to a new regular feature, and roughly five for a feature to start to take off in popularity; meanwhile, the artist/writer is using up the conceptual reservoir, so at five years the project is going into decline. You can tally your own list of television, radio, newspaper, or magazine projects that continued long after they had gone stale. (Of course, sometimes an individual will catch a second wind, but that’s another story.)
A year-and-a-half ago I stepped down as clerk of Dover Quarterly Meeting after a six-year term. That meant I had been presiding officer of a fellowship that met four times a year, gathering most of the local Quaker congregations in New Hampshire. (New England Yearly Meeting is the parent body, obviously named.) I was really happy to discover in the Book of Faith and Practice that limit to the length of service in any one post! It was long enough – I had initiated all I could.
More recently, I had hoped to be sending off some new material for you to consider. After a number of upheavals, of a positive sort detailed below, I’m back at writing again – got tied up, though, in some heavy-duty theological drafts rather than “creative” stuff. Things like why “Christ” equals Logos or Light more than Jesus, or why God wanted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit and why their expulsion from the Garden was not the cause of Original Sin, contrary to Augustine’s teaching. Who knows what those whackos in your neck of the woods would make of all that.
Your observation about the lack of time really hits home. It’s a disease or unease of today’s America – something that has received a lot of consideration in our Friends Meeting when we look at what we’d like to accomplish as a faith community, and then what we feel we can volunteer. Or when I debate whether to accept some OT shifts, which would help with all the bills, but decide instead to decline.
And your plans to move hit home, too. Guess the best place to catch up is just to cannibalize from the long-draft of my annual Yule letter from this past winter. Maybe some will resonate. If it doesn’t, skip!
While the flowers demand attention from a block down our street, we’ve found an even better reason to have them: the hummingbirds have a special fondness for bright zinnias in addition to the sunflower trail behind them.
Returning to my native corner of Ohio, I’m astonished by its flatness; what had seemed to be large hills or significant valleys now appear embarrassingly horizontal.
On the other hand, as I’ve uncovered my ancestral roots in that land, I’m finding a lost and untold richness in what was essentially a Pennsylvania Dutch heritage continuing in western Ohio. Feel free to take a look at my findings at the Orphan George Chronicles.
We’re well into the back-to-school swirl. Considering how many Friends teach for a living, it’s a wonder we don’t talk more about what Quakers used to call Sound Doctrine.
Not dogma, creed, doctrinaire, or even indoctrination, mind you. Doctrine, meaning teaching. The essentials for practicing our faith, just as certain skills are needed in mathematics or foreign language. Or, for that matter, for good cooking or carpentry or sewing.
It’s not just the children, either. Some messages arising in worship are basically teaching, and some are admittedly sounder than others, the latter including those that George Fox derided as mere “notions.” (Consider the Quaker who preached that Friends should not disturb the ground to obtain well water, until another spoke out during worship, “And Abraham digged a well,” citing Genesis 21:30 and apparently settling the matter.) Our own reading and inquiry, meanwhile, can be pretty much hit or miss. Who knows about other sources? Film, television, radio? And, as with all teaching, how strict should one be – and how flexible?
If we were passing a hat to collect slips of paper suggesting what should be included in our own “sound doctrine,” what would you write on yours? For that matter, how much would be a matter of content – and how much, process?
Sometime, perhaps, we’ll even have a session to hear our teachers talk a bit about their teaching – both content and method – and a continuing awareness of learning. Or maybe another, to consider all the ways we have learned from each other – and not just matters of faith, either. The progress of my compost bins, after all, is guided in part by eavesdropping on a few after-meeting conversations and their lessons of patience, humility, and renewal.
~*~
This has me wondering, as well, how we might extend a pursuit of “sound doctrine” into our secular circles. Economics, politics, education, even entertainment could all use a dose of what Friends used to call “close labor” – the effort of living with ever greater integrity. Any ideas?
For all of it reputation as the “tax-free state” and “live free or die,” New Hampshire has some pretty convoluted ways of making ends meet. True, we have no sales tax and no income tax, but that simply means finding a lot of nickel-and-dime ways of raising public revenues, starting with a hefty property tax rate. (Renters, of course, get no break on their federal taxes there, either – as I said, convoluted.) And if you dine out, even for breakfast, there’s another big hit, eight percent or so, one of many others. Eventually, it all adds up.
New Hampshire also has a reputation as the go-to state for cheaper liquor, compared to the rest of the Northeast. For all of the official conservative rhetoric of free enterprise, the state clutches its monopoly on the sale of hard liquor, unlike, say, neighboring Massachusetts, with its liberal tradition of neighborhood mom-and-pop “package” stores.
The conflict I see comes in the fact the state is both the regulator of alcoholic beverage sales, ranging from bars to groceries and wine stores and home consumption, and also the distributor. That is, the same agency, the State Liquor Commission, is both the policeman and an active dealer in what it is policing. It’s a situation rife with the potential for favors, favoritism, and outright bribery or corruption. As the Founding Fathers were well aware, whoever polices the police should not be the police. You separate them – the classic separation of powers, each keeping jealous watch over the other.
Not so here in New Hampshire. When it comes to alcohol, the only line of defense might be the Legislature or the Governor and Executive Council as the counterbalance, but that’s not the way it should be, especially when we factor in the possibilities of hefty campaign donations. The enforcer and distributor should be under separate agencies – then, if conflict arises, they appeal to higher authority. As it is, they’re likely to squelch any complainer … or else.
In addition, when it comes to wine, all the supermarkets, grocers, and independent wine shops face a double whammy. They’re required to buy their wine from the state (through the one and only licensed warehouse dealer), even though the state also sells directly against them. In fact, it’s the same agency they must apply to for their very permit to do business in this field. And then the agency adds its own percentage to the product, even if it’s from a winery the state wouldn’t otherwise stock except for the retailers’ order. As I said, convoluted and rife for abuse.
I first noticed this when I found a certain label for sale much cheaper in Massachusetts. Seems the Bay State has one less layer of middleman in the process. So much for the “Taxachusetts” tag we Granite Staters so often brush on our southern neighbor. Tain’t always so.
More recently, I found an example of the state’s monopoly bully at work when a local supermarket was out of several of its more popular varieties. Could it be someone had said something that miffed somebody in the state agency that was supposed to deliver the product, which now was just sitting in the warehouse? Who do you complain to, after all? You can’t switch to a different supplier, either. Where’s the free market free enterprise in this case? The official line may have been that the state was in the midst of shifting from one licensed warehouse operator, which had held the contract for decades, to a new one. But, as the old contractor miffed, the situation “is just the latest example of many where the the commission has cut a special deal” with the new licensee.
For years, I received the weekly release of which bars, restaurants, and convenience stores or supermarkets had their liquor licenses suspended by the State Liquor Commission, usually for underage sales of beverages. Not once did I see a State Liquor Store in that list. Not that they weren’t as prone to violations. As I said, who polices the police?
Yes, New Hampshire gets the revenue. As long as I’m not forced to go to Maine or Massachusetts to get the wine I want, where it’s available, maybe even more cheaply.
Any future MBAs interested in doing a case study? This one could be a doozy.
For much of its history, the Society of Friends forbid the use of engraved gravestones, deeming them vain and superfluous. Even so, another custom emerged, the drafting of memorial minutes for Quakers whose lives might serve as an inspiration for others.
The result was quite different from either the typical obituary or eulogy, and many of them prove surprisingly candid, as genealogists discover. If a eulogy celebrates the person, the memorial minute focuses on the individual’s spiritual life and service, especially in the ways these play out in the world.
Often, the minute would be approved by the local Quaker Meeting and entered into its records. If the individual had been active at a wider level, the minute would also be forwarded to the Quarterly Meeting (a gathering of local meetings that comes together four times a year), where it would be shared and, in due practice, approved. If appropriate, this would be repeated at the larger Yearly Meeting level.
As an example of the practice, here is the nearly finished draft of the minute for one Friend. As a member of the committee that prepared this, I’d like to show the “long” version that includes more of her remarkable career, in contrast to the shortened versions that were approved by the circles of Quaker meetings.
Alanna’s minute was approved by Fresh Pond Monthly Meeting and endorsed by Dover Monthly Meeting, and then accepted by Salem Quarterly Meeting, before being included in the minutes of New England Yearly Meeting’s sessions last month.
Alanna and me early in our friendship.
ALANNA CONNORS
September 25, 1956 – February 2, 2013
From an early age, Alanna Connors discovered a need and a capacity to trust her own compass. She was a mathematician at a place in time where women were seldom found. When her high school math teacher flunked her for excellent work, another teacher told her: “You know he’s giving good grades to boys and not to you, because you’re a girl.” Recounting the story in later years, Alanna said, “I didn’t need that; I knew I could do the math.” She held true to her course.
Long before finding Quakers, Alanna lived the testimony of experiencing God in everyone. While most of us have tight circles of caring – our family, friends, coworkers – Alanna’s circles were as unbounded as a wave expanding to all of space. It seems no accident her profession became looking at objects distant in the universe: across the many communities of her life’s paths, she welcomed all beings. Living with her was a joy; her love for others was never abstract but a centered flame close to her and everyone she touched.
Alanna was born September 25, 1956, in Hong Kong to Richard and Sonia Mitchell Connors. Her mother, who herself had a degree in mathematics and studied with Jean Piaget at the Sorbonne in Paris, ultimately worked as a font designer. Richard learned to fly in his youth and became a pilot with Pan American Airways, stationed in Hong Kong. Through his delight in sailing, his five children all learned to sail. Alanna took the lead, becoming a competitive sailor in her time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Returning to the United States in 1963, Alanna’s family settled in Greenwich, Connecticut. Living with four siblings – one older, Cynthia, and three younger, Kathleen, Noirin, and Patrick – in environments not always centered on these children’s welfare, Alanna developed an immense capacity to listen and extend empathy. Imagination shone through her grade school writings; her elaborate, award-winning gingerbread houses; and family-staged dramas.
Alanna was irrepressibly fascinated by math and science. She thrilled to the elegance of mathematics in expressing, revealing, and predicting physical behaviors. For her, mathematical physics was inseparable from the playfulness, color, artistry, and imagination by which she produced it. Whether it was classroom notes, derivations on scratch paper or napkins, or formal solutions, her handwritten analyses were crafted in flourishing script, vivid with colored pencil illuminations, and playfully annotated with such characteristically inventive words as “whatsit.”
Alanna’s dorm room hosted a wide array of human spirits. Her hotplate, washstand, handmade teapot, and mismatched cups provided hearth and an excuse for tea and convivial warmth at all hours of the night.
She met fellow student Phillip A. Veatch while they were both organizing MIT’s first on-campus food cooperative. After a year of courtship, they exchanged private vows of marriage in 1978, on a basketball court in East Cambridge. Alanna was opposed to the state-sanctioned institution of marriage because of its historical role in the oppression of women.
Communal living, conceived around Alanna’s dorm room, continued into her committed life with Phil through group houses with shared vegetarian cooking. While in Maryland during her doctoral years, they asked all prospective housemates: “Can you have: 1) too much garlic; 2) too much chocolate?” A no answer on both questions was mandatory for joining the group house.
With one housemate, Alanna went “church shopping.” While appreciating the wide span of worship experiences, Alanna gravitated to the Religious Society of Friends in 1982 in Adelphi, Maryland, dragging along her then-reluctant partner. A deep commitment to the Quaker principles of simplicity, peace, integrity, and justice soon enriched both of their lives. They continued at Dover Monthly Meeting in New Hampshire and finally settled at Fresh Pond Monthly Meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1998.
Wanting to understand stars, she became a groundbreaker in charting the sky of X-ray sources. Being of a mind to “like thinking we are all professional visionaries,” Alanna’s deep searches into the distant sky uncovered new observations and questions. After earning her doctorate at the University of Maryland, Alanna made significant contributions to the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory as a research scientist at the Space Science Center at the University of New Hampshire. She introduced astrophysics to Bayesian methods of statistics, which start from an assumption that knowledge about a problem is always incomplete. Applying this rigorous data analysis to X-ray and gamma-ray astrophysics, she provided a foundation for statistical methods generally unknown to astronomers in the early 1990s.
As a banjo player, she encouraged use of the Rise Up Singing songbook, learning by heart its song “Julian of Norwich.” Original lyrics and tunes came to her, either fully formed or developing through writing. Alanna’s spirit still comes to us through the texts and music of the dozen songs she set down in composition.
Despite being an intense introvert, she harbored a lifelong belief in the importance of community-building. She cofounded an astrophysics statistical working group at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. As a senior scientist, she was known for her support of young graduate students. She founded a singing group at Dover Meeting, and while living in Arlington, Massachusetts, enjoyed singing with Nick Page’s Mystic Chorale Singers. After the birth of her son, Roy, in 1999, she worked with other parents to reform special education in the Arlington public schools. She volunteered regularly at New England Yearly Meeting annual sessions working both in child care and the bookstore. She regularly attended the Women’s Group at Fresh Pond Meeting, where she spoke regularly about her concerns in raising her gifted son.
Alanna envisioned and encouraged public science education. She taught astrophysics at Wellesley College as a visiting professor, participated in university physics instruction at UNH and UMD, contributed to public education in science through projects at the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord New Hampshire, c0-organized family science days at her son’s elementary school, and encouraged exploratory science learning and teaching through many other avenues. She had an abiding interest in the history of physics and astronomy from its ancient origins, in welcoming women’s participation in physics, and in celebrating stories of diverse contributors to science.
Alanna was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995. She lived with the disease for 18 years. Characteristically, through its recurrences and treatment, she refused to be defined by the disease and conceived her son, Roy, born in March 1999. To her, the illness was but a single strand of her life. When Roy was 4, her disease recurred, and she took him with her to treatments, where he found the hospital’s high-energy accelerator intensely interesting. Whatever life brought her, she lived with it; she saw illness as no excuse to build walls. When her disease recurred for the last time, in an advanced form, Phil asked if she wanted to go on a special vacation. She did not, preferring to live in her callings.
At Dover Meeting, 1988-1998, she rotated through nearly every committee but also stayed long on Buildings and Grounds. During the first Persian Gulf War, Dover Friends called on her to write a compelling minute explaining the Meeting’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq and Kuwait. Phil and Alanna were lifelong advocates of same-sex marriage. When they decided for Roy’s sake to get legally married, they would not seek marriage under the care of Dover, as that meeting had not yet completed its process of hosting marriages for same gender (it has since done so).
During her time at Fresh Pond, her participation in committee work was limited by parenting and the recurrences and treatments of breast cancer. She was, however, a quiet and regular presence at Meeting for Business and an infrequent but powerful minister during Meeting for Worship, where her ministry was often structured around song.
Just as she knew not to take to heart a teacher’s censure that could have devastated a young mathematician, Alanna maintained integrity without ceding herself, her work, or others to be diminished. Mathematics was one route by which she independently investigated, questioned, and confirmed the truth for herself without relying on the claims of teachers and other external authorities. She stood up for discovering and expressing the full potential of one’s mind and heart, inspiring those around her to undertake aspirations and risks of which they did not suppose themselves to be capable. She knew greater being lies imminent within us all. Whether it was the rights of any couple to publicly live their committed love or a child’s mind emerging along ways and curiosities differing from the school norm, Alanna honored and worked for the fuller life she knew to be there.
Alanna’s spirit lives with us and continues to teach us. We remember her implacable but gentle striving to see the truth and to tell it. The women of Fresh Pond recall Alanna’s intense, powerful mothering, against all odds. Throughout her life she resisted the limits and distortions that social norms can impose on our vision of others. Knowing that a prism takes a beam of light and separates it into many separate parts, Alanna lived her life striving to bring the many separate parts of our world together into one shining beam.
Her memorial service was March 2, 2013, in the Wellesley Friends meetinghouse under the care of Fresh Pond Meeting. She was 56.
In the aftermath of major disasters, the wire services run a list of victims, something I used to think was to inform the editors of local newspapers of potential links to their own circulation area. But then my boss told me to run them.
“Why?” I asked. “We don’t have that much space for wire news.” Meaning national and international stories.
“Everybody’s from somewhere,” he answered. And I soon learned how true that was.
In fact, here in New Hampshire, we’ve come to expect a Granite State angle in almost every breaking story.
