Barbara Rodgers

wreaths by the sea

Mystic Seaport ~ 12.17.11 ~ Mystic, Connecticut

Yesterday we decided to take advantage of our new membership to visit our local living history museum, Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America & The Sea, to see what Christmas might have been like around here in the 1800s. The museum has a shipyard that is currently restoring the whaleship Charles W. Morgan, other historic ships, a coastal village, a planetarium and indoor exhibit galleries.

(above) Undecorated Christmas tree atop the main mast of the training ship Joseph Conrad, indicating that this vessel will be in port on Christmas.

Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you – smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, “Come and find out.”
~ Joseph Conrad
(Heart of Darkness)

I have to admit at first I was a disappointed, somehow expecting to walk into a twinkling winter wonderland. But later I remembered that they didn’t have electricity back then! Candlelight was an ever-present fire hazard. And it wasn’t until after the mid-1800s that Christmas trees became popular. So Christmas was not such a big thing at that time. In fact, the shopkeeper (below) at Stone’s General Store explained to us that no one expected to receive more than a single homemade gift. And that if we didn’t see what we needed to make our gifts in her store, then she would be pleased to order the items for us.

Even in the homes of the wealthy the holiday decor was simple. I love the winter afternoon sun filtering through the curtains (below) in the Thomas Greenman House parlor.

We stopped by the Mystic Print Shop and, with close supervision, I was allowed to print my own 19th-century Christmas card on an old press. Christmas cards were then the “latest” rage in Victorian fashion.

There were wreaths on every door in the seafaring village and on some of the windows, too. For the present I leave you with pictures of a few of them!

in the thrall of winter’s solstice

Because I am an early bird and a creature of habit, every morning I lay out in little trays our morning prescription meds (4 for Tim and 3 for me) and vitamins. A couple of days ago I suddenly realized that I had just taken most of Tim’s pills and vitamins. The shock paralyzed me for a few moments. Am I losing my mind??? For the rest of the day I worried about the effect his pills would have on me – one of them was definitely just for men – and worried about my brain’s increasing inability to pay attention. A few days later now and I’m still here and breathing so evidently no lasting harm done.

I’ve always been too easily startled and confused. And like most dreamers I do spend an inordinate amount of time living in my head. (One reason I was a sympathetic fan of the J.D. character on “Scrubs.”) But this latest episode was most unsettling. And I can’t even remember what thoughts were distracting me when it happened.

Mid-December is thus one of the most positively magical times of the year. Things are possible during December’s darkening days that are not even dreamt of at other spokes of the Wheel of the Year. We should use this magic as a vehicle for deepening our awareness of the world around us and preparing our souls for the ongoing pilgrimage of our lives. A seeker of Wisdom in the thrall of Winter’s Solstice should consider their celebrations as a spiritual pilgrimage or even a quest, during which, through the disciplined use of the spiritual imagination, he or she may encounter one’s own truest self along the way and in communion with Spirit.
~ Montague Whitsel
(The Fires of Yule)

Years ago in therapy I learned that if one feels weird on a particular day for no apparent reason it is sometimes helpful to see if it is an anniversary of some event that has left unresolved feelings lurking around in the subconscious mind. I didn’t have to dig too far to figure it out… But after figuring it out I had to deal with the feelings of regret and sadness and the fact that some situations don’t lend themselves to being neatly settled once and for all. Collateral damage from my spiritual quest… But deepening my awareness of the world around me, and inside my head, has helped.

No kids around this year to decorate the Tree so Tim cut a small one and I decorated it myself. Tim’s been working 17 days straight and I’ve been trying out vegan holiday recipes for our Solstice Party. Still haven’t completely settled on a menu. And we’ll be going up to see Dad and Auntie for Christmas. So it will be a subdued holiday season, but that’s OK, I’m content with the blessings we have.

by moonlight harder still

biggest, brightest full moon of 2008
12.12.08 ~ Groton, Connecticut

Should at that moment the full moon
Step forth upon the hill,
And memories hard to bear at noon,
By moonlight harder still,
Form in the shadows of the trees, –
Things that you could not spare
And live, or so you thought, yet these
All gone, and you still there,
A man no longer what he was,
Not yet the thing he planned…
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Wine from These Grapes)

sky, frost, starlight

in the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
the creak of boots.
rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.
~ Gary Snyder
(Pine Tree Tops)

inconceivable mystery

"Autumn Flowers & Moon" by Sakai Hōitsu — “Autumn Flowers & Moon” by Sakai Hōitsu

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
~ Joseph Conrad
(Lord Jim)

a sacred gift

"Einstein’s Vision" supercomputer image by NASA — “Einstein’s Vision” supercomputer image by NASA

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
~ Albert Einstein
(The G.O.D. Experiments: How Science Is Discovering God in Everything)

The metaphoric mind includes rationality, linearity, and logic – for it created them. But like some children, the rational mind often seems embarrassed by the presence of its parents.
~ Bob Samples
(The Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness)

giving thanks

As the four of us piled into the car one night to pick up some pizza at Z Pizza, I realized that this was the last Thanksgiving all four of us will be in our 50s – next year Tim will be 60. Where did all the years go???

Again we took the train to Washington, DC and then the Metro to Springfield, where Tim’s brother Dan picked us up after his session in Cardiac Rehab. There was so much to talk about, and so many notes to compare… The household cats (Baby above, Tammy below) took little notice of our arrival.

The new plant-based diet was a hot topic, and the guys decided to make some pasta from scratch, with a pasta machine Dan dragged out from storage in the garage. They used a broomstick to hang the pasta – after cleaning the stick part thoroughly. It was fun listening to them solve logistical problems as they went along. And the pasta was such a hit that they made it again a couple of days later!

Tim and Dan ~ 11.23.11 ~ Woodbridge, Virginia

After a few days I was totally hooked on the cappuccinos Dan made with soy milk. One night on CNN we all watched with great interest, Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: The Last Heart Attack. We did wind up having a turkey, and one night some salmon, but other than that we enjoyed vegan and vegetarian fare, Fran inventing a gluten-free vegan lasagne that was out of this world!

Below – Baby anticipating her share of the Thanksgiving feast…

A lovely centerpiece on the coffee table…

While Tim and Dan went golfing on Friday, Fran and I went shopping in historic Occoquan, Virginia, where there was not a Black Friday deal in sight, and a friendly gnome reminded dog owners to mind their manners. 🙂

At the Golden Goose I was thrilled to find a Norwegian Julenissen (Santa) figurine, five and a half inches high! I’m sure he will show up soon on this blog if I get a good picture of him while decorating for the holidays…

We had a great lunch at The Blue Arbor Café…

Whimsical rest room signs…

And this is pretty much when the picture-taking ended – I was having too much fun to continue!

Saturday Fran and I took the two Freds out for lunch at the Sunflower Vegetarian Restaurant. Fred and Fred have been friends for over thirty years. One is blind from birth and the other is intellectually disabled. They had no one to share Thanksgiving with so Fran wanted to do something special for them. She was afraid these meat lovers would balk at the idea of eating at a vegetarian restaurant, but they came along with open minds and really enjoyed their selections. I had the yummy Eggplant Medley.

Sunday we all went to see The Descendants, which was an excellent movie. Then the guys went to wash the car and make more pasta while Fran and I shopped at Ten Thousand Villages in Alexandria, a Fair Trade retailer. I bought two blue egg ornaments from Peru, looking into the cut-outs there are little snowman families inside. The cashier wrapped them very carefully for the train ride home on Monday.

Tim gave Dan a bottle of port which should not be opened until 2018. That’s seven years from now, a goal for them to look forward to as they adopt this new plant-eating lifestyle in order to reverse their heart disease and beat the odds. Here’s to family and life!

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.
~ Hippocrates
(Regimen in Health, Book IX)

embracing life

“Sunlight on the Coast” by Winslow Homer

One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found – and it is found in terrible places… For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
~ James Baldwin
(Fumbling Toward Divinity: The Adoption Scriptures)

memory is fragile

"Reading Woman" by August Macke — “Reading Woman” by August Macke

At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. … That’s why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory.
~ Isabel Allende
(The House of the Spirits)