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I light this candle for you,
but it’s really for me.
I need its flame to remember who I
am by recalling who you were.
For twenty-four hours memories flood
the house like the scent of cookies baking,
meals and laughter. Even icy words and brittle
promises leave my heart strangely warmed.
By wax and wick you refreshen time
so long as I can strike a match.
(For my Grandmother, Pauline Wolberg. "Memory of the righteous shall be for a blessing." Proverbs 10:7)
Veteran travelers on I-84 from Hartford, Connecticut to Massachusetts may remember the neatly groomed softball diamonds of the New England SportsPlex at exit 67. When it closed years ago, weeds began growing through the infield dirt and soon the grass became so tall it obscured the pitcher’s mound. In a few years, woody brush and vines grew so dense as to obscure the fences, dugouts and other infrastructure. Now trees and shrubs are so thick the site is barely recognizable. Eyed by Home Depot for a big box store and garden center in the face of stiff opposition that stalled new development, nature continues to reclaim the spot.
Connecticut is one of the nation’s most densely populated states. But with the accelerating spread of structures and pavement over the landscape during the past two centuries, we sometimes lose sight of nature’s resilience in this temperate, well watered part of the country. Without constant maintenance, it doesn’t take long for buildings, roads and other construction to degrade and even disappear under relentless assault from water, ice, vegetation and like natural processes. Of course, nature doesn’t return as it was or always with the same or even similar ecological values. But her relentless progression reminds us that our sense of the permanence of human works is often exaggerated.
Continue reading "Back to Nature: Weedy Assaults on Abandoned Buildings" »
Most folks I know reveled recently at “ringing in” the New Year. For my wife Mary and me, “ringing in” every week has become a ritual as we listen to the deep, vibratory gong of the Congregational church bell a few doors down from home. We’re not church-goers, but delight in the bell’s big voice saying “welcome” to the new week each Sunday morning. It greets us as we awaken from a busy Saturday night, while we have breakfast, or on a morning walk. When we’re away or a storm cancels services we find ourselves at a loss.
Bells “sounded the cadence of everyday life” in colonial New England, observes history professor Richard Cullen Rath. Funeral and wedding bells marked individual rites of passage and bells gathered communities for worship and town meetings. Some places enacted laws requiring residents to live within the sound of its bells. With clocks ubiquitous on wrists, walls and in all manner of electronic devices bells are no longer necessary to call people together, yet there continues a passion for ringing them.
Ringing bells is “an act of sonic identity,” Rath notes. They vary in their volume, tone and resonance and are the very speech of a community. “Just as we do not know a man by his face and manner only but wait to hear his voice,” wrote literature scholar and Connecticut lieutenant governor Odell Shepard, “so we cannot be sure about a town until we have heard its bell. It sings for all that we have found to say in answer to the songs of the earth and sky.” Each place’s bells have local accents, a distinct elocution and cadence. Not only the size and composition of a bell makes it distinctive, but its sound is affected by the nature of the belfry and nearby buildings and topography.
