I descend from revolutionaries and religious radicals

I was reading the family genealogy and came across another ancestor, John Rush, who fought against the redcoats in the Revolution.  And was also another Quaker, from a family that were some of the very first Quakers.

By the way, the name Quaker was one of the names various dissenting religious groups got tagged with by the English in the 17th century; others were Diggers, Seekers and Ranters.

 The family hailed from Hornton in Oxfordshire, England, probably living there for centuries. But the direct ancestor of my American Rushes was Captain John "Old Trooper" Rush (1620–1699). He served as a cavalry commander in Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army during the English Civil War, and converted to Quakerism in 1660. He and his family followed the William Penn colonists to America in 1683. They settled along Poquessing Creek in Byberry, Pennsylvania. 

I found it interesting that he is the ancestor of Dr. Benjamin Rush, surgeon, abolitionist, women's rights advocate, professor of chemistry, Christian Universalist and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It seems I am descended from a long line of radical Protestants who believed in liberty of conscience and who were also equally radical republican egalitarians. Nutters all, the English aristocrats would have called them. But they kicked King Charles's ass and King George's, too. And created America, God's own country, as they used to call it. 

We have a copy of The Soldier's Bible, the version published by the American Tract Society for Union troops during the Civil War. The original was created by Cromwell for his army, condensed from the Geneva Bible, mostly from the Old Testament.

It's baffling to me how much religious hatred there was in Europe in those days between Protestants and Catholics.  My Anabaptist German ancestors, the Dunkards, were tortured and burned alive by the Catholics and fled to America to escape them. The Martyr's Mirror recounts the horror in detail. There was Bloody Mary in England, and Cromwell did turnabout on the Catholics.  Then there was the Thirty Years War. I guess none of those guys had any use for Matthew Chapters 5 through 7, which to me is the heart of Christianity, and what I always try to keep in mind, despite my doubts and skepticism about, well, everything. Considering that those who founded our country emerged from that intolerant, murderous era, it is remarkable that America embraced from the beginning religious tolerance and freedom of religion as a fundamental tenet. I think it speaks well of us as a people. It was that liberty of conscience thing come to fruition on a fresh new continent.

Anyway, my John Rush was a member of the Sons of Liberty.  He fought at Brandywine, Germantown, White Marsh, Red Bank and the Siege of Ft. Mifflin, where he was badly wounded, having his leg and arm amputated. He was just sixteen years old. He had earlier survived the brutal Paoli Massacre, where the Brits showed no mercy, refusing to accept the surrender of wounded Americans and bayoneting them. If Rush had been killed in that massacre would I exist today?  I guess not.

Another of my ancestors, William Hebb, also fought at Brandywine and Germantown. I wonder if they knew each other. Hebb also survived a brutal assault by the Brits, the Baylor Massacre, when again the redcoats refused to accept the surrender of wounded Americans and bayoneted them. The behavior of the British against us in the Revolution was so monstrous that even a century later John Hay could tell Rudyard Kipling that the only thing that held the United States together was hatred of Britain. 

Oh, after the Revolution Hebb was such a vigorous abolitionist that he was chased out of the Old Dominion and settled in what is now West Virginia. Five of his great-grandsons served in the Union army.

One of the many oddities of history is that in the 20th century we fought on the side of Britain, our old arch foe, and they formed what they called "the special relationship" with us.

"Now, I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also. But when a man’s religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him."
~ Ishmael, Moby Dick

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking about you

 “If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca 

“So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near―
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you ...."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince  

 “I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until the moment I was lifted and struck.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

 C'est tellement mystérieux, le pays des larmes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you know what time it is?

It's later than you think.

 It's later than anyone thinks.

 

 

Lastly, you who read; aye, you

Who this very line may scan:

Think of all you planned to do ...   

Have you done the best you can?

See! the tavern lights are low;

Black’s the night, and how you shrink!

God! and is it time to go?

Ah! the clock is always slow;

It is later than you think;

Sadly later than you think;

Far, far later than you think.

~ Robert W. Service

 

 

 

 

Reading

 I published this in an old blog I had, October 27, 2017. Since Annie Dillard passed away today, I thought I'd republish it.  Kathy Shaidle, the Canadian poet and social commenter, sent me a nice note about it. She liked Dillard, too, I guess. And reading. Shaidle has since passed away. She was an interesting person.  I learned a lot from her movie reviews, more than just about the movies. At one time she tried to be a "sex pot" but failed. She wrote about it. She did not know where her mother was buried and did not care. 

N.C. Wyeth, cover illustration for the March, 1922, issue of The Ladies Home Journal.

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” 
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of my favorite things to do is read.  It always has been, but I don't read now the way I read when I was younger.  Then, reading was a special, private door into an unknown and fabulous world of elsewhere, othertime and otherness.  Now I know they're just books.

“Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.” 
 
“I read with pure, exhilarating greed....  Books swept me away, one after the other, this way and that; I made endless vows according to their lights, for I believed them.”

"When you open a book,” the sentimental library posters said, “anything can happen.” This was so. A book of fiction was a bomb. It was a land mine you wanted to go off. You wanted it to blow your whole day. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of books were duds. They had been rusting out of everyone’s way for so long that they no longer worked. There was no way to distinguish the duds from the live mines except to throw yourself at them headlong, one by one.” 
 
“What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. I wanted strength, not tea parties. What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you could live.”  


“Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy and a secret hope: There is a life worth living where history is still taking place; there are ideas worth dying for, and circumstances where courage is still prized.”

~ Annie Dillard,  An American Childhood 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bra ha ha

 I don't wear a bra unless I have to and have been that way since puberty. I hate the things. And I recently read an article that supported my choice with, apparently, scientific evidence that bras cause all kinds of physical problems and don't prevent anything.

The study by a French sports scientist named Jean-Denis Rouillon followed 330 women who stopped wearing brass, ages 18 to 35,  over a span of 15 years, comparing them to a control group of women who continued to wear bras.  The results: For those who did not wear bras, breast tissue became firmer, not looser. Nipple position lifted, on average, by 7 millimeters per year. The internal supporting structures of the chest — Cooper’s ligaments, the pectoral muscles, the connective tissue — became measurably more active and more effective at holding tissue in position. 

The study was done in the early 2000s and there have been no follow-ups that I found, but it does seem to, um, uphold my impression.  Bras are necessary sometimes  — vigorous movements are uncomfortable without them. Guys may like looking at boobs bouncing up and down under your blouse or shirt but it is annoying (the bouncing, and sometimes the looking) and can even be a bit painful. Another reason is to be polite in public and not attract attention when it's inappropriate.

But otherwise I like to let the girls breathe free.  And that's not just a phrase.  Bras cause sweating, chaffing and other discomfort.  The sweat that can't evaporate causes rashes, even  back acne where the bra strap wraps around behind you. When I do wear a bra, it's such a relief to take the darn thing off. 

My breasts are naturally firm and don't sag. That seems to run in the women of my family.  My mom still has a nice rack and she rarely bothers with a bra, too.  I think I got the aversion to them from her.  She tells me her mother, my grandmother, also had firm breasts.  I remember her but honestly never paid any attention to her boobs.  I only mention my mother's breasts because we've talked about this, concluding some women need the support of a good bra and others, such as we, do not.  But we all need to wear a bra in public situations for the sake of decorum and social expectations.   

These days I only wear a bra when I go into town or have a business meeting. People assume certain things about you if you don't wear a bra, especially if you are on the large size, and who needs that when you are just running errands, and you certainly don't want any attention to your physical endowments when you are talking important matters and expect to be taken seriously.

But around the ranch on normal days, I almost never wear a bra. If I'm meeting people about ranch business, of course I do.

I wonder if bras will eventually become out of style, like girdles. Who wears a girdle anymore?  They used to be a common undergarment but I don't think I've ever seen one for sale when I've been out shopping. Maybe they are, but I just haven't noticed.  If I did, I would think they were some sort of prosthetic device or something. 

Hosiery is another item of wear that seems to be almost gone.  In my grandmother's day, nylon stockings were a must, held up by garter belts that you lashed on over your underpants. What a pain. In my mother's day that gave way to panty hose and now most people don't bother with stockings at all. Supposedly, they are making a come-back, but I wonder. I enjoy wearing thigh-highs and knee socks; I do it because it's a style I like.  But among the women I know, stockings are just one more thing not to have to bother with.  I can see a day when bras will be considered the same way.

If you watch old movies, especially pre-code ones, it's obvious the women aren't wearing bras. Or if they are, they are very flimsy. The modern support bra doesn't seem to have become common until the 1940s sweater girl era when bras were used to emphasize the shape of the breasts under the sweater.  Then came the Fifties with the nose-cone pointy bras. Ridiculous. But with the Sixties came the topless bathing suit, which turned out to be a, um, flop. Still, it was a sign the times were a-changing. Then came Carol Doda, who I think was the first topless dancer in 1964. A rock formation in Yosemite is named Doda Dome in honor of her.  (I just looked that up!)

Then in the Seventies came bra-burning in the name of women's liberation.  Guys may wonder what the connection was, but that one of the first things women did to express their "liberation" was torch their stupid bras tells you how much the things are hated.

Of course, men were baffled because they just think of breasts as sex objects -- sweater puppies, whoopie cushions. So letting them free seemed like some form of provocativeness, which it wasn't.

I especially hate to wear a bra when I am nursing and my breasts are leaking, swelling with milk, contracting after feeding. Clogged milk ducts, mastitis, thrush, even reduced milk production...gawd. All that goes away for me when I don't wear a bra. Okay, guys, if you want to look at my stupid boobs, look. Like you've never seen tits before. I don't care.  Of course, as I said, if I must go out in public, I have to bra up and strap on a nursing bra for the duration.  But I hate it. I think I said that.  Haha. 

Anyway, what a relief it is not to have to armor-up before going out the way women did back in the day, with granny panties, bullet-bra, girdle, stockings and garter belt. These days that's all history.  I have run down to the post office wearing just a sun dress and nothing more. There would have been a time not all that long ago when, had I done so, I would have been arrested.  These days the only thing that might happen is that one of the loafers lounging in front of the general store next door will say, "Oh, honey, you just made my day!" 

 

 

 

 

 

September

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 September was when it began.
Locusts dying in the fields; our dogs
Silent, moving like shadows on a wall;
And strange worms crawling; flies of a kind
We had never seen before; huge vineyard moths;
Badgers and snakes, abandoning
Their holes in the field; the fruit gone rotten;
Queer fungi sprouting; the fields and woods
Covered with spiderwebs; black vapors
Rising from the earth - all these,
And more began that fall. Ravens flew round
The hospital in pairs. Where there was water,
We could hear the sound of beating clothes
All through the night. We could not count
All the miscarriages, the quarrels, the jealousies.
And one day in a field I saw
A swarm of frogs, swollen and hideous,
Hundreds upon hundreds, sitting on each other,
Huddled together, silent, ominous,
And heard the sound of rushing wind.
~ Weldon Kees

 Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
~ Carl Sandburg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So full, so shaken

 

“There are moments in life when the heart is so full of emotion

that if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble

Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret,

Spilled on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The past superimposed on the present

It's funny how you think about the oddest things, unconnected stray thoughts bubbling up from your past when you are tired, sleep-deprived, dealing with stress caused by multiple things.  

Like, I was wide awake, nursing, and I suddenly believed with absolute certainty that I was still in the Navy and I had to fly that day and I began thinking how I could get in the cockpit without anyone seeing my baby and how I was going to manage nursing her.  I was really puzzling that out and turning over different methods in my mind for several minutes -- and no, I wasn't dreaming: I was fully awake, aware of a blue jay squawking at a cat outside the open window, looking at the apples on the apple tree down the yard. Yet I was feeling a fresh sea breeze in my face while smelling a funk blended of JP-5, jet exhaust, hydraulic fluid, laundry soap, greasy, oily, steamy fumes -- that good old carrier smell. At the same time, I was in the cockpit, airborne, feeling that constant, deep-seated rumble from the engines, aware of the rush of wind just inches away outside the canopy, my shoulders warm from the sun...all of it.

I mention this because I just made a post about a test I took that told me my personality was such that I am not susceptible to these sorts of phantasms. And I thought the test revealed an accurate aspect of my personality.  I ain't no Terrence McKenna. But, nonetheless, there I was in the midst of a kind of secular rapture, for lack of a better description.

I guess there actually is a reason saints and mystics and seekers disappear into the desert or the mountain reaches, fast and flagellate until they begin having visions.  American Indians went on vision quests to discover their spirit animal. Such a quest would involve something like running non-stop for three days without eating or drinking until you collapsed and began having visions, hallucinating  on the verge of death, at which point your spirit animal would reveal itself to you. It seems that even I am susceptible to that, at least to some degree. Not a fan of it. Won't pursue it. The here and now is good enough for me. I have enough trouble trying to understand that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baby blues

 Worst I've ever experienced.  I would nod off without knowing it for a few minutes and wake up crying, calling out for my husband. I was terrified he was going to die and then I realized that he had and I just totally crashed emotionally.

Thank God my mom has been here with me. 

My lower body feels like I've been beaten with a baseball bat, really heavy bleeding, lots of big clots, my stupid boobs are swollen, sore and throbbing. My...oh, never mind. It may be worse that it ever has been, but I know it will pass.  I just have to hang on to that thought. 

And you know what? I have a baby girl! I almost didn't. But I do!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, gee whiz

 Sigh.  I guess my plans to become a mystic on a mountain top shall come to naught. 

Bummer, man.

Well, at least this explains why I can't become hypnotized -- I volunteered for that during a college class and it totally didn't work. I thought about faking it for the lulz but I didn't. 

(I have pretended to be hypnotized in other circumstances so I could do things I otherwise wouldn't do -- I had no control over what I did! I was hypnotized! And a swell time was had by all. Heh.)

It also explains why sciencey stuff is my thing while touchy-feely, woo-woo stuff is not.  I guess it also explains why I become bored in church or with philosophical blathering, psychoanalysis, dream interpretation....  I tend to view it all as phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock and roll. I try not to.  I really do. I do want to believe. And once in a while I manage it. But there is always this little voice at the back of my mind giving the raspberry to it all. 

 

 

If y'all want to take this yhar test, here she be.

Speaking of accents -- we were weren't we? No? Well, Ima segue anyhoo -- I was at a roadside rest stop sitting at a picnic table waiting for my mom while she visited the restroom and a couple was walking nearby. The woman was looking at the sky and suddenly she stopped and stared at something.  Then she pointed and said to her husband (I assume), "Is that a flyink sawsuh?" 

He looked where she pointed, shading his eyes with his hand. "Well, it's certainly something," he said. "I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before."

I looked where they were looking and saw far up in the sky a buzzard (okay, a vulture) lazily circling, riding a thermal. A pretty common sight in these parts. I assumed the couple were tourists from back east somewhere, New York or thereabouts, city people unfamiliar with nature.  I thought about telling them what they were watching was a bird, or, as I suppose the woman would have said, a boid, but I didn't. Let them believe they were seeing something outré they could tell their friends about.

I guess that anecdote expresses my practical mindset.  If I see something unfamiliar in the sky, I don't automatically leap to the conclusion that it is an alien spacecraft from another planet piloted by little green men out to kidnap nubile babes and steal their orgone energy. I just go, "Huh, wonder what that is." 

See? I'm so dull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I have lots of things to write about but my mind is kind of out of focus these days, casualty of a psychological IED, if you will.  But a good night's sleep or two will take care of it in the by and by. Been here before but this time has been a little rougher for...reasons. Nomsayn?

“Discouragement is a moral state, a failure of heart; you treat it by taking courage, not Prozac.”
― David Gelernter 

 “'Last forever!' Who hasn't prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying.” 
― Annie Dillard 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old -- and not so old -- couples

A repost from May 9, 2023.  Neither my mother nor I knew what was waiting for us in the months to come.  Sometimes they don't abandon you, God takes them from you. What might the next years take from us? My mind shies away....

_____________________________ 

 What makes a marriage last?

I've asked both my mom and dad that.  Boomers, they married late after having very rich and, some would say, adventuresome youths -- my father being a naval aviator participating in Linebacker II, the Christmas bombing, etc., during the Viet Nam War, my mother being an Army nurse during the same conflict and then a volunteer with the Barsky Unit of CMRI in Saigon after her service.  They'd both seen a lot of the world, including visiting the Soviet Union; in fact they first met on a ship sailing from Yokohama to Vladivostok, although they didn't date seriously for a couple of years after and marry a couple of years after that.  Then, once they married, we kids, two brothers and me, the youngest, came along some years after that.  And this year they will celebrate their 46th wedding anniversary.

Watching their interactions, it's clear they enjoy each other's company and are happy and comfortable together.  They will sit in the sun room and talk with each other for, it seems, hours about any subject under the sun -- current politics, the stock market, friends and relatives, their careers, places they been and things they've done, recipes and what to have for dinner, their children and grandchildren...just anything.  Now and again, they fall silent.  One may gaze out the window while the other reads something or checks his or her phone, then the conversation picks up again.  

Of course, that's not their whole day, and often they are apart for most of it, if not all of it, doing their separate things. And of course, when they  were working, often they would be apart for long stretches.  When my father was on a cruise, he would be gone for months.  During the Gulf War, he was away for eleven months. 

So what's the secret to their long marriage?  They shrug.  They don't know.  Just take it easy, don't be a self-centered jerk, be considerate, think of the other person first, always remember why you fell in love with them, and so forth.

But I think there could also be a predisposition to staying married, an inherited or genetic component.  One of my sets of grandparents were married for 51 years before the husband died, and another set was married for 68 years before the husband died.  Neither wife remarried, not that that was realistically expected to happen at their ages -- at least, I wouldn't think so.  

My mother did say, when we talked about this, that you should not rush into marriage hastily, but get to know the person quite well, analyze your own emotions and make sure you are not projecting a personality on the individual that is not really theirs.  Don't ignore or dismiss their faults but think about whether you can live with them.  And don't ignore or dismiss your own faults.  Be pitiless in your self-evaluation.  Try to see yourself as the other person sees you.

I would add, based on my experience, imagine what it would be like if the person you love, whose life means more to you than your own, should abandon you.  What black depths of despair would you endure?  Why would you let that happen? So, dear friend, do all that you can do to see that that never, ever happens.  Love, yes.  But also be worthy yourself of being loved.

 Two musical takes on the same thing; if you can do anything to prevent it happening to you, do so: