REDEMPTION

Redemption, the act of being saved from error, sin or evil, is not always a great, substantial event. Sometimes it occurs as just a tiny burst of illumination, come and gone as unexpectedly and fleeting as a butterfly alighting for a second on your knee. If you're looking in the wrong direction, you miss it.

 

Recently I experienced just such a moment of redemption at a Christmas Yankee Swap party, the kind at which everyone brings a wrapped present to be opened one by one. The only rule is that as you pick your present, you can swap it for any other gift already opened.

 

Very good or very bad swap presents create the most fun because you can give or get either. Some years ago I was invited to a Yankee Swap and ended up, amid much snickering, with a jigsaw puzzle of a massively overweight, naked man holding a strategically placed wash cloth as he climbed out of a claw-footed bathtub. When I divulged the next year that I had thrown it away in disgust, everyone was horrified. Apparently the puzzle was a beloved tradition that had been passed around for years.

 

So this week, I arrived late at a Christmas party with artist and writer friends as the Yankee Swap began, and I just had time for a quick sip of wine before my name was called to pick a present. Opening it I discovered a charming, bright 4”X6” pastel original signed by a friend. I loved it and immediately began thinking where to place it.

 

Several gifts later someone opened a picture frame for a 25^th wedding anniversary. “I’m divorced,” she declared. “This is definitely getting passed on." She walked around the room looking over the opened gifts, then stopped in front of me to examine the little pastel.

 

"Sorry," she said, grinning as she claimed it and handed me the wedding anniversary picture frame. I smiled as I gave it up, mildly disappointed, however, in the spirit of things I liked knowing the new owner would enjoy it and decided to ask the artist for another one of her prints.

 

Then it hit me. I was replaying an old sad tape but I finally got the ending right. This was a moment of redemption.

 

Years ago, the first Christmas after my husband and I ended a 20-year marriage I was at a party for new singles. I hated my unwelcome new identity and every Christmasy reminder of the changes in my life. At the event’s Yankee Swap I drew a set of Christmas candleholders, colorful little wooden baby blocks that spelled out "Merry Christmas." I was delighted and began thinking where I could place them. The game was nearly over when a swapper came up to me, holding out her gift to me.

 

But I couldn’t hand mine over. I felt close to crying at relinquishing the one good thing at this miserable occasion. She was an older woman. She looked into my face and immediately saw my distress. "You want to keep it, don't you?" I nodded, mortified but helpless to deny it. "I'll pick something else," she said to me quietly, and moved on. I felt ashamed, acting like a child who refused to share, but, still, relieved to keep the blocks and grateful that more had not been asked of me.

 

So, this week, decades later, I am again at a Christmas Yankee Swap and the gift I was so pleased to receive was again being taken. But this time I laughed as I handed it over, my vulnerability and fragility long gone. It felt good to respond as I wished I had years ago. I had been given another chance to get it right.

Today as I took out the little wooden blocks I’ve always associated with a Christmas kindness and my own frailty, I felt somehow cleansed, unburdened. I thought of the deep wisdom of the Shaker song’s lyrics that say “by turning, turning, we come round right.” So I had and so it has.

 

Redemption, like other fine gifts, can arrive in very small packages.  

MEMORIAL DAY

Memorial Day is an occasion to remember those who gave their lives in military service. Maybe it can also be a time to reflect on lives that were spared. The following post relates the circumstances and research for my biography Nature’s Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess that linked together a 19^th century Civil War naval officer, a 20^th century American children’s author, and a  21^st century biographer.  

When children’s author and naturalist Thornton Burgess was born in 1874, the scars in his Cape Cod birthplace had barely begun to heal from Civil War tragedies. If hundreds of thousands of lives were lost by the war’s end in April, 1865, millions more were devastated as families and communities struggled to adjust to missing, dead and maimed sons, husbands, fathers, friends, local leaders, tradesmen, and workers. There were fifty-six deaths in Burgess’ small hometown of Sandwich, Massachusetts alone.

One Civil War veteran who returned home to Sandwich, perhaps miraculously, was Captain Charles I. Gibbs. As a naval officer he had survived fierce battles at Fort Jackson, New Orleans, Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Mobile Bay, and at the Union blockage of the Mississippi. He described the details of one engagement to a family member:

This morning we have passed Vicksburg, through one of the heaviest fires from rifled and shell guns that you can imagine… A man was knocked down and had his head split open so near me that we were touching each other. My old friend and messmate master’s mate Howard Moffatt, lost his left arm. I have also to report the death of Thomas Flaherty, formerly an operative in the Boston and Sandwich Glass Works. He had both legs and part of one hand shot off, and died in about an hour. He was knocked down by a shell while bravely fighting at his gun, and died a hero; without a murmur. I am safe and ready for another fight. 

 

 (Yarmouth Register, July 18, 1862, courtesy of Sandwich Archives)

 

The same year Gibbs was fighting at Vicksburg, his father-in-law, Henry Hunt, Esq. sold or gave a large, two-story house on School Street to his daughter, Louisa Antoinette Hunt, who was Gibb’s wife. In the early 1870s the Gibbses rented at least part of the house to a young couple, Caroline and Thornton Burgess. Both Charles and Thornton undoubtedly knew each other and it is not unlikely that they were distantly related.

During a January snowstorm in 1874, Caroline, pregnant with her first child, gave birth at home to Thornton W. Burgess, Jr. Three weeks later, her landlady Louisa, who was pregnant with her last child, one of six, gave birth to Rufus Marmaduke in Hyannis. Within a year, both Caroline’s husband and Louisa’s baby would be dead.

Lives change and people must revise dreams and expectations. A new widow, Caroline Burgess and her baby moved in with her uncle who lived nearby in the village. The Gibbses sold 6 School Street in 1875, however, they left behind something wonderful that was accidentally discovered 106 years later.

In 1981 my husband David and I bought the old house at 6 School Street which badly needed repair and refurbishing. One day we stopped to check on the progress of electrician Dave Gove who was working on wiring in the attic. He had gone home for the day, but left for us something on the hallway stairs. A note said he had found it under wooden floorboards in the attic.

It was a packet of letters, no envelopes, tied together with a slim, blue silk ribbon.

Flowing handwriting made by an ink-dipped pen suggested the letters’ antiquity, but the heading on the first page confirmed it: “U.S.S. Sloop of War Richmond, off Pas al Centro Mississippi, Sunday Nov. 10 A.D. 1861.” My excitement mounted as I struggled to decipher the writer’s words. I realized I was reading a first-person account of the Civil War.

                     Dear Lou,

  Yesterday I received your letters dated Sept. 8 Oct. per the gunboat Ethan Allen which were the first letters which I have received from anyone. Last mail I sent you a very long letter and have nothing of interest to write this time as far as news goes.  We have taken one little schooner since but she was of no account. She had on board eight or ten Mexicans who were trying to make their escape from New Orleans. We let them go on their way rejoicing. There is an enormous steamer now in sight up river but I do not think there is any hope of our having a chance to get a shot at her. We have certain news that there is a floating battery of 18 guns already for attacking us also one of 22 guns which is nearly ready and one of 15 guns on the stocks. We are now the only Ship at Pas al Centro and their batteries assisted by Steamers and battering Ram will be apt to give us all we can stand if they should attack us. We hear by those Mexicans which were in the schooner that our shell stove the Battering Ram aft so badly that two steamers were required to tow her up river, one on each side to keep her afloat. Capt. Pope has left the Richmond and gone home on sick leave, he was very feeble. I fear that he will not last long. I liked him much while he was here…

The author of the letters written in 1861 and 1862 was Captain Charles I. Gibbs. Within ten years he would become the landlord of young parents and a newborn baby, Thornton W. Burgess, whose biography I finished writing and saw published in 2013.

Capt. Gibbs’ natural, candid style of writing, keen observations, and obvious affection for his wife and friends in Sandwich added to the extraordinary first-hand description of the life of a Union officer aboard a 225-foot-long steamship engaged in major Civil War naval battles.

I felt like I was walking into a history book.

And I thought of my father, Lt. Commander Howard “Bud” Palmer, who was similarly a naval officer, less than a century later, on a troop landing ship (LST) engaged in another brutal and bloody war at Normandy in 1944, as well as at Anzio and Salerno. He too came home, safe if not sound, for his back was broken when a torpedo hit the ship. (Read my post “War, Honor, and My Cousin Phil”)

Today, Memorial Day 2015, I honor those countless numbers who died in the service of their country, but I especially remember and am thankful for two who lived: Captain Charles I. Gibbs and Lieutenant Commander Bud Palmer who returned from terrible wars to those who dearly loved them.    

TIME

                                                          

Last night the seven-member folk group I play with, Just Plain Folk, got together after a long winter break. Before deep and constant snow made parking impossible at our usual rehearsal place at Stefan and Shirley Vogel’s home, we had been working on some new numbers. We warmed up our voices and guitars (and Bill Archie’s great banjo) with favorites like “Kisses Sweeter than Wine and “Farewell to Nova Scotia.” Then group leader Liz Moisan suggested we get out a new song that bass guitarist Vince Kraft had brought in.

Simply named “Time,” it was recorded by the Pozo-Seco Singers in the 1960s. In a flash I am back in college, sitting on the fat arm of a worn, overstuffed chair in the smoking lounge at Miller House at William Smith College in Geneva, New York.  On the nondescript couch across from me is my roommate Rusty Farmer (true, and she married Jim Wait). Aside from being the most non-judgmental person I know and having an irrepressible sense of humor, her roommate pluses included playing a Martin guitar well and briefly dating folk singer Tom Rush. In this flashback, Rusty plays on the Martin the opening chords of “Time” – G, A minor, D7, G – and we begin to sing this sweet, quiet song:

‘Some people run, some people crawl

Some people never seem to move at all

Some roads lead forward, some roads lead back

Some roads are bathed in light, some wrapped in fearsome black”

 

Then, leaning forward to better hear each other and blend our voices (one of the great pleasures of folk music), she sings melody and I do some kind of a harmony line. Vocals soulfully intensify as two college sophomores do their best to convey the worldly burden of the refrain’s message, the song’s heart: 

“Time, oh Time, where did you go

Time, oh, good, good Time, where did you go”  

 

In June I’ll be going to William Smith College for a 50^th reunion, an occasion that surely creates more instinctive denial than a $200 parking ticket. Undoubtedly some of us will be together again who sat around the smoker on that worn, oversized furniture singing songs by Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and Pete Seeger. I hope Rusty comes. Many songs may tickle our memories, but, as we return to the place where we prepared to move out into the world and find ourselves, none can resonate more deeply or immediately than “Time.”

 

Time, oh Time, where did you go?

Time, oh good, good Time, where did you go?

 

At the reunion we’ll share stories of our roads; even we who built them are surprised at how long and strong they've become. Through lessons both harsh and gentle, we've learned that some roads have lead forward and the others have lead back. We've learned in our seventy-plus years that all roads, at some points, have been bathed in light, and all roads, at some points, have been wrapped in fearsome black.

 

We’ve met people who never got, as the song says, no matter how deserving, and those who never gave, no matter what kind of abundance they had. We’ve all known people who will never die and those who never lived. We’ve been related to these people, worked with them, served on committees with them, or lived next door to them. We understand people and life better now, and understanding enables us to accept people, including ourselves, more. I suspect that acceptance will account for much laughter at this 50th reunion.

 

Undoubtedly some of us reunioners have kept to life’s straight-of-way, but others have explored its side roads, taken detours, or simply changed directions. One college friend achieved inspirational success as a corporate lawyer in Miami and scrapped it to became a French-speaking sculptor with an atelier in Paris. Another took her Political Science  degree to Maine where she still keeps a 100-acre farm, raises bees, and is conspicuously content and happy.  

 

For those who expect that age provides answers: bad news. For the most part we answered the questions that plagued and tormented us when we were 20 (who am I? where am I going? what will I do with my life?). But now, fifty years later, the same questions return, requiring new answers. Who are we as older people? What direction are we moving in? How do we plan to live this part of our lives?

Those of us who will meet again in early June after 50 years may not remember the lovely song titled “Time,” but we surely know its lyrics by heart.

 

Indeed. Time, where did you go?

 

THE CANADIAN CONNECTION

In order to write with accuracy and authority, most writers are on a perpetual quest for information. Several months ago I received an email from Canadian author and journalist Elinor Florence who was on such a quest. Working on her second novel, Elinor had an interesting question about naturalist and children’s author Thornton Burgess, the subject of my 2013 biography Nature’s Ambassador: did he ever write about bugs?

The following excerpts from our correspondence (edited slightly for coherence) show that a side benefit of literary research is meeting fellow writers and exploring common interests on an often solitary path. 

“Hello — I’m writing a novel in which my heroine, a single mother, reads the Burgess animal books aloud to her young daughter. The child in my novel is afraid of bugs, and I was hoping Thornton Burgess could reassure her about the harmlessness of the insect… Did Thornton Burgess ever write a book in which an insect was featured, or even mentioned? Thanks for any help you can provide.

Elinor Florence

Invermere, British Columbia 

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Hi Elinor -- oh yes! Thornton Burgess wrote about spiders, wasps, and bumblebees in addition to the mammals, birds, and amphibians he was best known for!! On the Green Meadow and The Crooked Little Path contain these wonderful stories… I'm in a bit of a rush at the moment, but can provide more detail later -- 

 Best regards,

Christie Lowrance
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Christie, if you could point me to one or two good stories about insects, that would be wonderful. I have about a dozen of his books but I haven't read them for years and don't know where to start.

Thanks,

Elinor

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Hi Elinor,

On the Green Meadows and the Crooked Little Path books have lovely stories about insects.

"On the Green Meadows chapters:

3-7 are about Madam Orb, a wonderfully informative spider

9-11 are about a wasp, "Cousin Lycosa"

12-15 are about a bee

Here are titles of chapters about insects in The Crooked Little Path: “The Fiddler in the Grass,” “Queer Fiddles and Funny Elbows,” “The Loafer and the Worker,” and “Mrs. Digger Solves a Problem.”  Please let me know if you need more information.

Best regards,

Christie Lowrance
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Hi Christie,

I checked out both of these books and I can order used copies from Amazon. The only problem is that in my novel, the heroine discovers a set of books in the attic that were acquired in 1927. (It has to be 1927 because they were a baby gift for a child born in 1927). These are the beautiful old ones with the red and cream illustrated covers.

I could just go ahead and quote from the two books you mentioned, and probably nobody (but us!) will know the books were written later. But as a purist, I hate to be inaccurate!

What do you think?

Elinor
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Hi Elinor,

I've looked through five likely later books and not an insect. Could the child have a fear of frogs (which I personally cannot bear the thought of touching) until she learns that poor Grandfather Frog has such a terrible time when he is tied up by his legs and then gets trapped in a rain barrel in the Adventures of Grandfather Frog (1916), and she feels very sorry for him?  

 It's wonderful you are including Burgess in your novel. If you don't mind my asking, where did you get that idea? … I interviewed many people who read Burgess books or were read them, but not many as far away as British Columbia! Did you watch "Fables of the Green Forest," the internationally distributed TV series based on Burgess stories on Canadian television when you were young?

Best,

Christie
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Christie, thank you! I think my story will work well as it is — the little girl will lose her fear of nature and wildlife based on the books generally, and I won’t be too specific about the insects.

I have known about Thornton Burgess all my life. Canadians and Americans have very similar reading tastes. It was my father, who was born in 1917 on their dirt-poor farm in Saskatchewan who loved the books so much, and he read them to us when we were small. He identified with all the little animals around him. There was even a beaver dam on the creek running across the farm.

I have never heard of the TV series. I saved the books printed in the 1960s for my own children, but my daughter now has a baby of her own and she has decorated Nora’s nursery with three of my scanned book covers! So the fourth generation will know and hopefully love them as well…. I’m sending you a link to my daughter’s blog called “Miss Tweedle” so you can see the photograph of the three covers in the nursery.

[http://www.misstweedle.com/2013/08/the-nursery-reveal-whole-picture.html

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Hi Elinor,

… Tell me more about your first novel, who is publishing it and how (of course) is it selling? …

Best,

Christie
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Hi Christie,

My first novel was published in October by Dundurn Press in Toronto. Dundurn is now the largest Canadian-owned publisher and it has a background in publishing Canadian history, so my wartime novel was a good fit… Research is addicting! In 2014 I think I read 34 books of pioneer memoirs and I had to force myself to stop reading and start writing.

I won’t know for sure how my novel is selling until I receive my first royalty statement in May… I have a number of book signings planned for the coming spring and summer, so that should help. In Canada, 3000 copies is respectable and 5000 copies is a best-seller…

As for reviews — I have begged everyone who told me they liked my book to write a review, and my guess is that about one in ten have done so. Sometimes they don’t have an Amazon account, and sometimes (I suspect) they were just being nice. But I will not stop asking, because that is the one thing my publisher said would help.

Thanks again for the message — Elinor
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Hello, Elinor,

Congratulations! You must have been thrilled to find a top publisher. I also have a second book for children related to Thornton Burgess that is making the rounds -- good luck to both of us!... Like you I have written for newspapers and magazines most of my career, also travel writing for Fodor’s Travel Guides… You may be right about non-fiction being harder to place, but I have no experience with fiction...

I have tremendous respect for you reading over 34 pioneer works in your research. I read 25 Burgess books, among many others, for the biography, I love it when your subject gets a hold of you and becomes your daily life. 

Better get on with things- thanks for writing! Good luck with your new book!

Best, 

Christie 

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Hi Christie,

… My new novel is about a young single mother from Phoenix who inherits an abandoned farmhouse in northern Alberta, on condition that she lives there for one year. It is off the grid, and she must teach herself the pioneer arts in order to survive. In the attic she finds a complete set of Burgess books, and because they have a beaver dam on their property, she begins reading Paddy the Beaver to her little daughter. It is just one of many discoveries made by my heroine, but I thought it was very appropriate for the time and the place…

You can read more than you ever wanted to know about me on my website.

Thanks again, Elinor

www.elinorflorence.com
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 … well, Elinor, just looked over your delightful website, loved reading about your traipsing from one side of Canada to the other in various cars -- and your love of writing and commitment to journalism make you seem like a friend I haven't yet met! Wish you were closer, I'd suggest meeting for coffee!

It's wonderful that you're including Thornton Burgess in your stories! Would you mind if I mention that and you and your father in a blog post? Yes, research is addictive! It’s exciting when you don't know WHERE it is going to take you!

Best,

Christie

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Christie, I would be delighted to have you reference the Burgess connection…Let me know so I can link back to it from my website and Facebook author page as well.

Once my second book is farther along, I will do the same for you. I would be happy to promote the whole Burgess connection, and your book by extension. Maybe I could come to Cape Cod for a book signing and meet you there!

Thanks again, Elinor

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Elinor, yes! That would be great! I’d love to meet you here and show you the place where Thornton Burgess grew up. Keep me posted on how you make out with your heroine, her daughter and of course, Thornton. And sign me up for a copy!

Very best to you, keep in touch --

Christie

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NOTE: Elinor’s first novel, Bird’s Eye View, is a dramatic fact-based fictional tale of a young Canadian woman who goes overseas in World War II and works as an aerial photographic interpreter for Allied Intelligence. To order it as a paperback or an ebook, visit www.elinorflorence.com and look for her fascinating blog “Wartime Wednesdays” at www.elinorflorence.com/blog.

THE POWER OF POETRY

I belong to an organization that recognizes how much hard-working professional writers and artists have in common. At a recent meeting of the Cape Cod branch of the National League of American Pen Women, I struck up a conversation with Andrea Ker Hutter, a painter who wore the most compelling purple print scarf. It wasn’t just a large purple print scarf. It was an all-encompassing purple print scarf, the kind that made its own introduction: this wearer is An Artist.  

Having written many freelance articles on artists, I know they see things – no, really, they SEE things - differently than the rest of us. I was intrigued to learn Andrea had trained as a sculptor and is now an interior design/faux art specialist. My friend Lorie Strait is a sculptor in Paris; I’ve seen her atelier and have a small idea of what it takes to call forth form from a piece of stone or metal. Why would an artist change mediums? What did Andrea need to learn to make the transition? Clearly, this was going to be a lengthy conversation.  

Her decision fascinated me in part, I explained, because as a writer, I feel absolutely no temptation, nor do I suspect the necessary talent, to move over into another literary form such as screen writing, poetry, short stories, novels, or memoir. I am a non-fiction prose writer. I savor the process of gathering up information like a harvest, inevitably much more than necessary, then giving it a shape, a purpose, a name.  Occasionally, obviously in moments of romantic indulgence, I see myself as the single point of connection between a subject and an audience that will most likely never meet. I’m not caterpillar or butterfly, I’m the cocoon.

Although I tell Andrea only one literary form has ever called me to embrace it, in fact, I recall an exception. There was one time when non-fiction prose was inadequate, unappealing. It was somehow incapable of conveying what needed to be said.  A death had occurred in my life, a unique and important loss, staggering in its own way.  Suddenly I wanted poetry, I needed poetry. I found peace only in poetry.

It was so surprising, I told the artist. Writing non-fiction prose felt like being in a cramped, dry, airless, colorless place, a small box, a paper bag. So, hesitantly I began to shape my ideas and thoughts and feelings as poems. One ten-part piece titled “Till Life Do Us Part” was six pages long.

No, that is not so surprising, Andrea remarked. She told me of a cousin who began to write poetry when her 37-year-old daughter died. It was a heart attack, a fluke. Friends stopping by had found the young woman dead where she was house-sitting. The cousin was a story teller, an alcohol and drug counselor.  But why had she turned to writing poetry in grieving a catastrophic and overwhelming loss? Together we two non-poets pondered the role of this literary form as a salve, a balm, a saving grace.

“I think of poetry as concise, direct, raw,” reflected Andrea, “like Chinese brush painting with simple, elegant, intentional strokes, just enough, no more.  Our emotions and interpretations fill the spaces in between. It’s synthesis, stark word pictures. Maybe it’s the exactness in poetry that balances the cataclysmic tides of grief. ”

Perhaps poetry somehow suits extreme circumstances because of lack of structure? No, I don’t think that’s it, I responded. I have a friend, Jacqueline Loring, a superb poet (and Pen Woman) who has won an international poetry contest. When she talks about her process, she applies rules to her work, no matter how unstructured it seems. But writing poetry does feel like dreaming, I said. Yes, agreed Andrea. Her cousin said that too.  

Here are two of my poems:

Death moves

like a mighty arm

sweeping wordlessly

across the flat surface

of a cluttered breakfast table,

clearing it of every plate, bowl, and spoon,

juice glass, cereal box, and coffee cup,

jam jar, salt shaker, half-finished piece of toast,

pencil, pen, crayon, unfinished grocery list,

smudged napkin,

utility bill,

aspirin coupon

all gone,

in one single

soundless instant,

gone.

                        ***

 In the presence of a dying person

you recognize the oppression

of your own vitality,

the force of your whispers

the power of your breath

the exhaustive thrashing

of your thoughts and feelings.

If you try to moderate your being

to reduce this violation,

you will, you must, fail,

and so the chasm

widens and deepens

between your separate souls

as moment by moment

breath by breath,

beat by beat

you part.   

WHAT A WINTER!!

Dearest K (8), R (7), G (5), and J (5),
Wow! Look closely at that picture! This is the stairway we all walked down to get to the Sandwich Town Beach to wade or swim or skip rocks in the water. Why is the stairway so torn apart and covered with ice? Because a few days ago a blizzard arrived on Cape Cod. It left so much snow on the ground that the top of the snow touched Koko's belly, and where it was shoveled out of my driveway, a huge pile of snow was even over Koko's head, and he is a BIG dog.

The wind blew so hard (60 miles an hour, which is very hard and fast for wind) that it pushed big waves up onto the Sandwich beach where we walked last summer. The waves came crashing onto shore so big and high and strong that they broke the boards of the stairway we walked down. All along the beach are stairways like this, just hanging in the air. The sand underneath them is all blown away. The land in front of houses near the water has disappeared, so people have no front yard any more. Or worse -- part of their house is hanging in the air, like the stairs.

BUT VERY WORST is that the wind blew so hard and so long, and the waves crashed so long and so hard onto the beach that they washed away sand dunes that were as tall as a house. Where did all that sand go? Tons of it blew into the little tidal river that R and G swam in this summer, and where their Daddy paddled his paddle board.

Remember where we watched the tide creep in (or creep out, I can't remember)? Now the tide is blocked by all that sand from coming in or going out there. Now I can stand right where you were swimming, where the saltwater creek was last summer, except now it is a beach. I found a little clump of beach grass and brought it home. (That is what I am carrying in the picture below of me.) I remember talking with you all about how important the beach grass is because it holds the beach sand in place. But last week the wind and the waves blew so much beach grass away, in some places there is no grass and no sand. 

What will happen? People here are worried and sad about the destruction at our beach. Some are writing letters to newspapers and officials and to each other, and they are taking lots of pictures. What can be done to help preserve the beach? The tidal creek? The stairs? The boardwalk? The houses?

And they are worried about something else. Do you know that the boardwalk creek flows completely through the whole marsh, from Cape Cod Bay nearly to the village. Some people are worried about what will happen if the beach disappears and suddenly nothing stops the sea from coming all the way up to the village buildings.

My goodness, it sounds complicated doesn't it? And it is complicated. This is why people need to try to learn about nature and understand how it works. Was there something we could have done to protect the beach? Maybe we should have tried harder to understand how important it is to our homes and our town and our lives.

I don't know what will happen next, but I will write again and let you know. I know ALL of you are good writers, so maybe you could write to me and tell me what you think about this situation!! I would LOVE to hear from you!

With LOTS of love!!

Nana

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, THORNTON BURGESS

Over 140 years ago a baby was born in my house at 6 School Street in Sandwich, Massachusetts. A fierce snowstorm made travel impossible on that January 14 in 1874, even the trains were unable to get through to Boston and Provincetown. But Caroline Burgess, then 22 years old, probably had plenty of help in the home delivery, for both she and her young husband Thornton had parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as many friends in town. When their first and only child was born, they named him Thornton Waldo Burgess, Jr. after his father who would die later that year of tuberculosis. 

   

Presumably Thornton Burgess himself took the above photo of his birthplace. It was sent to me by David Cesan, son of Ernestine Johnson, Burgess’ secretary and loyal friend in his later years in Hampden, Massachusetts. The picture was still in the original envelope that Burgess, a meticulous man, kept it in.

 The return address was:  Burgess Radio Nature League

                                                Hotel Bradford

                                                      Boston, Mass.

                                                Hotel Kimball
                                                     Springfield, Mass.

 We who live in old New England houses are generally realistic about our occupancy and accept that we are more caretakers than owners. Burgess’ birthplace on School Street, now my home, was built more or less around 1835, around the time of the Battle of the Alamo and Andrew Jackson’s Presidency; eight more presidents would follow Jackson before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861. When the foundation stones of my house were being laid and square-headed nails being pounded into its wooden timbers, there were only 25 states in the Union.

A decade before Thornton Burgess was born here, people would have sat on my front porch in rockers like the ones in the picture above, discussing national events like the outbreak of the American Civil War, the horrific, bloody battles at Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg, and the assassination of Lincoln in 1865. Hundreds have preceded me in living in this house at 6 School Street, and hundreds more will undoubtedly follow.

But it is hard to imagine that any of them achieved or will achieve more than Thornton Burgess.

During a long and active career, he played an important role in the dawn of children’s literature, in the early days of environmental conservation and education, and in the introduction of radio technology. In 1925 his Radio Nature League went on the air. Within its first week, the children’s nature program attracted thousands of listeners, some as far away as England.

His first children’s book was published in 1910; by the end of 1914 he had written 14 more. In 1915 he added to his beloved Bedtime Story-Books series with volumes on the adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse, Grandfather Frog, Chatterer the Red Squirrel, and Sammy Jay, as well as his last of four novels on Boy Scouts and three other books, nine in all that year alone. Half of his 70 books are still in print.

A 1973 cartoon based on his animal stories was created for Japanese television. Within six years it was distributed internationally as "Fables of the Green Forest" and is today on YouTube. He was honored by the New York Zoological Society and the Boston Museum of Science (see my post on Bradford Washburn award).

The distinguished Dr. Theodore Reed, director of the National Zoological Park commented, “In the realm of wildlife conservation and natural history education, there is one name in the United States that must not be forgotten: Thornton W. Burgess.”

 Happy Birthday, Mr. Burgess! Thanks for your lifelong effort to promote appreciation and stewardship for the wild creatures we share our planet with, whether mice or bears or hawks or spiders, and for sharing your enduring, deep respect for the environmental ties that link us all.  

…and happy birthday too to Chuck Roth, one of the naturalist’s greatest fans and a longtime advocate for the environment as education director at the Mass Audubon Society, and to Bob King, President Emeritus and longtime supporter of the Thornton W. Burgess Society.