July 14th
Bastille Day
Always interesting how protests escalate and a monarchy is toppled
along with a lot of heads. Sometimes insurrections work, fortunately
for those of us living in the United States, the 2021 January 6
insurrection did not; and fortunately for those of us living in
France, the 1789 insurrection did. I have a neighbor with
immaculately sculpted hedges and seasonal flags, they have a French
flag this week. Vive La France! Today is a good day to march to the
Marseillaise.
My favorite time of listening to the Marseillaise was in 2012, the
last time I was in Sydney. A wonderful Remembrance Day ceremony,
capped with a handful of Frenchmen spontaneously bursting into the
Marseillaise. Definitely a song for impromptu singing. Vive La
France!
La Marseillaise https://youtu.be/Vjg6uv0q1i0
One
hour of French Revolutionary music https://youtu.be/oGB6YQyPyQg
–
Jerusalem
Paul was an American who likely had some roots in Eastern
Europe, and grew up in a Roman Catholic family. He lived, worked,
rowed, and died on June 24th 2022 in the city where the
Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. He wholeheartedly
embraced the philosophies of the Religious Society of the Friends of
Truth, which has its roots in 1600s England. Paul was clerk of
Worship and Ministry for Arch Street Friends, which is not exactly the
same as being the priest, but it is the closest thing we have.
On Wednesday July 13th Paul’s memorial meeting
for worship was held in the Arch Street West Meeting Room, I counted
more than 500 mourners including family members, rowing colleagues,
professional colleagues and 30 or 40 members of Arch Street Meeting.
Messages were given about Paul’s love of cooking - we all knew
that at Arch Street and at the Old First Winter Shelter, about his
care for all of his large family – five grands, how wonderful is
that, about his passion for rowing – Paul died doing what he loved,
and his faith in the Divine and the Divine plan for him and us all.
We were told Paul’s last words came after a cardiac event while
he was rowing in a two-man boat under the Columbia railway bridge: “I
feel better. I’ve got this.” These words were interpreted to mean
that he believed his pain was gone and he was able to bring the boat
to shore. He then lost consciousness forever. Perhaps he meant that
he saw the Kingdom of Heaven open and he was ready. The fact that his
last words brought comfort to his friends and family is wonderful.
What a blessed life Paul led. May we always remember him when we sing
Jerusalem.
Which brings me to Jerusalem, one of two hymns Paul had requested
be sung at his memorial. We did, as much as we could, with the help
of a pianist who helpfully played the tune through first before we
butchered it. But we did sing it, even about how we wanted a
Jerusalem in England.
Jerusalem is the unofficial national anthem of England. England.
Not Britain. England, where I was born and left after being herded
onto a boat in Southampton when I was six. The England that took the
lives of more than 20 cousins and closer relatives of my English
grandparents in the 1914-1918 war. England whose parliament so
offended American colonists that they declared independence in 1776
one block west and two block south of Arch Street Meeting House.
Jerusalem was a poem written in 1808 by William Blake, which, if
you look at the calendar, was when battles against Napoleon’s
France were ongoing, and my several greats uncle Sir Nash Grose was
happily sentencing convicts to transportation to Australia, rather
than to hang in England. My several greats Dodgson grandfather had
started the London Exchange a few years earlier and was busy
producing 9 daughters and 2 sons with Selena Juliana Sharp, who may
have come from a Quaker family, and likely regretted marrying out.
Selena’s daughters were not given property rights or higher
education; all went to her stockbroker and engineer sons.
Jerusalem is such an odd poem, it makes no sense until you realize
what Mr Blake was writing about. A story that Jesus himself showed up
in England, and because of that, before too long, England will be the
center of all things. The poem was put to music and became a runaway
hit in the 1914-1918 global war, because having Jesus and all things
good on the green fields of England sounded like the best possible
outcome after weeks, months in muddy trenches in Frances, and in
eternity in unmarked mass graves.
I love it. The hymn. The music. Not the words, but if you want
one, you get both. Play it and sing it, and remember Paul and all who
walked across Pennsylvania’s green fields and Philadelphia’s gray
roads, rowed the Schuylkill, biked on Fairmount Park trails. All
those who walk in the Light, seeking truth and accountability.
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon
England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On
England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our
clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these
dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows
of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my
chariot of fire.
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my
sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In
England's green and pleasant land.
Jerusalem, followed by God Save
the Queen https://youtu.be/041nXAAn714
Land of Hope and Glory
https://youtu.be/vpEWpK_Dl7M
---
Rowing
In the early 1900s the four Noerdlinger brothers and one sister
were doing well. Two brothers moved from Stuttgart to Floersheim am
Main, these were Dr Hugo and Dr Ernst; and two brothers moved to New
York.
Hugo was the genius inventor, and Ernst ran the pharmaceutical
company they started. They did well, they employed many, and lifted
the farming community out of poverty. Why was the farming community
poor? Wars, pestilence, emigration. A cobbler emigrated to America
and started Florsheim shoes. Beer makers emigrated to America and
started Anheuser-Busch.
Ernst married a local Busch daughter, Hugo also marred a local
woman. The brothers built an enormous house near the river on which
they started a rowing club. Ernst and Hugo were keen rowers, as were
their children in the 1910s and 1920s.
By the 1930s everything changed: the brothers had died and the
widows discovered that their children were enemies of state, because
their fathers came from Jewish families.
In 2017 my daughter and I learned that Hugo’s sons were murdered
in the Jewish Holocaust, https://youtu.be/rtvYKBBYqBo . The last
thing Ernst’s son-in-law said to me was “Thank you.” The second
last thing he said was that Ernst’s daughter surviving the
Holocaust was miraculous.
The rowing club is still there, as is the massive house which has
been converted into flats. My three sons and I joined Ernst’s
grandson Lothar and the extended family in 1991 for his 50th
birthday celebration in the rowing club house, and again in 1998. I
was amazed that my youngest son Allister looked exactly like his
second cousins. Strong German genes. He and my daughter also
inherited Lothar’s huge lung capacity, which is a requirement for
competitive rowers, which they were in high school and briefly in
college.
My daughter and I visited the rowing club in 2017, and drank
black currant wine to the memory of all the Noerdlingers and all the
families sent to their deaths and their properties seized. We saw
that the pharmaceutical factory had been torn down years after its
theft by Nazis had turned it into a losing business; in its place a
dress shop where I bought a belt that I love wearing even though its
colors go with absolutely nothing, and a supermarket where I bought a
bottle of black currant wine. To remember. That is all we can do.
And rowing. Lothar rowed, and was an alternate in the Olympic
Games when he was 18. He always rowed, and cycled, and skied, and
invented devices and machines. So competent, always the adult in the
room, always compassionate, always looking to help those in need.
I understood Lothar needed help too late, I returned to Germany
four times to try and bring him to New Jersey but was unable. Fifty
seven patents, extreme athlete, and the minute he was diagnosed with
Parkinson's all his sports were stopped by “friends”, ensuring a
long and painful deterioration.
Lothar died in 2019, unable for some years to walk, or think
coherently, and no longer able to speak English. We learned he was in
his last days from a hospice nurse we had tracked down, and asked her
to get him the last rites in the Catholic Church, the church of his
mother and Busch grandmother. No funeral, no official mourning.
And so I write. Lothar was loved, greatly loved. I am not sure he
knew that. Paul was also greatly loved, and he knew it. As sad as it
was for those who loved Paul, dying on the longest day of the year
doing what he loved looked like a gift to me. Obviously we would all
have liked him around another ten or twenty years. Death came too
soon for Paul, too late for Lothar.
I hope Paul and Lothar have connected on the other side of the
River Styx, and are rowing together with the angels. And cooking.
They were both keen cooks; I have never enjoyed a pizza since I ate
the ones Lothar made. And apple tarts. My gosh. If heaven does not
include doing things we love, or finding ways to encourage those we
love, I am not sure I want it.
---
Goats
The goats were all gone by the end of June, I miss them. Love
watching the videos of them, here is one https://youtu.be/Q80ERKC580k
And elephants. I took some videos of elephants when I was in
Chiang Mai hoping for a glimpse of my eldest son. After a week he
showed up and took me for a wonderful day looking at water buffalo,
https://youtu.be/gopgS8v6hEI,
and elephants, https://youtu.be/YZ5RUMDpILg
Love elephants. Adore my eldest son Angus. He writes about diseases,
devices and drugs. He knows a great deal about multiple sclerosis
having prepared reports on clinical trials for the Food and Drug
Administration; medical writing for a living is a wonderful education
about all things health related.
Video from 15 years ago, when Angus was my student, or maybe a
million years ago; the university where I was a full professor no
longer exists after 200 years https://youtu.be/nSXBZx8d6Sc
It has been a while since I took on a mentoree in medical writing.
If someone has the drive and a good solid education in biological
sciences I probably could be persuaded if they insisted. I do charge,
but I donate all my fee. Medical writers can work in a home office,
or under a tree in a park on a perfect summer day, like this one
https://youtu.be/DOgl8tWjGJk
---
Amnesty International 112
Occasionally victories are achieved by mass emailing and letter
writing. Amnesty International USA (https://www.amnestyusa.org/)
reports these https://www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynews/victories/
Philadelphia’s Amnesty International 112 has a dedicated email
address: AmnestyInternationalPhiladelphia@peacescientists.org.
Indigenous boarding schools:
https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/u-s-continuing-to-fail-indigenous-women-as-rates-of-sexual-violence-in-tribal-communities-remain-at-epidemic-proportions/
https://youtu.be/QJKsAa41Szk
