Park Street Church,Tremont Street, Skimming Oliver Wendal Holmes-Pages from an old volume of life; a collection ...

During a reading of Ephesians, the above theologian was mentioned. The photograph is from a volume of the writings of Oliver Wendal Holmes. My confidence in Holmes is more as a poet than a theologian, so I'm only skimming for information, not profound insights that may or may not be debatable. If you can guess who the theologian in the picture is, the below link will bring you to what the poets of the Atlantic Monthly wrote about him. Pages from an old volume of life; a collection ...:

'via Blog this' In regard to the sermon itself, the passage from Ephesians was the most succinct, compressed summary of Christian ethics you could ask for, it ending with a supplication for Thanksgiving, but thankful that you are not lead into temptation. (and sing praise) In a way, if it is remove from the metaphysics of The Bible, it is a pretty good code of living- for some reason the minister repeated the word "transcendent" and I found it irrelevant to the passage, in that it seemed to be merely the words of an Apostle or Disciple, exhorting us to live right, or morally... and of course what works is that to pray is to worship in both thought and deed to where it does become a Utopia, where we would not even pollute the earth unneccessarily.

Donna and I have a wild rabbit,

Donna and I keep finding rabbits in the wild. This is the fourth. We first found one in Mount Auburn Cemetary. Then we found one near the garden at the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House. Then another again in the Mount Auburn Cemetary. I'm a little tired to write passages from a philosophical novel tonight, but the doctors wanted to test me for cancer. I tested negative for prostate but for a week we didn't know. The in the courtyard behind our apartment at one o clock in the morning, there was another rabbit. Its where my ashtray is- not that I don't take lung seriously, but we didn't think it was lung, so I still use nicotine. I'm tired tonight to make it a work of art, but tonight I called Donna over to where I was to show her that the rabbit returned. Its wild and our courtyard is to a building with 19 floors. Physically tired from the tests and from the roses still on the table. We thought I could have had cancer, one that is not emphysema- but I don't. We did go to church, which on the surface is a scene from a slow-moving movie in itself and I did give her a thank you. I was reading Mr. Britiling Sees It Through by H.G. Wells before the service. I read ten volumes by the British author E. Phillips Oppenheim during the summer and there were two more in the store; I have a game where I look for hardcover first editions of novels in written before 1925 for a dollar to three dollars and I leave the five dollar copies there, most are copies published before 1930, and never having read an H. G. Wells before it seemed interesting that he wrote "Adult Fiction", which he did. So thoughts of one's own impending demise and a morbid somber mood make for deep fiction, not tonight, but I'll keep out some reflection. Before seeing the rabbit, which I didn't know would return when I was not in solitude, I called in a car accident, which was right in front of me, my test scheduled for the next morning. The person needed a phone and I thought quickly enough. Is it in middle age that mostly if you just think quickly enough when you need to, then most things feel as they should, and you know that you've gone from one day to the next. And then there's the contemplative way to live in between. (I mentioned 19 floors because each year, to contrast we visit Rockport Massachusetts, I can right now hear the train; our rabbit is surrounded by Harvard, MIT, and depending how lost you get, probably the Boston Museum of Science.)

Donna and I had lunch in West Brookfield (Salem Cross);Longfellow's The Wayside Inn

Longfellow's Wayside Inn is painted pink, or so it seems; we only drove around it and I wouldn't know if it is open as a restaurant, but adjacent to it is a beautiful church, Martha Mary Chapel and an old Grist Mill, with a waterwheel, that seemed abandoned, but was still operating. The Mill, open to the public, had s staircase to the second floor and is preserved as it was when it had been in use. It's pretty enough to visit if you don't know what to expect. We then continued for what would be a 200 mile ride to a farm Phillipston, Massachusetts. We had lunch at the Salem Cross Inn in Westbrook, Massachusetts. The restaurant is on the national historic register as being built in 1705, and it provided an imginative account of it having a Hexmark from the "Queen Anne War". Part of the romance of our dating is to find "historic" places. The hexmark is a roman numeral ten with a vertical line through the middle. I did notice Holy Lord hinges in the interior, if that is in fact what they are in New England. The dining room is post and beam and there was actually a wooden peg driven into one of the beams: it is a colonial tavern (hip roof). To quote the menu, "this mark was used to protect the inhabitants against, 'ye evils of witchcraft and diverse other manifestations of devilltry.'". "Inhabitants" is a word frequently used in the handwritten history of Brookfield from that time period, although all I found was the town records of their committee of selectmen, which, although written with quill,only describes land grants and that white oaks marked with three initials or letters were used to mark off where began each property, which is only of so much interest to someone who would skim it thoroughly- but they seemed to be self-governed colonists in certain respects. There are artifacts in the restaurant, although I didn't notice any muskets or pewter. The thing was that "She liked it." After dinner, we looked into the other dinning rooms. I told her that it was probably ok to peek into them while people were having dinner and they were like museum rooms and it got her interest, to where she kept exploring until I mentioned that it lead to what seemed to be the entrance private residence. But, most importantly, the atmosphere held her interest now that we had finished dinner. After having before visited a fishery to see trout, which happen to grow fairly large in size before they are restocked, we found Enfield, Massachusetts. We watched a television clip of a brief fragment of a silent film photographed by a theater owner from the twenties of the town. It is now the Quabbin Reservoir and looks like an ordinary lake. Four towns were flooded and have long since been completely submerged, the residents having been relocated during the thirties. My later explanation at first was rural poverty during a time of small companies; but then postpone historical context. We continued to a farm in Phillipston, where other than my having coffee and Donna having cider and donuts, there were rabbits. She remarked that two of them were sleeping together in a basinet and that like us, were inseparable. From this blog, you wouldn't know that its been approximately ninety-six to ninety eight percent, of every hour for the last year, and a similar year before that, which is the only way by which you would prepare to do that, it being almost too long for her to now mention it, but very endearing. It would be more, not less than ninety eight. In the paddock, with a bull and several goats was the first sheep Donna had ever seen. It was black, as were the many cows and calves we had seen earlier this afternoon, and their not being brown, my not knowing whether they were gernseys or holstiens. The sheep does in fact have a unique sound when it bleats. Yesterday, I was in a bookstore on the otherside of the river and left a very inexpensive copy of English Poetry 3 of The Harvard Classics (Colliers or Scribners?) there which could have been seperated from the set, thinking that most of the other volumes are, except the Donne, are from too ancient a time period and that I had a public domain copy of them on the internet and that I not yet finished with what I'm reading. It's an exceptional anthology and truly would have been a souvenier that includes Tennyson if you've ever seen a copy from 1911. I would have had it with me but then again, its not an old enough copy of the poetry itself and I didn't know we would be going to The Wayside Inn.

Donna and I visited the birthplace of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Brookline, Massachusetts- National Historic Site

John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site - John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site:

'via Blog this' Please visit the above link should you be interested. Donna and I visited the birthplace of John F. Kennedy in Brookline. Really, we were just out for a walk on a date together and after frozen yogurt, I suggested we explore parts of the city I with which I am unfamiliar. That is how we found Marsh Chapel at Boston University and now, when we are near by, we walk towards it and Donna goes inside to pray for a minute or two- its usually open and she uses it for silent meditation or supplication. I knew that there was a subway line towards the city parallel to the one on Commonwealth Aveneue that transverses B. U., both are the green line, so I thought that we would just head in that direction, an maybe we would have enough luck to pass the birthplace of John F. Kennedy. Not far down there's a sign marking 1/4 mile through the residential section, so I encourage her to go. When we found it, it was a house about the same size as the one that I grew up in, which was on the North Shore, except that it was 40 years older. But it has shingles and two dormers. Technically I was almost lost, but Donna was nice enough about exploring, which made the date all that more valuable. Then she was more pleased than I was. Its a guided tour, as the house is owned by the National Park service. He was in fact born in the house with one sister and an older brother; the other siblings were born in another house nearby: I have since left a note somewhere that it was more of a Rose Kennedy musuem, but the nursery where he slept is preserved with their belongings. Significantly, Donna has a knack for finding an interest in the women of history, irrespective of the part they may have played. We we visited the Paul Revere house last summer I believe she was interested in the Colonial women. The bedrooms are restored to how they were during 1920, and Donna thought it was interesting that Kennedy's mother had attended a convent. But I was there is his boyhood home, so it restored Kennedy as a New Englander, rather than a shattered myth (don't tell his ghost, but it was getting to be that Ronald Reagan, and everyone like him was a dipsomaniac)...but I was there in the actual house looking at the staircase that lent a human element, a human element that could be felt. I saw his desk and remembered that Scott Fitzgerald claimed to have written his novels on a desk that had once belonged to Francis Scott Key. Most of all it is intact. It is really a typical residence from the 1920's, with a couple of finer things added. I write fairly extensively about the silent film from that era and read British novels from that decade, maybe nine or ten of them in the last three months, so my interest went further than it being the house of a President- which it is. He had a copy of National Geographic in the living room; my magazine collection is of movie fan magazines from the twenties, mostly issues of Picture Play. There is an old telephone in the hallway, by the stairs Most of all, we needed the date and it was tucked away on a side street, the same thing having happenned one afternoon when she and I hurriedly decided to "take in" the Boston Anthenuem, which too is small and interesting because it is unique. The postcard is from Donna; its obviously not the same one that she bought today and added to our collection. Entry added later: This Weekend to begin Autumn I was hoping that visiting the Kennedy birthplace would begin Autumn, which it nicely did. In regard to that, in Boston, the really is suppossedly a (Swedish) Pirate Party that is registered a third party; so actually Kennedy was more a politician than author. (There is a story that, for about a year before my marriage-then-divorce-then-engaged-for-second-marriage, I lived in the house of Senator Charles Summner, which is in Boston and does exist, and I may have attended book-signings or poetry-readings while there). But I do study the period of the twenties, their film, their novels and sometimes their poetry- the Kennedy birthplace is a museum of the Twenties, and novels put their protagonists in imaginary settings of that nature. The only thing being the art that Kennedy had was a reproduction of Whister's painting of his mother. Saturday I wanted to begin the Autumn by continuing with the weather. The leaves have not yet begun to change and went to the bookstore. I've been reading and collecting the novels of a British novelist, E. Phillips Oppenheim and have been buying first edition copies for one to three dollars each. After looking for twenty minutes through the stacks, which seemed full of first editions of the numerous novels written by John Galsworthy, before conceding to buy the Galsworthy before having to leave I found a copy of The Governors by E. Phillips Oppenheim, bringing my collection of first editions from 1907-1937 to ten volumes which cost me fourteen dollars. The publishers were Little, Brown and Company or A. L Burt, the two exections being one Ward Lock and one Hodder and Stoughton. I've read eight since Oppenheim since June and am presently reading the ninth: The Cinema Murder The Passionate Quest The Treasure of Martin Hews The Wrath to Come The Golden Beast The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent General Besserley's Second Puzzle Box The Malafactor The Illustrious Prince The Governors It took two, now beginning three months with the volume I'm presently reading and they are all first edtions- all found in the only used bookstore I know really left in Boston. There were several old bookstores in Harvard Cambridge Massachusetts and I usually say that's why I moved here, but they have mostly left. Sunday was saved for Donna's church service. She's the librarian at the Park Street Church and the service on again on Ephesians. As a philosophy student that's agnostic, you might like beginning with Ephesians if it isn't what you usually read. My writings were quickly jotting down that the fact that life might be absurd doesn't matter as much because love is both an abstract concept and an action, so if you require to answer what might transcend us, absurdity is only an abstract concept, like heaven, therefore love that exists can supplant meaning that exists, where you would only then require that existence improves upon essence, not only as knowledge of essence but as love now in action. Donna, "after going to the birthplace of John Kennedy" sang loudly, and clearly and joyfully in church this week. It might also have something do with her being librarian at the church every other week. Actually, the church was there during the lifetime of John Quincy Adams, who live around the corner near the old bookstore, and to people that live in Boston it has only notoriously been just a plaque. This week I had dinner at the church as there was a student fair for Christians now attending local Universities and Colleges, though I didn't engage in anymore than evesdropping.

Donna and I hadn't been to a movie in a while- she works in church library in Downtown Boston

The service today was actually from Ephesians and included in the hymns was How Great thou art. You, might say that the word "cosmic" replaced the word "transcendentalist" in the service, but still, I recognized the expression "universal truths". I'm not sure whether Ephesians includes the transubstiation, or transfiguration, of Christ at the moment, but the ascension to heaven was mention, meaning it would postulate whether "this is true because Christ was resurrection" or not, but there was a hint that the "cosmological" certainly includes a possible relation to Christ, particularly through faith. While Donna was working in the church library, which is in the heart of Downtown Boston, I noticed a shelf of ecclesiastical poetry titled "inklings" which she pointed out to me on the way back to the apartment, and I said that I thought it meant "Meditations". There might have been The Holy Sonnets of Donne, whom I think was one of the greatest British poets as an artist. And yet while she was shelving books I was reading a British novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim entitled The Illustrious Prince about a passenger on the Luisitania. My copy could be a first edition hardback; most likely it is. Donna mentioned that she wants to see every movie Jennifer Anniston ever makes,but we were early and she noticed the poster for this film. I had fried shrimp this time.

Visit to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Grave, a turtle, a rabbit-Donna is a new librarian at the Park Street Church

Longfellow's poetical works:

'via Blog this'

Please use the above link to view a superbly illustrated copy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This afternoon Donna and I found the poet's grave while walking through Mount Auburn Cemetary. Its quickly and easily found by using a map, but not if following the the road and paths- we had been walking an hour and were trying to find the easiest reachable exit when we found his tomb. We began by finding William Ellery Channing, the theologian and circled the perimeter towards the back of the cemetary. We found a pond that has a gravity fed fountain and and encountered a turtle. Then when we thought there wouldn't be any rabbits, Donna spotted a very small one that didn't try to avoid us while it was eating. Donna found a grave named Lockwood with an angel and children and noticed that there were family spots that reserved places for those still living- she usually goes into a Church alone to pray whenever we find one open- I started to offer that to her while we were in Rockport and she usually takes a moment of silent reflection whenever we pass an open Cathedral,  previous summers she has included the Old North and King's Chapel to where she could kneel at the altar- so I connected her idea that not all the graves were from a different century with her praying at the cemetary church. The church at Mount Auburn has beautifull stained glass in someone you happen to be with needs to exersize their individual need to pray or intrinsic individuality. Historically, I like the churchyards that date from before Mount Auburn, specifically, Tremont Street and maybe those near Harvard. The news since the week we spent in Rockport this year is that Donna is a new librarian at the Park Street Church library. I was impressed. I believe it was built in 1809, and I was reading their original principles of founding the church and they are jampacked-a- a-crashcourse with theological thought and precepts as to why the original twelve married couples that began the church carried on the ideas on causality established during the 1600's- that belief in the Lord as Savoir was a requirement of belonging to the "Congregation" and with that an outline of precepts that we to be adhered to devotedly. But she loves being a church librarian and can attend the service after.
Honestly, I go to the cemetary for the Art, and maybe the serenity of finding a rabbit. I didn't notice as many statues this year, although there were some. I found a bust situated in the middle of a crypt by looking though the door into an otherwise empty mausoleum (if your ever there the name on it was Borne).
The link at the top of this blog show a superbly illustrated British copy of the poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which I thought I'd recommend for perusal.
Honestly, this summer I'm reading the author E. Phillips Oppenheim this summer and in now way regret it. During June and July of 2013 I've read the novels The Cinema Murder, The Passionate Quest, The Treasure House of Martin Hews, The Wrath to Come and The Golden Beast. All by Oppenheim written from 1917-1928. To begin August, I'm now reading a sixth novel written by Oppenheim, The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent, written a little later, in 1934. I like his fiction enough and hope his command of the language and artistic expression of imagination finds its way to my writing. Its steady-during a busy summer where I could have found even more time to enjoy reading them.

Scott Lord Silent Film In regard to how pleased I am, not only does Donna sing hymns at the Park Street Church, which she enjoys and therefore I'm glad for her, but the church shares a view of the Tremont Street cemetary, one of our oldest, with the adjacent Boston Anthenuem, the most beautiful library of its size you could picture.