Old wyves tales, covered bridges & the best 19th century structural technology

Old wyves tales, covered bridges & the best 19th century structural technology

In our rush to solve whatever crisis is in our face, we can trample over people, neglect our own best instincts, or craft solutions worse than the problem that consumes us. I have come to believe that human conversation requires a protected passage over the deep ravines and dangerous waters of our own thoughts before we find the way through.

I also sense that solutions already exist, that they don’t have to be entirely invented, but, in our panic – yes that’s a strong word – we have lost  sight of them. Then a friend’s evocative description of a trip through the dazzling New Hampshire foliage of early October inspired me! Of course, the path of our thoughts needs the safety of covered bridges.

I became obsessive in my search for anything about covered bridges. 

In 1909, the Oxford city fathers bridged Logic Lane, a short alley that carried the name from the 1300’s. As you will see from the picture, it is reminiscent of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, but the Logical Bridge has more of a ring to it and, to my mind, might lead to a living solution, not the gallows.

I found examples of bridges dating from the 14th century, as well as more proximate ancestors of the New England design from Germany. I discovered the 1852 Philippi Covered Bridge across Tygart Valley River that is still part of the US Highway system and, according to legend, the site of a secret meeting between Lincoln and Jefferson to discuss the terms of surrender before the end of the Civil War.

Now onto old wives' tales. Familiar with New England seasons, town squares, bright maples and covered bridges, I am a sucker for almost any romantic notion that can be suggested, especially when the fantasy is confirmed by a heart stopping experience.

Very early one morning in the late fall of 1965, before Highway 89 was finished, I was speeding back to Hanover New Hampshire from Boston. Somewhere between Concord and Lebanon, I lost the road: a sudden cold snap coupled with the moisture of a slight rain, the bridge came up before I had time to adjust my speed. The car spun 180 degrees and slid 200 feet horizontally, never touching a guard rail. It was an eternal second before I reached the other side, gently nudging the car forward into a shallow drainage ditch with what speed remained.

From that time until this morning, I believed that the purpose of the covered bridge was to save speeding fools like me - the surface temperature of the suspended roadway cooled more quickly than the ground! And with no town plows to spread sand and chemicals, a quaint roof might have saved me if luck had not been in my corner and the road had not been deserted!

This morning I began to explore why those tight-fisted old Yankees wasted all that money on fancy roofs that might have saved me if I were driving my mother’s 1962 Ford station wagon on winter roads at a dangerous speed in the early to mid 19th century, the highpoint for covered bridge construction.

So why a covered bridge? The structural strength of a rectangular box is far stronger than any one of its surfaces suspended between two points. This allowed for study bridges for transportation and trade using heavy timbers; steel I beams were not available before the Civil War. Hell, I should have known Yankees only care for income producing projects.

My love of words drove me to the dictionary to see if I could discover the roots of “a time, place, or means of connection or transition” - the second meaning of bridge. I discovered a hidden link, a reference to god language! Violà.

Middle English brigge, from Old English brycg; akin to Old High German brucka bridge, Old Church Slavic bruvuno beam.

There it is! When building bridges, raise high the church beam! Who can pronounce, bruvuno? I say sing it! (Bridge also means a musical passage linking two sections of a composition). Trust in God and love for one another are like a covered bridge.

In this first post, I have tried to lay out a few of the things that I will try to do in the future: I want to look at the way that we have framed the questions, the puzzles that face us; then, try to distinguish fantasy, nostalgia, and illogic in the conversation; and finally, see where we lost the road. That might be just the first step to finding our way. Let's see.

This is a conversation. Hopefully there will be more than one person talking. That is not a conversation. At best that’s is a monologue, but rant might also apply. Let’s dream of bridges and talk to one another.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Originally posted April 28th, 2010

“Very early I learned to value and respect words, and I also uncovered a passion for reaching my own conclusions.”

When I started to consider the origin of my values, a memory of my kindergarten teacher began to emerge. I struggle for real memories of early age, but this much is clear--she was a wiry woman with a tight bun who seemed a hundred years old, and, at least from the taste of decades-old feelings, someone who did not like children.

She ran her kindergarten in an upper room at the Methodist church that stood at the base of the triangular New England town green in Nichols. Her fixed ideas were shaped by the way Yankee families held that children should behave from time immemorial, or at least as far back as the 400 odd years since our religious fanatic forbearers fled Europe, and childrearing was fundamentally religion. My guess is that she had no love for Dr. Montessori who was, after all, a Catholic.

She was one of the elder “Misses” in town, who, along with the two spinsters who ran the library, always stood for us children as a clear demarcation between our families and single women who obviously preferred the company of their own sex. We were told that because spinsters were just not lucky enough to find husbands, they were forced into a world of loneliness and the company of other women. This we learned by listening to the disdain in the pauses between sentences of our parents’ conversations.

My own experience has lightened any ill will that I might have carried through the years, and perhaps even added a touch of magic to the story that I am going to tell.

I did not want to nap when were told in a voice that did not beckon negotiation: “Put your heads down on the desk.” I would defiantly look up and examine her, and another woman, her enforcer, who were clearly happy to be relieved from having to entertain, occupy or educate their charges. Several times my mother chastised me for not following instructions—she had been warned that I was very “willful”. My response to my mother was probably a complaint, setting the tone for a long battle in our relationship. I would bet the farm that her response was “That is the way things are. Some things are unchangeable and, besides, you are in no position to think for yourself.” So of course, I began to think for myself even if it was entirely reactive.

But there is one memory that comes back to me. It has even appeared in my dreams. I call it the “blue redbird.” We had coloring books that had rudimentary, inelegant, drawings of things-to-be named in the world, mothers and fathers, doctors, siblings and pets, houses and gardens, flowers and birds. The white spaces inside the outlines were labeled with names and colors. On command, in unison, we all opened to a prescribed page, scrambled for the crayons heaped in a pile on a low table in the center of the room, and began filling in the spaces neatly and correctly. Sometimes I would read the labels and oftentimes, not. My coloring was meticulous and colorful. I never had colors bleed from a shirt or cat. I was also very aware of the colors, even at the expense of labels. One day I was carefully coloring a bluebird red. I think it was the woman enforcer who looked over my shoulder and motioned for Frau Dominatrix to come and examine a bird that had been designated blue—clearly.

“Ken that is not a redbird. Can’t you read?”

“Of course I can read, but there are almost no redbirds in Nichols.’

“That was to be a blue-bird. You never going to go anywhere or make something of yourself unless you read and then carefully follow instructions.”

“But I want a redbird!”

“Hush. You have made a very serious mistake. I am going to have a word with your mother.”

I began to cry. And now everyone had turned to look at the boy who wasn’t man enough to hold back his tears.

When my mother arrived in the white station wagon to pick us up, very likely unhappy at the prospect of her two hours in the car with three preschoolers, she was not pleased to hear that I could not read nor follow instructions. She certainly didn’t comfort me. The martinet reflected her own theories of child rearing almost exactly. The kindergarten “Miss” had humiliated me and that meant one less thing that she would have to correct—with any luck.

Why do I consider this an event to be appreciated? I learned that words themselves have consequences and that definitions cannot be assigned arbitrarily. Language was not a child’s game. Language was powerful. It could also become a tool for enforcement.

Rigid language stifled creativity. The blue bird that I had created was far more handsome than the red would have been. The person who had made the drawings of the alleged red bird was inept. The outline of its shape matched the blue birds that gathered on the big nut trees in our side yard. The sting forced me to notice their shapes and coloring with more attention and care.

But I am still left with a crying five-year-old boy with the unwanted attention of fifteen other five-year olds staring at him with fear in their eyes. The cruelty of adults is not entirely a learned behavior, but five-year old kids are perhaps more malleable than adults. Perhaps.

And finally, as a testimony to Creativity, a few words from the poet laureate:

THE PROBLEM OF DESCRIBING COLOR
by Robert Hass

If I said—remembering in summer,

The cardinal’s sudden smudge of red

In the bare gray winter woods—

If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat

Of the girl with pooched-out lips

Dangling a wiry lapdog

In the painting by Renoir—

If I said fire, if I said blood welling from a cut—

Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass scented summer air

On a wind-struck hillside outside Fano—

If I said, her one earring tugging at her silky lobe,

If she tells fortunes with a deck of fallen leaves

Until it comes out right—

Rouged nipple, mouth—

(How could you not love a woman

Who cheats at the Tarot?)

Red, I said. Sudden, red.

[Our Nichols Methodist Church is not pictured, but looked very much like the one that I found in Google images although the main door was set at an angle facing Longhill Road.]

The Meanderings of Francis Xavier

May 22nd, 2010

For my friends Garry Demarest and Tom Marshall, travelers and seekers.

"Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins where it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface: a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events. History is a construct....." Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

My friend Garry Demarest was in Goa a few weeks ago, and I suggested that he and his camera seek out the Basilica of Good Jesus, the final resting place of Francis Xavier. (I never imagined that I'd ever visit myself but now I've been twice!)

April 7th was the 504th anniversary of Xavier’s birth, and though neither Garry nor I were aware of any celebrations, if he had arrived just a few weeks earlier, he could have seen the mummified body of the saint carried in procession from Bom Jesu to the Cathedral across the street for veneration.

Veneration was also part of my request: I was asking Garry to help me complete a spiritual journey by paying respects to Xavier with his fine eye and camera. My experience of spiritual journeys is that they contain precious few endings, and many beginnings. In fact the journey seems like countless beginnings with a common thread. But I had intended my request, and my desire to complete my following Xavier in much the same spirit as I understand Ignatius’s making his confession to a friend before the Battle of Pamplona when no priest was at hand—the first step of his new life after soldiering.

I wanted to end my tracking of the meandering Xavier, but truthfully, I also wanted to be done with Xavier. His adventurous spirit was heroic—you have to admire that. He traveled to the edges of the known world over treacherous waters in vessels were like leaky rowboats compared with what modern mariners sail, and reportedly the man never acquired a sailor’s belly. On the other hand, he made me uncomfortable. His concern for all men and women, when that seemed fully present, was generous and loving, but reading from his own words, he seemed to trip up on a rigid, dogmatic understanding of the world.

Saints are human beings, and, in my view, some of the men and women whose lives Christians are told to admire and imitate also possessed, or were possessed by, some habits of mind that make the world less bright and friendly. Xavier seemed dogmatic, judgmental, and stubborn, always ready to pick a fight. He was also reckless. If just his own life were in jeopardy, I might be able to attribute it to his quirky behavior. However if you read carefully, he also put others in harm’s way. The ethos aboard a Portuguese man of war certainly encouraged bravado in the face of danger, but it seems to have fed a kind of fanaticism in the man. And although he was a guest in Japan, and didn’t know the language and customs, it is clear that he tried to stir up ill will towards Buddhist monks for what he perceived as sexual abuse of minors. He intention was to topple their authority as well as to present the teaching of Jesus. I make no secret that I would favor that outcome in the current scandal of abuse that has rocked the church. Perhaps Xavier forces me to look into a mirror and see the viscous side of my own attitudes.

The reconstructed map of Xavier’s voyages look like meandering, but they were certainly purpose driven, as was he. Francis left Lisbon in 1541 and for the next 11 years traveled many thousands of miles, from Goa to Japan with stops in Sri Lanka, Malacca, the Moluccans. He established missions that were to be staffed by the many Jesuits who followed him. On December 2, 1552, two years after he left Japan, he died on the Island of Changchuen while waiting to gain entrance into the Celestial Empire. His body was dipped in quick lime and returned to Goa 15 months later.

In spite of my personal aversion to parts of Xavier’s personality, I still admire his courage and dedication. As a small tribute to his explorations, I’ve assembled the following images. I’ve supplemented Garry’s shots with others that I found on the Internet. My only criterion was that I found the images interesting or beautiful. Credits for the photos appear if they were available.

The Beginnings of my own Journey

I began reading about Xavier more than 8 years ago when Tom Marshall gave me the 4th volume of Schurhammer’s Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times. I had wanted to read Xavier’s letters to Ignatius from Japan, especially several in which he describes his meeting with the Zen adept “Ninxit,” his transliteration for Ninjitsu, the abbot of the Zen Temple, Kinryu-zan Fukushoji. This was the first encounter between Zen and Christianity. The year was 1549, soon after Xavier landed at Kagoshima on Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan.

I attempted to reconstruct the meeting between Xavier and Ninxit in Buddha S.J. There were some hints that he formed quite a wonderful friendship with Ninjitsu that was not entirely driven by his missionary zeal. Apparently Xavier broke off his relationship when he could not convert Ninjitsu and pushed further north.

Xavier’s letters to Ignatius are the only record of this encounter. Xavier was writing to his friend and mentor, but he narrated with a kind of the formality that I didn’t expect, although my understanding of writing letters conventions 440 years ago is entirely best guesses. Xavier may have taken a very dogmatic tone because intermediaries might read them, or they were what Rome and Portugal wanted to read, or they may have just reflected the rigid side of his personality. He also brought only the most rudimentary linguistic skills to encounter, and seems in no way prepared for the kind of conversation that he tried to have. He was aware of his handicap and, in his letters, recommended thorough linguistic training for the Jesuits who will follow him.

[Signature of St. Francis Xavier taken from a letter to the King John III of Portugal, dated May 16, 1546. The letter itself is in the collection of the 26 Martyrs Museum, Nagasaki, Japan. Go to their catalogue for further inspection. I have not reproduced the entire letter as requested. I am also conscious that the Museum may not be entirely comfortable with my portrayal of Xavier.]

The story with a larger series of images continues at “A saint for the East or the Portuguese expansion into the East?”

References:
Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, Vol. 4: Japan and China, 1549-1552, Georg Schurhammer, Jesuit Historical Institute, 1973

St. Francis Xavier, J. M. Langlois-Berthelot, Jean-Marc Montguerre [pseud.] Trans. Ruth Murdoch, Doubleday, 1963.