Monthly Archives: November 2006

Slow food

Because tomorrow is a holiday, I worked on my sermon today. It did not go well. The sermon remains unfinished. It was a gray, gloomy day, with spatters of rain now and then, and by the time the sun went down I was feeling pretty gray and gloomy myself. Carol got home at a quarter to seven, bringing groceries. I gave up on the sermon for today, and we began cooking for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

We had been assigned to cook squash, turnips, and pumpkin pie. I cut three butternut squash in half, took out the seeds, and put them in the oven to bake for an hour and a quarter. Then I peeled some more squash for the pumpkin pie (if you don’t tell anybody about it, squash makes a better pumpkin pie than does pumpkin). Carol cut it up and steamed it. When it was soft, I ran it through the food mill and turned the resulting mush over to Carol, who did whatever magic she does to turn it into a pumpkin custard. While she was doing that, I peeled and chopped up two huge Westport turnips, the really mild variety of turnip that’s grown around here, boiled them, and put them through the food mill. By then it was time for the squash in the oven to come out and get run through the food mill, and the pumpkin pies went into the oven. While the pumpkin pies were cooking, I cleaned up the kitchen while Carol finished writing the article that’s due in a couple of days.

We both work more than full time, so usually we cook on the run, making a quick stir fry or some pasta. It’s easy to forget how satisfying it can be to cook “slow food,” something that takes longer than fifteen minutes from preparing it to eating it. I’m not feeling at all gloomy any more. Yet by the time Friday evening comes around, after I have spent the day finishing that sermon, dinner will be another quick stir fry with some buckwheat noodles. Even though some slow food would probably help restore my soul to balance.

Crunch!

At about a quarter to three, Carol and I decided to take a walk. We were both working at home this afternoon, and wanted to get out before the sun set.

We decided to walk to Pope’s Island, and as we got on the bridge from New Bedford to Fish Island we saw that the big freight ship that had been offloading fruit at Marine Terminal had just gotten underway, and was rounding Fish Island. Just then, the bells for the crossing gates at the swing span bridge started to clang, stopping vehicular traffic on Route 6 so the bridge could swing open for the freighter.

Late last week, I had been walking on the New Bedford side of the hurricane barrier that protects the harbor just as the freighter, River Phoenix, came into the port. It’s probably on the large end of the ships we see coming into the harbor, somewhere around 400 feet in length overall, a big white reefer with “NYK Lauritzen Cool” painted in huge bold lettering on the side, the red British ensign snapping from the stern. It was quite something to see it come through the hurricane barrier, the bridge superstructure and derricks towering over the hurricane barrier. Two tugs came out to meet it: I could see that Jaguar was the tug at the stern, but I couldn’t see which tug was at the bow. The black and yellow pilot boat came zipping out, but I couldn’t make out whether they took the pilot off once the tugs had the ship under control, or whether the pilot stayed on until the ship was docked. All this while, the swing span bridge was swinging slowly clockwise so as to open the channels into the upper end of the harbor.

From where I stood on the hurricane barrier, I had a clear view straight up the eastward channel of the swing span bridge; River Phoenix is big enough that it pretty well filled the channel, and it must have been a neat bit of piloting to take it through. There was a stiff westerly breeze, and you could see River Phoenix moving slightly eastward under the influence of the wind, but the pilot (or the tugs, whoever had it under control) nicely adjusted for the influence of the wind.

When I walked out to Pope’s Island on Sunday to buy a newspaper, I could see them unloading what looked like boxes of fruit.

And then this afternoon, there was River Phoenix rounding Fish Island, about to head through the swing span bridge. By the time the swing span bridge had swung open for River Phoenix, Carol and I had walked right up to the edge of the westward channel to watch.

The tug Jaguar was at her stern, and we watched as Jaguar cast off the stern rope. River Phoenix swung slowly around in a wide arc towards the eastward channel of the swing span bridge. “Too bad,” I said. “I thought it would go through this side of the bridge.” I thought she would keep to the starboard, but Carol said that the one other ship of that size that she had seen heading outward through the bridge had kept to the port heading out.

It looked to me as if River Phoenix were swinging a little too wide, but of course I’d never seen a ship of that size heading outwards through the bridge and I really had no idea of what too wide would look like.

“I don’t see how they get through there without hitting the bridge,” said Carol. “I wonder if they’re going to hit.” “Oh, they must know what they’re doing,” I said. But then, a couple of weeks ago, the tug Fournier Boys had been heading in the westward channel of the bridge to assist another big freighter out, and the tug had hit the pilings along the channel on the Fish Island side. I looked down and could see a piece of one of the beams Fournier Boys had shattered, still resting there on top of another piling. When she had hit, it had been quite a crunch.

River Phoenix was quite a sight as it passed through the channel. The setting sun cast shadows of the bridge superstructure on the white side of the ship sliding down along. I noticed one of the crew on the deck started to run, and then several things happened almost simultaneously: there was a crunching, scraping sound; the swing span of the bridge rotated a little bit clockwise, seemingly beyond where it usually stops; the crew member in his bright orange jacket peered over the railing, looking down where the steel side of the ship was scraping the steel girders of the bridge; and Carol said, “Oh my God, it hit!”

We stared in disbelief. The scraping sound stopped, and the part of the ship that had hit the bridge appeared beyond the end of the bridge. There two long dark lines where the white paint had been scraped off the ship’s side. I was looking at those scrape-marks in amazement when I heard another scraping sound: River Phoenix had hit the bridge again, near her stern; an even worse sound of crunching and scraping; but this time the bridge didn’t seem to move much at all.

“Look, there’s the bridge operator,” I said to Carol. He had come out of the control room which is mounted high in the center of the bridge’s superstructure. He stood on the walkway up there, watching the ship pass slowly by. At last she cleared the bridge, without hitting again. The bridge operator was talking into a radio or cell phone, I couldn’t see which. He came down the steep steps to the main deck of the bridge, and leaned over the far side inspecting the damage. The tug Jaguar steamed briskly through the bridge after River Phoenix. The bridge operator climbed back up to the control room, still talking to whomever.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to finish our walk,” I said to Carol. “I’ll bet they won’t try to swing the bridge back after that.”

We waited for a while. Carol had somehow had an idea that the ship was going to hit the bridge, and we talked about that. We watched as River Phoenix slowed down in the middle of the harbor. Then we started walking back the way we had come.

We told several of the cars that were waiting for the bridge that they shouldn’t bother waiting any more; the ship had hit the bridge. One woman tried to argue with us. “I recognize that fishing boat coming in,” she said — there was a blue trawler far down the harbor towards the hurricane barrier — “I work on the piers, they’re just holding the bridge for that boat.” Nearly everyone else, though, turned around and started driving towards Interstate 195, in order to cross the harbor there.

We walked down to State Pier, and River Phoenix was out in the middle of the harbor with an anchor chain coming down from her bows into the water. As she swung slowly, majestically, around to face the northwest wind, we could see that her crew had lowered her gangplank. We guessed that the captain was going to be picked up and taken ashore to talk about what had happened to the swing span bridge.

As we back across the pedestrian overpass over Route 18, we could see cars and trucks still heading towards the swing span bridge. We could see flashing blue lights on the Fairhaven side, but no police presence on the New Bedford side yet. We discussed how long it might take to reopen the bridge to Route 6 traffic: surely they’ll at least have to inspect the bridge; perhaps repairs will be necessary. Maybe everything is fine, and they’ll reopen the bridge soon. I have my doubts, though, and wonder when we’ll be able to resume our favorite walk across the bridge to Fairhaven. As usual, I was way too gloomy — by 5:15 pm, the bridge was operational again.

Ship information from the NYK Lauritzen Cool Web site: River Phoenix, 394396 cubic feet, 4537 square meters, built 1993, speed 19 knots. No length given, but I estimate about 400 feet.

Not for the faint of heart

If you live in Boston, you might have read the recent article in one of the freebie tabloids about Hank Peirce, now the minister at the Unitarian Universalist church in Medford, but formerly a roadie for a number of punk rock bands back in the 1980’s. The article did not mention that Hank did a number of punk rock worship services at the Middle East Cafe in Cambridge, then one of the best places to hear punk music — when I asked Hank about those worship services, he said he did a fairly standard order of service (sermon and all), but with a live punk band providing the music.

Are you with me so far?

Punk rock has its all-too-evident weaknesses, but don’t forget its strengths: a do-it-yourself aesthetic, and a willingness to integrate avant-garde visual art and music into a popular format. Wouldn’t that be fun to try with worship services? Not for the regular worship services we attend every week, perhaps, but as a sort of incubator for innovation in worship. Our Unitarian Universalist worship services could stand some innovation. I came across a music video in which that do-it-yourself aesthetic of punk rock is applied to a mix of musique concrete, performance art, and postmodern ironic self-reference — and I can’t help but imagining a worship service with this kind of punk rock [Link].

OK, I can see that I lost you there.

But as a Transcendentalist, I do believe that humor, odd juxtapositions, unexpectedness, can lead us to confront reality in new ways, shock us out of our complacency and our set ways of being to see (finally) a little bit of truth. Or, as Henry Thoreau brutally puts it:

If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.

Annie Dillard writes that we should wear crash helmets when we attend a worship service, because if we ever actually unleashed the powers we claim to call on, we’d need them. Or if we ever actually confronted the reality of life and death, we’d need them. Even if you don’t like punk rock, a punk rock worship service would be preferable to a complacent worship service.

Some other time I’ll explain why worship services should incorporate a fair amount of boredom in order to be authentic.

NaNoWriMo update

Today I fianlly had time to get back to work on my National Novel Writing Month project. Prior to today, I had done nothing on it since November 8, and I had fallen far behind the 2,000-words-a-day pace I had promised myself.

Earlier today, I had almost decided to give up NaNoWriMo. It’s bad enough having a sermon churning around in my head all week; I don’t need a bad novel to be churning around in me as well.

But then I decided that I couldn’t just abandon the story; now I kind of want to know how it turns out in the end. In spite of my efforts to forget it, the story has been stewing in the back of my brain for the past week. I sat down and churned out about 3,500 words of the story this evening. Then I had to stop because bedtime rolled around; but I wasn’t ready to stop. I wonder if I’ll wind up dreaming about the story and the characters tonight, or if I’ll lie awake for an hour with the story turning around in my mind.

And now it’s far too late, and I have to go to an all-day meeting tomorrow, and a dinner meeting tomorrow night, and then church most of the day on Sunday, and when will I ever find the time to get back to the story?

Late fall

At the beginning of last week, the tree in front of our apartment window was still half-covered in leaves. We could sit at the dining room table and brilliant red leaves filled our view, obscuring the scaffolding some workers had erected against one wall of the Whaling Museum across the street. But the wind and the rain of the past week and a half gradually stripped leaves from the tree; we’d see small red leaves dotting the glistening road beneath our windows; sometimes a few leaves would flutter away while we watched. The workers finished the work across the street, and took the scaffolding down. A particularly strong wind came up, stripping most of the rest of the leaves away, revealing the freshly-pointed red brick wall beyond.

A few leaves still cling tenaciously to the dun-colored tree branches. But now the view from our window is a view of late fall: wide open, hiding nothing.

Another Christmas carol

I know it’s not even close to Christmas yet, but I have to plan way ahead for the Christmas worship season, and once again today I found myself searching out good carols. The 1993 Unitarian Universalist hymnal contains the lovely Provençal carol “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella.” But the hymnal editors included only two verses (verses 1 and 4 below).

Two verses are not enough to tell the whole story of the two milkmaids, Jeanette and Isabella, who go to milk the cows before sunrise one morning. There in the cows’ manger lies the baby Jesus! Jeanette and Isabella run back to the village to awaken the townsfolk with the news that the messiah (the Christ) has been born. The townsfolk all grab torches and head off to the stable to see for themselves. As the word spreads, more and more people come, some bringing cake (more precisely, gâteaux) so that everyone can celebrate. But Jesus is sleeping, and the latecomers are told to quiet down lest they waken the baby.

A Web search turned up four verses in French, and a decent translation by Edward Cuthbert. With all four verses, the song is a little more raucous and a little less precious. I’m bored with precious Christmas songs, so I like the longer version better. I’ve been thinking about developing children’s story to go with the song, a story that emphasizes the humanness of the baby, as well as the fact that the townsfolk saw great potential in this child — the potential to be the messiah and save the world.

You’ll find all four verses below (with the original French for Canadians, and anyone with Francophones in their congregations). I have tweaked Cuthbert’s translation in a few places for greater accuracy, and in a couple of places so it sounds better to my ears.

Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella
Provençal carol attributed to Émile Blémont (16th C.)
English words adapted from a translation by Edward Cuthbert Nunn (1868-1914)

1. Bring a torch, Jeanette, Isabella
Bring a torch, and quickly run.
Come see Jesus, good folk of the village
Christ is born, and Mary’s calling.
Ah! Ah! beautiful is the mother,
Ah! Ah! beautiful is her child.

2. It is wrong when babies are sleeping,
It is wrong to talk so loud.
Stop your talking one and all!
Lest this noise should waken Jesus.
Hush! Hush! quietly now he slumbers,
Hush! Hush! quietly now he sleeps.

3. Who comes there, who’s knocking so loudly?
Who comes there, who knocks on the door?
Open wide! for I bear a basket
Filled high with cakes, which I have brought here.
Knock! Knock! let us inside the stable!
Knock! Knock! so we can celebrate!

4. Softly, come and enter the stable;
Softly, come for just a short while.
Go and see, how charming is Jesus!
Brown is his brow, his cheeks are rosy!
Oh! Oh! see how the child is sleeping,
Oh! Oh! see how he smiles and dreams.

French words:

1. Un flambeau, Jeanette Isabelle,
Un Flambeau, courons au berceau.
C’est Jésus, bonnes gens du hameau,
Le Christ est né, Marie appelle:
Ah! Ah! Ah! Que la mère est belle,
Ah! Ah! Ah! Que l’enfant est beau.

2. C’est un tort quand l’Enfant someille
C’est un tort de crier si fort.
Taisez-vous l’un et l’autre d’abord!
Au moindre bruit Jésus s’éville.
Chut! Chut! Chut! Il dort à merveille!
Chut! Chut! Chut! Ivoyez comme il dort.

3. Qui vient là, frappant de la sorte?
Qui vient là, frappant comme ça?
Ouvrez donc! J’ai posé sur un plat
De bons gâteaux qu’ici j’apporte.
Toc! Toc! Toc! Ouvrez-nous la porte!
Toc! Toc! Toc! Faisons grand gala!

4. Doucement dans l’étable close,
Doucement venez un moment.
Approchez, que Jésus est charmant!
Comme il est blanc, comme il est rose!
Do! Do! Do! que l’Enfant repose!
Do! Do! Do! qu’il rit en dormant!

Final notes: Although it seems to me that “flambeaux” could also be translated as “candlesticks,” that just won’t scan. And it’s still a little ragged — your editing will be appreciated.

Traditional UU Xmas carols

Those of you who are Unitarian Universalists know that our 1993 hymnal made some interesting changes to the words of some favorite Christmas carols, such as “Joy to the world, the Word is come/Let earth prepare a room.” Yes, it’s appropriately de-genderized, but it’s not fun to sing.

Here at First Unitarian in New Bedford, rather than use some of those new words, we just print more traditional Unitarian and Universalist words in our order of service. Thinking that others might be doing the same thing, I thought I’d upload the text files of the words we use so that others who wanted to could also insert them into orders of service (no reason someone else has to type these up again).

You’ll find the text file here.

Update: PDF file: Thanks to Ed S., this file is now available as a PDF file — instead of formatting it yourself, you can just print it out! Link. Also, I’ve placed an HTML version on my web site that allows you to jump to individual songs: Link.

Contents:

Angels We Have Heard On High
vv. 1, 2, & 5 from Hymns of the Spirit, 1937
vv. 3 & 4 from Hymns for the Celebration of Life, 1964

The First Nowell
as it appears in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937

God Rest You Unitarians
from Hymns for the Cerebration of Strife, by Rev. Christopher G. Raible, 1972

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
as it appears in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937

It Came Upon The Midnight Clear
as it appears in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937

Joy To The World
as it appears in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937

O Come, All Ye Faithful
as it appears in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937
English and Latin words

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (Veni Emmanuel)
as it appears in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937

O Little Town of Bethlehem
as it appears in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937

O Tannenbaum
German and English words (I use this when talking about Charles Follen, the Unitarian minister who was born in Germany and brought the Christmas tree tradition to America)

On This Day
as it appears in Hymns for the Celebration of Life, 1964

Silent Night
adapted from Hymns of the Spirit, 1937

…and a few others.

The two-day Sunday evening potluck

Carol and I met Roger Jones, the Unitarian Universalist (UU) minister in Sunnyvale, California, when we lived out in Bay area. He used to come to the Sunday evening potlucks at the “Villa on Manila,” which was our group house on Manila Avenue in Oakland. “Villa” residents included Michelle, UU minister who wears purple and roots for the Red Sox; Michael, grad student at the California Institute for Integral Studies who was doing work in queer theology; Carol, freelance writer specializing in ecological wastewater issues; and me. We had great potlucks in that house:– we’d invite people from our various circles of friends, and you never knew what you would wind up talking about:– Matthew Fox, Irish music, architecture, the state of liberal religion, the Red Sox, ideas for alternative worship, where to get really good Chinese dumplings in Oakland. So that’s how we met Roger:– at one of those potlucks.

Roger has a meeting in Boston this week, and it occurred to him to call us to let us know he’d be in the area. Of course we invited him to come down and stay with us, and he said he would. I picked him up on Saturday, and he just left this morning. It was like having one of those Sunday evening potlucks (except that it was just the three of us, and except that it lasted for a couple of days): long conversations into the evening, much gossip exchanged (good gossip, catching up on news of mutual friends), plenty of food eaten. With all the talking we did, no wonder I got very little writing done.

The “Villa” only lasted for a year, and then Carol and I had to move to Illinois; a year later, both Michael and Michelle had moved in with new life partners. When you live in a place like the “Villa on Manila,” you hope it will last for a long time, but it rarely does. The next best thing is to have really good house guests like Roger visit for a weekend. But soon they, too, have to leave. The Chinese poet Tu Fu wrote:

Here we part.
You go off in the distance,
And once more the forested mountains
Are empty, unfriendly….
Last night we walked
Arm in arm in the moonlight,
Singing sentimental ballads
Along the banks of the river….
(trans. Kenneth Rexroth)

The only solution to that feeling of melancholy is to convince more house guests to come and stay in our guest room. Do you hear that, Michelle? –you’re next in line to come visit.