It kept snowing all day today. The town’s plows haven’t been able to keep up, so the town has extended the on-street parking ban through Wednesday at 8 a.m.
Because it’s been so windy, it’s hard to say how much snow we got here in Cohasset. The National Weather Service reports that a trained spotter measured 13.5 inches of snow in Rockland, just south of here, at 5:13 this morning. We’ve had another 2 to 4 inches since then, and it’s still snowing. I’d guess the total snowfall will be at least 18 inches here in Cohasset.
I took a break from work in the middle of the day, and went snowshoeing in Great Brewster Woods, a 25 acre tract of conservation land close to our house. It felt like I was out in the middle of nowhere — a pretty amazing feeling for crowded suburbia. I didn’t see another soul, and the falling snow deadened all the sounds except for a Great Horned Owl hooting mournfully in a tree overhead.
Snowshoeing in Great Brewster Woods, Cohasset, Mass.
Update 1/28: NWS spotters from the immediate area reported 18 to 24 inches of snow from the storm. I’d guess about 20 inches here, though because of drifting it’s hard to tell. In any case, a very substantial storm.
Snow is coming down, maybe an inch an hour. The wind is drifting the snow around our building, and I couldn’t really tell how much snow we have gotten so far. So I put on my snowshoes, walked over to Cohasset Common, and saw there was at least eight inches of snow in the middle of the common.
The Common was quite beautiful. A few kids were sliding down the hill that St. Stephen’s church is on, and the occasional snow plow rumbled past. Aside from that, no one else was out. Lights were on in nearly all the houses around the common, making it look cheerful in spite of the gusty winds.
Cohasset Common in a night time snowstorm. The First Parish meetinghouse is in the center, with my snowshoe tracks leading towards it.
This morning, Nativity Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the Greek Orthodox church in Cohasset informally known as Panagia church, held a memorial prayer service for Ana Ljubicic Walshe. If you live in eastern Massachusetts, you’ll remember that Ana Walshe is the Cohasset woman who disappeared on January 1, 2023. Last month, her husband, Brian Walshe, was found guilty of first degree murder; he also pleaded guilty to misleading the police and improperly disposing of a body. When sentencing Brian Walshe to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the judge called his acts “barbaric and incomprehensible.” With the sentencing, a truly grisly murder case had finally come to an end.
Yet even with Brian Walshe’s sentencing, Ana Ljubcic Walshe’s family still didn’t have complete closure. There is an oddity in Massachusetts state law that a death certificate cannot be issued when there is no body. Brian Walshe pleaded guilty to disposing of her body in various dumpsters around eastern Massachusetts, and none of her remains was ever found. That means no death certificate can be issued.
Ana’s mother is Serbian Orthodox. In that faith, a full funeral can’t take place without a death certificate (that is, without a body). Various Massachusetts officials are now trying to get the law changed so that in certain circumstances, a death certificate can be issued when there is no body. In the mean time, the Serbian Orthodox bishop based in Cambridge arranged to come down to the Greek Orthodox church in Cohasset to celebrate a memorial prayer service for Ana Walshe. A memorial service, in the Orthodox tradition, doesn’t require a body. The memorial service was livestreamed so that Ana’s mother in Belgrade, and her sister in Canada, could participate from a distance.
Panagia church opened the service to the entire Cohasset community; they know how this murder has impacted everyone in the community. They also issued a special invitation to the other congregations in Cohasset, so of course I had to attend. I would have gone anyway, because domestic violence prevention is one of the issues that I care most about. I’m also grateful that the Cohasset community has not tried to forget, or to cover up, this horrendous incident of domestic violence — something that happens all too frequently.
The interior of the Greek Orthodox church is beautiful, filled with icons. Even though I’m part of an iconoclastic religious tradition, personally I love icons, and I found it peaceful and calming to look at them before the service began. The service was led by the local Greek Orthodox bishop (who used to be the pastor of Panagia church, the Serbian Orthodox bishop, the current pastor of Panagia, and his immediate predecessor. It was a beautiful service, filled with (as they put it) the hope of eternal life.
We can only Ana’s family got at least some measure of comfort from this service.
Screen grab from the livestream of the memorial service for Ana Ljubicic Walshe, at Panagia church in Cohasset
Avalokiteshvara is a Buddhist deity with multiple identities, some of which I outlined in an earlier post. In Vietnam, this deity appears as Quan Am.
White-robed Quan Am, marble, Walters Art Museum, acc. no. 25.69.
This sculpture, carved in Vietnam in the nineteenth century, portrays Quan Am attired in a white robe. So it is that here Avalokiteshvara manifests both as Vietnamese, and as the White Robed Bodhisatva of Compassion — showing how one deity’s manifestations can be shaped both by theological concerns, and by regional or national identity.
This lovely sword guard, made in 1874 by Tozan (no other name given), shows the Japanese deities Amaterasu and Susano-o.
A sword guard (tsuba) depicting Amaterasu and Susano-o, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, accession no. 51.244
Amaterasu was the Sun-goddess, and Susano-o was the ruler of the Underworld; they were siblings by virtue of both being the offspring of Izanagi and Izanami. Here’s a story about the two of them, adapted from W. G. Aston, Shinto: The Way of the Gods (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1905), chapter VI — in the West, this is probably the best known story of these two deities.
Before Susano-o took up his duties as the ruler of the underworld, he asked his elder sister, Amaterasu, if he could come to heaven to take leave from her. She agreed. At first, all went well. But then Susano-o became rude and unseemly.
Susano-o broke down the divisions between the rice-fields belonging to his sister, sowed them over again, and let the piebald colt who lived in Heaven run through the fields, trampling them. Then Susano-o misbehaved in the great hall where Amaterasu was celebrating the solemn festival of the first fruits to be harvested. Finally, Susano-o killed a piebald colt of Heaven, skinned it, and threw the dead body into the sacred weaving-hall where the Sun-Goddess was at her loom weaving the garments of the deities.
Amaterasu was so offended by this last insult that she entered the Rock-cave of Heaven and left the world to darkness.
When Amaterasu hid herself in the Rock-cave of Heaven, the other deities grew worried, for there was no light any more. Everything was in complete darkness. All the other deities met on the dry bed of the River of Heaven to figure out a way to bring Amaterasu out of hiding.
First, Omoikane, the god of wisdom, brought roosters to the cave to crow, hoping to bring Amaterasu out that way.
Then Ame-no-Koyane, whom Amaterasu had put in charge of the divine mirror, and who was in charge of divine affairs in the palace, dug up a five-hundred branched Sakaki tree of Heaven. He hung strings of jewels on its higher branches, a mirror on its middle branches, and on its lower branches pieces of cloth. Then all the deities recited prayers in honor of Amaterasu.
Finally, Ame-no-Uzume, the goddess of Dawn and the Dread Female of Heaven, dressed herself in strange and fantastic clothing. She kindled a fire and pounded on a tub, danced wildly, and spoke inspired words. The Plain of High Heaven shook, and the eight hundred deities all laughed together.
The Sun-Goddess wondered how Ame-no-Uzume and the other gods could be so jolly while the world was wrapped in complete darkness. She peeped out from the half-opened door of the cave. She was at once seized by Ame-no-Tajikarao, or Heaven-Hand-Power. He kept her from slipping back into the cave, to the great joy of all the deities.
After the Sun Goddess was out of the cave and once more lighting up the world, a council of the deities put Susano-o on trial. He was found guilty, and caused to pay an enormous fine. They also pulled out the nails of his fingers and toes, and banished him to the land of the underworld. Finally Ame no Koyane, the ancestor of the Nakatomi, recited his Oho-harahi or “Great purification” liturgy.
It’s not clear to me whether the sword guard depicts a moment in this story, or is merely a depiction of these two deities.
Artist Matt Inman has a long cartoon/blog post on his website The Oatmeal, in which he sets forth his feelings about AI-generated art. He is thoughtful, while at the same time he pulls no punches (including the use of some salty language). Here’s an excerpt:
“AI art is an interesting technology because despite its growing popularity, nobody seems to want it. Artists hate using it. Consumers hate consuming it. And yet it thrives, like an Arby’s built inside a protected forest.
“I know it’s bleak. But artists, remember this: Nobody worth giving a damn about wants this technology. No one with a modicum of taste, patience, or culture gives a shit about AI art.
“AI art might eventually have the right number of fingers, but it’ll never have a heart. (I know this is cheesy but fuck you I like it.)”
“Maybe it [AI art[ will get better. I’ve said it before: I don’t know what we (humanity writ large) are capable of achieving with AI, but I know the people and corporations funding AI are in it for profit, not the betterment of culture or humanity.”
I went for a walk at Black Rock Beach late this afternoon. A large quantity of seaweed had been left behind by the ebbing tide, mostly Sugar Kelp (Saccharina latissima), but also some wrack (Fucus spp.), some Sea Lettuce (Ulva lattuca), and a few other odds and ends.
There were also hundreds of small (2-3 cm long), almost transparent jelly-like objects washed up above the line of seaweed. At first glance I thought they were Sea Gooseberries (Pleurobrachia pileus), a species of comb jellies. But when I put my photos on iNaturalist, user ja-fields corrected me — they were salps.
What is a salp, you ask? It’s an organism in Family Salpidae. The Salpidae are in Subphylum Tunicata, which is a part of Phylum Chordata — animals with spinal cords. Human beings are also in Phylum Chordata, so this odd little animal is more closely related to us than are crabs, sea urchins, or starfish.
This made me curious — how does one identify Salpidae, if not to species level, then at least to genus? James L. Yount, “The Taxonomy of the Salpidae (Tunicata) of the Central Pacific Ocean,” Pacific Science, July, 1954, has a “Key to world species and reproductive forms of Salpidae,” pp. 280 ff. Identification requires looking at the internal structures, and Yount provides a “Schematic median section of a solitary salp (after Ihle, 1935).” I digitally enhanced his sketch, and identified the body parts in easy-to-read type:
After Yount (1954).Click the image above for a PDF version.
At some point, perhaps I’ll type up Yount’s key. In the mean time, you can find it yourself here.
I climbed up to the bell level of the tower of the Cohasset Meetinghouse, because someone wanted to know if our bell was cast by Paul Revere (it was not). While I was up there, I took a panoramic photo. Not much of a view, to be honest — the tower isn’t all that tall, and it doesn’t have the dramatic view the you get from First Parish in Lexington (from which you can see the skyscrapers of Boston), or from First Unitarian in New Bedford (from which you can see New Bedford Harbor). But it’s still a charming view.
Click on the image above for a higher resolution version.
It’s a crazy world out there, and sometimes you just need to forget about the human world and get in touch with the beauty and subliminty of the non-human world. And on a walk today, I saw more than a dozen species of wildflowers in bloom….
Chelone glabra, White TurtleheadLobelia cardinalis, Cardinal FlowerImpatiens capensis, Common JewelweedCuscuta gronovii, Common DodderEutrochium dubium, Coastal Plain Joe-Pye WedMikania scandens, Climbing Hempvine
