Astonished and Overwhelmed

Yesterday, I rode the rails and went downtown. I took the train because parking a car downtown costs about $25 a day and a round trip train ticket was only $8.

I enjoy the train ride so that is a nice bonus. I went to visit the historic society, something I've put off for a while since their hours are not terribly "helpful" and just getting there is a nuisance.

But.

A year ago, when I went through my cousin Franklin Mousley writings, I discovered that he left a box full of stuff at the historical society, including his diary from the years 1911 to 1917.


Outside the society there is a sign bragging how old they are.

Inside, I found the staff very friendly and most helpful. They showed me how to use the computer card catalog, fill out call slips to get things brought to me from the storage rooms, and how to work the microfilm reader.

Ha! I bet some of you don't even know what one of those is! Truth be told, I've only ever used one once, and that was a great many blue moons ago.

The staff person lead me to the drawer contain the many rolls of microfilm that Franklin's stuff had been "recorded" on. My eyes nearly fell out of my head.


16 reels of microfilm, each containing upwards to 3,000 page images. I barely scratched the surface of what was available. Sitting there for nearly 5 hours, I looked at only two rolls.


Franklin was one of the very first radio-telegraph operators. He got his licence in 1908. He was only 16 years old when he started the diary I was looking at.

Imagine how I felt, when I spooled the film into the reader, and on the very first page that the machine displayed, was an entry for April 15, 1912 with the word RMS TITANIC underlined in pencil.

In that fateful day's entry, he writes about sitting in a ship that is unloading cargo at a pier in Savannah, Georgia monitoring the newfangled radio and hearing (in Morse code) the lists of survivors being radio'ed ahead to New York City by one of the rescue ships.

"CAPE RACE, Newfoundland, April 15, 9:55 pm. Orders to cancel the special train for passengers for Halifax to New York, means that the Carpathia is headed direct for New York."

Of a total of 2,224 people aboard Titanic only 710 people survived the sinking.

I remember my seeing the first lunar landing in 1969 like it was yesterday - might this of been Franklin's "lunar landing" experience?


The first page of the diary gives me a unique insight to a man I've never met and have heard very little about through oral family lure.

Somehow, I need to find a way to get a copy of this diary. It "rots" away, in a box, nearly hidden in a museum that is not only hard to get to, it's hard to get into, and has probably never looked at by anyone in fifty years.

Sartorial Splendor

In the past, I've written about how some of my father maternal relatives worked for a world famous hat manufacturer in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I was thinking about them today. None of my grandmother's siblings and various aunts and uncles were known for their sartorial splendor with the possible exception of my great-aunt Eleanor, and my grandmother who wanted to dress like "the Queen." I think she meant Queen Elizabeth the Current One.

It's not they dressed badly, if the many old photos of them that I have is any indication. It's just that, well, let's take one of my great-uncles as an example, I'll leave him unnamed as to let his spirit rest in peace. He once visited my grandfather in a hospital room, having come from yet another funeral dressed in a rather odd manner.

I'm going to digress briefly, and explain the "yet another funeral" comment. He was a interesting man, this great-uncle. He had a sharp wit and was quick to laugh. I didn't see him very often as he seemed to always be busy going to someone or other's funeral. Now, I'm going to give him the benefit of a doubt and say he was a friendly and caring sort and had many acquaintances and clients with his insurance business, as opposed to thinking he just enjoyed going to funerals because they offered free food. But I don't think anyone really knows.

At any rate, one evening while my grandfather was laid up in a hospital bed from the one of only two ailments that ever troubled him, unspecified internal bleeding, talking to me and my dad, when just arrived from a funeral, my great uncle comes walking in, wearing a bright green suit jacket and slacks, black shirt, and a wide purple tie with big white polka dots. I nearly choked on my own spit, and my dad just laughed quietly to himself. My great-uncle gives my grandfather a hardy, booming greeting, "Hey there Bud! I hope you are feeling better now! They get you any good lookin' nurses? Huh? huh?!?" My grandfather's eyes opened really wide.

Yes, I was thinking about him today, one of the relatives that once worked for Stetson Hats. Because today, I wore a brand-new hat to work.

I wore it to the 7-11 across the street when I got a sandwich for lunch. The Indian guy (three of them work there, it fits the stereotype so perfectly it eerie) looks up from the register and his eyes open real wide and he just looked at me like I was insane. His fellow co-worker just starts this quiet laugh (one that I've heard before in that hospital room so long ago)...

I'm betting you it was pants...maybe my zipper was down or the seat of my pants were ripped out or something?

Or maybe my shirt was on inside out and backwards or sumpin?


Thank you LadyStyx, I'm going to wear it all the time!

Mathias Gmelin (1677-1756)

While searching for the gravestone of another early German immigrant by the name of Heinrich Kasselberg (1670-1729) for Find-A-Grave request, I went to the nearby Methacton Mennonite cemetery. It was a dreary overcast day, one that had begun with a heavy fog. A day just perfect for wandering around an old burial ground!


In the wall surrounding the cemetery, one finds a commemorative marker that begins, "This marks the place of the first church house built prior to 1771." The local historic society says the "oldest surviving stone in the cemetery (and within the township) appears to be that of George Beyer, age 4, dating to 1744, when this was a neighborhood cemetery."

So that rules out finding Henry Kasselberg here...

A giant white oak marks the northwest corner of the cemetery. The oak is estimated to be 300+ years old and may be the oldest living object east of the Mississippi River. I've written about this tree before.

I decided to see where Henry's offspring were buried, as there were several mentioned in the records. So I began to thread the rows of the cemetery noting the familiar family names. Some family names are remembered as street names, others as neighbohood areas.

Eventually, I came across this old stone. Typical of the period, it is inscribed in German.

I carefully wrote what it said in my notebook --

"Hier ruhet die Gebiene den
verstorbenen Mathias Gm
elin gebohren Im jahr 1677
Den 31 Jan Gestorben Im
jahr 1756 den 17 April
Seines Alter 79 jahr
2 Monath 2 Wochen
Und 3 T"
"Here rests the bones of Mathias Gmelin born in year 1677 on January 31 died in year 1756 on 17 April. His age 79 year 2 month 2 weeks and 3 days "

Born in Vaihingen an der Enz, son of Jeremias and Christina (Zimmerman) Gmelin. Grandson of Jeremias Gmelin, Lutheran pastor of some renown in Auggen, Germany. Mathias became a Pietist (The Pietist movement combined the Lutheranism of the time with the emphasis on individual piety and living a vigorous Christian life - which influenced the Mennonite and Amish) and became a member of the Schwazenau Brethren, and eventually immigrated to America. He was naturalized in Philadelphia Co. 9 Jan 1729/30. He settled at Methacton in Worcester Township. He was a farmer and also a glazier (a person whose profession is fitting glass into windows and doors) by trade.

He is a typical example of a German immigrant of the time. The Germans settled Germantown, about 10 miles west of Philadelphia, because the English-speaking residents of the growing city, including no less than Benjamin Franklin, told them "to keep going up the Schuylkill river, they were not wanted there" deeming them to be "...generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation..."

Eye-opening, huh?

Time to Hug a Tree

For the last two weeks in February, I was in the sunny Florida Keys. This has become a nearly annual trip for me - and I stayed with my parents in a small resort. Not far from my bedroom window, was a smallish palm tree standing alone against the edge of the resort driveway - but somehow, I don't think it minded being where it was.

My mother asked me each evening if I had watched the sunset - they are truely spectacular in the Keys - I think mostly because it can be clearly seen - the backdrop is the wide expanse of the Florida Bay. Of the nearly dozen sunsets I witnessed, only one was a "fizzle" and not one was alike.

I ended up taking literally hundreds of photos of the sun setting. My theory was, given digital film is basically free, taking lots of pictures wouldn't cost hardly anything and might end up with me accidently getting one or two "good ones."

Take 300 pictures, 150 of them will be better than (your) average, right? And maybe, hopefully, a small handful might actually be worth keeping.

I share with you that single, solitary palm tree - out by the water's edge with only a couple regrets.

One, a certain good friend can't see the glory that is in them, and I've no language ability that will convey that intangible feeling of... awe that experienced watching the sun slowly head for the horizon in a final blaze of color, an awe that these photographs can only barely represent and/or preserve.

And second, that you weren't there with me to share the sunsets with me, as they happened.


If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. ~Henry David Thoreau

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk? ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982


I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines. ~Henry David Thoreau

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. ~John Muir


I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. ~Willa Cather, 1913


Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ~J. Lubbock


A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible. ~Welsh Proverb

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver. ~Martin Luther


It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. ~Robert Louis Stevenson


Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
~Kahlil Gibran


A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. ~John Muir


There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~Minnie Aumonier

Alone with myself
The trees bend to caress me
The shade hugs my heart.
~Candy Polgar


It is difficult to realize how great a part of all that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our own life is associated with trees. ~Wilson Flagg

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


Happiness is sharing a bowl of cherries and a book of poetry with a shade tree. ~Terri Guillemets

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. ~Chinese Proverb