The Cruise: Boston,the tour bus from hell, still a history buff's delight

Boston Massacre marker

On our entire 10-day cruise and touring at ports of call, Boston Harbor will forever be an experience both interesting (my degree, after all, is in History) . . . and abysmal.

The came down the gangway to a bus, and . . . waited. Oh, our octogenarian (?) tour guide was FULL of information and (extremely) trivial comments for the next five hours -- once he allowed us to get rolling, about 45 minutes after our departure time.

The late start -- due largely in part to the guide's inability to keep the right luncheon count for "SCROD" (stands for "Special Catch Right of the Dock," and is generally one of many white fish species).

So, he took the count, of the 27 people on-board, FIVE times. Two people wanted chicken instead, if it matters . . . and apparently, it did.

The first stop was supposed to be the Old North Church, where Paul Revere and assorted rebels lit lanterns in 17575 to warn the Minutemen the British were coming to Lexington and Concord. But, remember, we were late . . . so that got moved to the last of the day's itinerary.

Lexington Green

Other stops became looking through windows of the bus as we crept by, mostly architecture. Every now and then, we'd exit for 10 minutes, snap pictures like a bunch of aged sheep (like a spot of pavement where a marker noted the Boston Massacre took place), and then here hustled back on board. Lexington and Concord came and went, with a brief stop on the Lexington Green (site of the fabled "shot heard 'round the world) . . . snap, snap, look at a monument, back on the bus.

Lunch was better, at the historic Union Oyster House in downtown Boston. We crammed into a small dining room up two flights of stairs. The Scrod was good, by the way. The bus was AWOL, however, when we were herded back onto the streets, leading to a meander through a market area until we were reunited.

Trinity Church, reflected in skyscraper glass

Harvard was next. HARVARD? Really? A HOUR there, stuck mostly on the "old" Harvard Yard (there is a "new" Harvard Yard nearby).

The guide talked about the yard's history, and then walked us over to the massive Widener Memorial  Library, an impressive structure to be sure, with its 3.5 million volumes, 57 miles of shelves on 10 levels . . . none of which we got to see, since our tour did not include access.


Finally, the Old North Church! 

But again, it turned out the tour did not include admission to the site itself, so we had to be content with taking photos from the sidewalk, trying to peer into the interior.

Old North Church. Revere, lanterns, etc.

It's too bad, really. I wanted much more from Boston's historic offerings, having crossed a continent to see them.

The Scrod was good...

One bad experience does not a cruise make, though. And it was the only bad experience we were to have. So, there's that.

. . . and did I mention, the Scrod was good? Even the coleslaw was tasty . . .

The Cruise: Casting off, a first day at sea

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

                                            H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

 

And, so we did. Well, not setting sails in the true sense, and hardly the wooden ship buffeted by the winds Brown likely had in mind. 

 

View from the top

A mall . . . at sea

After all, the massive, diesel-electric powered Anthem of the Seas is 15 stories high, draws nearly 30 feet of ocean, comes in at just under 1,140 feet long, and is more than 160 feet at the beam.

 

In other words, with 5,000 souls on board, it was a city afloat, and it would take the fringe waves of a tropical storm late in the cruise for us to even be aware of the Atlantic's motions. But it was still adventure for us, 21st century seniors' style. 

It was our first day "at sea," having left NYC en route to Boston Harbor. Barbara and I determined to start at the bottom deck, and work out way up through several levels of restaurants, shops, esplanades,and theaters to the top, 15th level. At the top was where a quarter-mile plus walking/running path wound around the railings and deck chairs (and bars, pools, a climbing wall, skydiving simulator, and the North Star -- a 300-foot-above-sea-level elevated, glass-enclosed observation platform) were features.

 

 In other words, we easily topped our "steps" goal that day, roughly 4 miles worth. Indeed, between roaming this sea-going world and our tours at our ports of call, we did well with the exercise . . . and good thing, too, since it helped burn off the steak, lobster, and (once, never again) escargot, and associated culinary decadence cruise ships are (in)famous for.

Barb, feeling her Norwegian Cheerio-Os

It was all overwhelming, at first, and fascinating. 

 

The crew hailed from no less than 65 countries; our waitress was a Ukrainian woman -- who spotted my Orthodox Christian prayer rope bracelet and greeted us with a smile and friendliness (it seemed a bit more than the expected to me, but who knows). 

 

We would learn she and her husband worked on the ship, entrusting their two young children to her mother back in Odessa during their shifts.

Sunrise, from the 13th deck

 

Impressive as all this was, for me one of the best features was our cabin on the 13th deck, with a small balcony. 

 

From there, watching sunrises and sunsets, or just letting the sounds and sites and salt air of the ocean waves soothe mind and spirit, were priceless.

The Sun now rose upon the right:

Out of the sea came he,

Still hid in mist, and on the left

Went down into the sea.

                 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

 

The Cruise: A bumpy flight, a New Jersey bus, and a ferry to Liberty Island

It's a four-and-a-half hour flight, Delta says, from Salt Lake City to JFK International Airport. Add on early check-in on our departure date (9/11) for heightened security, several luggage and body scans, and time on the tarmacs and it was more like nine hours.

That's air travel in the U.S.A. 18 years after Islamic jihadists killed more than 4,000 Americans by turning three airliners into terrorist bombs that blasted New York City, Washington, D.C., and a Pennsylvania field.

But this is not a complaint. It is the new normal for us, and Barbara and I, along with 25 other Utahns signed up for a 10-day cruise along the northeastern coast of the United States and Canada, accepted all this as part of what likely will be a once-in-a-lifetime vacation.

Lady Liberty

We had saved for years with this in mind. The idea had been to celebrate our 45th anniversary with the cruise, but the failing health of my parents, so evident as 2018 drew to a close, convinced us to hold off. When we buried my mother and father within five months of each other, we decided it was time.

Time to leave mourning for life, to mark our 46 years together. While we could. Because when you get into those so-called "golden years," they can be few, as well as many. Health can be fleeting; there are no guarantees that what one can do today, one can do a year later.

So, our luggage loaded onto a bus that waited for us while we took a ferry destined to Liberty Island; we churned to Ellis Island on the way, a brief stop for photos and exploring where Barbara's forebearers from Norway first landed en route to North Dakota. (Mine had arrived earlier at Jamestown, Virginia, indentured Welsh farm labor in the hold of a 1658 British landowner's ship).

Ellis Island train terminal

We saw the massive immigrant sorting halls, dormitories, and now-abandoned train lines from where those cleared by doctors rode off in cattle cars (we were told) to their American Dream.

Ellis Island

Liberty Island was next. Lady Liberty looked small against the New York City skyline, until we landed and walked beneath her 300-foot shadow. Barbara and I settled for the view from the monument's pedestal, roughly 140 feet up -- still impressive.

I wondered, even as I registered awe at the monument's architectural immensity, if Lady Liberty truly stirs the hearts of newcomers to our nation as it must have done for Barbara's ancestors? Or, have we become too complacent, jaded even, about the freedoms so many Americans shed their blood to protect?

I let the internal debate fade, as Barbara took my hand, and we walked down the steps to our ferry back to the New Jersey shore and our hotel room.

The next morning would be an early one, another bus ride to the Port of Bayonne and our home for the next 10 days: Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas.
(To be continued)

A 9/11 World Trade Center girder

The Cruise: On countering a year of loss, with celebration of life

Death and loss had become an unwelcome companion in 2019. First my father, then three months later, my mother.

Never mind that for both -- one afflicted with severe arthritis and dementia at 96, the other with Alzheimer's and in a near vegetative status at 91 -- the end of life on this planet was a blessing.

It was still . . . death. It was emptiness, where once resided the breath of parents who had loved unconditionally for 66 of my years on Earth.

While I firmly believe we will be reunited in God's light and love, But until then,  I must live in the here and now. And now, they are gone.

So, having saved up for several years, Barbara and I booked a 10-day cruise along the Northeast Coast, from New York City to Boston, Portland and Bar Harbor, Maine, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, in Canada.

We chose to break the cycle of mourning with celebration of life, of seeing places and people we had never seen before.

New Jersey, New York and Boston were fascinating for all the usual reasons -- their mere size, density, skyscrapers, and historicity. And, they were confirmation that we would never want to live there . . . and underscored our appreciation for less crowded, more amiable and beautiful for raw outdoor variety of mountains, forests, rivers and deserts of the West.

I'm going to take my time recounting our cruise and excursions over the coming several blogs.

It is a time of life, and set of experiences, worth tasting in full.

Stay tuned.

Kicking social media: There's a real, scary and rewarding life of actual humanity out there

Earlier this year I finally, after a furtive earlier attempt, ended my personal account on Facebook.

Social media can be an addiction. For me, it was certainly a distraction from doing meaningful things -- reading good books, actually talking with human beings and nurturing friendships, and picking opportunities to give back to my community of faith, and community at large.

I chose a sort of nicotine gum approach to this breaking of the Facebook habit: Twitter.

Big mistake. Kind of like leaving Oxycodone for heroin.

So, I suggest this: Best way to leave social media's artificial "social" community -- and the cesspool of extremism left and right politics, and self-righteous, only-we-are-right types (and if you disagree, you are a homophobe, Nazi, "mansplaining," anti-woman for being anti-abortion, hater of whatever new gender identity fad has come along, etc) -- is cold turkey.

On Twitter, I found the same idiocy and anti-intellectual, intolerance-couched-in-"progressive" politics mindsets on Twitter, albeit within a (now 280) character limit.

Fewer words just makes the whole thing more crass. And, the temptation to call out bigots, both right wing and those digital Antifa and the self-defined "woke," is still just too much to resist for a journalist.

And, it is a killer for the humility for which Eastern Orthodox Christian folk are urged to struggle.

Here's the key point: you never, ever convince anyone to consider another viewpoint by arguing with them on social media. This is the realm of the echo chamber, of stating fictional facts to back up morally and intellectually bankrupt declarations.

For someone familiar with logical fallacies, social media is the place where reasonable people risk schizophrenic breaks.

So, today, deactivated my Twitter account.

While I will still have sources on Facebook and Linked In I occasionally need to contact for my freelance editing and writing work, that's rare and all business. The personal involvement is over.

Blinking into the light of reality, I wonder, what awaits.
:)

Death be not proud; just be gone. It's time to live again

One of the books I read in junior high school, among the first "grown up" works of my then-nascent adventure with the written word, was John Gunther's "Death Be Not Proud."

 It was a book that touched my heart and soul, perhaps stirring the first deep questions I had about the meaning of life.

I had first, having always had a love for history, read Gunther's "Berlin Diary," a journal of his work as a foreign correspondent reporting on Germany during Hitler's rise to power and up until his expulsion as World War II erupted. (Note: Worth reading now, when fascism has found its soulmates on both the right and the left extremes; here's a link to the text: https://bit.ly/2L5I30o)

So, I picked up "Death Be Not Proud" next at my school's library.  It was a heart-breaking, heart-warming, intimate memoir of the ultimately fatal struggle of Gunther's teenage son, John, against brain cancer. (Here's a link to the book's movie adaption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJvJiDcouU

The book and movie take their titles from one of John Donne's so-called "Holy Sonnets," which in turn were inspired by Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 15:55: "O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?"

Specifically, Gunther chose a passage from Donne's 10th poem in the series. (Click on the hyperlink to read the whole sonnet, and forgive the author's dated spellings . . . you'll figure it out. But in summary, the message is this:

Death be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so . . .
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die

 

I was about 14 when I first read those words, quoted in Gunther's book. Now, more than half a century later, I think of them again. Especially this year, 2019, Death has almost been a specter with some indescribable substance for my family. Both my parents gone and buried within three months of each other, and funeral reunions with a dwindling number of older relatives. 

 

So, where am I going with all this? Certainly, my blog this year has been rather somber at times, balanced, I hope, with the hope of faith. So, yes, you are probably as tired of death as I am. Too many goodbyes of late; time for more hellos.

I'm determined to say "hello" more often to Life, Love, and Light in my remaining years, however many or few they may be. I will pray, work out my salvation in actions driven by, I hope, deeper humility toward my God, and a decidedly more Christlike attitude toward others.

The Church Fathers and traditions of my Eastern Orthodox faith provide a rich narrative and examples on how to do the former. The latter will require openness, and suspending (better, eliminating) self-righteous judgment of my fellow humans in order to show them the Love I desire to shine from within.

I'll try to share that journey here. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memories and Eulogies: Snapshots of lives lived, and eternity gained

 This week, my mother's remains were buried with those of my father. It was the second trip to this gravesite in three months. 

 Now, they are together again here, and in the Light of Christ.

 This is what we believe, this faith, this hope.

 These are some select memories I shared as we said goodbye to her, on breezy, late summer day at my parents' shared, cliffside plot overlooking the Spokane River:

As we went from one little church pastorate to another, Mom seemed to attract hangers-on. Ancient old ladies, mostly, who would be a little less lonely with her regular visits. She’d bring some cake or cookies, and they would brew up some coffee. And they would chat for an hour or more.

There would be laughter, hugs and promises to come back again. Mom kept those promises, and she often took me along -- usually to the tiny home of one kindly, nearly blind and all-but-deaf widow of a German farmer.

It was boring, I would argue; the woman’s house always too hot, and then there were the smells. Let’s just say you might think she had a house-full of incontinent cats – though she had no pets other than two parakeets, with whom she held frequent conversations.

My own grandmothers had long since passed, so Mom made this lady my honorary “Grandma.” At first, it was just how Mom insisted I address her. “Grandma,” after all, had no family of her own, and she cared for me like a grandson . . . so, for crying out loud, I could reciprocate. And I did, with more conviction as the years went on.

It was one of Mom’s many lessons in compassion, taught in actions no one else might see, or if they did, understand in their depth.

...

But Mom had a different approach to how Christians were to handle bullies. Dad always told me to not hit back, just walk, or run away; turn the other cheek, or cheeks, as the case may be. But in a tiny central Washington farm town, Wilbur, other kids thought beating up the preacher’s kid was just great fun; they didn’t get this holy, bruised example of the Gospel, at all.

During one scramble home from school with three of these devils on my heels, I got tackled into my own garbage can. My tormenters scattered, but Mom heard the commotion. She cleaned me up, and then taught me how to make a fist.

 Don’t ever hit first, she said. But after that, well, a straight shot to the nose, or a punch to the stomach usually would end things. OK, I sniffled, and practiced making the fist. “Tighter,” she said, tucking my fingers into my palm. “And don’t let your thumb stick out like that. It could get broken.”

Then, Mom walked me over to where the three were hiding across the street. She told the boys I had been ordered not to fight back, but that was done. And, she invited them – one at a time – to fight me.

What? I gulped a stood there, looking as resolute as possible. But there were no takers that day. There were later that week on the school playground. And lo and behold, Mom was right – giving one of those surprised brats a bloody nose stopped the fight, as she predicted. There were a couple other fights, but before we left Wilbur to pastor another church, those kids were playmates and friends.

...

Flash forward. I was a young married man, just starting out on my journalism career. Mom would call me and invite me to coffee. We’d just talk, laugh; she’d ask questions, interested in what I was doing. And she’d give me advice on marriage – and some of it made me blush, to be honest.

She always knew when I was going through a rough patch, too. Out of the blue there would come a phone call, and she wouldn’t hang up without praying for me. But then, I knew she always prayed for me.

That stemmed from one last childhood memory. I was 8, and teasing my sister. Mom told me to stop it, and told me to put away my clothes. I didn’t want to. “OK, I’ll just pray for you then, Bobby,” she said.

I went to play with some toys, when, as if there was a loudspeaker inside my brain, I heard my name in a deep, and clearly disappointed voice. I ran to Mom, stammered an apology, and told her what had happened. She just smiled slightly, nodded, and hugged me.

That was my Mom. Earth was, and now Heaven is, a better place because of who God created her to be.

-------------

A long, sweet goodbye: A prayer for the dead, a comfort for the grieving

Jesus, she fell asleep in hope as did Nature before the cold winter. 
Jesus, rouse her when the thorns of the earth are clothed in the light of eternity.

Those lines are from the Eastern Orthodox Christian "Akathist to Jesus Christ for a Loved One who has Fallen Asleep."  They are just a couple of many beautiful phrases and divine petitions contained within this ancient form of poetic prayer, one I have repeated daily for the past 40 days since my mother passed away.

And as a believer, those words are true as both art and statement of faith; so, to me, are the others spread throughout the Akathist's 2,400 words and 13 Kontakions (a thematic hymn form dating back to Byzantium and the 6th Century). Believe it or not, at "only" 13, it is on the short side among the many akathists preserved by the Ancient Church.

This was my second cycle of this Akathist this year. My father, Robert Sr., died at 96 years old; we buried him in late March. My mother, Katherine, 91, died in late June, a little more than three months after Dad passed, holding hands with her as they both slept at the Cheney Care Center, outside Spokane, Washington.

Their passings, however anticipated, have been bittersweet for me. Stroke-induced dementia in my Dad's case, and the final stages of Alzheimer's disease, in my Mom's situation, combined with the physical frailties of extreme old age to rob them of not just memory and then awareness, but left them in pain that only increasingly strong medications could ease.

I mourn them, and I celebrate their release -- and the emptiness within my heart wrestles daily with the relief I feel for the end to their sufferings, and the hope we shared as a family in Christ.

Now, having completed the Akathist for my Mom last night, it is the emptiness that has once more opened like a raw, bleeding wound. It's difficult to explain, unless you have prayed for your dead, but during those 40 days of reaching beyond this material world into the next, there was a . . . connection.

Call it a confirmation of another line from the Akathist: Jesus, union of love placed between those who have fallen asleep and those among the living.

For the past nearly seven weeks, I've had that connection. It has been both a time of souls embracing across the abyss, and a prolonged, inexplicably sweet goodbye.

Now, memories will have to do. For Mom, they will be bolstered in the telling, shared with family and friends on August 22, when her remains join those of my father, buried at Fairmont Memorial Park outside Spokane. Then we will hug each other, linger, and leave, our lives continuing . . . for a while.

Until, Mom and Dad, we meet again.
 

On awakening with a mountain lake, and a moose

 "I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'This is what it is to be happy.'"  —Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

 We rose well before dawn, having walked the dogs quickly in the darkness first, then packed up fly rods, tackle, and net in the car. A brief stop for coffee and a raspberry fritter to split, my wife and I drove East into the Wasatch Range and onto the narrow, winding mountain road up Big Cottonwood Canyon.

 We have arrived well before the crowds, at first all alone with the awakening day, the breeze off the water, the scent of pine and the tentative chirping and trilling of birds a peaceful welcome. A short time later,  we are joined by my son, Rob, and daughter in law Rachel. 

 It was twilight, with the coming sunrise a bashful, soft glow over the near two-mile high Brighton Ridge, we arrived at Silver Lake. The lake, which adjoins acres of marshlands, is a popular destination for young and old; the former can frolic in heavily forested picnic areas and run along the shoreline and scale adjacent mountain trails . . . and the latter, a mile of boardwalk meanders through the natural area where waterfowl, trout (of which we caught none, but that's fine) and, on this day, a foraging moose, too, resides.

 The moose, a cow, occasionally glances at us, but seems unperturbed; as it first swims and then plows through rushes and sedge meadows until it reaches the boardwalk. She clops onto the boardwalk and into the wet seeps beyond, intent on breakfast.

 I smile. How humbling, and beautiful, to just be part of the scenery for such a majestic creature.

----

To close, a modern-day parable:

 Father Herman recalls a quiet moment when he was with Father Seraphim [Rose] and their animals came up to them: Svir [the monastery dog] looking up devotedly and wagging his tail, and a lovely, white-pawed cat named Kisa standing quietly by. 

 “From your point of view,” Father Herman asked in a reflective mood, “what are animals all about?”

Father Seraphim replied: “They have something to do with Paradise.”

Lord had mercy: The grandma I never knew, welcomed my mother 'home'

My grandmother, Bessie Fern Powell, held me when I was a baby.

I don't remember her. I was 2 years old when she died in October, 1955, at age 61 of cancer.

But I pray for her repose regularly, along with her husband, my grandfather Luther Powell, and my other grandparents, departed uncles and aunts and cousins, and a few folks, passed away and still living, who were sources of pain --and thus learning -- in my life.

So, all I have of Bessie is the memory of an old black-and-white snapshot my mother showed me. It was of my grandmother, who hailed from the Scots McGinnis family, holding me, wrapped in blanket.

That photo may be among the few belongings she left behind. I've not, yet, been able to bring myself to go through them.

Mom passed away on June 28, age 91, after years of being ravaged by Alzheimer's disease. I had seen her last in late March, when I buried by father. During our visits we had a few seconds of her being "present," a smile and a laugh, before the blank eyes and drifting off to sleep regained increasing, and terminal dominion.

Staff at her nursing home in Cheney, Wash., had told me her last few weeks were non-responsive ones. And finally, in the early morning hours a couple weeks ago, she just stopped. So, that was my image of her final breaths in this life, as I have prayed the Eastern Orthodox Christian Akathist for the Departed the past week or so.

But, back to Bessie.

Today I learned of another piece of the story of Katherine Mims' final moments, one that means so very, very much.

Late the day before she was found deceased, a staffer told my family, Mom awoke out of her near-coma briefly, shouting with surprised delight: "Mama!"

And then, she fell asleep again. As far as we know, she never awakened again, at least in this world.

Could it be? My heart tells me, yes.

Thanks, Grandma Bessie.

I look forward to someday seeing, and remembering you, for eternity.