A cold wintery Sunday with thoughts of the Shakers and life that has passed me by!

Brooklyn Street this winter

The lesson I have learned this winter is that without money…you are stuck wasting your life...yes really.  I watched via social media people who could go skiing, go to a vacation spot, go to the Syracuse basketball games, attend runs and walks, go to fund raisers. go shopping to malls, go out to eat or go to concerts...what if you have  no family that is close, and no money…?

If you are struggling to stay warm, to eat, to keep things together, to pay ridiculous energy bills… is this called living?

I had someone say to me well you can watch TV or go to the Library and get books!  With no TV because of the cost of it and no local service, with no car or bus service to get to a library…what do you suggest then?

The fact is everything costs so much money today that staying alive could take all of your funds and more. 

So in reading research I am doing on the Shakers for next year’s lectures, I was struck by what actually was their demise.  Many would think it was celibacy…but no, it was modern times and money.  

Success and wealth allowed them to become part of the “World’s People”.  They no longer were happy with the simple life of growing, working, keeping busy, praying and living separate from the world, no they now saw the need for expansion and progress…the cost…cost them everything.

They could no longer make everything to sell and had to hire workers who never provided the quality of “Hands to work, Hearts to God”.  As people left for the world they had to hire people to grow food or to buy it. Dissention reined as some want this, some that, none were really happy just staying put away from the world and all of the things they originally thought were repugnant to God.  Even fellowship was lost in squabbles over money and investments...yes they had tons of money to invest at times.  As they saw more of the worldly goods they wanted more. As the number of Believers left they could no longer keep the communities clean and neat and working. The rules they lived by changed and then changed gain...they no longer went out to seek new members.

Sad actually… a way of life that brought people together who had fashioned a society that cared about one another, that was self-sufficient for the most part…fell to ruin.  The Shakers were the longest running (one group of which is still functioning at Sabbath Lake in Maine) communistic society in America.  Millerites, Oneida Community Perfectionists, and so many others are all gone because of religious beliefs…but Shakers kept their vision of God both mother & father and failed because of money!  Believers wanted to be part of what the "world" could offer! Modernization..

I guess that is us today…we all want what the world can offer us…but for some the world has passed them by and unfortunately, they cannot be self sufficient in today’s society without the money to make them that way!

I wrote poem when I was very young, when my mother died I found that she had kept it.  It was on life passing me by…and this winter it has…

Life Just Passed Me By

I felt the wind like the touch of Spring, /Gently passing in the glow of day./
I saw a scene so far from me,
/Yet passing just a foot away.
/I heard God as I walked the hill.
/I stopped to listen and to pray, /And time just passed on by.

May heart smiled, enjoyed, and cared,
/As my lungs filled with the sweet Spring air;/ And the breeze against my face wasn’t even there,/ As life just passed on by.

They laughed at me for I beamed with love, /For the grass that felt like silken glove, 
/It gave me pleasure and just a bit of love, /And time just passed me by.
/I heard the call of the meadow’s lark,/
I felt the tree and its rugged bark,
/But time had passed me by.

For now I’m grown and now I’ve lost /The simple heart that would have bought,/ With a fortune or a ransom found,/
But not even that could stop.../Time from passing me on by.

Here is a video I did on the Shaker Settlement near Albany..their original settlement...

Winter, Tom a Hero Cat, and the Crimean War, all on another cold Sunday!

Well it is Sunday again, it is freezing cold again, and they are predicting snow…AGAIN!  March is coming in like a lion…but could it go out like a lamb?

So I am sitting here thinking about getting my Sunday blog up and wondering what in the world to blog about that might be a bit uplifting, unusual, different.  Nothing came to me.  Sure I had tons of stuff to bitch about as usual…but uplifting…hmm.

Just then the little Tommy cat came bounding in the door…I had just named him after a very famous cat called Sevastopol Tom or Crimean Tom a British Hero!  So I decided that for my blog I would tell you the story of Tom…the only hero cat I know who is in a Military Museum…STUFFED!

During the Crimean War in 1854 after a siege at Sevastopol, a port in the Crimea, the British after successfully forcing the surrender or desertion by the Russian Army landed in a place they found totally devastated.  The inhabitants and the Brits were left starving, as well as freezing in the frigid Crimean winter.  They all knew it would be a long while before supplies could come, so men and stray animals were left to scrounged for food. 

At one point, men noticed a sleek and well-fed cat that became very friendly with them… they wondered about him?  One day they followed him to the wharf area where he disappeared under some ruble.   Curious, they began to dig and there under the rubble was a Russian stash of food that had been placed there and hidden for their soldiers.  Most of the food was good, there was also clean water and... Tom got to eat the mice! (Why he was so well fed and sleek.)

Captain William Gair of the 6th Dragoon Guards (the Carabiniers) and his men eventually followed him to other hidden supply locations finding food that saved their lives. Gair and his men officially adopted him as their mascot…naming him Crimean Tom. 

When it came time to return to England, unwilling to leave him behind, they somehow secreted Tom to England with them.  The cat was honored many times and died a well taken care of cat a year later.

Since he was of “heroic” stature, Tom was stuffed and mounted and today gazes at visitors from a display at the Royal United Service Institution Museum… where he is remembered for his service to the armed forces of England!

So there, a tidbit of history... and a cat you can adopt named for a hero cat called “Crimean Tom”!

Hope the weather improves!