Summer Lectures, Shakers, and the Weather!

 I have been thinking about doing a Wednesday night lecture on the Shakers this year. The Town of Lebanon was actually settle by Shaker members who left the society to get married. They settled on land that became our current Town of Lebanon. (The Shaker settlement they left was New Lebanon.) 

What added to my Shaker thoughts has been the discussions about the terrible cold damp weather we have been having.  I said to friends that it was possible some of it is caused by lingering smoke in the atmosphere from this past years wild fire, which reminded me of a history story! The date was May 19^th in the year in 1780.....

The sun shown bright red in many places before that date and was followed on the 19^th by a black cloud that settled over an area that stretched from New York to Maine.  It was so dark that candles had to be lit at noon and the darkness never stopped until the following night. Since there was no weather or news broadcasts in those days it brought many to the conclusion that the “World” was coming to an end as predicted in Biblical teachings.

One famous scene attributed to this was a story made famous in a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier.  His name and the poem are called Abraham Davenport.  Davenport was legislator in Connecticut who when his colleagues wanted to adjourn a session because of the darkness exclaimed: “I am against adjournment.  The day of judgment, is either approaching or it is not, if it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment, if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty.”

The Shakers of then Niskayuna (Waterveliet) Colony were seeking new converts to their religion and were out proselytizing when the event occurred and received a record number of converts because of it.

Many years later (recently) the cause was confirmed to be massive forest fires in Ontario, Canada.  College researchers examining the scar damage on the growth rings of trees attributed the “Dark Day” to a fire in today's Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario.

The new lecture series is scheduled to begin in July, dates to be announced as we are delaying because of the weather...so stay tuned as they say!!!

Here is a video of today's work to restore the Shaker Colony of Niskayuna. Enjoy and come out to Eaton for our "Shaker Lecture:!

The Shakers, Canterbury Village, a vacation trip & a Simple Gift

I was thinking about summer and vacation this week and I remember one of my last vacation trips, which was only 48 hours or so long, but it managed to do something special to me, something I will always remember and I look back on with fond memories.  

The trip was business in a way…and payment to a volunteer helper Barbara Keough… who had become enamored by the Shakers after viewing a video I owned by Ken Burns.

Ironically, the story of this year’s speaking engagement was on William Pryor Letchworth and the Shakers played an important role in his work, so I had planned to do this year’s lectures on the Shakers.

To prepare for the trip I had bought Barb a wonderful (used) book by June Sprigg called “Simple Gifts”.  It was a charming look at her college summer job for three years as a tour guide at Canterbury Village in New Hampshire.

The summer was magical for her as she became an adopted “granddaughter” in a way, of the old Shaker woman who were left and who had opened the village officially to tours as a way to educated and to preserve the rich cultural heritage of those that toiled before them in the religious sect known as The United Believers in Christ’s Second Coming…better known as “Shakers”.  The women lived in a belief that June not only came to understand, but also came to accept in an enlightened way…though not becoming a Shaker.

As she described her arrival at Canterbury Village and her view of the dusty road that led to a place that had once been a vibrant community of “Believers”…working, living, and dying in their beliefs you fell in love with Canterbury yourself.  That summer she came to understand herself and what she longed for…her “Spiritual Awakening” you might say.

As a novice guide she worked with a young man of only 13 who was the tour guide the previous year.  His father worked as a caretaker for the community and lived with his two boys in the village… it is his father before him who took people through and explained the Shakers as well as Canterbury’s history to visitors for many years…The young man's name was Darryl…someone she had become fast friends with even though he was younger.  It seems anything she wanted to know about the Shakers he shared with her, knowledge he had gained as having lived there at Canterbury for much of his young life.

The day we arrived, we were a bit hot and tired since we had gotten lost and were running behind schedule. But as we approach the village... June’s words seemed to come to life…there before us was the dusty road with a clearing at the top of the hill… lined with white and colored clapboard built structures dating from almost 200 years ago!

We bought our tickets and just caught a tour that had started a few minutes earlier.  We walked to a grove of trees where the guide gave us the story of their plantings… it seems each tree was planted by a child who lived in the village and it was their responsibility to water and nurture it… the one we stood before he said was his.

                                       

At that moment… like in the movie Field of Dreams…” all the cosmic tumblers fell into place”…Darryl of the book was our tour guide…but 30 years older.  As he spoke with so much love and knowledge of the women who in the book he called his “grandmother’s”, he made you part of that love and of their story.  His history knowledge of the Shakers was enormous and he was a fascinating speaker and guide.

As he closed the tour and left us to wander and explore on our own… he stepped out the building’s side door.  I followed him and called him by name asking him about June Sprigg who he said was now a librarian at Berkshire College. He said she was a wonderful writer…I said, “I know”. We spoke for a while of the two new Shaker converts at Sabbath Lake Maine.  

As we ended our conversation, I thanked him and said that I was so glad he was our tour guide.  He smiled and put out his large warm and firm hand for me to shake.  With his touch I felt I had been transported back through the years and knew all the people who had come before…  I was now part of them and the pages of their dusty and once glorious past.

Now as I write this I have a feeling that perhaps I left a piece of me there at Canterbury Village… in the past…now a part of it... I wonder?

***Barb and I have visited a number of Shaker Villages that are now being restored and the Hancock Shaker Village, which is in my opinion too commercial.  So I recommend if you want a trip into understanding and wish to see a Shaker Village, visit Canterbury.  It looks and feels as if the Shakers just had just left it there for us to find and become part of.

To make the trip complete… read the book “Simple Gifts” by June Sprigg… perhaps Daryl will step out of the pages of it to take you on a trip back to a much more simple time….

Here is a quick video I did of our trip... ut on your speakers & enjoy!

That Field of Dreams feeling, stepping into the past and losing your troubles for just a moment in time!

This has been a busy week… though I actually took time to take a mini vacation mixed with work… the first in 6 years.  Only 48 hours or so long, it managed to do something special to me, something I will always remember. 

The trip was business in a way…and payment to a volunteer helper Barbara Keough… who had become enamored by the Shakers after viewing a video I owned by Ken Burns.

Ironically, the story of this year’s speaking engagement was on William Pryor Letchworth and the Shakers played an important role in his work, so I had planned to do this year’s lectures on the Shakers.

To prepare for the trip I had bought Barb a wonderful (used) book by June Sprigg called “Simple Gifts”.  It was a charming look at her college summer job for three years as a tour guide at Canterbury Village in New Hampshire.

The summer was magical for her as she became an adopted “granddaughter” in a way, of the old Shaker woman who were left and who had opened the village officially to tours as a way to educated and to preserve the rich cultural heritage of those that toiled before them in the religious sect known as The United Believers in Christ’s Second Coming…better known as “Shakers”.  The women lived in a belief that June not only came to understand, but also came to accept in an enlightened way…though not becoming a Shaker.

As she described her arrival at Canterbury Village and her view of the dusty road that led to a place that had once been a vibrant community of “Believers”…working, living, and dying in their beliefs you fell in love with Canterbury yourself.  That summer she came to understand herself and what she longed for…her “Spiritual Awakening” you might say.

As a novice guide she worked with a young man of only 13 who was the tour guide the previous year.  His father worked as a caretaker for the community and lived with his two boys in the village… it is his father before him who took people through and explained the Shakers as well as Canterbury’s history to visitors for many years…The young man's name was Darryl…someone she had become fast friends with even though he was younger.  It seems anything she wanted to know about the Shakers he shared with her, knowledge he had gained as having lived there at Canterbury for much of his young life.

The day we arrived, we were a bit hot and tired since we had gotten lost and were running behind schedule. But as we approach the village... June’s words seemed to come to life…there before us was the dusty road with a clearing at the top of the hill… lined with white and colored clapboard built structures dating from almost 200 years ago!

We bought our tickets and just caught a tour that had started a few minutes earlier.  We walked to a grove of trees where the guide gave us the story of their plantings… it seems each tree was planted by a child who lived in the village and it was their responsibility to water and nurture it… the one we stood before he said was his.

                                      

At that moment… like in the movie Field of Dreams…” all the cosmic tumblers fell into place”…Darryl of the book was our tour guide…but 30 years older.  As he spoke with so much love and knowledge of the women who in the book he called his “grandmother’s”, he made you part of that love and of their story.  His history knowledge of the Shakers was enormous and he was a fascinating speaker and guide.

As he closed the tour and left us to wander and explore on our own… he stepped out the building’s side door.  I followed him and called him by name asking him about June Sprigg who he said was now a librarian at Berkshire College. He said she was a wonderful writer…I said, “I know”. We spoke for a while of the two new Shaker converts at Sabbath Lake Maine. 

As we ended our conversation, I thanked him and said that I was so glad he was our tour guide.  He smiled and put out his large warm and firm hand for me to shake.  With his touch I felt I had been transported back through the years and knew all the people who had come before…  I was now part of them and the pages of their dusty and once glorious past.

Now as I write this I have a feeling that perhaps I left a piece of me there at Canterbury Village… in the past…now a part of it... I wonder?

***Barb and I have visited a number of Shaker Villages that are now being restored and the Hancock Shaker Village, which is in my opinion too commercial.  So I recommend if you want a trip into understanding and wish to see a Shaker Village, visit Canterbury.  It looks and feels as if the Shakers just had just left it there for us to find and become part of.

To make the trip complete… read the book “Simple Gifts” by June Sprigg… perhaps Daryl will step out of the pages of it to take you on a trip back to a much more simple time….

Here is a quick video I did of our trip... enjoy!

Going back in time to childhood, the world as it used to be, and a song of Simple Pleasures!

The days of simple pleasure have dwindled for most of us.  Cute pictures up on line for National Siblings Day bought back many memories of growing up in a world not inhibited by Television news, Facebook, video games, hand held devices, and the music and media riot of today.

Getting up early we delivered newspapers, which are now delivered most often by the Internet.  We walked to school... with no worry of molestation or drug soliciting.  We played outside in all kinds of weather and looked forward to visiting relatives for holidays and birthdays.  The phone was a luxury that we only used occasionally and then when we could get on… as we had a party line.

Now fancy clothes, expensive jeans and sneakers are needed to stay in vogue…my sneakers cost 50 cents at the five and dime.  Kids have their own cars to drive to school…we had one used family car and thought that was great.  Chores had to be done...lawns mowed, and driveways shoveled in the winter…shoveled…I still do…no snow blower or plowman.

I have been doing research on the Shakers this month and I was amazed how much I missed the simple pleasures that as children we took for granted. Their song Simple Gifts says it all. It certainly has been made recently iconic by Ken Burns in his documentary on the Shakers…and the story of the song is a great bit of history…yes, another of my “history quests”.

The “gift”of the song, as these inspirational things were called, was given to Elder Joseph Brackett who lived at the society in Alfred, Maine in 1848.  It was meant as a statement of what the “Believers” were striving for.  A sentiment of what was important in life…shunning the “Worlds Ways.”

‘Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free,

‘Tis the gift to come down where we out to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right

‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d

To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed

To turn, turn will be our delight

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

With many other verses added!

Composer Aaron Copeland picked the haunting melody up 100 years later and turned into a score for Martha Graham's ballet named “Appalachian Spring”.  It was performed in 1944 for the first time at the Library of Congress.

It was originally scored for only 13 instruments and won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1945. The dance won for Graham the “Outstanding theatrical work of the 1944-45 season” award.

Everyone from Judy Collins to Yo Yo Ma and Alison Krauss have recorded the song in recent times…a song that is a tribute to simplicity in this rather schizophrenic world of money seeking and daily clutter.

Enjoy!

Blood Moon Rising....Shakers...and this week in Easter & Passover time!

I have been enjoying reading about the Shakers and their history this week.  In actuality we (History Star Productions) are going to tour on the Shakers of New York and Mother Ann Lee next year…but this year they make their way into my lecture on both the Sodus Lateral Canal that I am delivering at the Camillus Canal Society meeting on Saturday, April 18^th and the related story of William Pryor Letchworth and Letchworth State Park on April the 26^th at the Solvay Geddes Historical Society.

When I saw all the publicity on the Blood Moon of April 4^th, I was brought back to another history story…New England’s Dark Day!

Yes …Dark Day…May 19, 1780.  In a book of stories on Ann Lee founder of the Shaker Religion, I found a wonderful story on her and her followers being threatened because of their beliefs.  Many times they were beaten and or threatened with bodily harm because of their missionary work among the “World’s People” while  they were looking for converts.  This one story has them in New England threatened by a crowd when suddenly the sky became black and the sun was completely obscured.  The crowd disbursed hurriedly…thinking that the end of the world was at hand!

There are hundreds of stories relating to tales of this day that is well documented in history and it wasn’t until recently, using timing and accounts of the event, that science answered the reason “Why and How” it occurred.  Answer…huge forest fire in Ontario Canada.

By studying the rings on trees scientists were able to pinpoint …via damage to the rings… a date which indeed corresponded to the times listed in newspaper and diary accounts.  The huge black mass of smoke moved via wind south and east.

I loved some of the quotes listed about the event, an event that many thought was God’s work and a symbol of the end of times.

One quote became the fodder for a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier called “Abraham Davenport" a Connecticut legislator who said when the session was set to adjourn because of it….”I am against adjournment.  The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not.  If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty.  I wish therefore that candles may be brought it!”

So on this special Easter weekend, with the Blood Moon rising….think about how times have removed superstition and how events are no longer seen as dire warnings from God but explainable events…

Rev.6:12 13 …and there was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became as blood.

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...