Tag Archives: Salem Witch Trials

Rain, Fading Colours and Certitude

2
Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Historical, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal goals, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

October 30, 2021- Rain put a slight damper on the celebration of Hallowe’en Eve, in Salem. The last day, or two, of October constitutes a prime commercial windfall for the Witch City. Indeed, October as a whole has emerged as Salem’s prime tourism season. The confluence is that of the city’s being the site of several, but not all, of the trials of people (mostly women and girls) with the American observance of All Hallows Eve-itself a metamorphosis of the early Christian (ca. 4th Century A.D.) honouring of departed saints, and family members of the faithful, for the three days October 31-November 2. British Celts began the custom of disguising oneself as a departed person, and going house to house for small food items. This custom came to North America, with the mass immigration of Irish, Scottish and Welsh people, from the 17th Century onward. It gradually evolved into today’s secular practices of widely varying costume play and the disbursing of treats. Should the rain continue, tomorrow evening, in Salem and environs, it will diminish, but not cancel, the celebration. Having grown up in a town not too far from Salem, I can predict many ghouls, goblins, witches, even 10-foot-tall dinosaurs and skeletons will be afoot-even some in rain gear.

Some scenes from Salem were shared by cellphone, as Hiking Buddy and I drove from Prescott, through Jerome, Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon, to the overlook at that canyon’s North Rim. The idea was for HB to be able to see at least some of the remaining fall foliage-a bit of which was still bright, despite being still in recovery from an injury. That mission was accomplished, and was a good use of a day which was quite open-ended.

The day started with my consideration, again, of the balance between serving this community and following insights from my spirit guides. It is, in my condition of certitude, a question of balance. There are those whose mantra is: “Bloom where you’re planted!” There is also the mantra of “Follow your own path!” The truth, for me, means following a path that incorporates both time spent in one place, serving those living here, and extending one’s network to people and places further afield. My path to certitude thus does not subscribe to the dictates of even the most well-meaning of those around me. Rather, it derives from intense reflection and meditation.

Even the most open-ended day can bring sunshine into the lives of others.

Four Days’ Reflections

6
Posted by on in "sibling-ish", Family, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Social, Travel

December 29, 2015, Phoenix- The period just passed, from Christmas  until Transit Day (yesterday), saw either sporadic WiFi connection, or time when being on the Internet would have been just plain rude.  As it was, my non-technological mother saw any time spent on the computer as an imposition, even when I was sharing what I found with the group.

Few are in a place of honour, when among those who knew them when.  I was delighted to have felt welcome, when I visited with a couple of friends from my late teen/young adult years, and the three of us were actually having intelligent, respectful conversation- free of the oneupmanship that seemed so prevalent back then.  Now, we are all mid-sexagenarians and have a grander view.

Mom was not feeling all that great, but kept a game face the whole time I was in Saugus.  I know better, though, and I also know that her current aches and pains will subside.  Andrew Wyeth remarked, on his own father’s passing, “It took a freight train to kill N.C. Wyeth!”.  It’ll take a lot more than that to bring down my mother.

The siblings will always be my treasured core group.  I spent time as the bete-noire, in my twenties, and it was largely deserved.  Now, each of us has our niche and when we get together, we have genuine nuggets to share.  This was my sister’s year to break out- to see the Mountain Northwest: Montana and Wyoming.  Her list of travel goals is also growing, and I hope she gets to a few more, in the years immediately ahead.

One of my seatmates, on the plane back, recommended a book entitled “The Third Target”, by Joel C. Rosenberg.  She was looking at the piece as if it were non-fiction, much the way some of us interpreted Tom Clancy novels, in the ’90’s.  Indeed, many fictional works are vehicles for disseminating information that would otherwise be “classified”.

I got a lot read of “The Witches:  Salem, 1692”, that is a nonfictional study of the events, and backdrop, of the Salem Witch Trials.  Kids were unruly back then, also, and, wonder of wonders, because they were roundly ignored by parents who were pre-occupied with the day-to-day grind of an oppressive life.  That teenaged girls and young women would react to being treated as chattel, by staging near-psychotic flash mob attacks on the reputations of their elders, somehow comes as no surprise.  Children have been my life, for nearly forty years.  The more neglected they have seemed, in their larger lives, the more I have sought to understand them and be of value.

Now, I am back in what has come to be Home Base.  My coming to Arizona, initially, was rather random and happenstance.  As with any such move by a rootless youth, it morphed into a place of growth.  I am still growing, and my octogenarian mother is till lucid enough to tell me that I’ve seen nothing yet.  The “Greatest Generation” will never concede to their Baby Boomer children, or anyone else, the place of the pioneer.

I look forward to the rest of this decade, and to my seventies, eighties and whatever else the Good Lord deigns to offer.  As the great Dick Van Dyke writes: “Keep Moving”. (I’m reading that book now, also).