Rachel has more or less finished the floor refinishing project. I think it looks wonderful! She also made herself a great reading corner.
I’ll be so glad when this election is over. I always resist writing about electoral politics because 1. what the hell do I know and 2. I hate the dread I feel after I do say something. Still, I wrote something yesterday and then woke up at 12:19am and deleted it. (Way too late, obviously.) Not that I said anything wrong. Basically, it’s bad practice to presume to peer into the inner workings of people you don’t actually know, despite the fact that everybody with internet access does it every damn day. Also, we have got to learn not to trust any opinion that gives us the pleasure of feeling superior. Those two sentences, removed from the context of our miserable godcursed politics, are the heart of what I wanted to say.
The Given Life, part two
My earliest religious memories took place at Trinity Pentecost Mission. (Yes, Pentecost. Like Episcopal and Episcopalian, the folks weren’t always sure whether they were Pentecost or Pentecostal.) My grandpa helped build the church when the congregation outgrew its old building around 1970. My grandpa was also Sunday School superintendent at that church for thirty years. I have the bell he used to ring to round up the children. Springville church (as it was more commonly known) was truly a country church.
The Given Life, part 1.5
I need to clarify some terminology. I mentioned in the first post in this series that the Holiness churches were “fundamentalist.” Now, I know many people use that as a term of abuse for basically any conservative religious organization that they don’t like but I do have a specific meaning for it. I believe I got this from James Ault’s book Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church, which I read shortly after leaving the Holiness churches.
Good list of eight ways of connecting from Ted Goia. Some of these I was already doing okay with and some still need a lot of work. The two I’ve been working on the most recently are:
- Connection with history and tradition
- Connection with the community via institutions and organizations
This morning I heard a bit from The Wayfinders by Wade Davis, a book about the Polynesian open ocean navigators. Astonishing. Not only the volume of knowledge required to do such navigation, but the types of information used–observations in minute detail gathered over centuries–is amazing.
To all the folks complaining about how popular Halloween is among adults today, I offered this as my considered reply:
This is a good list of ideas for cleaning up your garden at the end of the growing season while also keeping the well-being of your local critters in mind.
Thinking about the research I did yesterday, what will future researchers do, given the demise of local newspapers? Even the silly society pages gave me valuable information. Now such things are on social media sites, behind subscriptions, with terrible search capabilities.
Rachel and I are continuing to research the lives of our ancestors of place. Today we looked into the Schroer family, who were the second family to live here (1939-1971). Dr. William Schroer was a chiropractor who moved to Bedford from Poland, Indiana, in 1927 to open a practice. He and his wife Delzena had one daughter Florine.
Dr. Schroer was a deacon of First Presbyterian here in Bedford. The family seem to have been socialites: very active in various clubs and committees. Dr. Schroer was a Mason and his daughter was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star.
We also visited their graves in Poland, Indiana, a little over an hour from here. They seem to have had deep roots in that little community, which was heavily populated with German immigrants.
This is just a sketch for the moment. I plan to write a more complete history of the house after I gather more information. Rachel and I were saying today that we have thought so much about our house and its history and people that it’s beginning to feel like a person in itself.
Young Schroers:
Older Schroers:
