In Repose Blog

Changing Patterns of Collective Thought

Have a new idea? A new view? Watch out. Humans, in general, won't like to learn about it.

They dislike having their world view jostled. We have a long, long history of punishing those who are on the cutting edge of thought and evolution. Burning at the stake is probably not going to happen but ridicule is still used extensively and can be quite effective in our current society.

Its an unfortunate, ego and survival driven way to think about things in our contemporary times, but if you find that you are skeptical on every new thought that comes along that challenges your definition of reality you are certainly not alone in wanting to reach for those matches.

Take for instance the concept of ourselves as the center of the universe. It  was no easier for human societies to give up that notion than it is for individuals. Copernicus escaped censure because his theories weren't published until he was on his deathbed. Galileo, however, attracted the attention of the Inquisition, and was found guilty of heresy, forbidden to publish, and sentenced to house arrest for life. This was relatively lenient treatment for the time, perhaps meted out because of Galileo's age and poor health. In 1600, the philosopher Giordano Bruno had been burned at the stake for espousing the same ideas.

Some people, and by extension some societies are really are utterly unable to open their minds. Facts we take for granted in our current lifetime were considered a reasonable cause for murder not very long ago.

I bet Bruno is likely incarnate today as an alternative healer or spiritual quantum physics scientist today, escaping literal, but likely not figurative flames.

One step at a time Bruno. One step at a time.

Where were you in 1967?

I was six and in first grade. I lived in Kansas with my mom and my little brother. My dad was some place far away called "Viet Nam".

One April day my mom answered the telephone. It was the local newspaper. They asked her how she felt about her husband's jet being shot down out of the sky. I think I was standing behind her in the hallway. I think I felt the air being sucked out of the house.

I was only six but I had a fair notion about what war was and what it meant. I watched some tv news, I looked to see if I saw my dad's face in the news footage while Walter Chronkite talked. I knew some kid's dads came home before they were supposed to. Some of them came in boxes, some came all bandaged up. I didn't know for a little while if my dad got the box or the bandage.

I still remember how that felt to my stomach. The good news was dad was alive. They were talking about cutting off his leg, but he was alive and he was coming home with bandages and not in a box. Here is one of the photographs that landed in the local paper.

I saw other things on the news too. I knew there were people called "hippies" who did things like march for peace. Peace sounded like a good idea to me, if the people who were shooting at my dad would consider the idea a good one too. There was also rock and roll on the radio and this song by a group named "Hair". Remember?

When the Moon is in the seventh house

and Jupiter aligns with Mars.

Then peace will guide the planets

and love will steer the stars

At dawn on 14^th February the day dedicated to St Valentine, the patron saint of Love, the Moon in Libra enters the seventh house of relationships. And Jupiter and Mars are aligned in Aquarius in the twelfth house of spiritual transformation.

We actually then, now begin this age of Aquarius. Read more here.

The suggestion is that at 7:25am GMT, or at 7:25am your own local time, you might want to join with others to give a few minutes of your time and attention, and therefore your vibration, however you feel appropriate, to the dawning of Aquarius.

Seems like a lovely Valentine's morning thing to do.

P.S. Don't forget to tell your friends, especially your Radical Muslim friends, or maybe any Mexican Drug Cartel members you happen to pal around with, you know, lets get those kind of people involved.

The Paper Flower Funeral Club

Special article by Contributor Jamie Sue Austin

I’m part of  a group called the Paper Flower Funeral Club.  Often many beautiful, small, cemeteries are left neglected during secular remembrance holidays. With the residents families dead and gone there is no one left to honor their memories. Our group is dedicated to the revitalization of old, forgotten cemeteries through the placement of handmade paper flowers. 

(Here is one of our members making a purple rose  J We try to use bright colors so they can be seen from the roadside.)

This year I will be heading the placement ceremony at a small local cemetery.  The placement will be on October 30^th. October 30^th is often known as Mischief Night or Devil’s Night in the United States.  It is not uncommon for acts of trespassing and vandalism to occur on this night.  In part an October 30^th placement protests the negative acts conducted on that date, however the main reasoning behind selecting the date is because its proximity to the pagan holiday of Samhain which celebrates the yearly harvest and pays honor to the dead.  It is believed that the veil between the living life and the afterlife becomes thinner as Samhain approaches allowing those that have passed before to hear the petitions of their supplanters.

Heading the placement is a matter I take very seriously. What I say as we place flowers on the graves represents our intentions to honor those who came before us for their contributions to our lives.   In the same way that someone who presides over a funeral must feel a twinge of guilt for not knowing the correct thing to say I too am facing a considerable amount of frustration in selecting the right words.  How do I sum up the lifelong contributions of strangers who, most likely, are from various religious, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds?  My audience is 100 years dried into dust beneath the clay, forgotten, and un-revered.  How do I emphasis our connection to them? 

You see, nothing exists in a vacuum.  The decisions made by the bones below when they were with flesh are as real and with consequence as the decisions we make today.  They built the roads we drive on, formed the companies we work for, settled the towns we live in,  and created the law and common practices we abide by.  The local culture we experience now is  result of their constant tinkering.   The lessons we have learned from our collective past were hard taught at their expense.   The water leeched from the remains beneath our feet generations before our birth is the same water in our cup today.  And while we wish we were much removed from then, untouchable by the cold and quiet grave, we are but one breath from becoming the same as and a part of them.  What words best connect the beating butterfly wings of the past to the winds of today?

It’s hard to convey the sense of unity that we all should feel.  If the footprints we leave behind in our daily walks were not washed away by rain or wind or sun… if they were collected, catalogued, and kept for prosperity… if our fleeting thoughts were bottled and shelved, we could see our effect on the world.  We could watch the piles of footprints grow, build warehouses for our  bottled dreams, and know the intimate details of the lives before ours.  We would see the path carved for us by the actions of our ancestors.  We could better understand how to carve a path for our decedents.

But, we are fickle temporal creatures.  Eternity stretches out around us in all directions and we see only a glimmer of a fraction, a mere glimpse of the now.  The past is a far away thing, a distant fairy tale, a story we tell our children.  The future is a wistful dream, a wisp of white smoke rising in the distance; intangible and ethereal.  The bits in between are ancillary characters to our personal dramas.  How can I explain a concept that I barely grasp myself?

Jamie Sue, I think you already, and most eloquently, have.--Candace

172 Years Ago Today

To The People of Texas and
All Americans In The World --
February 24, 1836

Fellow citizens & compatriots --

I am beseiged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna -- I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man -- The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken -- I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls -- I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism, & every thing dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch -- The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country --

VICTORY OR DEATH

William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Comdt.
P.S. The Lord is on our side -- When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn -- We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves -
-
Travis

(From the battle of the Alamo, and the Texas Revolution)

For those of you who are NOT from Texas a small primer from Wikipedia:

The Battle (and siege) of the Alamo took place at the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas (then known as "San Antonio de Béxar") in February and March 1836. The battle was between the Republic of Mexico and the rebel Texian forces, including both Anglos (ethnic Americans) and Tejanos (ethnic Mexicans in Texas), during the Texians' fight for independence — the Texas Revolution. The 13-day siege started Tuesday, February 23, 1836, and ended on Sunday, March 6, 1836, with the capture of the mission and the death of nearly all the Texian and Tejano defenders, except for a few slaves, women and children. Despite the win, the 13-day holdout stalled the Mexican Army, and allowed Sam Houston to gather troops and supplies for his later success at the Battle of San Jacinto. The Texian revolutionaries went on to win the war.

 

This just in: The British did not Kill Napoleon

Legend has had it that British jailers murdered the French emperor. His official death certificate claims he succumbed to stomach cancer at age 51.

Th truth as recently revealed by scientists studying hair samples (saved by family and kept by museums) hair from even Napoleon's childhood, prove his arsenic levels, were indeed quite extraordinarily high.

But so were everyone else's. Samples taken from others in the early 1800's contained 100 times as much arsenic than the current average.

It seems as though the environment, poisoned by glues and dyes used during this time in history, was quite toxic by today's standards.

Museums, Legacies and People Containers.

A friend recently wrote that she is "not a museum person". Hm. My first reaction after reading that sentence was: I am totally a museum person! I would happily visit almost any type of museum I can name: Art, history, natural science, heck, even a sports museum might hold my interest at least for a while. I have been to some quirky ones over the years too that have made for some fond memories.

While visiting my friend Lynda in Florida, she and I took a tour of the Ringling Museums and of the Ca d'Zan, the mansion that circus legends John and Mable Ringling built right on the clear aqua blue water's edge on the lovely white sand of Sarasota beach.

The art museum houses an impressive collection of all types of work, and even contemporary galleries, but especially Baroque paintings and features some stunning works by Peter Paul Rubens.

The circus museum was pure delight with articles, costumes, photographs, carved circus wagons and even a diesel truck that was converted to the cannon some brave souls were shot out of to the awe of crowds in the early 20th century.

The Ca d'Zan was, however, no question, the pie'ce de resistance.

Built in the 1920's by Mable Ringling and inspired by Venetian palaces, the house has recently undergone extensive renovation and restoration and beautifully displays her legacy, now nearly 100 years later. This is where she and her husband lived and entertained society, throwing lavish parties on the marble patio while orchestras played and their yacht took guests for tours around the bay.

I was most taken with the windows and their tinted panes.

Someday I want to have window panes just like these, they are simply delightful and just as Mabel knew they would, create lovely flattering pastel light inside the home.

I have always been fascinated by houses, both monumental and spectacular such as the Ca d'Zan and yet also by the very humble and even the very poorest of shelters humans have made themselves since we moved out of caves so long ago. I think it was my friend Andrea who called houses "people containers" once when we were discussing the idea, and I think she was so right. They certainly are one way to leave a legacy, or at the very least, a story about the lives that were carried on between their walls.

The next house I visited on the trip was perhaps more moving to my soul than even this jewel by the sea, and it was most certainly much more humble. I'll tell you about that "people container" in my next post.

A Piece of Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821.

The cause of Napoleon's death has been disputed on a number of occasions. The physician chosen by Napoleon's family and the leader of the post mortem examination declared on the death certificate that it was stomach cancer that killed the exiled emperor. Later in the late 1900's, some theorists believed he was the victim of arsenic poisoning. Used at the time in medicines, hair tonics and found in unusual amounts in the wallpaper of Napoleon's home, arsenic poisoning was a viable theory, but put to rest in 2005 by extensive forensic testing.

Napoleon's autopsy was quite the event and reportedly was witnessed by many people, including a priest named Ange Vignali.

Though the body was said to be largely intact at the time of the undertaking, it seems the priest took home a souvenir. In 1916, Vignali's heirs sold a collection of Napoleonic artifacts, including what they claim to be the emperor's penis.

Having, um, changed hands for large amounts of money through the years no one has definitively proven the artifact is in fact the manhood of the late emperor.

Currently, it's in the possession of an American urologist named John Kingsley Lattimer who paid $38,000 for it at a 1969 auction.

"Spirits, Furious", a Poem by a World Trade Center Survivor

Rogue angels chiffon my nights, twelve arms flailing,

Those long whispers of limbs that curl a pale blood around my throat. 

They are maddened by my breath, as constant as God’s bare foot. 

 

I saw their burning flesh drop and felt the slow vibration of death,

A hum-drone known to the ages.

Jet fuel streamed under the lime-stripe of a firecoat, poof!

Then I ate them, I swallowed their stardust exploding on glass,

One hundred freight trains crashing.

 

Come tonight, I’ll cream your skin and feed you cowfoot and beans.

There will be a love song, then you could find my keys and my checkbook and maybe

In my room everything would feel new, like a red birth or a

Muscled and panting fish gill, or just green grass that serves as a bed

For dragonflies.

 

If not, we'll talk about it when I get there.

--Karen D. Rickenbach

(A World Trade Center survivor 56th floor, North Tower)

This poem won the Donald G. Whiteside Poetry Award, May 2002 and is posted here with permission from the author.

"Safety Coffins" Just in Case You are Buried Alive

The abnormal psychopathological fear of being buried alive is called taphophobia, (from the Greek taphos, meaning "grave".) Literally it translates into "fear of graves." Before the era of modern medicine, this fear was not entirely irrational.

During the cholera epidemics of the 18th and 19th centuries worries reached quite a peak, and many inventions were patented at that time, but history has recorded many cases of live burial.

When is a dead person, really, all the way dead? It has not always been so clear. Physicians and undertakers have employed many unusual methods to try to determine if there is any life left in the body laying before them.

From a 2001 Wired News Article:

Administering enemas of tobacco smoke to the suspected dead had a strong following among many members of the medical profession in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Other doctors preferred to insert hot pokers into various orifices, pinch nipples with pliers, and vigorously yank on the tongue of a presumed corpse in order to ascertain that their patients were quite dead.

Tongue-pulling became so popular that a device was created to automate the procedure. The suggested modus operandi was to clamp the maybe-dead person’s tongue to the machine and then turn a crank that rapidly moved the tongue in and out of the patient’s mouth.

This procedure had to be continued for at least three hours, doctors believed, so a village’s most-easily amused person was usually assigned to the task.

Fear of being buried alive was elaborated to the extent that those who could afford it would make all sorts of arrangements for the construction of a "safety coffin" to ensure this would be avoided (e.g. glass lids for observation, ropes to bells for signaling, and breathing pipes for survival until rescued).

In 1995 a modern safety coffin was patented by Fabrizio Caselli. His design included an emergency alarm, intercom, a flashlight, breathing apparatus, and both a heart monitor and stimulator.

Jamie Sue Austin who writes for In Repose, sends us a link to Vermonter.com that has photos of the grave of Timothy Clark Smith, who, presumably, is no longer affected by taphophobia.

Baba Uploads her first Story to In Repose, part 2

Today we conclude with Part 2 of Baba's story, "The First Time I Ever Rode a Horse".  Baba is busy adding photos, stories and documents to her page on In Repose.

The officers for whom I worked were some of the most infirm of the German Army. They had spent time on the front and been wounded or were ill, and not fit to serve as fighting soldiers. The commander of the garrison had only one eye. His name was Hartnack, he was a Colonel. The man I took dictation for was named Captain Astfalk. He had only one arm.

   I spent my working days taking dictation and then typing orders for the company commanders that were full of half truths and lies about how well the Germans were resisting. Even at 17 I knew I participated in a daily farce.

   Sometimes, during a break in my work I would look out the window at the long lines of parked military vehicles and wonder how many weeks it had been since any of them had seen a drop of gasoline. Here at the Feirhof we were using old parade and draft horses to pull carts of people and supplies.

   I had just finished handing Captain Astfalk a stack of briefing papers when the Air Raid siren sounded. “Go go go!” yelled Captain Astfalk. About 30 people from our building poured outside and most of them ran toward the woods nearby. I came out running with my high heel shoes and saw that some people were climbing into a small horse drawn cart. By the time I reached the cart, it was already overflowing with people, most of whom were not physically able to run to the woods. A sergeant helping with the evacuation took one look at the overfilled cart and then decided to pick me up, and while he was setting me on the horse I heard the old kitchen woman yell, “Take off those shoes and RUN!” But I was already astride the horse. I remember that there was nothing for me to hold onto but a handful of his long brown mane as the horse trotted toward the woods and the other people.

   That’s when I heard the machine gun fire. The horse heard it too and began to run madly out of control down the dirt road with the people in the cart screaming and holding on for dear life.  I managed to stay on for only a few minutes before I finally lost my grip. I slid off and landed in a ditch. The horse kept running as I laid there terrified.

   I glanced in the direction of the cart and saw the horse stumble and fall during another burst of machine gun fire. The cart turned over and the people jumped off and ran as fast as they could. Even the old kitchen woman started to run. I was one of the last ones to make it to the woods. As I reached the others I realized that I had wet myself when I was in the ditch. I hoped that no one would notice.

   When the airplanes finally left we all looked at each other in silence. Then we started to walk back to the buildings. As we walked I stopped and turned and looked for the horse and saw that it was still lying on his side, its back bloody with bullet holes. The sergeant was looking at the horse too. With a sigh he told me to turn around, follow the others and not look back.

I will never forget the sound I heard next: The single shot from the sergeant’s gun.

I know how busy life is these days. It seems like the days zoom past and there is always more work to be done than there is time to do it in. Take my advice and try to record some of your family's important stories while you still can.  We will share more of Baba's stories here as we prepare to upload them to her online page.