Flight 93

 After South Carolina  we stopped in Maryland to see my brother and his wife. Knowing we were headed for Kane, Pennsylvania, she recommended a stop at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, PA. I found it deeply moving.

From the National Park Service brochure:

September 11, 2001, morning: Four commercial airliners are hijacked by al Queda terrorists in a planned attack against the United States. Two are flown into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York City. A third is flown into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, United Flight 93, a Boeing 757 bound for San Francisco, California, from Newark, New Jersey, is delayed 25 minutes before takeoff.

After 46 minutes flying, when over eastern Ohio, hijackers in first class attack at 9:28 am, incapacitating the captain and first officer. Hijackers turn Flight 93 southeast, headed for Washington, DC, most likely the US Capitol.

Just before 10 am the plane is seen flying low and erratically over southwestern Pennsylvania. At 10:03 it crashes, upside-down, at 563 miles per hour into this Somerset County field. There are no survivors. All 33 passengers, seven crew members, and four hijackers are killed.

It’s a sobering story, told with TV news clips, photos, artifacts from the crash site, and even recorded voice messages by crew and passengers trying to send one last message of love to their families.

The courage of those forty people is awe-inspiring. They were just regular civilians, taking a routine cross-country plane trip. They hadn’t been trained for combat. The crew’s training against hijacking focused on negotiating and deescalating a tense situation. No one was prepared to deal with suicide pilots.

But these brave men and women, in a matter of minutes, responded to the unprecedented situation. Forced to the back of the plane, they made a plan and voted to storm the cockpit. Again, from the NPS brochure:

Recovered from the crash site, the cockpit voice recorder captured the shouts, thumps, crashes, and breaking of glass and plates. The 9/11 Commission reported that the hijackers, although remaining in control of the plane, must have judged that the passengers and crew were mere seconds from overcoming them. To continued sounds of the counterattack, Flight 93 crashed into this field.

The crash site is 18 minutes flying time from Washington, DC. The action of unarmed passengers and crew thwarted and defeated the terrorists’ plan.

May they rest in peace.

Honeybees

 Our niece keeps bees. It’s an admirable occupation. Sherlock Holmes kept bees in his retirement on a small farm upon the South Downs.

Our apiarist relative established a hive about three years ago, at the outside corner of her parents’ house in Charleston, South Carolina. She has about three pounds of honeybees, or 10,000 little winged creatures.

We recently visited Charleston and as I was lugging luggage to the front door, I heard an angry buzzing around my head. I walked all around the front yard to escape but the insect persisted in circling my head. I finally starting waving my arms around my head, beginning to feel crazed by the incessant buzzing. I felt my right hand hit something fuzzy and larger than a housefly and then that unique and familiar sharp pain that bee venom inflicts. A little whitish stinger was lodged in the proximal phalange of my right index finger. (Yeah, I had to look it up on Johns Hopkins’ anatomy chart. It’s the finger part nearest the wrist.)

Jim scrapped off the little stinger (remarkable pain from such a small puncture caused by a tiny bit of organic material) with a credit card. I knew enough not to try and pull it out: it has a sac that can release more venom if squeezed.

Over the next day. instead of improving, the swelling moved from my finger to the back of my hand towards my wrist until my knuckles and veins disappeared and my skin grew taut. The worst of it was the itching. I trained myself years ago never to scratch an injury, but I was sorely tempted. We saw Beethoven’s Third Symphony that night and I struggled to concentrate fully (we were in Charleston to enjoy the annual Spoleto Festival USA). The next day the swelling was even worse. I remembered that I had some steroid cream from a previous poison ivy rash. It took another day to take effect, but over a few more days the swelling subsided.

As I understand it, the symptoms we experience after an injury or illness are caused by our own immune system reacting to the invasion. I’m sure it would be worse if we had no defenses against microbes and poisons, but I wouldn’t mind a little downgrade tweak to my system.

The beehive, after three years of growing, is finally producing honey. Our niece gave us a little jar, which I will enjoy when we return home. My attacker will not enjoy home: when the stinger is lodged in the victim the bee suffers fatal internal injuries.

Polaroid picture

 I’m finding the stress of my life cutting into my sleep. I seem to sleep long enough, but I can tell when I wake that I’ve been worrying about my responsibilities all night long.

With no school-aged children at home I often don’t follow weather forecasts. This morning I awoke before six a.m. vexed by a complicated issue. I got up to work on it on my laptop and when I glanced outside after about a half hour, something magical happened.

When I was a little girl I received a Polaroid camera for Christmas. (My granddaughter has a camera with the same technology.) I would take a picture and pull the seemingly blank photo paper from the camera. As I watched, a dim image in black and white would appear and details slowly sharpen before my eyes.

That’s what happened to me this morning. When I sat down at my desk, all seemed the same as yesterday. but at some point I turned my head to glance outside and realized the car seemed different. Peering down at the pre-dawn yard, I saw a blanket of white on my car. Over the next hour, each time I glanced out details of the scene deepened and sharpened into a wintry landscape. In the windless air a dusting of snow covered every maple twig. Since our coachhouse is white with grey trim, my west window framed an old black and white photo with a touch of dull brick in the Greeley Village apartments beyond and to the south a tinge of dusty pink at the office condos peeked through the branches.

David A. Bednar, an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke of "the tender mercies of the Lord," small blessings that we can learn to recognize and appreciate in our daily lives. As I sit here, wondering at the beauty that developed before my eyes this morning, it truly is a tender mercy. The stresses remain, the challenges abound, but there is beauty to be seen if I just lift my head and look.

Drinking from a firehose

 I just got back from a religion class at our chapel. (Adult religion classes offered during the week are called “Institute.”)

It was inspirational and reminded me of my one experience with BYU Education Week back in 1993. Brigham Young University opens its campus each year for a week between spring and summer semester. BYU professors and others offer free classes and lectures on a huge variety of subjects. I saw Stephen Covey give a lecture on Joseph Smith, using the same paradigm as he uses in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I attended a college-level art history class. (I’ve often regretted not taking one as an undergrad.) I literally ran from one venue to the next, 'drinking from a fire hose,’ to borrow the metaphor a speaker in the opening meeting in the Marriott Center used. And today I had another sip.

Shauna Seamons is generously sharing her wealth of knowledge and deep understanding of the restored gospel. The topic for this semester is “Temple Text in the Scriptures.” I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that our temple experience can be enriched by a deeper understanding of temple references in the scriptures. (For me as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these are the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.)

Shauna has been a religion teacher for over twenty years and I was blown away both by the content of her lesson and her teaching style. I decided at the last minute to bring a new notebook. (With my hand tremor my handwriting is sometimes illegible, especially in public.) I’m so glad I did. My left hand behaved itself admirably and now I have notes to refer to as I study this week.

I love taking classes and expanding my horizons. Thank you, Shauna! And thank you to all the women who came out on a winter Tuesday morning to share in the class and contribute to my day.

Latest Autumn

 The yellows are fallen and browned. A few stubborn dark leaves, chiefly oaks, hold on.

I lived in a little town in central Pennsylvania until I was nine. I loved the rolling hills surrounding our little Susquehanna River valley. To me, after the leaves fell, the hills were covered with soft brown fur. As I grew older I realized that my impressionistic view was a fantasy. Bare tree limbs and twigs catch your jacket and scratch your face. But the childish fancy won't give way to reality. The sight of a late autumn wood is comforting and cozy.

My oldest cousin, Lola, owned a sugar beet farm in eastern Montana and we visited them in 1995, the summer of our cross-country trip, after stopping at my Dad’s old stomping  grounds in Choteau County and Fort Benton, Montana.

Lola and her husband Dick were gracious hosts. They took us in their pickup truck to view the sugar beet fields and their oldest son gave my kids rides on his horse.

Their oldest daughter had moved to West Virginia. She was quite homesick and one day called Lola and said, “Mom, the leaves have all fallen off the trees. It is so ugly here!”

Because of that report I have pondered late autumn. It would be a shock to first experience an Eastern late autumn in adulthood. I’ve grown up with them. I love the contrasts and the continual change in color and texture all through the year.

Out my kitchen window I see trees, a few small ones in the foreground and a large maple tree a block to the north. It has a pleasing rounded shape and I’m reminded of a poem I once wrote. I visualized my brain, which had failed me so utterly, as a large deciduous tree with thousands of branches and twigs. My marvelous brain, for all its failings, was as glorious as a mighty oak.

I’m very proud of the fact that I can say and even spell deciduous. I’ve often felt it was a pretentious adjective for such a familiar object. I just learned that it comes from the Latin: to fall down or off. So prosaic.

Sunglow, burnt sienna, and honey

 I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before. For the past thirty-eight years I have reveled in the simple but deep pleasure of living in New England: a place other people go to on vacation. In the fall, I enjoy walking and driving, day after day, watching the colors change from the deep augustal green through reds, oranges, yellows, and browns.

According to The Boston Globe, “Summer 2023 was the second-rainiest on record in Boston,” with more than 20 inches falling in three months.

In drought years the trees turn color early, and this year they turned late. I was happy to see that even though we were in England until October 12th, we hadn’t missed the peak in New England. Two weeks later Jim and I took a drive west to Petersham and ate supper in Barre at Red Tomato Pizza, enjoying delicious Italian food. We’d been to the town before: Barre is the terminus of my beloved Route 62.

As we headed home on this late afternoon, the sunlight on the leaves nourished our souls.

Two days later we drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, where we lived for seven years. Four of our six children were born there at Elliot Hospital. I’ve always loved the mix of deep forest green pine trees and deciduous trees in New Hampshire.

As I’ve been driving around the past few weeks, composing this post in my head, I’ve paid especial attention and tried to name all the colors of late fall. I’ve been surprised at the vibrant reds: I think of red as an early fall color. And it is. These deep scarlets are mostly single trees, obviously from a nursery and not native to the soil.

I’m also surprised by the yellows still on the trees. How to describe the colors? I went to a website website for some linguistic help. Here are some of the colors I’ve been trying to describe:

Burnt sienna, golden brown, amber, autumn gold, sunglow, golden puppy, harvest gold, sandy taupe, antique gold, cognac, aspen gold, dark goldenrod, maize, candlelight gold, saffron, honey, and caramel. Good enough to eat.

Anniversary: November 5, 1995

 On November 5th of 1995, I went crazy, bonkers, insane, out of my mind. Literally.

I once heard Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five and other sixties (and seventies) classics, talk about his family history of mental illness. “Bats in the belfry,” he said cheerfully. I loved his bluntness. I don’t judge anyone else’s sensibilities, but I personally don’t like euphemisms, if for no other reason than that they don’t have the intended effect. New terms for old conditions can’t keep up with popular culture turning them into insults.

So on that first Sunday in November (I’m on deadline here), I stood outside the kitchen in the warm autumn sunshine as a kind older mother combed out my long hair to remove head lice nits. I stayed home from church, a very rare occurence, because some of our family were infected with lice. Later that afternoon I started wandering around the house making no sense to anyone but myself. I was convinced evil men were trying to kidnap my daughter. I thought I could read Jim’s mind by studying his facial expressions (and did pretty well with that). When my bizarre behavior escalated a good friend took me to her house. Later a few friends drove me on Route 2, a four-lane highway, to Lahey Hospital. On the way I unbuckled my seatbelt and said I’d get out. Luckily I still could be persuaded by my friend as she said, “You don’t have to do this, Mary,” reaching across my body and calmly buckling me back in the minivan seat.

I spent several hours in the emergency room and then about four days in the psychiatric unit on the 5th floor of Waltham Hospital. I was so naïve that it took me a day to realize the doors were locked.

It was a memorable weekend. I review parts of it most weeks at the newcomers meeting of my support group: DBSA Boston: Depression Bipolar Support Alliance. Just this past Wednesday I told part of my story again. Later, as the other Zoom participants introduced themselves, a young woman thanked me for my story. It gave her hope to hear me share and see that I had survived and flourished despite my illness.

When I woke up from the anti-psychotic-drug-induced sleep twenty years ago, I was in my right mind and shattered. I knew no one, NO ONE, with mental illness. Intellectual disability, (we respectfully called it mental retardation in my childhood), I was intimately aware of. My little brother, Michael, was born severely disabled and I lived with him daily. I knew his classmates and later I trained as a special education teacher.

But I had no such history with mental illness. Soon after my first hospitalization, a woman we met at church generously shared her experiences with Jim and me. I vowed that I would be open about my illness. I wanted to be the person a 'young Mary Johnston’ could turn to. I often have that privilege at DBSA Boston.

I talked on the phone today with my brother, who has been sober for as long as I’ve been married. He started an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting in Butler, PA, many years ago. He told me, with passion, about a man he knew whose life was changed by NA. It reminded me of something I sometimes forget in the administrative throes of being president of DBSA Boston. We do what we do because it changes lives. It makes a difference. That’s what we are here for.