Boston Common Elm

Is it just me or should grocery stores have complimentary coffee stationed right inside the door? Especially on chilly damp days. I would have stayed longer and bought more.

There was this TV show called The Honeymooners. It ran from 1955 – 1956. It was mostly about Ralph and his wife Alice. She would do wacky stuff and cause funny things to happen to her husband. He would get mad clench his fist and shake it at her saying “To the moon Alice, to the moon!” I just saw this and it fussed me up. These people are commenting on how funny it is but it is not funny! Ralph never ever ever would have laid a hand on his wife. Yes he would get upset over whatever crazy thing she did but while he was shaking his fist and saying “to the moon” what he was actually saying was I LOVE you.

 He loved her to the moon and back. In other words the capacity of his love could fill the space between the earth and the moon and back again from the moon to the earth. So many people think he wanted to hit her so hard she would land on the moon, “to the moon Alice, to the moon” but that is NOT what he meant. It saddens me to think people found it funny that he would threaten to hurt her. Domestic violence is NOT funny. NOT!!! NOT FUNNY!!!

I am hunting the Henchman Ghosts and came across Anne whom I cannot verify existed. However on her tree sheet I had her married to a woman named Hannah with a daughter named Ann. Now I have no idea if the woman was a Lesbian or not so to any ghost hunters who were excited or fussed up by what I had, I deleted them, wife Hannah and daughter Ann of Anne Henchman mystery woman. I am sure there are other mistakes I have made along the way but this is a work in progress and I discover new things about some of these people every day and make changes.

                                                       NOT a photo of Anne. (Just an artsy example)

In reading my devotional today Max asked why when we pray the Lord’s Prayer we say….  Our Father, Forgive us, Lead us and so on? Why not say my Father, forgive me, and lead me? To be honest I never even thought about it. We grow up and learn it that way and I never questioned that part. I have been asking myself, now that I am aware, why. Because He belongs to all of us? He is the GOD of us all? So we are aware of others? We all throw rebellions that affect others? We not only need to ask the forgiveness of GOD but those our actions affect. We are part of one huge family he created. Just as I, as a mother hate to see my children at odds with each other, GOD hates to see us at odds. I am sure He does not mind the difference in opinions or even how we worship Him, but our failure to see each other as His children, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts hurts Him. So by teaching us to pray in the plural we are to become aware of each of us and treat each other like an equal recipient of the joy, pleasure, peace, laughter, and fun that comes when a family is devoted to each other and their Father.

Forgive us, not just my drama queen daughter, the child up the street who mean mugs me every day, the woman across town who speaks ugly words over me, the man filled with loathing across the country, the misinformed man in another country, myself. Forgive me/us as we/I forgive others. Lead all of us around temptation and deliver us from the evil that we do to our sisters, cousins, aunts, mothers and all of our family.

Now on to Great Grand Uncle Hezekiah Henchman who planted the Great Elm tree that stood for so long in Boston Commons. As a young man in the 1680s Uncle H planted an elm tree in the commons. The commons was like a huge public park the city of Boston purchased and it was for the use of all who lived in Boston. It was used as a military training ground and was for people in the city who wanted to keep a cow so they had a place to graze them, keep a small plot of vegetables. It was used as a camping and training ground for British Forces during the revolution.

Boston Common--oldest city park in USA...Puritans used to meet here and cows grazed. Also used as a military training field and a football field for America's very first football team--Oneida Football club in the 1860s

The elm was in the center of the Commons. By 1855 it was 72 and a half feet tall, 17 feet in circumference at about 4 feet from the ground, and the branches spread out a distance of 101 feet. The tree was massive. The distance from the ground to the first branch was twenty two and a half feet. The British had built a powder magazine near the tree in a hill that Washington and his troops bombarded with ferocity in the Revolution. During the war of 1812 troops were garrisoned in the Commons to protect Boston. The elm was used as a hanging tree, a place where revolutionists, religious fanatics would hang criminals, traitors or burn effigies of a political, religious nature. In 1876 a huge storm with strong winds finally blew the tree over and it perished.

                                                  An old postcard circa 1875

Or so the legend goes about dear old Uncle H. His niece Lydia, foster mom to John Hancock says it is true.

My registration is expired in my car so I am about to go on the hunt for the paperwork. I do not recall seeing it anywhere in the mail. I wonder what I am supposed to do if I do not have it.

Cheers!