Category: Apple Pi Inn

 

Pentecost Sunday but I’m in the Garden State, not Almost Heaven, and on a different pilgrimage than planned. The plan was to return to Drew to teach a week-long class on Native America and UMC Missions and then take the class on a 9 day travel seminar through the Northeast. I was not supposed to be “Teacher” but Learner as Dr. Thom White Wolf Fassett and Cyndi Kent lead us where we need to go inside the classroom and through time and space on the road. Dr. Fassett had to decline so that he could concentrate on health needs, so I began digging out files I’d carried into Wirt County.

The missing link between Wirt County and Native America turned out to be a revelation. Wirt County was named for William Wirt, the 9th Attorney General of the United States. I knew President Thomas Jefferson asked him to serve as the prosecutor for Aaron Burr’s trial for treason. The history of Blennerhassett Island is part of the history/story of this place.

What I’d never noticed until now was another part of Wirt’s story. In June 1830 a delegation of Cherokee led by Chief John Ross invited Wirt to defend Cherokee rights before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case known as Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. Wirt’s argument: sovereignty. Cherokee Nation was “a foreign nation in the sense of our constitution and law” and was therefore not subject to Georgia’s jurisdiction.

In a second case, Wirt was asked to defend the rights of missionaries who had been evicted or imprisoned for supporting Cherokee resistance to removal. In the spring of 1832, the Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee Nation was “a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress”.

Chief Justice John Marshall knew he was challenging President Jackson’s wishes, but the law was the law. So why was there a bloodied history of forced eviction known as the Trail of Tears? Because President Jackson defied the law of the land and told the state of Georgia, “Light a fire under the Cherokee. They’ll move”.

Some were driven through the snows from Georgia to Oklahoma. Some headed for the mountains and mingled their blood with the immigrants of Scotland, Ireland, England, and Eastern Europe who populated the Appalachian Mountains. They carried traditions in their bodies but were forced to leave their names, their language and their land behind.

A time for burning. A story that needs to be learned by heart so we don’t repeat the history.

So why I am writing this reflection on Pentecost in the Garden State and not on the road with other learners? Because my William, husband of 40 years, had emergency heart surgery on Friday evening. Saturday, I sent the class on under the care of a great teacher Cyndi Kent, a Southern Ute, and UMC.

 

Today, Pentecost Sunday, Bill is now released and resting peacefully on a comfortable couch in Copperbeech. Thanks to two stents and two doctors willing to work over Memorial Day weekend we will have time.
We will have time.

Baptized by Fire
If you pray for fire
on this day of wind and flame,
Beware.
It is a living thing
and its care requires a calling.

Altar fire will alter.
Scorch marks are the scars
of hell and resurrection.

Remember Moses.
He turned aside
to find the burning
that consumed his fear.

The way is not straight.
The path is not plain,
but heat will rise.

Track the heat of fiery tongues
through texts unscribed
in Tribes unknown but named by God.

If Campfire calls,
step into the circle.
Consumption is consumed.
Destiny reduced to ash.

This and only this is Manifest:
Fire will purify.
Only Life survives.

For those on pilgrimage Pentecost 2015, Rev. Honey.
Heather Murray Elkins, © 2015

 

 

Day is done. Gone the sun. All is well but I’ve missed hearing the ceremonial explosive sounds of rifles fired in respect, the trumpet lament of Taps, the sight of decorated graves, and the salutes given to comrades long gone but not forgotten. This is the first year without an opportunity to pray or bless or speak well of the dead in the presence of the living. I send these notes out as a way of speaking well.

I’m not isolated from the images and stories of this country’s wars. Bill is in recovery, sitting in an easy chair as he follows the bloody steps of the blue and gray through the Peach Orchard of Gettysburg via earpiece and IPhone. I hope Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson is what the doctor ordered.

If I were in the Inn I could post a picture of the triangle fold of Dad’s flag, and the picture of his WWII Company of the Corp of Engineers. We were raised on this creed: “The difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a bit longer.”

I have the picture of him wearing his Korean War hat that was taken when he came to visit me in South Korea after 9-11. Many West Virginians volunteered for WWII, stayed in the reserves, and were called up again for Korea. The entire shift in the Weirton Steel Mill signed up during their lunch break on Monday December 8, 1941. The man ahead of Dad signed his name and said, “They can’t do that to us. Where the hell is Pearl Harbor?”

But the story of service that links the structure of this Inn together tonight is the First World War, the war that was to end all wars. It is my grandfather’s record that was about service and not soldiering. He tried to enlist when the call went out for the “Yanks”, April 6, 1917. Why did we enter that War?

I have a chocolate box that has an answer:

“Wilbur’s Chocolate”
At Yorktown, under La Fayette
The Poilu fought our fight.
And now our lads beside them stand
To fight for France—and Right.”

But A.E Hoyt’s eyes were bad; he was rejected. He then presented himself to the YMCA. They were also recruiting and he was sent to the trenches outside Paris. His job was to bring coffee, write letters for men who couldn’t write, bring books to those who could read. He helped to set up the first lending library for the troops in Paris and he loved to read aloud to anyone who’d listen.

He filled our childhood with the sight and sounds of reading. We were raised on the songs, not the stories of that War. We were also taught that the Statue of Liberty was the most beautiful woman in the world for if you survived the battles on land, and the flu that took so many lives at sea, she would be waiting for you as you sailed into New York’s harbor.

Bill’s fallen asleep and the stars are clear. Safely rest. God is nigh.

 

In my Mothers’ house are many rooms, and each is many stories high.

In 1875 Mary Jane Bee, a widow of a Confederate Captain, purchased the old Tavener House in Elizabeth, WV. She and five of her children ran this as an Inn for travelers on the Little Kanawha River. Oil men, circuit riders, salesmen, circuit judges, English fox hunters, even delegates for the Republican Senatorial Convention in 1894 found room in this Inn/Hotel.

I write this history in the long dining room where meals were served “home style.” I wonder about this great great great Grandmother Bee and her skills as a mother, cook, book keeper, gardener, peace keeper, and hostess. Her only known portrait shows a woman with a fierce eyes and a strong jaw. I ponder over one daughter’s decision to marry a guest, a itinerate painter. Was young Emma tired of all the fuss and buss of a noisy Inn where patrons often spent the nights playing poker? Did she long for a room of her own with a view?

The painter she married was a “rambling man” and Emma died young, leaving my grandfather, Arthur Edward Hoyt, at age 14, to raise his younger brother and sister. Whatever memories connected Emma’s children to this place got embedded in an odd verse of song, sung to my grandfather by his artfully father, “Three little girls in blue, lad. Three little girls in blue. I painted the others, but married your mother and then we drifted apart.”

My family story and this structure of hospitality also drifted apart, in 1883 only coming together again in 1983 when my mother read an account of the Kanawha Hotel that listed its owners. She recognized Mary Jane’s name, remembered the odd song her father had sung to her about his parents’ meeting, marriage, and separation.

“That’s my house, my hotel!” my mother declared to the startled beautician who was cutting her hair. And with my father’s help, it became her hotel, her house, her history classroom, her story, and her stage for entertaining whoever loved old stuff and wild West Virginians.

Her own mother, Flora Belle, wife of A.E. Hoyt, lived out the last decade of her 106 years in this space, cared for by my older sister Sandy and her saint of a husband, Roy Lee. Mary Jane’s bedroom is where our mother’s mother passed into “her Father’s House”. It is also where my mother’s casket was placed at her request, although the funeral director thought it strange to hold the visitation in what was like a museum filled with dusty old stuff and perhaps a ghost or two. “Not to worry,” I told him, “there will be plenty of Holy Spirit to go around.”

I’ve spent my sabbatical re-membering these Mothers and searching for the narrative structures that make Time both human and holy. This Sunday is the West Virginian day of days. (See Ann Reeves Jarvis, her daughter, Anna, and the1908 Mother’s Day celebration in a Methodist church in Grafton, WV).

 

Sitting on the porch swing, looking at the river, I take comfort in the promise Jesus makes in the gospel of John: “I go to prepare a place for you.” May there always be room in the Inn for every mother’s daughters and sons.

Heather Murray Elkins © Mother’s Day 2015

It was once the custom to deliver a basket of flowers to the neighbors, ring the bell, and run. It is also a time to consider the questions of justice and labor, for we will reap what we sow.

Flora,
a photo of a rose,
the memory of your hand
reminds me
of a planting springtimes ago.

A family crisis is in bloom.
Our drama of odds
our trauma of ends turns toxic
and finds its way home.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

My chore in the chaos?
Keep watch on the meadow. Clean out the spring.
My part in the chorus?
Plant peas and potatoes, sensible things.

It’s hard to stand guard over Spring.
I tire of bland basics.
I weary of row upon rows:
I long for rings, rings of roses,
But who will conspire?
Who will plant dangerous things?

At ninety-three
you sit supreme in the swing
holding court on the porch with a calico cat,
a kind of coon dog,
and several stray bees.

I help you and the shovel ,
out of the shade.
The decision’s been made.
We go in search of the roses.

You sit. I dig.
You nod. I dig deeper.
You sigh. I keep digging.

“You work too hard.
You know, you work too hard.”

It’s the first of May, Flora, .
The green roots of nature
and the red roots of labor
tangle together in this country’s side.

I work among ghosts of victory gardens.
My fingers trace your calloused hands
on the worn handle, in the dark leaves,
under this green piece of land.

Should well-soiled hands receive a living wage?
Each turn of my spade reveals roots of your labor.
New things grew tender under your sun.
You were a May Day Queen and Sage.

Under the half-dead apple tree
on the first day in May
we spend an afternoon
as if Time is not Money
but Free.

“M’aidez!” Grandma. “M’aidez”.
Help me remember.
Fall is falling and winter closes.
Once we labored; it was spring,
and together we planted the roses.

Heather Murray Elkins (Copyright 2015)

Two 50 lbs. sacks of Kentucky 31 grass seed are stacked under the Angel Well house waiting for a sower and a sunny day. The Earth Day forecast was Cloudy, but a hard rain is falling, so the grass seed will have to wait a little longer. The patch of earth behind the Inn has been cleared of the rubble created by re-construction that went from the roofs to the floorboards. It took five dump truck loads to reveal the ground again. It’s hard to know when it’s a time to keep and when it’s time to let go. The ground needs breathing room; there are apple trees to plant, and the grass is waiting, so it’s time to sow.

Grass for holding the earth in place. Grass for the four-leggeds to roll in. Grass for greening the gray. Grass for all the grave matters of life. I turn to the poetics of the unknown prophet of Exile, beginning in the book of Isaiah, chapter 40.

A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand forever. Isaiah 40:6-8

I study the Angel Well house, the sacks of grass, the stacks of straw.
If the blistering heat of our Deathbreath continues,
where will the Word of God stand,
how can it take root
if the earth is missing?

 

“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d”…

 

I planted two lilacs today. The planting was scheduled to mark the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death this last Wednesday, but the post office delivered them to a surprised someone in Elizabeth New Jersey. My new order arrived today, just as the rain stopped, so my older sister and I prepared a place they can call home. I didn’t say why I’d ordered them, but she recited the first line of Whitman’s lament for Lincoln as we cleared away the clover and the dandy lions. Lilacs for Lincoln. They’re planted on either side of a squared space of brick, right in front of the parlor window. My younger sister laid the brick in her season of owning this old inn. It’s been waiting for its purpose and the lilac anniversary provided it. Soon and very soon a hand carved statue of Lincoln will stand here between the lilac bushes. He was the authorizer of our identity as a state. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation and approved a new state almost in the same breath. West-by God-Virginia. We seceded from the Confederacy. Mountaineers are always free.

That history is harder to decipher these days. Every Pioneer Day, for example, an entire regiment of Confederate re-enactors set up camp by the Elizabeth Courthouse. A mock battle is fought between the Rebels and the Yanks. The Rebels always win. This year a young Union officer was shot and fell right beside the sign that reads “Little Kanawha Hotel, 1800”. It helps to know that winners and losers brush themselves off, put their weapons down, and have a beer together. It also is important to keep track of the number of Confederate flags displayed year round in trucks and homes. It’s still the war that everyone refers to as “The War,” and discussions about seceding from the Union aren’t just history lessons. Putting a statue of Lincoln in the front yard will be our way of joining the conversation.

The lilacs’ late arrival formed a strange time warp between the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death and the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing. Before he drove the truck/bomb into the city, Timothy McVeigh donned a T-shirt bearing an image of Lincoln and the words, “Sic semper Tyrannis”.”This always to tyrants!” is what Brutus shouted during Caesar’s assassination. John Wilkes Booth shouted those words after he shot Lincoln. They were/are the Virginia state motto.

Will the rare sweet fragrance of “with malice toward none, with charity for all” survive our smoky choke hold of violence, our love of uncivil wars?

The leaves on the small plants droop, then straighten as they settle in at the Apple Pi Inn. What state will we be in when these lilacs first bloom?

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
Walt Whitman

The upstairs rooms in this old Inn are named, decorated, and dedicated. There’s a judge’s room, an oilman’s room, a school room, an angel room, and so on. I visit the preacher’s room as this Easter day comes to a close. It is filled with treasures that are difficult to distinguish from trash unless you know the story. Methodist preachers stayed here during the early days of its life as an Inn. Baptist preachers from the family tree smile from their frames on the wall. I see going away gifts from churches I once served, and hymnals of all shapes, ages, and denominations.

Easter is almost over. I watch the dust motes dance and remember with gratitude all those country preachers, all those pastors of small congregations, all those who began the day saying, “Christ is risen!” then waited for a response that means the church is still alive.

For those who rose long before sunrise to be sure there were enough song sheets…
For those who proofread the flower list one last time…
For aging sopranos who find just the right notes for a joyful noise…
For those who count the heads in the pews just in case they need a miracle of loaves 
at the communion table…
For all who have a love/hate relationship with lilies…
For all who hope that this year’s Easter sermon will raise the dead…
Let angels guide you to your rest this night 
and tomorrow may you rise.

Any sign of life? I’ve waited to ask that question all through this icy winter and stormy spring. The problem is, I don’t know what I’m looking for. There’s been a memory wipe of gardening wisdom between my mother’s mother, Flora Belle, and me. She had two green thumbs and all the rest of her fingers knew how to help things grow. So, I’m in the dark on this bright Saturday as I search for signs of life in the dogwood I planted last fall. Is a small brown bud a good sign? How many dead branches can a life survive?

It was a summer leftover, a Charley Brown kind of a bush. It was definitely on sale; the compost pile was its next stop. I would have, should have kept walking, but looking at it made me sad. That small sad added to my deep sigh over the death of my son’s beloved West Virginia coon dog. That good dog had gotten him through college, graduate school, and into a job. I’d promised him that we’d plant a memory tree down by the riverside of the old inn. I’d gone shopping for a pine tree, but providence kept pinching me. “Rescue dogwood to honor a rescue dog.”

The dogwood legend belongs to this wholly human Saturday. A giant green tree is turned into a means of state-sanctioned torture and death. In shame it begs its Creator to remove its power, reduce its “treeness” so it could not be used for harm again. These are the embroidered blossoms that decorate my mother’s calendar/towel. Perhaps the petals are evidence of forgiveness, as the story goes.

So what are the signs of life, and when is hope ridiculous? I can’t answer that. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

 

 

What makes this Friday sad?
Good wood and nails are turned into torture.

What makes this Friday Good?
Our rubble reveals the old rugged cross.

What makes this Friday glad?
All will be well in the strong hands of God.