Herstein's Mennonite Church, 1803 - a Good Friday meditation

When I drive from my home in Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania south to Rt. 422 I will take the charming, woodsey backway known as Neiffer Rd. About midway in my journey I pass an old church that would appear abandoned and is clearly unused except that it shows signs of being kept as a museum or antique by someone or some group that loves it very much. So as my peculiar form of meditation and reverence on this Good Friday I stopped at the church, took these pictures, and began this pictorial.

I have asked a German friend of mine to help me read the stone on the left (above). Here is what we think it says -

"Hier

rusten die ge-

beine der verliorbenen

MARIA SCHUMACHER

Sie war gebohrenden im

April 1762 und starb den

12 von July 1803. ihre

alter ??? 3 month

???? Tage"

My German is a bit rusty but I think this would be translated -

"Here rests the bones of the beloved Maria Schumacher. She was born in April 1762 and died on the 12th of July 1803. (41 years, 3 months and ??? days.)"

The church (called a chapel) is smallish but looks like it could easily seat 100 congregants. It sits on an unpaved lot rather close to Neiffer Road. Note that until just the last few years Neiffer would have been a quiet country road. Behind the church - from where I took the photo above is an old church graveyard.

I have done a full webpage of this old church with more pictures and background information here:

Herstein's Mennonite Church

The Dream Garden

This place is like a dream.

The Dream Garden

Philadelphia

RIP - Arthur C. Clarke

Dec. 16, 1917 - March 19, 2008

I was always a fan of Arthur Clarke - long before 2001, A Space Odyssey. But my God what a movie!

After that - everyone loved this great, great man. But we who love science fiction knew him long before. We knew him from The Star , Childhood's End , and his wonderful TV show Mysterious World.








Born in Sommerset, England - Arthur Clarke was a child of the stars. A man out of time - for all time.

May we who reach for the stars - love this man who managed to grasp them.

The tango and young musicians

Some great writing here - yes I'm prejudiced. I dance Argentine Tango. It is a turn-on. It is as close as a married man is going to get to a woman not his wife.


The tango and young musicians
by Tom Purdom
from The Broad Street Review

"When I spoke to Krantz at the reception after the concert, he said that his partner had really gotten into the tango. Stillman herself said that she moved around and danced to the music when she rehearsed. She had kept that impulse under control on stage and transmitted just enough body language to add a visual element to the performance. Believe me, you don’t need Rudolf Valentino or Fred Astaire when somebody plays the way she was playing."

All the classic dances are stylized courting rituals. As any biologist will tell you, many animals and birds woo their mates by dancing. It’s one of the techniques males use to demonstrate their genetic fitness. It’s more fun than fighting and healthier, too.

When serial adultery was a major pastime -

The minuet combines sexual display with a communal setting and a ceremonial swapping of partners. It reflects the mating customs of a highly structured society in which serial adultery was a major pastime of the aristocracy. Its successor, the waltz, added the trappings of romance and the titillation of public embraces.

The tango combines sex with grace, like the waltz, but it’s more overtly erotic and embraces a wider emotional range.

Someone once said that the waltz expresses the idea that life is, with reservations, worth celebrating. The tango springs from the feeling that the sexual attraction of two conscious, intelligent creatures is a complex, endlessly fascinating marvel."

Interesting review of Merce Cunningham in Broad Street Review

I have for the past several months enjoyed reading the Philadelphia journal of local culture Broad Street Review .

The latest issue has a review of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Annenberg by Jim Rutter that is very perceptive.

"In an economy where many Americans sit at desks for 40 years of their lives, only those who engage in some type of athletic or physical pursuit retain the knowledge that they live in bodies—their primary experience of the world filtered through the lens of conscious thought. Strangely enough, I could say something similar about Merce Cunningham’s choreography, at least as represented by the two pieces performed by his company at the Annenberg.

Unlike his polar opposite in George Balanchine—who once described the goal of his choreography as “trying to make the music visible"— Cunningham works independently of a composer. Seated alone in a room— at a computer, no less (using a program called DanceForms)— he composes works that convey no sense of scenes or theme, no story, just a calculated sense of logic designed to produce pure movement."