Richard Jernigan -> RE: Black Hole eats sun (May 23 2017 21:55:36)
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Agnosticism is rare in my family, but it cannot easily be ignored. My mother's father left Long Lake, Minnesota as a young man. He taught English on an Indian reservation in Idaho, he worked as a lumberjack, he was a chef in a San Francisco hotel before the 1906 earthquake. Passing through the small town at the base of the Oklahoma panhandle where my grandmother, then a widow, owned the 160-acre homestead she inherited from her father, he decided he liked the place and settled down on the 160-acre tract next door. His neighbor on the other side, Pickens, was illiterate. My grandfather taught him to read. Before long he and my grandmother married, combined their farms and prospered in the wheat boom of the early 20th century. My mother was the eldest of two daughters and three brothers. She told of lying awake one night and hearing her mother say to him, "Pickens tells me that the people in the town say you are an atheist." He replied, "Pickens wouldn't know an atheist if he had one for a neighbor." My grandfather had a lively sense of humor, and was generally liked and respected in the community. He died from injuries sustained in an accident when my mother was 11 years old. She, like her sisters and her mother became religious at a fairly early age. Her father had specifically expressed his desire that they be allowed to form their own ideas about religion. Recently I Googled the town history of Long Lake. Many of my grandfather's relatives still live there and in nearby Minneapolis. They retain to some extent the Scottish traditions of my great-grandfather, who immigrated from Nova Scotia. I was interested to read about the Freethinkers' Society in Long Lake, established near the time the town was founded, and wondered whether it had been an influence on my grandfather. Though I never knew him, my favorite photo of my grandfather was taken in the farmhouse in Oklahoma. He is seated at a table. Behind him the wall is completely covered by shelves packed with books. Through a window you can see the wheat fields waving in the breeze. I know that his father was deeply interested in science, read the published works of Franklin, Gibbs, Faraday and Maxwell, and conducted experiments of his own in electromagnetism, out there on the plains of Minnesota. His ancestors were among the first English speaking people in Nova Scotia, strict Scotch Presbyterians, among the founders of the Commonwealth of Canada, but I don't know my great-grandfather's religious views. My mother's brother whom I knew best was open but not confrontational about his agnosticism. I suspect that the other brothers were agnostic as well. My mother had an older half brother and half sister from her mother's first marriage, and an younger half brother from the third husband her mother had to bury. From my point of view the unifying force in this diverse lot was my grandmother, and the necessity for mutual support and cooperation in running a family farm. Family solidarity was the most important value by far among this group. I knew my grandmother quite well. She lived with us throughout WW II, while her five sons, my father, his brother and brothers-in-law were in combat. We listened to the news at noon and read the paper when it came in the evening. She never exhibited the least shade of anxiety, but remained warm, loving and thoughtful. She passed away 66 years ago. I still miss her. In my parents' extended families and that of my generation, family solidarity was the supreme value. It trumped all others, including religion. Among the two generations younger than I, family solidarity has declined a little under the corrosive forces of modernity, but a wedding will still assemble a group from far flung parts of the world. I'm pretty sure the city of Jackson, Tennessee had never seen so many men in kilts, sporrans and dancing shoes as they did last summer. Agnosticism has reappeared in a few instances, among a largely religious group. Thankfully, civility has survived. RNJ
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