Bethlehem

Our newspapers are reporting a downturn in tourists visiting Bethlehem at this time of the year. Just as they reported last year. I visited Bethlehem a few years ago when tensions were escalating and getting across the border into Palestine was problematic. The checkpoint was a flux of tension and a crossroads of hate. Those in uniform treated us with disdain and we were pushed around. Regardless of what passport we were carrying. I was walking through with some French and Germans. A French lady who had been through before, and who had become our guide, advised us to make like the Palestinians and to keep our mouths shut. So we did and after a long, hot, and dusty wait we were through.

In Bethlehem we found a hive of activity and the winding walk up to the Church of Nativity was one long construction site as new buildings were going up, new fibre optic was being laid, and plumbing dug in. There seemed to be a real energy in the air, and we were chatted to by children in the street and waved at by Palestinians who were keen to sell us trinkets and badly made brass souvenirs. An enduring highlight was a schoolbus that crept past us with smiling kids at the windows, many of whom yelled out “hello” and “bonjour” – a telling counterpoint to the border crossing experience of a few minutes earlier. Children are great equalisers.

I visited the regular tourist stops and was impressed with the various claims made by those who insist Jesus was born at this or that spot. But I was more convinced by the presentation of a cave, one of many stables around Bethlehem, that seemed to my imagination to be a more credible place of his birth. And I was even more impressed by the realisation that these hills and vistas were those also walked and seen by Jesus – those impressions had more impact than any particular church site.

Church of the Nativity Forecourt
But over the years the enduring remembrance of Bethlehem has been the profound divide between Israelis and Palestinians, all on top of the place where the Prince of Peace was born and not too far from where he died. There is a terrible irony and pathos in what Bethlehem stands for today, when in its roots there is something more powerfully contained.

Micah knew as much 700 years before his birth.

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times.”

Therefore Israel will be abandoned
until the time when she who is in labour gives birth
and the rest of his brothers return
to join the Israelites.

He will stand and shepherd his flock
in the strength of the LORD,
in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness
will reach to the ends of the earth.

And he will be their peace.

And there was a final irony that I have never understood – it was more difficult for us to cross the border from Israel into Palestine to visit Bethlehem than it was to return to Israel. Over in seconds and after an idle glance at our passports. Maybe we had just struck an ornery security detail on the way in.

On this Christmas Day, and hereafter, may He be your peace.

Bonjour Vietnam

A remarkably evocative clip. Sung by Quynh Anh, an expat Vietnamese living in Europe. Having been to Vietnam I found it an evocative piece of video and music. All the more so for their disastrous past and their passion for the present. The English words contain none of the magic of the lyric French, or the romance of that language. In any event, best watched and heard, not read.

Nonetheless, the words are below!He

Tell me this name, strange and difficult to pronounce
That I have carried since my birth
Tell me the old empire and the feature of my slanted eyes
Describing me better than what you dare not say
I only know you from the war images
A Coppola movie, (and) the angry helicopters

Someday, I will go there, someday to say hello to your soul
Someday, I will go there, to say hello to you, Vietnam

Tell me my color, my hair and my small feet
That I have carried since my birth
Tell me your house, your street, tell me this unknown entity
The floating markets and the wooden sampans
I could only recognize my country from the war photos
A Coppola movie, (and) the helicopters in anger

Someday, I will go there, someday to say hello to your soul
Someday, I will go there, to say hello to you, Vietnam

The temples and the stone-carved Buddha statues for my fathers
The stooping women in the rice fields for my mothers
Praying in the light to see my brothers again
To touch my soul, my roots, my land..

Someday, I will go there, someday to say hello to your soul
Someday, I will go there, to say hello to you,Vietnam (twice)

S&M

Cafe in Lane Cove, on Longueville Road. Two days before Christmas and the sweat sticks to my skin The day is overcast and threatens, then delivers, even more humidity as the sky lets loose a light shower, closes up, then releases another once the pavement has dried off.

The heat is exacerbated by a furious kitchen that churns out lunches and coffee. It is a busy place abutting a small village shopping centre that is bustling with last minute shoppers. Like myself. Who is not only a last minute shopper but a two minute one as well. A hunter gatherer approach to shopping.

Around the corner eight year old girls play a cello and violin and sing. They and their instruments are decorated with tinsel, as if to make up for the fact they are not in tune, in sync, and clearly have only put their ensemble together in the last two days since school closed for summer. And competing with the two boys playing carols on their trumpets two shopfronts down. Also out of tune but fervour and filthy lucre drive their performance. Each has an instrument case open which catches a generous shower of silver from bustling shoppers. It’s that time of the year after all.

The obligatory black T-shirts and strappy tops adorn the girls behind the counter and those who rush around the tables which spill onto the street. Entirely appropriate attire for this glistening sweat day. And good for those who admire a tanned shoulder or decorously adorned decollete. Don’t we all?

Kids saunter past with foam reindeer antlers on their heads, mouths rimmed with chocolate. Some are well behaved and fresh to the street. The rest have clearly been out all morning and are irascible and ready for home. Faces of their parents confirm it.

Plates clatter, bottled drinks clink as the fridge is raided. Cutlery chatters as it is unloaded from the dishwater. As the dishwasher door had opened the sharp smell of detergent bit the senses and a billowing cloud of hot vapour rolled to the ceiling and into the cafe, adding to the humidity. A five cent piece tings off the floors as a kid fumbles his treasure and argues with mother about ice cream flavours. Happy shouts as friends discover each other.

“Mate, whadayadoing?”
“Nothing mate. Keeping my head down. Going slow. Bugger of a day.”
“Yeah, mate, need a coffee to keep going.”

That it is a hot coffee is illogical but no one cares, or minds.

“Who’s next please?”
“James! Howya doing?!”
“Next please!?” Shouted a little louder and through yet more friends focused on catching up first, before placing an order.

Traffic creeps past, all leaking condensation onto the road from air conditioners. A shower of rain waters us all then stops again. Indian accents. Muslim headgear. Irish accents. Australian “ocker”. All mixed up and adding to the tableau. S&M arrive. Shane and Mark. (Apologies to any of you who have gotten this far and were hoping for something else).

We order lunch and spend a couple of hours talking about everything and nothing. Which is part of the pleasure of these sorts of friendships. Indeed, Shane referred us to C.S. Lewis (well known for his Narnia series but for the thinking person a deeper well in his other writings) who he is reading at the moment, and Lewis’ description of four loves, one of which is affection - the sort of love that is delivered without any expectation of anything in return and which, in the view of C.S. Lewis is most commonly expressed in its purest form between men. Not erotic (Lewis discusses eros in another context) I would hasten to add, but those friendships forged between men through tough times, especially war. But also common through early friendships and which can last a lifetime. Something I must dig out and read for myself.

The converse is no doubt true. At a time when male suicide rates are at an all-time high in this country how little salve might have been applied through a firm friendship? And a death prevented? What tough times do we share with reach other. What welding of friendships occurs through heat? Not much these days. We are all individuals and are all the poorer for it.

Whatever the view of C.S.Lewis, a pleasant lunchtime interlude, with pleasant company, in a great city, all at a time of the year when we are full of goodwill towards each other and we are all grateful that we are alive. Even if it is humid!

Life is a Beach

Well, so “they” say.

At this time of the year we are inclined to believe that is the case. We usually take what we have at our doorstep for granted. Until someone visits and we take them to the beach. And wonder why we don’t do it more often. Nephew Monty, out from England with his grandfather John, are in Australia to catch up with family and, well, just because they can. So naturally we take them to the beach if it is a nice day. Today it was (always is), so we went to Avalon Beach.

North Avalon

Trying something new in Avalon
- baby octupus

Bloody Feather Quilts

Well, the Joseph Sherfy story is starting to piece itself together. The material is a little thin at this point but the Library of Congress has been helpful, so too some resources at Carlisle Army War College and also a very hospitable group of on-line enthusiasts at militaryhistoryonline.com

This is by no means definitive or necessarily confirmed in every detail but some of the story is coming together and as it does so I will keep you informed. I am interested in the human story of Joseph and his family and the impact the Battle at Gettysburg had on them. Recall they owned the Peach Orchard at which I, and few of you no doubt, have eaten peaches.

Apparently the farm was owned, and the farmhouse built by Joseph’s father, Jacob. A sense of the effort it took to build the place can be gained by understanding that 250 cartloads of stones were used in its construction. The farm originally extended over Little and Big Roundtop. And Jacob’s holding originally included the Rose Farm, some being of the understanding Jacob gave that farm away as a wedding present.

Apparently, before the battle Joseph and others, drove their stock to a point on the south east side of those two hills and successfully hid them from both armies. So not everything was destroyed. However as some of those at militaryhistoryonline.com point out farmers, including Sherfy lost miles of fencing and looking after stock after the battle must have been a challenge.

Apparently Joseph and Mary Sherfy had seven children. Their names were Rafael, Otelia (spelt Ophelia in the 1870 Census), Mary, Anna (Annie in 1870), and John. In 1870 Earnest is added to the family, born in 1861, and Fannie was born in 1866. At least three went on to become teachers. According to the 1860 United States Federal Census Joseph was 48, making him 51 at the time of the battle, and his children’s respective ages 20, 17, 15, 11, 10 and 2. Sherfy himself was one of eleven children, nine of whom survived beyond infancy. It would seem that the family were part of the Brethren faith and, as with many of those congregations up and down the Shenandoah were staunch pacifists.

Some sources hint that Joseph Sherfy was a “Reverend” but I have yet to determine if that is the case. An index of all pastors and ministers in the Adams County does not reveal his name there but a Sherfy family was extremely active at the Marsh Creek German Baptist Brethren congregation.

In other parts of the country and at later times large numbers of Sherfys appear as Baptist Clergy. And in a war notorious for pitting brother against brother it is interesting to learn that two Tennessee Sherfys were Reverends – one fought for the south and one for the north. Their uniforms sit side by side in a museum in Knoxville. I am not sure of this family is connected to Joseph or not.

Back to Gettysburg and the Peach Orchard. The Sherfy house was used as a medical post.

“Every dwelling and farmyard left behind in the wake of the withdrawal by Longstreet’s troops had been ransacked. Notably Joseph Sherfy’s brick house on the Emittsburg Road was in shambles. According to a civilian visitor to the battlefield who gazed upon Sherfy’s property: “The rebels had searched the house thoroughly turning everything in drawers etc. out and clothes, bonnets, towels, linen etc were found tramped in indistinguishable piles from the house out to the barnyard. Four feather beds never used were soaked with blood and bloody clothes and filth of every of every description was strewn over the house.”

Joseph and his son returned on the 6^th, the rest of the family the following day. It would not be too much of a stretch to guess that the Sherfys came back to find their home was a carnage house, with blood now black and congealed, body parts and gore through the house. “Filth of every description” should probably be read as a polite euphemism for human offal, refuse and other waste. Photos attest to the bloated bodies left in their fields.

To make matters worse the their barn which burned down still contained the charred of those burned alive in there. A member of the 77th NYI Referring to Sherfy’s barn burnt by cannon fire on 3 July 1863: “As we passed the scene of conflict on the left was a scene more than unusually hideous. Blackened remains marked the spot where, on the morning of the 3rd, stood a large barn. It had been used as a hospital. It had taken fire from the shells of the hostile batteries, and had quickly burned to the ground. Those of the wounded not able to help themselves were destroyed by the flames, which in a moment spread through the straw and dry material of the building. The crisped and blackened limbs, heads and other portions of bodies lying half consumed among the heaps of ruins and ashes made up one of the most ghastly pictures ever witnessed, even on the field of war.”

This is all getting a bit morbid I suspect. But imagine these people with their teenage family (and younger) coming home to confront and clean up this mess. We understand the people of Gettysburg, due to stench from the dead animals, men, blood, piles of amputated limbs, carcasses from the animals butchered by soldiers, outhouses and sinks (latrines) filled to capacity “most everyone walk around with a bottle of pennyroyal or mint oil” to alleviate themselves from the noxious odours and that many folks were unable to open their windows until the effects of frost and cold weather arrived (thanks Ed). That gives us some idea of what the Sherfys would have had to tolerate. What impact did this have on the kids?

So imagine if you will the appalling things this family confronted. Bloody quilts. Their clothes and fittings bloodied and scattered in bloody heaps across their yard and through their house. Blood covered floors and walls. Stinking carcasses. Severed limbs. Human offal. Life could hardly ever be the same. There is more to the Peach Orchard than eating those peaches!

Jocelyn

Family is having a handicapped kid.
Family is having a handicapped kid, who some close to you want locked up.
Family is having a handicapped kid who prompts parishioners to shift to different pews.
Family is having a handicapped kid which means siblings friends won’t stay over.
Family is having a handicapped kid who community services don’t want to know about.
Family is having a handicapped kid about whom some relatives just don’t want to know or understand.
Family is having a handicapped kid which means holidays are not.
Family is having a handicapped kid that destroys your goods and chattels.
Family is having a handicapped kid who can’t be managed at school.
Family is having a handicapped kid who others laugh at.
Family is having a handicapped kid who does not know her own strength and hurts you.
Family is having a handicapped kid that requires 24 hour care and supervision.
Family is having a handicapped kid who prompts other patients in the waiting room to leave.
Family is having a handicapped kid with a syndrome not understood and for which there is no cure.

Yet…

Family is having a handicapped kid who loves unconditionally.
Family is having a handicapped kid who does not give a tinkers toss that the parishioners moved to another pew!
Family is having a handicapped kid who loves life.
Family is having a handicapped kid who is your own!
Family is having a handicapped kid who lets us know very quickly who are worth knowing and those who can go their own way.
Family is having a handicapped kid who has a wicked sense of humour.
Family is having a handicapped kid who loves practical jokes.
Family is having a handicapped kid who is her own person.
Family is having a handicapped kid who teaches us humility (learned very slowly).
Family is having a handicapped kid who has introduced us to people worth knowing (have I said that already? Must be important).
Family is having a handicapped kid who is, well part of the family.
Family is having a handicapped kid – for which we would do it all again.
Family is having a handicapped kid – well part of it anyway,
Meet Jocelyn.

The Peach Orchard - Will the Real Joseph Sherfy Please Stand Up?

The Peach Orchard at Gettysburg is understood by military historians to be significant in this particular battle for the Confederate breaking of the Union line. Under General Sickles the Union line had been drawn from the Devils Den, anchored at the Peach Orchard and then drawn up Emmitsburg Road. A map always helps, so here is one courtesy of Wikpedia.

One of the things I appreciate about Gettysburg, so long as I don’t arrive there behind 43 coach loads of boy scouts (!) is the sense you get of what impact the battle had, not just on the soldiers, but the community as well. There is something about the way the battlefield is preserved that engages you, at all sorts of levels. That “something” is assisted by the way the National Parks have attempted to keep things as they were in 1863. So the Wheatfield has an impact born of souls you seem to be able to touch. The Peach Orchard gives you a similar sense, of being on the farm as it was. You take a peach and eat it and keep half an eye on the farm house just in case Joseph Sherfy appears, brandishing his shotgun.

Joseph Sherfy was the owner of the Peach Orchard. Larger then than it is now, Joseph also grew apples and operated a cannery here. A label here from one of his cans.

But Sherfy for me encapsulates all that you wonder about Gettysburg and those who lived on the battlefield. He got his wife and five children away from the place before the shooting started. But in the course of the three days troops ransacked his house, used it as a shield, and thereby drew fire onto it. His fences were destroyed and his barn burned to the ground (where most things head when they burn!). And his fields were covered with dead and dying soldiers.

What on earth did he make of all this? Did the State of Mississippi make good the destruction? Confederate Brig. General William Barksdale had assaulted the Union line there? A naive question of course – but did he get any repatriation from anywhere at all? Did anybody? What did Mrs Sherfy find when she came home? What trauma did the children experience? Did they arrive back home before their fields were clear of the broken and rotting bodies – they bloated pretty quickly in the heat. Did anyone help them repair? What hellish horrors did Joseph find in the ashes of his burned barn?

I can’t seem to find anything about Joseph and his family after the war. They seem to have been fused into the background story of Gettysburg. The war moved on. We remember the heroic and move on as well. Their house is a monument but we don’t enter it with our imagination – just as we don’t really enter all the others that are scattered over the battlefield. A useful marker and that is about all.

One warm afternoon I stood with Andre and ate peaches from The Peach Orchard. It was a still hot day and there were no other visitors on the field. That helped us cast our imagination as far as we dared. I know it has been replanted, and these trees are not those that he tended. But we fancied we were eating Joseph Sherfy’s peaches. And as we ate we looked around the trees and wondered at the soldiers that sniped here, observers that watched here, artillery that blasted here and men that died here - and wondered at the family that was blighted here by those three days in July.

Follow up post on Sherfy family…

White Trash

The pair of us landed in San Francisco and had four hours to spend before connecting to our flight across the Pacific and home. We had been on the road for a couple of weeks and were in no mood to hear from a clerk that, having checked in, we were not to leave the airport. After solemnly promising to stay on the premises James and I fled out the front door, jumped a cab and headed downtown to the wharf district - a popular but garish haunt.

In fact to be fair to San Francisco it is hardly representative of the city. There are parts of that wharf area that are uniquely American and distinctly San Francisco. My first trip there is especially memorable – eating seafood at Fishermans Wharf while ensconced in bibs, with the otherwise straight and proper colonel I was working for at the time, getting very tactile with his food. Something of a revelation to me – hard to look at him the same way when you have seen him with sauce running down his chin. But there are parts of that tourist area that are no different to any other cheap tourist trap which hustle imported t-shirts, cheap prints, bizarre postcards and strange wood and glass artifacts.

We were idling through the crowd, avoiding the hustlers and steering away from the buskers and beggars, with one eye on the watch and one hand on the hip pocket. At one point, to avoid some brightly lit, cheaply priced shops we moved towards the kerb though were kept from the road by a wrought iron fence. We shuffled along trying to outflank the cheap pits and while we did so were completely startled when a loud voice bellowed from beside us “Nickel for some white trash?!”

For a moment we had no idea where the voice, increasingly strident, was coming from until we looked into the bin at the side of the road and saw a pair of eyes peering out at us from inside a trash can - built in the style of those found at MacDonalds or other fast food places. Somehow he had gotten in there and had hung a little tile out the front simply titled “white trash”. If a passer-by missed the sign he yelled out instead – lifting the flap to get their attention. I don’t recall if he got a nickel from us but he sure made us laugh.

I hope he made a lot of money. A very self deprecating approach to begging, nicely claiming a pun as a way of life, employing some self mockery at the same time – and touching a raw nerve in US culture that is not always seen in such a humorous light. In southern states reference to white trash can often have a pretty raw edge to it.

We made the flight with time to spare, no one at the airport missed us. And “white trash” still makes me laugh when I think about him. I hope he is OK.

USS Arizona Rebuilding

USS Arizona still leaks fuel oil in a steady blobby rain, called by some the Black Tears of the Arizona. You can watch it leaching to the surface in black blobs of ink, and in the light chop of a protected harbour the peacock tail colours of petroleum on water glint the sun hard back into your face.

Iconic as the image that symbolises that “day of infamy” USS Arizona now lies just below the surface of the harbour. As a visitor you can spend some time looking at the hull shadowed in the water, and be startled by the wall of names that remember the hundreds of men who perished in her. Many from the same families - see how fathers, sons and uncles all vanished together. An assignment policy the US Navy overturned as a result of this disaster.

That wall of names was a revelation for me one hot Hawaii afternoon. I was the only Caucasian on the tender that ran us out to the memorial. More to the point every other person on that tender was a Japanese tourist. All carrying mountains of flowers. I boiled with indignation. How dare they?! Gloating no doubt. Having a look at what they had achieved in 1941. Reliving the glory. I felt a mix of agitation and anger and irritation. How dare they interrupt my own spiritual journey out here. I was even more appalled when I stepped onto the memorial to discover even more Japanese quietly waiting the return tender trip. There were thousands of flowers on the water, all being gently pulled away from Ford Island by the breeze. At that point their significance was lost on me. I stepped over to a National Parks officer and asked him what was going on.

He had the good sense to keep the brief simple. He said they were here to grieve, to express their regret. And suggested I walk up to the wall and see what was happening up there. He added that his grandfather was killed on 7 December 1941 but that he wished his grandfather could see what was happening here today. Then signalled with his chin for me to make my way through the crowd to the wall of names. Perhaps he sensed my agitation. Or heard the indignation in my voice.

I paused for a moment, caught in a crowd and noticed for the first time the serious stripping of garlands and the tossing of flowers onto the water from the edge of the memorial and through a hole in the floor. Everyone was doing it. I was the exception. All were sober. All were silent. The slap of the water on the barely visible turret housing, and on the memorial pylons was all that could be heard.

Finally making my way to the wall of names I was confronted by a wall of flowers and a veil of tears. The flowers were heaped up over a plinth that is located in front of the wall, and over the rope that keeps visitors away form the wall. The tears coursed in silence down the faces of elderly Japanese who stood stiffly at attention. Before they bowed gently and about turned and made way for others. Here was a very different perspective altogether and my about-face was total and instant. In humbled shock I could not tear myself away.

Nor could one old Japanese gentleman who was bowed from the waist, at complete right angles. His tears splashed on the deck. But there was no sound. With a tight timetable of tenders coming and going with visitors a Parks officer had to gently help him away from the wall and back to the boat. I followed, the last to leave. As I did the Parks Officer who had suggested I see what was happening at the wall nodded to me. “Those Japanese who visit this place are usually more sorry about what happened here than we are” he said. Words that rang in my ears. The return trip, only 20 minutes or so since my outward leg, carried a very sobered and humbled me. These people had taught me a lesson about humanity that I hope I don’t forget.

It was certainly all brought to mind with this photo in the weekend paper of Zenji Abe, former Japanese pilot who was one man whose bombs struck the USS Arizona in 1941. His posture suggests to me the same regret I saw the day I visited the memorial. See his hand touch the names. And see the names below – was that a Johnson family who lost four men in one fell disaster?

Some of the great things that have come out of conflict have been the powerful reconciliations forged afterwards. We are capable of so much which is corrupt. But capable of so much compassion as well. It’s a shame the latter is often most profound when it is born out of the former.

Train Nazi Postscript

20 September 2006. We finally dropped into Lanzhou at about 7.15 am. I managed to get back into the carriage via the platform as recounted earlier (Train Nazi). We eventually were pressed out through the exit with a throng of fellow travellers into the cool morning air. We were immediately struck by how different this town is. Hard, gritty, flinty even. Hard faces. Heads down. Worker’s clothes, impassive responses to our proffered hellos. Here we met Richard our driver after running the usual gauntlet of no hopers that crowd around the forecourt of any rail-station anywhere in the world.

Including a bunch of soldiers preparing to board a bus, looking surly and half asleep, Captain trying to get them to line up properly and to stand in order while their baggage was being stacked high on the bus. That made me grin to myself. Military conscripts anywhere in the world are all the same. They know what a straight line looks like but passive surliness, spiced with some insouciance, without direct disobedience, is just the perfect mix with which to get your own back at your officers. I know the formula well and fancy I was rather expert at it. The Captain was clearly rattled enough for me to keep my camera in my pocket. No need to prod the dragon.

We were dropped off at our hotel which boasted “grand” in its title somewhere. It was a pile of rubbish actually. With the usual Chinese inability to provide quality service. The one thing it had going for it was the size of the room. However the whole place was remarkably musty and we were forced to open windows – onto the city reputed to be the most polluted in the world – clean the bathroom with bleach (that shopping expedition is another story in itself) and to keep the air-conditioning turned off. In fact I think the whole musty/mould problem was the air conditioning. But we slept there in the warm air of late summer, mixed with dust and smoke, together with the noise of people and traffic bustling away six stories below and the trains bellowing through to the Russian border, Tibet, Urumqi and other remote points directly beneath us. Whatever shortcomings we have in this hotel, it is probably is far beyond what those soldiers are putting up with right now.

Four weeks after we were there the sorry story of Lanzhou’s air pollution was complemented by a broken sewage pipe which turned the Yellow River red. Something poetic in there somewhere.

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