Celebrating spring

After having lunch with the "hooligans" Sunday I picked up the parkway just off Detroit Road and immediately descended into the valley created by the Rocky River. By way of explanation for those readers not from the Cleveland area...this stretch of green called the Rocky River Reservation is just one of numerous parks connected by a parkway that is called the Emerald Necklace, since it encircles the Cleveland area just like a necklace. It truly is a jewel, providing wonderful green and open spaces so urbanites can get back to nature for a time.

One walking trail is designated as a wildflower path and provides an outdoor display with photos and explanations of the different types of wildflowers. This is a photo of Virginia bluebonnets.

I had it in mind to stop at the Rocky River Nature Center as I often do, but as I approached it I determined that some special event was going on since the parking lot was overflowing onto the parkway. What a pleasant surprise it was to find that there was a nature/art show in progress.

I spent most of the time there enjoying a "close encounter" with a variety of raptor birds (owls, hawks and an eagle), thanks to the presentation by a wildlife rehabilitation facility in Castalia called Back to the Wild. Some had been injured sufficiently that they could not be returned to the wild so they are used for instructional purposes.

Several years ago this bald eagle was found lying on the ground by a man out looking for Indian artifacts. It was determined that it had contracted the west nile virus and had lost its vision. There were numerous dead critters laying around it but it was significantly underweight. They think that its mate brought it food but it could not see it and eagles do not have the sense of smell. It is sad to see these amazing birds tethered and unable to soar the heights, yet they continue to serve us with valuable lessons.

Young hooligans and old farts

That’s what we call our inter-generational “get-to-know-you” endeavors at church. Those who want to participate sign up and indicate their age (or age range) and they get paired up with someone in a different age bracket for lunch or coffee or whatever.

The church is Community of Hope (“One church, three locations”) and I’m at the Lakewood location which was just launched in October. (www.cohnorth.com). They asked for a handful of folks from the other locations to come to Lakewood for a few months to help get it started. I came and never left (although I still visit the Broadview Heights service once in a while to keep up with folks there).

The demographics of the Lakewood group is predominantly college age and twenty-somethings with the rest of us being people closer to my age range. So since I don’t qualify to be a young hooligan in this situation, that means I’m the other one.

Presumably the idea is that those who’ve been around longer have gleaned some wisdom that would be of value to younger folks, and in turn the young hooligans have a lot of energy and enthusiasm and a passion to make a difference, which can be contagious. In fact, those are the primary reasons I’ve stayed at Lakewood. It lifts my spirit just to be around them.

Today after church I got together for lunch with Jody and Leslie (both young hooligans). As it turns out, it seems like we have more in common than not. We all are working in creative endeavors. Leslie is an editor for a publishing company and Jody is in an art-director type of position with American Greetings. I could feel a resonance among us as we talked about how we go about our work and life.

I couldn’t help but tell them about the connection I feel with the generations that have gone before me, and especially those ancestors who expressed their faith in their diaries and letters. On the front page of the Hester-Stough Genealogy book (compiled by my grt-great grandfather, Martin M. Hester) is a verse from Psalm 90:1--Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

My perch

This is one of The City Mission's five buildings on the main campus, an apartment building that we've partially converted to office space. The five of us in the Development Department occupy the top right apartment, each with our own room. That means getting great exercise trekking up and down the flights of stairs, either by way of the exterior stairs at the back of the building or the interior stairs at the front. I think my office is the best space even though it's the smallest because for at least half of the year I look out into a tree full of leaves. My nephew who dubbed me a "tree hugger" (and that I am) will appreciate that.

Three of the offices look out over the roof top of the building next door, looking west for a view of the downtown landscape. From here you can see those toothbrush-looking lights sticking up over The Jake (aka Progressive Field). It's also a pretty decent spot to watch some of the maneuvers of the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels as they practice in the airspace over Cleveland in the days just prior to Labor Day weekend. The front office looks out over Carnegie Ave and the thousands of vehicles streaming past every day, headed east towards the Cleveland Clinic or University Circle or beyond, or headed west towards downtown or to the freeway entrance ramps.

Over the last several days I've been checking on the progress of the leaves every morning on the way up the exterior stairs. Here's what they looked like today, photographed close-up from the stair landing. They're growing so fast it almost seems like I can detect the change from day to day.









This is the view from my window... not much to look at yet, but it won't be long. Every so often I break from my long stints at the computer, stand up, stretch and look out the window. Sometimes when I'm thinking about how best to write the next sentence or paragraph, I stare blankly out the window while my mind is reconfiguring different ways to express my thoughts. It sure beats staring at that blinking cursor.

The guy in charge of facilities once threatened to cut down this tree, something about it encroaching on a fence. I in turn "threatened" him (well, sort of). I say, the tree was there first.

Genealogy Pt 2

Since writing the previous entry on genealogy (on April 19) I’ve been thinking about why so many of us are fascinated with our roots. In spite of all the letters and diaries my family has pertaining to our ancestors (or perhaps because of them), I still find myself wanting to understand more of what life was like for them. I wonder what it would be like to reach across the generations and compare our lives with one another. And then to think that I carry within my genetic makeup a little bit of each one of them. Could it be that my grt-grt grandfather Loren Webb’s affinity for journalism came down through the line to me? But that’s a subject for another time.

In the opening pages of the Phillips’ genealogy book this poem is offered as a reflection on the study of our family trees:

Come walk with us,
Back through the vista of the years
Which our ancestors knew. We seek
The trails which they once trod
To find the spots where they once dwelt.
And while we search abandoned haunts,
Read wether’d stones and turn the musty pages
Of the past, their spirits come alive
And walk with us. We learn of them;
Their lives, their loves, their hates,
And with this knowledge learn
To understand ourselves. For each of them
Has given unto us a part. We owe them this:
That they shall be remembered for that gift.
Fern Stokes Eller

And then there are all those "begats" in the Bible, now stated in contemporary language... "Abraham was the father of Issac..." and so on. An online concordance lists 139 begats in the King Jame Version. Undoubtedly the most astounding genealogical record in the Bible is Matthew’s account of Jesus’ ancestry. He opens his book with an accounting of names for each of 42 generations. Being that he was formerly a tax collector he must have had an affinity for numbers, so he sums it all up in saying there were "...fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah." (Matthew 1:17 NLT).

Genealogy was a big deal to the Jews of the day. They took pride in being a descendant of Abraham. Their scriptures said that their coming Messiah would descend from the line of David. Matthew (a tax collector turned disciple) basically wrote this book to his fellow Jews to prove that Jesus was the Messiah.

Just like all of us, Jesus’ family tree had within in it some "characters," the kinds of folks that most of us would gloss over in recording our own family histories. There are so many accounts in scripture of how folks messed things up but it wasn’t as if God had to keep adjusting his plan accordingly. His plan just kept marching on through all those generations in spite of, and especially because of their failings.

Cleveland Hungarians

One of my coworkers today mentioned something about her Hungarian heritage so I thought now is a good time to post one of my Hungarian photos. Several years ago I did a photo essay on the Hungarian population in Cleveland which at that time was the 3rd largest in the world, following Budapest and Toronto.

I think my first stop was St. Emeric's church (on the near west side near the West Side Market) where children attended Hungarian school in the evenings, getting grounded in their language, history and culture. I am grateful to the many people who graciously welcomed me into their lives, homes and festivities. I even attended a church service at St. Emeric's all spoken in Hungarian.


This is one of my favorite photos from the project taken at their annual festival. With the stage elevated to about shoulder height I could easily achieve a floor level perspective. Then through all the flurry of dance steps I caught a glimpse of the little girls sitting on the back side of the stage awaiting their turn to dance. I waited for the right moment then clicked and I knew I had it.

This photograph is one of four I had published in a coffee table book entitled Cleveland: Continuing the Renaissance.

Genealogy

That’s a broad subject for my family so settle in for a longer read on this blog entry. Right off the top I want to express my deep appreciation for those ancestors and relatives who have considered it a priority to do the long hours of research and write things down.

Towards the end of his life, my great-great- grandfather Martin M. Hester compiled the history and genealogy of the descendents of the Hester-Stough families, starting with his great grandfather, John Lawrence Hester born in “about” 1738 in Germany. It was published in 1905 and totaled 366 pages, complete with biographical sketches, indexes and photographs.

 My grandfather Webb Hester (that's him and me in the photo) also did genealogical research and must have spent a great deal of time determining a direct connection to Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony. Only in the last five years has my cousin Jonathan Webb Deiss verified that Webb’s conclusions were correct. We have documentation that Webb was pursuing the publication of his research but he was not able to complete the pursuit.

Meanwhile, someone on my Dad’s side of the family published a book on the descendents of the William and Elizabeth Phillips family, them being my great-great-great grandparents, William born in 1766 in Pennsylvania. Since it was published in 1986 I am in it.

Dad has entered over 3,000 names in the family tree software on his computer, along with birth and death dates, marriages, children and so on. He’s entered information on other family branches in addition to those mentioned above. We can go back at least a few generations on most of the branches. I think the branch that goes back the furthest is 14 generations. Besides all that we’ve got scans of photographs of great many family members, including a daguerreotype of my great-great- grandmother Francis Hannah (Holmes) Webb.

My parents and my mother’s cousin, David Hester have a sizable collection of letters, diaries, other documents and various artifacts, many of which have been retrieved from the attic of the Hester homestead where descendents still live.

Once we made that wonderful connection with my cousin Jonathan, our collection of family historical documents expanded greatly thanks to his many hours and days of research. Our family also is grateful to Matthew Burr of the Firelands Historical Society who painstakingly transcribed my great-great-grandfather Loren Webb's civil war diary. The photo on the left is a display that was at the Firelands Museum pertaining to my grt-grt-grandfather with his portrait and some civil war artifacts.

Mom and Dad have traveled over hither and yon to get photographs of tombstones of people in our family tree. Mom remembers that on many of those days a cold winter wind was blowing across the hill top as they wandered around looking for names on weathered stones. That's Mom and me with Loren Webb's stone on a nice day at Woodlawn Cemetery in Norwalk, Ohio.

Every now and then we’ll get in the car and take a little driving tour of the places my relatives lived and the land they farmed and the stories that go with all that, like when my Dad's Grandfather Schneiter would have enough of the family gatherings and take off for home on foot across the fields.
One of the places frequently visited is the Webb Settlement, the name given to the area near Norwalk, OH settled by David Webb and his sons in 1820/21. David was my grt-grt-grt-great grandfather. (Photograph and research on this attributable to Jon Deiss).

Sometimes it seems like the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. Everything you read or look at raises more questions. Once you start on this quest it can just go on and on but what an adventure it is. Dad often tells the story of going to visit my Mom before they were married and they would sit and listen to her Dad’s stories. Mom would say, “Let’s go someplace.” And Dad would say “We already are someplace.” But today he wishes he had listened to a lot more of Webb’s stories.

Wonder

As I go on in life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered child; I cannot get used to this world....

I could wish my days to be bound each to each by the same open-mouthed wonder.

Robert Louis Stevenson