Volume XVI, Issue XXIII
Josiah
By Bob Kirchman
Copyright © 2019, The Kirchman Studio, all rights reserved
Chapter 8: Déjà Vu All Over Again
That ship never came. For decades the little band struggled on. Josiah struggled to lead them. A small core of APOLLONIUS devotees were always perturbed that the collective mindset originally prescribed was not adhered to. They were led by Mark and Sergey, who had barely made it through Elizabeth Zimmerman’s vetting process. Though the group as a whole dispensed rapidly with addressing each other by number, Mark and Sergey resisted that change to the bitter end. Finally it was only them referring to each other by number anyway. Then they gave it up.
The problem was that the two of them brooded together privately and stirred up some dissention publicly. Sergey would often interrupt Josiah with the statement, “that’s not by the book.” He was committed to restoring the purity of the original colony mission as he saw it. Josiah’s leadership was necessary now but in the long run it would have to go.
The two doctors gravitated to this mindset. They arrived at the colony both expecting and when their babies came they attached themselves to some men of the APOLLONIUS faction. APOLLONIUS was not the only person on Earth pushing for colonization, they reasoned. Others would follow and they would be the charter village of the new order when the latecomers arrived. Josiah had inventoried the remaining stores and they were actually not in any immediate danger of depleting resources. The doctors, for their part, did not strongly resist the change to home education. They considered their children the rightful heirs of APOLLONIUS and intended to raise them as such. Combined education might indeed get in the way of that.
Then there was the Allison/Josiah faction. They held rule of the colony by necessity and because of Josiah’s giftedness in that area. Even their enemies acknowledged this. The loss of APOLLONIUS had left most of the colonists quite rudderless if the truth be known. Steeped in the Progressive thought that had been overshadowed by a rebirth of Faith in the North Country, they were quite capable of creating institutions but clueless as to the deeper stirring of human nature that seemed to make them run so wretchedly.
The new colony was to have no prisons, but it became clear over the years that the folly that necessitated them was still present in humankind. Though they had cast off all of the antiquated beliefs and institutions, they were surprised at the dark shadows that had followed them across the solar system. Josiah dealt with the raft of petty crimes within the community with an application of something very much resembling the old ‘Golden Rule.’ When thievery was discovered, restitution was expected. Abusive and violent situations were not so easy. Initially mandatory separation of the aggressive parties seemed to work, but then there was the murder.
(to be continued)
The Port of Lexington, Virginia
Zimmerman's Lock on North River Canal
Photos by Bob Kirchman
Before the railroad, the James River Canal served as a route to Western Virginia. Our founders were building a network of canals before the steel rails came.
In the late Eighteenth Century, men like George Washington saw the need for a young nation to have infrastructure. Washington and others would oversee the building of the James River and Kanawha Canal, eventually hoping to create a water link to the Ohio River and the Mississippi. The Maury and James Rivers were already used for commerce to the coast by bateaux. These disposable boats would be built for a one way trip downstream and the trip could be described as a combination of white water canoeing in a cargo boat and drifting along long sections of flatwater. By 1860 locks on the James and the North River (now the Maury) allowed canal boats to be drawn by mules upstream to Lexington. The boats were as large as 90 feet long and some had passenger accommodations.
Canal boats in Richmond, Virginia. Drawing by J. R. Hamilton
But the era of canals would be short lived. In Ellicott City, Maryland in 1830 and Charleston, South Carolina, the first steam engines would be proved on fledgling railroads. By the middle of the Nineteenth Century, Claudius Crozet and 2000 Irish tunnel builders would establish a viable railroad through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Soon it would wind its way through the Allegany Mountains. Waterways would not connect the East to the Mississippi.
Railroads soon cut along the banks of rivers, often using the old canal towpaths, but the locks from the old canals remain in many places. The stonework is beautiful and precise. The builders obviously created a work to last for the ages. As the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad built a branch South into Lexington, the engineers of that road would build fine stone viaducts in the same tradition. Many of those remain as well including a beautiful multi-arched one just South of Staunton, Virginia which may be seen from Interstate 81.
Concrete rivers carry the commerce of our day but it is good to remember that our founders saw this commerce as essential to a nation at its beginning.
Photo of a canal boat.
Zimmerman's Lock on the Maury River. The gates opened back into these recesses in the lock walls.
Grumman Corporation
[click to read]
They Built Airplanes, Canoes and the Lunar Module!
Grumman was one of the leading aircraft producers for the U.S. Military in the 20th century. Grumman got its start in Baldwin then to Farmingdale and eventually moved to Bethpage. In 1936, a local townsman successfully persuaded his friend Leroy Randle Grumman to relocate his expanding aircraft business from Farmingdale to Bethpage. It was at this time that the founders Messrs. Leroy Randle Grumman, Leon 'Jake' Swirbul, William 'Bill' Schwendler, Clint Towl, Ed Poor, and Joe Stamm purchased the farm land from the Looney family, Mary Moesch, the Neders, and the Kutsurs. They also acquired the polo grounds known as the Central Park Hunt Club (that was the area where the airport is currently.) They opened their first plant in 1936, soon becoming Bethpage's (and Long Island's) largest business concern. Their business boomed during the 1930's and 1940's in answer to the Navy's demands for quality aircraft and by 1944, Grumman, the man and the business, became a legend in their own time, winning the Navy "E" Award for production efficiency five years in a row. It was also awarded for its high morale as it turned out 500 airplanes per month. During World War II over 17,000 aircraft were produced in Bethpage, the runways were paved and several new plants were built. Having earned a "sterling reputation" for a quality product, the company went on to produce for the Korean conflict, for the 'Cold War' peace of the 1950-s and for the needs of the military in Vietnam. (read more)
*Central Park Historical Society Encyclopedia
Francis Collins' Graduation Song
This has to be the best commencement message since Winston Churchill's 'Never Give Up" speech!
House Mountain Petunia
Photo by Bob Kirchman
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” – ISAIAH 55:12
Taming the Buffalo
[click to read]
How Bob Childress Brought Civility to the Mountains
American history is replete with unknown pastor heroes who braved the wilderness and brought the light of the gospel to wild and brutal areas. One fascinating example is mountain man Bob Childress.
Buffalo Mountain in Virginia's Blue Ridge rises to 3972 feet, a thousand feet above the surrounding hills. The early settlers thought the summit looked like a charging buffalo, with its head lowered and its hump bulging. The early settlers on the Buffalo were Scotch-Irish, but the God-fearing ways of those earliest pioneers had long died out on the mountain. There were few roads, and those living on the mountains had no schools and often no churches. They lived the lives of remote pioneers, even retaining some of the early English speech Shakespeare would have recognized -- saying sallet for salad, sech for such, and being afeard rather than afraid. (read more)
White Oak, Quercus Alba. Photo by Bob Kirchman.
Nurture and Young Imagination
By Bob Kirchman
Published in Lost Pen Magazine [click to read]
Here is Dyane Forde’s Lost Pen Magazine. I am very pleased to be a part of it! (Link will be active on June 3rd).
Welcome to my new venture and the realization of a dream: the creation of the Lost Pen Magazine, a free, digital Christian literary and arts magazine!
For a long time, I struggled to find a place for my writing which often straddled genre and literary fiction. As book clubs and magazines began popping up for Christian romance, speculative fiction, and fantasy it seemed there wasn’t much out there for writers and readers of short fiction and poetry that dealt with Christian themes in a thoughtful, reflective manner that didn’t involve aliens, zombies, or two starry-eyed lovers trying to find their way to each other against all odds. Also, digital magazines are easy to distribute, which appealed to my desire to feature and share top-quality writing pieces and visual art.
So, I decided to create my own digital magazine to provide a platform for the ‘lost voices’ of Christian literary fiction writers and artists. I hope you’ll join this journey with me and support me as I put this project together. – Dyane Forde
Greater Montreal, June 3, 2019—The Christian Creative Nexus (CCN), an online support and promotional resource for Christian creatives, and Focus Writing Services (FWS), a freelance writing and editing service dedicated to enabling writers, businesses, and organizations to produce exceptional written content, are publishing their first digital Christian arts and fiction magazine, Lost Pen Magazine. The publication will be free and available on Issuu and Mailchimp (PDF version).
The CCN and FWS hold that God expects His people to excel at producing good work, as what His people create is a reflection of Him. Lost Pen Magazine originated from the need to take supporting and promoting Christian Creatives to a higher level than what was possible via a website, and a desire to produce a wide-reaching publication with a reputation for excellence—evidence that Christians are highly creative and capable of producing top-notch, quality written and visual work. Ultimately, Lost Pen Magazine hopes to build up and motivate local and global Christian creative communities while reaching non-believers for Christ.
For more information about Lost Pen Magazine, the Christian Creative Nexus, or Focus Writing Services, please contact founder and editor Dyane Forde at fwritingservices@gmail.com.
