Ewe's Full Things
Posted November 3, 2008

http://radnichole.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/ewes-full-things/

Saturday night, I sat in a box-pew in the meeting-house in Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. Catherine, my partner, and myself were there as invited guests of the bride and groom to witness their wedding along with about one hundred other folk. The candle-chandelier cast down wavering light on the meetinghouse main room, candles burnt in lamps along the aisles and around the walls of the magnificently re-constructed building.

Our friends rode to the ceremony in a Hartford/Worchester stage-coach. Jennifer processed with her sister and father to her appointed place in front of the minister and beside David. Through tears and a lot of emotion we witnessed them wed one another as the last Massachusetts day of daylight savings time this year sunk to a magnificent dusk.

The sky after the ceremony took on the aspect of a great fire in the west. The air was chilled to freezing and the russet and yellow tones of tree leaves began to fade to black in the gathering gloom.

Catherine and I walked the pathway back to the Oliver Wight Tavern where the reception was beginning, we both were filled, from our conversation with the knowledge that such an evening would be relegated in our lives to a ceremony that would have no legal status except in Massachusetts, Vermont or California should we chose to be married. Love and troth cannot overcome the legislative imperative legally. One makes her love and then relies on a state-sponsor to affirm it or to say "no" to it. So it goes.

appearance and reality often don't come together as one tries to delineate various aspects of life and existence. What we think we have divined by what we see, we often find is 180 degrees different than we had believed possible.

True that.  Beautiful sentences BTW.

Thank, you tekla. What a nice thing to say.

Nichole

so, why didn't you stop by my place? Hmmmmmmmmm?

Because I have no idea where "your place" is, Rebis. I thought you were somewhere around Boston though, not in Northhampton, Amherst or Springfield and definitely not in Sturbridge!!

Tell ya what, gimme your phone number, I'll give you mine, we can exchange addys and next time either of us is in the other's state we can look each other up. How 'bout that?

Of course I guess that advantages me. I mean if you happen to be in Pittsburg it takes a lot longer to get to me for you than it would for me to drive from Great Barrington to Charlestown, for instance!

Nichole

I must be nice when the next state is less than a five hour drive at 65 mph away.

I wouldn't know, tekla. For me the "next state" is a two-minute drive across a bridge. The 5 hour drive sent me across and into four different states!

Nikki

God, that would turn any leisure drive into an interstate crime spree.  Of course back in the day, we just called it Summer Dead Tour.

Didn't that Summer Dead Tour stay mostly in state, or even in-bay-area? I mean in 1977 I saw the Dead in SF twice, Oakland once, Sausalito once and once in Berkeley and once Santa Cruz. All in about six weeks! I could have almost walked to the shows each time if I hadn't have been living in Monterey!!

Nikki

Well for me the West Coast - including Colorado and New Mexico were in bounds.  But I did a lot of time in Iowa too, so I did all that Midwest stuff also.  Then I joined in, and even went to Texas and the Deep South.  Ok, I was really high.  I would not do that again.

Yeah, I understand that. Getting "really high" sometimes leads to getting caught in those upper atmosphere winds and leads to landing in a land one doesn't recognise as part of the "real world." Texas has that effect, very true.

I still recall my three month's stay in San Angelo TDY as a dream that I got caught in and couldn't get out of for about three months. *sigh* It can be quite traumatic! *smile*

Nikki