It's Only a Pawn

White pawns from the Charlemagne chess set, ca. 1050

I’ve decided to write a history of chess pieces, one piece at a time. I’m hardly the first person to do so, but I thought it would be fun. All the pieces were either made by me or are in my collection.

It might seem appropriate to start with the king, the focus of the entire game. Trapping the king is the central goal of chess. But, I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to start at the bottom, the lowly pawn.

Pawns have gotten a bad rap over the years. A commonly used phrase, often by talking heads on History Channel documentaries, is that people of lesser standing were moved around by kings and the nobility “like pawns on a chessboard.” What they fail to understand, of course, is that ALL the pieces on a chessboard are moved around by the player. Duh. I guess they'd be easy to checkmate! Part of what is behind that sort of phrase is the idea that pawns were worthless, disposable, just cannon fodder to protect the king and his court. Actually, that is not true.

This was even more untrue during the Middle Ages. When chess came to Europe around the 8th century it was a very different game. The queen was not a queen, but a vizier or general (and the weakest piece on the board), the rook was a chariot, the bishop was an elephant with limited moves, and the other pieces were the same as today. In such a game, with only the rook having unlimited movement in one direction, action in the game was more localized. Hence, the pawns were very important strategically. They were used to form a barrier against the forward movement of the other side.

Even in modern chess pawns can be very powerful. You can checkmate with a few pawns with cover. Really.

This did not make them less valuable, cannon fodder (although there weren’t cannons in Europe at the time), disposable pieces of lesser value. They had a great deal of value. They were often used in a way that they were captured, given that there were eight of them. That didn’t make them less valuable. They were used strategically.

Having said that, the uniformity of pawns in medieval chess might give the impression they were less valuable. They represented foot soldiers, of which there were more than there were of other components of the army.

As chess evolved in India the pieces represented the four parts of an army. The rook was the chariot, capable of high speed movement straight ahead. The knight, which along with the rook has retained its original movement since the beginning, was more nimble and could turn off if necessary. The bishop (at the time an elephant) was limited in movement, but if it were in the right place it could be devastating. Finally, the pawn represented the infantry--soldiers on foot, not in a chariot, riding a horse or elephant, and carrying a shield and spear. All parts of the army were important, and each had its own function.

l to r: Persian/early European pawn, ca. 1000;  Lewis Chessmen, ca. 1100; Spanish, ca. 1250, Scandinavia, ca. 1300 Russia, ca. 1350; England, ca. 1480; Italy, ca. 1490; Germany, ca. 1500

The development of the chess pawn is an interesting one. The pawn as it came out of Persia in the 7th century was small, with some decoration. Most pieces from this period resemble that form. The pawns in the Lewis Chessmen are similar, with two designs, perhaps reflecting two different sides. The rest of the pieces are figural, and I’ll get to them another time.

l to r: England, ca. 1560; Italy, ca. 1600; England, ca. 1700; Portugal (made in India) ca. 1650; France, ca. 1750; England, ca. 1750, England, ca. 1830

Regional variations on the pawn cropped up in various parts of Europe. In places the pawn became somewhat bottle shaped, with a small neck that was easy to pick up. In many parts of Europe, the pawn remained a the simplest piece, taking the shape of a barrel or cylinder with minimal decoration. Some examples are illustrated here. One notable exception is the pawn in the so-called Charlemagne chess set now in Paris, made in Sicily during the eleventh century. Here the pawn is a foot soldier.

As time went on pawns were still uniform in shape but took on many different designs. In places they retained that bottle-shaped form, while disks and other additions mad them more elaborate. In some designs the pawn became a miniature of the bishop and/or queen, such as in the Regence style. In the case of the ubiquitous Staunton design, introduced in England in 1849, the pawn had its own design not based on another piece.

l to ro: English, bone, ca. 1860-1900; German, wood, ca. 1840-80; French, Staunton design, wood,  ca. 1920; German, wood, ca. 1860-80; French, Regence design, wood, ca. 1880; Irish, Killarney, wood, ca. 1880; Russian, wood, ca. 1950. The only piece I made here is the Killarney piece.

Pawns are almost always the shortest pieces on the board. That has remained consistent. That does not make them of less value or insignificant, however. In modern chess the pawn can be promoted to any piece the player desires once it has made it to the other side. It often takes most of the game to get a pawn to the last rank on the other side. It is very rare for a player to get more than one pawn to the other side. Generally players will promote their pawn to a queen, since it is the most powerful piece on the board. New chess sets today quite often will have an extra queen for each side. That was not true when I was learning how to pay as a kid. Back then, you took a rook and turned it upside down to make a second queen. That’s why rooks in old sets will often have damage to the top.

Enjoy the photos of pawns through the ages!

In The Bleak Midwinter

“In the Bleak Midwinter” is one of my favorite Christmas hymns. It is based on a poem by Christina Rossetti, published in 1870. The hymn first appeared set to music in a 1906 hymnal.

The first verse sets the mood:

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Rossetti wrote out of her own experience if winters in England. Anyone who grew up in a northern climate can relate to the image of cold winds blowing and the ground hard as iron, water as hard as stone. I can remember winters like that in northern New England. With climate change we’re not seeing those typical conditions as much, especially in balmy Connecticut. However, the image persists.

The best way to see how this tag team of Christmas and winter functions is to see what Christmas is like outside of New England. We take for granted the Currier and Ives images of riding a sleigh carrying the Christmas tree home where pumpkin pie and a roast await, with the fireplace burning brightly. My first glimmer of this was in Arizona a number of years ago. Anita and I were there on our honeymoon, and we went to a Lowe’s to see what they had for desert plants which we can’t get here. I have the two cacti that we bought in my office at the church for the winter. It was mid-October, and just like anywhere else the Christmas decorations were up. Bear in mind that this was Phoenix, Arizona, hardly a winter climate. They had artificial Christmas trees for sale. It looked incredibly out of place, in the same league as the bright green lawn we saw in front of a Phoenix mansion, sprinklers running at full tilt.

It occurred to me that many people living in the area were transplants from somewhere else, people from colder regions where a live spruce or fir tree was not exotic, and this appealed to nostalgia for home.

I was in the Holy Land six and a half years ago in March, and it was cold some of the time, but not winter as we experience it. Jesus wasn’t born in December anyway. The leaders of the early Church put his birthday there to counteract the Roman celebration of the Saturnalia, a bawdy, raucous holiday that they didn’t want their people celebrating.  Better to be celebrating Christ’s birth than getting blind drunk, although that hasn’t stopped anyone lately. For some, Christmas is the Saturnalia.

For many, winter is difficult. Those who grew up in northern climates often eat more, exercise less, drink more, and wrestle with depression. It’s no wonder that Russia has one of the highest rates of alcoholism in the world.

So, even if Jesus wasn’t born during the winter, the image of Christ coming to us in our winter is still an apt one. Jesus comes to us not when we are feeling good about everything, but when we struggle with all that bedevils us. That’s the meaning of the Incarnation. 

The King and Queen are Tipsy: How Chess Pieces Age

Lardy Staunton queen, France, ca. 1920

Regence style king, France, ca. 1880

Chess pieces are an art form. I've discovered that in my ongoing obsession with turning chess sets. I've bought a few antique sets here and there, and enjoy playing a game with a set that is over a century old. One of the peculiar things that happens to some sets is the king and/or queen get tipsy. Literally. Case in point is these two pieces, both a century or more in age. You'll notice that the warping has occurred at the thinnest point of the piece. The kings and queens are more susceptible than the other pieces to this kind of warping because they are the tallest pieces in each set. In the case of the Staunton queen, to the left, there is only one narrow junction. In the Regence king, to the right, there are three, making for three narrow places where warping can occur. Instead of this being a problem that diminishes value, it actually establishes their age as a century or more, since this type of warping generally doesn't happen with new pieces.

Old chess sets will often be very dirty, and I always give them a good cleaning with Murphy's Oil Soap to restore the surface. I sometimes will make repairs, and a few times I've had to reproduce a missing pawn or two.

Regence knight, ca. 1880

Other chess pieces age gracefully to one degree or another. This Regence knight, from the same set as the king above, has a crack (called a "check" in woodworking lingo) on the ball below the horse's head  from the wood drying out. Some people might try to glue and clamp this, or fill the crack with some sort of filler, but that wouldn't be a good idea. This crack will probably close up somewhat when it gets warmer and more humid.

South German king, pawn, and queen, ca. 1870-90.

Wear is another way in which pieces age. If they are used a lot, the finish on chess pieces will wear off on the highest points of the turned piece, as you can see in these three pieces from the black side of a ca. 1870-90 German set (king, pawn, queen, left to right). There is wear on the top of each pieces. Sometimes wear like this can be unsightly, and many times, as with this set, it testifies to its age and use. It's part of the patina.

Rooks also suffer damage from use. Rooks are particularly susceptible to breakage because until recently there was only one queen on each side in a chess set. Generally, new chess sets today include a second queen, only to be used if a pawn is promoted. If a player got a second queen by promoting a pawn, if the player did not simply regain his or her queen from capture they traditionally would use a captured rook turned upside down as a second queen. Eventually this can lead to the crenelations on the top of the rook to break off, as has happened to the rook on the right from a St. George style set, ca. 1880-1900. An intact rook is to the left.

In Japanese nomenclature the term wabi-sabi has become popular in the West. It simply means the characteristics that give an object an patina, a sense of having been used or worn. I think this is the appeal of sets that show their age--you know that a century or more ago someone was enjoying a game of chess with a friend.

Rounded Out With a Sleep

It probably won’t surprise anyone that I have a number of collections that reflect my interest in a wide variety of subjects. One collection that I don’t talk about that much is related to death. I know that that’s an uncomfortable subject for many. I always have my ears attune to how people talk about death. I have noticed in the last few years that the euphemism “passed away” has been reduced to “passed.” I assume this refers to the transition from life to what lies after life in the undiscovered country, but to my mind it clouds the reality of death. I do not use euphemisms in reference to death. As a pastor, I deal with death much more than many do. I do not feel it helps anyone to diminish the impact or reality of death. To shield someone from the reality that their loved one has died does them a disservice. We don’t know what the next world is like, and we can’t know, and it is perfectly fine to think of someone as having gone into another phase of life.

Having said that, it is important to acknowledge the reality of death. Even if our spirits live on in a way that we can’t understand, our physical bodies die. Everyone dies. I will die some day. I wish that an exception could be made in my case, but I don’t see that as forthcoming. Having a small collection of items related to death helps me think about it. It’s something I need to do, to reflect on death, since part of my role is to help others work through their grief and deal with death.

One thing I watch for in antique shops are memorial cards. These black cards were popular from around 1880-1900. I have a number of them, including one for my great great grandmother who died around the turn of the century. These cards were usually printed on black cardboard with gold or silver ink, and included the name and dates of the deceased. They also have imagery related to death.

A more unusual item in my death collection is a name plate for a casket. These often turn up in estates. EBay usually has a selection of them. These plates were intended for the casket of the deceased. When I first bought it I had the odd feeling that it had surfaced (literally) when the occupant’s grave was opened. I took comfort in learning that in the second half of the nineteenth century these plates were often on display during calling hours, and very often the family kept them rather than actually affixing them to the casket. Whew. I wasn’t holding an item that was a by-product of grave robbing.

Naturally, I wanted to know more about the man whose casket plate I have. This is what I’ve learned. First, I need to say that this name plate is not for sale, and at this point I don't plan to give it to his descendants, if he has any. I have no interest in getting in the middle of family disputes and rivalries, and by giving or selling it to one family member I am excluding other family members. I have no idea how this name plate came into the possession of the antiques dealer I bought it from, but it is safe to say that it probably was in an estate sale of some sort. I acquired it legitimately.

The casket name plate is for Nahum Russell, who died on July 17, 1854 at the age of 63 years and 5 months. The dimensions of the plate are 4 3/8 x 3 3/8 inches and is made of silver plated pewter. The inscription reads:

Nahum Russell
Died July 17th 1854
Aged 63 Yrs. 5 Mos.

Online research turns up that he was born in Arlington, Massachusetts on February 16, 1791, and died in Greenfield, New Hampshire, where he is buried in the Greenvale Cemetery. He married Lucretia Johnson of Francestown, New Hampshire on January 28, 1817 in Arlington, Massachusetts. There is a Nahum Russell living in Brighton, Massachusetts in 1816, his name being on the voter list, who could possibly be our person.

In 1820 he appears as the head of a household in Francestown, New Hampshire with two sons under the age of ten. It appears that he and Lucretia had a total of four children, three sons and a daughter. One son died as a teenager. Another son moved to California.

Lucretia, born in 1790, died in Bennington, New Hampshire on October 11, 1875, so she outlived her husband by over twenty years.

The Genealogical and Family History of New Hampshire says about Nahum that he “was one of the early settlers in the town of Greenfield, New Hampshire, where he came in 1823. He owned a tract of two hundred acres on land on what is now known as Boylston street, and was a farmer and extensive cattle raiser.” (p. 730)

So, there it is. A person’s life summed up in a few paragraphs, with one object that is directly connected to him. These few facts, though, only give us the barest details about his life and who he was. From these details we know nothing about what sort of person he was, if he was a good parent, an active member of his community, and so on.



The name plate for his casket tells us one thing. He was mourned. It never made it on to his casket. It was saved after his funeral as a reminder. One little detail is poignant--the upper left corner of the plate has its plating worn off while the rest of the silver plating is more or less intact. Could it be that Lucretia held this plate many times and passed her fingertips over his first name, where the plating is worn off? It's quite likely. I know that some would see that as overly romantic, and perhaps it is, but it wouldn't be surprising. We all mourn someone, and hopefully some day someone will mourn each of us. That's part of what it is to be human.

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself—

Yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve,

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep. (William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1)

That's a LOT of Money for a Painting

Salvator Mundi, ca. 1500

Since every art critic and those who think they are art critics have weighed in on the recent sale of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi. I thought I’d add my observations. Although the majority of scholars who actually know something about his work have decided that it is actually by him, some have wondered if the mystery buyer has paid $450 million for a hack job by a second rate student.

Critics have described the painting as flat and lifeless, noting that Leonardo favored motion in his paintings. It is true that Leonardo favored motion in his paintings. He like to paint people at an angle, with their upper bodies and faces turned to face the viewer, such as with the Mona Lisa. What these critics are not taking into account is that this painting is different from the others that have survived from Leonardo. This is a devotional work. At the time it was considered irreverent to paint a figure head-on because that pose was reserved for Christ. Albrecht Durer’s famous self portrait is a good example of a secular take on this. Painted at the same time as Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi, Durer’s self portrait mimics the pose reserved for Christ. He even paints his own hair loose, as paintings of Christ often depict. Durer had an enormous self-image and he apparently needed a pose normally reserved for the divine to contain his greatness. Durer also knew how to paint motion, and often did. Does that mean that his self portrait wasn’t by him because it wasn’t his normal way of painting a portrait? Of course not.

Durer self portrait, 1500

The media have issued a torrent of words, speculating on the allure of a Leonardo. Obviously, he’s the most famous artist of any generation. Even people who know nothing about art recognize the Mona Lisa. They speculate that with the hype a number of years ago about the Da Vinci Code ( a work that is totally worthless and was a shrewd way to make lots of money) and the excitement of a new Leonardo appearing after centuries of obscurity, people just can’t help themselves.

One factor, the most obvious in my opinion, I have already hinted at above, is that the allure is in the fact that it’s a painting of Jesus. Why this? We have to go back to the root  of religious art. In religious iconography, an image of Jesus, let’s say, has a connection to Jesus himself. The image participates in the divine nature. This is the essence of Orthodox icons. An icon is a window to the reality beyond it.

An image of Jesus, in the minds of many, participates in the nature of Jesus himself. Most art critics do not understand the nature of religious experience, and this wouldn’t naturally occur to them. I believe that beyond being a painting by Leonardo, it is a painting of Jesus by Leonardo. Put the two together and you’ve got a team that can’t be beat.

So, let’s sit back, pop open a cold one and wait for the buyer to be revealed, and whether he or she will donate it to a museum or put it over the fireplace in the recreation room next to the deer trophy.

Dickens, Child Labor, and Shoe Polish in a Bottle: Why Nothing is as Simple as it Seems

Many objects can become a window into the past when thought of as an individual object rather than “just another old .......”  A case in point is this small stoneware bottle. The bottle originated in England, and dates from the period 1817-1834 when a duty known as the Excise Tax was imposed on a number of consumer products including ink, soap and blacking. Blacking was made from the soot of lampblack, the carbon left over from the burning of lamps. It was an oily soot that tended to stick to whatever surface it was applied to, and was used for blacking the iron surfaces of stoves, and for polishing boots. Blacking came in two forms, liquid and paste. The liquid was sold in bottles such as mine. The paste was sold in round flat tins, similar to the containers still used for shoe polish.

Famously, Charles Dickens went to work in 1823 at the age of twelve in a blacking factory in London after his father was sent to prison for debt. He told his biographer, John Forster, what it was like to work in such a factory:

The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on similar wages.

Could Dickens have dressed up my bottle as a child? Perhaps. Obviously nobody knows, but many children such as he worked in appalling conditions. Child labor was still very much the norm in early Victorian England, and it took the work of many people, including Dickens, to make the public aware of this injustice. The textile industry was probably the largest to employ child labor, with thousands of children employed in tying up loose ends and often losing hands or fingers in the process. Child labor laws were slow in their evolution. A Royal Commission recommended in 1833 that children aged 11–18 should work a maximum of 12 hours per day, children aged 9–11 a maximum of eight hours, and children under the age of nine were no longer allowed to work. That seems like small comfort to our modern eyes.

Child labor is still present in much of the world. Unless a consumer is willing to do research on the origin of products that they buy they may not know that the clothing their are wearing might have been made in a sweatshop in Southeast Asia, for instance. The buyers of boot blacking in Victorian England probably didn’t give a second thought as to how their shoe polish was produced, so they bought it with a clear conscience.

Yet Another Shooting and Yet Another Reflection on Violence

The shooting at a Baptist church in Texas has many wondering if churches are safe any more. The 26 people killed are 26 too many. What compounds this horrific loss is that the murders occurred in a place that reasonable people view as sacred. It was a place where couples were married, where families said goodbye to their loved ones, where children learned to pray and sing. I can’t imagine how the members of that church view their church now. It has been violated in the most grotesque and cruel way possible.

I despair that after shootings such as the recent massacre in Las Vegas and now in Sutherland Springs, Texas, that anything will be done to control access to guns by dangerous people. The weapons that are available boggle the mind with their capacity for large scale violence. I would have thought that the Sandy Hook massacre would turn the tide, but it did not.

Church shootings have happened before, and unfortunately, they will happen again. This particular instance is partly the result of a tragic oversight in which the shooter’s dishonorable discharge from the Air Force for domestic violence was not entered into the Federal database for people who are prohibited from purchasing firearms. It’s possible that he might have been able to acquire guns illegally had that prohibition been in place, but it’s impossible to say. This was a tragic failure. The shooter was prone to violence, nearly killing his infant stepson by striking him so hard that he cracked his skull. 

Kelley was a violent person. He chose to shoot up the church in Sutherland Springs because his in-laws were members there. Ironically, they were not present on Sunday morning, but that did not prevent Kelley from spraying the interior of the church with bullets, killing 26 and wounding 20 more.

It is not the fault of the church that they were not ready for such an attack. No church is. This is no reason in the world why a church could possibly anticipate such an attack. There have been church shootings in the past. The shooting at Emmanuel AME Church in Charlestown, South Carolina comes to mind. That particular shooting, in which 9 people were killed including the pastor and several elderly women and men. That shooting was racially based. The shooter, Dylan Roof, wanted to start a race war and has been unapologetic. He targeted the church, presumably, because he knew that African Americans would be there. He also knew that a church such as Emmanuel AME Church was at the heart of the black community.

Surveys indicate that a bias against religion accounts for very few shootings. They are more often the result of mental illness, a perceived lack of welcome on the church’s part, and notably, domestic disputes. A church is a soft target. By nature churches seek to be welcoming and open to all.

The Texas attorney general said that what is needed is more guns in church. In Texas it is legal to have guns in churches. There have been suggestions in social media that churches need to have bouncers and install metal detectors. I can’t disagree enough. My own gut feeling is that we cannot afford to change course and turn our church into a fortress. It is a good conversation to have about how we might handle difficult situations during a church service, but not to fortify the church. That is not how we are called to be Christ’s disciples.

In short, I feel that we are safe. It is impossible to prepare for an attack such as this, and I don’t believe it will happen. As I’ve indicated above, churches are targets for attacks not because they are churches, but because of other factors. We are called to be a community open and welcoming to all, and we will endeavor to fulfill that calling.

Context

My great-great grandfather, George H. Lewis,
who died in 1863 in Washington, D.C.

Context. That’s what I’m always looking for. Growing up in Connecticut, where parts of my family have been since 1634, I had a profound sense of context. It was all around me. In downtown Meriden was the high school (in my time a middle school, now demolished) where my father graduated from high school in 1940. Across the street is the big brownstone Meriden High School building, a late Victorian pile, where my grandparents went to school. My great-great grandfather’s name is on the Civil War memorial in front of City Hall, again, across the street.

Every Memorial Day we went to the East Main Street Cemetery to decorate graves. There, my great-great grandfather is buried. He died of dysentery during the Civil War. My great-great grandmother is there next to him, along with her second husband and their infant children. In the same plot is a memorial to my great-great-great grandfather who lost his shirt in 1830’s by speculating in real estate. He went out to Iowa to start over, hoping to bring his family out. He died out there. One of my life’s ambitions is to find his grave and find out what happened to him.

I grew up with a deep sense of context, that I was part of a continuity. I always had a sense of my ancestors surrounding me. I have a glimmer of what many peoples around the world have, of seeing their ancestors with them, not just dead and buried. Now that my mother has died (6 years ago) and my father is in memory care, I have many family treasures--a photograph of my great-great grandfather, presumably taken before he left for the war, never to come back alive; a print of Abraham Lincoln reading the Bible to his wife and son (which turns out was based on a photograph of Lincoln leafing through a photo album with his son, and Mrs. Lincoln pasted in); several keepsakes of my mother’s which she saved from her childhood, such as a  metal German candy canister given to her by a German boarder who stayed with her family for awhile; a little incense burner in the shape of a birdhouse on top of a tree stump, and other reminders of her.

For me at least, it seemed natural to study history. As a pastor I’m not a professional historian, but history is very much a part of what I do. I preach from a text that is thousands of years old, and help my congregation understand what the text meant to the people who wrote it and first heard it, and what it can mean to them.

Reproduction of a Novgorod chess set, ca. 1300

On my own, I seek out the past. Anyone who has read previous posts knows that I enjoy making reproductions of chess sets from the past. Once in awhile I enjoy buying an antique set online, but the sets I reproduce exist only in fragmentary form and must be reconstructed. That’s the fun part. As I play a game with a medieval Russian set I have a sense of the people who would have used such a set in Novgorod 700 years ago. I also enjoy painting copies of medieval and Renaissance devotional art. Same thing as the chess sets. I enjoy seeing such art in museums, and I often pause and pray silently before them, as their original owners would have. It’s easier to spend a long time with a piece of art at home, however.

All of this helps me to understand myself in context. I’m not just an isolated individual. Each of us is a part of that great cloud of witnesses.

Don't Blame God for Las Vegas

“Well, my book is written--let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell.”
Letter to W. D. Howells, 22 Sept 1889 (referring to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)

I came across this quote from Mark Twain years ago and it is one of my favorite quotes from him. This is how I feel today after the shooting in Las Vegas. To say that I am angry would be to trivialize anger. I am burning inside. I am burning with rage that the shooter was able to buy such armaments legally. I am burning with rage that our government has done nothing, nothing to prevent this from happening. This was avoidable.  The automatic weapons that he used fired hundreds of rounds, and he came to the scene loaded for bear. It looks as though he emptied several weapons before taking his own life.

As a pastor I am often asked why God allows bad things to happen. If it is truly one of those happenings that have no explanation, I’ll say that I don’t know. But this, this has an explanation and it is an ugly one. Our Congress has been flooded with hundreds of thousands of dollars by the NRA to pay off mostly Republican senators and House members so that they will vote against legislation curbing access to guns in this country.

Statistics show that even with our uneven, state-by-state laws concerning the sale and possession of automatic weapons, our society is awash in automatic weapons. People who have absolutely no need to own such weapons have them. To be sure, probably many of these people also lock up and handle these weapons responsibly. But the mere availability of them makes it possible for people who intend harm to buy them. Frankly, I am willing to sacrifice the right of law-abiding citizens to access these weapons if it means that dangerous people won’t be able to get them.

Our country suffers under a deep-seated illness, an illness of violence. Violence against other people has become legitimized for various reasons. The entertainment industries thrive on images of violence. Video games desensitize children to the real-time consequences of violence. Violence against people of color and LGBTQ people has become legitimized in the minds of some. Until this epidemic of violence can be dealt with there will be no solution. We need to start with ourselves and work outward to include all people. Violence against innocent people is never, never legitimate, yet every time people are slaughtered in these numbers and nothing is done to curb the violence our government makes a statement that these losses are acceptable. One friend posted on Facebook today that the debate over gun control ended with the Sandy Hook shootings because it became acceptable for children to be slaughtered.

I get angry when after these shootings I hear politicians saying that their “thoughts and prayers” were with the victims and their families. Nonsense. This is just code language for the NRA to hear, that the senators and house members who are under their control are obeying their pay masters. Thoughts and prayers are worthless, less than worthless, when they are not followed by action.

The culture of violence that has our country in its thrall is only getting worse. Police continue to be let off the hook for shooting unarmed black motorists. Toddlers access guns that are not locked up properly and shoot other toddlers. It is far more likely that a handgun in a home will be used against a member of that family than against an intruder, yet people snap them up because it makes them feel safe.

Friends, we are not safe. Our society is filled with guns of all sorts. I have no quarrel with a person who follows all the rules and hunts for sport. I have no quarrel with someone who enjoys skeet shooting with a friend. I have no quarrel with someone who goes target shooting on the weekend.

My father worked for a bank all his career, and was responsible for the buildings themselves. If anything happened with one of the buildings he got a call, even if it was in the middle of the night. When I was around 13 he was called out several nights because there had been a bomb threat in one of the bank branches. He went in the building along with the police, pistol drawn. He had all the permits needed, and regularly went target shooting. He kept the pistols he owned locked up, with the ammunition locked up separately. After he retired he sold his guns. He said he didn’t need them any more and he didn’t want the responsibility. Unfortunately, not all gun owners are that responsible.

Friends, we need to create a culture of peace. I realize that may sound too idealistic for some, but that is what I feel we need. It won’t happen tomorrow, but it will never happen unless we work toward it. We need to make it much more difficult for someone to pick up a gun because they are angry with a former employer, an estranged spouse, or with the world in general. We need to model conflict resolution that isn't based in squeezing a trigger. Until this becomes the norm, God help us.

My Chess Genealogy

A significant part of chess for me has been the pieces themselves. This goes back to my childhood. Growing up, we had four chess sets. One was a Lardy Staunton set, which I now have, and I treasure it.

We also had a plastic set that was fairly common at the time, and can still be found on eBay for a fair price. This set was modeled after French medieval sculpture, featuring figural pieces--the king was a king, the queen a queen, etc. The rook always entranced me--a literal figure of a castle tower. I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to live in such a tower, in safety.

The third set we had was a travel set, which again, I have now. The pieces were tiny and had pegs that went into holes on each square on the board. The fourth set was a French Regency set made in the early 20th century. I remember my father telling me that his mother had given it to him, and she recalled someone giving it to her. He learned how to play chess during World War II, at a time when long periods of boredom were punctuated with periods of crisis. He came home and told her that he was going to continue learning about chess. She gave him the Regency set but suggested that it might be beyond him

My father was active in a local chess club for a number of years before he married my mother in 1955. I am not sure if he was active in the club after he was married, but it is possible.

Getting back to the chess sets themselves, I now have my father’s Staunton set that he bought in the early 1950’s so that he would have a set to bring to the chess club in Meriden. The Regency set is long gone, not surprisingly. I think that and the Lowe’s figural set went into a yard sale. I have similar sets that I bought on eBay, and although they are not the actual sets they are exactly the same as those that I remember.

Moving the pieces around has always been a great appeal to me. I have never been a strong player although I continue to work on my game. The aesthetics of the game are very important to me. I enjoy studying the different styles of chess pieces. I have a number of sets from the 19th century, and the early 20th century. I have also made reproductions of a wide variety of sets dating from the Middle Ages up to the early 20th centuries. My wood turning skills continue to improve with practice.

Enjoying the actual pieces as miniature sculptures is a pleasure to me. I enjoy examining chess pieces and thinking about how they were made. I enjoy moving pieces around on a board and looking at how they interact with one another.

The reasons I enjoy making reproduction sets are several. For one thing, I often can't afford the originals. Also, I like making a complete set from pictures of a set that has not survived complete, to have an idea how the first owner would have seen it and used it. It's nice to be able to play a game with a set in the style of one made centuries ago and to think about the people who would have used it.

Great Aunt Anne

Today I’m sitting in my study reading for work while a blizzard howls outside. Across the room hangs my copy of a portrait of Anne Boleyn, the original being in the National Portrait Gallery in London. This in turn is a copy of a lost original. When Henry VIII ordered that all portraits of Anne should be destroyed, he did it well, although obviously not everyone complied.

Most everyone knows the story of Anne. She was one of three children of Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard. Her birthdate is not know but is generally thought to be in 1501. Anne had the misfortune to grow up in an era in which women of wealthy families were traded like baseball cards. Marriage was not generally for love, but was for social position, and her parents knew that well. Her father was a unrepentant social climber, although everyone in his class was as well.

Anne spent some of her early years in the Netherlands and France where she gained a good education. Her sister Mary spent time in France as well, and was widely believed to have been a mistress of King Francis I. Mary eventually was the mistress of Henry himself, and is widely believed to have borne two children of his. This happened during her first marriage to William Carey, a marriage that Henry arranged for cover for himself. William had the decency to die young and Mary remarried in secret.

But, there’s Anne. We’ll get back to Mary in a minute.

The basics of Anne’s life are well-known. She was a lady-in-waiting for Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife, who had ha several children with Henry, although one was stillborn and three (I think) only survived for a short time. Only one, Mary, survive to adulthood, later to become Queen Mary I. Henry also had a natural (illegitimate) son whom he recognized. Henry Fitzroy became the Duke of Richmond, the title his father had held. Catherine was not happy about this, especially since Henry came very close to naming him as heir. However, the young Henry died at the age of ninteen and it never became an issue. As Henry and Catherine grew older, he worried that he would not have a male heir. He was a Tudor, and like his father, he needed to prove that he was the legitimate heir. His father, Henry VII, had a claim to the throne but it wasn’t nearly as good as the claim others had. Henry VII worked overtime to prove his legitimacy, spending a number of years fighting off the infamous Perkin Warbeck, a pretender claiming to be Richard, the son of Edward IV and one of the two princes in the tower believed to have been killed by Richard III.

So, Anne provided a fresh distraction for Henry, who had already fathered an illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, whom he recognized and nearly legitimized as an heir to the throne. When Anne appeared in court in 1526 Henry pursued her, seeking  another conquest. Anne enjoyed the attention but wouldn’t let Henry have his way.

Fast forward to 1533. Henry had broken from the Roman Catholic Church because the Pope wouldn’t give him the annulment from Catherine that he wanted. His formation of the Church of England, on the surface, was to give Henry the power to provide his own annulment, but it was more than that. There had been tensions between London and Rome for years over questions of sovereignty.

Anne was queen for less than three years. She and Henry quarreled a lot, and when she gave birth to her daughter, Elizabeth (who later became Queen Elizabeth I) he began to find comfort elsewhere. After a couple of miscarriages he became convinced that Anne had seduced him with witchcraft, and asked his advisors to come up with a conspiracy against her. They dished up as much as they could manufacture, accusing her of sleeping with hundreds of courtiers, including her own brother George. After a kangaroo court she was condemned to death and was beheaded by a swordsman on May 19, 1536, aged somewhere between 28 and 35.

Anne was very intelligent, and by the standards of the time, not very beautiful. She had auburn hair (not black as often assumed) and black eyes, and a large nose. She was slightly built, and men interested in busty women commented on her deficit in that area.

Historians look back at Anne’s downfall and find little or no basis in the charges leveled against her. Probably the one thing she was guilty of, something women at the time had to be careful of, was that she had a quick wit.

So, after all this, why my interest in Anne? Because I am descended from her sister Mary, who is my 12 great grandmother. Henry had an affair with Mary before he married Anne, and many historians feel there is compelling evidence that Mary's daughter Katherine was actually the illegitimate aughter of Henry. Henry might have acknowledged her in different circumstances, but he never did In all likelihood he didn't do so because it would make him look bad if he had an affair with one woman and then married her sister. Since Mary is an ancestor, that makes Anne my 12 great aunt. My mother was delighted to discover this in her genealogical research a number of years ago.

So, I have my portrait of Anne to remind me of my connection to her, but to remind me of the frailty of human existence. As a pastor, lots of things remind me of that, but Anne in particular does because of her quick fall from grace. Women at that time lived a precarious existence, and her story, although played out on an international stage, was far from unique. For her, the stakes were higher.

Phillipa Gregory, the author of The Other Boleyn Girl, speculates that Anne in fact slept with her brother in the hope that a pregnancy would result in a male heir, whose parentage could be kept from Henry. There’s no question that once things started to go downhill for Anne, she tried as hard as any other sane person to save her own neck, literally. I doubt that she would have gone to that extreme, and it is a theory that hasn’t gotten a lot of traction.

So, on this snowy day I lift a glass to my great aunt Anne in the wish that she could have lived to see her daughter grow up to become the legendary Queen Elizabeth I.