Category: Melancholy Thoughts
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I Never Met An English Country Church I Didn’t Like
[St. John the Baptist, Buckthorn Weston, Dorset] It’s been said by many travelers that if one wants to know what’s happening in any small English village, just go to the pub and listen for an hour. I think the same is true, to a degree, of social life provided by the Church in these towns…
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The Haunted Well Of Avebury
I heard about the haunted pub and the cursed well of Avebury while touring a church in Gloucestershire. I was purchasing a CD of Traditional Country Songs (sung by a small chorus) at the gift shop of St. John the Baptist in Cirencester. I recognized many of the titles from my collection of Irish songs…
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The Green Man: Watcher Of The Lychgate
I am a conflicting image. Sometimes I appear in churches, carved into the bosses of an archway. At other times, I am associated with pagan symbols of nature worship. I am a man and I am a tree…one part of me morphs into another. I am called The Green Man by those who study the…
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Yes, But Why Can’t You Go Home Again?
It’s a cliché. It’s a meme. It’s been repeated a hundred billion times by three hundred billion people. “You can’t go home again” I’ve read Thomas Wolfe’s book by the same name. It was a long time ago. I may be wrong (correct me if I am), but I do not recall Wolfe ever saying…
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Digging A Grave On A Beautiful Spring Afternoon
I stood in the soft loam, nine inches below ground level, leaned against my shovel, and thought about death and insects. This is not a difficult thing to do when you’re helping to dig a grave on a day in May when the gnats and flies are biting ankles and arms. After all, it is…
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A Chain Of Events Has No End
The judge cancelled the restraining order setting into motion a chain of events… I walked into my classroom on a September morning to meet my class for the first time. I looked around the room of faces, hands holding pencils, open notebooks and staring eyes. A chain of events was set into motion… One in…
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Forever and a Day
Absolutely nothing lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever. There may be some things that last forever. One thing lasts forever. You’re waiting for me in the cafe. The place beside the old church and next to the cemetery. The only place in the city where I can sit next to the fire and feel warm…on…
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A Winter Tragedy in the Unforgiving North Country
This is a heartbreaking story of a misjudgment made 87 years ago today. The heart of the sadness is that this is a true event. In the summer of 2014, I was wandering through St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Chateaugay, New York. I was searching for certain headstones to photograph for ancestor-seekers that lived too far…
patrickjegan 