The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

My most ancient forebear, Thomas Boyte, came to American an indentured servant, leaving from Bristol on October 19, 1667, 125,616 days ago, 343 years.

http://www.pbase.com/daveb/image/77350254

A hundred years later, his namesake, another Thomas, stood for religious freedom, against establishment, and in favor of deism:

http://www.pbase.com/daveb/image/38154014

Protest against the bill obliging the inhabitants of the Commonwealth to pay the teachers of the Christian religion. (reel 134, box 175, folder 17)
Link: http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whatwehave/gov/petitions/localityresults.asp

Signed by Thomas Boyt and others (Ballard, Langston, Howell) of Nansemond Co. VA. For a complete list of persons signing the petition select next for copies of the original signature pages.

Petition for Religious Freedom, 1785, Nansemond County
27 October 1785, Nansemond County, Virginia

To the Honourable, the Speaker & Gentm of the House of Delegates.

The petition of the Inhabitants of Nansemond County humbly sheweth: that whereas it hath pleased your Honourable House to publish a Bill obliging the Inhabitants of this Commonwealth to pay the teachers of the Christian Religion, and required their opinion concerning it.

Your petitioners therefore do most earnestlly declare against it: beliving it to be contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and the Bill of Rights.

And having duly considered that worthy clause in the late revisal of our laws in “A bill for establishing Religeous freedom”. “That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he unbelieves and abhors, is sinful & tyranical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own Religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to that particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, & whose powers he feels most pursuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an (absolution) of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest & unremited labour for the instruction of mankind,” do humbly conceive it will be nothing less than an infringement on the Rights of a free people. The blessed Author of our religion suffered, died and maintained his Gospel in the world for several hundred years, without the aid of (___) (___), & against all the powers upon Earth. Neither was it the better for the Church when Constantine first established religion by human laws: though there was rest from persecution; but quickly was he overrun with errors, superstitions & immorality. We humbly conceive it the duty of the Legislature to enact such law as shall punish the vices & immoralities of the times; & let there not be wanting such men placed in authority, who by their pious examples shall recommend religion, and by their faithfulness scourge the growing vices of the age. As touching the Christian religion, the teachers thereof, & a support for them, we think the work is the Lord’s: & those whom devine grace hath called to the work of the Ministry will esteem it their highest Honour to do his pleasure without being moved thereto by temporal interests or lucrative vice & then we shall have religion flourishing in our land, & Deism be put to open shame: but while religion is endeavored to be (preached), & held up by human laws, & the people constrained to a conformity thereto; we trust your Honourable House will very well recollect, that it has been very much the reverse, & Deism gained ground & grew a pace, till it got possession of, alass! but (humaness).

Under these considerations your petitioners hope that the Wisdom and uprightness of your Honourable House will leave them entirely free in matters of religion, & the manner of supporting it, and your petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pray.

The sun shines over the mountain and into the valley. Part of the valley, that which lies beneath the mountain, is in shadow, occluded. Part is lit. Sun. The Sun moves. The part that it is obscured is revealed. The part that was revealed is obscured.

I look out before me and see only darkness. The darkness is the shadow of my own self against the light of existence. I turn around and face existence with my self, and there is no shadow, no darkness, no self, only the light.

Back. Forth. Self. Non-self. The Res Interna. The Res Externa.

Shadowbox. Blinding light. Only in the shadow of ourselves can we begin to outline and delimit the edges of existence. The phenomena. The Greater Light and the Lesser Light. The Greater Dark and the Lesser Dark. Sun and Moon.

All things change. All things changing. Time is change, change is time, not one thing, forever, but all things, passing. I am – no, I was – no, I am – in a boat on a river. I am 29. I am 14. My hand reaches down into the river. Many rivers. All different.

My father’s many rivers. Quiet chirp of animals. Snakes in the water. Swimming. Almost not, but here I am.

The universe exists, and the universe persists.

Sing the Susan Constant, that carried us to shore
To the great unfolding emptiness of land;
teeming, full, and perfect;

All things crafted then were crafted well;
The land gave forth its fruit;
The people, strange people, noble, lived with and within the land;
They were healthy and few, strong, true;

Never having lain down with dogs;
Never having walked with cattle;
Following after the squawk of chickens;
Not packed in rotten wooden cageworlds;
Or cold stone mounds with waxen light;
And the strange thin icons of a dark strange dying man
called Jew, called Carpenter, called God.

He still hangs, they whisper, as they board the Susan Constant.

To the ends of the earth they’ve teemed;
Despairing, despairing, despairing;
Trust in me, says men in gold,
as their children sick and die–

He goes to the bosom, they say then–

She goes to the bosom, they say then-

Even as they think on how the chair cut up for firewood
has lost all of what it meant to be a chair-

He still bleeds, they whisper, as they board the Susan Constant.
John the Joiner, carpenter like He, built the Susan Constant
Nurtured in his mind’s eye,
And then hewed from wood and water,
Built on land, on the last edge of the westerlands,
To sail beyond the sunset

To sail beyond the sunset,
In the Susan Constant

To new life;
Where life is still young;
and not at the end and extremity of our suffering,
but here, and now, while our patterns undeniably are

Here. Is. Heavy. 

Feel not the lightness of being but the heaviness of it now, you real incarnated soul, as you sit and read, whether by the shores of the Tookany, or of the Long Island Sound, or the River Delaware, or anywhere in this New Found Land

Here, not there. To begin again.
The Susan Constant.

Wonderful and sad. Let his nose lead me.

What are these strange small oceans we lay beside? Dark, unknowable, deep. We sit beside them, gazing into the depths, swimming, not swimming –

Burn the whole thing down — secret wish of everyone for the apocalypse, for the great revolution, the great dying, in which the multiples screaming will finally be quiet. Be quiet! They say. Be quiet! As glass breaks. As the youth, eighteen, the only ones who will legitimately live into the 2070s look at what that world will be and despair

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

https://practicalspactical.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/the-snake-charmer/

I have been a tree in winter, bare and naked, naked and cold.
And I have been a tree in summer, green and brilliant, bright;

Now I am a tree in August; Now I am a tree in fall;
My leaves fall off; I grow new leaves; My leaves fall off;
I am not my leaves, my green appendages
I am not my naked branches,
I am roots, and inner sap,
and the sleeping dreams that all trees dream
when they are a tree in winter