Music In A Small Town,

About a month or so ago I got a message on Facebook from my past-driver-ed-student-turned-my-piano-teacher telling me that my Youngest-Son's-drumming-instructor-friend-and-SO-of-other-Son's-friend and said SO (significant other) were doin a fundraiser for a local animal rescue/adoption service. This is private and over and above the SPCA. A family who has found adoption for many a pre-loved animal for 30 years in our area.

These musicians who decided to plan the fundraiser......well, over the past few years I have watched them grow into fine Men and Women. It was really great to see them shining, and with a great line up of some more seasoned musicians from the area.

It was held at the Sharon Temple, which is the music hall for the Children of Peace. The Quakers who founded our area. (I write on the founding Quakers when I can. The history is amazing.)

Small towns have all sorts of hidden talent in the cracks and crevices. I really enjoy being able to support such endeavors. Plus I really truly like these people.

If these music instructors can put up with the old croanies who I used to play music with at their work, then they are capable of anything. I walk into our local music shop which is called The Arts, and the folks I picked with for years are all behind the counter. You just gotta know that when the old croans like me start talkin old days of music the same ole stories get recycled through the bunch of us. Of course, some of us were sober in those days and recollect much more than the others. This always creates the grey area we muddle through in the stories.

I hope this next group of musicians has as much fun as we did when we were twenty-something. I certainly think they are better song writers. And they really seem to have their fingers on the pulse of things. I like this idea. I really really like the idea that I can learn from them....and I regularly do.

So this is how I spent my Birthday night:

There will be more video at a later time
But for now here is a snippet as a teaser:

(this makes two committments I have to create compolation videos for the blog. I just can't do them fast enough this week. I will let everyone know once I have the videos for the tattoo and this show ready.)




I sit within the temple
Watch the crowd ebb and flow

Pets drag their owners into the room
Noses sniffing
Big legs slinking to try to get just a bit closer to the other pawed pals.

Music fills the temple
The brothers and sisters are watching from above
Singing praises as the music fills the structure once again


Strings in harmony
Voices singing

And the sun sets upon the sleepy town




As the last voices come to pass
God shows he is listening to the serenade
As he paints the sky in pastel hues





My last glimpses
This beautiful memorial
A building to blessings of music
My eyes gaze upon my last visions
Like a Group of Seven Painting comes to life

https://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2007/06/music-in-small-town-about-month-or-so.html

My History As A Bird-Lundy

Recently I created two shadow boxes, for my Dad, of the coins and stamps that are created in our name.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you may remember that I spoke of The Children of Peace who settled in our region in the late 1700's here in Canada's York Territory (The Toronto and surrounding areas).

Our family started out in Canada with these pioneers. Then our Lundys moved to Burks Falls to seek more land. The connections and marriages in that area would create the two direct descendants who are the only ones left of this particular line, left in Ontario today. Dad and me.

My Dad has 3 cousins in Michigan and Hawaii.

Before the trip to The New World, the Lundy's had a fascinating past. I do not know it all, but I will tell what I understand.
The Lundys share the tartan of the Lyon clan. The name is broken down in a few ways. Lundy, Lund, Lundi, and Lun. The names changed depending on what place the families settled in Ireland, Scotland, or England, or Wales and France. Those with the full name Lundy passed through Scotland and settled on the Island of Lund (known today as Lundy island). The name means Puffin. Those that kept the Y on the end of the name saught the approval of the Scottish and British subjects, yet settled on British favor, and only then were they accepted into the Lyon clan.( I don't know the exact marriage that did this)

Lundy Island got its name when those Lundy's settled there and took the Island in the name of England as the Knights Templar. This was not a known fact to us till recently, and I find it very interesting as the Knights Templar are intertwined with The Masonic Order, a fellowship in which my Father is a Past Master, and active member of.

The Island contained settlement farms. But the income and commerce of the Island has always been two things. Coins and Stamps. The shadow boxes below contain collectors stamps and a coin from the 1920s and 50s.

Today, one can take a ferry several times a day from the Port of Devon to the Island during the good weather months, but in the winter the Island is only accessible by helicopter once a week.

Stamps and coins are still produced on the Island, and there are only a few permanent families on the Island now.

(you can click on any photo to make it larger)

The Lundy Coin
with the puffin on it.
1924

The Puffin below is painted on Walrus Tusk
which has been extracted and used
by an Eskimo for his art.
These ivory pieces are excavated by Eskimos
from the areas of the North West Territories and Alaska
where the snow and ice is receding to reveal the claim.

The 1954 First Day Editions
of
The Lundy Island Millinary Stamp Collection

https://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2007/05/my-history-as-bird-lundy-recently-i.html

The Children of Peace

There once was a group of people in the region I live in, that lived a life that we all aspire to live now. If this group had not dismantled, would the world be a different place today?

(the Lynn Tucker hisorical serial #1)
(Click any photo to make it larger)

I have mentioned before that the history in Canada is very recent. Major things that happened here are on record from the early 1700's. So for some of you, this seems so recent, that it would not have much bearing in the history of your land. In Canada, in the early 1800's, the area where I live was the wilderness. A rough forested, and hilly land with many rivers running through the area, and a single road that progressively was being extended to become the longest street in the world. The road is called Yonge Street. In 1802 Yonge Street was a dirt path that lead through the forest to Newmarket. The future would extend Yonge Street approximately 1500 miles to Rainy River, near the Minnesota Boarder with Ontario.

Newmarket area land was being offered up cheap to folks emegrating to Canada. The buz was that this area may be the future area of a huge settlement, that may one day be the Capital City, because it had a large watershed and fertile land with plenty of forest to cut so people could build a town.


In 1801 a family set out from the United States to settle in Canada, in the area of York. David Willson, his wife, and his two children set off to move to York from New York. When they reached York (which is now Toronto) they signed a land deed to take on large property in the specific area which is now represented by Newmarket, and the town of Sharon(which was called Hope). I say both of the current town names because the families in this area actually travelled long distances between the boundaries of these two towns to conduct their business, and reflect their faith.

Mr Willson and his family affiliated themselves with a group of Quakers that had originally come from Pennsylvania to settle in Canada. These Quakers were called the society of "Friends". The Quakers had been around since the 1700's, they were called a Christian group, yet they followed no creeds. They believed in the Spirit of God within each man, and the divine personal connection each person has with God. There was no hierchy in the Quaker meeting house. Yet there were guidelines, that David Willson challenged within the group.

It isn't that he was against their practices, it was the interpretation of the guidelines that he felt were taken too literally; and for this he was asked to leave the society of "Friends". In doing so, approximately six other families, who shared his viewpoint walked away from the group, to form their own sect called The Children of Peace.I am not about to do a large study on the "Friends" movement of the Quakers, for I do not want to get off the topic I chose. I will outline the guidelines of which the Children of Peace decided to practice in their own meeting house.

In 1814 The Children of Peace were able to hold their first meetings. These first years The Children of Peace held the meetings within Mr Willson's home. Then a log building, and afterword, by 1819 they had their first church.

At the Meeting-house, in 1818 the first harvest home dinner was held outside where they would soon begin to build what we will call The Music Hall. The future looked bright for The Children of Peace. They were raising money and followers through this time. They raised money with chairs. Every person required a chair to sit in the Meeting-hall. So a price was put on the purchase of chairs for the families. Each person attending donated the money for the number of chairs their family required.

The area where the Children of Peace were settling their properties for the faith was the town of Hope (now Sharon).
Their ideals of faith, fellowship and business were well defined.
Unlike the Quakers, the Children of Peace believed that through music man could express themselves in the Spirit much more effectively. The Children of Peace did not practice any conformity of dress. So the members were not obligated to wear certain colours, or dampen the cut of their clothing. There were no religious tests bywhich members would be sought who could conform to a standard of faith or Godliness. Equality was forefront in their beliefs. Women were held on equal standard in the Meeting-hall, and there was no head person who ran proceedings in the Church. Everyone had an equal participation in the education of the faith. As well as the equality within the sect, the sect ruled that they would only do business with folks who would strike fair deal. The idea was not to get a great deal so you come out ahead. All deals with the sect meant that only trade that was equally fair to both parties would be excepted. If both parties did not win equally the deal was scrapped. So there was no undercutting involved, for the Children of Peace would not see anyone get a short stick when it came to business.

This practice of business made the Village of Hope the most economically adventages place in all of Canada for as long as the Children of Peace existed.

The Bible and The People

The Children of Peace believed that the Holy Bible was a guideline to faith. They kept the Bible opened to the Ten Commandments in the centre of their place of worship, the Meeting-house(church). And in that place it stood, and never touched. For the Children of Peace felt that the Bible's good guidelines were to be read by the people on their own, and the effect of this knowledge was to be put in practical life experience terms, and then spoke upon in the Church. The members were to speak of their own life and the effect that God in their world has made them feel.
So this group never conformed to the Christian ideas of the Collect, Epistel and Gospel.

to be continued......

The photographs are taked at the Historical Archives of the Sharon Temple

https://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2006/10/children-of-peace-there-once-was-group.html