You may or may not be aware that I’m foolish enough to be embarked on another post-graduate program. I’m not sure why I’m doing this as an old guy at the end of my working career, but it’s what happening. The degree is in Science, Technology and Society. Fall semester was about the history of technology. Spring semester is about sociological issues in science. In both semesters there was reference to a period in American history when industrial machinery moved from human or animal power, to water power, to steam power, then to electrical and petroleum-based power. There was a lot more on this during the technology class, but still some interesting effects in the look at social issues.
Why this is coming up is that while sitting in the temple, listening to general conference, and during down times in my work travel I was thinking about Beach Haven. It’s a town in Pennsylvania that was founded by one of our ancestors who we named our son Nathan after. I grew up in Berwick, a small blue collar town along the Susquehanna River. Beach Haven is just a few miles upstream from Berwick on the same side of the river, and is more like a small village, a sort of hamlet.
Growing up I remembered Beach Haven for two things. Fishing, and the steam-powered laundry that belonged to “Uncle Morris”. His actual name was Morris Kemmerer. By the time I had any sort of understanding he would have been in his 80s. I looked him up in the Family Tree software. I get these notes from them on occasion letting me know about one relative or other that could have temple work done. Now that my mother has passed away I’m paying a little more attention to family history. I had always thought Morris was my dad’s uncle (a sibling to my Grammy Beach – Violet Kemmerer Beach), but as it turns out he was his great uncle (sibling to my Grammy Beach’s father - Alfred).
Fishing in Beach Haven in those days was either done in one of many eddies that form along the bank, or in the remnants of the old 19th century canal system that still existed in pieces. When the water was high there was good fishing in the canals. When it was low there was not. That’s when we’d fish the main river.
The steam laundry was another thing altogether. For a young boy like me at the time it was an enticing maze of machinery, large conveyor belts driving the machinery, and the sound of hissing steam everywhere in the hot damp atmosphere. My dad told me how he used to help work there when he was a kid. I learned through my academic work that such businesses were common in the days when laundry machinery in homes was uncommon. By the time I came along they were not really doing laundry for families anymore, but were doing more industrial cleaning like for restaurants, hospitals and hotels.
In Beach Haven there really was nothing else. You could count the total number of homes on your fingers and toes, and there were no other businesses but Uncle Morris’ laundry. Today the landscape has drastically changed. The laundry closed after Morris died. Just before we moved away in the mid-1970s construction was started on a nuclear power plant that now stands on a hill overlooking (overshadowing) the town. The last time we visited there were still a few homes and an old cemetery where some of our ancestors are buried. We couldn’t see any remnants of the old canals anymore.
What was the same was the river. It flows continuously at varying heights depending on the time of the year. The water still looks the same as it did when I was young, as does the countryside of rolling, tree-covered Appalachia. Looking closely the downstream pointing ‘V’ shape of the old eel walls are visible just under the surface of the water. From Beach Haven you can look across the river and see the cliff face of Council Cup. It’s a promontory that gets its name from the fact that it served as a place where the old Indian tribes that lived in the area held their councils before the whites moved in, or at least that’s the story I heard back in the day. When I was young we used to go up to the back side of the cliffs at Council Cup and pick wild blackberries in the summer.
I felt inspired to consider how in some ways our times are changing. Like the town, human society shifts with successive generations, but only within limits. There really are no new ideas at the macro level of society. We humans just keep rotating and combining ideas that have been around throughout history. Some ideas are adopted to the detriment and suffering of millions of people. Others bring more or less stability.
What stays constant are the basic principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can choose to align ourselves with them and find more joy in life, or not and find less of it.
Why this is coming up is that while sitting in the temple, listening to general conference, and during down times in my work travel I was thinking about Beach Haven. It’s a town in Pennsylvania that was founded by one of our ancestors who we named our son Nathan after. I grew up in Berwick, a small blue collar town along the Susquehanna River. Beach Haven is just a few miles upstream from Berwick on the same side of the river, and is more like a small village, a sort of hamlet.
Growing up I remembered Beach Haven for two things. Fishing, and the steam-powered laundry that belonged to “Uncle Morris”. His actual name was Morris Kemmerer. By the time I had any sort of understanding he would have been in his 80s. I looked him up in the Family Tree software. I get these notes from them on occasion letting me know about one relative or other that could have temple work done. Now that my mother has passed away I’m paying a little more attention to family history. I had always thought Morris was my dad’s uncle (a sibling to my Grammy Beach – Violet Kemmerer Beach), but as it turns out he was his great uncle (sibling to my Grammy Beach’s father - Alfred).
Fishing in Beach Haven in those days was either done in one of many eddies that form along the bank, or in the remnants of the old 19th century canal system that still existed in pieces. When the water was high there was good fishing in the canals. When it was low there was not. That’s when we’d fish the main river.
The steam laundry was another thing altogether. For a young boy like me at the time it was an enticing maze of machinery, large conveyor belts driving the machinery, and the sound of hissing steam everywhere in the hot damp atmosphere. My dad told me how he used to help work there when he was a kid. I learned through my academic work that such businesses were common in the days when laundry machinery in homes was uncommon. By the time I came along they were not really doing laundry for families anymore, but were doing more industrial cleaning like for restaurants, hospitals and hotels.
In Beach Haven there really was nothing else. You could count the total number of homes on your fingers and toes, and there were no other businesses but Uncle Morris’ laundry. Today the landscape has drastically changed. The laundry closed after Morris died. Just before we moved away in the mid-1970s construction was started on a nuclear power plant that now stands on a hill overlooking (overshadowing) the town. The last time we visited there were still a few homes and an old cemetery where some of our ancestors are buried. We couldn’t see any remnants of the old canals anymore.
What was the same was the river. It flows continuously at varying heights depending on the time of the year. The water still looks the same as it did when I was young, as does the countryside of rolling, tree-covered Appalachia. Looking closely the downstream pointing ‘V’ shape of the old eel walls are visible just under the surface of the water. From Beach Haven you can look across the river and see the cliff face of Council Cup. It’s a promontory that gets its name from the fact that it served as a place where the old Indian tribes that lived in the area held their councils before the whites moved in, or at least that’s the story I heard back in the day. When I was young we used to go up to the back side of the cliffs at Council Cup and pick wild blackberries in the summer.
I felt inspired to consider how in some ways our times are changing. Like the town, human society shifts with successive generations, but only within limits. There really are no new ideas at the macro level of society. We humans just keep rotating and combining ideas that have been around throughout history. Some ideas are adopted to the detriment and suffering of millions of people. Others bring more or less stability.
What stays constant are the basic principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can choose to align ourselves with them and find more joy in life, or not and find less of it.
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