This Week’s Bit of String: A 160-year-old murder
Once on a Girl Scout visit to the local Shaker Museum, we learned about a murder which hastened the decline of this hard-working populace. The story stayed with me for decades, and only recently on a visit home did I confirm it.
Shakers, officially the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming, fused work and worship to delight in tasks rather than view them as punishments. This resulted in some excellent craftsmanship for which they’re known. They’re also distinct for practising celibacy. Their numbers relied on recruits.
Families struggling to provide for their children might sign a couple over to the Shakers, agreeing not to interfere with Shaker education. When the American Civil War started, a man named Thomas Wier entered two daughters into such an agreement. He was enlisting, and his wife was ill. It seemed the best way to look after them.
In 1863, Wier returned. He made various attempts to take his daughters back, valuing unification above the contract. His wife and older daughter tried to snatch them away during a visit, but the girls fought them. On another evening, Wier tried to visit them but the community trustee, Caleb Dyer, refused because it was so late in the day. Wier shot him.
Caleb Dyer died from his wounds three days later. As trustee, he’d been in charge of the finances pooled by the fellowship. They had invested in mills, bridges, and railways around town. However, his records of these transactions had mainly been mental and unwritten. Without him, creditors swarmed and a local mill even, apparently, fabricated debts and demanded them of the Shakers. The community lost a lot of money.
Hearing that story the first time, it fascinated me that a whole group’s fate hinged on a desperate man’s impulsive act against a seemingly, perhaps excessively, introspective one. I always wondered what happened to the children Wier was pursuing. Did they feel responsible? Where did they truly feel at home?
My recent visit did not illuminate anything on that front, so I’m still imagining the possibilities.
Life of the Mind
The tale had populated my mind for so long anyhow. In my last post, I considered how random objects can lodge in our memories, and this is even more true of stories. Their crest and ebb etch channels into our minds. For us creative types, it’s as if we’re standing on the shore wondering how to harness these tides.
Once we’ve diverted our gathered stories into new forms, an even bigger question is: What’s good enough to share? Which are better off eddying in our minds and which can we release?
Last week, one of my stories dried up in the wild, you might say. It was my third story to flow all the way to a major competition’s longlist, but not make it past the dam. Longlisting is good for sure, but I want better for my stories. Now I have to work out how to give it an extra shove, when I thought it was great already.
It’s panic-inducing, the realisation that most of our work will advance no further than the borders of our minds. Our desires to reap tangible benefits from all our efforts, to gain recognition and to be remembered for it after we’re gone, are all real and human. If my novels and more of my stories never get published, will all my time be wasted?
Shifting Currents
When the Shaker community started to die down and sell off their buildings, a Catholic community bought up much of the premises. They built their own shrine and chapel, and fixed up the Shaker buildings with a view to running a boys’ school.
For decades the shrine kept going partly by putting up a dazzling display of Christmas lights in the snow, and receiving donations. But the funds seem to have dried up, and as of a few years ago, they couldn’t maintain the site. By this time, the Shaker Museum was established enough to buy the site back.
So, anything can happen. A draft of a story in my head could evolve into something else entirely, or get swallowed into another project. Maybe that will have more of a chance outside my imagination’s borders. Who knows.
Like the Shakers, we can’t view our work as a punishment, or even exclusively as a means to an end. Engaging with creative pursuits is challenging, but it helps us make sense of and appreciate our surroundings and the people therein. It gives us an outlet in stressful times, whether someone else ever sees it or not.
Even if our creations don’t make it far out of our heads, is that really such a bad place to be?