Connections
Oct. 23rd, 2005 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rscOur friend Eric K., known to some of you (hi, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bratman!), moved from his home in Gloucester, MA to Ottawa a couple of years ago to live with his Canadian boyfriend. But the two of them were in Gloucester yesterday, being married in a Quaker ceremony at the Annisquam Village Church.¹ jwg and I had never been to a Quaker ceremony before (having been out of town at the time of J & B's wedding last year); I found it very interesting. The two grooms jopined hands and spoke their vows; they then signed a certificate, which a friend read aloud (repeating the content of the vows), and then over the period of the next hour or so the entire congregation sat in silence punctuated by various individuals rising to speak "as the spirit moved them", to express their love for the couple and wish them well, to recount anecdotes about one or both of them, and the like; one woman sang a short song (whose words were unintelligible to me from the back of the hall). At the end of the ceremony we were all requested to sign the certificate as witnesses on the way out of the church -- with 100+ guests, this took some time.
At the reception, we sat down with our friends M and R, and we were also joined by two other people who were already known to them. One of these was LS, a local theater and music critic whom I remembered as a graduate student when I was an undergraduate at Harvard; unsurprisingly, he didn't recognize me, although my name rang a faint bell, and it turned out we had several common friends/acquaintances from that period, owing to his active and my peripheral assocation with Harvard theater; we spent some time reminiscing about shows that we had both seen or been associated with.
The other person was unknown to me, but he had a rather distinctive first name, and I gradually deduced from context that he was FS, past (and sometime present) flutist with the BSO, with whom I was able to claim indirect acquaintance because my friend N (who may be reading this, and to whom I owe email in any case) had become friends with him when N was living in the Boston area a few years ago.
It was quite the pleasant afternoon.
¹I don't know, and didn't ask, what they've done about the civil aspect, either in Massachusetts or Ontario.
bratman!), moved from his home in Gloucester, MA to Ottawa a couple of years ago to live with his Canadian boyfriend. But the two of them were in Gloucester yesterday, being married in a Quaker ceremony at the Annisquam Village Church.¹ jwg and I had never been to a Quaker ceremony before (having been out of town at the time of J & B's wedding last year); I found it very interesting. The two grooms jopined hands and spoke their vows; they then signed a certificate, which a friend read aloud (repeating the content of the vows), and then over the period of the next hour or so the entire congregation sat in silence punctuated by various individuals rising to speak "as the spirit moved them", to express their love for the couple and wish them well, to recount anecdotes about one or both of them, and the like; one woman sang a short song (whose words were unintelligible to me from the back of the hall). At the end of the ceremony we were all requested to sign the certificate as witnesses on the way out of the church -- with 100+ guests, this took some time.At the reception, we sat down with our friends M and R, and we were also joined by two other people who were already known to them. One of these was LS, a local theater and music critic whom I remembered as a graduate student when I was an undergraduate at Harvard; unsurprisingly, he didn't recognize me, although my name rang a faint bell, and it turned out we had several common friends/acquaintances from that period, owing to his active and my peripheral assocation with Harvard theater; we spent some time reminiscing about shows that we had both seen or been associated with.
The other person was unknown to me, but he had a rather distinctive first name, and I gradually deduced from context that he was FS, past (and sometime present) flutist with the BSO, with whom I was able to claim indirect acquaintance because my friend N (who may be reading this, and to whom I owe email in any case) had become friends with him when N was living in the Boston area a few years ago.
It was quite the pleasant afternoon.
¹I don't know, and didn't ask, what they've done about the civil aspect, either in Massachusetts or Ontario.
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Date: 2005-10-23 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-10-23 10:26 pm (UTC)Assuming that you make it worth my while.
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