Downton Abbey Fever

There is much to love about Downton Abbey. Airing here on PBS as part of "Masterpiece Classics" and now ending its second season, the series is filmed in an historic English estate, there are marvelous clothes and real settings, and the characters are feisty and largely likeable, with fast-paced plots just sudsy enough to keep our interest. It is written by Julian Fellowes, who also wrote the equally frothy motion picture Gosford Park (and whom you may remember as the rascal Killwillie in the Scottish-based Monarch of the Glen, a more modern take on the aristocratic and sporting life that remains in Great Britain). The series is a glimpse into the large scale country house era that once existed on both sides of the Atlantic and, seemingly, something of which we can not get enough. Of course, there are pantries and larders and silver vaults, too.

Carson, the loyal butler of Downton Abbey, awaits his supper below stairs.

As in Gosford Park, Fellowes has created a world where the servant and sire know their position and everything runs within well-oiled systems, precise order, and an awareness of one's place. World War I was a game-changer for all of that, even for our American "aristocracy." What I like about Fellowes' approach is that he pays equal attention to the domestic staff, which outnumbered the family members several times over, as he does the lives of those who are on the receiving end of such loyal service. In the past several decades, the museum world in Britain and the United States has begun to take notice of this importance. No house museum tour is worth its admission without seeing a glimpse into the "below stairs" life. Kitchens, sculleries, pantries, cellars, laundries, and servant bedrooms are now regular parts of most house museum experiences with the names, faces and histories of the domestic staff of a household often researched in detail. [Of course, a love of these spaces fueled my interest in writing, The Pantry-Its History and Modern Uses.]

Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio is an architectural nod to English manors and an

example of the country house expression in the United States in the early 20th century.

I have always been an Anglophile. This is motivated by architectural and historical interest as much as great literature, a rainy and lush climate (but notice how it never seems to rain at Downton Abbey?), stodgy nursery food and a good cup of tea (OK, and for a brief few pubescent years I read a lot of Regency romances). My great-grandparents, of German and English heritage, were über Anglophiles. In 1912 they set out with their architect and decorator on buying trips to Great Britain to find suitable furnishings–even buying old bits of manors and castles that were for sale–for the Tudor Revival estate they were creating back in Akron, Ohio. Enamored as they were with their British travels (Compton Wynyates and Haddon Hall were especially inspiring), they decided to stay a few extra weeks and went ahead and cancelled their homeward trip on the Titanic in April 1912. Stan Hywet Hall likely owes it ultimate completion to that fateful decision. That it even exists today is because it was signed over in 1957 by the six Seiberling children to a non-profit museum foundation and left as originally furnished and decorated–complete with paintings, china, silver, full cupboards, closets and drawers.

Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, c. 1925.

The house, which opened in 1915, had all of the grandiose trappings of its era and yet always maintained a cozier sense of home and family. There were balls and galas, events in the Music Room, garden parties and large family dinners (F.A. Seiberling, my great-grandfather, was one of nine children who lived in the Akron area and he liked to gather the clan together often). Christmas was a beloved time and my father's childhood Christmases at the manor were a source of many happy memories. On certain occasions, the manor and its grounds were also opened to the public or to employees of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. The English would have scoffed, I'm sure, but the attention to detail in the house is transporting and the intended effect has succeeded in the appearance of an estate that has evolved over centuries. Charles Schneider, a Cleveland architect, won the commission because his design was warm and appealing, not at all like the marbled halls of many of the Gilded Age homes in Newport and New York that the Seiberling family found wanting.

Lord and Lady Grantham–

to the manor born in Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey incorporates aspects of the American Gilded Age in the newer wealth of Cora, Lady Grantham's heritage paired with the aristocratic, but slowly impoverished, Edwardian English estate of her husband Lord Grantham. Despite his wife's money, and their three daughters, the estate and its contents must pass by law to the next male heir, ideally with sufficient funds for its maintenance to keep it within direct lineage–an example of the male heir primogeniture holdover of feudal law. Marriages of this kind were not uncommon during this time when wealthy women from American industrial families were paired with English noblemen to infuse dwindling estates with cash and uphold their preservation. Thus, a tentative "marriage of convenience" was forged between pockets of the American nouveau riche and a few bastions of fading English aristocracy.

The F.A. Seiberling family around 1915, after Stan Hywet was completed. My grandfather, James Penfield, is at the upper left, alongside his sister-in-law Henrietta Buckler Seiberling (who would later be instrumental in the creation of Alcoholic's Anonymous), brothers Fred and Willard, and in front (from left), sister Virginia Seiberling Handy, parents F.A. Seiberling and Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, flanking youngest sibling, Franklin, Jr., and sister Irene S. Harrison.

One of the many reasons I continue to enjoy Stan Hywet today is because it is the only repository of family memory that I have left in Akron: we long ago left the small house across town where I grew up and my grandparents' home, just up the road from Stan Hywet, was sold in 1983. Where there were once several dozen staff, by the end of World War II there were only a few servants (and the once well-manicured grounds more or less went wild). Meanwhile, my father's household in a comfortable 1923 Spanish Mission style house nearby had two live-in staff and several hired as needed. He and my mother spent their married years in a much smaller suburban Colonial, across town, with no maids. By the 1960s, the world that my family had known no longer existed and paralleled the demise of the midwestern Rust Belt's industrial heyday. While I can't deny that I am grateful for a glimpse into this other world––or that I take pride in my heritage on both sides of my family––at the same time I am blessed to have had a grounded upbringing from each of my parents that focused on values, kindness and the merits of a good education: part middle class suburban offerings and part New Hampshire farm.

F.A. Seiberling in front of Stan Hywet in 1942.

It's fun to speculate "what if?" What if the family had returned on the Titanic? Would Stan Hywet still have been built? What if there hadn't been a hostile takeover of Goodyear Tire & Rubber in 1921? What if the family had still been involved with Goodyear and never founded Seiberling Tire & Rubber (when F.A. lost Goodyear he turned around after a few months and started another tire company, which stayed in the family until a corporate raid in 1960)? What if the family still owned Stan Hywet? Would there have been a pattern of primogeniture as there was in Great Britain or would my grandfather, the second of two sons, who ran Seiberling Tire after his father passed the baton, been the heir apparent to the home? The speculation is fun but the reality is that, in deeding the entire estate and its contents in 1957, the six siblings guaranteed that the property and grounds would never be divided, sold or destroyed. Today it continues to live up to its noblesse oblige Latin motto carved over the door: "Non Nobis Solum" (Not for us alone) with a well-preserved house, collections and accurately restored landscapes and gardens. [Meanwhile, Highclere Castle, the very English and historic setting of Downton Abbey, remains privately owned through direct lineage of the Carnarvon family since 1679, and is also open to the public.]

So as my husband and I watch Downton Abbey from our humble doublewide on our Kentucky farm, it seems a rather strange way of glimpsing a reassuring sense of order and family life in a changing world. While the fictional characters in the household of Downton Abbey mourn the way it was before World War I, nearly one hundred years later we look back at a past we did, or did not, know with the same, odd kind of longing. No matter what era we're in, it's usually about one's sense of place in the world, family hierarchy and relations, a well-appointed house (or hopes and plans of one), great dinner parties, and the intricacies of romance and relationships. Strong and imperious no-nonsense matriarchs with great one-liners go a long way, too, even if snark was probably not very fashionable in those days. I want to be like the Dowager Countess when I grow up! And, while we're being silly (sort of), a devoted butler would be fabulous.

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!

In the spirit of simplicity, this will be my only blog post this month. If you'd like to read more about our Christmas this year, check out my Farmwife at Midlife blog where I've posted today about "Less is Always More" at the holidays. I'm deliberately not going to blog any more this month on any of my three blogs––even if I have to sit on my hands!––to save up time and room for a simple, relaxing holiday––and to spend more time with my family: how, may I ask, do we do that if we're always on the computer? Also, there is a link back to some Christmas cookie recipes on this blog and you can always search In the Pantry (see column at right) for more holiday and food-related blogs from Christmas Past. As this blog is now over six years old, there is plenty of fodder in that department.

Father Christmas visiting Stan Hywet Hall, c. 1940. 

[That's my grandmother on the right.]

If you are in the Akron, Ohio area this season you can visit this 

historic manor during the holidays and enjoy their decorated Tudor Revival-era 

rooms and beautifully lit grounds. Click here for more information.

Also, please remember that I still have copies of The Pantry–Its History and Modern Uses available for sale at my website. They make excellent gifts and I am happy to sign, and inscribe, copies and even ship them directly to anyone on your list. Hardbound, and filled with beautiful color photography, the book is an affordable addition to your home library. And still only $16.90, including shipping! Order today in time for the holidays ~

Blessings to you and your family this holiday season, and always,

Catherine

My father, left, admiring the Yule Log in the Great Hall of Stan Hywet Hall, c. 1940.

PS For more great images of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens––at Christmas and through the years (both archival and promotional)––check out this new blog by architectural historian Michael Henry Adams, a fellow Akronite who now resides New York City.

Pantries I Saw on My Summer Vacation

An old Hoosier-esque cupboard in the shed at Green's Heritage Museum
 in Orient, Ohio. [I particularly like the vines growing around it.]

We took several trips to Ohio this summer and, of course, I brought my camera along. I'm always on the lookout for unusual spaces and pantry places along the way. What's fun about visiting Ohio is that even though I have spent much time there––as a child and adult––there is always something new to see or find. [For more about "What I Learned on My Summer Vacation," please see my Farmwife at Midlife blog.] We don't go far together now that we have a cattle farm and much responsibility here in Kentucky, so we do try to pack as much time as we can into our short trips.

The butler's pantry at the James A. Garfield Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio.

The interior of the small field worker's wagon at Green's Heritage Museum.
It was used by migrant workers from Kentucky who came up to Ohio each summer.
There is a small bedroom and an open area for cooking and living space––like a Gypsy caravan.

The cupboard and counter in the field worker's wagon.

A former tourist cabin.

The cupboard and kitchen area of the tiny tourist cabin
 at Green's Heritage Museum. What little girl, or grown woman,
would not want this as a playhouse of their  own?

Two views of the kitchen and pantry area that was in the old store at Green's Heritage Museum. 

A row of old oatmeal boxes in the old store.

A "Portable Pantry," made in Ohio in the latter part of the 19th century. I'd heard about them but had never seen one before. I found this in an antique shop in Berlin, Ohio (but did not buy it!).

A flower arranging volunteer in the room made for the same purpose at
Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio. Above this space,
on the second story, is a commodious linen closet with cupboards and drawers.

Last but not least, my friend Linda spotted a copy of my book on the upper shelf
of the gift shop of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens. I was glad to see it and they ordered more copies.

Writers' Houses

The kitchen in the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, in Asheville, NC, where I visited last year and was able to take photographs. Preserved as the boarding house where Wolfe lived with his mother, it also inspired his novel, You Can't Go Home Again.

I am a consummate voyeur. I have enjoyed a too significant amount of reality programming since its inception and, yes, I have watched every season of Flipping Out and The Real Housewives of New York City on BravoTV. As well as some superior blogs, I even read a few inane ones, too––gossip sites and others––where I really shouldn't lurk at times [People of Walmart comes to mind], and where I even occasionally post, just because. I like a good bit of celebrity gossip. In more erudite moments, I read a lot of memoir and biography. Perhaps it is the architectural historian and writer in me, but whenever I travel I like to visit the literary homes of authors. I have on occasion, blogged about or have published articles about them. For a time, I even lived in a museum that belonged to a self-ascribed poet and his Boston Brahmin family.

Writer A.N. Devers shares this same passion as she has recently started a blog called Writers' Houses. It promises to be a wonderful journey into the homes of writers around the world [the criteria is that they be open to the public]. I learned about Devers' new blog today in my daily The Daily Beast email and just had to sit down and tell you all about it.

Writers and their homes are intricately fused. Where a writer lives can be as important as what they write about as it helps shape their outlook on the world. It is also a treat for a fan to be able to visit where a writer lived and sometimes wrote. My first such pilgrimage was to Haworth, England as a sixteen-year old exchange student. There the Brontë sisters lived and wrote at the Brontë Parsonage at the edge of the Yorkshire moors. Let me tell you that seeing the bleak landscape that inspired the wanderings of Heathcliff and Cathy made Wuthering Heights that more real for me.

As one who has worked in numerous house museums, I understand why these places are of interest to people. When you add a famous person or a writer to the equation, it can make the experience even more powerful. Tromps to writers' homes become more of a pilgrimage. There are also writers whose homes we wonder about––J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee come to mind (I have driven past Salinger's former home many times in Cornish, NH and have seen his mailbox and barn, at least!)––and others that are as open as, well, a book. Others are as secretive as their former occupants: the rather starkly furnished Emily Dickinson Museum comes to mind (where the pantry is now a storage closet for the museum shop, but where Emily was said to have written many poems in it while tending to her domestic chores in the kitchen). It helps when these places are left with their original contents, too.

The former chicken house at 'Shieling' was the location of early children's Story Hour times led by author Elizabeth Yates McGreal in the 1950s after she moved to Peterborough, New Hampshire. I was glad to see, a few years ago, that it was still as I remembered it on the property.

This new Writers' Houses blog is timely for me this week. The other day a woman contacted me who is now a caretaker in the former home of Newbery Award-winning children's author Elizabeth Yates McGreal. She wanted information on the original stencils in the house so that they could be restored. [I assumed they had been painted over by a former caretaker and it bothered me to think about it.] When Elizabeth left her 18th century Cape and its property in Peterborough, New Hampshire, known as "Shieling," to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, she likely hadn't included provisions for the preservation of her house. One of her books, Patterns on the Wall, was inspired by the restored stencils in the front room that were presumably painted by itinerant artist Moses Eaton. They are gone but her house, and barn––where her writer friends Elizabeth Gray Vining and Dorothy Canfield Fisher used to come and write at different times in the small apartment every summer––and beautiful property is still preserved, at least. I spent many Tuesdays in her home as a teenager, and later as a young adult home from college, reading aloud and having Lapsang Souchong tea and English biscuits. She was one of my early mentors and I am grateful for the friendship that we had.

It is always a great thing when a writer's home is as preserved as their literary legacy. I look forward to seeing what the blog Writers' Houses has to share in the coming years.

Where Would I Be Without Emily?

I have always appreciated the poetry and life of Emily Dickinson–especially since I discovered when writing The Pantry that she had a penchant for writing poems in her pantry and kitchen. Today I thought, mmm, I wonder what Emily had to say about spring? She wrote about so many things, often in allegory, that I also like to muse about: the weather, gardens, hope, faith, God-in-nature, birds, beauty, virtues, the presence of God or the spiritual realm, oh so many things. To think that she wrote from her home in Amherst, Massachusetts, where I have been as it is preserved as a museum, without ever hardly leaving it or traveling much further than Boston (and I believe that was only once for medical issues)! Yes, it is possible. The mind is a marvelous thing and Dickinson was the ultimate arm-chair traveler through books and her glorious imagination.

I think of Emily as this Zen-master poetess, beyond time and place, really, ethereal in her earthly presence. Her words are timeless and even transcendent. We are blessed to have them today, thanks to the efforts of her sister-in-law who found them and published them after Emily's early death. Imagine–writing for writing's sake and nothing more? I often wonder if Emily would have embraced blogging or delighted in the anonymity of posting on other blogs. I'm almost certain she would have preferred email to the phone, however a voluminous correspondent she was in her day. She may have Twittered but Facebook would have been too public for her. I don't blame her for wanting her solitude or embracing her home and gardens. I often feel the same way in a kind of self-imposed seclusion, at times. Perhaps she was a reclusive agoraphobic or depressed (or had S.A.D.) or maybe she just got all that she needed from books and her own place in the world.

Here is a poem (812.) that she wrote about spring (I just discovered that the Emily Dickinson Museum has also posted it as their "poem of the week"):

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay —

A Quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament –

~ Emily Dickinson

NOTE: Here is a very early blog, one of my first, written back in the spring of 2005 about Emily Dickinson and her pantry poetry. Part of this blog was turned into an essay on cleaning my kitchen that appeared later that year in Old-House Interiors [I will have linkable PDFs of most of my published writings up very soon at my website.] The photo in this early blog (I am still updating and tweaking early entries with links and minor corrections–these were back in the day when it was more difficult to make formatting changes) is of one of the early, original built-in cupboards from our former historic home in Hancock, New Hampshire (c. 1813). Oh, how I miss that kitchen and my pantries!

Libraries I Have Known and Loved

The Horace Walpole Library belonging to Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis, taken by Life Magazine in 1944 at Lewis' home in Farmington, Connecticut.

The library as an institution, and as a place in our schools, communities and even our homes, has been on my mind in the past few weeks. Are you as drawn to what books people have on their shelves as I am? Or what they might have piled high from their local library? Or if a person has any books around at all? (I know, I'm just a nosy old poke.) I have been in several public libraries this summer, have reminisced about more, and even have a few librarian Facebook "Friends" and blog readers (and some are also real live friends). So I have had a blog brewing on the subject and this evening the following came in via a Facebook posting by a New Hampshire town librarian. It seems that the library at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Massachusetts is getting rid of its books.

In this age where print is threatened by the Internet (OK, I'm a blogger but I still read books, magazines and newspapers, and sometimes even write for them, too) and awful gadgety things like Amazon's Kindle (sorry Oprah, but I ain't buying it), the medium of the printed book is even more precious. I have often blogged about book shop finds here at In the Pantry and at Cupcake Chronicles where two friends and I continue to write about the books that we read apart or together. You can't escape the tactile feeling of a book in hand. My eyes might be morphing into a need for driving glasses and reading glasses and no, not willing to concede to bifocals just yet, so how is reading a book on a flickering computer screen good for anyone? The children at Cushing Academy, as all children and adults, need books: bindings to crack, pages to flip, and dusty tomes to dig out of old archives and catacombs.

Andrew Carnegie established a grant program for American libraries in the earlier part of the 20th century, donating more than $40 million between 1886 and 1919 to construct 1,679 new libraries in the United States and about $56 million for libraries worldwide. In one of the greatest philanthropic gestures in our nation's history, we have this Scottish-born American industrialist to thank for much of the great library architecture and collections that remain today. [Image of Andrew Carnegie © Columbia University Library]

The first library I ever visited was the Ayers branch of the Akron-Summit County Library in Akron, Ohio. We lived almost around the corner but drove anyway because the traffic wasn't conducive for my mother to walk with a stroller and three children. The library branch was housed in a large former home on Market Street, in the Tudor Revival style from the 1920s as so many suburban homes of that era were, with a 1950s addition on the back. It was brick and kind of Gothic-y. Inside were shelves of books and cozy corners. We went there often and I was always able to check out an entire pile of picture books. I can still hear the magical and tidy "ka-chunk" sound of the lever pressed on top of the plastic library card through the paper and carbon and well remember the satisfaction of having my own library books to take home. Problem was that I wanted to keep many of those books–even to jump right into many of them–and it was often hard to return them (not for my punctual mother but for her hoarding daughter who liked to linger). I was sad to see a few years ago, like so many buildings in Akron over the years, that the original house-turned-library was torn down (and yes, to make a parking lot for another building). The newer, larger branch is on another street nearby.

I've been to the downtown branch of the Akron-Summit County Library over the years, but not since its latest transformation. The 1970s library was constructed in the unfriendly and cold "Brutalist" style of architecture inside and out, that filled so many urban vacuums at the time and was laden with modern art and hanging mobiles. I didn't find it very welcoming, just like the newer main branch of the Boston Public Library, but that's just me: I like cushy and cozy in a library.

Meanwhile, the library of my great-grandparents Akron home, now a museum (since 1957), is so inviting that even Helen Keller remarked that it was her favorite room in the house as she could feel its presence. Even though I never knew him, I've always liked seeing the charred wood on the library shelf where my great-grandfather used to rest his cigar. It was also here, on a 1970 tour with my Grandpa with my second grade class, that I first heard of Helen Keller. I became a girl obsessed: a woman who is deaf, blind and mute and could learn to read? I was soon reading all I could about this remarkable woman. How would she manage in a virtual library such as Cushing proposes? Can a deaf and blind person "read" a computer? PHOTO: Helen Keller wrote on her photograph on December 21, 1924, "In witness of three beautiful days spent at Stan Hywet Hall and my sincere affection." [Image © Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, Akron, Ohio and used with permission.]















On summer visits to the Gray Goose Farm to see my grandparents in New Hampshire, I spent long afternoons reading the "My Bookhouse" series that my grandparents had in their extensive multi-generational library, scattered about in bookshelves but especially gathered in what was called "The Toy Room," the southwest parlor at the front of their 1792 farmhouse. [I later bought an entire set at a used bookshop for my children–the same edition as theirs (for $10 each in those days)–and several years ago bought an earlier set still in its original wooden "Book House" from a woman in Connecticut who also collects Country Fare pottery. She gave me an amazing deal on a "Book House" with books because she knew I would treasure it.] I also looked forward to going to the Jaffrey Public Library with my grandmother where I could wander around and check out different books (often cookbooks and where I discovered The Buttr'y Shelf Cookbook for the first time). PHOTO: The Toy Room, Gray Goose Farm, Jaffrey, New Hampshire, summer 2006.

During my high school years in Jaffrey, I often went to the town library after school where I always enjoyed talking with librarians Miss Margaret Priest, an Englishwoman, and Miss Gwyneth Andrews, from Scotland. They also gave the library a natural air of calm and repose and you just wanted to have a nice cup of tea and some scones with them. I last saw Margaret in 2005 when she joined us in Hancock for our Thanksgiving dinner. Margaret was also a dear friend of my friend and children's author Elizabeth Yates McGreal and lived next door to her in "Pineapple Cottage" on Old Street Road in Peterborough for many years. PHOTO: Margaret Priest, Thanksgiving 2005, Hancock, New Hampshire.

One of my relatives by marriage, Wilmarth S. Lewis (don't you love that name?), was a Horace Walpole scholar and collector and had a rare book library that he amassed in Connecticut; it was later donated to Yale University where, since 1970, it has been the Lewis Walpole Library. He gave an old 18th century leather volume, an English hunter's companion if memory serves, as a wedding present to my parents (and my mother was able to sell it at a rare book auction years later). I never met Cousin "Lefty" (I was told my manners had to improve significantly before that could happen–something that was always held in front of me like an elusive gem) but I expect we would have had a lot to talk about, especially years later when I wrote part of my college thesis on Walpole's writings and his vision of Gothic Revival architecture. PHOTO: Annie Burr Auchincloss and her scholarly husband Wilmarth S. Lewis, aka "Cousin Lefty" in the family. [Image © Yale University Library]


That's me on the right in my 3rd grade yearbook photo in the Lower School library of Old Trail School in Bath, Ohio, c. 1970. Three of us in this photo, as well as other would-be high school classmates, have recently connected via Facebook. Most of us left in middle school but are now trying to arrange a 30th reunion for 2010.

I always enjoyed library time at various schools over the years–and really got into the Dewey Decimal system in Library Science in 5th grade at Old Trail School. In the Lower School library I had discovered the delights of Betty MacDonald's Mrs. PiggleWiggle series as well as children's books by Roald Dahl and The Lonely Doll series of live-action photography books by Dare Wright. The Laura Ingalls Wilder books were also favorites. I later worked for the Wheaton College Library (Norton, Massachusetts) throughout my years there. In the fall of my freshman year, the new library wing and its subterranean stacks were christened. I spent many days and evenings in "the stacks" in favorite study carrels, tucked away where time just seemed suspended and in a way that seemed more productive than the hours that seem to be sucked into the computer today. When working I got to put the books away according to a new system for me: the Library of Congress classification (and for some time one of my longest friends from childhood has worked at the LOC). As I remind my children, much to their disbelief, I had an electric typewriter in college, no cell phone, and used a card catalog to find books on the shelves. Furthermore, that was only 25-30 years ago. So in the span of thirty years, the idea of going from a library with real books to a virtual "learning center" with a cappuccino café at Cushing Academy in Massachusetts is, well, preposterous. Call me sentimental.


The Radcliffe Camera at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, England © National Geographic

On two academic trips to England–one for a high school semester and another full year in London–I really got to immerse myself in the full library experience both at Bodleian Library in Oxford (so now you can understand why, despite it's tragic overtones, that I love Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure) and at the University of London library system. I also researched at the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum and other smaller libraries around London. In 1982 I had my first college internship cataloging a donated postcard collection at the library of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, then headquartered in Washington, DC but now a part of the University of Maryland.

During my years in Boston in the mid-1980s I was a regular at the Boston Public Library and in their archives and had a special student pass to the Boston Athenaeum (which, if pressed, is probably one of my very favorite private library experiences–we are proprietors there, too, but never have been able to get down in the past decade or so). In fact, it amazes me to sit here recounting all of my collective library experiences because, with Google and many digital collections at my finger tips, it just seems such an archaic thing to be doing: digging around old books and files for research. However, please don't misunderstand: while Google fills a need and a void made real by time, place and circumstance, I would gladly roll around and encamp in a research library again for extended periods of time. In recent years I have used the on-line LOC collections for research for The Pantry, as well as the fabulous HEARTH [Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition, History] archive at Cornell and other on-line digital collections. Their ease of access, free use and savings on travel and time has been invaluable and their search mechanisms time-saving. However, I would never want to banish books from a library collection entirely. IMAGE: The Boston Athenaeum was designed by architect Edward Clarke Cabot who also designed the Gibson House, built in 1860 and a house museum since 1957 and where I lived as resident guide in the mid-1980s.

For the first twelve years of our marriage, until we moved to rural Kentucky, we lived next door to the Hancock Town Library. Did I visit it much? Surprisingly no, but this was because we had a tremendous library in our own home, now mostly in boxes, and I didn't have as much leisure time to take books out and read them back then (let alone return them on time–yes, even from next door!). Our children and Aunt Cynthia were regulars, however, and it was so nice to have them all be able to go back and forth with ease. Meanwhile, our house library was a multi-generational collection and added to with our own interests and subjects, including many children's books. It was sad to dismantle it but most came along with us and the rest was donated to various friends and other library sales or book dealers. One thing I have noticed about small-town libraries is that the "shush" factor no longer seems to exist. They have become, in many ways, the new general stores of a town–the place to meet and greet, exchange news and well, gossip (but, ssh, you didn't hear that from me...). PHOTO: The Hancock Town Library is at the center of the picturesque New England village of Hancock, New Hampshire, a town, interestingly enough, that also has many resident published writers and others who are in the book business. [I wonder if it is the water, the town's charm or the clear air?]

So I haven't found small town libraries to be conducive for studying or reading in recent years but that isn't to diminish all of the great resources, terrific programs and "Friends of the Library" groups, and enterprising, dedicated librarians that they offer. Besides, Hancock's current librarian, Amy Markus, dared the town's children that if they read a certain number of books this summer, over 700, she would dye her hair pink. How cool is that? (And yes, the children read 729 books and her hair is now pink!) PHOTO: Beaming librarian Amy Markus is also probably wondering, "How long will I have pink hair?" Read more about Amy's transformation here.

Here in Kentucky we have county libraries, some with several branches. A few weeks ago, our boys and I had some time to wait while in Liberty, and decided to pop into the Casey County Library to finish some homework after school. Kathy Goode is a welcoming librarian and friendly, outgoing person and fun to talk with. [She was just back from an enviable trip to England and a library course there.] I was grateful that she offered us the back meeting room where it was quieter and perfect for a quick homework session (and where we wouldn't disturb anyone else). Afterwards, in some limited shelf browsing, I was pleased to discover a memoir by Shirley Jackson called Raising Demons that is a sequel to her Life Among the Savages, one of my favorite memoirs about family life. It is still in print but I took out the first edition pictured here with it's lovely jacket illustration–I had no idea of its existence before. It is now on my nightstand, partially read, and I'm going to have to soon part with it. This might be why I have so many books of my own (and many purchased at used bookshops and "Friends of the Library" book sales over the years): parting is such sweet sorrow and they look so nice on my shelves. I feel secure with a book in hand and nearby in some kind of order (and yes, I've even organized my own books over the years).
PHOTOS: Shirley Jackson was perhaps best known for her chilling short story, "The Lottery" and was a master of modern Gothic fiction. She lived with her husband and four children in Bennington, Vermont throughout the 1950s and until her untimely death in 1965 at the age of 49.

Somerset has a brand new brick main branch of the Pulaski County Public Library which houses the Historical Society, a beautiful children's room, and other rooms for meetings and community use. The main reading room is like something out of a modern English refectory with its steel vaulted beams and a hint of Harry Potter in the stacks, complete with nice cushy seats by a northern window with constant light...and WiFi. I am contemplating a portable winter office there. I might not take out many books but I'll put my feet up with my laptop, catch up on some newspapers and magazines, and write. There is nothing like a quiet library away from one's familiar–and laundry and too many to-do lists–for a needed getaway and focus.

Finally, what prompted this (rather long) library blog was a recent email I received from a blog reader ("the Library Lady") at the Emily Taber Public Library in Macclenny, Florida. She kindly wanted me to know that my book, The Pantry, resides in this building and has been checked out many times. That is always good news to a writer. She also writes that they are presently building an addition on the back of the older structure. That's always good news, too: combining the new and updated with the old, historic architectural fabric. PHOTO: The Emily Taber Public Library, courtesy of a blog reader. Don't you love the juxtaposition of the palm trees next to a Greek Revival brick building?

There is a rather over-the-top disaster movie called The Day After Tomorrow that came out a few years ago. After several catastrophic global storms, New York City is besieged by extreme and life-threatening subarctic temperatures. A number of survivors hunker into a reading room in the New York Public Library and start burning books for fuel. This is understandable, given the circumstances, but it is a reminder of the deliberate book-burning episodes in different sad chapters of our country's history (as well as Nazi Germany, to name a few). It also points to what is left when a world culture or society collapses or dies away: artifacts and books or other writings.

Despite our technology, which always seems to have to be improved upon and too quickly becomes obsolete, the essence of a book hasn't changed much throughout history, only in how it is printed and distributed. It remains an extension of ourselves or a window on another time or place. You can pat it lovingly into a shelf, put it next to you on your nightstand, or bring it along in your handbag. [However, that said, a digital archive of collections and photographs is also useful for internet researchers as well as providing a needed back up copy in case of fire or other disaster–such as the ghost rampage at the New York Public Library in the first Ghostbusters movie–remember the card files and books flying everywhere? And that librarian ghost knew how to say "SSSSSHH!"]

The motto over the older Wheaton College Library entrance states: "That They May Have Life and Have it Abundantly" which was paraphrased from what Jesus said in John 10:10 [And I didn't go to the Christian college in Illinois by the same name, but to the former women's college, co-ed since 1985, in Massachussetts.] I suppose, twenty-five years after graduating, I have done just that. I have also realized, or remembered, that my college library was designed by the same architect, Ralph Adams Cram, who designed the Norman-style church, All Saints' Episcopal Church in Peterborough, New Hampshire, that over decades held so many events in the life of my immediate and extended family: marriages, memorial services, christenings, confirmations. No wonder I had such affinity for both places! A library–and the world of a book–opens so many doors into our inner and outer worlds, whether you are able to attend college or not. So in this post-Labor Day back-to-school time, here's to cracking a lot of good books–metaphorically speaking, of course! PHOTO: An image from the Wheaton College archives of a Greek tragedy played out in front of the newly-constructed library in the 1920s.

POSTSCRIPT ~ Tonight, when researching (yes, via Google), I came across this:

"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital."

~ Thomas Jefferson

PHOTO Library at Monticello, also known as the Book Room © Thomas Jefferson Foundation/Robert C. Lautman.

Pleasant Hill Shaker Village

The large stone dwelling house at Pleasant Hill reflects the inherent New England architectural practices that the Shakers brought with them as they settled westward.

This past weekend, with the glorious sun and in celebration of Eli's birthday (our baby is now nine!), we went to the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill near Harrodsburg, Kentucky and also had a cookout on Sunday. Pleasant Hill was the first place we visited in Kentucky several years ago when we were looking at maybe relocating here. The farm manager at the village said, "Well, if it's beautiful country and farming you want to do, you should look at the 'knob region' just south of here by about an hour." And so we did and the rest is our own pleasant history in formation.

At the village we treated ourselves to a fine meal in the dining room (Pleasant Hill also operates an inn on the premises). I will keep things brief here, for a change, and let the photos do the talking!


An old sign marks the mileage from Pleasant Hill's bucolic Main Street (now off the main highway). It is located southwest of Lexington and north of historic Harrodsburg.


On the way into the Shaker meetinghouse at Pleasant Hill. The costumed interpreter greeter, in indigo, sings and dances to demonstrate early Shaker worship practices. And yes, Grace and Anna were often mistaken for Shaker museum staff on our visit.


'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free...


I'm not sure what's with the mutual arm posturing between my husband Temple and our friend Melvin, here in the Shaker meetinghouse at Pleasant Hill. I know they were talking about architecture but it looks like they are about to break into an impromptu Shaker dance.


How is that for an angel food cake pan?! Anna and I both coveted this in the dwelling house kitchen at Pleasant Hill.


Shaker architecture displays a duality of form as sisters and brothers, despite their advanced egalitarian regard for each other, used separate entrances into buildings and communal rooms, as for dining and worship. Oddly enough, an old Kentucky vernacular house style often uses two front doors (and, back in New England we lived in an 1813 Federal home with two front doors as it had been built for two brothers and their wives). Two front-doored facades seem to be an architectural constant in my life since my marriage.


A highlight of our afternoon was the season's first riverboat cruise on the Kentucky River, adjacent to the Shaker village.


We further celebrated Eli's birthday on Sunday with an impromptu cookout (his request: hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, chocolate cake). Anna and Henry hold up a donkey comforter that a local Mennonite woman made.