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.

Harvest Home

I've never been so glad to see the summer end. It's not that I don't enjoy summer, it's just that it is prolonged here in Kentucky and sometimes unbearably hot. By early August you're done already! Fall and spring are lovely, and also long, and you enjoy going outside whenever possible. [We have four seasons here, which I am glad about, and this reshifting of what we're used to having back in the northeast for seasonal duration also provides us with a much shorter winter in Kentucky.] Today was in the 90s, but it's a dry heat and a cold front this weekend will bring more seasonable nights and days again. Despite the lingering heat, fall has arrived in the landscape and in the air. IMAGE: The last of the summer watermelon, along with an assortment of knobbly pumpkins and giant cushaws at our local Casey County Produce Auction.

Usually I get a bit melancholy with the earlier darkness, the shorter days and the cooler weather. Or saddened to see the Big Dipper start to drop down into the starry night of the northern skies by late August. Not any more. This year, summer's end is like a welcome balm. I am glad to see pumpkins and squash, crisp apples, withering cornstalks. I continue to can great quantities of things from summer's bounty. 

This was the sunset exactly a month ago, on August 22, 2010, with a tinge of fall in it. I love to watch the changing big skies throughout the seasons here in Kentucky. This is the view from my office window looking up towards the knob.

We have already enjoyed some cooler nights. I look forward to quiet time spent knitting, reading, and long hours working on new writing projects and other lingering tasks. I like a reason to be indoors and yet, here in winter, it is often possible to be outside, too. It will be great to go out walking again without misery.

Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.

In the coming weeks and months I will try to blog more, too, and have some photos and other things to share along the way. Thank you, as always, for stopping by here in the pantry!

As the sun set on summer for the last time in 2010, the Harvest Moon was rising to the east over a distant storm front. Both photographs were shot around moon rise/sun set at 7:15pm on September 22, 2010 from the top of our knob on the farm.

My son Henry and I had supper together on a rare after school time to ourselves. At dusk we went to the top of the knob to watch the Harvest Moon rise and the sun set on summer 2010. Today is the first day of Autumn ~ one of my favorite words in the English language (next to "summer afternoon" and "crisp" and "luscious," of course).

Meet Woodrow. Bull about town. He's a ladies' man who knows what he likes. Prefers green pastures and strong women. Not into the dating scene or even monogamy and wants to get right down to business. Loves children. Surprisingly sweet, too (but you can never turn your back on a bull!).

Our first eight Angus calves, here with some of their mamas: born from early May to early August. This is our "Long Field" where they will spend much of their autumn days munching on Kentucky grasses.

Farewell to the summer!

Try to Remember

Our Valley View Farm from the top of our knob.

This song, sung by Patti Page and written for the musical, The Fantasicks (1959), has always prompted a nostalgic longing for me, even when I was barely verbal and first heard it on my parents hi-fi in our Akron living room in the early 1960s. What thoughts or memories does it conjure for you?
        

Try to remember – Patti Page

              

MP3 search on MP3hunting

And a Happy 100th to RMG ~ wherever you are!

Reclamation

Sometimes I land upright and realize, yes, that's it, it's been this way all along. Perhaps it was there all the time but I wasn't seeing and I wasn't listening. Rather than have that "ruthlessness to rest," as my great-grandmother used to write to her children (here "rest" as in "pause"), I have had a wanderlust for many months.

The Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" speaks to this necessity to pause right where we are: "Till by turning, turning we come round right." That's exactly what I've done these past few months: whirling and twirling and now fortunate to have landed on my feet again, but glad for having had the journey.

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

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

In the past six months I have been presented with several job opportunities, all from my own searching but each one, in its own way, something I feel I have been qualified to do and to do well. Problem is, I sense, with an especially tough job market now, that options are limited for writers or historians and certainly more competitive. I made the deliberate choice when my last job was downsized in 1997–– from site manager of an historic museum house to a part-time docent: I chose "I don't think so"––that it was time to have more children. We had been married not even a year and I was thirty-three, my husband forty-one. Our two boys were born within two-and-a-half years. ["The heir and the spare," as it is often referred to in jolly old primogenitured England.] I had our daughter in my mid-20s but that's another long and wonderful story.

My point is that well-educated little old me, who had worked hard at developing her career in historic preservation, public relations and freelance writing, felt it was important to be at home with her children. I had been reared in the "you can have everything you want" school: career, husband, children. But I knew better and I knew myself better than that: I have believed, for some time, that you can have everything you want, within reason, but certainly not all at the same time. If someone tells you otherwise, they are fooling themselves: their house-of-cards has to give somewhere (or they have a lot of hired help).

So I was able to be a stay-at-home mother and I hope it has served my children well (although perfectly organized, crafty and polished mother, I am not). Then we moved here several years ago, over the span of a year, and life has been busy and hectic and still not quite settled. We still have things in boxes and our real estate situation has more settling out to do yet. As my husband stretches out into the farm that we are creating, I'm often running around like some of my hens, cackling and scratching and generally in a twirl. He is project-based and linear where I am circular: he moves from A. to B. with great finesse, while I am dabbling in G., thinking about finishing A. and pondering X., Y. and Z. Occasionally I screech or peck at those around me, but I've been able to keep that to a dull roar. And, I've kept writing in some form, still selling the occasional magazine or newspaper article or copy of The Pantry from my home coffers (thank you all, for that!).

With each potential job opportunity there has been this expectation: what would the job bring in terms of challenges and income and benefits? How would it change our lives? But each job, as great it has been on paper, and as polished as I've been on paper, has not even led to an interview. This has been a bit discouraging, and also quite humbling. It has also been illuminating because I realize, finally, that I am meant to remain at home for the foreseeable future, perhaps consulting or working away from the ridge when the right opportunity may present itself, but not now. A few weeks ago when I realized this, I received a hearty check for a forthcoming article and some press-related queries on The Pantry. Around the same time I found some amazing writings from my grandmother, in an old college trunk of mine, some of which seemed to speak right to me [she was also a farm wife and a published magazine writer––and we share a focus issue, too]. The Universe was speaking to me and with a big, LOUD BANG!

So what am I going to do with all of this newly allowed "free" time, you may be asking? Well, I've given myself permission to write the stuff I want to write, to try to sell more articles and books. To blog more. To can food for winter and organize our house while we transition some more on the ridge. To be a more organized wife and mother. To start tackling a family archives project at last: for myself, for my extended family, for posterity. To walk again now that the hot summer is behind us and glorious warm fall days are here. To be more present with my family and have no regrets about what I'm not doing in the world, but to better focus on what I am doing. To be right where I am, "where I ought to be."

I've felt a bit like Dorothy in the past few months: looking for a different scenario than the one in my own back yard. Not only did I try so hard to get the right job that sometimes things backfired on me, despite my own efforts: like the time I was a "strong contender" last spring for a publications manager position, but they never received several key emails from me that would have weaned out the group to be interviewed. [I found this out two months after I first applied, when I had the guts to inquire as to what was going on: I have never had "dropped" emails before in my life, at least for something so significant!] There are other stories, some humorous, some pathetic: like when I virtually begged a headhunter (excuse me, a "Culture Catalyst"–don't ask) to convince the ad agency to let me write them some sample copy. I think that guy went running, and fast, leaving me a mere quip: "The agency is no longer in a particular urgency to hire at this time."

Finally, my own personal catalyst for this recent epiphany was this email response, when I inquired as to my status, after spending eight hours about a month ago crafting the pitch-perfect college development letter as another test of my writing abilities: "Thank you for your inquiry. We are in the interviewing stage for the position now but will bring in additional candidates as necessary. We hope to have some resolution to this search soon and will be informing all candidates of our decision." Perhaps I am reading too much into this but my gut says that, in other words: "You are way overqualified for this position (you nitwit), you will probably want a lot of money, and, most of all, you are old. And remember, don't call us, we'll call you for an interview, but only if our other younger, less qualified candidates don't pan out. As a lovely parting gift, you will eventually receive our generic 'We've filled this position but thank you and we wish you the very best in your job search' email. Now, thank you and go away."

"Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Sally O'Malley. I'm proud to say I'm fifty years old and I like to kick, stretch, and KICK! I'm FIFTY! Fifty years old..."

I've been out of the workforce for some time. I'm graying naturally and I kind of like that. I'm definitely middle-aged but my eyes can still laugh and twinkle or be tinged with melancholy. In my heart and my head I am still that idealistic, passionate twenty-five year old young woman. So, that woman is going to be my driving force now to accomplish the things at home and with my family, and in the world via my writing, that I want to do. Let's face it: writing is an ageless profession. Many women novelists, especially those who raised a family, got their start later in life. One of my favorite books on farm life, Little Heathens, was written and published by a woman in her 80s!

Now that this midlife crisis is effectively over (unless it is just beginning), I'm going to finish my canning this weekend: salsa today, peach jam and bread & butter pickles tomorrow. Then I'm going to tackle projects: both writing and otherwise. Little bites, one life at a time. Most of all, I'm going to "write and KICK!" as my now twenty-two year old daughter has so wisely advised. Because I'm (almost) fifty: fifty years old! And time waits for no one.

Keep Calm and Carry On

A tea towel sold by www.KeepCalmandCarryOn.com ~ Don't you just want a stack?

I love these reproduction items from English war posters. They were put up in the Underground (or "Tube") and around London and other areas during World War II: here is some history on them. There is no more British sentiment than "Carry On!" It means, in essence, "as you were," "keep going," or "just do what you were doing." If you wait in line in England, you will be in an orderly single-file line, or "queue." ["No bunching!" as my son's English soccer coach used to say to the boys as they huddled about the field in little packs.] Can you imagine that in America?

Space is a big issue in England, too. There is much less of it now but I'm talking about personal space. If someone gets in your space, or walks near it, or dares to bump you, you will hear a "Sorry!" uttered. Not in a sarcastic way but in an "Oh, I'm so sorry to have bumped into you or near you" kind of way. I have to say, we have a lot of space here and I've happily traded perfect Miss Read-esque kind of New England village life (in some ways) for land spreading out so far and wide on a rolling rural ridge in Kentucky.

"Keep Calm and Carry On" is a motto that I can use right now, if not every day of my year. When I had a major disappointment the other day (from something where I'd done everything by the book, to the letter, had waited anxiously upon for almost three months, and then to find that an important email to the process had never been received: so here's my word of wisdom on that front–CALL!), my friend Edie (and fellow Cupcake) just reminded me to keep swimming, even if it is water over (or is that under?) the ubiquitous bridge. [And that's the little song that Dory sung in Finding Nemo, too: "Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming..." Sometimes it is all you can do. And like Dorrie, I have a similar attention span/short term memory issue.]

So where is the summer going? It is slipping away from us and next weekend will already be July 4! We've had a lot going on at the farm and there are days it is all I can do not to just crawl into bed with a good book (although I highly recommend this for afternoon siestas, if possible, or early-to-bed-with-book evenings). Right now at Cupcake Chronicles, we're on a path of new literary vigor and have collectively chosen the novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. I highly recommend it, especially if you like food with your fiction. Next we'll be (re)reading a classic English novel by E.M. Forster called Howard's End. Join us!

Suspended Animation

Our first haying time is in late May before it gets too hot and humid, as it is now.

I have been reconsidering my relationship with the computer of late. It is a necessary tool for me and I can't imagine writing without it. (Although this is entirely possible, even if I do not want to return to the thought of banging out articles, double-spaced with liquid corrector, as I did with college papers on my electric Olympia. My father had given me this as a high school graduation gift, thirty years ago this month, in fact.) However, I've been wired on the internet for about 13 years now, have blogged for five, and Facebooked for one. I have countless emails that I have sent and received--less prolific than I used to be so that is a start. I have withdrawn from Facebook somewhat, with occasional check-ins, and I refuse to Twitter. So there's all of that. I text occasionally, always to my daughter, on a very primitive off-the-shelf basic version of my basic Verizon cell phone plan (which I'm also reconsidering).

What has been designed to be an effective modern tool, even time-saving, is actually a modern day Prometheus or an incubus in Mac's clothing. Either way, I have been sucked into this world and not always effective in my own real time. So I'm reevaluating how technology and the ability to reach anyone, or find almost anything, with my finger tips is actually not necessarily a good thing for me right now. I have enjoyed blogging but for the past few months the idea of it has felt like a chore. I continue to photograph my world, often with the idea of "oh, I should blog this..." and then I never do.

The view of our farm from the edge of the knob field where we placed some of the hay from our first cutting this year. Our new hay shed looms over Ida's old farmhouse that we intend to renovate to live in when we can. For now it is a place for summer meals, guests and a makeshift writing studio, sans internet.

Summer here is a busy time: haying about once a month for several days, lots of meals and ferrying of picnics, our boys home from school, canning and preserving what I can get locally or am growing in the garden. So there's that.

So I've decided to just take the pressure off for a time. I still have books available and will respond to any orders that come in. I might still blog on occasion in the next few months but no promises. I appreciate everyone who reads and follows my blog and hope you will continue to check in on occasion. I welcome you to join me on Facebook [under "Catherine Seiberling Pond"] where I will also be popping in on occasion [mmm, maybe Facebook and its necessary brevity has made me less of a blogger?].

I do follow other blogs but not as much as I might like to do: I suppose I could find a reason to be on the internet all day if I wanted to. Here is a recent blog called "Nothingness" written by Susan Orlean, a staff writer at The New Yorker among other accomplishments (author of The Orchid Thief for one) who, lucky duck, has a summer fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, amidst my old stomping grounds. She is musing about the same thing, more or less, as she is without WiFi by design and circumstance. As artist and writer's colonies were designed for escape from the everyday so that their colonists can write, compose and create unhindered (think summer camp with endless free time and great meals and lunches delivered quietly in a basket to your studio), the internet and social media have presented a modern problem there, too.

So here is to "Nothingness" for a time and to making choices that can provide everything.

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!

Low, How a (Lenten) Rose E'er Blooming

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.

Old English Carol

This has been an unseasonably cold winter with either constant flurries or enough snow to keep people hunkered in or our kids home from school–a lot. I realize it is all relative to what we were used to in the northeast but when there isn't sufficient salt or snow-clearing equipment to treat the roads, you realize how treacherous a few inches of packed snow-turned-ice can be on a back road. And after a few months of colder-than-usual temps for what are usually balmier winters, and snow upon snow, well, it gets old. Spring will never be so sweet. That said, I do love that we still have four seasons here and that the spring and summer are both longer in duration.

This week I've been taking advantage of the warming weather and have been hiking up our knob almost every day: sometimes with the family and always with the puppies and other fauna. Today I went alone to the top of the knob (remember all of those hay bale images last summer–where it looks like you will fall off of the Earth?) and lay down on the warming ground and just took it all in. The "merry little breezes"swirled about, sometimes gathering leaves up into the air. Remember those in Thornton Burgess' Old Mother West Wind stories? My grandmother shared those books with me and I thought of them today and Burgess' love of nature.

The earth is different in spring: it is warm and fecund, full of promise. The same ground is cooler and more fallow in the fall as the woods release the wet, dank smell of decay. The sun is lowering in the sky and by spring it is climbing higher again. SUN! What a glorious thing it is! I always enjoy the inward time of winter but welcome the sun again like some kind of crazed animal.

So I lay back on the ridge and breathed in the air around me, listening alertly to the few sounds around the knob (where we can see 365 degrees around), and drinking in the sunshine. The animals were playing and lying around or near me, too, and we just all seemed to be in the moment together. When I came down a bit later, I was struck that over an hour had passed. It's not that I had walked that far, all told, but that I had allowed myself to enjoy the space–and place–without interruption or attention to time.

The other day when we all walked together after school, Henry turned to his Dad and said, "We sure do have a nice farm here, Dadda." It made me happy to hear that. I am starting to send out new growth shoots here into the land but to our boys this has probably already become their homeplace. We don't have the dream farmhouse yet, we long ago left the mansion. Ultimately it's not about the four walls but who is within them. A friend of mine said the other day, "Home is always where the people I love are." Like the "home tree" in Avatar, we now connect with each other and with the world from our farm on a ridge in Kentucky. It's been the journey of a lifetime.

IMAGE: In our first winter here, two years ago, we discovered two colors of Lenten roses (helliobores) blooming on the north side of our doublewide. They start to emerge and blossom in late February.

Oscar Night

I love the Oscars®. I've watched them every year since college days, often with girlfriends or my daughter but now even my husband and boys get in on part of the fun (but I still tape them in case I miss anything and that includes the pre-game Barbara Walters show and any follow-up).

We saw Avatar today and I was a bit skeptical about three hours of science fiction (not my favorite genre). I was, instead, moved by the beauty of the cinematography and the interconnected spiritual message. The movie also seems to favor interplanetary harmony and had many messages about occupation and colonization, and an indigenous respect for nature–all quite relevant in today's world. And there was a fantastic, beautiful "Tree Home," center to the plot and the locale of the natives. I came away thinking we all need a protected "Tree Home" in our lives. The allegorical quality to the movie also appealed to me as did the imagination and work it took to create it.

So I won't linger but I'll be back soon this week with more blogs. I've been reinvigorated to write again and have missed the blog world. I've posted an odd self-portrait: part homage to Meryl Streep's hooded cloak in The French Lieutenant's Woman (great English period pic, c. 1980) and to the veiled Roman and Jewish women in Ben-Hur (c. 1959). The aqua scarf is another story and one I want to blog about very soon. In the meantime, here's to Oscar night! My boys just came in with my husband from wood-splitting and have surprised me with pizza. You can't go wrong with that.

PS I'll also be posting several food-related blogs this week, from my recent trip back to New Hampshire, at our book group blog, Cupcake Chronicles. Join the conversation and check us out for some fabulous recipes.

Displacement

Going up to the knob field–the view from my office window: early February 2010.

I have returned from my travels a bit unsettled. Disconcerted. Homesick–but for what home? I need to find my sea legs again, my place in my house, my family, my world. Is this a seismic shift at midlife or the effects of too much estrogen in my system after reconnecting with my daughter, my mother and dear women friends from my past and present over the past few weeks? Of thinking about my own past, visiting the places where I have lived, and hearing painful recountings of the makings of memoir in workshops? Is this what happens when we go out into the world on our own, in our own company, and then return again to our familiar? When I did the same last June and came back again here, to our new world, "I was happy to see the barn, happy to enter it," to quote Carolyn Chute from her novel, The Beans of Egypt, Maine.

This time upon return I felt like an alien, even in my own house. Perhaps it was just a shock to my system after being "on" and in the world for several weeks–more like what I perceive to be my authentic self who is not just a wife and a parent. Coming back to a place where I sought refuge for several months in my self-imposed wintry seclusion which soon became an odd form of agoraphobia, and then, just as easily, from which I had escaped. Then learning another beloved animal (the third mammal and pet in a year) had "escaped" on their own, just yesterday–had I, also, flown the coop? The pain of loss, of causing sorrow to others–both animal and human. Guilt and regret and aching sentiment: words I too often live by, that haunt me.

Returning to more snow and cold in Kentucky did not help. I was not happy to see the wintry, desolate landscape. We have had a real winter here for many months and after a while the trailers and the sorrow can compound themselves. [So what exactly was I expecting? Spring and red buds a month ahead of schedule? A chorus of neighbors singing "Oh, Happy Day!" on the roadside as I drove down the road towards our farm? Am I that powerful to effect change?]

Just a note to also say that I will be blogging again, I'm just not sure when. In the meantime, if you've ordered a copy of The Pantry and haven't yet received it, please be assured that you will, very soon.

Now the sun is peaking out, the morning flurries have melted, and the prospect of a "to do" list and picking up my children at school beckons me out of my lair. Ah, routine: there is always some comfort in what must be done.

Best wishes and salutations,

Catherine

News from the Front: Woodstock Writer's Festival

Many of you might know that I am currently at the first Woodstock Writer's Festival. I'm not here as a published writer peddling The Pantry (although I've done that, discreetly, here and there), but as one interested, as I have been for a very long time and on several topics, in writing a memoir (or two or three–heck, I even have enough material for a variety of angles and doorways). I have written and sold many personal essays in magazines over the past twenty years but nothing as ambitious as a book–and one, unlike The Pantry, that actually doesn't have lovely photographs in it. You know, a grown-up book. The kind that authors write. Not that I haven't written a book. Yet there are moments, as Laura Shaine Cunningham, who wrote Sleeping Arrangements and A Place in The Country, which I have loved for many years, noted today, "there are even authors in the world who still want to be published." I get that.

I came here expecting great things but I did not expect continued greatness–like speaker after speaker, panel after panel, workshop after workshop kind of greatness. I also didn't expect to be so emotional. As workshop participants and even published writers talking about their books each told their story or mined the depths in an exercise, you realize the extent of the human condition, how we are all here in this place, together, doing our own things, bringing our own histories along with us. Perhaps that is the secret of memoir: we all want to share something or to leave a part of ourselves, of who we are, in the world. Perhaps that is why I blog. We don't have to be salacious or shocking, just to tell our truths, whatever they are. 

Perhaps it is a love of food and how it has brought form and texture to our lives, as with Ruth Reichl, former Gourmet editor and author of Tender at the Bone and other books about how food has been both a presence and a subject in her life. Or the intrepid Susan Orlean, who seeks out those who are passionate about something (like barbed wire collecting as she mentioned in her talk) and then learns what makes them tick, as with The Orchid Thief. While that book is more narrative nonfiction than memoir, and was later greatly altered in the movie Adaptation, her impressions are there on the page, too, as with this classic line: "I hate hiking in swamps with convicts carrying machetes." Isn't that line enough to make you want to read the book?

There have been many moments of lucid thought and 'ah-ha' type of revelations in the past two days–readings from aspiring memoirists, a moving musical performance by a woman who tragically lost a son and is now writing about it, as well as singing through it. Tonight the grand finale will be Julie Powell, of Julie and Julia blog, book and movie fame (imagine!) and who recently wrote Cleaving. 

I would have driven here for three consecutive nights of Susan Orlean, Ruth Reichl and Julie Powell alone but to sit through an hysterically honest and funny hour with festival organizer and author, Martha Frankel, who wrote the memoir Hats & Eyeglasses, has also has made it worth the price of admission. [Martha's active Facebook presence was not only how I heard about the festival in the first place but has made me rethink Facebook as a marketing tool and forum directly with readers, as much as a place to interact with existing friends and other writers. Her irreverence and candor is so refreshing on the subject of Facebook and other things. For some reason I could have spent the afternoon yabbering about social media–or maybe just talking with her about anything. She's that kind of person.] 

So too have been the writer's workshops on mining the depths and suggestions for starting a memoir with writers like Abigail Thomas, Laura Shaine Cunningham and Susan Richards. While these workshops weren't the small gatherings I had expected in terms of writing exercises and critiques for all, I nonetheless gathered much. I was also glad to meet fellow native Akronite, Melissa Holbrook Pierson at long last, author of one of my favorite memoirs, The Place You Love is Gone. I've also met so many interesting people, other writers, and have bought more books (I will buy others later or go to the library, too). I am also so very grateful, on this Valentine's Day, that I am blessed with a husband who, while he might not know how to turn on a computer and read this missive, is guarding the fort and caring for our boys as "Mommy's On the Computer Again" mixes and mingles up north.

My one regret? That I did not stand in line to give Ruth Reichl a copy of The Pantry (call me gutless) or at least a dozen eggs from my Kentucky hens (I have some in the trunk of my car, well-insulated), especially after reading her lovely brief blog (she understands the essence of things) on her Woodstock experience last night. But on the first night I did have Susan Orlean sign some of her books for me while I wasn't wearing any underwear–but that's another story and perhaps best put in a memoir. Or not. There is actually a part of me, at the end of this festival, that questions whether I have the chops for memoir and if so, what context? What doorways?

[Over at Cupcake Chronicles, our book group blog (and I will very soon be actually seeing the Cupcakes in New Hampshire!), I have excerpted from a book out this past month, called Devotion, by Dani Shapiro. She read from it today in an excellent panel of authors (there was another one yesterday with four other memoirists) that included Shalom Auslander, John Bowers (from Eastern Tennessee) and Marion Winik. I was moved to tears by this passage, as I have often been this weekend. It's been like group therapy for writers–not to mention, for once, that I haven't taken a single photograph.]

A Note about IN THE PANTRY

I will be doing some needed blog cataloging in the next few weeks–going back into the huge archive of posts at In the Pantry (over 300 now) for almost the past five years (hard to believe, really). This year is about archiving–and new projects–on so many levels, not just at my blog. But here "in the pantry" I will be doing some reorganizing and reconsidering labels for archiving and also giving many earlier posts links and labels. Back in the early day of this blog you couldn't do certain format things or links without understanding HTML formats. Also, photos were limited by size and other factors.

While I want to tidy up, I know I will be tempted to edit my earlier blog posts and will only do so if there is a glaring error. Otherwise, apart from maybe italicizing or providing a link or two within the posts, or making a consistent format change, I will leave them alone. [After all, we can't really go back and rewrite a journal, can we?]

It's been a great journey and I often consider moving this blog to another location (like Wordpress) or leaving this one here and starting another blog that has more to do with our new lives and journey here in Kentucky (to include pantries and recipes, of course).

But then I am just lured back to my familiar, to the pantry, and I'm comfortable with that place. And yet, new horizons or formats always beckon. If I did depart from this site, I would still keep this one in place and perhaps add something pantry-related to it from time to time but move all other future posts to a different blog and format. I would certainly want you to come along for the ride, too.

In the meantime, as I have valued everyone's reading and comments through the past five years, I would appreciate your thoughts on this idea. [You are also welcome to email me privately at info@catherinepond.com] Would you prefer to stay here In the Pantry and visit occasionally to see if there is a pantry-related post or to also visit newer pastures along with me?

Epiphany

Today, January 6th, is also known as Epiphany, when the three kings apparently visited Christ, twelve days after his birth. Some people–the English come to mind–still do celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas. Usually, by January 6, I am ready to take down our decorations which I am (starting) to do today. It is always a laborious process for me, like so many organizational tasks (but a closet or cupboard, especially if it is food-related? I am all over it...). In Appalachia, the custom of Old Christmas is likely a thing of the past but perhaps there are readers here who can elaborate on that. That link provides more information than I can and here is another. IMAGE–Giotto's "Adoration of the Magi," 1304-1306, one of the fresco panels he was commissioned to paint for the Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel in Padua, Italy. While I studied these frescoes extensively in college, I have never actually seen them. Here is an interesting modern interpretation of the frescoes, with more photographs.

I am a great one for epiphanies and I am always open to them throughout the year. Sometimes the awareness is external, from other sources or friends or even family, and sometimes it is from within. Over the years I've learned that my intuition–call it female, my soul, my alter or the God-voice–should never be ignored. It is our most primal gift and should never be feared, but embraced. I believe it is the same thing that would have caused us to perk our heads up from the campfire and listen to the cracking of sticks in the woods. What prickles the hairs on our neck. What makes the deer in our fields pause, listen, and respond. What, at times, just clicks.

I've had epiphanies that radiate from within me, like an enveloping warmth. I've had them when being very still and almost seeing an inverted external radiance from the natural world around me, like a glimmer on another realm and then, just as quickly, it is gone again and the world looks the same as it did only moments before. An epiphany is like a voice of great clarity or the manifestation of the divine. I've had friends tell me of a booming external voice or hearing only the faintest whisper. At its most basic, an epiphany is "a light bulb moment." Any way we experience it, we should listen.

Adoration of the Child (1439-43) by Fra Angelico

One of my favorite moments in The Common Book of Prayer, the Episcopal service liturgy with which I grew up, was a benediction spoken after communion: "The Peace of God, which passeth all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord." I always took it to mean that we should listen and keep our minds open to God's wonders and wisdom, but don't spin it for your own purposes. God and his "peace" are beyond our understanding and I don't believe we as mortals are supposed to always have all of the answers or solve all of the mysteries on Earth, either. But we are to be open to them and to discovery (and yes, that includes scientific discovery, too). That, to me, is what Epiphany is all about: being open to the wonder and the mystery of it all. To behold something so great from something so very wonderful that even three kings were brought to their knees. What writer Madeline L'Engle termed "the Glorious Impossible" in her book of the same name (and one of my favorites in our Christmas books) reflecting on the birth of Christ through Giotto's frescos: Possible things are easy to believe. The Glorious Impossibles are those things that bring joy to our hearts, hope to our lives, songs to our lips.

I watched a disturbing film this vacation in the wee hours of the night, when the rest of the house was sleeping, that I probably shouldn't have watched. Occasionally I am just a sucker for the morbid–or at least trying to understand a person's psychology, what makes us as mortal infallible humans "tick." [I am also a fan of redemption but there is none in this movie and there is no happy ending, either, which is why it is not for the squeamish.] Seven was about a serial murderer, played to the chilling hilt by Kevin Spacey (as good a performance as Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, just not as much screen time). In his mind he was carrying out a plan of atonement, in what he claimed were God's whisperings to him, for the seven deadly sins: gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy and wrath. [I think I've got that right...] In his own mind and deeds he became jury, judge and executioner in the name of God. [Yet, it is not really clear who is whispering, just that this guy has issues with mortal sins, big time.]

What I realized is that we all have an inner voice of sorts but that some of us use that voice differently–and that some of us use God's voice, or what we perceive to be God's voice, for great hurt and harm, sometimes even persecution or a minor, but self-interpreted, judgment call. Perhaps that has been my greatest lesson here in the Bible Belt: God is used as a cross, shield and even a crossbow at times. But I have to wonder what he would really have to say about what is often said or done in his name?

I am aware this is just a fictional movie but yet we have many modern and historic examples of sociopathic and narcissistic leaders who have listened to their inner voice, too. And many psychopaths, certainly. So when is that voice evil and when is it good? I suspect it is evil when harm is being leveled, when intolerance is preached, when personal and wider boundaries are crossed, when tears are shed or blood is spilled. This can happen in a home or a country. Goodness is so very easily seen but evil can be more hidden and at times even defended, by individuals or entire governments. Perception and reality can be two murky concepts.

And yet, there are so many "good people" and glimmers of good, too. It's the high and mighty–and often the terribly insecure–among us who want control, to bring us down, to be the first to throw stones. It can be the ultimate in persecution and, sadly, it is at the root of what is dividing this country–and world–right now into two very different political and social realms.

There is a wildness here in our new world that is refreshing and open and yet there can be menacing voices in the woods, too. I see despair all around me. Poverty, drugs, people who won't or can't work and have just given up from generations of despair. But I also have encountered people who are, on the surface perhaps, all clean and shiny and allegedly Christian but their appearance masks great judgment and probably even greater unhappiness. We also have people "around" who have outright stolen wood, hay and fencing materials from us and yet go to church every Sunday. It is a dichotomy that ingratiates or amuses, depending on the day. [I've often thought we should just leave out extra food and hay like the Scandinavians do for their barnyard Tomtens: so they'll bless their farm rather than pillaging it.]

I've always preferred real: true grit, honesty, and an attempt at mutual understanding and respect, even if there is not agreement. "Good fences make good neighbors," wrote Robert Frost in his poem Mending Wall, but make sure you provide a gate that opens both ways once in a while. [Then there is that great expression: "If you don't like my gate, you don't have to swing on it!"] The people most dear to me in my life are not afraid to challenge me or tell me like it is and neither are they afraid to validate and support who I am and respect my own journey. They are also not afraid of my authentic self, the one that radiates from inside and not on the surface–which, depending on the day, varies from dowdy to downright pleasant. All I ask of others is that they not judge my own journey as I try not to judge theirs–but sometimes you just have to take different paths to the same end point.

Teddy and the Bear-with-No-Name (I never named her!) are still a part of the family and have always sat in old chairs. They wear some of my daughter's clothes from when she was a little girl. I try not to choose favorites and love them both.

Then there is that most marvelous, scruffy, ready-to-toss out old stuffed animal or doll. Do you remember that most magical children's story, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams? Did you ever have something that you loved so much that the poor thing got so bedraggled or patched back together? Each of my children had (and have–of course I still keep them!) one of those: Addie had a Raggedy-Annie doll, "Annie" that my mother bought from a doll maker when she was one or two, Henry has a mohair bear that my father (Grandpa) gave him, "Teddy," of course, and then there is Eli's "Piggy," who came in his Easter basket when he was a toddler. Piggy is no longer pink but has faded into a pinkish-gray and much of his plush hair has worn thin. Each doll or animal is covered in love.

I still have my father's mohair bear, "Teddy," that he gave to me in my early childhood and that my grandmother tried to replace with a newer model. I wouldn't have it and I remember my father smiling at my youthful defiance–we're talking before the age of five (and yes, I was a precocious brat but that's beside the point here). I even remember overhearing their conversation at my grandparents' house about it: "Jim, you have to get rid of that old bear!" "No, Mother, Cathy loves him." I still have the replacement bear, too, that my grandmother was pleased to give me that day but my father's bear is still my favorite in my own nursery arsenal.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

So here is to growth and meaningful introspection and to earned and well-deserved shabbiness–to becoming real in our journey. To learning from our own voices and to hearing the voices of others, too, even if at times, we don't want to hear them. We can even choose to tune them out or turn them off, certainly, but make sure you at least listen, first, or keep an open mind and heart. Acknowledgment is always good, too, if not polite and gracious. Even as I age I can't ever imagine not keeping an open mind to new possibility, friendship, outlook, change or a different perspective or way of doing something. I tell my children that even though I have a lot of education and the paper to prove it (sometimes I question if it was really needed, but don't tell my children that!), I'm still a student and always learning. I will forever be a seeker because, as much as I am comfortable with old and sentimental or well-worn things and concepts, a new idea or way of being can sometimes be a revelation. Perhaps even a "glorious impossible."