Fiction: The Elder

I don’t know. It seems to me that people are all the time getting harder to live with. I’m not even talking about the younger generations, though some of them seem as far from me and my experience as an eel at the bottom of the sea. Of course we still breathe the same air and all, but that’s about as far as the similarities go.

Sure, I know. You think, “There goes old Sam, one of them typical get-off-my-lawn old fellers yelling at the clouds and falling far, far behind the times.” Well, that may be right to a degree, but it ain’t the whole truth. I know how to bank online. I’ve got a smart phone and use it when I need directions to get from Point A to B. And as chairman of the church cemetery committee at Lotus Creek Baptist Church, I keep the records of every plot on a spreadsheet, backed up on a flash drive. Sam Windlespear may be old, but he’s no fool.

I know we’ve got paper records at the church that go back to the 18^th century, when the open land behind the church served as a mustering ground for the Revolutionary militia. Now the open land is no longer open; where the church graveyard ends, a fence separates it from a subdivision built in the 1980s. Soon will come a day when there’s no more room to bury any soul, especially the way so many take advantage of the free burial for legacy members. There are folks buried in that land that hadn’t stepped foot in the church for years, but they knew the trick to finding a cheap place to get planted, you better believe they did.

The Windlespears were known at Lotus Creek Baptist going back to 1939, when I was five years old and my folks moved into the community to take up farming on land that my mother’s uncle had left. He was a Morrison and a church elder himself (plot 14G, close to many a sad gravestone of a child struck by Spanish flu or a soldier of one of the world wars). His 20-odd acres included a tidy house and a good-sized barn. My mama and dad were proud to have such a good solid-built house, not like these two-story gingerbread houses in the development that get thrown together in no time at all.

Anyway, I know I’m getting away from the point, which is that I believe people are changing for the bad in ways that nobody ever thought of 30, 40 years ago. This past Sunday at church, Lou Goldston—known her all my damn life—got in my face about the way I’d looked at her grandson. I told her I can’t help how I look, but that boy can help the way he looks. Boy’s got a ring in every hole in his head, and punched a few fresh holes that God didn’t give him and put rings in them, too. But what got me was the tattoo he had on his right leg and the fact that I could see it because he wore shorts to church in 30-degree weather.

“He wears shorts all the time,” Lou said. “It ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

“Lou Goldston, it’s cold outside. How you expect me to look at somebody when looking at them makes my blood freeze?”

I know she didn’t like it, but she needn’t act like I ought to clean up my act and be a better Christian. She and her family have had their own issues, is all I’ll say, and if excommunication hadn’t been ruled out by the church in the 1950s I doubt her family would still be allowed through the doors, though these days about anybody can come in and no questions asked.

I don’t tell everything I know, and that’s all I’ll say about it. But as the number of open plots in the cemetery dwindle down to a handful, taking into consideration that some are already reserved or have people waiting to move in next to their kin, I’m of a mind to do a little excommunicating myself. “Nope, sorry,” I’ll say, when Lou and her husband ask about reserving a plot, “I don’t have space to put you together, though I reckon I could put one of you in that space beside Willard Ormsby, since it appears his wife won’t be coming back. Then you could be next to Willard, Lou, and Ernest could wedge in there at the end of row 30, with only the foot path between you.”

There are some other members I would fix, assuming I can hang on to my chairmanship for a few more years. Lindsey Beck, for one. I know from two different sources, one of them my daughter, that Lindsey has no more business receiving a free Christian burial than Judas Iscariot. Not a thing against Lindsey that could hold up in a court of law, mind you, but he was relieved of his duties as youth minister. They let him stay in the choir, though, being thin of male voices. I hate his face, and rejoice on those Sundays when he’s not present to remind me of his existence. Forgive? You do it. I can’t and I won’t. I may not have power to throw anybody out of the church, but I can sure keep their rotting flesh from desecrating the sacred ground of which I am chief custodian.

Somebody—I know it was one of the Granger brothers, who think they’re each one a unique comedian—said, “We have to tread careful around Sam, we sure do. After all, he knows where all the bodies are buried.”

Oh, I know where the bodies are buried. You better believe I do.

Image: Childe Hassam, “Colonial Graveyard at Lexington,” circa 1891. Pastel drawing. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of John Gellatly.

Quilting

Our family quilts were not gently used; they were vigorously loved. … [T]hey became picnic blankets, they were flung over a card table or clothes-drying rack to serve as tents, and they were spread out as landscapes for Matchbox car journeys and doll tea parties. Threads loosened, fabric ripped, and batting leaked out.

“The Art of Quaker Quilts,” Friends Journal, September 2022.

As a person with no sewing skills whatsoever, I will never be able to create a quilt of my own for future generations to love. I know this, because I find it hard to hem a pair of pants or reattach a button without making a mess of it. I like to think, though, that some of us serve a different purpose, as preservers and archivists. That’s why I was thrilled to share my family quilts in Friends Journal. Now two of our family quilts have been immortalized through the magic of print.

The power of creating things on paper is certainly not to be despised, and I’ve decided that my life’s-work quilt will have to be made up of words. Over the years I’ve collected several fantasy quilt materials, things that really could become a quilt in the right hands. There’s the dress my mother wore to her brother’s wedding in the late 1950s, with a small burn hole in the satin bow at the waist where she leaned too close to a hot stove; the strapless sundress she made for me when I was in college; and the blue kimono with pink and gold batik flowers I received during an exchange trip to Japan. Not long ago my mother added another item to my fantasy quilt fabric collection. She had a length of light pink cloth draped over the front of her walker. I saved this for you, she said. She had discovered, in a dark corner of the linen closet, a pink apron with tiny patch pockets that her mother had made for her when she got married in 1953. It looked exactly like the type of apron that ladies wore in 1950s magazine advertisements for aluminum foil.  

Free of the boundaries dictated by needle and thread, my word-quilt will be able to contain all of these fabrics plus many other treasures—my grandmother’s blue willowware plates; the model of a dugout canoe that I made during fourth grade with the help of my dad and his blowtorch; the porcelain doorknob my uncle saved for me before my grandparents’ house was demolished; and the arrowhead I found in the creek behind my parents’ house.

My imaginary quilt of fragments has the potential to grow large enough to span several counties. A road of stitches can connect our little farm to my parents’. The stitching will become a creek, down which the little dugout canoe navigates. The creek will connect the pond to a tree-circled back field where many holiday dinners have been walked off. The field will be appliqued with round hay bales and deer and the ghosts of beagles past. A length of pink cotton is embroidered with bluebirds and bob-whites, and the blue of my kimono swims with bass and bream.

Working toward the center of my quilt, distance will magically contract. My parents’ land will connect to my grandparents’ farm and the nearby grove where my grandfather’s grandparents once lived beside the Up River Friends Meetinghouse. A zig-zag pattern of tall pines will link these smaller squares to vast expanses of open fields and shaded lots where pigs bang the metal lids of their feeders and scrabble their feet to flee to a far corner when a child comes to hang on the fence and see what they’re doing.

That’s the crazy quilt that I’m in the process of patching together. And though it isn’t done and probably never will be, I’d like to spread it before you—humbly, in keeping with its nature—and invite you to join me and all those who came before me to a tea party on the grass.

Fiction: American Mistletoe

She had always loved hanging clothes to dry on the clothesline, so when her old electric dryer died she had never bothered to replace it. Winters were mild enough that she could hang clothes any time of year, as long as she kept an eye on the weather forecast and planned accordingly.

Thus it was on a cool, sunny morning in late December she hung up a week’s worth of clothes on the line. The high temperature was expected to be 55, and the clothes should dry in a few hours.

Around midday, she glanced out the front window and saw a sight that stopped her breath. Some creature—a squirrel, or a crow?—had snatched a pair of her white underpants off the clothesline and dropped them high in the hickory tree. They hung on a stob and fluttered there like a half-hearted flag of sad surrender.

The rake was nowhere near long enough to reach, and she was deathly afraid of ladders, hating even to go up the narrow folding stairs to the attic. She stood in the yard craning to see the underpants, but every time a car went by she began raking frantically so as not to draw more attention to the spectacle in the tree.

Squinting up at the sun tangled in the branches of the hickory, she recollected a winter day like this one on her grandparents’ farm, which had been surrounded by large trees like this one. Her grandfather had pointed out a nearly perfect ball of greenery up in the bare branches, so high up that she had to throw her head all the way back to see it. “That’s mistletoe. Should we get some for Grandma to hang up for Christmas?”

Ever the cautious sort, she had said, “How? You can’t climb up that high.”

“No. There’s a trick to bringing down a mess of mistletoe.”

***

Fearful of ladders, she had no similar qualms about firearms. After studying the matter from several angles (surreptitiously, raking as needed), she went inside, loaded the old .22, then went back out and shot her underpants out of the tree.

END

Illustration: “American Mistletoe,” Mary Vaux Walcott (1923). Smithsonian American Art Museum

Little Gallery of Mighty Fine Arts, Part the Second

This post is a follow-up to one from 2020, in which I used the pandemic as an excuse to offer up my tiny home as an art museum alternative and describe some of the treasures that comprise our permanent collection. As mentioned at that time, I chose the name the Little Gallery of Mighty Fine Arts (LGMFA) because in rural North Carolina, there are two levels of superior quality: fine, and mighty fine.

Today, I bring you a sampling from the gallery’s Mighty Fine Pottery Collection and a few select pieces from Textiles & Fiber Arts.

Horse Hair Pottery (Turn & Burn Pottery, Undated)

Here in central North Carolina, the Seagrove area is known for its potteries, and it’s easy to spend a full day driving through the countryside, following signs to different potters’ studios. This piece of horse hair raku pottery is one of our largest specimens. It is inscribed on the bottom “Turn & Burn, Seagrove, NC, John 14:1.” That’s the “Let not your heart be troubled” verse, in case you’re wondering.

The LGMFA also has in its collection two pieces of crystalline pottery, which is one of my favorite of all the Seagrove pottery styles. The crystal configurations on the glaze are beautiful.

Crystalline Vase (Dover Pottery, 2002)

This piece and another by Phil Morgan were gifts from my sister. And how was she repaid? See Snowy Owl, part of the Textiles & Fiber Arts collection referenced below. (Hint: She got the short end of the stick.)

But first we must visit the intersection of Pottery and Textiles & Fiber Arts, where we find this thing.

A Fairy Garden Teacup (V. Winslow, work in progress, mixed media)

What started out as a large Styrofoam Easter egg covered in green needle-felted wool became a hillock in a teacup that had belonged to my grandmother. After finding that the egg could be jammed neatly into the cup (pointy end down), I added a tiny cottage with a metal button roof, a couple of trees, and shrubs. My wooly tree needs work, and I think I should add a tiny stone pathway up to the front door before calling it done.

And now the long-anticipated owl!

Snowy Owl (V. Winslow, 2020, wool roving)

On permanent loan from the LGoMFA, the snowy owl is part of a lovely tableau in my sister’s home. Last summer she made the mistake of sending me a photo of a mighty fine needle-felted owl she saw in an antique shop. Smelling a challenge and with nothing much else going on, I surprised her with her own snowy owl perched on a stump. While I think I managed to capture a taste of the original owl’s baleful expression, my version is otherwise not so very fine. The stump, styled around a wool dryer ball, looks more realistic and less like it has toes when it’s turned to the other side. Next time I visit I’ll reposition it.

Quilt (Mary Pleasant Winslow, early 20^th century)

This quilt was made by my late grandmother, Mary Winslow of Perquimans County, NC. I photographed it after a gentle hand-washing in the bathtub with Ivory Snow. Even though I took a lot of care (and slopped a ton of water through the house while rushing it outside), I don’t imagine this was the best way to conserve a handmade American quilt from the 1930s/40s. But it looked mighty fine as it dried over the course of three full sunny days. Yes, I know—fading. But it needed washing and is now protected from direct light.

Our Most Recent Acquisition

Jane Austen (V. Winslow, 2021, wool roving and a scrap of lace)

I wasn’t going to include this piece, completed on this very day, because Jane is… unrecognizable. She looks concerned, and who can blame her? Perhaps I should add her to the category of Mighty Fine Primitives and pretend that she was meant to look crude. Or maybe Jane is simply suffering from the summer heat, as I am. I understand that she wrote in one of her letters, “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.”

On that note I shall softly close the doors of the LGMFA and go on about my usual business—yes, in a continual state of inelegance, but ever appreciative of the mighty fine things that surround us. 

Remembering French Carols, Russian Tea, and Ronni Lundy

Russian tea. Bavarian china.

I once tried to explain to someone how my mind works. “I’m constantly making associations,” I said. “Something will trigger a memory and remind me of something else, and that connects to other associations, and more popping.” The upshot is that I’m often living my life while simultaneously reviewing old footage. The bits and pieces playing on the screen inside my head may not be always historically accurate, but they help me preserve the color and flavor of my days.

The holiday season is rich with color and flavor. I associate decorating the Christmas tree with Ruffles potato chips and Sealtest French onion dip. Christmas morning always makes me think of my grandfather’s cardboard box filled with brown bags of candy (chocolate drops, peach bud candy, orange slices, and chocolate-covered peanuts) and the gleam of firelight on the clear plastic window of the box a Mary Poppins doll came in.

And Christmas songs remind me of my high school French teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson. Under her eagle eye and dramatically raised left eyebrow, country children like myself learned French carols: “Il Est Né,” “Un Flambeau, Jeannette Isabella,” and “Sainte Nuit,” among others. Each year we spent one class period before the holiday break visiting students in other classrooms and singing our French carols, a blessing they no doubt recall to this day with great fondness.

Ever since high school, I have continued to sing “Un Flambeau” during the holidays. When Mannheim Steamroller did an instrumental version on one of their Christmas albums, I sang it so much that I am convinced it is written in my bones. I admit I’ve gotten the words badly scrambled over the years. No doubt the phrase “courons au berceau” belongs in only one verse, but I stick it in all the verses when singing my personal rendition. It has such a nice ring to it, and is so active: “Let’s run to the cradle!” Yeah!

From France to Russia

The French word for Monday is lundi and today being Wednesday, I declared it to be Ronni Lundy Day. That happened because of another memory connection involving Russian tea.

You see, my sister Holli let slip that she was dropping off Russian tea mix for my parents for Christmas. I rudely elbowed my way into a piece of that action and wangled a jar of it for myself. I hadn’t had Russian tea in ages. The closest I’ve come was years ago in St. Louis, when for one winter season I drank yuzu tea because I read about it in a memoir whose author drank yuzu tea all the time. I decided I had to try it, so I visited one of the Asian food markets near our home in the University City area and bought a jar of what looked like grapefruit marmalade. The beauty of yuzu tea was all I had to do was stir a spoonful of the marmalade into hot water. Watered-down citrus marmalade may not sound like much, but it is mighty fine. I drank it until the jar of marmalade was empty then forgot about it entirely until right this minute.

But we’re talking about Russian tea, not yuzu, and as soon as my jar of Holli’s special blend came into my house I thought about Ronni Lundy again. I discovered her when I lived in Louisville, Kentucky, because she was a writer and editor for Louisville magazine. Her column, “Omnivore,” always featured a recipe embedded in a wonderful, perfectly written story. I have three of her columns saved in my three-ring binder of recipes, and the first one I saved (July 1994) was about a trip to Colorado she’d taken in her youth with a friend. Young Ronni and Cindy crossed the Great Divide in a Plymouth Valiant station wagon, a hair-raising experience. When they stopped just over the summit at a log cabin with a sign declaring it to be a store, they were entertained by the 80-year-old shopkeeper who served them cheddar cheese and crackers with Russian tea. The column ended with a recipe for a Jamaican-style tea cake to be served with “aged cheddar, hot tea and good stories.”

Side note: While checking on the ingredients for Russian tea mix, I came across a wonderful piece on myrecipes.com called “Russian Tea Is Not from Russia It’s from Church Cookbooks.” If I didn’t have ethics I’d have used that title for this post.

Anyway, even though I often breezed past her columns when flipping through my recipe binder, Ronni Lundy sifted down to the murkier depths of my memory for eight years. Then, 13 years ago while living in St. Louis and probably drinking yuzu tea, I discovered her book, Crafts for the Spirit. Can’t remember how I came across it, but I was delighted to learn from it that Ronni had moved to my home state of North Carolina. This made her practically family. Then I forgot her again until Holli’s Russian tea brought her back to the front of my mind, and I have spent a nice afternoon rereading her three columns from 1994 and ordering two of her award-winning cookbooks, which promise more of her excellent stories and recipes when they arrive.

I regret having let Ronni Lundy lapse for such a long time, but isn’t it wonderful that my sister’s Russian tea brought her back? Today I drank a cup of the tea in her honor, with a thin slice of fruitcake, while “Un Flambeau, Jeannette Isabella” played on a loop in my head.   

October Light

“[Artists are] people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.” – British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, as quoted in Mary Ruefle’s essay “On Fear” in her collection Madness, Rack, and Honey. 

Artist or not, that quote is me in a nutshell. (I’ve always wanted to live in a nutshell, a little self-contained walnut shell/hidey hole furnished like Mole’s home in The Wind in the Willows complete with a fireplace and rugs and a plush armchair and all my favorite books on the shelves nearby. Or a simple tree fort would be nearly as good, like the one we came across this week while hiking.)

I like to stay tucked away and hidden until the urge to communicate grows overwhelming. At that point I become like Mary herself, who writes in her title essay: “I don’t know where to begin because I have nothing to say, yet I know before long I will sound as if I’m on a crusade.”

Today’s crusade begins with my raptures over a new plant.

My neighbor, Brenda, brought over a few sprigs of a shrub that grows near her creek. She told me that the old folks used to call it Indian dogwood, but when I did a search I found it identified as strawberry bush, or more poetically “hearts-a-bustin’.” I consider it one of the prettiest things I’ve seen in a long time, and I want to try to get one to grow somewhere on our five acres. Generally strawberry bush grows in the forest understory, but I think there are a few places that we might be able to trick it into growing—say under the hickory trees out front, or in the redbud grove. I’d like to have those raspberry pods bustin’ in our yard every fall, and according to Southern Living the leaves turn “soft yellow suffused with pink” as autumn progresses. I need that.

Persimmons are another autumnal fruit currently bustin’ out all over. My dad collected about two quarts of them from under one tree. They become gooey after hitting the ground and are difficult to avoid stepping on, so he also tracked some into the house. He said it’s exactly like walking through a chicken coop. Because I’ve spent part of the late summer turning pears into preserves, he offered me the persimmons to see if I could turn them into something.

As I have mentioned before on this blog, persimmons are not to everyone’s taste. Upon first sampling the fruit in the New World, Captain John Smith wrote in his Generall Historie (1624): “If it not be ripe it will draw a man’s mouth awry with much torment.”

But if it be ripe, it be lovely. I am partial to persimmon pudding, which is sticky-delicious and toffee-rich. But Ernesto does not care for it, and he requested that I try making persimmon jam.

When I made persimmon pudding I had bags of frozen pulp that Brenda (she is a treasure) shared with us. I had no experience turning persimmons into pulp, and when I started in on them I soon discovered how thoroughly attached the seeds are. I tried mashing the fruit through cheesecloth, which was useless and messy. I had a little better luck pushing it through a colander and periodically scraping the pulp off the bottom and into a bowl. It took a good deal of time to extract, finally, about 2 cups of pulp. I estimate that another half-cup was smeared on various paper towels or was still clinging tightly to the seeds. (I later asked Brenda how she managed persimmons, and she said she has a special device. After watching her give a mime demonstration of how it worked, I figure she must use a food mill.)

Once I had the pulp under control, the jam itself was really simple. I stirred in sugar and lemon juice and cooked it for about 15 minutes. The smell was glorious, and my heart was nearly a-bustin’ with hope as I ladled it into a few small jars.

When it came time for the taste test, though, it drew our mouths awry with mild torment and extracted all the moisture from our tongues.

The other thing about persimmons—safer than eating them—is the seeds are used here in North Carolina to predict the coming winter. When you cut them open, you’ll see a white shape in the center that takes on the appearance of flatware. A knife forecasts a cold winter with a wind that cuts right through you. A spoon means the winter will be snowy and you’ll be stuck doing a lot of shoveling. A fork means that the winter will be mild.

This year’s persimmons indicate that we will be shoveling snow. I think. They were clearly spoons when I looked at the seeds, but now that I’ve posted the image I think I see tines. What do you see?

Anyway, I love the look of the little ghostly utensils, whatever they are, in the seeds. They could almost be grottoes with tiny angels inside. And 2020 being what it has been so far, wouldn’t that be a comfort?

The Little Gallery of Mighty Fine Arts

Cecil Honeychurch, 2020. Wool.

Museums are closed, and there’s time to fill here at home. Inspired by John Simmons and his 26 Fruits blog, I have devised my own gallery of treasures from around the house. I believe they were grateful to be dusted and fussed over.

I chose the name the Little Gallery of Mighty Fine Arts (LGMFA) because in rural North Carolina, there are two levels of superior quality: fine, and mighty fine. Featured first are works from the gallery’s Folk Art Collection:

Artist unknown: White Goat, circa 2014. Painted tin.
A gift commemorating the LGMFA’s acquisition of three goats in spring 2014.

Virginia Woolf wrote: “If we didn’t live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I’ve no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged.” Today, Iris is the only one of our three goats left standing; we lost Lily in 2015 and Rose in July. Given the way the year is going, I am tempted to take Virginia’s advice and pull Iris’s beard in hopes of halting the downward slide toward becoming daily more faded, fatalistic, and aged.

Artist unknown: Mexican Cherub, circa 2012. Painted wood.
Acquired in Webster Grove, Missouri in a shop next to a Thai restaurant.

We wanted a Guerrero, Mexico cherub, and we found one we loved in a shop on Isla Mujeres. A wall plaque about a yard wide, it featured a wonderful cherub whose cheeks where filled with air and whose lips were blowing a mighty wind. Sadly, we walked away, and by the time we had convinced ourselves that we had to have it we could no longer find the shop. This little guy is smaller, but we are delighted we found him. He hangs in the kitchen where he can supervise the cooking and keep an eye on the White Goat (above).

V. Winslow: Cecil Honeychurch, 2020. Wool.
Artist’s statement: “My needle-felting phase began with a number of small animals, followed by a peaceful yet wildly creative period of crafting Easter eggs and experimenting with wet-felting. In mid-2020, tired of the browns and grays of woodland creatures but running low on the brilliant colors used for my spring line of eggs and fascinators, I decided to branch out and attempt a more complex, humanoid work. It was only after his tiny black eyes were in place that I realized the truth about Cecil: He was meant to have butterfly wings. So now he does.” 

V. Winslow: Fairy House, a Ruin, 2020. Mixed media.
Artist’s statement: “Well, if you think you can do any better, then be my guest.”

♦♦♦

Next, highlights from the LGMFA’s collection of European artists:

Pablo Picasso: Citando Al Toro con la Capa (Provoking the Bull with the Cape) from the series La Tauromaquia, 1957. Print.

Acquired by the LGMFA in 2010 in Barcelona, we purchased this print and another in the same series from a sidewalk vendor across from the Museu Picasso. The title shown above may be incorrect. During our visit to Spain, we also traveled to the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres to view major and minor works by Salvador Dalí. Notes from that excursion read: “The art included very little in the way of explanation—there weren’t even the usual small signs that told the year of the work. Ernesto was able to drift in and out of a Spanish-language school group, and he picked up some info that way. He told me that according to the teacher, Dalí dismissed Picasso as being ‘too Spanish’ (as opposed to universal, I suppose), and after that I was annoyed at Dalí and wanted no more to do with him.”

Vincent van Gogh: Roses, 1890. Poster.
Since 1995, this piece has traveled widely, with extended showings in Kentucky, Florida, and Missouri. The print is now permanently housed in the Little Gallery of Mighty Fine Arts located in central North Carolina. As a tribute to van Gogh and in celebration of one of the gallery’s earliest acquisitions, Ernesto recently enacted van Gogh’s Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear in our early-season sunflower patch.

It was 90 degrees outside. We all suffer for our art.

If you haven’t yet seen the animated film Loving Vincent, you really should. All of the music is fabulous, but stay through the credits to hear Don McLean’s “Vincent (Starry Starry Night)” sung by Lianne La Havas. Or listen at the link provided, as you enjoy your own home art collection. 

 

Recipes for Disaster: 5 Pandemic Projects to Pass the Time

In a continuing effort to stay cheerful, I am still experimenting with new recipes and projects that in normal circumstances it would never cross my mind to try. Isn’t it funny the strange things that do cross one’s mind in the middle of a global pandemic?

Case in point: Have any of us ever spent so much time thinking about toilet paper—its availability, its necessity to daily life, possible alternatives? Tuesday morning I did the grocery run, and there was no toilet paper to be found. The very next day, while visiting my parents and delivering a nonessential treat (see Recipe 3) in exchange for homegrown radishes, my dad returned from a trip to the store. He came through the door from the garage, dropped off a couple of bags on the washing machine, then went into the pantry with a bulky item under his arm.

“What’s that you’ve got under your arm?” I asked, knowing full well what it was.

“Toilet paper—twelve rolls!” he said. “But I had to get Food Lion brand.”

Who cares what brand it is? The last time I found any it was at the Dollar General, a brand called Colortex. I haven’t opened that package yet, so I can’t comment on its quality, but I have a pretty good idea of what it will be like. The other option available that day didn’t even have a name. The package was simply labeled, in extra-large letters, “SAFE FOR SEPTIC TANKS!”

I left my parents’ house immediately and went straight to Food Lion, but I was too late.

Recipe 1:  Tricking Out My Black Bear

I am sharing that story just so you’ll understand where my head was when, scrolling through Pinterest for needle-felting projects, I stopped at a realistic bear, beautifully done. The bear stood nobly upright, complete with accessories; a folded newspaper was tucked under his left forearm, and his right paw held a miniature roll of toilet paper. Obviously he had been in the woods or was en route to the woods. The bear’s roll of toilet paper made me think: My own needle-felted black bear sits on a shelf in the hall bathroom; shouldn’t he have a tiny roll, too? So I made him one. It was a matter of minutes to cut and glue a wee cardboard core from a spent roll of Angel Soft, and then I  cut strips from a napkin and painstakingly wound them onto the core, gluing it in place as needed.

I realized, of course, that this didn’t mean that I now had the power to create toilet paper out of thin air, but it felt powerful all the same.

Recipe 2:  Incredible Peppermint Laundry Detergent

Back in early March as we began preparing for these uncertain times, I bought a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castile Soap (peppermint). I thought it might be smart to have a large supply of multi-functional soap on hand. (Like the label says, “Dilute! Dilute! OK!”) Maybe you’ve noticed Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap in stores—the ones with his All-One speech printed on them in an itty bitty font. Not only do you get a lot of soap for $14.99, you also get philosophy. Can’t beat that deal.

Now, it is a fact that the soap can be poured directly into the washing machine as-is, but where is the fun in that? Why settle for easy when there are Pinterest recipes for more complex formulations? While not strictly necessary, these recipes will stretch out your supply of Dr. Bronner’s and (most importantly) give you a project that spans two days! The version I chose used half a cup of the soap combined with baking soda, washing soda, and water. It gets all gelatinous and thick overnight, and it smells divine. The next morning you blend or whisk the thickened gel until it loosens up.  

I also purchased a bar of Dr. Bronner’s peppermint castile soap to try my hand at wet-felting. It worked beautifully, and I now have a wool-encased pepperminty soap bar that I love (pictured below).

Even if you don’t feel like making your own laundry detergent, you should go to the Dr. Bronner’s website and check out the founder’s story. Emanuel (“Emil”) Bronner left Germany before World War II and came to America, bringing his family’s soap-making skills and his All-One philosophy with him. The site notes this interesting landmark in the 1940s:

“Emil adopts honorific ‘Dr.’—with his intensity, scientific knowledge and thick German accent, no one argues.”

Recipe 3:  Homemade Tootsie Rolls 

We love Tootsie Rolls, so when I found a recipe for homemade ones, I knew I had to try it. This is candy-making as craft project; the process reminds me of those old recipes for edible clay. Am I the only person who remembers edible clay? Anyway, I think this version is a little healthier than others I saw online. It uses cocoa instead of melted chocolate, honey instead of corn syrup, and only one-quarter cup of powdered sugar. The one pantry item that you will probably have to go out and buy (unless you’re a prepper) is nonfat dry milk. I tweaked the recipe a bit, adding one-eighth of a teaspoon of orange extract to the mix. 

The reviews on homemade Tootsie Rolls run hot and cold—basically, they either succeed and you love them, or they fail and you hate them. Or, to paraphrase one commenter with a totally different point of view, “I would make these, but I’d rather just buy them.” I loved them. The kneading of the dough is very therapeutic, and the recipe only makes about two dozen candies so you’re not producing more than you can comfortably consume. I had to make a second batch to have enough to barter for radishes. Yes, it’s slightly tedious to cut waxed paper and wrap each piece individually, but the quicker you wrap them the less time they sit there on the kitchen counter looking like fresh poop.

Recipe 4: Suet Cakes

Birdseed is one of the items that seems to be in short supply around here. Also, it goes very quickly because nothing we do keeps the squirrels out of it. We have tried greasing the poles that our bird feeders hang from, and that is entertaining for about half a day as we watch the squirrels try to climb up, only to go sliding back down. But after several slides, all the grease has been transferred to the squirrels’ paws, and they simply wipe their little paws on the grass a few times and up they scamper. There’s just not enough grease in the world to make this a workable solution.

Suet cakes last longer than seed, and I can make them myself even when they aren’t available to buy. I’ve adapted a recipe I found that is very simple: Melt one cup of lard and one cup of chunky peanut butter over low heat until fully liquefied, then remove from the heat and stir in 3 cups of corn meal and 2 cups of quick oats (or you can reverse it to 2 cups of corn meal and 3 cups of oats). You can also mix in other stuff that might be around, including nuts or even birdseed if you’ve got plenty. Press this mixture into molds of some sort—the plastic containers that fresh mushrooms come in are perfect (as shown above), or you can use loaf pans and cut the final product in half to fit your feeder—then chill until firm. A single batch will make four cakes (five, if you keep them a little thinner). The suet cakes can be frozen for longer-term storage.

Recipe 5:  Wild Violet Tea Pie

Until recently I had never heard of Water Pie. Also known as Depression Pie, or as my friend Jeanne calls it, “Desperation Pie,” Water Pie was a project I tackled because it got in my head and I couldn’t shake it out. It had to be made. In essence, you pour water into an unbaked pie crust, sprinkle on a mixture of sugar and flour, drizzle in some vanilla, and launch five pats of butter into the pool. Then you bake it a long time and let it chill in the fridge overnight.

What kept me pondering this pie was the idea that it needn’t be plain water. It could be lemony water, or tea, like the Sweet Tea Pie we had last winter at the Nothing Fancy Café in Edenton, North Carolina. Then I remembered my white clover and wild violet teas, both of which have (it is said) immune-boosting, antioxidant benefits. So I went out and harvested enough wild violet leaves to brew a cup and a half of tea, and then proceeded with the recipe. The liquid and other ingredients, which you do not stir or mix at all, come together into a sort of gelatin. A gelatin with antioxidant powers! I didn’t take a photo of the pie before it was gone, but there are some nice shots on the site with the recipe that will give you the idea of how it looks. I don’t think making it with violet tea instead of water changes the overall appearance.

A side note on the crust: I bought the Food Lion brand frozen deep-dish pie crust, which I found to be absolutely outstanding. If Food Lion toilet paper is of similar quality, then my parents have nothing to be concerned about.

Bottom Line

Never underestimate the level of satisfaction that even a silly project can bring during a shelter-in-place order.  

Spring Work

One evening this week, as the sun began to set, the little dogwood in our front yard filled with late-afternoon sunshine and held it. As John Muir, the naturalist, conservationist, and champion of American national parks once said: 

Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.

The dogwood is going about its spring work not only with joyful enthusiasm, but with a flair for the dramatic that makes me very proud. I feel the tree is a kindred spirit, because part of my spring work this year has also been an attempt to hold sunshine and preserve it. Here are three recent projects:

Dandelion salve. A reportedly pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory ointment, dandelion salve may or may not ease the pain of arthritis, but it absolutely glows like trapped sunlight. Knowing that I could harvest dandelions to make salve transformed my ill-will toward dandelions. Suddenly, having more dandelions in the yard than anyone else on earth became a point of pride, something to celebrate. I collected a cup or two of the blooms, made a dandelion-infused oil, then performed the necessary magic that turned it into actual, successful, impressively rich and golden salve. I gave a good portion of the batch to my dad for testing. He said it makes his hands shiny.

A scarecrow! 

Another spring project that we tackled with enthusiasm was the making of our first scarecrow. We hope he’ll keep the critters and birds from eating our young garden. I have tied lengths of twine to his hands, with aluminum pie pans on the ends, thinking that when they blow in the wind they might startle the more nervous rabbits. After we got the scarecrow up, I had him model nearly every hat and helmet we had in the house. That last one is a fascinator, which would be nice for Easter but honestly wasn’t nearly as becoming as some of the other choices. It seems almost to enhance his pallor.

Wildflower teas. Recently a vast crop of white clover blossoms appeared near the back door, so this morning I brewed a quart of white clover tea. There it is at left, quietly humming along. Doesn’t our Mexican cherub almost look as if he plans to take a dip in the tea? This is the second wildflower tea I’ve brewed this season, out of an abundance of flowers, an unusual amount of free time, and (most importantly) access to the wonderful website Grow Forage Cook Ferment (also responsible for the salve, above). Wild violets—we have them in purple and white, scattered all over our five acres—made a lovely teal-colored tea. Both teas taste of spring and are perfectly pleasant, especially when sweetened with a drop of honey. I have read that violet and clover teas are anti-inflammatory and bolster the immune system, which are strong arguments in their favor no matter what they taste like. On the other hand, having had two cups of iced clover tea in a five-hour span, I am beginning to wonder if the muscles in my back are seizing up. They feel a bit odd.

Come to think of it, I probably shouldn’t drink strange brews with such gusto, but should sample them judiciously first. But don’t you feel that judiciousness is anathema to joyful enthusiasm? That being so, I say let my muscles seize up! I will rub them with dandelion salve, and if I am not healed, at least I’ll be shiny.

Keeping Cheerful

 

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. – Wendell Berry

I have the nicest little black-and-white mug that my sister Robin gave me (see photo above). On one side, a child marches in the snow with great determination. On the opposite side is a little verse, called “Keeping Cheerful.”

If it’s snowing, or it’s hailing,
Or late Winter checks the Spring—
If the northern wind is wailing,
Still this heart of mine will sing.

The mug’s bottom says that it’s from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but there’s no indication of who wrote the verse. The writer may have been influenced by Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” from which the quotation above was pulled.

Late Winter has not checked the Spring here in North Carolina, though the temperature is a little cooler at present. I believe the freezing weather, ice, and snow are behind us. But it feels like we’ve been through a long lead-up to a serious snow day, with everyone rushing out to get toilet paper (why?), alcohol, and hand sanitizer to protect against the coronavirus. Now we are mostly sheltering in place and avoiding contact with others, metaphorically (or perhaps literally) barricaded behind a wall of Charmin Ultra Soft. Well, that’s my brand of choice. Yours may differ.

So while we wait to see how this pandemic plays out, I am trying to keep cheerful by staying busy. Back in November, I ordered a supply of wool roving, needles, and leather finger guards to do more felting projects. This craft is perfect for me, because all you have to do is stab a barbed needle repeatedly into wool until it sticks together and turns into something. It is therapeutic, except for the inevitable stab wounds to one’s hands, and an excellent way to work out stress or anxiety. And then you end up with a super-cute black bear, like this guy! He has an oddly round head but is very comforting to hold and squeeze.

In anticipation of Easter, I’ve also felted several Easter eggs and a vivid gold chick.  (Speaking of chicks, we picked up ten Rhode Island Red biddies from Southern States in Pittsboro last Saturday. They are cute, and doing great so far. We should have fresh eggs by mid-July, if all goes as planned and the predators don’t upset the coop. Again.)

During my research of needle-felting techniques and projects, I came across some very interesting information on wet-felting. My largest Easter egg was felted using that method, which was quick and fun. Basically, you wrap wool roving around the egg, tuck the egg into the foot of an old pair of hose, and then dip it in hot water and massage it with soap. This turns the wool fibers into felt fabric while coincidentally sanitizing your hands to a degree that most people can only dream of.

Inspired by this success and Pinterest photos of felted hats, on Saturday afternoon I took all of my pink wool roving (dark and light) and tried a wet-felting technique to make myself a sort of fascinator. See?!

Well, okay, let’s just go ahead and call it a potholder. Potholdinator? I do think it gives our Seagrove face jug a little extra flair.

Oh, no. I forgot I’m not supposed to touch my face jug.  

Hang on to your compassion during these difficult times, be good to your neighbors and others who may need your help, and keep as cheerful as you can. Remember the words of Dame Julian of Norwich, who is something of an expert on difficult times. After all, she lived during the Black Plague and in seclusion, and yet one of her most important messages to the world was this: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” 

Amen.