INKLINGS
By Siggy
Hello, my name is “Siggy“, and I have been asked to write a “Guest Blog”. I will get right to it; you can find out a little bit more about me at the end (and hopefully, by reading my story about the Inklings)!
Last year, my wife and I watched a documentary of C.S. Lewis, the British author whose impressive list of books includes the well-known, “Chronicles of Narnia” series. (By the way, every book C.S. Lewis published during his life time–over twenty–is still in print.) The documentary was actually a Christmas gift from the year before; one of those things that just are put aside to get to “later”, you know? Well, I guess the time was right, and we put it on to watch. During the program, it was mentioned that Lewis belonged to a small group of writers who got together regularly for several decades (another notable member of the group was J.R.R. Tolkien, famous for “Lord Of The Rings“). They called themselves the “Inklings“. My wife loved this name, and told me if we ever started a writers group, that was what we should call it. We talked about who else might be in the group, and we both suggested our friend and fellow-writer, Eydie — hence, this connection to her blog site!
Our small writing group, Inklings, is very important to me. To me the name is really important. If our group can provide even a little spark and motivation for the participating members it is all worth it. Inklings is a perfect name. I want our small writing group to encourage the writers it in to continue to improve — to be the best writers they can be.
I never forgot an anecdote related by Arthur Gordon which told the story of two writing groups that had met decades ago, when the participants were still in college. The two groups were about equal in talent. One was a group of women whose members were kind to one another and did everything in their power to encourage each other, while the all male group, who aptly called themselves “The Stranglers“, were brutal with one another and ripped into each others work. Years later, not one prominent writer had come out of The Stranglers, but several emerged from the women’s group, including Marjorie Rawlings, author of “The Yearling“.
After hearing that story, I was determined that Inklings would be a place where we could encourage each other, not tear each other apart. We held our first meeting in August 2008, just three of us — myself, my wife, and Eydie. Now Inklings is starting to grow. A graphic artist came twice, she works for the publisher who printed Eydie‘s first book of poetry, “September Butterfly.” In February we gained our first (and second!) virtual members. BlogMaster, Brother John, is now a member and I am sure he will bring us into the 21st century, and beyond, with his networking talents, and hopefully we will be encouraging his creativity in the writing area. My old friend, Sara, who recently married and moved to North Carolina to begin a new chapter in her life, also joined us long-distance. Sara just this past week completed her studies and became an ordained minister because she wanted to marry people! And this month, another person, a registered lobbyist, joined us for the first time and expressed an interest in coming back. As you can see, our growing group is diverse.
Each time we meet (usually at Eydie‘s or our home) we talk and get to know each other better. I usually pull a few passages from my writing resource library to inspire discussion and then we do a few exercises. In the past, they might have consisted of writing about a piece of music one member shared. Sometimes I pick an interesting photo for us to write about. The ground rules are usually the same: write five minutes without lifting your pen, neither changing anything or crossing out. Then we share what we wrote with each other. We usually have a break and a snack or two.
At the moment, Inklings is doing a “chain” story. This exercise will probably take at least two months to complete. One person writes a chapter and then another adds another, etc. We usually have another home assignment. This month we are writing a description of someone, then next meeting we will compare notes. Last month, we shared our stories of one significant event in our lives.
We try to meet once a month, coordinating our schedules to pick a date. So far, it has all worked out. It has been a challenge to figure our how to include the virtual members in our group. E-mail and snail mail certainly help. We are still working that one out. But my goal remains the same: I want each person, present or virtual, to get better as a writer, to NOT compare their writings with others, but only to feel that they are improving as a writer. AND, to be encouraged to WRITE!!!
A bit more about me:
Our Inklings group ties in well with the web site I started in January — “Siggy’s Café for Writers and Poets”, www.siggyscafe.com, and my Blog, Siggy’s Blurbs (which I never expected to be doing, since I don’t like to type!) www.siggyscafe.com/Blog. Inklings and Siggy’s Café are encouraging me as well! At the web site, I want to encourage budding and experienced writers. There are articles on the writing process, a bibliography of suggested reading, inspirational quotes, current and classic poetry, a Word Of The Day, and more. There is also an article I wrote about the best record albums from the 1960’s & 1970’s that are still available today on CD. I absolutely love music, and to me one of the greatest things is sharing or recommending a wonderful piece of music to someone else. I love to write, I love to read my poetry in public, and I love to listen to music.
Should anyone wish to contact me about this post, or just to say hello, you can do so at: Siggy’s e-Mail.
The Beehive (and other ramblings)
By Eydie Wight
Well, here it is nearly 5:30 AM and another night has passed in work rather than blogging (I’m hearing wheezing, sneezing, and coughing in my after work sleep these days.). Brother John may have to post another yummy recipe while waiting for me to catch up. But, Sammy and I have the weekend off and I have a list. Writing a blog is on it. Somewhere near the top. Along with painting my beehive, filling out Roger‘s Fafsa form for college this fall, cooking the turkey that’s been in the freezer since Christmas, repairing Roger‘s hematite frog necklace for the fifth or sixth time, sending Uncle Dave a get well card, sending Uncle Mike a very huge thank you for doing our taxes, moving the old refrigerator out to the shed so the work on finishing the basement can continue next week and, of course, the usual weekend dusting and vacuuming, laundry and litter box detail. I may hold off on single-handedly solving the national recession until next week. Ditto world peace.
Sammy and I plan to sleep most of today, then go to coffeehouse tonight. We’ve been working on the song “Good Riddance” by Green Day and I thought maybe we would have it ready, but we both had a few days of feeling a bit peaked this week and I didn’t have enough time to get my part comfortable. Sammy does the singing and plays guitar throughout and could walk on stage with five minutes practice. I have two measures here, three or four there, and a little chording at the end, but my fiddle has a HUGE problem with stage fright so we’d better practice some more. I do plan to read a few of my poems. Our usual coffeehouse has a nice mix of musicians, poets, and storytellers. I think I’ll read “Street Busker of Her Heart” and “The Musician’s Wife.”
I think I mentioned in some of the Christmas posts that Santa brought me a “beginning beekeeper” kit. It came from the Dadant catalogue (making beekeeping a family tradition since 1863!) Ever since Sammy and I made our first batch of mead and started having conversations with beekeeper Dan I’ve been dreaming of honey bees, writing poems in their honor, and catching every show I can find on National Geographic and Animal planet about them. Last summer I discovered “wild” Italian honeybees in great numbers all over my flower beds and nearby wildflowers, and became fascinated with them. So, this year, Sammy and I are going to give beekeeping a try.
My “hobby kit #2” came un-assembled and contained two medium ten frame supers, an inner and outer top cover, and solid wood bottom board and some essential equipment. (Smoker, gloves, hive tool, feeder, beginner’s book, veil.) This was about $153.00. A little plug here for the Dadant catalogue. Not only does it offer everything a large scale beekeeper might need, but it also has equipment, cool bee factoids, and helpful hints and suggestions for us “newbees” (ha ha.)
I have to admit that my hive sat unassembled in it’s box until last week. It was only partly procrastination on my part. Sigh. Santa had also brought me several books on beekeeping. I made the mistake of starting to read the big flashy one with all the fancy expensive pictures (and I won’t mention it’s name ’cause I’m not going to be very complimentary.) The very first thing the author started opining about was that you should NEVER get an un-assembled hive to start out with because they take a rocket scientist to assemble, the instructions are lousy, the parts are never cut to fit, and it’s all “oh so off-putting.” And of course here I was with the unassembled hive. Then, as I read on, it was a never ending series of “you can’t do this, you can’t do that, people do it that way but that’s WRONG.” I know nothing about this author and she may be a pleasant enough person but boy, I was stressing before I got halfway through. I just didn’t want to read the section on foulbrood, hive beetles, varroa mites, tracheal mites, and wax moths BEFORE I read about joyful, happy, healthy hives. I want the “Joys of Beekeeping,” not the “Buzz about Bad Bee Bummers.”
So I agonized about the whole beekeeping idea for a nearly two months, and then did what I should have done from the start. I talked to beekeeper Dan. His advice was to “put that book down and start another.” He also said, in his gentle way, something that interpreted as, “You’re not an idiot, just sit down and put the darn hive together.” So I did. Both. Seeing as the Dadant catalogue had been my friend, I opened the book that had come with my beginner’s kit, “First Lessons in Beekeeping.” It started with POETRY. I was sold. And, Sammy and I sat down that night and in a few hours had the hive together. It was easy. Once all the pieces were laid out in matching groups, and the nails sorted, the diagrams made sense. We put the whole thing together on the living room coffee table with a minimum of mess. We put the whole thing together while watching “City Slickers” and drinking mead. I was in my pajamas. Putting together the frames with their foundation wax was just as easy, but a bit more time consuming as there are ten frames to a super and two supers. I did that the next day in about an hour and a half while watching CSI New York.
The Villanelle
As I write this it’s now Saturday morning. Coffeehouse went well last night. It was a packed, appreciative house with a pretty even mix of musicians and poets, about a half dozen of each. I read three poems and received an official congratulations on my recent “specialty”award for a poem I had entered for our county’s annual poet laureate competition called “Winter Morning”. The poem was a villanelle. Now for those of you who aren’t into this stuff, maybe just skip this part. You’ll find It’s going to be boring. A villanelle is a highly structured poem consisting of 19 lines and only two different rhymes throughout. It has five tercets (three line stanzas) and one final quatrain (four lines.) The first and third lines all rhyme. The second lines all rhyme. In addition, the poem has two “power lines” that are used throughout the poem. They are the first and third lines of the first tercet. The first line becomes the third line of the second tercet, the third line becomes the third line of the third tercet and so on. The quatrain has the two power lines as the last lines of the poem. One of the most famous villanelles is Dylan Thomas‘ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.“
Well, I’m an “old hippie” free verse poet by nature. I don’t rhyme, it stresses me. But, like a dog with a bone, I had to try this villanelle thing if for no other reason than the gauntlet had been laid down before me. So for weeks I agonized. At first I tried this Celtic story of murder, kidnapping, betrayal. My power lines were “‘Tis naught but one left to tell the tale. With voice that falters and lips that pale.” I had rhymes of: tale, pale, fail, sail, ale, nail, jail and: greed, need, freed, bleed, deed, mead. Maybe it would have worked. But it made me crazy. Then I tried a magician story. I had: mage, stage, wage, page, cage, age, rage and: illusion, delusion, confusion, profusion, exclusion, occlusion. Again, though the possibility was there, it made me crazy. Finally, in the wee hours of the deadline day for the competition entries, as my friend Lynelle and I communicated with each other with increasingly frustrated and desperate e-mails, I put together an idea while I was standing at the kitchen window drinking coffee and waiting for dawn. It made me crazy. But, I agonized on and ended up hand delivering it to the arts council gallery with ten minutes to spare before the deadline, saying that it was “The worst piece of crap I’d ever written.” Go figure it would win. My villanelle experience is, I hope, laid to rest eternally.
Back to the Bees
I’d better finish this up soon so I can wake Sammy and we can go accomplish our daytime Saturday errands. Two of which are buying paint to paint the outside of my hive to weather proof it and calling Bjorn Apiaries to order “nucs” for beekeeper Dan and Sammy and I. A “nuc” or nucleus (I just love learning this new “beespeak.” I probably will get stuff wrong or misuse terms and I would appreciate being corrected by those more knowledgeable than I) is a good way to get started. It contains four or five frames of nurse bees, brood, food, and a queen which is introduced to the incipient colony. I wanted to order Italian bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) because that’s what my “wild” girls were that I enjoyed watching as they foraged on the property last year. I think this apiary may have only Russian Carniolan (Apis mellifera carnica) which is what beekeeper Dan wants. That may be a good idea in the long run as the Carnolians seem to be more resistant to some of the bad bee bummer mites. So much to learn!
I have learned that beekeeping is an up and coming area of interest. Those that were wholeheartedly into knitting and bead stringing the past couple of years, and gardening and canning last year, are looking at beekeeping. Any why not? Beekeeping (so I’ve been told and have read in numerous sources) is relatively inexpensive, relatively easy, less time consuming than most gardening, harvesting, canning experiences, and can be done in very little space. There are even New York City beekeepers who have rooftop hives and bees that co-exist with the flowers, musicians, homeless, and knock-off watch entrepreneurs of Central Park! Honey has long, and I mean like Biblical, ancient Egypt long, been a natural sweetener. It has medicinal uses for healing wounds that “modern medicine” has given up on. Honey makes mead, mead makes one happy, therefore (a little twisted Aristotle) honey makes one happy. I could go on and on extolling the virtues of honey, propolis, beeswax, and honey bee pollination services, but let me just end with some way cool facts I lifted from the Dadant catalogue:
- If honey bees ceased to exist today, about 1/3 of all the foods humans eat would disappear
- It would take one ounce of honey to fuel a bees flight around the world. The average honey bee will make about one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.
- The honey bee is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
- A honey bee visits 50-100 flowers during one collection trip.
And now I must get out of my pajamas, take Sammy to our favorite little restaurant “The Joyful Bakers” for breakfast as I promised, and get to the post office, hardware, and grocery store. The sun is shining, the sap is flowing in the maple trees (although I don’t think any of the neighbors have tapped their trees yet,) my tulips, daffodils, and surprise lilies have broken ground in the front flower bed, and we were just visited by two whitetail deer that we could see from the kitchen window. It is a propitious day, rife with possibility.
Resolutions (a.k.a. Best Intents)
By Eydie Wight
Well it’s officially (and somewhat past) the advent of the New Year. I rang in the year all unawares as my Croat co-worker Marija and I ran from floor to floor at our hospital giving respiratory treatments and answering calls. It was midnight plus 23 before we met up to give each other a hug and say “Happy New Year.” Then my phone rang again and we got back to work as Marija said “Vat do dey vant now, wen I am trying to vish you a Happy Year.” I love Marija, working with her makes for much happiness in the workplace.
She, friend Carole, and I had gone out for dinner and a movie one night (Sylvia honey, we missed you!) and as we had talked straight through the start time of our movie we decided to just talk more until the next show started (uh, and have dessert and another beer.) We got to talking about men, a conversation inspired by our cute-until-he-opened-his-mouth server Brad, or, as he told us “That’s B-Rad.” (Like P-Diddy, but we middle aged ladies ain’t too down with that. We still live in the land of cool, don’tcha’ know.) Anyway, I said, “What would be your favorite physical characteristics in a man, strictly physical looks, what kind of man are you attracted to?” Carole went first, she said, “I like the Italian men, dark hair and eyes, and physically fit, like a boxer.” I went next, “Easy answer, give me a tall, braw, red-heided Highland Scot.” I asked Marija, “Your turn, what would your ideal man look like.” She considered a minute and said, “Vell, he vould look like he has money.”
I’m typing this as I sit at my mom and dad’s kitchen table. My dad had a total knee replacement this past Monday (thanks to everyone who sent prayers and good thoughts his way) and I came down to give mom some company and chauffeur her back and forth from the hospital. Dad’s doing pretty well, supposed to come home tomorrow, but is plagued by nausea.
It’s Thursday now (the computer decided to freeze up last night which it does occasionally) and I’m up in Dad’s hospital room waiting for him to be discharged. Today started out as a brisk sunny day with blue skies and I had a wee walk in mind down past the farms at mom and dad’s. But now the clouds are rolling in and I hear that snow is on the way. A little snow never bothers me but I didn’t bring proper footwear. But wait! I do have my winter “survival” kit in the car. Boots, coat, hat, scarf, gloves, sleeping bag, granola bars, water, signal flag. I sent Sammy down to Georgia over Christmas with his kit in the Saturn. It was the topic of some amusement when he arrived down there to 70 degree weather!
Brother John had suggested (as we were talking about the bloggless end of last year and our resolution to do better this year) that something New Year’s-ish might be nice. Each year I resolutely resolve (like millions of others) to change, change, change. Me and the president elect have a bond. Hopefully he will do better at his resolutions than I have over the past years with my vows to stop eating an entire block of cheese with pretzels as I read novels, control childish outbursts of @#$%*&(!@#$ when working on the wood stove pipe, stop gardening in my pajamas, or finally finish that poetry book (oh wait! I DID do that last year, Yipee!, one for me!)
This year I kicked the resolutions up a notch. I resolve to create, to shine, and to genuinely like myself, nay, even love myself just as I am. I have a pretty blessed life, any change for the good is icing on the cake. I resolve to accept this gray hair that never grows as fast as I’d like, this cellulite that pirouettes with me in the mirror, the odd surgically removed organ here and there that requires replacement medication, these varicose veins. How about, as a friend said of me, I shine that thousand watt Celtic smile on the world and drop some of the guilt.
This year, I resolve to relax and enjoy the fact that I’m married to a man for whom there are never enough exclamation points in a love letter. I resolve to embrace my pajamas (’cause they make me happy) and not worry that the Jehovah Witness ladies found me in them Christmas eve.
And now, our Dad has just been sprung form the hospital and I must go.
Happy New Year!
Books, Movies, and the Christmas Spirit!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!
By Eydie Wight
Well, Brother John has been wonderfully patient with my absentee blog-ism. The last week has been filled with social events, Sammy’s tooth extraction, un-successful hunting, decorating mayhem, and the advent not of a calendar filled with little doorways and goodies but of our busy season at work. ‘Tis the season to be wheezin’ as we respiratory therapists like to say.
Last Saturday I had the “coming out” party for my poetry book at the open house for our county’s Arts Council. I was pretty nervous that no one would show up and I would sit there at the table with an ever increasing mountain of books and a stack of brand new Sarasa black gel pens listening to the clock tick, tick, tick as I tried not to fidget too much in my black velvet skirt, glittery velvet top, and knee high black polished boots. I figured it would have been stretching the eccentric writer persona a bit far to show up in my everyday apparel. Do they make book signing pajamas? Hmmm. They should.
But, not to worry. When Sammy and I arrived Mom and my “earth sister” Joanne were already there and had broken the ice for me. Mom had brought a big batch of my dad’s chocolate dipped peanut butter candy balls and had introduced herself to everyone. My dad’s name is John Richard (he’s called “Dick”) and I tried not to cringe as Mom asked people if they wanted to try Dick’s chocolate balls. It was sort of like a South Park episode. (Brother John here… OMG! It’s as bad as when Granny used to compliment Dad on his cooking… “This is GOOD DICK”). The Arts Council has a gallery of rooms dedicated to the work of local artists. There were artworks on the walls, framed photography, note cards and pictures, music CD’s, jewelry, knitted scarves, purses, and hats, woven textile clothing, and sculptures done in all sorts of media. They had set up two tables for us “Authors” to sit with our books. They had even made a sign. The sign had my name on it. Spelled right and everything. My friend and mentor Tony arrived, our friend Dave was there to provide some acoustic guitar background, fellow poet Siggy set up at the next table and Jonas was there with his book about a half hour later. Suddenly the gallery was filled with people. They were shopping. laughing, eating cookies, pate, and Dick’s chocolate balls. Sammy and I uncorked bottles of our homemade elderberry and blackberry wine and things had the making of a holiday party.
I signed and sold my first seven books! They were all to Mom! But that was okay! It was exciting!
The afternoon flew by. So many of my friends came out to show their support. Some of them hadn’t even been begged beforehand to casually “stop in.” I signed and sold a few more books, one to a perfect stranger, and then during a lull in the crowd we decided to play the part of “starving artists” and all go across the street to the local coffeehouse, “Espresso Yourself.” There were ten of us including Mom and Joanne, Tony, Siggy, Jonas, Dave, Gary, Beekeeper Dan, Rog, Sammy, and me. Mom and Tony were in rare ribald humor and Dad’s chocolate balls were the source of much raucous hilarity. I smiled so much my face hurt. Of course I hugged everyone and the glitter on my velvet blouse left it’s mark everywhere I went. Tony had glitter in his beard, Mom had a little glitter speck on her cheek, Beekeeper Dan had glitter on his shirt sleeve, Sammy had glitter on one eyebrow, Dave had glitter on his guitar.
That evening Sammy and I “found” our favorite Christmas movie for this holiday season. My friend Carole had said her son had told her she “must see” the movie “The Hogfather,” a TV movie from 2006 based on the Terry Pratchett novel. We sat down to watch it, not knowing what to expect, and it was great. Wonderful music score, twisted characters, fantastic sets, dark humor and witty asides. I had gotten together all my paraphernalia to wrap presents and ended up sitting with the same unwrapped present in my lap for over an hour until I just gave up and moved to the couch. As good as the movie was, it was in two parts and nearly four hours long. A combination of the excitement of the day, the couch, the couch blankey, my pajamas, and elderberry wine soon had me romping in dreamland.
That was Saturday, a good day indeed. Sunday I got up early, did the house chores, and started in on my unfinished wrapping. It was a gray, dismal day and as I rewatched the first part of “
The Hogfather” I wrapped, and wrapped, and wrapped. The stuff was multiplying, I swear. Now, somewhere in the murky ghosts of Christmas past my mom started the tradition of labeling the packages in cute or sometimes just strange ways. Instead of, “To Eydie, from Mom” a package might read, “To Good Girl Eydie Lynne from Barbie Santa.” Or, “To Johnny from the Wolfie Santa.” (What!!! Mom didn’t call me “Brother John” back then???!!! And I miss my Wolfie!!!) Thanks to me, this year we have, “To little Mary from The King” and “To handsome Sammy from the fashion Santa.”
Sunday evening I decided to put up the tree and decorate the house a little while Sammy put up some outside lights. The plan was, this year, since no one will actually be at home for Christmas, to decorate minimally. Sammy helped me bring down the Christmas storage bins from the attic. There were eleven of them and the 30 gallon tree container. All stuffed full of treasures from my nearly five decades of Christmas. I have one lone surviving angel hair (long since banned) ornament from when our Pop-paw was alive. I have a few pieces of Granny’s holly and ivy dishware. I have an ornament I gave big Roger the first year we were married and a half dozen frog ornaments that Greg had collected. I have Rog’s “Baby’s first Christmas” ornament. I have a ballerina, unicorns, a banana, a Boeing plane, Sherlock Holmes, a Scottish bagpiper, Mr. Potato head, and the Mystery Machine from Scooby Do. My life chronicled in ornaments.
Of course I ended up putting out far more stuff than I’d planned because I like my Christmas stuff and I want to look at it for a few weeks. It’s glittery and shiny and full of memories. Better than a bag of gingersnaps and a half gallon of vanilla ice cream to dip them in. Although I wouldn’t say no to eating the aforementioned while I admired my Christmas decorations while sitting on the couch watching part two of “The Hogfather.”
Sammy did manage to get a little deer hunting in during last week. Our work schedule wasn’t too conducive to prime hunting times so we gave our Amish neighbors permission to hunt up in our deer stand. They got an eight point buck and two doe so far from up on our ridge. Two were from our stand, one from theirs. I hoped Sammy would have some luck, but I didn’t relish the butchering process that follows. The year after my second husband died our unidentified neighbor, knowing we counted on venison as a major meat source, offered to share his deer meat with me if I would process it. I jumped at that idea, and sure enough, he arrived one morning with a gutted, skinned, and quartered deer. The first bit of processing is to cut out the tenderloins, the most tasty and tender back strap of the deer. Around here it’s jokingly called “poison meat” as in “You don’t want that old poison meat, you’d better give it to me.” Then the steaks are cut out, chunks are cut for stew meat, and the bits and pieces are ground for burger or made into jerky. I have my Granddad’s jerky recipe. I may include it on the recipe list, but then again, maybe it will remain a family secret passed down through the generations. But (as usual) I digress. The year my unidentified neighbor brought me the deer three of his brothers showed up through the season with deer for me to process and share in the meat. I suspect their mom, knowing I wouldn’t have time to hunt that year, made sure I was taken care of. One reason why I love living in the country.
The unidentified neighbor has nine brothers and sisters. Their mom lives on the “home place” and throughout the year the whole clan shows up for summer picnics and swimming in their big farm pond, the men all come and bring their sons (and a daughter or two) to hunt deer in the fall, and or course, everyone shows up for Christmas. One Christmas when Rog was young there was a big snowfall just before Christmas vacation started. Then there was a freeze so the snow stayed around. The farm has a perfect sledding hill and that year it had a perfect crust for tobogganing. Some of the teenage boys built a big ramp about halfway down the hill and would ski or snowboard off it. All the neighbors, including me, my second husband, and Rog, showed up for the sledding. There was a bonfire to stand around and thaw out in front of, and some of the dad’s were engaged in building competitive snow forts for later snowball battles. We all took turns going down the hill. Mostly toboggans, but some runner sleds, snow tubes, a big tractor inner tube, and some sheets of paraffin coated cardboard. The hill was fast enough that the runner sleds and toboggans were too fast for me. I like my sledding sedate. So I took one of the snow tubes and happily slid down in lazy spirals and curves along with the toddlers. Unfortunately one of those lazy spirals brought me, now sliding backwards and all unknowing, onto the path of the big ski jump ramp. Next thing I know I had an excellent view of the downward slope of the hill. Unfortunately it was an upside down view as the tube performed complete 360 in the air (with me still hanging on out of desperation and shock.) The tube and I landed to applause from all and sundry and calls of “Do it again, Mrs. Hall. That was soo cool!” I gathered my wits and waved as my heart slowed from it’s trip hammer pace and I (hopefully) nonchalantly ambled off in search of home, pajamas, and hot chocolate.
Cooking Thanksgiving with Uncle Mike
By Eydie Wight
First of all, I’d like to issue a disclaimer. To any family members who were actually AT this Thanksgiving dinner, and actually READ this: I have a somewhat dim recollection of all the events that occurred but I’m going to write about them anyway. This is how I remember it!
It was the first Thanksgiving after Granny died and the whole family was making a special effort to get together for dinner at Granddad’s. My second husband Greg, my son Roger, and I had made the trip in from Indiana to stay at my parents for a nice long visit through the holidays. Rog was only about three and I was still in respiratory school. I volunteered to go over to Granddad’s the evening before to help Granddad shop, get the turkey ready, make the pies, sweet potato casserole, and anything else that could be done ahead of time. My Mom said she would stay home with Rog and then they would all come over early Thanksgiving morning. I was surprised when Uncle Mike said he would come down the night before and help with the cooking, but tickled too.
Uncle Mike has always been a very cool uncle. One year when Brother John got a microscope for Christmas Uncle Mike not only let us stick pins in his fingers a billion times so we could look at blood, he also let us look at skin flakes, boogers, arm hair, and spit. He would babysit us when we were kids. I don’t think we ever got to bed on time when Uncle Mike was there. I can remember being cranked up on soda and candy and jumping up and down on the bed yelling at the top of my lungs just for the sake of the irritating noise of it. Uncle Mike took it like a sport.
Now, by this time I was a grown up married lady and had had my hand up many a turkey’s cavity to fill it with stuffing, but mind you always with my Granny or my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law around for moral support. This would be my first solo run without a matriarch to guide me. But, I was no stranger to cooking and was ready for the task at hand. Sure I was.
I arrived at Granddad’s and after he greeted me with his usual “How are you Sweet Thing?” we settled in at the table to make lists. Or rather I made lists, consulted Granddad, and he read me bits and pieces from the newspaper and showed me the Thanksgiving cards he’d received. God love him, he wanted everything to be just like it was when Granny made Thanksgiving dinner. As he went down the list of food I began to feel the first creeping signs of unease. Surely in past years we hadn’t had all that food? Yes turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, corn, sweet potato casserole, and pumpkin pie. But did we really have in addition corn bread, deviled eggs, pickled eggs and red beets, three bean chowder, Lima beans, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, stuffing balls, ham, pineapple upside down cake, cookies, apple dumplings, a pickle and olive tray, dips for pretzels and chips, and hot dogs for my son who at that time in his life ate nothing but hot dogs? How did Granny do it? Granddad had lovingly gotten out all of Granny’s recipes and placed them in a (towering) stack for me to look over.
Armed with my list, Granddad picked up his crutches (he’d been injured in an industrial accident several years back and had nearly lost his legs) and we went out to his big salmon colored Cadillac. Talk about a beautiful car. Leather seats as soft as butter. He handed me the keys and we floated our way into town. That car just about drove itself. I was doing 90 before I knew it. Granddad’s hand on the armrest never even tightened its grip, not even when we sort of sailed over a huge bump and I’m sure all four white walled tires left the ground.
Our first stop was the liquor store. I was a little puzzled when Granddad grabbed a shopping cart on the way in. I soon understood as he went down the aisles. “Now, Sweet Thing, get you a bottle of that Scotch you like, and get your Aunt Deb some of that stuff there, I forget what it’s called but that’s the bottle, and your cousin Tim drinks Jack Daniels and Kathy drinks Old Granddad and your dad likes a Seagram’s Seven and seven -up…” and the list went on and on. He knew what everyone from family members to family friends liked to drink and bought it. The bill was more than I took home in a week! I was thinking that all that liquor never took into consideration that most of the men hung out in Granddad’s shed before dinner and drank his homemade plum brandy anyway and smoked their cigarettes and cigars while he sharpened their pocket knives!
I pulled the now loaded Caddy into Granddad’s driveway, just missing the snow-ball bush to the right and the big walnut tree to the left (at least missing the big walnut tree THIS time) and pulled in beside Uncle Mike’s car. We got the groceries unloaded and it was time to cook. I forgot to mention that Granddad had gotten some of the groceries a day or so before I got there. To my consternation I saw that he had gotten real potatoes to make the mashed potatoes. Not the instant I had planned to make, then hide the box, and hope no one noticed. He had also gotten “real” bread cubes, four big bags of them, for the stuffing. No Stove Top, I sighed. Fortunately, Uncle Mike turned out to be a pretty good cook and took everything in stride. We got the turkey washed and the giblets cooked. (Granddad was horrified when I prepared to throw out the neck. No neck? “Why there’s some commin’ that’d soon have the neck as the whole dang turkey,” he said. By this time it was late, and things were moving along very slowly. Uncle Mike got the pumpkin pies in while I was peeling the hard boiled eggs to put in with the pickled beets. New eggs. New eggs that didn’t want to peel. Lots of new eggs that didn’t want to peel. Uncle Mike lent a hand and we made the most pitted and cratered plate of deviled eggs you ever saw. The pickled eggs floated in the dark beet juice looking like I had beat them with a stick. Uncle Mike said, “Tastes good, all that counts.”
Finally, just about everything was prepared. Granddad had long since nodded off at the kitchen table and was finally persuaded to go to bed. I was yawning and Uncle Mike kept saying, one more thing, and then I’ll go home for awhile and see you in the morning. The last thing on the agenda was the making of the stuffing balls. Now our family likes their stuffing done outside the turkey. We use an ice cream scoop to make balls of stuffing that are cooked in pans in the oven. The stuffing comes out crispy on the outside and the inside is moist enough to stick together but no more. Many a heated discussion has revolved around the stuffing balls and whether or not they were the desirable “bone dry” balls. Granny always got it just right. As we started to shake out the bags of bread cubes into the big mixing bowl I noticed what I thought was a piece of blue bread wrapper in the bowl. I picked it out, and then immediately spied another piece. “Uncle Mike,” I cried aghast, “these bread cubes are MOLDY.” Granddad had gotten the stuffing cubes a day or so ago and had put them on top of the refrigerator. The top of the fridge gets warm, the moisture left in the cubes provides a nice growth medium, and there you have it. We just looked at each other, knowing there was no place open (especially in those days) to buy more. Granddad only had a few slices of bread left in his loaf. So, we started picking mold off the cubes. Uncle Mike said, “penicillin won’t hurt you, right?” Now I’m thinking that that’s not the only kind of mold that can grow on bread, and some people are allergic to penicillin anyway. But, Thanksgiving dinner and no stuffing balls? There would be mutiny. So, until two A.M. I picked and pored over the bread cubes. Finally we made the stuffing balls, ready to pop in the oven come morning. We stored them in the fridge to retard further growth. Uncle Mike left for home and a few hours sleep and I poured myself a hefty Scotch, shed a few tears in the dishwater as I cleaned up, and started getting out the “good” dishes, serving spoons, extra silverware, and coffee cups.
Thanksgiving day dawned. I know it dawned because I saw it. I had gotten as far as putting on my pajamas after Uncle Mike left, but that was as close to beddy-bye as I got. As I watched the sun come up into a clear sky that promised a crisp perfect day I gave thanks that I was blessed with such a large loving family. I also prayed that no one would get sick from the meal, that I would manage to be awake for over 24 hours without becoming a demented shrew, and that Granny would forgive me my many trespasses in the preparation of the family meal.
My mom, dad, husband and son were the first to arrive, followed quickly by pretty much the world. Aunts, Uncles, cousins, second cousins, neighbors, friends, all were welcomed. Everywhere I looked I saw mouths filled with food. The kids were running around the table snatching an olive or pickle here, a cookie or some chips there. And then, it was the moment of truth. The turkey came out of the oven at the right moment and was done to perfection. The mashed potatoes I had delegated to mom with a certain amount of desperation. I had peeled them, I had cooked cooked them, and then she did all sorts of mysterious things with warm milk and butter and came up with smooth mounds of creamy goodness. I made Uncle Mike take the stuffing balls from the oven and pass them around to the ohhs and ahhs of anticipated satisfaction. The balls were lightly browned, pleasing to the eye. They smelled heavenly and I saw that most people took at least two. My dad took the first bite as I bit my tongue and he pronounced, “Bone dry.” The highest compliment. I felt my face turn as red as the pickled beets and I choked back the laughter that was holding hands with the urge to tell on myself. Mom patted my shoulder, “She’s shy.” I felt my face grow redder and added to myself, “and possibly a murderer.” I coughed and mom said, “I hope you’re not coming down with something.” Uncle Mike passed me a stuffing ball. “Here, fix you right up.” (Brother John here… ah yes… and I’m sure he said it with a twinkle in his eye… So much humor and irony expressed with so few words!)
I watched closely for the remainder of the day but no one’s throat swelled up forcing me to do an emergency tracheotomy with the pen Uncle Dave had given me that said, “From the desk of Dave Reed.” One of my second cousins DID throw up but I think that was due more to the entire box of chocolate covered cherries she had eated when no one was watching. By mid afternoon Granddad had run out of chairs and sofa’s for uncle’s to sleep on. Uncle Mike was stretched out on the lining room floor in front of the football game on TV. The snores were so loud and varied that we women giggled from the kitchen as we gossiped and washed dishes. There were no left over stuffing balls. My mom hugged me and said , “Granny would be proud of you.”
News from Lansdowne
By Brother John
Ah yes, now… now I’m starting to feel a tiny bit of holiday spirit! Lansdowne recently received her first snow of the season! It’s at times like this that I really enjoy having a huge picture window overlooking my front yard. I can stand there for long periods of time, watching the birds feeding, the squirrels playing, rabbits hopping around… it’s a magical winter wonderland! Kathy and I often call this view, “The Nature Channel”. (Perhaps we watch too much TV). 
But our kitties enjoy it even more! (When they can keep their sleepy eyes open that is). To them, our picture window is way better than plain old TV! Pictured to the right is the “Cat Chair”.
Every cat we’ve ever served has loved that chair! I must admit that I too enjoy sitting on it at night to do a little reading. Sarah Jane wraps her body around my neck and purrs and purrs. The warmth of her body and the vibration from her purring is one of the best natural massages to be found!
Sister Eydie mentioned that Kathy and I had been in the hospital. Kathy has Muscular Dystrophy and had quite suddenly developed difficulty breathing. It was so sudden, in fact, that we actually became trapped in our own house! We have a machine that assists Kathy’s breathing at night, allowing her to breathe on her own during the day. But suddenly she was actually using that machine for total life support. Fortunately, I provided our home with a powerful generator capable of running the entire house should we lose power from the local grid. So we were fairly safe in our house, and we had some backup to her breathing equipment which made us safer still. As a programmer, I have the ability to work from home, and we found ourselves unable to leave the safety of our home.
It took quite a bit of ingenuity on our part to try to do something about our dilemma, but I eventually worked out a plan with the private Ambulance company (STAT Medical Transport). We managed to get Kathy into the Emergency Department at our “favorite” hospital, The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). Nice hospital!!! We then moved from the Emergency Department into HUP’s Medical Intensive Care Unit (M.I.C.U.), (primarily because Kathy was considered to be on life support at that time).
It was in the M.I.C.U. that we discovered Kathy had about nine pounds of fluid pressing on her lungs which make it impossible for her to breathe on her own without mechanical assistance. The fluid was being caused by a defect in her heart known as Diastolic Dysfunction. We managed to get the extra fluid out of Kathy during our stay in the M.I.C.U., but we also learned another thing.
During the night, each and every night, Kathy’s blood pressure would suddenly drop out from under her. It would become so dangerously low, that it set off alarms on the monitoring equipment attached to her. This also could have been a contributing factor to her extra fluid in that during the night, her kidney’s were not receiving proper blood flow. Limited blood meant limited oxygen. Limited oxygen meant improper functioning kidney’s and even damage to Kathy’s organs.
So we began a complicated “game” of finding the best way to prevent Kathy from building up fluid, combined with the best way to have her blood pressure under proper control during the night. Our insurance company could see that this could possibly take some time, time they didn’t want Kathy to be spending in an expensive M.I.C.U. So they shipped us both out of our favored hospital and into an unknown Long Term Care facility (L.T.A.C.).
At the L.T.A.C., our goals were three:
- Figure out the exact amount of diuretics Kathy required to assist her in keeping off the extra fluids without also causing damage to her kidneys.
- Figure out the exact amount of blood pressure medication it would take, to maintain her higher blood pressure during the day, yet wear off in time for sleep so that it wouldn’t drop critically low.
- With the fluid off, retrain Kathy’s lungs and muscles to permit her to wean herself from daytime assisted mechanical breathing devices.
We nicely accomplished the first two simply because we were almost at that point anyway by the end of our stay at the M.I.C.U. Our hope was that the L.T.A.C. would have intelligent techniques to teach Kathy how to wean herself from what had become total life support. We were sorely disappointed. I won’t go into the details of what Kathy endured at the L.T.A.C. other then to say she wouldn’t be with us today had I not been constantly by her side.
Bottom line was I got her out of there with great haste.
We got Kathy a portable non-invasive ventilator. My dad rigged up an attachment that holds a mouth piece near Kathy’s mouth. When she wants air, she causes her chair to recline (in a forward direction) until the mouth piece enters her mouth. She takes in as much air as she needs. Then she reclines the chair away from the mouth piece and breathes on her own. Using this technique, she is spending less and less time seeking the assisted breaths, and is doing more of the work on her own.
I’m happy to report that she continues to breathe on her own more and more each day. All because of the non-invasive portable vent. And we can finally get out of the house! Yay!
I’m not so happy to report another thing. Our insurance company has so far denied covering the cost of the expensive non-invasive portable vent. They have gone against the prescription and order of her physician. We have initiated what is known as a physician to physician appeal.
And I’m even unhappier to report something that just came to me via a received phone call. Evidently the physician to physician appeal was rejected by the insurance company. We will have to give back the non-invasive ventilator on Friday or Monday. Kathy’s bummed.
Since I hate ending things on a sour note, let’s just say I ended this one on a fatty one. Yes, I went to Walt’s Philly Style Cheese Steaks (the best in Delaware County!!!) and I treated myself to a heart attack on a plate! Yum! I ate the best mushroom cheese steak I’ve ever had (well… since the last time I ate at Walt’s that is 🙂 ). And they have these delicious crunchy onion Rings that are just to die for! I washed it all down with a giant fountain Coke and man… I was in heaven (or would soon be).
Walking into Walt’s is like stepping back in time. Everything is colorful and quaint and has the feel of days gone by. Much of the art is antique and classic. The service is fast and friendly and the prices are quite reasonable. You won’t go home hungry! As I sat at one of the small square tables, I found myself near several groups of friendly customers who were all having a great time. Even though I was by myself, I found myself smiling often, somehow becoming a part of the shared community. All in all, it was a great way to end out the day (and my low sodium diet).
Excitement Over My New Book!
By Eydie Wight
First I’d like to say, “Welcome home Brother John and Kathy!” I may work in a hospital but it’s the LAST place I’d want to spend 24/7 time for nearly two weeks. Especially, in Kathy’s case, being poked with needles, tied to monitors, and a being a guinea pig to the whims of residents who HOPE this medicine or this test will fix the problem that they HOPE they have figured out. Medicine is not an exact science but it is an exasperating one! And, in Brother John’s case, days of sleeping in a chair, not being provided with a place to shower, having to eat cafeteria food and Kathy’s leftovers, and making sure that doctors realize they have to wash their hands just like inferior people all can make you just want to curl up and have a Twinkie. Brother John will have to expound on their adventures in ICU land.
On Thursday I officially turned my book of poetry over to the printers! I am obnoxiously excited and beg forgiveness for shameless self promotion but this has been my dream for so long. Number one on the old bucket list! I had been working pretty hard the last several weeks to get everything in the correct form. I’m not very computer literate and the pictures I was trying to place kept jumping all over the screen, growing larger and smaller at whim, knocking my text right off the page, or disappearing entirely. Last Saturday was a cold, drizzly day so I worked steadily on the book, progressing from page 17 to page 65, typing in poems I only had in hard copy, searching for elusive photos I KNEW we had somewhere in the big Rubbermaid vat of photos, picture CDs, and negatives, and writing the “thank-you”page, content page, and cover pages. Then, I hit a whole slew of poems that needed to be typed into the format and I was so tired. I was whining to Sammy and he came up with the idea that they could be copied from a poetry site I belong to. And then he somehow hit the “X” button. Now, despite what I have been told over and over again, I hadn’t saved any of my day’s work. Yup, back to page 17. I stomped around the house cursing, I slammed the refrigerator door and kitchen cupboards, I finally grabbed the keys and ran out into the rain. I drove to the top of the ridge and sat in the car and pounded the steering wheel and cursed some more and wailed and boohooed. Then I drove back home, made a pot of strong coffee, and re-entered everything. By 4:30 AM the darn book was done except for proofreading and a little editing. Poor Sammy made me the biggest, most beautiful breakfast in the morning.
So, Thursday we drove to the printers. I had everything on disk, which I copied, including a copy for the fire safe. I had a hard copy (one in the fire safe too). The meeting went smoothly and well, even though I had to pop a couple of Mylanta and wished for a much stronger deodorant. I had a little trouble actually handing over the disk and hard copy. My fingers just didn’t want to let go. I did ask them to make sure they tucked in my poems before bed, didn’t let them go out and play in the rain, and if it wasn’t too much trouble, maybe sing to them just a little. Yup, they think I’m a crazy lady. So, December 1st my poems will come back to me in perfect binding form with an ISBN and a price tag. I may have to break out the Scotch. I DID break out the Apple Jack after we left the printer.
It may have been the high spirits, it may have been the Apple Jack “spirits”, but on the way home Sammy had to forcibly restrain me from using the pellet gun on the large inflatable turkey someone had decorated their yard with. I have a deep, abiding dislike of inflatable yard decorations. This dislike leaves pet peeves in the dust and borders on inflatable serial killer rage. First the inflatables started popping up at Christmas. Then I saw inflatable spiders, ghosts, and a seven foot tall Frankenstein at Halloween. Now the turkey. I don’t want to make light of anybody’s right to tacky lawn decoration, but they do make my trigger finger itch.
Speaking of alcoholic beverages, the mead is bottled! At the moment the pantry is empty of carboys. We bottled a case of small beer sized bottles and a case and a half of fifths. Young as it is, the Minsi Mountain Mead has a mellow, somewhat earthy flavor. Not too dry, not too sweet. Now it should age for at least a year. We’ll see…
Each year I try to knit several little Christmas gifts. This year I was so excited because I found a knitted slipper pattern that had belonged to our Granny. I remember those slippers. Every family member had a pair in whatever colors Granny happened to have yarn scraps enough for. They were great for skating down the hallway. I can’t remember which cousin it was (I’m thinking cousin Tim) who had the bright idea to lemon pledge the hall first and then skate down it wearing the Granny slippers but that worked GREAT! Kids, try this at home. (I mean knitting slippers but the hallway slide part is pretty good too!) The slippers are an easy pattern to make. (You can follow the pattern here: Granny’s Knitted Slippers but come back when you are done!). I made my first pair the other night after 40 years of slipper less knitting. I chose a thick brown wool and then knitted a narrow cashmere trim to line the foot opening. Unfortunately the kittens think my slippered foot is the best play toy ever invented. I may have to knit them their own pair. They keep dragging the slippers all over the house at night. Usually a soggy chewed on slipper finds its way into the bed during our day sleep.
I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is nearly here. I still haven’t finished all the fall projects (like winterizing the shed where the outside cats sleep and sorting through the flower seeds I harvested.) I do have the heater running in the cat shed and the old comforters washed and set out on the shelves in there. Big Fat Sherman refuses to leave the shed in the winter so he has a litter box even though the whole world could be his litter box. I have neurotic cats.
I remember one Thanksgiving when my second husband Greg was alive. He was quite a good hunter and had shot a fine big turkey with the shot gun. I skinned it, cooked it with all the trimmings (mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, corn, pumpkin pie) and made myself a nice lunch to take to work. Greg and Roger had gone to mom and dad’s for Thanksgiving and stopped by afterward to see me at work and brought ANOTHER whole plate of food! I had been working with one of the hospital residents who was from Russia and had never had a “true American Thanksgiving” I had spoken of the food in glowing terms during the shift and decided, since I now had two dinners, to share the one I had brought with him. I heated everything up and eagerly awaited his opinion. Well, it seemed that I hadn’t gotten all the shot out of the turkey and the resident’s first experience of an American Thanksgiving resulted in a broken tooth and a first visit to an American dentist. Also, I had over microwaved the mashed potatoes and he had to chisel his way through them. The stuffing like wise was “bone dry” and as he struggled politely through it I thought I was going to have to give him his first American Heimlich maneuver.
We had a little bit of a snow shower as Sammy was driving us to work last night. Combined with my double header of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “The Wizzard of Oz” that I watched before coming into work, I’d have to say I’m getting into the holiday spirit. There’s nothing like holiday movies, a nice fire in the wood stove and (you guessed it) my pajamas to make me a happy girl. Add a little snow falling outside, put a cup of hot tea on the coffeetable and some Granny slippers knitting in my hands and I’m a very happy girl.
Announcement!
By Sammy Wight
I was so pleased this past Thursday when we drove into the “Burg” of “Harris” for a long awaited special event; the day had finally arrived after two years of very laborious work, when my wife Eydie had completed her first book of poetry entitled: “SEPTEMBER BUTTERFLY“.
The printer was excited to be working with her to ensure that this book would be perfectly bound and presented with a cover that everyone would be proud to own a copy. They told us that the book would be ready to pick up by December 3rd this year, so we became even more excited! That means when our Perry County Arts Council has it to display among all the other artistic contributions from our area, that we can proudly offer it to her fans and future fans! I have also heard that 2 other local writers are planning a “book signing” party at the arts council in Newport, so, it should be a very uplifting time for Eydie and her family and friends this year.
Eydie has also spoken with a representative from the “Borders” media store about hosting a book signing there, and from all first glances, it appears that we can schedule that also. I am so proud of her for her work on this book, and the future contributions that will come from her arsenal of stories waiting to be completed.
Eydie has a wonderful story that she has written called, “The Christmas Bear“, that we hope to have ready by next Christmas. It will have some detailed illustrations that are contributions from one of her artist friends. Eydie’s time has finally arrived that she can complete some of these long awaited projects and share them with her fans. Believe me, her dreams each night, as told to me every morning, are just as vivid and spectacular as her poems and stories. I guess the next thing is for us to get our “Screenplay” written from a dream i had back in the mid 70’s that has never eluded me and is begging to be written and made into a very powerful film. I know Eydie is chompin’ at the bit to write a story to the website and offer her interpretation of things.
I sent brother John many photos from our Fall Driving adventures, and from our bottling of the wine and mead recently. By the way……….the Mead tastes wonderful! Wait til you see the photos!
(Brother John here. Well… why wait? Feel free to click on each image below to see it at full size!)
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Well, bye for now, and hope to hear back from our readers!
Sammy
The Weekend (Part #1)
By Eydie Wight
It’s been awhile since I sat down to ramble (why does that feel like I should be saying, “Forgive me Blog Master, it’s been a over a week since my last blog session…”
Absolution
“The Adventures of Eydie and Sammy Wight”,
through sweat, labor, and eye for detail,
has reconciled all things blog worthy unto Himself,
and sends you forgiveness for posts delayed.
He forgives your acts of procrastination,
and through HTML and supreme coding, applies his technicality.
In the name of future posts joyfully awaited,
You are now absolved from guilt and shame.
In the name of Blog Masters who seek timely content.
Amen.
So many things, as always, have been going on. This time of year is when we “put the property to bed” for the dormant season, prepare to crank up the wood stove, and, in my case, take the time for the luxury of fall leaf rides.
Our last weekend off had been, until Sunday, very busy. Pleasantly so. Friday afternoon I had finally found time to take a long proposed hike with my friend Gary. I arrived at his house about 2:00 and we set off. Gary lives on the edge (literally) of a creek that comes down from the mountain. His bridge over the creek washed away in a flash flood that came a couple years back. His new bridge is actually the frame of a mobile home that was dropped over the creek. He has the creek edge lined with water shaped stones and the bordering trees make music with bamboo wind chimes he makes. It’s a lovely spot.
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We set off for our hike, across the creek, and started up an old logging road. We went up, and up, and then a fairly flat switchback, and then more up, another switchback, up again, switchback, up. I had to stop several times, making no pretense of stopping to look at the beautiful fall scenery (although I DID look at the beautiful fall scenery as I was panting and sweating) and then finally the road started to level out at the top. I was content with the conversation we were having about religion, spiritualism, and nature, and the different plants Gary was pointing out. Imagine my delight when the top of the mountain opened up to a large, grassy, cleared space that offered a vista of the Juniata River way down below. It was incredible. We sat on a couple of benches the owner had strategically placed and took in the view. Two hawks circled below us. A train, looking for all the world like a child’s toy, made its way down the tracks. We were above the world of the Friday rush hour traffic we could see on Rte. 322. We sat there, took some pictures of the view and of a flowering plant neither of us could identify, and started to make our way back down to civilization. I noticed a tree that I thought at first was a hickory, but when I examined one of the nuts I found an easily opened shell containing a multitude of whispery seeds. We took a picture and Gary later identified it as a “nuisance” import, a Royal Paulownia. Interesting.
Saturday we finally finished getting the wood stove ready for it’s first fire. We haven’t had that first fire yet, but we’re ready. I took the stove pipe off, scraped the creosote from the inside, and blacked the pipe with a rub on, buff off stove polish. Last year our insurance company had sent out a survey with the very casual question, among fifty others, of did we have a wood stove, fireplace, or pellet stove. I answered yes. It was TWO DAYS later that I got a call saying a representative had to come to our house to assess the safety of our stove. I managed to put that little visit off for about a month and then was informed that my homeowners insurance might be canceled without the visit.
Hardball. The little gal arrived an hour earlier than she had arranged and I was (you guessed it) running around in my pajamas cleaning so that she would know I was conscientious and diligent. She had a little clipboard and she informed me that my stove was not allowed to set atop a potentially unstable platform of bricks, that it must have a firewall drywall behind it for a certain number of feet, and was I aware that I had no smoke alarm in place. Now, the smoke alarm point I agreed with and I was pleased to show her my TWO battery-less smoke alarms that were sitting on the work table. The stove had sat where it was for fifteen years and had never jumped from the bricks. Sigh. Establishment doing it’s job for the betterment and safety of us all. Last year, after her visit, we had bought the firewall. We just hadn’t installed it. So, Sammy did that, and went to the local hardware store and bought several wide flat concrete blocks to set the stove on. I started blacking the stove, but then son Roger came home and I sent him up on the roof with the chimney sweep (the device, not a soot blackened small boy we keep on hand) to clean out the chimney. I’m not so good with heights, so I stood on the lower rungs of the ladder so that the strength of my prayers that he wouldn’t slip and fall off the roof would wash over him in waves of maternal concern. At one point the chimney cap began to slide down the roof and even though my eyes were seeing a chimney cap, my heart was seeing a blond young man in shorts, tennis shoes, and a Zeiderelli’s pizza shirt skittering past me to certain death.
Let me just interject here that if Roger had eaten a salad before going up on the roof, I would have had no worries. We used to call our mother “the salad pusher”. She used to worry. A lot. She still does but modern medicine is a wonderful thing and she is more laid back in her worrying these days. She used to worry herself through a series of events that would always end in a death scenario. For example: “If you aren’t careful reading that book you’ll get a paper cut and then you’ll go out to play in the dirt and it will get infected and then you’ll become septic and you’ll die.” But, salad was the ultimate health food. Brother John and I can both remember not even wanting a salad, saying no when it was offered, and then somehow finding ourselves with a huge half eaten salad in front of us, fork in hand, and NO RECOLLECTION OF THE EVENT. To this day I respect the supernatural healing powers of my mother’s salad.
I also had Rog help me empty the large ash can from last year. We should have emptied it after the last fire last year when I should have also cleaned out the stove. (Conscientious and diligent, remember?) During the winter we empty the ash can onto the shady part of the driveway to help melt the ice that always accumulates there. Now we were ready for fire. Warm, toasty fire. Unfortunately the temperature was a balmy seventy degrees that weekend.
I’m fairly sure I was a dog in a past life. (I’m also fairly sure I was a Native American medicine woman, the housekeeper of a large Scottish manor, the girlfriend of a traveling troubadour in the Middle Ages, and a fiddle playing Irish immigrant stonemason.) Stories for another time. (Brother John here… Most of my past lives ended in tragedy, but I know I was a majestic flying Eagle on at least one of them). But, as I said, I was a dog. Or maybe several dogs. I love to ride in the car. (And roll on the ground and have my head petted and probably some other stuff that dogs do that we don’t need to go into here.) One of my favorite things to do is to have a day when Sammy and I can take the cameras, a couple beers for me and a Coke or ginger ale for Sammy, some homemade Chex mix or pistachios, some tootsie roll pops, and my topographical map of Pennsylvania, and go for a ride. Often we go for a short ride in the evening and chase the sunset, or wind our way around back roads on the way to or from town for errands, but every once in a while we take an entire day and travel someplace we’ve never been before. I’m convinced that we could travel Pennsylvania roads for the rest of our lives and never see them all. We don’t have a destination other than “someplace we’ve never been before” or, in the case of our last Sunday off, “north and up”. The map is for when when it begins to get dark and we have no idea where we are but would like to head home. As of last Sunday, our local leaves had still not turned their glorious fall colors. Actually we may not have a glorious fall here. The weather has been unseasonably warm and dry and a great many leaves seem to be skipping color and going straight to brown.
Our goal was to head north where the weather has been a bit colder, and head up into some of the higher ridges. One nifty feature of our car is that it has a compass. We started out on back roads, trying to keep to a generally northern direction. Most of the roads we had been on, but we enjoyed seeing big red barns full of hay, soybean fields sun dried and ready for harvesting, Amish traveling in buggies on their way to church. We took an inviting side road that bordered Penns Creek and it was as if we had traveled back in time. Old stone houses with hand pumps still in the front yard, tobacco barns weathered to pink, a young horse rolling in the pasture to scratch his back, and a young Amish boy with a fishing pole leaning over a bridge. Then, as the afternoon started to wane, we reached the foothills of the Bald Eagle State forest. The leaves were so bright Sammy said it looked as if they were glowing. Reds, oranges, yellows. The yellows had outdone the others this year in my opinion. We traveled some one lane roads and some dirt roads and each ridge line was more spectacular. At one point we stopped at the intersection of a dirt road and a road that ran along the base of a huge ridge. I said, “GOD’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.” We started home, now heading south and west to follow the sun. I love “ridge skipping” as we drive. Pennsylvania has long ridges in many places instead of individual mountains. The only way to cross most of these is at “passes” which are natural breaks or dips in the ridge line. Early settlers and Native Americans would have crossed the ridges in the same way, knowing a “pass” would save time and energy. I’ll look along the ridge as we drive and say, “Head west toward that break, probably a road goes through there.” And it usually does.
Cutting Firewood To Make Nut Brittle
By Eydie Wight
Sammy and I had had great aspirations of filling our wood shed to overflowing when we were off on our “working vacation” a few weeks ago. And we did bring in several loads. Then, the rains came. Not for 40 days and 40 nights, although the people of Texas probably felt that way, but enough to make our access into the fields a mucky nightmare. So, this past Thursday we sallied forth (well, Sally didn’t go, only room for two in the truck plus Jasper) to our unidentified neighbor’s farm to cut a load of firewood. It was actually chilly, intermittently overcast and with a stiff breeze blowing. Enough so that I had an old gray sweat jacket on and came home with pink ears and a somewhat windburned face. Our neighbor had cut several trees down that grew along the access drive to his 100 acre property. He had done this so that in the winter the sun would be able to reach the road surface and melt some of the ice. I’d been on that road a few years ago when it was possible to skate (or in my case slide on my backside) down the length of it to where the truck was parked at the bottom, unable to make it any further up the drive.
The first tree Sammy began cutting was a nice sized walnut. It was big enough to provide that day’s truckload of wood. And, it was covered with walnuts. I’ve already mentioned that I have this quirky survivalist mentality. To me, a tree full of easily accessible walnuts means a source of protein for the winter should society fail completely and Sammy and I be unable to keep us in squirrel and deer meat in the style to which we are accustomed. The walnuts also mean my favorite nuts for Dad’s Microwave Nut Brittle. The first year he made this stuff (two or three years ago) I thought it couldn’t possibly be any good. Wrong. I put that first piece in my mouth and it had just the right crunch of nutty goodness. Let it stay in your mouth a bit and the whole mess melts into a sweet sticky glue that renders you incapable of separating your jaws for several minutes. (Great for kids if you know what I mean!) Dad has since doctored the recipe to include coconut, confectioners sugar, brown sugar, and peanut butter. I’m going to experiment with (of course) honey this year. I have to laugh at this mental image I have of Dad bringing out the container of nut brittle at Christmas time. It’s like the pied piper if you can picture a gaggle of (mostly) overweight middle aged adults all trying to get their sticky hands into the smallish plastic container at the same time and fighting over the “big” pieces.
My job, when we are cutting wood, is all the ancillary duties. Sammy cuts, I load the truck. I also pull aside and stack the ends of branches too small to cut, hold pieces still as Sammy cuts them, pull out fallen (and usually brier covered) limbs and dead fall, and play with Jasper in between. (Brother John here… I once worked for the tree trimming company Asplundh and, except for Jasper…, these were also my daily duties. The person doing this type of duty was called a “Brushy” back in the day). Well, to add to my list, there were walnuts to collect because, (chant with me Brother John, and Sylvia, you’ve been around enough to join in too) “NOTHING MUST BE WASTED!” I had no idea how many walnuts a tree has when the entire tree has been cut and all the nuts can be harvested. And, not knowing the nuts would be there, I hadn’t brought a bag along. Imagine. I was unprepared! After a minute or so of abject humiliation, and after shortly abandoning the thought of filling my jacket pockets 20 or so nuts at a time, I graciously volunteered Sammy’s jacket (which he wasn’t wearing) and started loading it up with nuts. Each jacket load I would then dump in the front foot well of the passenger’s seat of the truck. Why I didn’t just throw them in the back I don’t know. Maybe nuts and wood, like oil and water, don’t mix in my head. Anyway, by the time the truck was loaded with wood I had enough walnuts to reach up to the seat. I sat in the seat, my feet resting on a mountain of walnuts, and realized that with the back full, Jasper had to ride up front. On my lap. Seventy-five pounds and I hadn’t peed before we took off for home (on some of the finest washboard dirt roads ever traveled).
When we pulled up the driveway I had Sammy stop at the top and let me offload first Jasper (who had enjoyed the trip home immensely, with “Mom” serving as a captive petting machine) and then the walnuts. Drive around the county this time of year and you’ll see many a driveway full of walnuts. The walnut comes off the tree with a thick green hull. This turns brown as it dries. This hull has long been a natural source of brown dye. The first time I hulled walnuts I used my bare hands. I had dyed brown hands for nearly a week. Now I do what everyone else does and throw them in the drive way to be driven over until all the soft hull has been worn off. These hard walnut shells are so tough that even driving over them doesn’t crack them. They scoff at traditional nutcrackers. (Brother John here… I always wondered why people did that! I always figured the nuts would get smashed into little bits, making that a very stupid thing to do. Now I get it Sis!). I place a few nuts in a rag and then take the hammer to them. Dad uses a vise, I think. I’m open to a better suggestion. But, it is one of the late autumn/winter pastimes when the weather is nasty. Sit around the wood stove, crack some walnuts while Sammy cleans a rifle or plays a little sweet guitar. A truly rustic picture. Completed by the image that I am, of course, in my pajamas.
Tomorrow we are going to get a few more loads of wood and meet up with our unidentified neighbor who will be cutting down a couple of the larger trees that still shade the drive. I’m hoping that after the work is done he’ll suggest a walk. He has lived in the area all his life and has shared some amazing discoveries with us. I have been along when a wild honeybee tree was harvested (the bees had swarmed and were given a new hive to populate). I’ve seen heavily fossilized shale covered with the imprints of shells and algae. I went along arrowhead hunting and collected blanks and pieces of arrowheads along with one that was complete. One day we walked into a field of wildflowers. He clapped his hands and suddenly the air was full of fluttering Monarch butterflies that landed on our arms, head, and clothes.
I always keep my “other” eyes open when I am out in the woods and fields. My imagination fills them with fairy worlds that live just beside the one we know. I often feel something else, an energy, or presence, or spirit. These days I call it God. I call it all God. It could be called many things. But I know, on those fall days when I lie in a cut field and feel the earth cool beneath my shoulder blades and the sun is warm on my face and a red tailed hawk soars searching in the blue sky above me, I know that there IS more. It gathers beneath me, goes through me, and connects with things unseen. One of my poems, “Fair Paladin” came from the magic the special places hold, or at least that I imagine they hold.
I have a bucket list. For those that didn’t see the movie, it’s stuff you want to do or accomplish before you kick the bucket. I have three things on my list so far. I plan to live to be a hundred and three so I’m hoping to add a few more.
- I want to get my book of poetry published. It’s so close. I want to see it on the Arts Council shelf and on the local artist shelf at Borders. I want my mom to be there when I do my first book signing, hopefully at the Arts Council where I’ll provide homemade blackberry, elderberry, and mead wines for my friends (and maybe a stranger or two) to drink. I want someone to pay real money for a copy of my book.
- I want to walk through an airport carrying my fiddle or mandolin to take it on a plane to somewhere and know that I actually play the darn thing well enough to deserve to carry it through an airport.
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I want to take a hike on the falls trails at Ricketts Glen State Park on a perfect day in the company of someone who sees and feels and loves the magic I talked about earlier as much as I do (Sammy and Brother John would do nicely.) We’ll find goblins under tree stumps, fairy houses, alligator jawed dragons, ice eggs, and walking tree Ents.
- Eydie, Brother John here. I have no imagination it would seem. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out which “other eye” vision each of these represent. Hover the mouse and you’ll see one idea, and click on the item to see that and other ideas. It would help greatly if you would define which is which. And maybe throw in a bit of real description as well. Ricketts Glen State Park looks very nice!
But for now, Sammy is out sharpening the chainsaw on the living room coffee table and me (in my pajamas), a novel (The Gargoyle), and the big brown chair have developed this undeniable attraction for each other. Throw the blue gingham angel quilt into the mix and I won’t be long for this world… Zzzzz.
The Adventures of Eydie and Sammy Wight 