These Fevered Days, Ten Pivotal Moments In the Making Of Emily Dickinson, by Martha Ackmann

 Hi Dear Folk,

I have been hunkered down with this book for far too long, and it now, absolutely must go back to the library, no more renewals.   I wanted to do a review and this is the stick I needed.

Emily Dickinson had a fertile mind but lived a life confined to house and locality, at this present time it seemed absolutely the correct read, as my mind is busy, but confined to home and hardly venturing forth beyond our little area on the map.  Can one in such circumstances live a full life?  And I say yes, Emily Dickinson did.  Life other than an external situation.

To some it seemed she lived an ordinary life, 

... resided in one town, went to school, never held a job, lived in her parents home, remained single and died at fifty-five.  She loved passionately, wrote scores of letters, anguished over abandonment and fought with God, found ecstasy with nature, embraced seclusion, was ambivalent towards publication, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer.  Only after her death, when her sister opened the drawer, did the world begin to realize, that the life of Emily Dickinson was far from commonplace.

Author's Note.  

Martha Ackmann taught a Tuesday afternoon class in the Dickinson homestead.  I have often thought of that class and how it would be to sit in her very home discussing Emily's poetry.  There is such an ambience of setting to learning, hence my heart goes out to those students sitting at a computer doing remote learning.  Here it is a snowy day in January and my mind goes back to my days at Hadham Hall, sitting in a tower turret room, on a snowy day, with leaded glass windows, looking out over the snow covered cedar trees, taking a history class.

Emily was born December 10th, 1830 in Amherst, MA to Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson, schooled at Amherst Academy and Mt Holyoke Female Seminary, South Hadley, MA.  Published posthumously in 1890.  She did not keep a diary, but frequently corresponded with friends and of course wrote poetry.  She could be reclusive, and reserved the right to hold lengthy lively conversations with you if she so chose, or not to.  Of the town she lived in:

One professor's wife Deborah Fiske, put her finger on two qualities that made Amherst unique.  Amherst, Massachusetts, she said, was filled with "a very spending evening sort of folks" and its best women were "free from the silly very birdish airs."

Emily held dear the group she called her Circle of Five:  smart and lively girls ...

With friends Emily even produced a literary journal they named "Forrest Leaves"  which reminds me so much of the March sisters, in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  The surrounding of oneself with learning and learned people, the founding of schools for just such a purpose, including girls.

Emily came from an academic family who believed in the value of education and had the means to pursue it.  A year at Mount Holyoke cost $60.  Her maternal grandfather, Joel Norcross, was one of the founders of Monson Academy and at the same time Samuel Fowler Dickinson was getting Amherst Academy off the ground.  Emily's mother and Aunt Lavinia had attended Monson, and later Mr. Herrick's School for girls, in New Haven, Connecticut, where young women regularly attended lectures at Yale.  Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke, from which many pupils went on to be missionaries and teachers.  Religion was most important at these institutions.

President Hitchcock once remarked that religion was at the very core of Amherst College.  Area newspapers shared his point of view.  In reporting on commencements at Amherst and Mount Holyoke, newspapers listed students who read prizewinning essays as well as the number of seniors who had professed their faith.

The Dickinsons were Congregationalists the largest faith in Massachusetts at that time.  Emily was part of the "no hopers."  As such she was still allowed to attend Mount Holyoke, Mary Lyon was a liberal thinker.

Miss Lyons rooms were behind the double parlors and across from the Seminary Hall.  Emily could remember the many words Mary Lyon had spoken there.  "Don't be a hypocrite," she had told them, "be honest." Distinguish between what is very difficult and what is impossible.  Do what is difficult."  "The difference between great and small minds is the power of classifications.  Little minds dwell on particular things.  Great minds take in a great deal."

Fidelia Fiske had been a teacher at Mount Holyoke, her missionary letters from Persia were often read to the girls.

... and more letters in Seminary Hall from the intrepid Fidelia Fiske.  Emily knew she would never set out for Persia or teach Choctaw Indians. ... she would bore into her own interior, confronting an unknown as wild and uncertain as any new world missionary had seen.

Valentine's Day was celebrated with a Festival in town where ice cream was served and Valentine's were penned.  Esther Howland an enterprising young women who had attended Mount Holyoke; mass produced Valentines from her father's stationery store in Worcester, she hoped her brother could find $200 worth of orders, he came back with $5,000.  Emily loved to write Valentines and spar with them.

"A little condescending, & sarcastic, your Valentine to me," she teased a male cousin, "a little like an Eagle, stooping to salute a Wren, & I concluded once, I dared not answer it, for it seemed to me not quite becoming; in a bird so lowly as myself; to claim admittance Eyrie, & conversation with its King."

Emily did not like housework, it took time away from her beloved writing.  This was especially so when Vinnie her younger sister was away at school.

"Vinnie away," she had written, "and my two hands but 'two' - not four, or five as they ought to be - and so many wants - and me so very handy - and my time of so little account - and my writing so very needless."  Emily said that if she took so much as "an inch of time" to write, she would be castigated - not so much by her family as the world and her own guilt.  Housekeeping, to her, was a way to cultivate a woman's submission and steal time, and she wanted nothing of it.  "God keep me from what they call households," she said.

There are so few literary works written by working class people before the fifties, to find any is a rare and special gem, they just didn't have the time to do so.  One can say that has changed for the better.  Even Emily came from what can be considered a more well to do background, begrudged the time spent on, as she said "households."  Neither was she a fan of small talk and as she got older her solitude became more pronounced, fewer people were let into her secluded world,

That winter when the Sewing Society began its meetings, Emily declined to attend.  She knew "the public"  would be puzzled by her absence and make her the object of prayers, and she let loose with a torrent of sarcasm.  "Now all the poor will be helped - the cold warmed - the warm cooled - the hungry fed - the thirsty attended to - the raged clothed - and this suffering - tumbled down world will be helped to its feet again," she wrote her friend Jane.  

In reference to her hand sewn little books which came to be know as 'Facicles.'

Sometime Emily would carefully write a poem and fold the sheet as if for mailing, but never send it.  She dated practically nothing and almost never included titles.  One poem was as short as two lines and others extended to five or six stanzas.  There were countless images from nature - robins, gentians, owls, snowflakes - and verses that echoed the religious cadences of her youth:  

In the name of the Bee - 

And of the Butterfly - 

And of the Breeze - Amen!

Several poems described an aching void that she refused to identify.  

Emily and the people of Amherst were heart broken by the loss of Amherst men in the Civil War, thirty-one men from the town died for the Union cause.  

She delighted in standing apart, and sneered at puffed-up somebodies who forever croaked about themselves.  "I'm Nobody!  Who are you?"  she wrote in one verse.  "Are you - Nobody - too?"

Yet it was unclear - as it always would be - if Emily were speaking for herself in her poems or inventing a persona with vastly different opinions.  Amherst residents would have been surprised if they had discovered the shy, reclusive daughter of Edward Dickinson was capable of writing such bold lines as  

I'm "wife" - I've finished that - 

That other state - 

I'm Czar - I'm woman now - 

She rarely showed such audacity in person.

Thomas Higginson was the co-editor of the first two collections of Emily's poems.  She corresponded with him for eight years before finally agreeing to meet with him.

First he heard her.  From upstairs on the second floor came the sound of quick, light steps - footsteps that sounded like a child's.  Then she entered.  A plain woman with two bands of reddish hair, not particularly good-looking, wearing a white pique dress.  The white stunned him.  It was exquisite.  A blue worsted shawl covered her shoulders.  She seemed fearful to him, breathless at first, and extended her hand, not to shake - but to offer something.  "These are my introduction,"  she said, handing him tow day-lilies.

Jostling along on the tracks, miles from Amherst, ... She was not capable of casual conversation, he told Mary, (his wife) or of friendship.  It took every ounce of his being to meet her level of intellectual intensity... "Without touching her, she drew from me.  I am glad not to live near her."

Helen Hunt one of her closest friends, who lived in Colorado and had just married for the second time.

Helen was pleased to hear from Emily, but baffled by the second verse.  What did "dooms" mean and how did the idea of calamity connect to her wedding?

When fleeing from the Spring

The Spring avenging fling

To Dooms of Balm - 

Emily died May 15th, 1886.

That Wednesday afternoon, May 19th, the funeral service took place in the Dickinson's family library.  "To Amherst to the funeral of that rare & strange creature Emily Dickinson."  Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote in his diary.

I never studied Emily Dickinson, or her poetry, but in my year of coming to grips with who is an American? this is just a little cog in rounding out my thoughts.  I feel as did Helen Hunt, much of her poetry baffles me, but my favorite Emily Dickinson poem is this, I'm Nobody!  Who are you?  A question we all should be asking in this present time.

I prefer the first published version.

I'm Nobody!  Who are you?

(First Published Version)

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

I did enjoy this book and would recommend it.

Keep safe,

Christine

The Story of English by Robert MacNeil

 Hi Dear Folk,

The Story of English, narrated by Robert MacNeil.  I first saw this on PBS in the eighties and was so interested in the history that I bought the book and still have it.  

I've been going through my library revisiting many of my books, with the thought of reading them again and maybe turning them into altered books, or just keeping them. When I came across my Story of English, and thought let me see if that is on You Tube.

If you've never seen this series and love English, where it came from, what it is, and what it is becoming you will enjoy this series.  I will say that looking back to the eighties, I had just got married, forty years ago does look old fashioned, but the history of the English Language does not change.  If anything it is more entrenched now forty years later, than ever.

If you like history, geography and people, why we are, who we are, and why do we speak the way we do, you will want to watch this.

I grew up within fifty miles of London, to the North. Living within the triangle of London, Cambridge and Oxford; which was to form the centre of standard English.  I would say that my English was close to BBC English, because I grew up in the era that how you spoke was most important.  My mother worked on it closely, although I never spoke with the accent of either my father, London or my mother country Essex.

At the age of eleven I got my first tape recorder, and with my friend Jill, we would make up plays and record them.  I wish I still had those tapes, I could listen to how I sounded back then in the sixties.  Of course I have lived the better part of my life now in the USA, Philadelphia area and it is reflected in my speech and intonation of speaking.  I no longer speak the same as my eleven year old self and that is what spoken language is about, how it morphs and changes.  

My son had my accent until he went to school.  But even then I worked on his speech, and I would say he speaks well.  As a child his spelling and writing could be improved on, but he had an extensive vocabulary, because we love words in our family.  They are the subject of conversation.

We speak the way we do because where we grew up, how our parents wanted us to speak, the era we grew up in.  Dialects or varieties of speech are not wrong, in fact there are reasons you speak and I speak, the way you do and I do, and that is what this series is about.  

Enjoy, Christine

My Mum's Old Cookbook, Farmhouse Fare, 1963 Edition.

Hi Dear Folk,

Another wet and windy day, although yesterday was sunny but chilly.  Mr. B. did get out to do some more painting.  It was in the fifties and you can still outdoor paint at that temperature, so we're pushing on.  It seems we're going to have a hard job matching the colour.  As I bought the paint a year ago from Sears when they were closing up their hardware store, and although it's a good outdoor paint the color is much more of a yellow cream than I wanted, but I'm not going to waste it.  I honestly think it has yellowed over time, the colour of my shed which I painted last year with this paint looks just the right colour cream.  Of course he may not have mixed the second two cans the same as the first, as he did have to play around with them a bit.  I just think all the upper floor will be a slightly different colour, but you know I'm not going to worry.  

I wanted to share with you my mum's old Farmhouse Fare Cookbook.  You can still buy an updated version of this on Ebay or other platforms.  Of course it has a different cover.  My mum basically had two go to cookbooks.  One was a cookbook that I think came with an old gas stove and this one from 1963.  My sister BB gave it to me when I was there two years ago.  So I got this book and BB kept the other one.

This book was first published before Christmas in 1935, they are a collection of recipes collected by the Farmer's Weekly and these must have been gathered all throughout the Commonwealth.  It was very popular and grew in size as later editions were published.

I've been looking through at her marked recipes and thought I'd share her tried and true recipes with you.  Starting at her first ticked recipe.
 

 Which is:-

Onion Quiche

Line a sandwich tin with short-crust pastry.  Make a filling as follows:-

Make 3/4 pint thick white sauce, add a cupful of chopped boiled onions, 2 tablespoons of grated cheese, 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley.  Season well.

Garnish with slices of tomato and a little grated cheese.

Bake 1/2 hour in a moderate oven.  It can be made beforehand and warmed up when required.

From Mrs. Willis, Salop

I make a quiche with milk and eggs, so it's interesting that the base of this is a white sauce.

Old recipes assume that you have a certain amount of cooking knowledge, such as how to make a white sauce.  I just was reading a blogger from France who is American and he said French recipes are not set out like American recipes, many can be just one long continuous paragraph.  As many of these are.

I love it that it tells you the name of the person who contributed and where they lived.  I didn't recognize Salop but it seems that Salop is an old name for Shropshire.

Salop is an old name for Shropshire, historically used as an abbreviated form for post or telegrams, it is thought to derive from the Anglo-French "Salopesberia". It is normally replaced by the more contemporary "Shrops" although Shropshire residents are still referred to as "Salopians".

I think I'll have fun in visiting all the recipes mum made and many of which I remember eating.  I'll have to have a go at some of them and try some new ones in the book.

I hope you enjoy them too, and travel on this little journey with me.  A journey though Mum's Cookbook.  We can't do much else travel wise.

Keep safe,

Christine

Driech Day and Pandemic Life

 Hi Dear Folk,

Cup of tea and raisin and lemon scones on a driech day.  Along with mascarpone cheese, which I think tastes most like clotted cream here in the USA, unless you want to go to a specialty store and my cherry conserve.  It is so tasty and apart from having to take out all the stones is very easy to make.

Long time no see.  It's pouring with rain today and is meant to tomorrow, I think it's the remains of hurricane Zeta that hit New Orleans.  It's been a busy day already and it's only noon.  We are eight months into this pandemic and as a couple of retired people, well I was and Mr. B. lost a contract at the beginning of the year before COVID hit and then lost his second job when COVID hit and did not return because he had too much contact with the public.  So eight months of both being home and I don't know where the time goes.

We had planned a trip to Maine in September but cancelled that, so here we are.  In September we started in earnest on getting some outside work done on the house.  Painting which we have done, and contractors will be here next week to cover some of the top soffit and roof rakes.

It's been a lot of work, but I do feel some kind of accomplishment that at sixty-six years old I can still climb up a ladder, I painted a lot of our sunroom exterior, Mr.B. did the prep work, I hate prep work, sanding and cleaning.  We are working our way across the front of the house.  Weather has been good to us up until now, and it may become too cold to paint.  Still I feel we have broken the back of it.  Our summers are just so hot and humid you almost seem on hold until the cooler summer days hit in September.

Our dear Tuppy died, our cat. We had been thinking of having her put to sleep as she was almost twenty years old and had some problems, but we were working with her medication and I cooked all her food for her.  She had always been an indoor and outdoor cat, but had taken to wandering and had become afraid of nothing, so unfortunately she was killed on the road in front of our house, our neighbor found her and picked her up for us so I didn't see it, which was very kind of him.  It's very hard to make that decision with a beloved pet.  We had spoken for a while about having her put to sleep.  With our other cat Tinkerbell she had a stroke so no decision there, it was the kindest thing to do.  In hindsight with Tuppy I think we should have had her put to sleep sooner, but Mr. B. disagrees, it's a hard call.  The Boy and the Mr. buried her together, in a corner area of our back garden, near my shed, where Baggy and Tinkerbell are buried.  There will only be three cats there as I'm not getting anymore pets, as much as I love a cat around.  All my cats seem to live to an old age.  Baggy was twenty and Tinkerbell my Himalayan was at least seventeen, I got her from the SPCA as a lost adult cat.  So I'm thinking that a cat at this point could actually outlive me.  Every time I open a tin of tuna fish or go out the back door, I think she'll be waiting there, it's so funny how the brain works.

Part of our spruce up of the house, is that Mr. B.  replaced two screens on the bedroom windows above the sunporch as Tuppy used to sprint up the pine tree, not when she was older, and would claw at the screens on Rob's bedroom windows to be let in.  And then as she got older she'd spy me in my Simla/sunroom and claw on the door screen there.  Obviously while she was still around we were not going to replace them.

This is rather a dry report of my life, but as long as you can keep mobile and ones brain is too, it's good.  Our Boy moved out a few weeks ago and just the aftermath of that is a chore.  I said to Mr. B. it's a good job he moved out now or I'd be too old to do the clean up.  He had the large bedroom which was used as a kind of audio room and TV room for him and his dad, so now we're making some changes.  The couch was listed on FBM (Facebook Marketplace) for free and went out the door the next day.  We also sold his bed on FBM, that went out the door today.  So now Mr. B. has moved his leather recliner to a central position for maximum surround sound experience, and it looks like grandpa's mission control, with all the left over cushions from the couch on it.  

We plan to move our bedroom back into the big bedroom and the medium bedroom will Mr. B's TV and audio room, of course lots of painting to do in both rooms.  So this quasi lock down thing has enabled us to focus on some much needed jobs around the house.

Some of Rob's things have left the basement, but not all.  Before he came back from college I had that basement all sorted and then he came back and stuff got dumped there, certain car work was done down there and hence was invaded and has never been the same since.  So I've been working on that and I'm still not done.

A lot of stuff is being listed on FBM.  You know the funny thing is you can never tell what will sell.  So I had fifteen plastic shoe boxes stacked, I washed them, listed them for $10, heck they only sell new for about a $1.  Do you know I had way over 200 views and at least 15 people contact me within one hour to buy them.  The thing is they could buy them on Amazon for not that much more.  All the antique furniture, that we collected in the eighties era ie. Eastlake style, clawfeet tables etc., you can't hardly give that stuff away.  But MCM (Mid Century Modern)  which of course The Boy wants for his place, well you had better be pretty quick to the draw on that.  It comes around and goes around, the thing is you have to live long enough to see it happen.

This morning the lady picked up the shoe boxes, then the bed went out the door.  Then a friend in our congregation delivered boxed food, all part of the feed America program, you know to keep the farmers working and paid, which of course they should be and I never say no because every little bit helps.  The one gallon of milk I received came all the way from Johnstown, PA.  All this while following COVID guidelines, it just makes ones head spin.

So then I felt a great need to bake, so I made raison scones and added lemon zest and juice which I'd had a hankering to do.  I used my tried and true recipe from here.  I'm looking forward to a nice pot of tea and a scone this afternoon, by the stove in my Simla Room where I hang out for now.

I have a bizarre if not funny story about a clock purchased on FBM, but will leave that for another time.  The trouble is the more you get on to sell, the more you see to buy, one needs to keep blinkers on and not to become side tracked.

As I said I don't know where the time goes, busy, busy, busy, even though I hardly leave the premises.  My creative endeavors have been on the back burner for a bit, just getting all this other stuff done.  But I have set the stage with the sorting and organizing of all my yarn stash, so I'm ready to go.

Have read some good books from the library, one of which I will give special mention to, The Convert, by Stefan Hertmans, probably I should do a review on that.  He's a Flemish author and a professor at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, in Ghent.

The Convert is based on a true account, which history only gives us the bare bones of and the author fleshes that out into a wonderful story, set in France, a thousand years ago, the time of the crusades.  I will leave it there for now, but will try and write a review.  If you like history and learning history while reading a good story, then you'll really like this.

Well will close for now friends.  Hope all is well for you.

Keep safe, Christine

Everyone Should Have A Moleskine

 Hi Dear Folk,

Well I guess Blogger went and did it, now you cannot even revert back to the old interface.  First of all my labels are gone and I guess I'll have to enter them back in manually, why have they always got to try and fix what was not broken, really.   Blah! Blah! Blah!

Do you have a Moleskine? I have one, it's small, red, has a ribbon marker and a wrap around elastic, where I write down all sorts of odd things, statistics, meanings of words, crochet patterns, what makeup to buy after watching one of those You Tube videos on how to do your makeup when you're older, and so on and so forth. I thought I'd share with you a few of the random things written in my Moleskine.

Crochet Japanese Flower Pattern

The Face of Age

Job 26:14  Look!  These are just the fringes of his ways:  Only a faint whisper has been heard of him!  So who can understand his mighty thunder?

Average age of a woman in USA 78, Man 71

Road to Hani.  Waianapanapa State Park.  Black Beach

If invited to a good meal.  Do we send a thank you note saying "Dear pots and pans, spaghetti and meatballs.  No, so where does our praise and thank you go?"

King Ferry, NY.  A Wobbly Reisling is good.

Shalwar kameez, Indian tunic and trousers.  Dupatta, head scarf

It's a pity the Hun prefers fighting to fun - Noel Coward

I refuse to join a club that would have me as it's member - Grocho Marx

Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you are right - Henry Ford

Daniel 5:24  Mene, Mene, Tekel and Parsin.  May have said mene twice to show the fall of both father and son - Nabonidus and Belshazzar.

Imposter - from the Latin impose

Gutsy Gorgeous.

People are as happy as they make up their minds to be - Abraham Lincoln

Learned behavior - 

1.  Identify the thought that produces negative thinking

2.  Talk back rationally

3.  Short circuit thought

4.  Consciously replace bad thought

Miss Grief, cost $15.99 left out in the rain.  Pay the library.

Evolution - Irreducible complexity, cannot come about in a gradual manner, useless unless all in place.

PNES Psychogenic seizures.  Stress, Anxiety, trauma, depression.

NES Nonpilectic seizures.  

Progress and Poverty by Henry George

To give birth in Italian, to give to the light.  Clare alla luce.

Longly School of Music Project, BC, Canada.  1978  Kids singing, Hans Fenger, teacher, recorded his students.

Evil in the absence of empathy.

Irish Gaelic - Senility - duino le dia.  A person of God.

Lord Vestey, who's estate was just down the road from where I grew up, owned huge holdings of land in Australia.  Who knew.

Life is freedom, dying is a denial of freedom.  Vasily Grossman

Seersuckeer, from the Persian, milk and sugar

Crochet, Bonni Lass Capelet

Tour of British Museum, 2 Kings 10:31 -32 Assyrian King Shalmanezar III, 2nd panel, man bowing, Jehu son of Israel.

Mosquito yard spray

Old age like being increasingly penalized for a crime you never committed.

Herd Immunity, 60% of world 4.7 billion people out of 8 billion would need vacination.  Have only ever made 100s of millions of vaccinations, over decades of time.

Russia's economy the size of Texas.

COVID in USA has killed twice as many people as have been killed in the Korean War and all the wars that American has been in since then.

Abrunt, one whose behavior departs substantially from the norm of a group.

Regiments No 166409 N Somerset Yeoman, private Henry Reginald Sansom

The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Passing of time should not be detrimental to the solving of crime.

French say, not a cat in sight - pas un amerce de chat

Fibula - Latin, means to fasten.  Tunisian Berber Fibula

Object Trouve - A natural or discarded object found by chance and held to have aesthetic value.

Rising tide carries all ships.  When things go up all rise.

Love makes the world go round, hatred stops it dead in it's tracks.

Just a cross section of my Molskine.  Now you have a cross section of my brain under the microscope.

Take care, Christine

PS I found my labels, hurrah!!!

Katherine Mansfield

Hi Dear Folk,

I often listen to BBC Radio 4.  This week they are running a reading of five of Katherine Mansfield's short stories.

• The Stranger
• Miss Brill
• A Cup of Tea
• Poison
• The Doll's House

She is a brilliant Short Story writer and well worth reading, I love Miss Brill.

Katherine Mansfield was brought up in New Zealand; which I've always felt an affinity with, because my great grandmothers half siblings, Mary and James, who my great grandma was very close with emigrated to New Zealand the year before WWI.

A regular correspondence was kept up with them.  In fact after my grandfather died 1938 of Polio, and grandma was left a widow with four children, they invited her to migrate to New Zealand after WWII and I often wonder what that would have meant for the family had my grandmother taken them up on that.  I honestly think she personally would have had an easier life, rather than staying on in post war England.  But I digress.  Click on my New Zealand label on side bar to see some old family photos taken in New Zealand.

Katherine Mansfield 1888-1923 did not have an easy life and eventually died of tuberculosis.  She had many contemporaries and was friends with such people as Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence and Elizabeth Von Arnim was a cousin.

As with many New Zealand writers she made the trek and relocated to London, on a more permanent basis in 1908, she had lived there before from age 14 to 17 as a boarder at Queen's College, Harley Street.

After her diagnoses she often lived abroad on the Continent, one place being the Montana region of Switzerland where she wrote many short stories.  The Montana Stories published by Persephone Books contains her short stories from July 1921 to her death in France, January 1923.

I ran across this lovely link to the Katherine Mansfield Society where you can read her stories.

Off down the rabbit hole now.

Christine

P.S. A quote from Virginia Woolf

"...then Morgan Forster said the Prelude and The Voyage Out were the best novels of their time, and I said damn Katherine! Why can't I be the only woman who knows how to write."  Virginia Woolf writing to Katherine Mansfield, 13 February 1921

The Rabbit Hole of Reading, The Kingdom By The Sea, by Paul Theroux

Hi Dear Folk,

How are you all holding up without a hug?  So big hugs and handshakes to all.  I'm afraid that even when we are let out, things will not be the same.  I can't see handshakes and hugs being freely given to strangers anymore, at least not for a long while, and that's very sad.

As you know if you follow me on Instagram, is that I'm reading The Kingdom By The Sea, A Journey Around Great Britain, by Paul Theroux.  This book has been in my personal library for a long while, I started it years ago but could not get into it.

It was published in 1983.  His travels around the coast of Britain and Northern Ireland was during the time of the Falklands War.  Theroux sticks to the coast line as much as possible, it takes him along windswept headlands, quant villages, but also past nuclear power plants, old dockland areas and industrial towns that have seen better days.  In the eighties I was newly married and living in the States, but would go back to the UK for long holidays.

I started the book with the preconceived notion, that it would read something like the book by Susan Branch My Love Affair With England, but no, it is the UK without the rose coloured glasses, the gritty side of people and places.  It is worth a read, it makes me think back to that time, how things were in the eighties, how some things have changed and some are still the same.

Moving on to the thought of the rabbit hole of reading.  While in Wales, he, Paul Theroux, mentions Taliesin, and I remembered that Frank Lloyd Wright named two of his houses, Taliesin Spring Green in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona.

Taliesin in Welsh history was a Brythonic poet, a Celtic poet in sub-Roman times whose work possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, The Book of Taliesin.  Taliesin a renowned bard who is believed to have sung at the courts of at least three Brythonic Kings.  Now of course he Frank Lloyd Wright used the name Lloyd which is a Welsh surname and his mother's name was Anna Lloyd Jones, her forebears emigrated to Spring Green, Wisconsin, from Wales, hence the connection.  I always thought Taliesin was an interesting name for a house.

Now down another rabbit hole while reading Kingdom By The Sea, were some quotes from the Ulster poetry of Louis MacNeice, who wrote so well about the sea.  "Upon this beach the falling wall of the sea..." and my favorite "That never satisfied old maid the sea.  Rehangs her white lace curtains ceaselessly."  I will never again go down to the sea and not think of that quote, the old maid rehanging her lace curtains, the white froth of lace as the waves crash, I love it.

So then I went on to who was Louis MacNeice, born in Northern Ireland? I was not familiar with him.  It seems that he was a counterpart of W. H. Auden while at Oxford along with Cecil Day Lewis, who were all part of the Auden's circle.  He was a contemporary of John Betjeman and Anthony Blunt who he was a life long friend.  All these names I know.

The Day-Lewis I am familiar with is the actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, well Cecil was his father, I found that interesting.  He often plays an Irish part, although born in London, but his father Cecil, was born in Ireland, hence connections.

And of course who does not know Anthony Blunt, who had close association with the royal family as the curator of their art collection.  He was recruited by the NKVD, later to become the KGB, while he was at university.  He worked for MI5 but was spying for the Russians.  He never was publicly outed at the time, because of the high circles he moved in and the scandal it would have caused, let alone the embarrassment with the Americans.

See what I mean about Rabbit Holes.  Well wasn't that diversionary.

Stay well, keep safe.

Christine

Covid-19 Virus Diary of a Mad Woman

Well, Well Dear Folk,

What did it take to get me back to blogging, a Pandemic.  After Hennypenny posted on my Instagram, why was I planting bittercress in pots?  That I certainly must have turned a corner into madness, because then I realized that later in the summer it turns into this wiry weed that takes over the lawn, I will be out there tout suite and rip it out, thank you Hennypenny.

How has everyone been?  I think a lot of spring and summer plans have come to disappointment.  I personally was planning a trip back to see family and friends in the UK, but will put that on hold for now.

We have been hunkering down.  Actually I find it to be a guilt free time.  One can positively stay at home with no guilty conscience and with that comes a certain freedom.  I am so happy that I got my she shed built last year and I can take a wander down to the bottom of the garden and escape.  As a child I remember that feeling of running out the back door at the end of a school day, across the lawn and turning the corner into the wilderness of "the bottom of the garden."  It truly was a wilderness down there.  A giant old cooking apple tree, very large apples but sharp, great for pies.  Loads of blackberry brambles and stinging nettles in profusion, with dock leaves their remedy.  We had a shack in the middle and a stream that ran by at the edge, with willow trees, we thought it was the greatest place on earth.  So I always think of my she shed as a trip to the bottom of the garden.  I've named it "Deux Portes Francaises" due to the fact that it has two sets of French doors, I hope that is the correct French.

I send Mr. B. out on food foraging trips, as little as possible and make a list.  We had, to a certain extent seen this coming so had a little reserve, but there's always those everyday things, like milk.  Rob our son is still working so we feel he is the weak link in the dyke and since he's already out in the world of coronavirus, I will get him to stop off for milk or odds.  It's all a gamble.

I have Netflix, Prime and Acorn, all those platforms must be holding people over and everyone wishing they'd invested in them instead of other things on their 401K which took a dive, as we all know.  Of course if it takes another twelve years as it has from the last dive of 2008 to recover, I may not be around to see that, or be too old in life to even worry.  The world is a roller coaster these days and it's not the tranquil little mouse ride that I'd take Rob on, at Bush Gardens as a boy, but the neck breaking sort of rides I avoided.  Of course if we'd have known what the CEO of the owner of the New York Stock exchange and his senator wife knew back in January, we could have jumped ship too, unfortunately we are just the pions of this world.  I wasn't going to get on this tack so let me reign it in.

I've been working on my crochet Sunset Shawl in the very fine Noro yarn, you need a lot of time to make it grow and I have that.  Finding the Great British Sewing Bee on You Tube and then the Great Pottery Throw Down held me over for a bit, although that might have been earlier before we really had to lock down.  Have found some quite good Icelandic series and watched Gracepoint the American version of Broadchurch, which does follow it quite closely, except for the ending, but shall I say it, yes I will because I'm in that mood, it was not as good, what are your thoughts?

Reading, oh my, what an escape reading can be, it is almost like going back to ones childhood years, reading was an escape then and it can be now.  I'm re-reading Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery, that story was set during WWI and Montgomery dedicates it to her cousin Frederica Campbell MacFarlane who died January 1919 of Spanish Influenza, which of course brings you right down to earth and you think of people not just as statistics, but lives and families and hope.

It has been a mixed bag for us.  Mr. B. had two part time jobs, one he lost a contract on earlier in the year, not due to the pandemic and then he lost the second one due to the pandemic.  After Mr. B. lost the first job we decided he would collect his Social Security early and I would collect mine at 66, but since he lost the second job I moved my Social Security up to collect it earlier.  We are only too grateful to shuffle these resources around as many people are not in that position and I feel for them.  I think he should also be able to collect some unemployment, not sure how that works really.  Since the government has promised some money for each family, that should certainly help.  Not quite sure what that will work out to be.

I will end on a gardening note.  I am so thankful to have a garden, I have pretty much finished with the big clean up from the giant oak tree, which as my neighbor put it so succinctly "the gift that keeps on giving."  If I gave someone a million dollars they could never collect up every oak leaf that arrives down in my garden.

As you might have seen on my Instagram I made another little patio area to sit and enjoy.  The bistro table and chairs date back to our very first house, almost forty years ago.  Originally they were white, then blue and now black.  I have other garden furniture that all needs a lick of paint, but will have to wait as I'm not going out for that.  I need to name the patio, any ideas?

Daffodils, forsythia, crocus, celandines are blooming along with primulas and Virginia bluebells are coming up. Yes spring is here waiting to burst forth.  I will end with some poignant passages from Rilla of Ingleside:

"How can spring come and be beautiful in such a horror," wrote Rilla in her diary.  "When the sun shines and the fluffy yellow catkins are coming out on the willow-trees down by the brook, ..."

"We never do," said Miss Oliver "That is why we are not left to chose our own means and measures of development, I suppose.  No matter how much we value what our lessons have brought us we don't want to go on with the bitter schooling."

Take care dear folk, keep safe, self isolate and be good.

Christine

The Week That Was and Other Mundane Matters

Hi Dear folk,

Snow storm is in full swing and the way it's coming down I think it will be a big one.  All these pictures are from the past week not today.  Still spring is sitting dormant these buds on the rhododendron have been waiting for a while.

Our neighborhood is from the 1920's and I think when they built these houses they did certain plantings of shrubbery with them, and I do think the purple rhododendrons were part of that.  A neighbor has an absolutely huge one, although mine would be that big if we did not cut it back.

What have I been up to?  Well life isn't all glitz and glamor it's the every day small stitches of life that hold it together, all those mundane things that keep the boat afloat.

Mr. B. bought me this lovely bouquet and after trying several vases I eventually put them in a vase I inherited from his mum.  His mum died when he was four, really hard for him.  In any case his dad and step mom had kept a number items from their marriage stored in a barrel under the stairs, and this was one.

It was a wedding present in 1945, but I think dates back further than that, I would say what they call depression rose glass.  I appreciated having it.

Mr. B's parents were married in August 1945 between being sent back from England, where he was a flight engineer in B26 Bombers, and before he was meant to be deployed in the Pacific.  He was on his way across the country when the war ended.

Before being sent out to England he worked in Baltimore at the Martin Marietta plant and one of the planes they made was the B26 Marauder, where he worked on the engines, so not at all surprising that he was assigned as flight engineer on B26, The Widowmaker.

I finished the one patchwork curtain, trimmed in crochet and I am working on the second one for the other window.  It's hard to take a good photo when they are up at the window.  I used a new kebab skewer to hold them up, it works well and just slips in the hooks I already had up.  Threaded through the crochet at the top.

I found a nice edging crochet pattern for the bottom.  Mr. B.  said the hallway is darker with them.  Before I had wax paper up with pressed flowers in between, but they were old.  I had made them out of dried pressed flowers I collected in PEI and that's BFR (before Rob) so old.

Have you ever tried that for a window?  Taking pressed dried flowers and ironing them between wax paper, it is I think a lovely window treatment for a smaller window.

Enjoying the meter of my day.  Coffee and croissant by the fire, reading Expiation by Elizabeth Von Arnim; which is due to be released by Persephone Books next October.  As always I have the original first American edition from my local library.  They all know me, I'm the one who pulls old books out of unused shelving which exists on the top floor of the library, and someone has to be sent in to find it.  Love that they have them there, so special.

My little mug bought in Amsterdam, it reminds me of my paternal grandad working around his market garden and chicken farm.  He always looked like that with his trousers and braces and the other side has chickens on which you can just see in the picture above this one.

My boys have given me a pile of mending which I have procrastinated on, must get to that.

I have one project on the burner, but I don't want to count my chickens before they're hatched.  I filled out all the paperwork to apply to the local borough to build a garden shed.  I have a rough quote on it and will have it built from scratch, as it has to fit into a certain area and be in compliance with local ordinance.  I wished we lived somewhere where that didn't matter, are there places like that?  I assume so.

I went to the offices to submit them and pay the fee but they are closed until Friday for training, oh well!  I hope I don't get turned down because the fee to re submit is $550.00, and I don't think I'd contest it.

I'm not going to talk about my plans and ideas until I know that it is a done deal.  Well maybe a little.  I have old windows I want to use in the project that I've collected over the years.  Three circular columns that came off the house porch when we enclosed it and two sets of French door wood screen doors that came off also.  They are the original 1920's wood doors with windows that can be taken out and screens put in of which I have everything stored in the rafters of the garage.  Hope my vision comes to fruition.

Well that's the week that was and a little of what is.

Have a wonderful week.

Christine

Kosti Ruohomaa, Night Train At Wiscasset Station and Dull Days and Dirth

Hi Dear Folk,

Welcome to all new folk who are following my blog, I do appreciate you stopping by and spending time here.  This will be my eleventh year of blogging and I obviously enjoy keeping on online journal of my life and do it for that reason.  If you enjoy my blog A Little Bit of British, do become a follower, and add me as one of the blogs in your blog list that you enjoy reading.  That would be great.

So here I am in today with a head cold.  Even had to break a luncheon appointment because I am not feeling up to it and I was looking forward to that.  I took one of those tablets that you drop in hot water with high doses of vitamin C to try and ward off what I knew was coming, hope it works somewhat.

With a lot of dull very soggy days we have a dirth of sunlight, the only brightness of light is when I light the fire in the afternoon which is as much for the ambience as the warmth, along with a few candles it does lift ones spirit.

Mr. B. watching the game, with Miss Tuppy.

I have been keeping up with my diary and my journal, also the fountain pens and the letter writing. Reading poetry and re-visiting some books that have sat on my shelf for a long while.  One is Night Train at Wiscasset Station.  It's mostly to showcase the photographs of a Maine photographer Kosti Ruohomaa.  Who was born in Maine to Finnish parents.  The writer is Lew Dietz who travelled along with him at times.  He said "As I see it I wrote the words and Kosti the music."  The forward is by Andrew Wyeth.

He caught a way of life from the forties and fifties in his black and white photographs.  This book was a library discard, but as soon as I saw the wonderful photography I knew it would join my collection.  He died young in his forties because he was an alcoholic.  His photographs were in several leading magazines of the time such as Life.  He travelled all over, but always returned to the family farm in Maine, his roots.

I love his photography he just catches a mood, wrinkles, warts and everything; which is how my son, the photographer tends to take photos of his mother.  No beautifully posed pictures, but the true gritty reality of old age, and when I object he says, "But that's a great photograph look at the light." and I say "Can't you just take a photo of me when I'm looking my best not all these down to earth shots." The ones that get filtered out and stay in the archives of your hard drive.

One time Rob posted a photo of me on his Facebook, my sister saw it and said "You should have him take that photo down, that's an awful picture of you."  My sister was right, it was, but it was reality.  Everything today is edited and airbrushed, so to view these wonderful photos of a Maine way of life that even at that time Kosti thought was slipping away, is delightful.

Here is a write up on his life in the Bangor Daily News Kosti Ruohomaa

I like Dietz's writing in this book of the Mainer's way of thinking, who these folk are "... they are inclined to pity those who never see snow."

Christine

Linen Closet Door Latch and All For Love, Tasha Tudor

Hi Dear Folk,

Yet another day of rain.  This year in Pennsylvania all rain records have been broken.  I heard that this is what we should expect here as we fall into the pattern of global warming.

Mr. B. brought up a cup of tea for me and I had the luxury to read poetry in bed. Yes read poetry in bed I recommend it in the early hours of the morning. Tasha Tudor's 'All For Love.'  I have had this book for a long while and revisit it every so often.   It is a delightful book filled with her renowned illustrations.  In my upstairs hallway I have a bookcase mostly filled with poetry books.

'All For Love" is a collection of love poetry and quotes from books, plus love songs and the music.  Her thoughts on what the family made for Valentine's Day, all these little hand written cards and letters for the dolls and teddy bears, plus the card board box post office and other hand made items is delightful.

It made me think back to my child hood and a homemade theatre that I made out of a box and covered with old wallpaper.  It even had stage lights, tiny bulbs connected to a battery in a sardine tin, can't quite remember how that worked.  Also stage curtains.  The characters went in and out on sticks from the wings.  We would make up plays, my friend and I and perform them.

Mr. B. repaired something that has long been a bain, he repaired the latch on my linen closet door.  I have not been able to close it for a long while.  Ever since The Boy, who tends to try and open doors without turning the handle, had broken it.  He had to go to Lowe's and get a new door lock mechanism, and a lot of it you land up not using.  I'm left with two glass door knobs that I will have to think what to do with, because they are quite lovely.

I cannot tell you what a joy it is to walk past that door and not see it sitting ajar.  One more little job knocked off the list.  I don't think husband's have any idea how such little jobs when left undone bug us wives to distraction and when done bring such joy, of something completed.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Christine

Oscar Wilde quotes about America

1) "America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up."

2) "America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself."

3) "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between."

4) "In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience."

5) “When good Americans die, they go to Paris." "Where do bad Americans go?" "They stay in America”  

6) "I was very much disappointed in the Atlantic Ocean."

7) "She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm." 

8) "The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years."

9) "I don't think I should like America." "I suppose because we have no ruins and no curiosities," said Virginia satirically. "No ruins! no curiosities!" answered the Ghost; "you have your navy and your manners."

10) "We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language."

11) "In America the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever."

12) "Walt Whitman and Emerson are the poets who have given the world more than anyone else. Perhaps Whitman is not so widely read in England, but England never appreciates a poet until he is dead."

13) "The beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance . . . living on the memory of crushing defeats"

14) "Everybody in American seems in a rush to catch a train."

15) "The first thing that struck me on landing in America was that if the Americans are not the most well-dressed people in the world, they are the most comfortably dressed."

16) "America is the noisiest country that ever existed. One is waked up in the morning, not by the singing of the nightingale, but by the steam whistle."

17) "In one dancing saloon I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.'"

18) “Every American Bride is taken there, and the sight of that tremendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.” (on Niagara Falls) 

19) “I wonder that no criminal has ever pleaded the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes.” (on Cincinnati) 

20) "America is not a country, it is a world."

History of English Language

Hi Dear Folk,

Back in the eighties, I'm sure it was shown on PBS back then there was a series The History of English Language.  There were originally eight episodes of which I was able to find some on You Tube.  I can't find them all, but it was and is a fascinating series.

I just picked up a few American English words and where they originate from.  The phrase 'I Guess' although American English actually was in use in the time of Chaucer, got dropped from British English but carried on over here in America.  Another word 'Riff Raff', comes from the early pioneers who were poor and couldn't afford a ride down the Mississippi on a paddle steamer so had to build a raft that had a paddle called a riff, hence the word riff raff.  The richer folk could afford a ride on the steamers which had tall steam stacks and they were called 'High Falutin'.

How English came to be English and the spread of English all around the world, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America, The Caribbean, India, Hong Kong and more.  All the words that came to be included in the English language that came from these countries.  The cadence of how sentences are spoken and the stress on different syllables.  Just fascinating.

Will post the episodes that I found.

Christine

PS:  I have found all the episodes now, just not posted in order.  Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.    Let me know what you think.

Which Shakespeare Play Captures Your Love Life?

Hi Dear Folk,

I cannot get PBS on my TV so watch anything on PBS via catch up on the Internet.  I just ran across the series Shakespeare Uncovered and took this test.

Which Shakespeare Play Captures Your Love Life?

1. Your friend wants to set you up on a blind date - how do you respond?

• I would not be thrilled. I don't believe romance can be influenced.
• I would be receptive to the notion, but would require a full debrief ahead of time.
• Completely opposed to it. I actually bristle at the idea of needing help in this area.
• I would do it, but would make no promises. I have to follow my heart

2. You begin to sense simmering attraction with an unavailable person - what do you do?

• This isn't a good situation, but the heart wants what it wants: I would pour my heart out to them.
• I would walk away immediately. That sounds like a huge waste of time.
• I certainly would not chase them - but would expect they would find me irresistible.
• I don't give up! Love doesn't follow any rules.

3. You have just been through a breakup - what's next for you?

• I can be a hothead so I would be upset for a while, but my career comes first
• A definite period of mourning: a lover being removed from my life would be extremely painful.
• I might cause some mischief to get back at them.
• A sigh of relief! If we broke up, it was for a reason.

4. You suspect your significant other is unfaithful - what action do you take?

• They would get kicked to the curb ASAP.
• I would enlist a friend to follow them.
• We might be open about such things; romantic relationships come in many forms.
• I would ask if what I suspected was true and would be honest about how hurt I would be.

5. Which quality in a potential romantic partner would be a deal-breaker for you?

• Lack of respect
• Weakness or lack of ambition
• Still holding a flame for someone else
• Lack of passion

6. Your family does not approve of your lover - what do you do?

• In a way, that would make my lover more attractive to me.
• I might trust a lover more than my own family, so that's not a concern.
• I would run away with my lover to somewhere we could be free.
• I might continue to see them, but in secret; it would be hard to break away from my family.

Romeo and Juliet was my play:-

Romeo and Juliet captures your love life.  For you, love is intense and quite consuming, but is almost always accompanied by feelings of conflict. Why can things never be easy? You form meaningful bonds in life and you certainly believe in love at first sight. You are also an intensely desirable romantic partner, so don’t go breaking too many hearts! Be sure to watch Romeo and Juliet with Joseph Fiennes on Feb. 13, 2015 on Shakespeare Uncovered on PBS!

I don't think that is all quite true, but fun to take the test.

Christine