Good Deeds in Weary World: A Visit to the Lincoln Cottage

#lincolncottage

If there is one good thing about the furlough/partial shutdown, which so far drags on for us “non-essentials,” it has been the motivation to visit some sites which are offering free admission. One, to get out of the house. Two, to get some culture, history and inspiration.

So, we visited the Lincoln Cottage last week. The cottage is located on the very pretty grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home (commonly called the Soldiers and Sailors Home) in Northwest Washington, DC, and it was a sort of retreat in the hot and smelly months of historic WDC for presidents including Lincoln. Back then, the three or four miles from the White House to this location was “a trip to the countryside.”

The cottage itself is pretty stark this time of year; they apparently dress it up with more exhibitions and furnishings after February. But the Visitors Center where you purchase tickets for the cottage has several rooms with exhibitions about Lincoln, the Civil War, the Home, and right now, an exhibition on immigration which includes a wall where people can leave their immigration stories. (Ironic as that might be.)

The experience inside the cottage, meanwhile, is a contemplation of things that Lincoln pondered within its walls, and a place to leave your own message about a good deed you intend to do or have done. The staff gives you a small battery operated tea light when you come in, and invites you to participate.

The rooms are subdued and atmospheric, and there are questions throughout which make you think. About Lincoln and his courage and faults. About your own intentions and hopes. About the consequences of the things governments do for and to their citizens.

Afterwards, we wandered the snowy grounds for awhile, and even built a snowman (there was no one around to tell us not to). When we got back to our car, kids from a local school were running around with glee and abandon at the adjacent playground. There is some joy left in the world, thank goodness, along with the difficulties.

Fathoming the Deep

Uncategorized, water, poetry, fathoming, ,

I’m not sure I believe in astrology, but I do love being near, on or in water, and I am an Aquarius (Aquarian?). So maybe there is something to it after all. In any case, I also like to photograph water, at sunrise, at sunset… and now thanks to a nifty feature on my Google Pixel phone camera called Night Sight, even at night.

Which brings me, in a roundabout sort of way, to the word of the day: “fathom.” This is a very useful word. As a measurement of water, the definition extends to a measure of understanding. (As in, “I can’t fathom how long this government furlough has gone on already.” Or, “I’m beginning to fathom just how expendable my job seems to be.”)

It is also a good word for literature. Shakespeare comes to mind. Another example is perhaps not exactly up to The Bard’s level but still interesting: when I did a search for “fathom poem” I came up with this poem on the Hello Poetry site by someone (?) called Third Legacy of Oliver, which I feel addresses the current state of negotiations in Congress, and also contains the word “fathom.” Give it a read and see what you think.

Circling back to the water, I offer my attempts at poetic photography, which hopefully describes in pictures the unfathomable deeps of our understanding – about life, about government, about anything you are currently trying to fathom. Enjoy.

Missing Some Holiday Pieces

Holidays, Uncategorized, , ,

Do the winter holidays ever leave you feeling as though you’re missing a few key pieces? Maybe you didn’t have as much fun as you thought you’d have, didn’t get the gift you asked for, or missed spending time with a good friend or family member. Or, like us this year, you sent out many more cards than you received and wondered if holiday cards are “out” now and you just didn’t pick up on that trend?

Our family metaphor for “the missing pieces of the holidays” is the annual tradition of doing an elderly jigsaw puzzle that has, to date, seventeen missing pieces. This puzzle depicts The Twelve Days of Christmas, with the added twist of gaping holes. We have other holiday themed puzzles (somewhere) but somehow this is the only one that we can find when there is some quiet time in front of the fire and nothing else to do.

Daughter M.E. and visiting friend Dan work on the less than perfect puzzle.

Why don’t we just get rid of this defective time waster? Well, for one thing, the zen activity of jigsaw puzzling is made even more mysterious and wondrous by never remembering which pieces are missing. For another, it is symbolic of the way that, even if the holidays do not live up to the hype (when have they ever?), the best part of the season can be taking time away from hustle and bustle even if the end result is not one hundred per cent rewarding. Third, the hardest part (the numbers) is still enough of a challenge to keep us interested and add that sense of achievement even in the midst of regret over the fate of those seventeen missing pieces.

Like the smile of a child with missing teeth (albeit without the promise of growing new ones), the puzzle is endearing. And, even with some pieces missing, the puzzle and the holidays can be enjoyable and relaxing if we realize limitations. No one, and no holiday, is perfect. Make the most of what you have.

Honoring Holiday Heroes

Uncategorized

A lot of people put an effort into making the winter holidays merry and bright. Those folks who put up all the lights; practice the songs; construct the toy train displays; bake the cookies; plan the parties. So, it is our duty to go out and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Here are some of the ways we did our part this year, in the lead up to Christmas. See ya next year!

  • The U.S. Botanical Garden’s train display
  • Zoolights at the National Zoo has become a tradition with friends.
  • The pink flamingos of Zoolights were very jaunty.
  • Husband Steve created a light show on our front porch
  • My friend Debi and I did a Nutracker themed tea in Winminster, MD.
  • My karaoke debut at our office holiday party was a rendition of “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.”
  • Friend/colleague Khamo hamming it up at the office holiday party. Our parties are always elaborately decorated thanks to the creative genius of our colleague Claudia, and often our designer Josue.

George Alfred Townsend: A Gap(land) in our Knowledge

culture, tourism, travel, , , ,

Nature and some largely forgotten history converged on a little post-Thanksgiving jaunt we took this weekend.  The Appalachian Trail intersects with a small park called Gathland in rural Washington, County, Maryland.   I wish I could say we went on a hike, but since the light was failing when we finally got there, we just explored the mute, stone testimonies to the man who was George Alfred Townsend, AKA “Gath.”

One of the two interpretive signs that deal directly with this enigma of a war correspondent and author of several novels includes the quote, “Mankind is always interesting, but is also fatiguing.”  As a successful writer, with it would seem substantial financial means, Gath and his beloved wife Bessie built a country estate to escape mankind and Washington, DC.

As most of the other ten or so signs describe various aspects of Civil War campaigns in the area, one does not learn much more about Gath, his life, and work from the site.  Bessie gets even shorter shrift.  The buildings remaining in the park, constructed from an attractive local stone, include Gath’s “empty tomb” – highly creepy, even if his mortal remains did not end up there – and the ruins of what appears to have been a very large barn.  There are also two houses intact, and the park web site promises a museum in one of them, open in the tourist season.

The central attraction of the property is a massive and curious memorial to war correspondents, planned and perhaps financed by Gath.  It towered over the peaceful late fall landscape like the sole remaining wall of a castle, with arches and crenelations, statuary and niches.  And a weather vane.

Perhaps we will return to visit the museum if/when it is open. Perhaps we will acquire a copy of one of Gath’s novels, such as The Entailed Hat, or Patty Cannon’s Times (as you see from this link, it is available on Amazon) and read it to better understand this contemporary of Mark Twain’s.  Perhaps not.  Meanwhile, visiting what remains of Gath’s country estate and trying to decipher his life from the meager outdoor interpretation available in the park made for an interesting afternoon.

Food, Life and Freedom

food, ,

I am procrastinating cleaning out the refrigerator.  It is Veteran’s Day and I should be honoring the fallen, thanking someone for their service, contemplating the horrors of WWI. Instead, I am tackling the recesses of our overstocked fridge and trying to salvage some food that is in peril of inflicting us with food poisoning if we don’t ditch it.

Thinking about the imminent stacking up of our excess of food on the kitchen counter turns my thoughts to food in general, and my visits last weekend to two very different but somewhat related food events.  And, finally, to the people who work to bring us our food.

First, I attended some presentations of the National Museum of American History’s annual Food History Weekend.   The theme was “the changing dynamics of regional food cultures in the United States.”  This fit in perfectly, I now realize, with my second food event of the weekend: my friend Jackie’s annual “Soup and Oyster” party on Cobb Island, Maryland, which features “scalded” oysters at the local firehouse as well as soups made by the hostess.

Regional food is usually seasonal, reflective of natural resources and landscape, and has a warm, homey and almost romantic connotation.  But, when you come to think about it more deeply, this food often represents someone’s backbreaking and highly uncomfortable work in its procurement.  Oyster dredging and tonging, for instance, was traditionally done in the cold months on an unforgiving body of icy water.

Farm labor to bring us our vegetables and fruits (the apples in the pie and the green beans in the casserole?) is no piece of cake either.   Picking your own apples on a crisp fall day for fun is one thing. Harvesting tons of apples for the commercial market is a whole other thing.  The harvest and processing of the food that conveniently shows up on our grocery shelves is its own battle, fought by countless seasonal and regional workers, who deserve our respect.

So, along with honoring veterans today, let us also honor those on the forefront of the fight to keep us fed.   Freedom from hunger is a privilege which the thousands of behind the scenes food workers laboring in the “trenches” of our farms, waterways, and processing plants work to make possible.  Unfortunately this doesn’t mean that hunger (like war, of course) isn’t still very much with us.

On that sobering note, it’s off to the fridge.

 

Teddy Roosevelt in Buffalo: Mystery in History Solved

culture, tourism, travel, , ,

While in Buffalo recently for the annual American Folklore Society meetings, I had some free time to explore this fascinating city.  (Yes, it is much more than hot wings and Niagra Falls.)  I set off to explore why Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated in Buffalo in 1901.

I set off on a brisk (due to the 40sF temperature and wind) walk from downtown, admiring the architecture along the way, and soon arrived at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Historical Site

This stately mansion houses not only the library where Roosevelt was inaugurated, but an impressive array of interactive displays for deeper dives.  While you wait for your guided tour through the house, you are immersed in an exhibit on the 1901 Pan Am Exposition,  a sort of world’s fair designed to showcase everything progressive and superior about America.  Considering that electricity, and even ice cream, were new things back then, there was a lot to ooh and aah over at this fantastic city of the future for the people of the day, and putting yourself in their place via the displays was fun.

Things get decidedly darker when the tour guide puts on a video that explains how, after a rousing speech about the wonders of the exposition and of America, President McKinley is shot while greeting well wishers.  (Obviously at least one person, Leon Czolgosz, did not wish him well at all.)  TR was the Vice President, and when poor McKinley finally succumbed to his wounds (unfortunately he did not die instantly but suffered in the hands of inferior medical practices of the day), Roosevelt was summoned to Buffalo to pay his respects and get sworn in.

The next area imagines the many pressing issues of the day that must have been going through Roosevelt’s mind as he prepared to take over the presidency.  Many of them sounded disturbingly familiar to those of us reading the news in 2018:  immigrants flooding the country; poor race relations; and rampant devastation of natural resources in some of the country’s most spectacular wild landscapes, among others.

Poor old Teddy had his hands full, in other words.  As those of us who know a little something about his personal history (or find out more through a visit to one of the many TR historical sites around the country), he was not exactly perfect.  (Let’s not get into such things as the eminent domain of the Philippines, destructive safaris in Africa, etc.)

In any case, the tour through the house, standing in the library were the inauguration took place, seeing a pile of facsimiles of telegrams (the email – or even Twitter – of the day) that he needed to address, and then diving into more history in the upstairs rooms of the mansion where you can pose with a larger-than-life cut out, pretend to be president, and contemplate further how far, but then again how close, we still are to issues of 1901, was all very interesting and powerful experience.  Thanks to our tour guide and the staff of the site for an enlightening couple of hours.

 

Encountering the Ghosts of the Past

childhood; stuff; family, Hilton Head Island, memories, ,

Last week, my sister and I embarked on the task of cleaning out my mom’s condo.  Mom is now in assisted living, and has everything she needs in her one large room.  (“Needs” and “wants” might be different things… let’s say, she has everything that could possible fit there and then some.)  So, the accumulated remaining possessions that were left in the closets, under the beds, in the cabinets, on the shelves, in the drawers, on the walls, were left to be dealt with.

This is not our childhood home, but the retirement home of my mom.  Still, some of the items dating back to our childhoods made it to this location, in a couple of enormous boxes in the corners of the spare bedroom closets.  These brought back memories, mostly fond and but some not-so-fond.   From my old report cards (which recorded your height and weight back then along with your academic achievements) I was reminded what a fat little kid I was.  Our old slightly beat up Madame Alexander dolls reminded me how I once shamelessly abused my sister’s doll by cramming corn flakes into its eyes.  A tiny set of metal pots and pans reminded me that, as children, we had a functional small electric stovetop – how many times did we come close to burning down the house with that beast?

We kept a few of the items that we just couldn’t part with – my sister took, among other things, the pancake pitcher and griddle, and we vowed to make pancakes served with sausages, maple syrup and applesauce at Christmastime like our Dad used to for dinner sometimes.  I took the family photos in various media – slides, loose snapshots, arranged in albums, framed.  We brought more small knick-knacks and mementos to my mom. But many of the items will find new homes via the many boxes we donated to a charity shop, or, if they were too far gone, have been deep-sixed in the dump.  It’s just the way of things.

It was sad, and exhausting, and frustrating, but we got through it, with the help of some friends and our husbands.  Ghosts have been encountered, dispatched, and banished along with about a ton of stuff.  The memories remain.

The Eyes Have It at the Wilmer Institute

Johns Hopkins Hospital; Wilmer Eye Institute; museums, Uncategorized, ,

We’ve been spending a lot of time in Baltimore at the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins in the past few weeks.  My hubby has a hereditary thing called “Marfan Syndrome” which among other things can affect your eyes.  (Though, as this link explains, “Marfan syndrome does not affect intelligence.”  This is good to know.)  The Institute is one of the best places in the country, maybe the world, for eye treatment.  So, although the hour-long drive is annoying, we are lucky it isn’t even further away.

The Institute HQ is located in one wing of the imposing, and impressive, historic brick Johns Hopkins Hospital building at 601 North Broadway.  One of the many waiting rooms is located at the base of an octagonal dome, the walls and alcoves of which form a small museum.  This is where I found myself earlier this week, with time on my hands as my husband was poked and prodded in a pre-op exam, so I tried to make the most of it.

A not particularly well lit bronze bust of Dr. Wilmer himself glowered down from high above in one alcove, flanked by some antiquated piece of eye exam equipment.  In the opposite alcove was the President’s Chair, which was used by a number of POTUSes for their eye exams in the past.  Historic photos of the Institute, its staff, and their scientific achievements lined the walls.  A multi-shelved display case took up part of one corner, with various items of historic eye care equipment.  (My favorite was the artificial leech, which was not explained there, but is here.)

 

Not a particularly well-curated mini-museum, with not much interpretation except for some fading, mostly handwritten labels.  But, still, good for whiling away a few minutes of the tedious waiting and worrying.  If you don’t mind Dr. Wilmer watching you.

 

 

A Spark in Salisbury

culture, National Folk Festival, tourism

This past weekend, I attended and helped present some artists at the National Folk Festival in Salisbury, Maryland.   The National is a long weekend event organized by the National Council for the Traditional Arts in partnership with local organizations, which moves every three years (theoretically at least) between cities willing to give up a substantial portion of their downtown to street closings, endure the infrastructure that it takes to put up stages on said streets, and brave throngs of locals and tourists who (hopefully) swarm to the event.

It’s a huge gamble for a relatively small city.  But, to their credit, Salisbury bought into it (thanks to the persuasive organizers and a feeling that the city “deserved” such an honor as a prestigious national festival) and the result seems positive.  Even though it rained most of the weekend, people came out with their umbrellas and their rain slickers in numbers not expected in such weather.

As usual, the line up of artists was stellar, including some things that Salisburians have surely never experienced and never even imagined existed.  Inuit throat singers?  Peruvian scissors dancers?  Tap dancing feet as a percussion instrument?  Check.  And some local things that tourists didn’t know was a thing… like muskrat skinning and cooking.

 

On the Sunday, I worked with participants from the Pocomoke Indian National during a sort of pop-up presentation at their demonstration area.  They decided to show the visitors huddling under the tent, sheltering out of the persistence drizzle, how to make fire with friction, using a board and a sort of reed.  The visitors watched patiently as the participants tried time and again to coax a spark out of the damp wood.  Finally, a tiny spark emerged and took hold into an ember, which was nurtured into a warm flame.  Cheers arose from the small but attentive audience.

I thought that spark and the resulting flame an apt metaphor for the National in Salisbury.  From the spark of the idea to stage the National in the city, the flame of the festival resulted, and will hopefully bloom (despite the damp and other obstacles that might be thrown in the way) into two more years of an exciting event showcasing excellent folk practitioners from the region and the world.