Historic cemetery as tourism destination sounds kind of morbid, but in the case of Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery, it’s really a treat. A couple of weeks ago, during our month long stay in South Carolina’s Low Country, my husband and I set off on a cool but sunny day to wander the substantial grounds of this final resting place, made somewhat famous by its mention in the John Berendt book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
While it’s the home of the remains of some famous people, including popular composer Johnny Mercer and writer Conrad Aiken, there are many other things worth exploring here. These ranged from an area honoring railroad workers, to the origin of the Vulcan “live long and prosper” hand sign (extra research was needed to interpret this and other things, such as the “Cosmos Mariner – Destination Unknown” epitaph in the Aiken plot). The cemetery is situated on the edge of a scenic bluff overlooking the Wilmington River so you get some glimpses of nature in there, too. I’m sure one of the guided tours that staff and volunteers give (which have been somewhat curtailed by COVID) would be beneficial, but we found blundering around with the free map available at the office an interesting challenge.
Here are some highlights. Enjoy the snaps and visit if you are ever in Savannah!
Entrance to the cemetery. Turn right from here to get to the parking lot, if you keep going left you end up in a totally different cemetery.The cemetery has a large Jewish component and a Holocaust Memorial. My friend Arlene explained that stones are left on graves to basically say, “I was here and honored your grave.” Many graves had at least a handful of stones of various shapes and sizes.See link for above for an article explaining how Leonard Nimoy borrowed from his Jewish heritage to create the Vulcan greeting. I never knew this before noticing this on one of the Bonaventure gravestones. Did you?A view of the Wilmington River flanking this huge impressive memorial.Lots of angels here. This one was sort of creepy but the carving is amazing.Is this a memorial to the Order of Railway Conductors or just their guests??A list of some of Johnny Mercers most famous tunes is carved into this bench in his family plot. Try to get some of these out of your head after remembering how they go! Elaborately carved stones are all well and good, but…Flip-flops and pink flamingoes, now that’s my kind of memorial.
Our month in coastal South Carolina is flying by, and I’m trying to make the most of it. Even though I’d rather stay snuggled in bed, I get up early (almost) every morning and take a walk to the ocean. It’s only ten minutes away and usually worth it.
It’s a familiar route, since we’re renting in the same condo development my mom used to live in after she retired in her early 60s and moved down here from Vermont. For over thirty years I’ve taken this walk to the beach when visiting down here, either alone or with someone. Towing my daughter, when she was small, in a Radio Flyer red wagon with the beach stuff. Later using it as a good excuse to get some exercise.
This week, walks to the ocean have been almost mandatory. Because for me, the seaside is a meditative place, the ocean a symbol of change and continuity. Its inexorable wave upon wave reminds us of the march of time and the constant restructuring of life. Each day is rewritten on the sand with water and wind.
The ocean also ties us to the rest of the world. It’s a bit mind-blowing to think that on the other side, thousands of miles away from the Carolina coast, is (apparently, because we looked it up) North Africa. And to think of how this very ocean, for better or worse, in triumph or sorrow, brought peoples from many lands to the shores of America throughout history.
As we brace for what comes next, after a week that brought first hope then disbelief, the ocean is always there, and I will rise from my warm bed to follow its call, gaze upon its ever shifting waters, and ponder.
I have a hard time making it just at sunrise but a few clouds help extend the illusion of getting there on time..Ever changing patterns in the sand fascinate me.Here’s a hopeful photo for an uncertain time – a lovely little beach wedding.
These days, celebrating is strange but necessary. Since our daughter and her partner Dan came home for the holidays to join our “pod” I figured we should engage not in only our own holiday food traditions, such as making and decorating (very specific) cookies, but try out some others as well.
We had “virtual” help, thank goodness. Our friend Arlene walked us through latke making via video chat (her article on the subject is a classic and includes the recipe we used). We gathered all the ingredients and accompaniments (apple sauce, sour cream and cinnamon sugar), debated about how to get as much liquid as possible out of the potato mixture, and had a grand time splattering oil all over the stovetop during the frying process. The result were delicious, crispy creations that didn’t last long around our house.
So, why not try our hand at tamales, as well? We got tamale making advice from a number of sources, including my intern Jennifer, one of my daughter’s friends, and some You Tube videos. (There’s also this article by Laura Wilmot Sheehy which I forgot about until we were done!) Our results probably would make experienced tamale makers laugh – inconsistant sizes, fillings spilling out into from their masa dough – but they tasted pretty darned good to us. Especially with liberal slatherings of homemade green and red salsas using the last of our garden tomatillos and tomatoes.
As a folklorist, I am supposed to be safeguarding against cultural appropriation. There is, I am well aware, a fine line between cultural appreciation and appropriation. I’d like to think we didn’t cross that line by trying out some other celebratory holiday food traditions. We’re not Jewish or Latino. But we enjoy good food and the joy that communal cooking brings, even if this year that means a virtual get-together.
I hope you all have a great holiday, enjoying foods of your own family and culture and maybe trying something new if you feel comfortable doing so. We’re cooking Thai dishes for Christmas dinner, though I won’t bother my Thai-born friend Ang for pointers as she’ll be too busy cooking for her own family. Probably something very American.
Our crispy delicious latkes. Well, just a little burned, too.
Dan and M.E. dig into a latke feast with the trimmings.Tamale making. Our system of food coloring to mark the types of fillings (pork, chicken, and cheese with or without beans) was semi-successful.The mis-matched tamales ready for steaming. We also participated in a virtual cookie baking/decorating party with friends scattered from California to Ireland. That’s me in the top middle row with our decorated spritz cookies..
Well, it’s that time of year again when I debate whether it’s worth it to send out holiday cards and also to include some sort of holiday letter. I did compile one of these, and I hate for it to go to waste. And, I do appreciate reading the (more concise) versions sent by my friends.
But our printer has been giving me trouble, from non-connectivity to low ink reserves, and I hate to keep bothering my poor husband (and resident Tech Support Person) with these problems. (For one thing, he likes to recycle the ink cartridges himself and this usually results in pools or smears of various colors from magenta to cyan all over the dining room table, and his fingers, and anything else within striking distance.)
I used to send out photos of our darling daughter when she was younger, necessitating getting her to pose in some vaguely holiday themed way next to a pine tree or something, and then getting the photos printed (remember printed photos?) by whatever arcane means we had back when she was a child. This was before cell phone cameras or even separate digital cameras were prevalent (and she isn’t even 30 yet!).
Then I went to a family newsletter sort of thing, invariably criticized by husband and daughter about which photos I had chosen and what I said about their activities. Everyone’s a critic!
So, this year, having decided that I will send out cards to those people who are still on my card exchange list, do I just write nice handwritten notes to everyone, and if they really want to know more, suggest they connect to my blog? This works for the more computer savvy among them, but not that handful of Luddites or older folks who don’t do computers. Or just don’t like blogs.
I think I will just attach my letter thing here and hope for the best. If you want to go the extra mile and download it, please give that a try. If not, don’t. Apologies to those who don’t read my blog and to those who don’t want to click on the link as it’s the only way I could figure to add it. But since you are not reading this, I will have to apologize to you via written note. I am pretty familiar with that technology!
NOTE ON FEATURED IMAGE: We finally got to view the holiday lights at the Mormon Temple last year, which were very cool! Happy holidays to all!
I’ve been scrolling through my digital photos and reminiscing about the the changing cast of characters, packed around our table on Thanksgivings past. Our usual dining room table, that is, augmented by one or two additional, impromptu addendums to accommodate the crowd. Everyone smiling over the “groaning board” of turkey, trimmings and potluck contributions.
For many years, we joined our friends Nancy and Steve and their family and friends in Upper Marlboro, Maryland for Thanksgiving. After they moved to Delaware we were still invited but decided it was just a bit too far to travel for the day. So we honored the “friends and family” tradition by hosting our own feast with anyone who wasn’t already committed elsewhere. Interns, far from home. People whose families lived too far away for just a long weekend visit. A cousin or two who live nearby.
This year many of us are paring and/or hunkering down, Zooming with family and friends, cooking alternative menus. We are going to make some Indian-inspired dishes and put the turkey off till next week, when we have finished quarantining from our daughter who is visiting from California, luckily for an extended stay through the remaining holidays.
It will be a memorable day and year, one way or the other. Hopefully the story we tell in the future will start like this: “Remember that one Thanksgiving when we all had to stay home because of the pandemic…”
Happy Thanksgiving, all!
Ah, remember when we could just stand near each other and talk…This was probably our “critical mass” of about 16 guests a few years ago. It has averaged at about 8-10 since then. Also remember when you could sit around the table after dinner and play silly games like this one where you pass around phrases and draw pictures to illustrate them?This was a tradition dating from our trips to Nancy and Steve’s feast. Our daughter always baked a chocolate cake because she didn’t like pie. The sentiment is timeless.
This past week, I had two food encounters with friends – one in person, one over the miles via Zoom – that were fun and meaningful despite the distance between us. It’s possible, it just takes a fair amount of planning.
The first was a tea in honor of my friend Debi’s recent birthday. Usually, we go out for tea somewhere within a two-hour drive or less from our homes. We’ve been doing this for so many years to mark her birthday in October and mine in February, sometimes twice a year but other years somewhere in between as a combination treat. If we’d actually kept notes, we could have by now written a “Guide to Tea Around DC.” Instead, we tend to try to test our memories every year by discussing the places we’ve been.
We tend to recall places by some memorable decor, type of tea, theme of the offerings, or in some cases an event. The latter includes recalling the time at Beans in the Belfry in Brunswick, MD when the waitress slipped and dumped all the little sandwiches into my open purse, or the time we arrived for a relaxing tea experience at Sweet Simplici-Tea in Sykesville, MD only to find a full-on beer festival happening on the same street.
This year, instead of braving a tea room in the time of COVID-19, I planned a socially-distanced tea for Debi at my house. This involved thinking about what we usually have at the teas we’ve liked best (a full menu including soup and salad along with the usual tea savories and sweets and of course scones and a selection of teas), finding recipes, and then actually baking, cooking, and making a really big mess in the kitchen. Next, getting out some nice china, tea cups and saucers, cloth napkins, and etc. I got a whole new appreciation for tea rooms, and will never scoff at the $25-$30 they charge per person for full afternoon teas.
The second food experience stemmed from the fact that some of my folklore women friends missed our usual food adventures when we meet in person for the annual American Folklore Society meetings. We decided to cook and eat and talk together one evening.
We chose to make gnocchi from scratch, something that none of us had ever attempted. Not just normal/simple gnocchi, but a recipe for sweet potato gnocchi with sage butter sauce which sounded totally awesome (and was).
It was deeply satisfying to knead and shape the dough, watch the little pillows come to the top of the boiling water, then to brown nicely in the bubbling browned butter. We had some laughs when our friend Lucy lost the flour she had measured, “which was here a minute ago,” and other little silly things along the way.
We then all sat down and ate (in my case, way too much of) the finished product, talked, laughed some more, and got a little weepy that we weren’t able to meet together. But somehow, the fluffy little balls of potato pasta eased the sadness. And the miles between Cathy and I in the DC area, Sue in Northern Indiana and Lucy in Northern Ohio melted away with each mouthful.
Debi contemplates a tea a few years back in a commercial tea room.Debi sits at one end of our long table for tea at our house last week. So much for the intimate tea experience.Tea goodies in progress. The kitchen was a disaster area after all that baking! How do they do it at tea rooms??Sweet potato gnocchi served up with friends on Zoom. I’m still eating this days later and every time I have some, I think about my friends and how much fun we had preparing and eating together even at a distance.
A trip to one of Pennsylvania’s 111 State Parks is as likely to uncover some of the state’s industrial past as it is to introduce you to natural wonders. Case in point, our visit yesterday to Canoe Creek State Park in Hollidaysburg.
In this case, it is the state’s once-thriving limestone industry that we learned a bit about. I say “a bit” because although you can view what is left of the two historic lime kilns (see photos below), the interpretation consists of three pretty worn interpretive signs, and the small museum/interpretation area at the park office was closed. (Double bad luck for us as we were hoping to get our recently acquired Pennsylvania State Park Passport stamped!)
One of the signs reminded the reader to think about how this quiet, seemingly bucolic parkland was once teeming with sound, sights, and smells. My imagination ran even further into the senses, speculating that you could probably have even tasted industry in the air as smokestacks belched, engines sent fumes billowing, and sweat poured off laborers.
Now, all we could hear was our own footfalls, a few distant crows calling, a woodpecker drilling for insects, and – when our trail skirted a scattering of homes on the outskirts of the park – a tinkle of wind chimes in the distance. The air was fresh in the mid-40s degree weather, and the dappled sun illuminated what was left of the autumn leaves in the tall maples, tulip poplars and oaks.
Ghosts and echoes of industry past, fitting for a Halloween hike.
What’s left of the Blair group of lime kilns stand like sentinels to a more industrious past.View from the top. Steve attempts to glean helpful info from the park brochure. Or perhaps starts mapping our course on the notoriously unhelpful trail map.Limestone, limestone everywhere. The trees which have grown up in the hundred or so years since the limestone industry thrived here cling tenaciously to it.The second kiln site is more ghostly, half hidden in the overgrown woods.A portion of the trail follows the old road bed of the railroad which carried the processed lime to market. Traces of the crumbling railroad ties are underfoot.
Wait, how did it get to be not only fall already, but close to the end of October? Is time speeding up? Maybe.
Last week was the most perfect of fall weather in South Central Pennsylvania. Sunny and into the 70s each day, with the colors, smells and sounds of the season fully awakening the senses.
Sound: The katydids, which had stopped their call and response at night during an earlier cold spell, started up again during the warmer nights. I love to leave the bedroom window open to the cool evening and let them sing me to sleep. Walking in the woods creates the shush-shush-shush of plowing through inches of crispy dry fallen leaves.
Shuffling through the fall leaves.
Smell: We purloined ripe red apples from the park’s small and totally untended orchard. No one cares, but you have to watch out for the wicked big hornets who also enjoy the fruit. Shaking the branches brings down a rain of apples; as they hit the ground they let off their sweet and tangy scent. They are not the prettiest of apples, with black spots, nicks from their tumble, and an occasion worm hole (sometimes with the occupant still inside), but they smell perfect. Apple sauce and apple cake planned in the near future!
Sight: Maybe not the reddest of years, but the oranges and yellows of the maples was intense enough. And the red oaks added their deep tones to the mix. Earth tones of the dried grasses, corn and soybeans contrasted with the bright leaves. We made the trek up to the overlook at Cowan’s Gap State Park to get the full effect from above. I always feel virtuous after this two-mile climb up the mountain and back down.
More sights in this group of pictures. Enjoy what’s left of fall and let it take your mind off everything else. I don’t think I need to elaborate on what “everything else” is right now.
A walk in Waynesboro, PA at that time of evening when the sun makes everything look even more intense than it is already.
The fall colors look good at least. Me, well, not so much.Cowan’s Gap Lake in fall splendor.
During the second part of my vacation, I joined my old high school buddies, Debi, Debbie and Chris on an Adirondack adventure. (Not that this was really “roughing it”, but tent camping in your 60s is an adventure in and of itself. No matter how soft your camp mattress is, you wake up stiff and fold yourself out of the cocoon of the sleeping bag slowly and ungracefully. Groaning.) Lots of fresh air and space for distancing, especially after Labor Day.
We met up at lovely Rollins Pond. Why are some of the innumerable bodies of water up there are called ponds and some lakes? Apparently it has to do with the depth. But anyhow, Rollins is a pretty big pond and most camping sites are situated a short distance from the shore. Perfect for kayaking or taking a swim right from your “back door.”
Water-based activities by day, roaring campfire by night. This was our “routine” for three days.
The first full day there we set off in kayaks after breakfast and encountered one of the famous northern loons and her chick swimming placidly along. I regret the decision not to bring my phone with me to snap some shots, because I got close enough to stare into the mom’s beady red eye and to scare the chick into keeping close by her side. During various parts of the day, especially around dusk and dawn, we heard their haunting call.
I was hoping to see another loon or two when we took a sunset paddle, but alas we only crossed paths with a large group of hooded mergansers. I was prepared with my camera this time, though.
After dinner, Chris chopped a couple of humongous logs into oblivion, and the dry wood Debi and I had purchased along the way kept the stockpile going. Toasted on our front sides and chilled on the back sides, mesmerized by the glowing coals, we sipped wine and gossiped for hours about our acquaintances.
Our family always took camping trips when I was a kid, so this form of vacation always brings back childhood memories. I recalled how my mom would save up waxed half gallon milk cartons for the trips, and each night when bedtime approached, she would bring them out, one for me and one for my sister. She set them on the back of the fire pit and set them on fire. When they had burned down to ashes, we had to go to bed, no whining or cajoling for more time in front of the warm campfire allowed!
We didn’t have any such time restrictions on this trip, but by ten p.m. we were ready to call it a night and climb into our cocoons, lungs full of fresh pine-scented air, lulled to sleep by the loons.
Home away from home. (That was the name of our pop-up camper when we were kids by the way; Debbie and Chris have not named their small RV.)The merganser group takes in the sunset.Even a non-spectacular sunset is worth a paddle. Can’t complain about the one we got.Second day paddle started in Rollins, through a stream to Floodwater Pond and through more channels like this one ending eventually in Fish Creek Pond.
After a spring and summer of way too much time on screens, I took a week and half off for a two-part vacation offering lots of water views. First destination to celebrate my husband’s birthday: Erie, Pennsylvania.
After a meandering trip through the back roads and small towns of western PA, we arrived in Erie just in time to catch a great sunset at Erie Bluffs State Park. After that we hunkered down in our semi-rustic cabin near Elk Creek.
The next day was our “discover Presque Isle” day. Presque Isle (“almost an island” in French) is a name shared with places in Maine and Michigan, so it will sound familiar to many. The Pennsylvania version is a peninsula, called aptly, The Penisula by the locals, jutting out between the bay and the open waters of Lake Erie. Erie is the next-to-smallest of the Great Lakes, but is still pretty darned impressive in size and scope. The Peninsula is entirely taken up by a state park with lots to offer for a day around, on or in the lake.
First stop was Misery Bay and the Perry Monument. I was thinking, Perry the Arctic Explorer and wondering what the heck the connection was. How wrong! We’re talking Admiral Oliver Hazard Perry, the War of 1812 hero here. Through the extensive series of historic markers flanking the obelisk honoring Perry and his brave men, we learned that after their grand defeat of the British navy, they wintered-over in this bay.
On a warm and calm late summer day, the bay near the memorial looks inviting and benign. Not so in the winter of 1813-14. And maybe in any other winter for that matter. It’s name, Misery Bay, stems from the freezing temperatures and sickness that killed off a dozen men that season, and made the rest of them, well, miserable.
Luckily for me, the winds were behaving and the air was fresh. I embarked on the Lady Kate, a sight-seeing boat which, with social distancing and everyone wearing masks (including our narrator, who regaled us with information for 90 minutes straight) took us on a trip across the bay into the open waters of the lake.
After the boat ride, we had a picnic, explored Horseshoe Pond with its ring of over twenty houseboats, and viewed the picaresque black and white channel marker from the shore. I dipped my toes into the cool waters at one of the beaches before we left in late afternoon.
The next day we did a bit of a walk-around in downtown Erie, parking on the edge of Perry Park which features a looming statue of the hero. “We have met the enemy and he is ours” is his famous quotation. For our part, we met Erie, PA and now it is ours in memory and pictures.
Sunset on Lake Erie from Lake Erie BluffsThe sky kept getting more impressive after the sun set. Birthday Boy documents.The Lady Kate awaits passengers near the Perry monument. Houseboats of Horseshoe Pond. Channel marker which looks like a mini-lighthouse, is as photogenic from shore as from the water view. There’s also a “real” lighthouse which is also much photographed.The Man Himself presiding over downtown monument in Perry Park.
