Books

Imagine my delight at happening upon Fiona J. Houston’s book, The Cottage Diaries My Year in the Eighteenth Century. Why would someone choose to live for a year in a small house without running water, electricity, heat or any of the comforts that we are accustomed to? Ironically, the present led her back to the past. While investigating the history of Scottish food for an exhibition, she read Felicity Lawrence’s Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on your Plate, and was shocked by the lack of nutrients found in industrialized food. She posited that people ate better in late eighteenth century Scotland and decided to take on the challenge of living and eating for a year as a dominie’s wife (a dominie is a Scottish schoolmaster).

Houston writes:

“One of my reasons for trying to go back in time was my anger at our throw-away society. It’s not just the wastefulness of buying goods, using them for a short time and then chucking them out that upsets me. It is the whole swathe of human activity and endeavour that is negated by this cycle. In the past, people had fewer resources. They had to use their skills and ingenuity to obtain the things that they needed for daily life. They had to make, mend, improvise and invent. I like all of that. I may not have all of the skills, but I have the inclination. In deciding to live simply for a year, I was setting myself a challenge to let the practical side of my nature come to the fore.”

Houston sets herself up in a small house and kits it to an eighteenth century standard with a simple table and chair, bed, a few candlesticks, pots and pans, and a range dating from 1860 (women of the prior century would have cooked on an open hearth, but the structure of Houston’s cottage did not allow for this). She wears clothing of the time (skirts and cloaks, both become soaked in the rain, for not waterproof), gardens and forages in order to cook seasonally, writes with a quill pen using homemade ink, and walks to the local village when necessary.

Her diary begins in January 2005 and chronicles her monthly chores and activities. She provides recipes, and I have yet to make her oatcakes, but soon nettle soup will be on our table. She kept a careful accounting of the her food categorized by season, purchased or foraged, as well as “What it all Cost.” She works incredibly hard at daily living, keeping warm or cool, gathering firewood, making candles and other chores. At the end of her day, she tries to sit down and read books of the time, but finds that it is difficult to read by the rushlights. Houston confirms my suspicion that working by candlelight was extremely difficult, for I often wonder how much was accomplished by such dim lights.

I have the utmost admiration for Fiona Houston, for mastering the skills needed to survive an eighteenth century year. Her book provides one with both the expertise to follow in her footsteps and the ability to see what one can do in the twenty-first century to live a more considered, ‘greener’ life.

NOTE: It seems only fitting to mark the completion of a second year of ‘on a colonial farm’ after reading of Houston’s eighteenth century life. Thank you, dear readers for joining me.

Fiona J. Houston, The Cottage Diaries My Year in the Eighteenth Century, illustrations by Claire Melinsky, (Saraband, 2009), pgs. 9-10, 44, 71, 214

Yet another snowstorm looms in our local future, as it does for many on the east coast. The weather continues to be a topic of much talk and, in some cases, despair, as it ever was.

Noah Webster (1748-1853) kept a “diary of weather” and thus was able to put both past and present into perspective. He wrote:

“The snow in January of 1805 was about 3 feet deep. This was the severest winter since 1780. But the snow left the earth in March in good season & spring was early. I cut asparagus on the 14^th of April, 9 days earlier than last year.”

His article ‘Meteorological’ in The Connecticut Herald seeks to make sense of the reported severest winters of 1780 and 1805. Webster was eagerly tracking the climatic changes through his strenuous data gathering, and thereby challenged the attestations of Thomas Jefferson and others that the “American winters were becoming milder.” Intriguingly, biographer Joshua Kendall links this controversy between scholarly gentlemen to what we now call climate change. Jefferson claimed that the deforestation in some states was the cause of this warming trend; Webster noted that variability in weather patterns was increasing, and he kept data and analyzed the statistics to prove it. Both of these wise individuals pointed to the plight that we are dealing with, or need to tackle, today.

Looking back at these winters and writers gives one a bit of perspective on the recent bout of record setting weather, which must needs give one pause about what we humans are doing each day as we shape the future of our globe.

Wendell Berry asks us to remain in the present with our actions in regards to climate change and land abuse. He posits that if we are only thinking of what can be accomplished in the future, we are missing the opportunity for what we can do right now. He invites us to ‘save energy now for the future’ by beginning with small acts today. Berry states,

“We are always ready to set aside our present life, even our present happiness, to peruse the menu of future exterminations. If the future is threatened by the present, which it undoubtedly is, then the present is more threatened, and often is annihilated, by the future.”

He continues:

“….so few as just one of us can save energy right now by self-control, careful thought, and remembering the lost virtue of frugality. Spending less, burning less, traveling less may be relief. A cooler, slower life may make us happier, more present to ourselves, and to others who need us to be present.”

Time, right now, to start a list of small actions for today.

Joshua Kendall, The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture, (Berkley Books, 2012), pgs. 273-274.

Wendell Berry, Our Only World Ten Essays, (Counterpoint, 2015), pgs. 174, 175.

I stand at my worktable, pierce holes in paper, thread a needle with waxed linen and bind the pages together forming a hand bound book. My actions are not revolutionary, but they are meditative, and ones that fellow bookbinders have done for centuries.

As I line up the pages within the eco-dyed covers, and rhythmically slip the needle through the holes, my mind wanders to images of leaves of books, of books within books. Often books are about just that – other books – and with more regularity now, images of archival manuscripts are reproduced therein. Thankfully so, for these manuscripts are hidden from view, tucked away in special (often secure) rooms in libraries for safe-keeping.

eco-dyed covers ready for binding

Scholars, poets, artists and authors search out these handmade objects, for the energy and information that they hold within. A tactile experience described by Jill Lepore:

“…sitting in that archive, holding those sheets of foolscap stitched together with the coarsest of threads, I began to think that Benjamin Franklin’s sister had something to say after all, something true, something new. Very delicately, I once more turned the brittle pages of the Book of Ages, and in them I saw an unwritten story: a history of books and papers, a history of reading and writing, a history from reformation to revolution, a history of history. This, then, is Jane Franklin’s story: a book of ages about ages of books.”

Lepore’s biography of Jane Franklin (Benjamin Franklin’s sister) revolves around this manuscript housed in the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Franklin “…stitched four sheets of foolscap between two covers to make sixteen pages. On its first page, she wrote, “Jane Franklin Born on Monday March 27 1712″. She called it her Book of Ages.” Lepore charts the course of her biography using Franklin’s book as the route; the strokes of Franklin’s quill pen in her handmade book provide the coordinates.

Step back. Examine the pen strokes, their placement on the page, the materiality of the paper, as Susan Howe wisely advises in her recent book, Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives, when examining Jonathan Edwards’ papers at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.

“Three of Edwards’ manuscript books I particularly love are titled Efficacious Grace. Two of them he constructed from discarded semi-circular pieces of silk paper his wife and daughters used for making fans. If you open these small oval volumes and just look—without trying to decipher the minister’s spidery script, pen strokes begin to resemble textile thread-text. Surface and meaning co-operate to keep alive in one process mastery in service, service in mastery.”

“Spidery,” and “lavish, calligraphic…slender, artful”, are adjectives used to describe the styles of Edwards and Franklin, respectively. Paper made from rags (Franklin) and silk (Edwards) bound by their hands and holding the words written in their hands. These manuscripts are more than books; they are also a portal into an historic figure and a corresponding era.

bound copies of Tobacco Hour

Objects. A few weeks ago, the poet Susan Howe delivered her lecture (from which the above referenced book is based) at The Hotchkiss School in conjunction with the exhibition, “Hotchkiss in 50 Objects” at the Tremaine Art Gallery. The exhibition traced, defined and referenced Hotchkiss’ history by way of fifty items from the school’s archives. Before she began her lecture, Howe told us that while giving her talk, a series of images would be shown, but she would not stop to tell us what each was, rather they would roll forward as a “collage”. Images of documents, book pages and fragments floated by on the screen, and we connected the dots by way of her multi-faceted details. Howe states:

“In research libraries and collections, we may capture the portrait of history in so-called insignificant visual and verbal textualities and textiles. In material details. In twill fabrics, bead-work pieces, pricked patterns, four-ringed knots, tiny spangles, sharp-toothed stencil wheels; in quotations, thought-fragments, rhymes, syllables, anagrams, graphemes, endangered phonemes, in soils and cross-outs.”

Find some paper and thread, make a book, and begin writing down details.

Objects.

Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, (Alfred Knopf, 2013), pgs. XIII-XIV, XII, 49.

Susan Howe, Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives, ( Christine Burgin/New Directions, 2014), pgs. 46, 21.

Note: Tobacco Hour a collaboration between poet/Dara Mandle, artist/Brece Honeycutt, and publisher/Jason Andrew/Norte Maar will be published in April 2015. Special thanks to Barbara Mauriello for her encouragement and consultation on the project.

sneak peak of Tobacco Hour cover

One often finds the useful in unexpected places. We go each week to the town “transfer station”, aka, the dump. Placed near the bins for garbage and recycling are a set of rambling metal shelves where useful items are deposited for the taking. Most of the time, there is nothing to bring home, but one day I found not only a pair of wellingtons that fit perfectly, but a copy of Tasha Tudor’s Garden.

As a child, I repeatedly read Tudor’s books with avid interest, but it was not until I thumbed through the pages of my new find that I realized her life and work were one in the same. The illustrations that so fascinated me as a child were in fact drawn from her real life. And, the real life gardens around her house that were photographed in my recent find captivated me, not only for their seasonal offerings, but for the absolute stunning painterly landscape they made for the eye—clumps of lupines, irises, poppies. Even though we live in a 1753 house, over the last fifty or sixty years its landscape had been transformed to something more like a suburban lawn. Shortly after we moved here, we began to transform our plot of land into something more natural, seasonal, and beneficial to the birds, bees and other insects; that is, into something now referred to as permaculture.

Wouldn’t it be a rich experience to go and see Tasha Tudor’s home? Upon further investigation, I learned that there are tours of Corgi Cottage, but these coveted tickets are quickly snapped up by her most ardent fans. One can, however, visit the Tasha Tudor Museum located in West Brattleboro, VT, and we found ourselves somewhat unexpectedly walking through the door there a few weeks ago after a pleasant visit with close friends.

We were greeted by a woman dressed in Tudor’s style, with long dress and apron. She invited us to watch a video about Tudor’s life (1915-2008) whilst sipping steaming cups of properly brewed tea served in china cups. The video allows one to be present with Tudor as she talks candidly about her life while she walks through the landscape, tends her chickens and goats, or sits by the wood stove sketching by candlelight. Before leaving, we marveled at the objects on view in the summer exhibition, “From Scratch: Tasha’s Handmade Life.”

On our drive home, we discussed how we might live a bit more closer to the land and continue to further transform our farm for the mutual benefit of nature and ourselves. Ultimately, we gleaned that Tudor’s life was whole, meaning that her art and life were one, and perhaps this is the most important lesson of all.

Over the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure of Cherry Jones reading to me. She beautifully narrates Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of Little House books, giving each character a distinct voice. The Ingalls family moved across the United States territories from Kansas to Minnesota and finally to the Dakota territory, experiencing extraordinary hardships but seemingly always making the best. At times, I wonder if Wilder made events more joyful, perhaps even sugar-coating some of her recollections; but then the locusts eat the carefully tended crops, or the blizzard encases their house for days, and I know better. These books are fiction, biography and a how-to manual all at once. If one wants to live ruggedly off the land, settle a homestead, build a cabin, establish a garden, plant crops, break horses, harvest hay, put up food, sew and alter garments and much more, listen or read the Little House books, making notes as you go.

Perhaps you might prefer instead a more traditional manual, with interviews, diagrams and recipes, and for this I recommend the Foxfire series. When these books appeared in the ‘70s, I gobbled them up, just as I had done with Wilder’s books. In 1966, Eliot Wigginton, a young high school teacher on his first job at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School (in Rabun Gap, GA), pitched an idea for starting “Foxfire Magazine” out of desperation when his traditional classroom teaching efforts failed. He sent his students to interview their relatives, hoping not only to capture methods and memories, but also to rekindle relationships. Their project was wildly successful and one can subscribe to “Foxfire Magazine” today (now at Issue 47).

Wigginton writes about his students in the introduction:

“Suddenly they discover their families—previously people to be ignored in the face of the seventies—as pre-television, pre-automobile, pre-flight individuals who endured and survived the incredible task of total self-sufficiency, and came out of it all with a perspective on ourselves as a country that we are not likely to see again. They have something to tell us about self-reliance, human interdependence, and the human spirit that we would do well to listen to.”

The time seems ripe again to glean techniques and methods from these books and magazines, and put them to use wherever we live.

The Little House series read by Cherry Jones on Harper Collins Audio.

The Foxfire Book hog dressing, log cabin building, mountain crafts and foods, planting by the signs, snake lore, hunting tales, faith healing, moonshining and other affairs of plain living, edited with an Introduction by Eliot Wigginton, (Anchor Books, 1972), pgs. 13, 11.

NOTE:  If one would like to see Cherry Jones on stage, she is currently appearing in “When We Were Young and Unafraid” at City Center, NY, NY running until August 10. Recent New York Times review

SECOND NOTE:  Abigail Doan recently interviewed me for her blog about the project Lost in Fiber.

Wednesday May 7, 1794–Two hundred and twenty years ago today, Jane Franklin Mecom passed away in Boston, MA.  Jane was the beloved sister of Benjamin Franklin and was an avid reader and a lively correspondent.

As is customary, Jane left belongings to members of her family, but to her granddaughter Jenny Mecom she left the majority of her household effects:

“In consideration of the extraordinary attention paid me by my Grand Daughter Jane Mecom exclusive of her common and necessary concerns in domestic affairs & the ordinary business of the Family, I think proper to give and bequeath unto her several articles of household furniture, particularly as follows The Bed, Bedstead, and Curtains which I commonly use, the three pair of homespun sheets lately made and the Bedding of every kind used with this Bed both in Summer and Winter, consisting of two Blankets, a White Counterpane and two Calico Bedquilts, one of which is new; The Chest of Drawers and Table which usually stand in my Chamber, and six Black Walnut Chairs with green bottoms also two black Chairs, my looking Glass which I bought of Samuel Taylor and which commonly hangs in my Chamber, a large Brass Kettle, a small Bell mettle skillet, a small iron Pot, a large Trammel, a pair of large Iron hand irons, a shovel and a pair of Tongs, a Black Walnut stand and tea board, two brass Candle sticks, a small Copper Tea Kettle and one half  of my Wearing Apparel of every kind.”

My mind conjures up Jane’s room, her humble bed with homespun sheets, and her skillets, irons and pots clustered around the fireplace.  Possessions.  Things left behind.  When a loved one passes, it seems that if one can hold something that was once theirs, one can thereby embrace that loved one for a bit longer.  When Jenny crawled into bed after a hard day’s work, did the calico bedquilt remind her of her dear grandmother, and thus provide a bit of comfort?

We can thank historian Jill Lepore for tracing down Jane Franklin’s writings and piecing together, as one would a quilt, the facts of Franklin’s life as retold in Lepore’s latest book, Book of Ages: the life and opinions of Jane Franklin.  Lepore’s book presents as one both poetry and history, for her exquisite use of language and knowledge of facts provides one with a captivating biography to be gobbled up and savored, simultaneously.

Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: the life and opinions of Jane Franklin, (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), pgs. 247,  245-246

First day of spring.  First spring snow showers.  First flock of red-winged black birds.  First shoots of skunk cabbage.

First American poet Anne Bradstreet’s thoughts on spring:

Sweet Spring like man in his Minority,
At present claim’d, and had priority.
With smiling face and garments somewhat green,
She trim’d her locks, which late had frosted been,
Nor hot nor cold, she spake, but with a breath,
Fit to revive, the nummed earth from death.
Three months (quoth she) are ‘lotted to my share
March, April, May, of all the rest most fair.
Tenth of the first, Sol into Aries enters,
And bids defiance to all tedious winters,
Crosseth the Line, and equals night and day,
 (Stil adds to th’last til after pleasant May)
And now makes glad the darkened northern wights
Who for some months have seen but starry lights.
Now goes the Plow-man to his merry toyle,
He might unloose his winter locked soyl:
The Seeds-man too, doth lavish out his grain,
In hope the more he casts, the more to gain:
The Gardener now superfluous branches lops
And poles erects for his young clambering hops.
Now digs then sowes his herbs, his flowers and roots
And carefully manures his trees of fruits.
The Pleides their influence now give,
And all that seem’d as dead afresh doth live.
The croaking frogs, whom nipping winter kil’d
Like birds now chirp, and hop about the field.
The Nightingale, the black-bird and the Thrush
The wanton frisking Kid, and soft-fleec’d Lambs
Do jump and play before their feeding Dams,
The tender tops of budding grass they crop,
They joy in what they have, but more in hope:
Yet many a fleece of snow and stormy shower
Doth darken Sol’s bright eye, makes us remember
The pinching North-west wind of cold December.

Bradstreet (1612-1672), along with her husband Simon and her parents Thomas and Dorothy Dudley, arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1650 after surviving the three-month voyage from England aboard the Arabella.

Bradstreet wrote over 6000 lines of poetry during her lifetime. Her poems are political, historical, lyrical, and seasonal.

Poems of Anne Bradstreet, edited with an introduction by Robert Hutchinson, (Dover Publications, 1969), pgs 167-8, from her poem entitled,  The four Seasons of the Year.

Growing up I had two heroines—Laura Ingalls Wilder and Harriet the Spy.  I read the books over and over again, for they were my city and country mice.

Harriet lived in New York City, a dream of mine as a young girl, but more importantly, she carried around her notebook and was an observer.  Rereading the book, one realizes that Harriet told the truth, and this was not always well received.  She suffered for it, and perhaps that was part of Fitzhugh’s plan.  Harriet the Spy turned 50 this year and Random House just issued an anniversary issue.

Laura grew up on the prairie and the day-to-day mechanics of the homestead was of utmost fascination to me, and still is.  I just began to listen to the series via books on CD, and these are reminding me that Laura provided so much practical knowledge.  Laura benefited from wise parents, for both Ma and Pa knew the workings of the seasons and how it related to the world around them.

my treasured copies

Books were my road into different worlds and their inhabitants, and I searched out books by, for and about women.  Women’s history week had not been proclaimed yet, and women in history and art history books were scarce, if at all.

March is Women’s History Month, and at the Library this week, I set up the related display.  I piled the cart full of books—all types: fiction, non-fiction, biographies, autobiographies, both for the adults and children.  Where would we be without the suffragettes and their hard won victories; without the historians and their invaluable writings; and without the many women that are leaders in their fields?

Many new heroines are to be found on the shelves of your local library.

Note:  Here in Berkshire County, Women’s History Month is celebrated with the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers.  Here is a link to the website with listings for events on every day of the month.

Outside, the landscape is white, covered by snow and ice, with more snow forecast accompanied by bitter winds.  As I look around, the white is punctuated with dark—bits of stone walls showing through the drifts, coupled with the upright stark beauty of tree trunks against the gray, gloaming sky.  This is the point in winter when the soul longs for spring, or at least for a significant snow melt.  It is time to take solace and scholarship from poets.

Emily Dickinson thoughtfully provided needed respite from the winter’s cold through plants.  Judith Farr reports,

“Martha Dickinson Bianchi recalled her Aunt Emily sitting near the Franklin stove in her bedroom every winter, hyacinth bulbs surrounding her, her eye quick to mark the slightest green they put forth.  Emily’s conservatory contained the vanilla-scented heliotrope, sweet alyssum, buttercups, and daffodils, even in February.  “Forcing bulbs” was, in fact, one of Dickinson’s stratagems against winter gloom.”

geraniums blooming by my desk

Farr references Emily Dickinson’s poem:

“Winter is good—
his Hoar Delights
Italic flavor yield—
To Intellects
inebriate
With Summer
or the World–

Generic as a
Quarry
And hearty – as
a Rose
Invited with
Apserity
But welcome
When he goes”

            F 1374

We know that underneath the snow, snowdrops & crocuses await their time, and will punctuate the lawn with color in the coming months.

Take heart also from John Keats: 

“Shed no tear—O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more—O weep no more!
Young bulbs sleep in the root’s white core”

Note:  The Emily Dickinson House reopens on March 1, 2014.

Judith Farr, The Gardens of Emily Dickinson, (Harvard University Press, 2004), pgs. 24, 272-3.

When I was a child, my mother and I had a few ‘mother/daughter’ outfits—dresses that were similar and/or the same, but sized accordingly.  While it was fun to have these matching clothes, wouldn’t it be more illuminating to have ‘mother/daughter’ books, so they could be read simultaneously?  Perhaps Cokie Roberts had this in mind when she wrote the newly published children’s book, Founding Mothers: Remembering the Ladies.

In 2004, Roberts published the ‘adult’ version, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation.  Her book masterfully documents the women behind the men. She traces the forming of America, chronologically from British colonies to the newly established democracy, through the roles of women, both known and unknown —Deborah Reade Franklin, Mary Otis Warren, Abigail Smith Adams, Sarah Franklin Bache, Sarah Livingston Jay, Mary White Morris, Phyllis Wheatley, and Martha Washington—to name just a few.

Why, one wonders, is it still necessary to write a ‘children’s’ version in today’s world?  Roberts states in her NPR interview with Steve Inskeep:

“The National Archives are the closest thing we have to a cathedral of the country. There are these fabulous murals up on the walls above the Constitution, the Declaration and the Bill of Rights.  And they’re all white men in white wigs with tights, and I don’t think they’re recognizable to a lot of Americans.  But they weren’t the only people who did it.  They were incredibly important — I’m not taking anything away from our Founding Fathers — but they didn’t do it alone.”

Spies, activists, poets, writers, postmasters, printers, cannon operators, farmers shopkeepers, cooks—these are a few of the jobs held by women during colonial times, and without their work, Roberts rightly asserts, the revolution would not have been successful.   Stories need to be told and re-told, and women’s history especially, and thus one finds Roberts’ distillation of these revolutionary women an act of beneficent wisdom.  Of course, a book for young girls needs to be accompanied by illustrations, and the pages are graced by the masterful pen and watercolors of Diane Goode.  For an insight into her working methods—translating both facts and images into illustrations–please refer to a photographic documentation on her website.

Venture forth to your local book store, purchase a copy of  Founding Mothers: Remembering the Ladies, then pull your copy of  Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation off your bookshelf and invite your daughter or granddaughter to sit on the couch for a read-along.  You don’t have to be wearing similar clothes, but it may help.

Remember the Ladies, indeed.

As the New Year dawns, it seems appropriate to look back as well as forward.

Martha Ballard, midwife, January 1, 1796, living in Hallowell, ME:

“Clear and Pleasant.  I washt and washt my kitchen.  Was Calld at 9 hour Evening to see the wife of Capt Moses Springer who is not so well as Shee Could wish.  Her husband is gone a trip to Boston.  I tarried there all night. Slept some after 1 o Clock.”

Abigail May Alcott, mother of Louisa May Alcott, January 1, 1877, Concord, MA:

“……..Brilliant, beautiful day.  The year comes in festively; its gorgeous drapery of clouds of many colors.  Not cold. I sew a little for Louisa.  Freddy played the piano last night, the last tune, “America,” ushers in the New Year with his favorite waltz (Star).  We rake a sleigh-ride, call at Mrs. Pratt’s.”

Margaret Dow Gebby, farmwife, January 1, 1891, Bellefontaine, OH:

“A very wet day.  Orra and George made each a key for the P.O. but Georges did not open the lock.  Jerry was at the farm this morning, everything all right, went to town this P.M. paid the taxes $240.22, got bank div $140.  I swept and dusted the house all over to day.”

[Note: Virginia McCormick, editor of Gebby’s diary, points out that a century ago New Year’s Day was not always a holiday, and that it was business as usual for merchants, bankers and government workers.]

At our home today, it dawns crisp, 12 degrees with ribbons of mauve clouds in the sky.  A snowstorm is predicted for the Berkshire hills in the next few days, accompanied by howling winds and frigid temperatures.

The weather is a constant.  A grounding for each woman–Martha, Abigail and Margaret–began by noting the climatic conditions.  Likewise, for the past six years, I have opened my ledger, every morning, and recorded the temperature.  Often, I will note events of the day—the coming of mud season, the planting  of onions, the harvesting of the garlick crop, the starting of the wood furnace, and, happily, the day the first puce points of the skunk cabbage open in the bogs: the harbingers of spring.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich,  A Midwife’s Tale:  the life of Martha Ballard, based on her diary, 1785-1812, (Vintage Books, 1990), p .205.

My Heart is Boundless Writing os Abigail May Alcott, Louisa’s Mother, edited by Eve LaPlante, (Free Press, 2012), p. 216.

Farm Wife A Self-Portrait, 1886-1896, edited by Virginia E. McCormick (Iowa State University Press, 1990), pgs. 147.

Happy Birthday, Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830-May 15, 1886)

Dickinson’s works are now more accessible—on the web, in a new book and on exhibit.

In late October, the Emily Dickinson Archive was launched on the web.  For the first time all of her known hand written manuscript pages—poems, notes, letters–are in one place and available to poet, scholar or gardener.  Pick from one of the eight archive locations housing her works and begin to turn the pages of their holdings.  Zoom in on her handwriting, her dashes, and carefully read her letters and poems.

If you want to hold a book in your hands, then you are fortunate for Emily Dickinson The Gorgeous Nothings by Marta Werner and Jen Bervin (with a preface by Susan Howe) is hot off the press and packed with images and essays.  The book is an artwork in itself—scanned images of ‘fifty-two envelope writings’ float on white pages—each page holds one image in full color.  Turn the page and see the other side, or hold the page in your hand, and see both sides at once.  The book concludes with an essay by Werner and visual indexes of the envelopes compiled by Bervin.

If you still want more, and by more, I mean to see the real envelope fragments, then you are in luck.  Tucked into an intimate room at The Drawing Center in New York, one can view her handwriting close up in the exhibition ‘Dickinson/Walser Envelope Sketches’ curated by Claire Gilman (on view until January 14, 2014).  Linger, as I did, over each fragment and examine the relationship between the shape of the envelope and the placement of the text.  Then, zero in on poem and relish in her words.

“When they come back–if Blossoms do”–Brece Honeycutt collaborative piece at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY, 2007.                   Photograph Benjamin Swett

Dickinson, in her lifetime was known for her gardens and baking, rather than her words.  Her flowers are long gone and the ovens are cold, but her words, placed on the page as she intended, can inspire us forevermore.

If you would like to visit Dickinson’s house in Amherst, MA, hurry over there before it closes for the season on December 29th (also closed for Christmas & Boxing Day). It will re-open in March 2014 : http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org