Category Archives: Photography
Old School
“Please excuse Priscilla’s absence from the blogosphere yesterday. Her make-up work will be completed on time.” Signed by my mother. Do I need an excuse? I was tired. The week of training is now complete. We are ready to open on May 1st. Here are some shots to whet your appetite; I promise that I will be posting more anecdotes and photos from my new job at Old World Wisconsin. Imagine filling up your tank with gasoline while dressed in 19th century clothing…and then going inside and asking to use the rest room. Imagine stopping by the post office on your way home from work dressed like this as well. Yes, we did these things. So far no one has asked for an explanation. In the case of the Postal employees, they know us really well and we’ve been talking about this for weeks. They were thrilled. As for the gas station, it was one in the same town, so I’m sure they’re used to costumed customers. Oh, I should tell you that I’ve decided to drop the poetry challenge. I really enjoyed the challenge when I had more free time, now it seems like an obligation that I don’t want to fulfill. So, thanks for the good time, NaPoWriMo, but I’m moving on!
This one's for Helen because she wanted to see my corset!
Me & Steve in full garb. I have a different outfit for weekends when I am in the village church. This is my farm wife costume.
This is the bake house or summer kitchen where I will be teaching kids to knead dough while talking to them about life on the farm.
More to come, friends. I now need to spend some time cleaning my 21st century house in preparation for a visit from my middle daughter tomorrow!
Field Trips
Today was another great day of training at Old World Wisconsin. School groups are coming tomorrow! Today I learned how to use a wood burning stove. I made a fire in both the stove and the bake oven and made coffee and creamed bratwurst on the stove. The rest of the crew from the German area came over for lunch bringing fried potatoes and caramelized turnips to complete our lunch. It was so satisfying to play hostess knowing that I’m beginning to truly feel at home in that way of life. I offered tin cups of hot coffee to the menfolk, and chairs to the most senior members of the group. I swept the floor after everyone left, did the dishes, and then had about an hour completely on my own to read up on the history of the buildings and to begin to darn some wool socks. When I returned to the training facility at the end of the day, my costumes were ready for me to try on. I have one for my role in the farmhouse and one for my role as the organist at the Catholic Church in the village. I get to wear a hooped bustle and a fancy hat with a hatpin for that one!
I feel like I’m being paid to cook over a campfire…I usually have to pay for that privilege! I need to practice up on my school group presentation for tomorrow. No poetry tonight, sorry!
Inheriting a Homestead
I spent several hours today in the homestead that I will demonstrate and interpret for visitors to Old World Wisconsin. Tomorrow I will learn to light a fire in the cookstove and the bake oven and actually cook something. The house and land was purchased by Adam Schottler, an immigrant from southern Germany who had a larger farm nearby. He rented the house out until his son Matthias was married, and then he gave his son and daughter-in-law the property. The Wisconsin Historical Society acquired the house and a few other buildings from the period, and assembled them together to form a homestead for the museum. The restoration date targeted is 1875. At that time, Matthias and Caroline Schottler had 2 children. They had 11 children total during their marriage. Here’s a photo that shows the zigzag fence, the granary and pig pen, the barn, the summer kitchen (or bake house), and behind it, the house. The granary, summer kitchen, and house are all one behind the other in this photo, so you can’t see much of them. The wooden crossbar frame standing outside is for butchering hogs (which we’ll do in the fall). The green field in the background is planted with rye. I am supposedly going to help make a rye straw basket, and to raise dough in it for rye bread, which I will bake in the bake kitchen oven…an oven that holds 24 loaves at a time!
I will also be busying myself chopping wood and gardening in order to prepare food in that summer kitchen. Today I saw rhubarb and asparagus and currents and thyme and sage and rosemary and lemon balm and dill and horseradish already growing in the garden. All of this produce is to be used on site during the season. I don’t get to take any home, but I do get to help use it. I have been wanting to learn more about how to “live off the land” for a while now, and this is going to be a great introduction, I think.
Right now I’m learning all kinds of logistics to interpreting this area for school groups beginning a week from today, but I think of the feel of the sun on my cheeks and the 13-stripe ground squirrel that peeked into the kitchen today, and I imagine moments that I will have simply soaking up the homesteading life, pondering the way of a woman who worked hard, raised 11 children, and knew the land around her intimately. What will I learn from her? What appreciation and meaning will take root inside me? Gratitude, a sense of life rooted and grounded, a hope for my own children to live honestly in the simple abundance of the earth? It’s a connection that I’m eager to explore.
I apologize for leaving out a poetry challenge for today, but I am too sunburned and tired to concentrate on that today. Tomorrow I have another early day out at the site. I am looking forward to sleep! And to getting my costume….more to come!
Happy Earth Day, Earthlings!
The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970 and marks what some consider the birth of the Environmental Movement. Of course, cultures throughout history have celebrated and appreciated the earth according to their particular perspectives. Harvest festivals, rain rituals, volcano appeasement, fertility festivals, river ceremonies…I can think of many ways that humans have venerated the earth. Since 1990, when the Earth Day campaign went global, we’ve focused on the planet as a whole. We are the ones who have seen it (at least in pictures) as a whole from outer space, and I think we are realizing more and more how our relationship to the Earth is effecting that picture. Large scale weather patterns, extinction rates, pollution and population are just some of the issues that are “going big” in our consciousness. This is all very well, and at the same time, each of us has a particular and specific and local intimacy with Earth that should never be overlooked.
NaPoWriMo is acknowledging Earth Day with its prompt to write a poem about a plant. I have so many favorite Earth/Nature/Flower/Animal poems already dear to my heart that I’m having a hard time being original, so I think I’m just going to share a few favorites with you here instead. The first one is a lullaby that my mother used to sing to me. I have no idea of its origin. I just hear Mom sing:
White coral bells upon a slender stalk,
Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk.
Oh! Don’t you wish that you could hear them ring?
That will happen only when the faeries sing!
Here’s one I wrote back in March as I looked at my lilac bush:
When will the buds appear this year?
When will the lilac be full in bloom?
When will that perfume make fair the air?
When will that purple bedeck my room?
Soon, oh, soon; let it be soon!
I’ve been wearing lilac oil from a little vial that Jim bought me when we were on Mackinac Island years ago. A few drops on my neck assures me that the fragrance of my favorite flower will not fade too quickly from my consciousness.
I took a walk yesterday to photograph some of my local earth miracles. May I present:
White tail deer
Bleeding heart
Red Admiral butterfly
Tulips, daffodils, hyacinth
And to represent the hippie protesters and the environmental movement, I have to share one of my favorite earth songs. Nanci Griffith, “From A Distance” (written by Julie Gold). Socks with sandals, passion and integrity. She moves me.
Love our planet, today and every day. Treat her and all life with respect. Please.
Cultural Awareness
I am about to venture out into the retail world in search of shoes that might pass as reminiscent of the 1870s. Having come up empty yesterday at two Goodwill shops, I’m not sure if I will be successful. It’s interesting taking stock of what’s out there in the resale stores. This is the stuff that people give away…and other people buy. It’s not marketed; it’s not about status or brand. It’s about filling a need with something serviceable. I would do all my shopping at a resale place if I could. That’s probably why my kids call me “cheap”. I don’t get the whole “status and style” idea. I just want to get the job done. I’m not trying to fit into a competitive culture of consumerism. My “work outfit” for my new job will be a reproduction of 19th century pioneer clothing. My “work outfit” for my last job was jeans and a T-shirt with the latest musical production logo on it. I guess I have a different idea of dressing for success.
One of Steve’s favorite fables is The Emperor’s New Clothes. He often sees himself as the little boy at the side of the parade who looks on in bafflement at what everyone else is celebrating and asks, “Why are we doing this?” He sometimes talks about it as being the one who points out the elephant in the room, that glaring awkwardness that no one wants to mention. He’s not judgmental about it, he just wants to discuss it, bring it out into the open, make everyone aware of it. He’s not cynical or sarcastic, he’s genuinely curious. We don’t have a TV, but we do watch basketball games online that often include commercials. Those ads bring up a lot of questions. Why do we sell what we sell the way that we do? Why is sex and violence so prevalent? And stereotypes? Why do we think having a good time is so important? What do we really think is important? And why? Why? What is the Big Idea? Everything comes down to that level, that three year old inside who stands watching and asks, “Why?”
It’s a really good question, I think, and one that I have been trained not to ask. “Theirs not to reason why/ theirs but to do and die.” The military motto, President Bush’s command to go out and spend money rather than debate economic policy, my father’s and the Church’s instructions on being obedient…there are so many examples of hushing up that 3-year-old. I admit that there are times when it’s useful to forgo the philosophical and act decisively and immediately, but shouldn’t we return to the subject eventually and periodically to keep our motivation clear? There are members of society who are watchdogs to our conscience, in a way, and I very much respect them for their courage and thank them for the questions that I forget to ask. I am more characteristically concerned with “How?” I want to do things lovingly, primarily; efficiently, much of the time; and as correctly as possible. That may say a lot about how effective my indoctrination into Judeo-Christian thought was.
Intentionally asking both questions and fashioning a life around the answers we find deep in our experience is the focus of our Saturday Summit (what we call our “relationship discussions”). The poetry prompt I found today on NaPoWriMo’s site challenged me to write a hay(na)ku, which is a recent poetic invention. It’s simply 6 words in three lines of ascending (or descending) measure. One word, two words, three words (any number of syllables) or vice versa. We can link several together as well, we’re told. So, here is my hay(na)ku series and a few photos.
Why?
Keeps asking,
“What is important?”
How –
“Am I
A good person?”
Questions
Are for
Shaping my character.
How now, brown cow?
Why? Just…why?
Traveling Mercies
Today’s poetry writing prompt is to write a travel poem about getting from Point A to Point B. I took this with me as I walked with Steve to meet his mom for breakfast at a cafe on North Avenue. Here’s what I came up with:
Suburban sidewalk, cement sanitation
Fighting blight from untidy dandelions
Writhing, withered stems polluted, poisoned
Preventing spreading superfluous seeds
Muddy raindrop crater-pocked parkway
Mini helicopter maples, twin neon confetti
Mossy black trunks, petal-splashed branches
Tinny worm smell, saturated iris-limp toilet paper
Hiking boots treading asphalt pathways
Longing for the purity beneath.
Yesterday’s rain has left a distinct damp chill over everything. I miss the golden sun. My mood is slow and overcast as well, but I think I’ve had an epiphany in the recent “relationship talks” we’ve been having. A serious and positive epiphany, too complicated to explain. I never knew that shock and denial could last four years and then drop in an instant. I feel like a snail without her shell. Perfect for crawling about a rain-soaked environment.
Opposites and Equivocations
Just when you’re ready to declare that you have had a defining experience, another experience comes along to blur that definition. How do you know what you think you know? Epistemology is enough to explode my brain, I fear. I have to be very careful venturing into that discipline. Taking an open, artistic approach spares me from the pressure to get off the fence. The poetry prompt from today’s NaPoWriMo post helpfully supports that position. They invited me to take a poem that already exists and re-write it so that each line is the opposite from the original. I assume that the fruit of this labor is to see that both are valid in some way.
Does this drive you crazy? Are some of us driven to be dogmatic, the ones who enjoy boxing things up and nailing them down and painting them in black and white? Is this a fear-based activity, presided over by the threat that there is a right and a wrong and you could be Wrong? Is life written in either/or, both/and, neither/nor or without the slash mark altogether? How many school teachers asked you to “compare and contrast” and then told you that you did it incorrectly?
Life is diverse. You could say it is “un-like”. It just is. “Are you, like, for real?” No. I am real. Real isn’t “like”, it is.
Original poem by Emily Dickinson, “Wild Nights — Wild Nights!”. Opposite poem by me:
Dull Morns – Dull Morns!
While I miss Thee
Dull Morns have come
Familiarly.
Priceless – the Calm
to a Soul at sea –
Tossed by my longing –
Thrown to the lee!
Exiled from Heaven –
Oh! with thee
Might I but soar – today –
Full free!
Juxtaposition: somewhere near Lancaster, Wisconsin
Summoning the Sand Man
I am thinking about my oldest daughter today. She has been sick with a terrible cough, possibly pneumonia, and left a message on my phone yesterday afternoon saying, “I just needed some Mom.” Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to contact her since to get more information although I’ve left messages. These are those “Mom moments” that teach me how to manage anxiety. Her voice actually sounded better than the day before, I know she’s on antibiotics, so my brain can convince me that there’s little evidence that something catastrophic is happening. My imagination, however, cooks up a million scenarios that are “possible”. My spirit tells me that I live in this moment, not any imagined or borrowed moments from some other plane, and so I act in the present as best I can. Practicing living in peace with myself and the world, what I think I know and what I don’t know is an ongoing project. At this point in my life, I do not need added drama. Reality is exciting enough.
My daughter has always been open to engaging with lots of stimulus. Even as a toddler, she had a hard time shutting her brain off at the end of a day, relaxing and falling asleep. As a grad student, there are just so many exciting things to pursue, that I think she resists shutting down to re-charge. She’s a fascinatingly energetic person to talk to, but she has a hard time slowing down. No wonder she’s succumbed to illness, right? I checked out the poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo this morning, and they suggested writing a lullaby. Perfect! I know just who to write one for! I am hoping her phone is turned off because she’s resting, sleeping, meditating and healing. When she was a little girl, I used to do a kind of guided meditation that I made up in order to get her to relax. I had her visualize floating like a leaf on the surface of a slow-moving brook. So, here’s a lullaby for Susan and pictures of the Sand Cave at Wyalusing State Park. I apologize if this makes anyone sleepy in the middle of their work day!
Lullaby for Susan
Float gently, float slowly, my baby, my dear
Like a leaf on the water, no burdens to bear
Gaze skyward to heaven while stars gather there
Like a leaf on the water, no burdens to bear
With mermaid hair flowing, glide slowly along
While Mama’s beside you, she sings this sweet song
Go slowly, breathe deeply, my child; nothing’s wrong
Your Mama’s beside you, she sings this sweet song
The End of an Exciting Day
For my second day of training at Old World Wisconsin, I got to finally get away from paperwork and training videos and get on site to see the historical buildings where I’ll be a costumed interpreter. I gotta tell you, I AM SO EXCITED!!!! My first stop was to see St. Peter’s Catholic Church in the Yankee Village area. This church was built in 1839 and has a wood stove right smack dab in the middle of the center aisle of the nave. No bridal procession is gonna get around that sucker! One of my jobs will be to pull the rope on the carillon to start and end the day. Swingin’! I also got to play the pump organ. I have never even attempted this kind of feat before today. It was a bit like trying to pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time, as my feet had to keep the bellows going while my fingers worked out the four-part harmony, but I managed to squeeze my way through a verse of Amazing Grace without too much difficulty. What fun! After some consideration, I realize that hymn is probably not Catholic, although it may be from the right period. I still have so much research and learning to do!
I had to cut my time in the Village short and ride up to the German immigrant area to see the place I’ll be working on week days and with school groups. It’s an 1870s farm with a two-story house, bake house (or summer kitchen), granary, pig barn, regular barn, smoke house and three garden plots. I will be the interpreter for all these areas. I will be making bread in the big brick oven (it goes back about 8 feet!), tending the garden, keeping an eye on the pigs so they don’t escape, chopping wood with a mallet and froe, greeting guests and inviting them to interact with the place. Oh, so much fun going on! AND, I got fitted for my corset today! I can hardly stand it!!
Came home to turn my computer on for the first time and saw more than a dozen e-mails. Then I checked the poetry prompt for the day. It looks like fun, but frankly, I’m too pooped to poet. I have so much homework to do, so many questions to answer about the world I am stepping into. Instead, I will leave you with these sunset shots from our trip to the Mississippi and let you think about settlers moving west into the unknown. Why is history important… in the big picture? Why is experience important? Why is it important to share experiences through stories?
