A trip to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania is always memorable. (Good thing, too, because it has been several weeks since we visited and I am just now getting around to writing about it.) For the uninitiated, Longwood was the home and pet project of one of those fabulously wealthy Duponts, in this case Pierre S., who had a vision to make a very grand garden for family, friends, and eventually, the masses.
Pierre had a special interest in water features, and today one of the biggest draws to Longwood Gardens is the elaborate fountains, programmed to “dance” to music. They are particularly spectacular after dark, and during the holidays.
But, since I am working on a program for the 2022 (hopefully, in person and on the National Mall) Smithsonian Folklife Festival which is all about Earth Optimism, I kept a particular eye out for stories of sustainability and interesting examples of reuse, recycling, encouraging pollinators, growing one’s own food, and all that good stuff. Longwood did not disappoint in that department.
Here, in photos (and one video) is a tour of some of the highlights of examples I noticed during our visit. Good for you, Longwood, although I am sure running a huge garden full of tourists has many unsustainable aspects as well. And, then, there is “better living through chemistry.” But, we won’t get into that right now.
Recirculating water in the waterfall. Well, I guess that’s sustainable right? The meadow part of the Garden, which is pretty extensive, has some good pollinator information, as well as bee houses and other fun features. I liked their use of recycled wood as a display support.Speaking of recycling, this sign was in one of the several tree houses at Longwood. It seems sort of funny that the wood came from an old toothpaste factory. Getting it all the way from Canada takes”marks off” their sustainability score I fear. (Is there a scale for sustainability? I am sure there is, or should be.)This prodigious basil, as well as the other veggies, fruits and herbs in the “idea garden” area (which is supposed to give you ideas about how to grow things in your own garden, but really only succeeded in making me think about how much less bountiful my own garden is) has a higher purpose of supplying a local food cupboard.Three Sister’s Garden, yay! For more info on those, you should watch our virtual Story Circle from summer of 2020. Last but not least, the “award winning green wall” (so described by one of the greenhouse info volunteers). If more buildings had one of these, the world would be a much more sustainable place. (In between each wall is the door to a bathroom, by the way.)
On a recent trip to West Virginia, my friend Arlene and I spent a whole day sampling the small town pleasures of Point Pleasant. Situated at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers, the town has many (well, several at least) historic and folkloric sites to explore.
Upon arriving, we checked into the Lowe Hotel. We had noted that the hotel is rated #1 of 1 hotel(s) in the town by tourism sites, which did not at first inspire confidence. But we were delighted to find a well preserved/restored property with lots of charming decor, and a chatty and helpful proprietor.
Next, we checked out the murals depicting historic events and people, which are painted on the wall that runs between the town and the river. They started out peaceful enough, with Native Americans going about their (historic) everyday lives, but in just a few mural panels morphed into the bloody Battle of Point Pleasant fought in 1774 between the Shawnee and Mingo tribes led by Shawnee Chief Hokoleskwa (or Cornstalk as he was called in English) and the Virginia militia (West Virginia did not exist at this point). Some guy named Lord Dunmore had a role in this mess too.
Unfortunately, the murals have minimal text interpretation, so some of the historical doings are left up to one’s imagination. As you traverse down the row of murals, you also encounter several historical personages fashioned out of tin. Daniel Boone (who lived near Point Pleasant in the late 1700s) gets this treatment, as does a feisty woman dubbed “Mad Anne Bailey” who gets her own set of murals depicting her interesting life.
At the end of the mural trail you enter Tu-Endie-Wei State Park. (The name means “point between two waters” in Wyandotte, apparently.) This is where Daniel Boone and American Ginseng tie in – though not commemorated on any murals or historic markers as yet. The confluence of the Ohio and Kanawhajust might be the place that a quantity of ginseng Boone was transporting to market got dumped into the Ohio in 1788. Though every version of the story has this ill-fated ginseng being dumped in a different location…
All of that walking around town made us pretty hungry, so we headed for one of the only two real sit-down restaurants in town within walking distance we located which were not pizza purveyors. This happened to be a very respectable Japanese restaurant, Ichiban II. (The other restaurant, located on Main Street, is Mexican, Rio Bravo 2 – we went there for dinner.)
We were saving a visit to the most famous Point Pleasant “native” for the afternoon. Mothman is one of several cryptids (mythological creepy humanoid beings) haunting the West Virginia landscape, and his most famous siting took place just outside Point Pleasant. The World’s Only Mothman Museum is located right across from the Lowe Hotel (and was visible from our room even), and the twelve foot tall tin Mothman Statue is a photo magnet for the masses.
After thoroughly overdosing on Mothman information at the museum, we strolled leisurely down Main Street and read the markers about the historic homes lining the street. We also paused to reflect upon the Silver Bridge Disaster of 1967 (marked by another mural and several historic plaques) which took the lives of 43 people. We ducked into the local art gallery and an expansive antique/doo-dad mall on Main Street as well.
By the time we settled in for the night at the Lowe, we had done pretty much all of Point Pleasant that you could do easily by foot. We downloaded the 2002 movie, Mothman Prophesies, starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney, for our evening entertainment/research. Having done our homework, we recognized the huge “poetic license” they had taken with the film – including how different the river town they actually filmed the movie in (Kittanning, PA) was from our Point Pleasant.
At the beginning of the mural trail, a depiction of the Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash). Very literal indeed. Daniel Boone as The Tin Man in Buckskins. Mad Ann(e) Bailey, who was apparently not “crazy” but just had a temper. She’s buried in Point Pleasant.View of Mothman Museum and statue from our hotel room. The infamous Mothman Statue. Another depiction of Mothman. My daughter said he looked “very cheerful” when I shared this photo with her.Though the Mothman Prophesies was not actually filmed in Point Pleasant, the museum ended up with several props from the movie. Such as this blanket which “came into contact” with fame. The makers of the Mothman Prophesies also managed to weave the Silver Bridge Collapse into the movie plot. While visiting this spot, we encountered a local who told us his Dad was almost headed across the bridge that fateful day, with Christmas presents in tow, but due to a change of plans, he was saved from a possible watery demise. There used to be a River Museum in town too but a fire put it out of commission. They are building a new one, so we may need to visit town again!Lobby of the Lowe Hotel, showing balcony, faux marble columns and other features. One of the common rooms of the hotel, this one dubbed “the peacock room” because of the collection of peacock art collected by the proprietor’s mother. This was the site of our watching of Mothman Prophesies because the wifi was coming in better than in our room. Very atmospheric and fitting especially when we turned off most of the lamps.
Last weekend, I helped out at the National Folk Festival in Salisbury, Maryland. My role was quite small – coordinating the volunteers in the Maryland Traditions Folklife area (featuring some really cool MD-based artists). But the effort was made so much more complex, and to me a bit edgier, than anticipated back in the Vaccine Optimism days of the spring and early summer.
The festival crowd was a microcosm of America’s current response to COVID’s Delta variant surge. People wearing masks diligently. People wearing masks half-heartedly (down around their chins somewhere or hanging off their ears). People not wearing masks at all – and leaning in a bit too closely for comfort. There was a well-intentioned scheme to hand out free masks to the maskless – which didn’t go over very well. There were also designations of where to stand within tents for social distancing – which no one paid the least attention to.
The Eastern Shore of Maryland is a mixed bag of humanity, and add to that the wide variety of people that free folk festivals attract. So, many people attending the event could have been vaccinated. But then again, many – for whatever their reasoning – were probably not.
I felt uneasy the whole weekend, which put a damper on what should have been a celebratory time. Back outside with hundreds of strangers, sharing folk traditions with the masses…this is my milieu after all, having worked for over 30 years on our Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I’d missed it, but still, it was not exactly a carefree return to (semi-)normality.
The potential for disaster – personally, a break-through infection for me or one of my vaccinated friends and colleagues, and worst yet turning into a super-spreader event – was ever present in our minds. A week later, and so far so good.
The whole thing reminded me of our own Festival in 2002, after 9/11, when Fourth of July on the National Mall with thousands of people seemed to many to be a big red flag. This time around, the “potential terrorists” are microscopic bugs. More subtle, and in many ways, more deadly.
Still, I feel the need to cautiously go forth into the world. Here are some pictures to remind us what we will miss if we don’t.
The Das family from Delmar, MD (originally from West Bengal) created beautiful rangoliartwith rice, lentils, and spice seeds, which took shape during the two days of the area.Quilters Sylvia and Stephanie Stephens of Hyattsville, MD filled a tent with the handiwork of five generations of family needlework. Sylvia went head to head with many interested visitors, speaking quite effectively through her mask. My friend Dorey and were sitting in the tent of the Salisbury Area Filipino Community group while they prepared to take the stage, which was across the way a bit. It was really fun to be “on the inside” of this excitement.Dorey and I swapped selfies with our colleagues working on the North Carolina Folk Festival in Greensboro. Fellow soldiers in the Folk Festival battle for normality. Comical sign in the downtown Salisbury visitor center bathroom evokes local culture, but also our necessary, COVID fueled obsession with hand washing and sanitizing. Did plenty of that over the weekend.
Water. It gives life, adds beauty to the scenery, and it’s great to kayak on. But, when it comes at you in a 40 foot high wall…you’re doomed.
Earlier this summer, we visited the National Park Service’s Johnstown Flood Memorial, and viewed the terrifying video which begins and ends, in otherworldly detail, with images and narration centering around the Grandview Cemetery, where many of the 2,209 victims who were confronted with a deadly wall of water on May 31, 1889 found their final resting place.
On later visit to Johnstown, we decided to visit the cemetery and pay our respects to those victims. We expected some sort of interpretation (a brochure maybe?) to be available, but since none was, we drove around until we found a sizable (over 700 it turns out) number of small white unmarked graves.
That many plain white gravestones with no inscriptions is rather unnerving, but also mesmerizing. I found I had to break my eyes away from their undulating pattern. After viewing the mass site from various angles, we walked around to see where other victims might be buried.
We found whole families of known victims, which was also disturbing. Seeing the same death date on five or six family members’ gravestones brings that day of horror home.
The water tooketh away. From this vantagepoint in history, we can only imagine the reality — as with many disasters, man made or natural. (The Johnstown Flood was some of both). And honor those who were lost.
Monument marking the unidentified victims of the Johnstown Flood buried at Grandview.Most of the Hochstein family met their demise on that fateful day. … as did the Hoffmans.Although bodies kept turning up according to one account as far away as Cincinnati and as late as 1901, some were never recovered at all.
During a recent visit to the farthest north portion of New York State, our old high school buddy Elaine, her friend Gordy, and my trusty travel companion Debi and I took a scenic boat tour of the “American channel” of the St. Lawrence Seaway. One achieves such a tour from the small tourist town of Alexandria Bay, on an Uncle Sam excursion vessel.
First off, getting reliable information about these boat tours is not an easy task. Both Gordy and I called them and got no or very misleading information. (Maybe it is “due to COVID” but customer service is not what it used to be, it seems.) We decided to just show up and get the story from the horse’s mouth, and ended up on a two-hour narrated tour, well worth the mild anxiety of not being able to really plan ahead. Hey, we had nowhere else to be and it was a superb day, so whatever.
This excursion ends up with a trip to Boldt Castle, a humongous stone estate which takes up its own small island. (One could also take a different trip to Singer Castle, but that is a whole other story and maybe trip in the future.) The story of the “castle” is a sad and terribly romantic one.
Mr. Boldt, an enormously wealthy sort of guy, was building the summer getaway for his wife when she suddenly (and we would guess unexpectedly) died. Though apparently she had tuberculosis, so how unexpected could death from that disease have been in the early 1900s? Nevertheless, there is was. Dream vacation home tragically scuttled.
Over three hundred workmen, including many a skilled stone and woodworker who had hoped for a long and fruitful employment completing this project, were immediately commanded to put down their tools and cease their labors.
The unfinished castle was left to the elements, and the vandals, within swimming distance of Alexandria Bay. (Well if you are a strong swimmer; at least within tantalizing view from shore, and a short row, paddle or motoring in any kind of water craft, or even a walk on the ice back in the day when the river froze over in the harsh winters.)
In the mid-1970s, after over 70 years of neglect and ruination, it was decided that the castle should be completed and opened for tourists. The Thousand Island Bridge Commission accomplished this feat, and today for a reasonable fee of about $12 you can take a self-guided tour.
The signage is all couched in “would haves” since this reconstruction is based on what the property would have been like had the ill-fated Louisa lived and held forth as mistress and hostess of the grand home, garden, and “children’s playhouse” (a separate big old stone edifice with a bowling alley, etc.).
The whole effect created very mixed emotions on my part, and I am sure on the part of many others who tour the house and property. Sad that Louisa and her family and friends never got to enjoy the sumptuous estate. Glad that the Bridge Commission did such a good job of reconstruction and interpretation. Mad that vandals had defaced and disrespected the property (which is still evident on the unfinished third floor).
It was a worthy adventure, if unsettling in many ways. Here are some photos that tell some more of the story.
Approach to the Castle. The Island is called Heart (formerly Hart) Island; Boldt apparently wanted to restructure the whole island in the shape of a heart but didn’t quite accomplish this. The Children’s Playhouse. Not totally restored but you can see where the bowling alleys were and get a sense that these kids had quite a playhouse indeed!Louisa’s bedroom and sitting room on the second floor opened up to a balcony overlooking the gardens and water. It “would have” been a lovely retreat for one very rich lady, but not to be…Unfinished and very ghostly third floor where generations of curious visitors left their marks. I suppose they felt it was not hurting anyone in this abandoned shell, and it is a sort of historic record maybe. But just sad anyhow.
Last year, as I might have already reported, my husband and I purchased a Pennsylvania State Park Passport, a chubby little guide to all the state parks and state forests in the state. It cost $10, and as we always want to get our money’s worth, we’re now determined to visit as many of the parks as possible.
We set out to visit three parks over the July 4 weekend, both within an hour and a half’s drive from our vacation home near McConnellsburg. The first one, Memorial Lake, was a bust since just as we were exiting our car for a scenic picnic, it started pouring! Nevertheless, we did get our passport stamped, and also got some good advice from one of the park rangers.
Without her enthusiastic recommendation, we would never have found “the cabin” which she assured us is a must-see at the other nearby park, Swatara. Why, we asked? Because it has a waterfall behind it, she reported. It is also not on the trail map which we picked up, but she marked it’s location with an “x” and we went on our way with hopes the sun would come back out.
After eating our picnic in the car while waiting for that illusive orb, we set forth on a rail trail toward the mysterious cabin-with-waterfall. It is actually a well-preserved but now open (as in, no glass in the windows, by design) sort of shelter for picnics and, by arrangement, overnights. And, yes, there is a waterfall behind it which makes for a very dramatic view from the back windows.
The cabin was built in the late 1930s by a local “shop” teacher named Armar Bordner. It wasn’t inside a state park then… it was just a hideaway he built with the help of his students – which was legal and perfectly okay back then it seems.
Eventually, the park was planned and eminent domain threatened to take over Bordner’s retreat. He cut a deal to stay until his death, then bequeathed it to the state (with some Boy Scout deal in there too as I recall). Through the magic of YouTube, we can hear Bordner’s voice and get some further details of his history, if you are so inclined. Swatara State Park also includes a fossil pit where you can search for the state fossil, the trilobite. We didn’t get to do this, though, because it started raining again.
The next day we met a friend for a picnic at Pine Grove Furnace State Park. This park has a lot to offer – access to two lakes, the Appalachian Trail, and the Appalachian Trail Museum, as well as a historic iron furnace and associated buildings.
I went kayaking on the larger of the two lakes, Laurel, which was a treat. The water lilies were in bloom, and it was acceptable, it seems, to kayak right through them. I worried a little that I would be harming them, but apparently they just bounce right back.
Two days, three parks, three new stamps in our passport. And the adventure shall continue…
The cabin.View of waterfall from back area of cabin.It’s always a thrill to walk even a tiny bit of the Appalachian Trail!Kayaking among the water lilies.
My father passed away when I was 13. It was a bright spring day in April, and I had been on a 4-H trip to a furniture factory or something. I suspected something was wrong when some friends of our parents came to pick me up at the parental meeting point after the trip.
The days leading up to the funeral are a blur, but at the viewing or after the service (not sure which) I remember sitting next to a schoolmate who had also lost her father. The only thing I can recall about our conversation was speculating together about what they did to tomatoes to make ketchup thick. Was it flour, other thickener, some kind of cooking magic? We couldn’t decide.
I like to think my father would have enjoyed that conversation. Not only did he love food (which one can see in the photos) and my mother’s cooking, but he enjoyed discovering things. No one could not disturb him, or even get his attention, when he would sit down in his easy chair to read the Reader’s Digest or another monthly publication.
Many of my best memories of my father revolve around food some way. I remember his pride in growing vegetables, first in our expansive New Jersey backyard and later when we moved to Vermont and had an even bigger space to plan out and tend. I hated pulling weeds and picking beans, but I learned a lot from those early gardening days, and honor that practice with my own vegetable garden, though it is not nearly as large and productive as my memory of his. But my husband and I are particularly fond of growing tomatoes.
He also loved hunting and fishing, and brought wildfowl and fish back to my mother – a city girl who did not always appreciate trying to figure out what to do with the spoils. If I am remembering this correctly, in the fall there would sometimes be dead ducks hanging upside down on the clothes line.
I’ll have to ask my mother (who in her early 40s had to become mother and father, and has been a widow for over 50 years). My sister, college-bound at the time, also had to grow up a lot faster than she might have, and chose to attend a college closer to home. We’ve never talked about that period right after my father’s death much. We should someday.
One of my favorite memories of my father was one night, after he and my mother had purchased one of those gadgets that sliced vegetables, probably “as seen on TV” or advertised in the Sunday paper or a magazine. It purported to slice anything with neat, picture-perfect precision, even ripe tomatoes.
I’d gone upstairs to bed, but was woken by very loud laughter in the kitchen. My mother and father were putting the slicer to the test with ripe garden tomatoes, and it obviously was not living up to its hype. I am not sure if I snuck downstairs to see what all the hilarity was, or if my mom told me about it afterwards, but apparently tomato mush was everywhere. Being frugal, I am sure my mom made tomato sauce out of it the next day.
She could have made ketchup, I suppose, but that was the job of the Heinz company. And, if she had, there would have been no mystery to discuss, to soothe my profound loss.
Our family in our New Jersey living room. I’m the little one on the right. My father in his young, non-double-chin days on the left, and with my mom at some beach or other on the right. That’s a (backyard) farmer, or fisherman’s tan if I ever saw one!
Our neighborhood is abuzz, but it’s not from human gossip. It’s from our once-in-seventeeen- years visitors, the cicadas. Yes, they started emerging in earnest after it stopped dipping down into the 40s at night and then, like it usually does in the Washington, DC area, shot instantly into the 90s.
They are dubbed “Brood X” which makes them sound to me sort of like characters in a sci-fy/ noir movie mash-up. Our colleague Jim has written an article for our work web site about why the X, and also many other aspects of cicada folklore and folklife, which is a good read.
While our own backyard doesn’t have nearly the numbers some do, there is still this constant, undulating “zizz-zizz” in the background when you venture outside, and scores (if not billions) of dopey or dead specimens hanging out. Here’s what they look and sound like:
It’s not really that big a nuisance, and actually it’s pretty cool. And, as a result, you too can become a Citizen Scientist by downloading the app “Cicada Safari” and uploading your photos, which get added to a map.
They’ll be gone before we know it. So, we might as well make the most of them. But I will not be trying any in recipes, which we knew were bound to be on offer, right?
As more people get “vaxxed” (that’s a verb now), we are slowly emerging out of our mostly virtual lives and into real experiences. My husband and I have even – gasp! – gone out to dine indoors at a couple of restaurants. But, certain pandemic-era practices seem here to stay. And, I fear, we are stuck with such terms as “hybrid” and “pivot.”
Is that all bad, though? I think not. Along with the part about getting outside more, the part about connecting via Zoom, Teams, or Google Hangouts can be wearisome but it can also create some opportunities that would never have happened if we had to rely on finding the time and means to get together in person.
Whether conveniently connecting with an old friend who lives across town (but still we hadn’t spoken in years), gathering some far-flung women friends for cooking sessions, or sharing the work of some colleagues half-way around the world with an Arlington-based classroom, the technology is amazing and some heart-felt connections can be made despite the coldness of the medium and the weirdness of being a face in a frame. (And also watching yourself all the time which is just plain weird.)
Let us continue to embrace virtual visiting, while (like the cicadas, which may be the subject of my next blog) also emerge from our figurative underground lairs to greet the world in person.
Here are some images from my recent virtual and in person life:
For the second year, our annual Titanic Party, held more or less around the time the ship sunk and involving eating and watching the movie, was organized virtually by my daughter. This year I won the food competition with my iceberg floating island!Our cooking group continues to meet periodically. In April we took advantage of spring asparagus and made asparagus galettes. And gabbed of course.I helped facilitate a program with my friend and fellow India/US Exchange partner, Mamoni Chitrakar, and an Arlington school. They have really upped their virtual game in Naya Village, West Bengal, and it was so great to see her and her daughter! Mother’s Day virtual movie night with my kid. We watched “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman” so many snacks were necessary to have on hand.In the category of real experiences, my husband and I visited the Franciscan Monastery grounds and garden in DC. Lovely on a spring day.Saint Anne put out the welcome mat for us. Nice of her!
Well, we got through winter (though it tried to come back last week), and now it’s time for more outdoor adventures. In the category of “get to know your NoVa,” my husband and I visited Fort Ward Park in Alexandria last week. This is a fairly large park which meanders around a neighborhood off of Braddock Road.
What is this park all about? We wondered that even as we started wandering around it more of less aimlessly. We parked in the first parking lot we saw, which is near the (currently closed) museum. The first signs we saw were interpretations of the African American community that had been located there right after the Civil War. These are newer signs, and a pretty good interpretation. (In the brochure you can read in this link there’s a nice group of “first-person memories” of the community, which as a folklorist I appreciate.) Does anyone other than me find it somewhat ironic that this community was displaced by the establishment of this very park, making it necessary for the city of Alexandria to interpret the history of the community that WAS there until the 1950s?
A large part of the park is actually an interpretation of the Civil War era fort, “a bastion of freedom,” which is partially reconstructed. Like most Civil War forts that were built surrounding Washington, DC, this fort never saw any action. But it was ready for action, with big guns at the ready, underground stocks of ammunition, and rifle trenches. Which you can clamber around, as long as you stay on designated paths. (But, no sunbathing as per signage.)
There are also lots of nice trees (at least one of them with a name as per below), an impressive gate, and a number of benches and picnic tables, and some adjacent tennis courts and open spaces where games could be played (though not in the “historic” portions). Still, the whole site has an air of not being sure exactly what its purpose is. Recreation site? Civil War interpretation site? Or site to learn about the community that used to be there but got moved because this somewhat schizophrenic but pleasant enough space was constructed/reconstructed?
If an actual battle had been fought here, I would have felt more inclined to be in awe of the battlements and artillery. It would feel more like “sacred ground” which one should think deeply about (see my Gettysburg ruminations). But, to me, it seemed like they could have really let the African American community stay there and continue to grow and prosper.
Here are some scenes from the Fort:
This slightly sad looking cannon thing did not make it to the main interpretation of the fort but was lurking behind some outbuildings on the edge of the park. A big gun awaiting action that never happened.The signage about the fort could do with a bit of sprucing up. We appreciated this sign as we had just needed to recall the word “parapet” to complete a NYT crossword puzzle. I am anxiously awaiting the use of “scarp” and “abatis” in future puzzles.One would assume this means only the immediate historic area around the restored part of the fort. Because there are picnic tables and inviting open fields for games nearby. Sunbathing, though, is something entirely different, no?The signage interpreting the African American sites is newer and well done. Despite this being interpreted as a cemetery, there are no evidences of graves here, but it is appreciated that they identified the site of a graveyard and have it roped off, at least.This quote is kind of poetic but – um – more than just a bit condescending? We could find no explanation of why this tree was named “The Beatley Tree.” If anyone finds out, let us know.
