Oil and Water

Ed emailed me today to  tell me that one of my few remaining aunts, Sr. Karen, died on Friday. I suppose that every family has that relative that they would rather not have show up at their front door. In our family, it was Sr. Karen – but she showed up anyway.  She is also one of my top candidates for the person least likely to be a nun – but, again, she was.  If the capacity to put on blinders to the feelings of others and plow ahead with what you want can be considered a virtue, then that virtue was Sr. Karen’s. 

I think we all have our stories about Sr. Karen that illustrate what has caused us to form our particular opinions.  I’ll just offer two brief ones and hope others will add their own.  The first was when my son Pat, was an infant.  We were in my parents’ living room and my wife Mary was nursing Pat.  Sr. Karen walked into the room, grabbed Pat and started pulling him away from her in mid-nurse.  The second instance happened when Lora and I were visiting in California, I think for Mom and Dad’s Golden Anniversary.  It was getting late in the evening, the sky was dark and everyone was tired.  We were sitting in the living room and Sr. Karen was there as well.  People kept hinting that they were tired and wanted to go to bed, but Sr, Karen did not take the hint.  One by one, people got up and headed back to bed. Finally, only Lora and I were left and finally, we said we were going to bed. We walked down the hall and turned out the lights. But Sr. Karen still didn’t leave. She just sat there until she felt like going.  The ultimate indictment for me is that on one occasion Dad, who had the patience of Job and was rarely roused to anger, actually kicked her out of the house.    

I’m sure that other family members have happier memories of her.  I have the sense that she and my sister Mary were close at one time and that she helped Mary out.  She would also send out a family newsletter every Christmas  before blogs and email came into vogue and update everyone on her year and  her various travels.  Though it was mostly about her, it was a way of trying to keep the family connected.  I suspect that Sr. Karen saw herself as a caring person and that by gracing people with her visits she was doing them a favor. 

Ed says that, despite her flaws, she had potential, and perhaps he is right.  She went into the convent at fourteen years old and while still young was sent to the Solomon Islands (near New Guinea) to work in the missions there for a period of ten years.  I suspect some kind of cultures shock occurred – this wasn’t a time in history when farm girls went off to exotic islands.  Even Mom, who gave Sr, Karen no ground for anything said that when she returned, she was never the same person. 

Mom and Sr. Karen were like oil and water.   Their relationship would have made for a TV situation comedy.  Whenever I called Mom during the last few years of her life, I could always expect to hear about the tribulations she had suffered at the hands of Sr. Karen.  At that point in their relationship, Sr. Karen could have been St. Karen and she still would not have had a chance. Even so, she was Mom’s sister and the original left.  In fact, if she is still alive, my Aunt Geneice in Texas may be the only one.

As I was updating my information about Sr. Karen on the family tree, I also discovered that my Aunt Beryl had died in January of this year.  Beryl  was Mom’s next youngest sister and the polar opposite of Sr. Karen.  She was the one Mom was closest too and had a tremendous amount  of character.  Her life, though, is a whole different saga.

A Blast from the Past

Sometimes old news can be new.

Recently, Judi posted a pictures of the six Northen siblings at the reception after Mom’s funeral. Whenever I look at Dave in that picture, it reminds me of one of the very few of my Grandpa Wilkins that I have of him at a younger age.  In that picture he is standing with his oldest daughter, my Aunt Lucille, who is a young adult and his mother.  This means the picture must have been from  about  1940.  I cropped the two pictures and pasted them together and put them out on Facebook with the following comment:   “Judi and Ed, I've always thought this picture of Dave in the photo Judi posted the other day looked a lot like a younger picture of Grandpa Wilkins, but see what you think.”

Ed's and Judi’s comments were as follows:

Ed Northen    I have never looked at the two photos together but yes they do resemble one another.

Judi Frensley   I think they do too! I think he has the same body frame too. It's hard for me to remember Grandpa Wilkins not in a wheel chair.

Though I was glad that I saw these comments that support my perception, what really interested me was the conversation that came next.

Cloice Janson Dave looks just like your Dad....good old Jim he was always so good to me... Even when I recked his car, in to a gas Pump at Dave's Mobile station....anyone remember THAT????

 Judi Frensley Well of course we remember that. I was in the car with you. This story has been told many times in this family.

Cloice Janson Yeah, that was embarrassing, the day after I got my license .... We didn't even get in trouble... WELL guess I did by David but your mom and Dad were so good about it.
Yep I thought my driving career was very short and over. Thank God your dad saved me… Many many memories with you guys.

For the younger generation of Northen’s who may not know,  Cloice was Dave’s first wife and one of Judi’s best friends as a teenager.  This exchange struck me on a number of levels.  First of all, I was out of the family loop by that time and had never heard the story. Second,  I thought it was hysterical.  I was laughing out loud at Judi’s comment about being in the car.

More than anything, however, what it does is reinforce my own warm images of Dad and Mom. I know that people outside of the family who hear about our upbringing simply don’t get why we all have such loyalty to Dad, but this is exactly why.  Dad and Mom would do anything to try to help out their children’s friends and Cloice was by no means the only one.  A number of them ended up living at our house – even becoming part of the family.  Mom also said that what was most important to her was that her kids group up to be good people, and when it came to how they treated others, they led by example.

What I love about Cloice’s comment is that her image of Dad is fresh from a time warp.  She and Dave separated early in their lives, so her image of Dad is that of the person he was many years ago and it is the core image of Dad that I still carry with me.  What Cloice said here, only as a kind of passing joke, to me is a real tribute to them.  If people think as well of us when we’re gone, then I think we will be satisfied – at least I know I will.

Zucchini Bread and Memories

( The following is blatantly plagiarized from Maya’s Lilies and Elephants blog.  My mother made zucchini bread as well – Ed and Judi can probably either back me up or prove me wrong – but the following words are all Maya’s. If you have zucchini bread memories, please share them in the comment. MN)

When I was a kid, my mom invented a game for us called Mixer. Or rather she probably gave an "official" name to an activity that countless other mothers had also shared with their children. Mixer was this: we took every allowable baking ingredient (flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, spices, water, milk) and mixed them into a bowl however we wanted, and then baked and ate it. They didn't guide our cooking, just let us go to town. Keeping in mind that my brother and I were probably four and five years old at the time, the fact that my parents ate these concoctions and deemed them "delicious" is a testament to their love. 

In the past 30 years, my cooking style hasn't changed much, other than the fact that I now know the ratio of baking soda to flour shouldn't be 10 to 1, or you're going to get some strange looking (and tasting) baked goods. 

I like to cook, I really do. But I'm a vegetarian, and many of my dinners involve things like veggie stir fry with baked tofu or seitan, and that's pretty self explanatory. The majority of my cooking is in one of two forms:  intricately follow a recipe from a book/site/pinterest that I could never duplicate without it, or throw everything in the pan/pot/baking dish and taste as I go along, adjusting and learning from trial and error. There's not much of a middle ground. 

My day to day "recipes" also don't hold much special meaning to me, unless you could general sustenance as special, which I guess it kind of is. Still, they didn't seem like something worthy of a blog post. But to keep to the theme, I did, technically, choose a food that does have a special meaning to me. Then, I googled it and found a version here on All Recipies. (Note: this is not my recipe nor do I know the person that wrote it, but it got 5 stars so why not?). The recipe is for Zucchini Bread. I admit, I've never used this particular recipe, but it seems about right. To duplicate the bread of my memories, I'd suggest adding raisins, if you're a raisin person. If not I'm sure it'll be just fine without it. 

Zucchini bread and I go way back. Probably farther back than Mixer and I do. My Grandma Ventura lived in Buffalo, NY which was, at the closest, about six and a half hours from where I grew up (significantly more when we lived in Georgia, of course). As a child, zucchini bread was synonymous with my grandma, and vice versa. Every time she came to visit us, she'd get off the plane holding loaves of zucchini bread wrapped in foil - I can still picture this exact scene.... it was in the days when you could still meet people at the gates. Going to Buffalo to visit her, we'd leave after my parents got home from work, usually around 6 or 7 PM I suppose, and arrive in the middle of the night. She'd always be wide awake (I was amazed at this, since it was usually 2 or 3 AM by the time we got there) and have zucchini bread and Italian Wedding Soup waiting for us. Sadly the soup was out for me after I became veg at the age of 11. This tradition happened every visit, which was at least Thanksgiving, Christmas/New Year, and Easter every year, from the time I first remember until I was about 17. In college, I wasn't at Grandma's as much, but when we visited each other, it was the same. 

I think I knew when Grandma started to get sick because the zucchini bread and soup stopped. I couldn't imagine she'd break the tradition for any other reason other than that she physically couldn't keep it up. She either wasn't able to remember how to make them, or didn't have the energy. I'm not sure which, as she covered her symptoms up well at first. Probably, it was a combination. Eventually, she couldn't remember what the stove was for.

My Grandmother passed away, seven years later, from stroke induced dementia and Parkinson's. Towards the end, she didn't recognize us and could barely communicate. But we talked to her anyways, telling her stories from the past, hoping to get a glimpse of some recollection, to share happy memories with her. Once, when she seemed to stop recognizing us and communicating all together, we reminded her of our late night arrivals to her house, and how she used to greet us with zucchini bread and wedding soup. She quietly said, "but no soup for Maya, not with the meat." Whether it was a moment of lucidity, or she was more alert than we thought and just couldn't tell us, we'll never know. But in that moment, I realized not only how much those visits, and that zucchini bread (and for everyone else, the soup), meant to us, but how much they must have meant to her. 

April Quiz

Here's a quiz for family members to try that takes in some of the events of the first few months of 2015. 

      The  name of Eli’s new architecture firm is _____________.

(a)    EN Architects, (b) Urban Geometries,  (c) Architects R Us, (d) Northen Exposures

 

2.      The most unusual ingredient in a pupa cu l’ova is ___________.

(a)    ground lamb,  (b) a hard-boiled egg,  (c) curry powder, (d) crushed candy canes

3.       My brother  Pat and his wife Rose recently bought a house in ___________.

(a)    Hawaii,  (b) Canada,  (c) Mexico,  (d) Florida

4.       Which member of the Cotter family did not swim in a race recently ___________.

(a)    Amelia,  (b) John,  (c) Liam, (d) Melissa

5.      The name of the “little sister” in Seattle that Maura has been taking on trips and outings for quite a few years is _________________.

(a)    Latifah,  (b) Rachel,  (c) Brooke,  (d) Junita

6.       For over the past year, Maya has been working for CHF.  What does CHF stand for?

(a)    Camden Health Fund,  (b) Community Housing Federation, (c) Corn Hole Fanatics,

(d) Chemical Heritage Foundation

7.      Connor just celebrated a special event.  What was it?

(a)    confirmation,  (b) winning school basketball championship, (c) his birthday, (d) indication into school honor society

8.        Which family member preached a sermon in their church last month?

(a)    Ed,   (b) Lora,  (c) Judi, (d) Melissa

9.        Which of the following cities did Lora, Mike and Maya visit in February?

(a)    Madrid,  (b) Istanbul, (c) Morocco, (d) Lisbon

10.    Of the following people, who is the only one that is currently working a job directly related to their undergraduate degree?

(a)    Maura, (b) Melissa, (c) Maya,  (d) Eli

And a few family history questions.

11.    Elvera Northen’s  last name before she was married was __________?

(a)    Lewis,  (b) Wilkins,  (c) Ryman, (d) Sitzman

12.   The children of James and Elvera Northen can trace their family history back to all of the following countries except which one?

(a)    England,  (b) Ireland,  (c) Germany,  (d) Switzerland

Answers

1 (a),    2 (b),    3 (c),    4 (d),    5 (d),    6 (d),    7 (a),    8 (a),    9 (d),    10 (d),   11 (b),   (12) b

Birthday Picture

Last week I was at a lecture at the Philadelphia Historical Society about  using various family documents to try to put together a family tree.  One of the speakers was talking about how family pictures can be misleading.  She put one up on the screen and was pointing out that the places in which people were standing made you draw conclusions that were not necessarily correct. In fact, a couple of the people in the picture were not even family members.

On my old computer downstairs, my desktop screen shows the following picture.

.

As I was look at it today, I remembered the lecture and thought that if someone in the future saw came across this picture, they might draw a few wrong conclusions so I decided to play a bit of a game with myself to see what I might think, if I knew nothing about this family. Here goes. 

The picture is of a birthday party.  The boy in the great sweatshirt who is blowing out the candles is probably turning about ten years old, though it is hard to tell because of the flames.  Looking on are his two brothers.  They all have similar haircuts.  The youngest who looks to be about three has the same hair and skin color as the birthday both and the same eye color has his oldest brother who is about thirteen.  Watching them is their grandmother or possibly an older aunt – she looks young to have a thirteen year old grandson, but a bit old to be the mother of the youngest boy.  Both boys are wearing sweatshirts that, if you put the names together spell Eagles, so they probably live in Philadelphia. If it is football season, then this picture is probably taking place in fall.  This is backed up by the fact that the grandmother is wearing a sweater in the house as is someone whose elbow we can only see.

These are the most obvious guesses, but  one might guess that the elbow belongs to the boys’ mother.  The picture on the wall behind them looks like a large family group, so it is likely that their mother would be there for the party. (As opposed to the boys living with their grandmother.)   The house is probably a good size house – or at least not a small one because the stairs in the background show that there is a second floor.   The table we are looking at is just a portion of what appears to be a much larger table so this must be the dining room.   The display of plates behind them also has more the look of a dining room than a kitchen.  It is a dining room that is actually used for eating, though, because there are salt and pepper shakers on the table and those don’t go too well with cake. The birthday boy likes diet coke, while the grandmother prefers crush which she drinks from a can rather than using a glass like her grandson. 

Since this is a family blog, anyone who is reading this, will recognize that a couple of the conclusions drawn here are wrong, but I think it is an interesting exercise in  making assumptions.  No doubt some of you would have come up with different inferences.

Spring 1948 - a cameo

            Recently Lora, Maya and I took a trip to Lisbon.  It was a three day stop on route to a conference in Marrakech.  We’d first landed in Casablanca and then taken a plane to Portugal.  As we walked out onto the tarmac in the Lisbon airport to board the plane for our return trip to Casablanca, we were surprised to see that we were walking towards not a jet, but a propeller plane.  Knowing that we were going to be flying over a stretch of the Mediterranean Sea and possibly even the Atlantic to reach Casablanca, this was a cause for dismay among some of the passengers. 

Yesterday as I was working on family history, I came across a document I had never seen before, and it surprised me as much as walking up to that propeller plane in Lisbon.  It was called “Clearance Declaration of Aircraft Commander.” The document was issued on April 20, 1948 in Honolulu, Hawaii.  It was a list of non-Navy passengers who were being transported back to the United States; aboard it were my mother, me and my brother Steve. I was two and my brother Steve, who had born on March 21 of that year, was less than a month old.  As a family, our places of birth made a strange grouping on the  list since Mom’s was as Aberdeen, South Dakota, mine was San Diego, and Steve’s was Honolulu, TH – the TH meaning Territory of Hawaii since Hawaii was not yet a state.  As the document notes, we were “Bound for” Alameda, California. The ultimate destination for the three of us was listed as  838 N. Van Ness St., Santa Ana, California – my grandparents’ house.

As I look at that piece of paper that appeared like something out of a time warp, I wonder how my mother felt on this trip, sixty-four years ago.  It must have been extremely difficult for her.  She was traveling with two young children, having given birth less than a month before, over a distance of 2400 miles, and I can imagine, being a military plane, it was no luxury travel.  It was certainly a propeller plane – one that probably makes my recent plane from Lisbon look like luxury transport. .  Once she landed, she had to make her way down to southern California.  The distance between the two cities, Alameda and Santa Ana, is about 370 miles.  My guess is that she took  a bus. It would have added another day to the journey.  Even for someone who was used to a tough life, this could not have been an easy trip, and I seriously doubt they had massive plates of lamb and Moroccan tangines waiting for them at the other end as I recently did.

Tomorrow is Steve’s birthday, the first full day of spring.  He would have been 65 years old – retirement age.  I always knew that he had been born in Hawaii, but I never imagined that he had been uprooted at only a month old and transported down to begin life in his grandparents’ house.  Of course, one can always see signs and causes in events, if they look long enough, but I wonder if such a beginning had any bearing on the short, often troubled, life that he led.  What might his life have been like given the stability and advantages that my grandchildren have.

Dad Quiz

Meeting up with my brother Pat and his wife Rose in New York last month in New York was a really wonderful occasion for me. Pat and I are fifteen years apart – something that seems a bit strange in today’ smaller families – but because of that, by the time he was in kindergarten, I was already in college.  With a continent between us, it has only been on rare occasions that we had a chance to get together and , often, as for the illness or deaths of our parents, it was not the happiest of circumstances.  Perhaps because I am a bit closer to encountering that scythe-wielding figure myself  that in the last few years it has become important for me to try to fill in some of the gaps in the saga of our family.  I frequently wish that I were able to sit down with Dad or with Mom as she was before she had trouble communicating, and ask them questions about their lives..  There is still much about them that I don’t know or understand.

It has been eighteen years since Dad’s death. Had he lived, he would have been 94 years old this month.  In the spirit of trying to keep some memory of him alive and, perhaps just importantly, passing along a little about him to children and grandchildren who met him long ago, if at all, I’m posting one of my ersatz quizzes .  It is one of those where those who get the most answers wrong my likely benefit the most from having done it.  (For ease, I’ll just use the word “Dad” in the questions.)

1.Dad’s middle name was ______________.

(a)    Edward, (b) Lee, (c) Crocker, (d) Lewis

2. When he was growing up, Dad’s religion was ____________.

               (a) Catholic, (b) Baptist, (c) Episcopal, (d) Seventh Day Adventist

3. Dad played sports on a high school team. What was his sport.  (a) wrestling,

               (b) football,   (c) baseball,  (d) swim team

4.  When Dad was eleven years old, both of his parents died.  How did his mother die.

               (a) heart attack,  (b) scarlet fever,  (c) automobile accident, (d) drowning

5.  After he graduated from high school, Dad joined the Navy.  How long was he in the Navy?

               (b) 5 years, (b) 10 years, (c) 15 years, (d) 20 years

6.  Which of Dad’s sons is named after him. (That is, their middle name is his first name.)

               (a)  Steve, (b) Dave,  (c) Ed, (d) Pat

7. Which of these foods is the only one that Dad did not like to eat.

                (a) tongue,  (b) liver,  (c) pickled pigs feet, (d) mutton

8. Dad always listed his eye color as ___________.

                (a) blue, (b) green, (c) hazel, (d) light brown

9. One of Dad’s favorite sayings was _____________________.

                (a) good things come in small packages

                (b) only the good die young

                (c) if you don’t have anything good to say don’t say

                (d) if its not your ass, its your elbow

10.  Dad always said he couldn’t sing, but when he was younger he did try to learn to play an instrument.

        What was it? (a) guitar,  (b) piano, (c) fiddle, (d) trumpet

              

Answers.

(1)    a,  (2) b, (3) c, (4) d, (5) d, (6) a, (7) d, (8) c, (9) c, (10) a

Let us know how you did. If everyone aced it, I’ll have to post something harder.

Family Quiz for 2014

As usual , at the end of 2014, I went back and read through the journal I keep and was amazed at the many things that had happened during the year that I’d forgotten. It was a tremendously full year. While I have the impulse to wax lyrical about it, what seems to be more enjoyable and generate more interest are the family quizzes reviewing the years.  In fact, I think it’s getting to become a bit of a tradition. So here is the quiz for 2014. Since I stuck with questions about those who are most likely to see it, this is probably the easiest family quiz yet.

1.        Who went on vacation and ended up in the emergency room?

2.       Who quit their job and began their own business?

3.       Who  fell into a swimming pool fully clothed?

4.       Who  moved from the city to the suburbs?

5.       Who had a moose in their back yard?

6.       Who took a trip in a submarine?

7.       Who was elected president of his class?

8.       Who made his first communion?

9.       Who has a mother that wrote a book?

10.   Who passed an important certification exam?

Who did not    ____________?

11.    Start a new job  or get a promotion (a) Maura, (b) Maya, (c) Eli, (d) Ed

12.    Make a trip to Buffalo (a) Mike & Lora, (b) Dan & Maura, (c) John & Melissa, (d) Pat & Rita

13.    Touch a snake (a) Liam, (b) Mike, (c) Owen, (d) Jack

14.   Have writing published (a) Lora, (b) Ed, (c) Maya, (d) Mike

15.   Sing in a Christmas program (a) Amelia, (b) Maggie, (c) Connor, (d) Jack

16.   Have to fly on a plane for work (a) Mary Beth, (b) Rita, (c) Lora, (d) Pat

What is their pet’s name?

17.   Maya

18.   Owen

19.   Amelia

20.   Maura

Bonus – Who noticed that the stamps on the Christmas cards that Mike and Lora sent out was a picture of all the Northen family cousins?

Answers.

1.       Pat

2.       Eli

3.       Lora

4.       Maya

5.       Ed

6.       John

7.       Jack

8.       Andrew

9.       Dan

10.   Maura

11.   (d) Ed

12.   (b) Dan and Maura

13.   (c) Owen

14.   (a) Lora

15.   (c) Connor

16.   (a) Mary Beth

17.   Cinnamon (or Cinn)

18.   17. Joey Ramone (or Joey)

19.   Poppy

20.   Kitty 2.0

The Book That First Changed Your Mind

There is a question  that I have been wanting to post on Facebook for some time because I am really interested in hearing the responses of others, but when I think about posting it I also envision the pajamas that Maura got Maggie for her birthday.  It has a picture of a cat and reads, “It’s all about Me-ow.”  Since I’d rather that shirt not become too appropriate, I’ve decide instead just to post the question here in the Northen News blog where anyone likely to read it is already family.

Here is my question. “What was the first book you ever read that really altered your way of seeing things?”   I’m not just talking about talking a book that you really got involved in and just couldn’t put down.  What I mean  instead is a book that once you had read it, you could never look on your life or beliefs quite the same way again.

For me that book was Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen, which I read as a freshman in college in 1965.  I’d been raised Roman Catholic and gone through twelve years of catechism.  In ninth grade, in fact, I was even considering going into the priesthood.  In essence (though I sometimes found certain aspects of the Church’s teachings difficult to reconcile) I was a true believer.  As I came closer to graduating from high school, however, I began to ask questions.  By the time I began college, my faith had come loose from its moorings.  I was looking for some way to make sense of those kinds of questions that religions ask. 

 What struck me about Watts was that he was looking for alternative ways of viewing things and he found them in Eastern religions, long before Zen or yoga became chic.  He pointed out something new to me at the time – the extent to which language shapes what we are able to think. English, for example, requires a noun and a verb? Watts asks, “What happens to my fist when I open my hand?” The answer, of course, is that it disappears because there never was such a thing as a fist.  A fist is really an action and not a thing.  It is an impermanent relationship. The ultimate impermanence of everything including - perhaps especially - the self is a main feature of Buddhism and other Eastern religions.  This was not, as in Catholicism, the idea that the soul is permanent and the body temporary, but the realization whatever it is that we called our self yesterday is not the same thing as it is today. A core self as a permanent entity is a fiction.  The result of reading The Way of Zen for me was that I could never return to my old way of thinking.  It was as though a bridge had been burned.

Of course  since those long ago days, I have read other books that have deeply affected how I think, but I do believe that Watts’ book was the first.  What I’d like to know from those of you reading this is what  the first book was that caused a paradigm shift in your thinking.  Leave a comment here, telling me what it was and what kind of change in thinking it caused for you.  (After looking back at what I've written, I think I probably need to borrow Maggie's pajama top, but I'm going to post this anyway.)

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Ed is keeping the family well represented in the writing publications department.  Here is a brief intro and poem about him that appeared in the Christmas Day edition of Keeping Our Eye on Sun Valley .  The pictures aren't included, so I'll put the actual link at the bottom.

It came Upon a Midnight Clear

Ed Northen, a retired fire captain and paramedic who worked in the field in southern California for 34 years, could be considered the poet laureate of the Wood River Valley…along with former Blaine County Commissioner Len Harlig, of course! Northen, who has been writing poetry for 20 years, has been published in Word Gathering, Ariel, Chimera and Poetry Works and reads at local poetry gatherings.                 He kindly allowed us to use one of his poems to brighten your Christmas Day!                 When he’s not writing poetry, you can find Ed at Galena Lodge where he volunteers on the BCRD Nordic Patrol. Or you can find him out practicing environmental stewardship, hiking, trail running and fly-fishing as a guide for Silver Creek outfitters.                              It Came upon a Midnight Clear From the Mountain top I peer through layers Of wintry firmament Air so translucent It has dimension I see beyond the stars Whose gaseous state  Burn brightly Like fiery diamonds Heaven is not far Not in distances Of light years But in the invisible The unseen Which envelops me. My vision is clearer Among the celestial luminaries When society’s chaos is removed And I am left With the sparseness of Essential thoughts I consider the forest Resembling matchsticks far below Living trees Which need not be cut down Except one To make a cross On which God Must hang To become the propitiation And I, an heir A bloody beneficiary Of Love On this sparse summit Suspended in air I abandon self Until my voice erupts With spontaneous chorus This Eve of the Christ’s birth Gloria in Excelsis Deo

 Here's the link to the actual article with pictures.

The Easiest Family Vacation Quiz Ever

One of the great events of the year was the Northen family reunion at St. Simon’s Island.  We all had a lot of fun, but now that we are headed into winter, how much do your remember?  This is the easiest quiz ever because you were all there, but let’s see if you remember who did what? Some questions can have more than one person for the answer. 

1. Who spotted a shark on the beach?

2. Who climbed up on the fireplace mantel to find a toy lizard?

3. Who slept in a closet?

4. Who had an alligator on their head?

5. Who had their arm in a sling?

6. Who ran around naked by the swimming pool?

7. Who lead an ice cream making activity?

8. Who saw a wild horse?

9. Who slept overnight in an airport?

10. Who won the most games of ping pong?

11. Who had the biggest bedroom?

12  Who was the best paddle board rider?

13. Who used an app to name all of the constellations in the night sky on the beach.

14. Who had a visitor during our stay at St. Simons?

15. Who was the last to leave when the vacation was over? 

We took turns with various meals.  Name the family or person that was in charge of each meal.

16. Stuffed Shells

17. Taco night

18. Seafood jambalaya

19. Southern Soul barbecue

20. Roasting marshmallows and s’mores

Answers.

1. Ryan 

2.  Eli 

3. Evan 

4. Jack and Liam 

5.  Lora 

6. Maggie and Owen 

7. Mary Beth 

8. Pat’s family 

9. The Cotters 

10. Connor 

11. Pat and Rita 

12. Melissa 

13.  Dan 

14.  Maya 

15.  Maura and Dan 

16. Pat & Rita 

17. The Cotters 

18. Maya and Ryan 

19. Maura and Dan 

20. Eli

Thanksgiving Remembrance

Growing up in a large family fifty years ago, Thanksgiving was always a huge event in which relatives who may not see each other at any other time of year gathered.  Even today those memories still filter through. Ed has written a poem remembering those family Thanksgiving.  It is interesting to me to think about in what ways our perceptions were the same and how they were different.

Thanksgiving  Remembrance

We were ordinary people

Living in the dark secrets

Nobody talked about

A Catholic family

Seven kids

And innumerable 

Aunts

Uncles

Cousins

On Thanksgiving

The clan congregated

In our modest tract home

Filling

Every open space

With food

Appetizers

Chips

Dip made with Lipton soup

Celery

Carrots

Ranch Dip

The counter overflowing

With single and

Double crusted pies

Pumpkin

Mincemeat

Pecan

All the kids

Were sequestered

Out of the house

Until the feast

Was spread

In true Rockwell style

I don’t remember

If  grace was said

But these survivors

Of the Depression

Dust Bowl

And World War II

Had gratitude

In their DNA

I imagine

The short

Prayer

For health

And Strength

And daily food

We praise thy name O Lord

Would be a sincere

And accurate prayer

For these South Dakota transplants

Multiple tables were set

Children ate on card tables

Relegated

To share this feast

With a cousin

You did not like

Turkey

Ham

Stuffing

Mashed Potatoes

Candied Yams

Sweet Rolls

Green bean casserole

Corn

Brussels sprouts ( for the adults)

More food

Then we would see

In most months

As our family

Would receive

Bags of groceries

Left on the doorstep

So not to embarrass

For which we were grateful

After dinner

We were sagely

Obligated to wait

Until our normally

Shrunken bellies

Now stretched to capacity

Had room for dessert

Which when allowed

Was devoured with delight

This one day a year

When indulgence

Was not a sin

Tables were cleared

The adults sat down

To talk

Or engage

In a fractious game

Of Pinochle

While my brothers

And sisters

Emptied sink

After sink

Of dirty dishes

Until

They sparkled

Shiny

Returned to their place

The leftovers

Divided

And distributed

Like care packages

Which would be made

Into next week's dinners

The End of the Book

 I’ve just finished listening to a series of tapes called Writing and Civilization, which traces the origins of writing and the development of various writing systems throughout the world including how scholars of languages have worked to decode writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan glyphs and Linear B.  In the final episode, the lecturer, Marc Zender,  made the claim that by the year 2050 printed books will for all practical purposes be dead. Our children’s will no more look at books made of paper as something to read than we would at quills and ink as something to write with.  This seemed an amazing claim coming from a Harvard professor who is not only a self-professed bibliophile but whose entire career has been devoted to the study of writing.  At the same time, it seems extremely logical.

Taking the long view, this does not seem a surprising development.  Such radical change in reading media has taken place before.  The development of the codex (i.e. the book with pages) from the scroll and development of moveable type that made writing books long hand unnecessary are two obvious examples.  Moreover, as Zender points out, in the same way that from our current point of view the use of the printing press had advantages that made continued writing of books by long hand seemed doomed to obsolescence, the modern ebook (or any “book” on electronic media) has the advantage of  being cheaper, more portable and easier to replace than hard copy books, making the continued production  of traditional books other than as an art form unlikely to continue very far into the future.

Writing this, I am sitting in my own library surrounded by shelves and shelves of books. As someone who loves the physical feel of a book, who likes sitting with a cup of coffee 

and relaxing sprawled in a comfortable chair with a book on my lap, or simply pulling  a book off of a shelf and diving at random into the mind of some person at a distant place and time, the prospect that a generation after my death all of this will be mulch, or at best, vying for a spot on Antique’s Roadshow, is a bit daunting.  At the same time, as Zender points out, the scribe who worked by hand on manuscripts not doubt looked in the same way at the advent of the printed book with the same sense mixture of concern and wistfulness – as though some integral part of the civilization he knew and that seemed natural to him were being lost.

Nothing is going to stop the continued advent of the technological revolution.  It isn’t even an advent anymore, but an established fact.  Those of us old fogies who are refugees from the world of books and think that because we happen to be on Facebook that somehow we have made the transition should take another look at our lifeboat. It’s already sinking. Our children’s children’s world will be a new one, speaking a language that we are probably constitutionally incapable of learning. There is neither praise nor blame in this.  It is simply the way that history is moving.  I never rode to school on a horse as my father did, but we both got to where we had to go.

Being the visually oriented person I am, though, I do feel luck to have been born into history at time when print was at its apogee.  When you stop to think that before Gutenberg only the very rich could afford books and that it is only that for the past one hundred years of our country that most people are even literate and books readily available, it has been a great time to be alive.  Except for this very recent time, culture has been predominantly oral.  The bulk of the population did not learn by reading or communicate through print – they talked and listened. I think that I would have been a very bad fit for that kind of culture being both poor at expressing myself orally and not much better at remembering what I hear. With the unrepentant ramping up of electronic media, the chances are that we are returning to an oral culture once again.  Writing has become tweeting and it won’t be too long before the keyboard is obsolete.  We’ll simply talk to the computer and it will answer us.  We will be able eliminate the intervening printed media. It is more than just a bit ironic that those who used to laugh at the idea of the stereotypic paternalistic boss who dictated to his secretary rather than simply write for himself will once again, in effect return to dictating, albeit with an electronic secretary.

As Zender points out, books made of paper won’t disappear overnight. Those of us born into the print culture will continue to read and buy them (that is until book stores turn totally into Kindle and Nook stations) and we will still sit down and read those same storybooks our parents read to us to our grandchildren, passing on a tradition even as it ceases to be.  I’m not writing a requiem.  Quite the opposite.  It is fascinating being poised on this point in history, both able to look back on the history that has made us who we are, and looking forward to what the future might be for those that come after us. In the short run, however, I think I will just get up and grab a book from the shelf.    

Veteran's Day

As anyone reading this blog probably knows, I just returned from Paris.  I with Lora, Maya, Lora’s brother Mike, his wife Bev and my niece Lauren.   It is hard to limit the number of superlatives one can toss out about Paris, but, as wonderful as that city was, the aspect of that trip that stands out the most in my mind today, was the side trip that we all took to Normandy.

Bev's father had been a decorated American fighter pilot in World War II. She had the diary that recorded in Hemingway-like sparseness, her father’s experiences during the invasion of the Allied Forces into Normandy in June of 1944 and wanted to visit the site where it had happened.   As someone who refused to be drafted during the Vietnam conflict, I've never been an aficionado of military history, but the day we spent on the Normandy beaches made us all take some baby steps towards the reality of the war for all those involved there.    We set out from Bayeux where we were staying, passing through the countryside where the German troops occupied the small towns and French resistance fighters snuck out of their homes at night to do whatever they could to thwart them.  We passed a church in one of the villages that is still being rebuilt and others, our guide explained,  completely disappeared.   

Our tour was limited to some of those beaches that American soldiers breached -  Utah, Pont Du Hoc and Omaha.  Walking across the landscape where concrete bunkers and remnants of fortifications still sit and where the surface of the land is still sculpted by the bombs that hit it gave a materiality to the events that took place there that all of us felt.  But for me, the moment that came closest to revealing some clue of how it must have felt to be there on D-Day was when we stood on Omaha beach at the edge of the water looking up at the cliffs where the German guns were sitting on that day and knowing that the only way there was to move was forward. 

In the twenty-first century, everyone knows that history is not a fact, but simply a narrative constructed by the winners to tell their story.  Even with the shards that we have to build it from – the diaries, the abandoned bunkers, scared landscapes – it is always going to be a protean tale.  Still, I think that having had the chance to visit the site where events occurred that have long since been subsumed into American mythology gave me the chance to toggle my own views.  I still won’t be rushing to join the Sons of the American Revolution, but at least, it has given me a bit more of an ability to participate in the collective memory that today, Veterans Day, represents.  And, if  I’m not mistaken, that is what national holidays are all about.

Another Family Quiz

Everyone knows that the stories we tell about our lives are constructions. They are a way  of stringing together what we take to be facts into a tale that helps us to explain ourselves or perhaps to project the image that we want others to have of us.  Facts in themselves mean nothing.  They are like a floor full of scattered beads; until we link them all together in some configuration, they make no sense.  This is a problem not just for writers of memoir and autobiography but for historians, philosophers and archaeologists as well, and as such not one that is going to be solved in a blog post.  What I wanted to do was to simulate how it is to arrange these events to tell a story. 

If you were to take ten events from your life, write them on slips of paper and throw them in a baseball cap, would your best friend, daughter or significant other be able put them order.  I thought I’d try.  To make this a bit easier, I will take events not strictly from my life but from that of the Northen family of my generation. Just number them from 1 to 10 in the order that you think happened. (Hint - #1 is a gimme.)

___Steve was killed in a car accident.

___A fire burned down the garage and back bedroom of the house where we were living.

___Our family lived in Hawaii.

___Dave got married (first time).

___Mom was hospitalized with a blood clot for six months and nearly died.

___Brother Pat was born.

___Maya was baptized at San Juan Capistrano mission.

___Judy moved to Tennessee.

___I was hit by a car driven by an uninsured 16 year old girl.

___Dad joined the Navy.

Even when you have a sequence, though, it is still not a story.  What are the connections? What are the causes/effects?  What is missing and how are the gaps filled in?  As a writer, and to a lesser extent, an amateur genealogist, these are the really interesting questions.  Given this bare set of facts or the bare facts of your life and fueled by their own imagination, what story would your son or daughter write?

Answers:  7, 5, 2, 8, 3, 6, 10, 9, 4, 1

Filling in the Picture

     Hanging on the wall among the pantheon of family pictures in upstairs guestroom is  a copy of an old black and white photograph that has been hanging there for years. In it, a family is sprawled across a yard in front of a mid-west style farmhouse. The clothes they are dressed in – the men including boys in long sleeve white shirts, vests, coats and hats, the women in floor length dresses with long doily-like collars around the neck – suggests that this picture is from the end of the 1800’s or beginning of the 1900’s.  A man, looking like the family patriarch, is sitting in a chair with his arms crossed,  and a woman, presumably his wife, stands near him with hands on a baby carriage.  In front of them, the children all lounge in the grass and to the side a robust woman stand beside a man who may be her husband but comes barely to her shoulder.

      I’ve always vaguely known that it was somehow related to my mother’s side of the family but I was never sure just how. Yesterday, through a stroke of luck I discovered who the family was. I was viewing a copy  of a page from the June 30, 1969 Centennial edition of the Le Mars Sentinel, the newspaper of Le Mars, Iowa.  The page was titled, “Some Early Houses of Plymouth County.”  In the middle of  bottom row of pictures was one with the captain “The barn and farm of Valentine Sitzmann.”  I recognize the name immediately, of course. The pictures on either side were labeled “Walnut Rose Stock Farm, Residence of Valentine Sitzmann” and “The Residence of Joseph Sitzmann,” respectively.  Valentine and Joseph Sitzmann were the brothers of my great-grandmother Katie Sitzmann. 

     The pictures themselves looked to have been photocopied so much that no detail was visible. As in a photograph taken by high contrast film, all that remained were the vague outlines of shapes with white spaces between them.   In staring at the darkest of them, that of Joseph Sitzmann’s residence, however, I began to recognize the outlines of the shapes and realized that it was exactly the same picture as the one hanging on the wall in the upstairs bedroom.  This told me not only whose family it was but, by default, also where the picture was taken.  It was on the land the Joseph Sitzmann owned in Lincoln Township, Plymouth County, Iowa. (The one I described in the Northen History blog post “Unscrambling the Map: Notes on the Sitzmann Family” a few weeks back.)

     The man in the chair is obviously Joseph Sitzmann, but who were the others?   I located Joseph Sitzmann in the 1910 federal census when he was 41 and his wife Eva was 40.  The census lists the children as George (20 years old), T. Mary (18), Edward (15) and James W. (13) and then stops, although quite obviously Joseph did not.  That is as far as I’ve gotten. I need to investigate further, so for now I’ll leave it to anyone reading this to try to match names with faces in the picture.

Staring at the old picture on a wall did make me wonder about the people in it, who they were and what their lives were like.  I wonder what it would be like for someone a hundred years from now uncovering a family photograph and trying to figure out who the people were, how they were related and what was going on. Take the following family picture for example:

What would one of our descendants who stumbled across this in year 2114 make of it?  One can only guess.

Belts

     I’m not what most people would call a fashionista, but when I go to the closet to grab a belt, I am always amazed at how many I have.  They all hang on a circular fake brass ring that is suspended from the closet pole by a similar piece of brass shaped like the top of a hanger.  By nature, I am loathe to throw out something that still has use, but in the case of these belt there is something added.  When I pull off a belt off of a ring, I’m also pulling off a piece of personal history. And, admittedly, some of them look like it. Which would I toss?

     The oldest belt is a wide, caramel-colored leather belt with designs etched into it. It was bought many years back when I first began teaching elementary school at La Purisima school in El Modena, California.  The students I taught in that sixth grade class are now in their mid-50’s.  It reminds me of the high ideals and hopes I had, the belief that teachers really could make a difference for children, my excitement about being part of that.  I have to almost laugh when I think that one of the more influential parents in the school tried to get me fired for being a Communist.  No, despite the fact that it is tearing around where the buckle snaps on, I can’t give that up.

     There is another old belt that I rarely wear, but also cannot give up.  It too is a thick western style belt, with an iron buckle so heavy it almost pulls me forward.  On the buckle is an engraving of some sort and the words Panama Red.  The irony is that it belonged to Lora’s father, a Buffalo accountant and very unlikely cowboy, who probably had no idea what the words on the buckle meant.  He died of ALS less than a year after Maya was born, so, of course, even though I may wear it only once or twice year, it is not going anywhere.

     The belt that I wear the most is probably a mere fifteen years old.  It is a medium width brown belt, with a light brown strip running down the middle.  It can go with anything but is probably among the most beat up of the belts on the hanger.  It is a belt that I purchased with a gift certificate given to me by my supervisor, John McClafferty, shortly after beginning my job at Inglis House.  John had given me a gift certificate to Banana Republic, a store normally out of my price range, but it just covered the cost of a belt.  I’ve had no actual friends as an adult - my life and personality just have not allowed for that - but in the last twenty years, John is the person who has actually come the closest.  When you are a person like me, you don’t throw out the those reminders that friendship may be possible.

     One belt that probably would surprise people to see in my closet is a meshed metal belt, the color of aluminum.  It is studded with faux-turquoise and designs that are no doubt supposed to invoke Navajo work.  The tip is a single piece of metal shaped in the approximate shape of a pit viper.  The belt belonged to Eli when he was in high school and speaks of a time when he was into experimenting with the next edgy fashion.  No doubt when I wear it in the year 2014, anyone who bothered to look in the first place would probably also be looking for a rainbow on my shirt.  I don’t care. Both my youth and my children’s has gone fast enough.

     There is one belt on my hanger that is functional in the extreme.  It is that shiny imitation leather a Walmart shopper would take as upscale.  One side is brown and one black and the handle twists so that it allows me to use either side – the kind of belt that makes it the only one you need to bring on a trip.  It is not for functionality, that I keep the belt but for the occasion on which it was bought.  I was heading from Philadelphia to Orange for Mom’s funeral when  after sitting in a plane out on the runway my flight was cancelled. I caught a flight, but my clothes were delayed. Ed and Eli (whose plane made it before me) raced around town to try to come up with an outfit for me so that when I landed I would not have to show up at my mother’s viewing in old clothes.  Whenever I put it on, I’m grateful for their effort and the memory the belt leaves me with.

      A sixth belt, a middle of the road strip of rawhide with a basic buckle that pretty much blends into any work-a-day clothing without being seen is probably the one that represents me best, but all of these and the half dozen other belts hanging from the ring each find their use.  The belts represent a bit of a conundrum – a personality crossroads, if you wish.  On the one hand, my mantra is that belts are like pairs of shoes: you really only need two. One to wear and one just in case something happens to those.  On the other hand, I’m congenitally pre-disposed never to waste or throw anything out whether it be food, old clothes, letters from family or belts.  I suspect all of these belts will be hanging there in the closet for quite some time. Or until I awaken one morning and find that by the graces of some well-meaning elves, they have disappeared.