Quo Vadis Blog

The Stillroom Book

Thumbing through the Winter 2009 issue of The Herb Quarterly looking for receipes and garden tips, I discovered instead a wonderful article by herbalist and freelance writer, Barbara MacPherson, called “Wisdom from the Stillroom.”

As she describes it, historically, a stillroom book “was simply a notebook in which health, healing, and medicinal information were recorded.”  A stillroom book was so named because in the past one of the most important areas of a house contained a still to make medicinal “waters” of all kinds.

“The earliest versions were written on parchment, then vellum, and finally in bound books of paper…Generally, they would write down each entry as an informal paragraph in scrapbook fashion. The book was not limited to medicinal knowledge and preparations; often included were recipes for cosmetics, soaps, and preserves, as well. Gardening information, measurements, useful tables, and sometimes even magic formulas all graced the pages of a stillroom book.”

Some examples MacPherson cites include: Arcana Fairfaxiana, a stillroom book compiled by the Fairfax family in England and published in 1890 by Mawson, Swan & Morgan; and Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick, and Surgery - attributed to Mary Kettiby, 1714.

MacPherson encourages her readers to make their own stillroom book, using the knowledge passed down from generations, or gathered from friends and neighbors.  “Be sure to use your own handwriting in your journal,” she said. “Don’t worry about mistakes; the old stillroom books were full of corrections, adding to the sense of the real person behind the writing. Date your entries. Imagine a great-grandchild opening the pages in 2060 to see your handwriting with the date of, say, September 25, 2009.”

There isn’t much on the web about stillroom books, but I did find this one gem thanks to the Project Gutenberg’s free ebooks: The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened by Kenelm Digby.

Sir Kenelm Digby was born in 1603.  It contains all sorts of things, including a recipe for mead, “Aqua Mirabilis. Sir Kenelm Digby’s Way,” and my favorite,”The true Preparation of the Powder of Sympathy, as it was prepared every year in Sir Kenelm Digby’s Elaboratory.” The “Powder of Sympathy” was used to heal wounds.

Herbal Quarterly Winter 2009 edition here.

The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened here.

Family Notebooks

My New Year’s resolution for 2010 will be to work on a family research project involving my parents, and both sets of grandparents and great-grandparents. The experience will require me to be more of a detective than archivist, since the evidence is so incomplete, scattered, hidden or lost. The record will be part fact and part conjecture.

I will need to collect the various bits available–papers, photos, random treasured possessions–and see if a puzzle portrait begins to emerge. I am searching for clues to who they were, what touched them, and what shaped their lives. I know our relation, but who were they as people?

I have thought a lot about putting photos and research online–and someday I might–but I’m going to start with a notebook for each individual.

My idea of using a notebook to record each family member’s history was sparked by looking at hundreds of old photos and tintypes at flea markets, estate sales and antique stores.  Most were anonymous. Even more than knowing their name, when I held the photo and looked at the man, woman or child I wondered what was going on in their life when the picture was taken, and what became of them?

Each page of the notebook will begin with a photo or memento.  Shortly before he died, my dad shared some memories of the Marines in China. A have a number of photos of him on the Great Wall or in a Marine camp in the countryside. Some of the stories he told wouldn’t have made it into a history book.  I will write down the stories he told me in the notebook.

There are also family mysteries to solve: one of the most treasured possessions of my great grand-father, a ship’s carpenter from Norway, was a picture of Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show! I wonder what the story was behind that!

The notebook will be handy to tote around as I do my research and jot down memories as they occur to me. The little scraps of paper and torn-off pages I normally use to write and then convey to a computer get lost too easily.  A notebook will hold all my research in one place.

Photos, documents and mementos are important, but what I find most interesting and all too often is lost, are the little stories people tell about themselves that go in to making up their life.

Anyone have any thoughts, ideas to share, about capturing family history in scrapbooks and notebooks?

Veterans Day

I received this email from a friend back in September who served in the Navy in Vietnam.  I thought her message was moving, and she linked to a story that was poignant, shocking and deeply sad.  I kept it to reprint today. It is the story of a funeral procession of a fallen soldier, Sergeant lst Class William B. Woods.

“Dear Friends,
 
I have selected send to all in my contacts list.  I hope this does not inconvenience any of you.  I have not seen or heard any tv or radio news today, so if you’ve already heard this story I hope you don’t mind that you have heard it again from me.
 
I was doing a regular check in and reading of topics on The Fountain Pen Network website I belong to and found a topic of discussion about the Procession for a Fallen Soldier’s body from the airport to (I assume) the mortuary from which his funeral will be held and a civilian woman’s complaint to the country sheriff’s office about her inconvenience getting home from work that day because of the procession.  I’m sharing this with my friends. . . As many of you know I am a US Navy veteran and I support the efforts of our military forces with my whole heart.  I may not always believe in the politics of this war or past wars, but the American men and women who serve this country deserve every ounce of support, respect and courtesy every American owes each and every one who has put his or her life on hold to do their duty.  When a soldier, sailor, or airman falls we all owe that person a debt of gratitude for their sacrifice.” 

Read the original complaint letter and the sheriff’s response here.

I want the flowers back, too!

Stephanie’s post at Rhodia Drive yesterday totally struck a nerve — I want it to be spring again, too! Fall is usually my favorite season, at least in the ideal East Coast version when it’s 60-70 degrees during the day and crisp and still at night. Fall is harvest, fall is weekend hikes and bracing swims in chilly, sun-lit ponds. But this year’s harvest was terrible because of all the rain, and the past few weekends have either been too cold or too wet to head out to the mountains.

In the meantime, I look at the unripe tomatoes on my kitchen counter (half of my plants didn’t even set fruit until September, which made them easy targets for last week’s near-freezing temperatures) and think wistfully about next spring, when the garden cycle starts again. Hopefully with better weather, fewer pests, and other improvements based on the mistakes I made this year… better stakes for the cucumbers, more space for the zucchini, and maybe next year my irises will actually bloom, though God knows what they’ve been missing during the past 2 summers! Really gets you thinking long-term, gardening.

In the meantime, anyone know a good recipe for fried green tomatoes?

Hockey Time

Sarah Palin and I have several things in common: we both have roots in Alaska; we were both photographed by the Mendenhall Glacier, and we were both hockey moms.

My life as a hockey mom got started when my son, Robert, was about six. He started playing in roller hockey in Brooklyn, skating at a rink at 53rd Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway. Joey Mullen, one of the best American born ice hockey players ever, got his start at that same outdoors rink. It was cold, gloomy and had no place to sit. You had to stand to watch. The only refuge from the cold was a pizza place across the street. 

A year later, Robert was playing at Sky Rink in Manhattan. The “old” Sky Rink on was on the 16th Floor of 450 West 33rd Street, not far from the equally famous Cheyenne Diner. Hockey players, cabbies, clubbers, mobsters, hookers, parents, European tourists hit the Cheyenne for coffee and breakfast at 4 and 5 am. I miss the old Sky Rink: it was grungy, unfashionably painted a hideous blue, and stunk of hockey just like a skating rink should.

Read the rest of this entry »

Try Working Less?

A recent article by Sue Shellenbarger in the Wall Street Journal’s “Work and Family” column caught my eye: “If You Need to Work Better, Maybe Try Working Less.” Read the article here.

I don’t work every minute, but for the last several years I have worked seven days a week. My job increasingly seems split between “work” and “email”, and as hard as I try I feel both are spiraling out of my reach to manage in a rational or calm way. This is due to an increased workload, and the nonstop communication between email, blackberries and smart phones facilitate.

Working any time and all the time now affects 70% of us, according to the Society of Human Resource Management.

But the situation has now hit a point, the Shellenbarger article suggests, “where a paradoxical truth applies: To get more done, we need to stop working so much.”

Shellenberg reports that a ground-breaking four-year study, set for publication in the October issue of the Harvard Business Review, seems to confirm that getting away from work can bring unexpected on-the-job benefits.

The study found that sticking to a predictable time off can lead to improved productivity.  This means–block out time not to do work.

After years of working on and off most weekends, Shellenbarger decided to try a new approach of taking off at least one entire day every weekend for a month, away from reporting, writing and all other work.  She hated it. As simple as it seemed, sticking to a time-off plan really stressed her out.

But she honestly admitted her experiment got her to change her work style. “This forced me to put proven time-management principles into practice,” she said. “Plan blocks of work time and stick to the plan; set short-term deadlines to keep work from spiraling out of control; and keep up with email daily, to avoid backlogs.”

I am inspired to try a similar “time out” plan for October. I’ll report back on how well I do and if the required “day off” makes me upset, stressed, or even more efficient.  Anyone want to try? (It will be like making a pact to give up smoking together…)

Meal planning

Sarah of Ghost World is an impressively well-organized blogger and pediatrics resident (and Quo Vadis / Rhodia fan). Reading her recent posts about refilling an empty fridge and managing the loose ends in life reminded me of a subject I’ve been meaning to write about since I saw her advice on Carrots ‘n Cake back in April: meal planning.

When I lived in Europe (Germany, Austria, England) for a few years after college, I fell in love with how easy it was to go to the farmer’s market every day, see what inspired me, and cook. Of course, I also had a lot more free time—the easy pace of European life is often oversold, but it’s definitely less hectic than your average New York day. The only thing you had to plan ahead for was Sunday, when everything was closed. And you could always go to a restaurant if you didn’t do your shopping on Saturday.

Here in Red Hook, I’m no longer close to a daily farmer’s market, though we do have a great supermarket. I work from home, and I don’t have kids, so it’s still relatively easy for me to pop over to the store at the end of the day and pick ingredients for that night’s dinner. Nonetheless, I’ve been experimenting with the idea of plotting out a couple meals in advance—in part because it’s summer, and I can now buy a bunch of vegetables at once at our weekly farmer’s market, and in part because, you know, life is stressful, and who doesn’t want more free time to read or garden or take an aimless walk around the block before dinner?

There are plenty of online tools to keep track of recipes and meals; many people also use their planners for that purpose. Thus far, however, I’ve been taking it 2-3 days at a time and using a simple shopping list as a mnemonic device.

How far in advance do you plan your meals?

2012

Quo Vadis staffers are in the process of finalizing plans for 2012 editions and cover styles.  But, will we need to discuss 2013? Maybe not, if the scenario of the movie 2012 comes true.

Roland Emmerich, the director of the mega-hit, Independence Day, and the eco-thriller, The Day After Tomorrow, brings his third crack at the apocalypse, this fall’s 2012.

See the movie trailer here.

December 21, 2012 is the day various sources throughout history predict the world will experience a massive cataclysm.

The Mayan Calendar – 2012 gained the patina of doom with the best-selling 1966 book, The Maya, by Harvard archaeologist  Michael D. Coe. He noted that the Mayan culture’s famously complex “Long Count” calendar simply ends on 12/21/12, speculating that civilization might come crashing down on that date.

Galactic Alignment - Astrologers have also pointed out that during the winter solstice of 2012, the orbital planes of the solar system and the twelve zodiacal constellations will intersect with the “Dark Rift”–a black bit of the Milky Way located next to Sagittarius. Some argue this intersection is precisely why the Mayans–who were brilliant astronomers–ended their calendar when they did.

Timewave Zero - And then there’s counterculture thinker Terence McKenna, whose Timewave Zero theory–drawing off elements from the I-Ching, the teachings of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, and modern fractal mathematics–determined that 12/21/12 is the exact date of a profound change in the world.

Pole Reversal - One theory that has some traction in the scientific community is that a solar flare will cause a sudden shift in the magnetic orientation of the earth’s poles, causing all kinds of planetary problems like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. NASA is predicting strong solar activity around 2012 and there’s evidence that the magnetic poles are slowly weakening, something that reportedly presages a reversal. (Of course, most scientists think this reversal will take centuries, not days, to occur.)

So how does Roland Emmerich end the world in his film? “Pole reversal,” he said in an interview this week. “All kinds of stuff going on. But it’s basically major earthquakes and volcano eruptions which kind of cause this global flood.”

“We found this obscure theory of ‘Earth crust displacement,’ written in the ’50s by someone called Professor Hapgood. Albert Einstein wrote the forward to his book. It pretty much says every X number of years the whole Earth’s crust shifts, all together. We thought that was a great underlying theory that can explain why there can be a flood.”

Emmerich was asked what is he going to do to prepare for the fated date.. He said, “I don’t believe that the world will come to an end in 2012, but it’s a great scenario.”

Daylily redux

And now, as they say, for something completely different… My first daylily of the year! I’m not sure what this variety is called (I swiped it from my mom’s garden last year), but it’s now the first daylily to open for the second year in a row… I love how it looks against the industrial green garage door thingie that serves as a section of our fence.

Good question: How to write a family memoir?

We got an intriguing email the other day from a reader in Arizona:

I have recently been charged with the task of scribing my great-grandfather’s biography, which includes both World Wars and a Medal of Honor, to keep as a family heirloom.

To this end, I would like to ask your opinion as to which pens, inks, and paper would be most ideally suited for this task. I should also mention that my own personal script is quite unique and legible, but somewhat small.

Also, I’ve been inspired to begin writing some of my own memoirs, stories, & letters to keep and share for many, many years. However, I feel the need for a more inspiring medium than the dull life of a notebook and ballpoint. I would like a pen, ink, and paper that could be used as often as everyday, resist fading, and that would also provide a distinguished style and flair.

Karen already suggested he post his query on the Fountain Pen Network, and make sure to use acid-free paper. But we figured you guys would have many more helpful suggestions… So how about it? What writing supplies would you use to tackle a task like this?

Image via Fimb.