Monday, December 23, 2013

A Christmas past..and Bailys Irish Cream!


Sitting here tonight trying to get my woodstove going with wet wood… while looking out the window and seeing the snow falling with the temperature dropping…. I was reminded of a Christmas Eve a number of years ago.  My parents were alive and I was expected to be in Syracuse for Christmas Eve and then to dinner on Christmas Day.

All of my wood had gotten wet because the week before there was a rainy period, just like this week. A snowstorm hit so I called a friend Jim that I bought wood from when I ran out and asked if he could spare some dry wood. I also asked if he could slide in the 1/4 mile to town and throw some wood into the stove once… while I was gone.

Pauline, my neighbor came over. She was worried about my traveling all those miles since the storm had started to brew in the early afternoon and warnings were on TV, which, of course, I did not have. She brought me a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream that her son Wayne had sent her, she thought I could use for the holidays. I told her not to worry about it Id make it!

So I tried to get the fire going as best I could and then set out, decked out in my coveralls and boots with my good clothes underneath. The story unfolds that my friend came down with dry wood… because of the wind he had worked and worked to get the fire going as the wind whistled about town and the temperature continued dropping.

I fought my way to Syracuse with my next-door neighbor’s four-wheel drive “bumpmobile”, as he called it, because he didnt think I would make it back and forth without it.

The snow was so bad by the time I got to Syracuse that my mother had fed everyone, was mad at me for being late, and fed me a baloney sandwich. My brother and his wife spent the night in Syracuse so it was no great problem for them, but I had to go home to get the house warm again and keep the pipes from freezing.

I left Syracuse at about 11:30 p.m. and started back to Eaton. I made it to Cazenovia and had to wait for a plow to pass so I could follow it, for I knew that otherwise I would never make it home.

About 1:15 I made the turn down Morrisville-Eaton Road, a dangerous road at best. Luckily there were two tire tracks ahead of me, so I followed them on the winding way to town. I could not believe it when the car turned onto Brooklyn Street and then went into my driveway! Sure enough, inside my house was Jims wife, trying to get the fire going again. It seems Jim ordered her to stop in after midnight mass and do it because it had taken him so long to get it going in the first place.

I laughed; we could see our breath in the house. As I tended the fire, she talked about what she had bought the kids, and I said, “Robin, have you ever had Baileys Irish Cream?” She said no and so I said, “Do you want to try it for a Christmas toast?” She did, and so we stood in the kitchen right up next to the woodstove and drank Baileys until 3 in the morning.

I assure you that the house never got warm, but we did!

Original Bailys commercial!











Saturday, December 21, 2013

A Christmas message and card from the backstreet!




Once again on the week behore Christmas I find myself lost amid old memories, problems of the present... and the dificulties of living in this (at the very moment) place in history where in seconds news is flashed, reflashed, disected and rehashed within the blink of an eye.  

So.. I decided to try and go back to a much nicer time, a time when life was simple and the holidays were something to look forward to...times to remember in your heart with joy!  Here is a repost from last year...but some things to think about.   I question...are we living in better times???

I painted the above picture for a Christmas card in 1995 and wrote the poem to go with it.  The story came from discussions with the old members of our little community group who shared their remembrances of "Christmas Past".

They are all dead now... but like on old clock I have turned my mind back to that year and leave the poem to you as my Christmas blog and my hope for a quiet and warmer future built on love...not hate....on families....not presents and shopping...and on love for your neighbor!

Going to Grandma’s for Christmas


Going to grandma’s for Christmas,
A very special day.
Through the city, past the suburbs,
Out the country way;
Past the now frozen pond,
Where children skate and sled;
While moms and dads look on.

As we approach the old farm house’
With barns in red and white;
I feel a glow of warmth,
In just picturing the sight,
The front door swinging open;
As waves and cheers abound.
It seems a million years ago,
Last Christmas came around.

The tree in its shining hour;
Standing in the hall,
So it might stretch to its fullest height,
And run from floor to floor.
Grandma’s fresh baked cookies,
Cooling by the stove;
And gingerbread decorated,
With swirls, and dots, and love.


The goose stuffed and waiting;
Cranberries and popcorn strung;
The neighbors gathering at the door,
Singing carols just for fun.
After all the presents,
Are unwrapped and tucked away;
I slip upstairs to Grandma’s room,
To kneel with her and pray.

Then curled up in a feather bed,
So snug and fluffy warm;
I feel at ease with all the world;
And safe from any harm.

No matter how many years come and pass away,
Grandma and the country,
Will be the heart of my Christmas Day!

Friday, December 13, 2013

Story of the Dream Net, Sigurd Olson, Whispers of the North and winter!


As the wind whistles outside my window and the snow floats softly to the ground, I like so many creatures am starting my winter solstice period.  They in their winter quarters... I with a book by the wood fire.  The days of laboring on outdoor projects this year has come to a close, ending with my unfortunate hand dug excavation of my side yard to solve a septic problem caused by this years two floods.

I visited the museum today with its new snug roof and its completion... sat wondering how I managed to get it together.  My little band of volunteers managed to put on a good small Eaton Day and Backstreet Barb and I finished a number of new books and videos.  All in all I don’t think we could have done more.

But it is winter and new projects loom, projects that I hope will lead me to a vacation in the Adirondacks or the lakes country.  So with that in mind I picked up a new book Cathy Nagle donated to my history collection called “Runes of the North” by Sigurd Olson.  The book written in 1963 is a collection of stories & legends… (Runes).  It covers Olson’s ramblings through the Quetico-Superior country of northern Minnesota and northern Ontario, Canada …that includes the Lake of the Woods and the long canoe passages of the many rivers and connecting waterways.

Runes, stories…  as he describes the scene as a young man before the logging companies clear-cut the rivers and lake banks floating the logs to mills.  Before nature lovers banded together to stop such practices that laid waste to vast areas for years and years.  He spoke of the fish and wildlife that flourished...  we now speak of oil pipelines and tar sands projects.

Olson eventually became a teacher and with his writings and expertise helped draft the Wilderness Act of 1964, he served as the president of the Wilderness Society.  Places that he helped protect included National Parks and Wildlife Refuges from Alaska’s Artic to Point Reyes National Seashore in California ...eventually becoming President of the National Parks Association.  Olson led quite a life.

The part of the book that charmed me the most was his telling of the legends of the Chippewa... including one about “Dream Catchers” that have become all so plentiful at gift shops.  The natives called them Dream Nets and on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation as a young father he was given one.  To him it was an unusual gift.

The Native woman told him to take it home and hang it over the beds of his children.  She explained that good & bad dreams waited around children for dusk and that the net would stop bad dreams from reaching them.  When he questioned the small hole in the center she smiled and said that it was so the good dreams could enter.  He did hang the dream net over his sons’ beds and related the story of the Chippewa woman to them.

Olson says: “Their years of childhood faith, I believe, left a mark upon them and as proof, the little net was eventually hung over another little bed in Alaska.  The net accomplished its purpose as it had for the Chippewa over the centuries of time.”

So perhaps when I dream tonight of camping in the north….and imagine a dream net over me…only good dreams will come……

“Whispers of the North
      soon I will go forth.
     To that ancient barren land
         where nature takes its course……”  

View and listen....great scenes and music!
Gordon Lightfoot music... video by a man for his dad and a trip they took!

















Saturday, December 7, 2013

Troubles, Spirits, Lily Dale and my Grandmother!


Grandpa, Grandma and me as a baby.

Have you ever read a book that made you laugh out loud?  If you have then you can appreciate the feeling I have had the past couple of nights reading Christine Wicker's fabulous book on Lily Dale, New York.  I reread it because of the horrible week I had.  I needed a laugh. (Topping my list of woes this week was digging for my septic by hand at 10 below zero...after being unable to clear the main drain line.)

Lily Dale is located in Chautauqua County and is a spiritualist community which sports séances, classes in spiritual healing and well as the books says… ”talks to the dead” … or does it?   

Christine is the quintessential skeptic that visits and is drawn back to the “Dale” to write about it and ends up trapped in a personal dilemma of what she does or doesn’t believe.  She thoroughly explores what makes people flock to this spot that some consider a vortex of spiritual power.

The humor and good natured questioning of all of the inhabitants and mediums and their teachings, brings not only a smile to your face but actually acts to reawaken your own sense of what is real, what is possible, and most importantly the question… is there another world beyond?

My favorite quote is one attributed to Susan B. Anthony who visited and spoke at the Dale… When given a reading supposedly coming from an aunt of hers on the “other side” she responded, “I didn’t like her when she was alive and don’t want to hear from her now… can’t you bring someone exciting out like Elizabeth Stanton? “

Most hysterical are her moments of classroom exercises where she practices giving messages to others in the class…and then her being astonished at actually giving a message that her read…ee was actually looking for? 

What is wonderful is Christine manages in her journey to unlock herself and comes away with a feeling that she has opened herself to the world around her.  Magically she gets the reader to do it as well.

So last night I closed the book, turned the light off,  and suddenly began picturing the rocker in the next room.  The rocker was my mother’s… but sitting in it was my grandmother… and she was crocheting.  It was a memory I had forgotten of grandma making a wool afghan for my mother when she stayed at our house for a while.  It was my grandmother Messere.

Grandma was a great person and I could still hear her telling me stories and laughing until we both cried.  She was always working hard even in the evening after all her chores were done… sitting and crocheting.  She always looked a bit like Madame DeFarge in the Tale of Two Cities I thought.  I always wondered if grandma was putting the story of her life into perspective… writing it with the hook and loops?

One of my favorite quotes of hers when something went wrong was… (With a laugh)… “It only happens to the living!”  I never really got the message of what it meant until I was in my sixties when I repeated it to a young woman with troubles.  I said, “Things will be okay … it only happens to the living!”  Right… it can’t happen to the dead!

Grandma was an orphan who lived as a child servant with a boss who starved her young workers.   She came to America as an indentured servant.  In her life she lost many babies at childbirth… one to green apples …and her youngest to war, but she never gave in to remorse, she accepted life for what it was… full of ups and downs.

So I began to wonder if maybe she was sitting there with me in the dark, reassuring me that all that was wrong would pass.  I like to think that it was so!