The turning point was the chocolate chip cookies: the year my mother did not give me a tin of her Tollhouse cookies as a Christmas present.
Tollhouse cookies were one of her four specialties, the others being two casseroles and a stew. Ever since I had moved way from home at nineteen, my mother had put together a tin of homemade cookies for me each year. I counted on them.
And this was before her stroke, so I did not know what to make of it that Christmas when she gave me a few oddments – her usual style of gift-giving, which was fine by me: random stationary supplies, a box of tea, maybe a nice dishtowel -- but no cookies. I considered if I had done something wrong, but certainly I had done nothing wrong in my mid-40s compared to what I might have done in my mid-20s. She just forgot, I thought. Or more likely was afraid of the oven, an old gas range with an uncertain pilot light.
But no mention of the omission either. My mother would have told me if she had not been able to bake cookies, and would have shown me the two big bags of Tollhouse chips she had bought and not been able to use. And the decorative tin.
I returned home to Baltimore and told my husband I was a little let down. He had counted on the cookies as well. But I realized it was a sign of the times, a small letting go of a small Christmas tradition my mother had created for me as an adult. Amazing to think now about how much more letting go there would be in the next few years.
Missing Places
How long does history last?
The Huguenots of Hanover County were still giving their children French names well into the twentieth century. I saw some of their graves today, next to an old plantation house up on blocks, dying slowly, with broken windows.
Should we mourn the plantation house? So many went through horrors to keep it warm, its larder stocked, its wood and silver polished.
What do we lose when we lose an old house? A woman stands at a second floor doorway, waiting to step into a missing wing, waiting to find out.
The Huguenots of Hanover County were still giving their children French names well into the twentieth century. I saw some of their graves today, next to an old plantation house up on blocks, dying slowly, with broken windows.
Should we mourn the plantation house? So many went through horrors to keep it warm, its larder stocked, its wood and silver polished.
What do we lose when we lose an old house? A woman stands at a second floor doorway, waiting to step into a missing wing, waiting to find out.
Southern Morale Soared
I like to read historic road markers, or at least try to read them as I drive by. One that I have read countless times is VA-E2, Intermediate Defenses, at the corner of Chamberlayne and Laburnum, where the red light allows me to savor the text:
Here ran, east and west, the intermediate line of Richmond defenses during the Civil War. Near this spot on 1 March 1864 Union Brig. Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick halted his raid that was intended to free Union prisoners and lower morale in the Confederate capital. A detachment led by Col. Ulric Dahlgren was defeated to the west of the city. On 2 March Dahlgren was killed; Southern morale soared.
Of course, it is the last, succinct phrase that is so compelling. Another favorite is the heading on the marker at Cedar Lane and Ashcake Road: Stuart Turns North. Both would be excellent titles for short story collections, I think. The roads are filled with markers, most of them about the Civil War, given how much action this part of the world saw in the 1860s.
Growing up in Manhattan, I got the usual bullet-point version of the war from the Northern perspective. Add to this Catholic school Manichaeism and you have a fairly straightforward story of good triumphing over evil. In the eighth grade I did a history report called “The Civil War in Song” and it was quite clever. The report was bound in burlap-covered cardboard and each section opened with a stanza from a different song of the era, ending up, I think, with the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
The South was a very different, kind of scary place to me. I did not really know anyone from below the Mason-Dixon line until grad school. My friend Gerald, from Winston-Salem, was Baptist to boot, and altogether a new breed for me in a city whose immigrants, when not Dominican, seemed to be mostly from Ohio.
But despite my utter ignorance of things Southern, I had always felt a direct connection to the Civil War. My great-grandfather fought in an upstate New York regiment and did time at Andersonville. Later he was part of a prisoner exchange and was transferred to a hospital in North Carolina before being sent home. We know this because we have a wonderful letter he wrote to the U.S. Pension Office in the 1880s asking where the hell his veteran's pension was. The letter is filled with details of his service: where he was inducted, his commanding officers, the names of comrades and battles, and his time as a prisoner and invalid. I do not know if he ever got his pension. I certainly hope so.
In my late thirties I started drifting south, first to Baltimore, then to the DC area, and now Richmond for the past six years. I have tried to educate myself, and road markers are just a small part of this. They cluster in some areas, two or three in a row, lending depth and meaning to the land. Blood was spilled here. Exhaustion, hunger, homesickness. Even victories – “Southern morale soared” – can be heartbreaking.
It is hard to scrape away almost forty years of prejudice and stereotype, but I feel I owe it to Richmond and to the South in general. Plus, battles took place on the ground I live on, the roads I drive over every day. It is a confusing, tragic history, one many people still debate. I am not about to mourn the Lost Cause or ignore the misery that sustained the South’s economy and way of life. Recent scholarship has shown how much the slave trade sustained New York’s economy as well. I just know that I am part of this history, and that I cannot live in a place without trying to understand its people and its past.
Here ran, east and west, the intermediate line of Richmond defenses during the Civil War. Near this spot on 1 March 1864 Union Brig. Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick halted his raid that was intended to free Union prisoners and lower morale in the Confederate capital. A detachment led by Col. Ulric Dahlgren was defeated to the west of the city. On 2 March Dahlgren was killed; Southern morale soared.
Of course, it is the last, succinct phrase that is so compelling. Another favorite is the heading on the marker at Cedar Lane and Ashcake Road: Stuart Turns North. Both would be excellent titles for short story collections, I think. The roads are filled with markers, most of them about the Civil War, given how much action this part of the world saw in the 1860s.
Growing up in Manhattan, I got the usual bullet-point version of the war from the Northern perspective. Add to this Catholic school Manichaeism and you have a fairly straightforward story of good triumphing over evil. In the eighth grade I did a history report called “The Civil War in Song” and it was quite clever. The report was bound in burlap-covered cardboard and each section opened with a stanza from a different song of the era, ending up, I think, with the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
The South was a very different, kind of scary place to me. I did not really know anyone from below the Mason-Dixon line until grad school. My friend Gerald, from Winston-Salem, was Baptist to boot, and altogether a new breed for me in a city whose immigrants, when not Dominican, seemed to be mostly from Ohio.
But despite my utter ignorance of things Southern, I had always felt a direct connection to the Civil War. My great-grandfather fought in an upstate New York regiment and did time at Andersonville. Later he was part of a prisoner exchange and was transferred to a hospital in North Carolina before being sent home. We know this because we have a wonderful letter he wrote to the U.S. Pension Office in the 1880s asking where the hell his veteran's pension was. The letter is filled with details of his service: where he was inducted, his commanding officers, the names of comrades and battles, and his time as a prisoner and invalid. I do not know if he ever got his pension. I certainly hope so.
In my late thirties I started drifting south, first to Baltimore, then to the DC area, and now Richmond for the past six years. I have tried to educate myself, and road markers are just a small part of this. They cluster in some areas, two or three in a row, lending depth and meaning to the land. Blood was spilled here. Exhaustion, hunger, homesickness. Even victories – “Southern morale soared” – can be heartbreaking.
It is hard to scrape away almost forty years of prejudice and stereotype, but I feel I owe it to Richmond and to the South in general. Plus, battles took place on the ground I live on, the roads I drive over every day. It is a confusing, tragic history, one many people still debate. I am not about to mourn the Lost Cause or ignore the misery that sustained the South’s economy and way of life. Recent scholarship has shown how much the slave trade sustained New York’s economy as well. I just know that I am part of this history, and that I cannot live in a place without trying to understand its people and its past.
Frank
I buy my furniture at Diversity because their stuff comes with good ghosts, the kind of people with whom I feel some affinity.
Take the chair I bought a few weeks ago. An old office chair from the fifties, probably, not a boss’s chair but maybe something you’d have in the waiting area or perhaps around a conference table, one with enormous, multi-notched ashtrays. But it is handsome enough, with its fake burgundy leather and brass tacks. It’s not all that comfortable, but it was not meant to be, so I think it does its job.
And it came with Frank, an amiable guy with the usual worries – wife, kids, mortgage and so on. But he’s pretty upbeat – key to a salesman’s success – and he has a lot to be thankful for. The heart attack was just a blip on the screen and now he’s here with me, although sometimes he does wander off for a smoke.
Frank doesn’t notice the computer or the microwave. In fact, he couldn’t care less. He squirms sometimes; the meeting should have been over half an hour ago, but hey, it’s not like he has somewhere more important to be. It’s fine here.
Take the chair I bought a few weeks ago. An old office chair from the fifties, probably, not a boss’s chair but maybe something you’d have in the waiting area or perhaps around a conference table, one with enormous, multi-notched ashtrays. But it is handsome enough, with its fake burgundy leather and brass tacks. It’s not all that comfortable, but it was not meant to be, so I think it does its job.
And it came with Frank, an amiable guy with the usual worries – wife, kids, mortgage and so on. But he’s pretty upbeat – key to a salesman’s success – and he has a lot to be thankful for. The heart attack was just a blip on the screen and now he’s here with me, although sometimes he does wander off for a smoke.
Frank doesn’t notice the computer or the microwave. In fact, he couldn’t care less. He squirms sometimes; the meeting should have been over half an hour ago, but hey, it’s not like he has somewhere more important to be. It’s fine here.
Clippings
I lent an old book to a friend the other day and mentioned when I handed it to her that there was a newspaper clipping folded up in the back, an obituary for someone described in the book. I know it is not good to keep such things in books – they stain and erode the pages, put pressure on the binding, and eventually result in yellow newsprint confetti. But the obituary added another dimension to the story: vertical time – this person’s long life – at a right angle to the horizontal time – the here and now, circa 1922 – of the book’s subject.
The newspaper clipping used to be an important way of saving and sharing information, and I have not gotten out of the habit in the age of the internet. True, these days I do the “esheehan has sent you an article” routine much of the time, although I dislike the third party intervention and the barrel of ads and cookies such “clippings” deliver to my friends’ computers. And the emailed or linked article does allow the recipient to print clean copies or forward to others, or, more likely, store the email until a respectful period of time has passed and she can delete it, unread. I am okay with that. An emailed article is always a potential intrusion, possibly even critique.
But I come from a long line of newspaper clippers and I still like to send and get the real thing, sometimes cut into ziggurats of odd column lengths and origami-ed into an envelope. In the old days, if an article was too outrageously formatted, I would spend considerable time at the office copier trying to getting the whole thing down to one or two pages, the first a 94% reduction, the second maybe 86%. Of course, access to a copier used to be a major justification for working, aside from paying the rent and eating. I would use the copies for teaching, or burden friends and colleagues with them if I thought they were of interest. One of my supervisors actually noted in a letter of reference for me how she would miss the little bundles of articles I would leave in her office mailbox. Perhaps.
There are different kinds of clippings: the cut direct, the paste-up job, the Xerox special. And different sources: the handover, which includes mailed articles, the anonymous insert (especially rewarding while browsing in a used book store), the legacies found in family papers. My Irish-born grandmother cut from her upstate New York newspaper a photo of Irish independence being celebrated in 1949 in front of Dublin’s General Post Office, scene of bloody fighting during the 1916 Easter Uprising. My grandmother left Ireland as a teenager in the first years of the twentieth century and never returned. But clearly the founding of the Republic meant something to her. I hardly knew her, but I know this.
And then there is the closely related category of whole newspapers saved for their significance. I have been carrying a box of these with me for decades, building on my mother’s collection. JFK’s assassination, then MLK’s and RFK’s. (A sharp high school memory: seeing the New York Daily News’ front page, with the blurred image of Bobby’s head on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel, scuffed and torn on the platform of the 14th street subway station.) Nixon resigns. Ford to City: Drop Dead. The Statue of Liberty Centennial. Clinton’s first election, and then the Starr Report. And 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. How long will I save each year’s anniversary issue of the New York Times? I think of the Civil War veterans meeting a half century later at Gettysburg and imagine those who remember 9/11 someday being like them, a frail, dwindling brotherhood.
The whole newspaper, of course, creates the mise en scène -- movie ads and white sales at Gimbel’s, the racing results and op-eds by dead wise men. Many years ago my friend Steve ripped up generations of linoleum in his New York tenement kitchen and found a Pearl Harbor-era newspaper used as lining for the 1941 stratum. He gathered it up and went to the local coffee shop and read it at the counter over his eggs and bagel. No one commented, but then most of the habitués had been at that counter since the second FDR administration. I have a 1967 copy of the Village Voice that takes me back to the days of be-ins and head shops on Eighth Street. I am Curious (Yellow).
But the random clipping is a very intimate form of communication, especially when the message is unintentional. I have my father’s handwriting on things he saved. He died more than thirty years ago but his notations, his obsessions really, show how his mind worked and where his interests overlapped with mine. They extend the reach into the past: an article from the 1960s about events that happened in the 1930s stuck in a book about the 1890s, and all connected.
People worry if newspapers will exist in years to come. If they disappear, clippings will go with them. These days we have the “most popular” list of emailed and searched articles on newspaper websites, a form of literary ranking unknown fifteen years ago but vulnerable to the whims of hard drives and servers. I’d rather cut the article out, save it, or send it along: I saw this and thought of you.
The newspaper clipping used to be an important way of saving and sharing information, and I have not gotten out of the habit in the age of the internet. True, these days I do the “esheehan has sent you an article” routine much of the time, although I dislike the third party intervention and the barrel of ads and cookies such “clippings” deliver to my friends’ computers. And the emailed or linked article does allow the recipient to print clean copies or forward to others, or, more likely, store the email until a respectful period of time has passed and she can delete it, unread. I am okay with that. An emailed article is always a potential intrusion, possibly even critique.
But I come from a long line of newspaper clippers and I still like to send and get the real thing, sometimes cut into ziggurats of odd column lengths and origami-ed into an envelope. In the old days, if an article was too outrageously formatted, I would spend considerable time at the office copier trying to getting the whole thing down to one or two pages, the first a 94% reduction, the second maybe 86%. Of course, access to a copier used to be a major justification for working, aside from paying the rent and eating. I would use the copies for teaching, or burden friends and colleagues with them if I thought they were of interest. One of my supervisors actually noted in a letter of reference for me how she would miss the little bundles of articles I would leave in her office mailbox. Perhaps.
There are different kinds of clippings: the cut direct, the paste-up job, the Xerox special. And different sources: the handover, which includes mailed articles, the anonymous insert (especially rewarding while browsing in a used book store), the legacies found in family papers. My Irish-born grandmother cut from her upstate New York newspaper a photo of Irish independence being celebrated in 1949 in front of Dublin’s General Post Office, scene of bloody fighting during the 1916 Easter Uprising. My grandmother left Ireland as a teenager in the first years of the twentieth century and never returned. But clearly the founding of the Republic meant something to her. I hardly knew her, but I know this.
And then there is the closely related category of whole newspapers saved for their significance. I have been carrying a box of these with me for decades, building on my mother’s collection. JFK’s assassination, then MLK’s and RFK’s. (A sharp high school memory: seeing the New York Daily News’ front page, with the blurred image of Bobby’s head on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel, scuffed and torn on the platform of the 14th street subway station.) Nixon resigns. Ford to City: Drop Dead. The Statue of Liberty Centennial. Clinton’s first election, and then the Starr Report. And 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. How long will I save each year’s anniversary issue of the New York Times? I think of the Civil War veterans meeting a half century later at Gettysburg and imagine those who remember 9/11 someday being like them, a frail, dwindling brotherhood.
The whole newspaper, of course, creates the mise en scène -- movie ads and white sales at Gimbel’s, the racing results and op-eds by dead wise men. Many years ago my friend Steve ripped up generations of linoleum in his New York tenement kitchen and found a Pearl Harbor-era newspaper used as lining for the 1941 stratum. He gathered it up and went to the local coffee shop and read it at the counter over his eggs and bagel. No one commented, but then most of the habitués had been at that counter since the second FDR administration. I have a 1967 copy of the Village Voice that takes me back to the days of be-ins and head shops on Eighth Street. I am Curious (Yellow).
But the random clipping is a very intimate form of communication, especially when the message is unintentional. I have my father’s handwriting on things he saved. He died more than thirty years ago but his notations, his obsessions really, show how his mind worked and where his interests overlapped with mine. They extend the reach into the past: an article from the 1960s about events that happened in the 1930s stuck in a book about the 1890s, and all connected.
People worry if newspapers will exist in years to come. If they disappear, clippings will go with them. These days we have the “most popular” list of emailed and searched articles on newspaper websites, a form of literary ranking unknown fifteen years ago but vulnerable to the whims of hard drives and servers. I’d rather cut the article out, save it, or send it along: I saw this and thought of you.
Disposable
I do not have a camera at the moment – I will buy one – but I need to take pictures right now as the old buildings, woods and waterways in my area disappear. If I wait until I can afford a decent camera, there may be nothing left to photograph but strip malls and townhouse developments.
When I was driving home late last Monday the old tin barn on my corner was still there. By two o’clock the next day it was gone. The trees and brush around it had been leveled, cut into pieces and piled in heaps for a truck to cart away.
So I went and got a disposable camera to take pictures of disposable history. First I took pictures of the black family cemetery on the hill overlooking the Chickahominy, just off Route 1. Then the ravine going down to the river. Then the stripped hilltop where the barn used to be. Old Telegraph Road. The creek behind where I live. These may all be gone soon.
When I was driving home late last Monday the old tin barn on my corner was still there. By two o’clock the next day it was gone. The trees and brush around it had been leveled, cut into pieces and piled in heaps for a truck to cart away.
So I went and got a disposable camera to take pictures of disposable history. First I took pictures of the black family cemetery on the hill overlooking the Chickahominy, just off Route 1. Then the ravine going down to the river. Then the stripped hilltop where the barn used to be. Old Telegraph Road. The creek behind where I live. These may all be gone soon.
Mark Your Calendars
I managed to get through most of yesterday without realizing that it was Columbus Day, or as it has been renamed in South Dakota, Native American Day. So another benefit of not having a regular job is not caring a fig about so-called national holidays, what is open or closed, who’s having a long weekend and who is not. I may just declare my own holidays: National Family Pie Day, National Hopeful Baptist Day, National Bipedal Sinner Day, National When the Fuck is Bush Going to Stop Being President Day…
Marsh
I’ve hidden it in a place where it will be found, but not for some time. A few years, perhaps longer.
The landscape is being stripped and leveled all around where I live. Soon, the woods on the other side of the road will be replaced by houses. The corner and two other sites near me on Route 1 have been cleared for retail development. This is the way it is and has always been. I have no illusions about the purity of the land. This road was once a major artery between north and south; it has been bordered by farms and inns since the 17th century, more recently by barbeque stands and motels. But things wear down, are abandoned and removed, and the land returns for a while to its dissolute ways.
Still, some places are harder to tame, even with concrete and steel. They’ll figure out how to do this eventually, when it pays enough to try. In the meantime, I have hidden the doll for the little girl who knows where to find it.
The landscape is being stripped and leveled all around where I live. Soon, the woods on the other side of the road will be replaced by houses. The corner and two other sites near me on Route 1 have been cleared for retail development. This is the way it is and has always been. I have no illusions about the purity of the land. This road was once a major artery between north and south; it has been bordered by farms and inns since the 17th century, more recently by barbeque stands and motels. But things wear down, are abandoned and removed, and the land returns for a while to its dissolute ways.
Still, some places are harder to tame, even with concrete and steel. They’ll figure out how to do this eventually, when it pays enough to try. In the meantime, I have hidden the doll for the little girl who knows where to find it.
Logophilia
People think I know words, but it’s just that I went to Catholic school and lived with a classicist for many years. And, oh yeah, I read a lot.
In Catholic school you learned enough Latin to understand the mass (before it was in English, of course) and on Sundays you stared at your missal with Latin on one side and English on the other and saw over and over again how the words were connected. Plus, you had the nuns saying “Break it down, break it down” whenever you were confronted with a new word in class. We learned our roots and prefixes; no problem.
The classicist expanded the base, with some Greek thrown in, so that I could be pretentious about words in three languages, two of them dead. I would be teaching an anthropology class and put a technical term on the blackboard – ambilateral, or matrifocal -- and say, Come on, you know this. Just break it down. No breakdown ensued, just blank stares.
I gave up on that ploy and started putting random words on the board that I loved, telling students that they’d never need to know this but it would enrich their lives immeasurably if they ever saw the word “prelapsarian” in a book and understood what it meant. Yeah, right. That went over well.
A while back a little girl I know told me that there were cumulonimbus clouds in the sky and that this meant it would rain. “Nimbus” means rain, she said. I said no, that kind of cloud does mean that it will probably rain, but nimbus itself means cloud, or aura, the special quality that some people and things have surrounding them. Her mother took issue with me: the handout from the teacher said that nimbus means rain. I gave up on what “mean” means and went home to my OED, the middle-aged Catholic schoolgirl’s best friend.
In Catholic school you learned enough Latin to understand the mass (before it was in English, of course) and on Sundays you stared at your missal with Latin on one side and English on the other and saw over and over again how the words were connected. Plus, you had the nuns saying “Break it down, break it down” whenever you were confronted with a new word in class. We learned our roots and prefixes; no problem.
The classicist expanded the base, with some Greek thrown in, so that I could be pretentious about words in three languages, two of them dead. I would be teaching an anthropology class and put a technical term on the blackboard – ambilateral, or matrifocal -- and say, Come on, you know this. Just break it down. No breakdown ensued, just blank stares.
I gave up on that ploy and started putting random words on the board that I loved, telling students that they’d never need to know this but it would enrich their lives immeasurably if they ever saw the word “prelapsarian” in a book and understood what it meant. Yeah, right. That went over well.
A while back a little girl I know told me that there were cumulonimbus clouds in the sky and that this meant it would rain. “Nimbus” means rain, she said. I said no, that kind of cloud does mean that it will probably rain, but nimbus itself means cloud, or aura, the special quality that some people and things have surrounding them. Her mother took issue with me: the handout from the teacher said that nimbus means rain. I gave up on what “mean” means and went home to my OED, the middle-aged Catholic schoolgirl’s best friend.
Mandates
Unfunded mandates – that’s who I’ve gone out with most of my life. Or if my mandates got funded, it was about twenty minutes after we split up. Now I’m not one of those wives who put hubby through law school and got left in the lurch when he made partner. I should live so long as to fight over who gets the weekend cottage. I’m just one of those ordinary women in a series of long-term relationships where sometimes I paid the rent, sometimes he did. No problem, no complaint. No money.
At this point in my life, however, I’d like to find a funded mandate. I’m not talking diamond earrings and private jets. I mean someone who could buy me what I want most after decades of hard work: a little free time. Someone who’d say, “That’s okay, honey. You stay home and lie on the couch reading back issues of The New Yorker. I’ll take care of everything.” That kind of mandate.
But funded mandates are hard to find, even if you are as ravishing and witty as I. Funded mandates my age are drawn to womendates who were born sometime during the Reagan administration and who are fierce advocates of trickle-down economics. I’m more of the property-is-theft school of thought, which helps explain my series of unfunded mandates.
My therapist says “Fund your own mandate.” I tell her, that’s what I’ve been doing all this time. It’s not working.
Maybe what I really need is an unmanned fundate, a nice eunuch with a good sense of humor and a healthy bank account. The two of us can lie on the couch reading old magazines and eating chocolate chip cookies, and never go looking for mandates, funded or otherwise, again.
At this point in my life, however, I’d like to find a funded mandate. I’m not talking diamond earrings and private jets. I mean someone who could buy me what I want most after decades of hard work: a little free time. Someone who’d say, “That’s okay, honey. You stay home and lie on the couch reading back issues of The New Yorker. I’ll take care of everything.” That kind of mandate.
But funded mandates are hard to find, even if you are as ravishing and witty as I. Funded mandates my age are drawn to womendates who were born sometime during the Reagan administration and who are fierce advocates of trickle-down economics. I’m more of the property-is-theft school of thought, which helps explain my series of unfunded mandates.
My therapist says “Fund your own mandate.” I tell her, that’s what I’ve been doing all this time. It’s not working.
Maybe what I really need is an unmanned fundate, a nice eunuch with a good sense of humor and a healthy bank account. The two of us can lie on the couch reading old magazines and eating chocolate chip cookies, and never go looking for mandates, funded or otherwise, again.
Cookbook Review
What Fresh Hell: Quick ‘n’ Easy Dinners for Unexpected Guests. Bootsy Barnes Boxwood. 112 pages. Homemaker Press. $19.95.
Break out the cooking sherry! That’s the first piece of advice we get from Bootsy Barnes Boxwood, author of Drinking Alone While Cooking for Two, in her new book, What Fresh Hell: Quick ‘n’ Easy Dinners for Unexpected Guests. A self-described “cordon blah chef,” Boxwood now gives us her guide to fine dining at the last minute – after hubby’s called to say he’s bringing the boss home for supper, the Eagle Scouts have just camped in your living room, and the mother-in-law who said she’d never darken your door again shows up.
Ever since the days of Mrs. Beeton, women have looked for time and labor saving ways to run their kitchens. As that eminent Victorian advised in her Book of Household Management (1861), when it comes to cooking, “all terms of indecision should be banished.” Boxwood is the modern Beeton, minus the scullery maid – a woman who is not afraid to wield a can opener and a bottle of ketchup. Let others embrace their James Beard and Julia Child; my choice is Boxwood’s back-to-basics approach to getting dinner over with. It’s not rocket science – but a little fuel sure helps!
Boxwood’s recipes call for an uncommon amount of brandy and vermouth, but that just adds to the warmth around the dinner table as guests enjoy her Casserole à la Colonel and Chili con Corn Flakes. Tuna and minute rice are mainstays, and if you have canned peas, you are ready to entertain. But don’t think this is just another add-mushroom-soup-and-stir cookbook. Boxwood combines convenience with elegance to serve up tasty meals with a truly eclectic range of ingredients -- in fact, whatever’s in the house when the panic sets in. One might quibble with her approach to writing recipes; for those of us who are not natural cooks, a “dash” of this and a “slosh” of that will not be sufficient guidance, but Boxwood allays our anxiety, and hers, with frequent reminders to “sip” -- surely the best way to face down dinner.
No cookbook author can afford to ignore the interest in healthy eating that has swept the nation in recent years. Boxwood avoids artery-clogging corn oil, recommending extra virgin (“at least it was when I bought it!” she quips) olive oil for her Titanic Salad, a clever combination of iceberg lettuce and blue cheese (“at least it was when I bought it!” – Boxwood knows just how far to stretch a joke). She thoughtfully provides the calorie count for the most popular before, during, and after dinner drinks, but her bottom line is this: never mix the grape and the grain. That’s good advice, although a little hard to follow in a book so filled with “good cheer.”
A creative dessert will crown any meal, and here Boxwood excels. Did you know that leftover candy corn makes a great ice cream topping, with or without the ice cream? Boxwood also provides simple centerpiece ideas to suit the season: a pine cone in an ashtray for the winter holidays, a bunny slipper filled with dried-up marshmallow chicks for a festive Easter look; the list goes on.
We look forward to Boxwood’s upcoming Dining after Divorce, a cookbook for women facing re-entry into the job market and a vicious custody battle. In the meantime, have a friend drive you to the bookstore to pick up a copy of What Fresh Hell and then toast yourself for being smart – and “loaded” with great new ideas!
Margaret Burnside
Food Editor
Break out the cooking sherry! That’s the first piece of advice we get from Bootsy Barnes Boxwood, author of Drinking Alone While Cooking for Two, in her new book, What Fresh Hell: Quick ‘n’ Easy Dinners for Unexpected Guests. A self-described “cordon blah chef,” Boxwood now gives us her guide to fine dining at the last minute – after hubby’s called to say he’s bringing the boss home for supper, the Eagle Scouts have just camped in your living room, and the mother-in-law who said she’d never darken your door again shows up.
Ever since the days of Mrs. Beeton, women have looked for time and labor saving ways to run their kitchens. As that eminent Victorian advised in her Book of Household Management (1861), when it comes to cooking, “all terms of indecision should be banished.” Boxwood is the modern Beeton, minus the scullery maid – a woman who is not afraid to wield a can opener and a bottle of ketchup. Let others embrace their James Beard and Julia Child; my choice is Boxwood’s back-to-basics approach to getting dinner over with. It’s not rocket science – but a little fuel sure helps!
Boxwood’s recipes call for an uncommon amount of brandy and vermouth, but that just adds to the warmth around the dinner table as guests enjoy her Casserole à la Colonel and Chili con Corn Flakes. Tuna and minute rice are mainstays, and if you have canned peas, you are ready to entertain. But don’t think this is just another add-mushroom-soup-and-stir cookbook. Boxwood combines convenience with elegance to serve up tasty meals with a truly eclectic range of ingredients -- in fact, whatever’s in the house when the panic sets in. One might quibble with her approach to writing recipes; for those of us who are not natural cooks, a “dash” of this and a “slosh” of that will not be sufficient guidance, but Boxwood allays our anxiety, and hers, with frequent reminders to “sip” -- surely the best way to face down dinner.
No cookbook author can afford to ignore the interest in healthy eating that has swept the nation in recent years. Boxwood avoids artery-clogging corn oil, recommending extra virgin (“at least it was when I bought it!” she quips) olive oil for her Titanic Salad, a clever combination of iceberg lettuce and blue cheese (“at least it was when I bought it!” – Boxwood knows just how far to stretch a joke). She thoughtfully provides the calorie count for the most popular before, during, and after dinner drinks, but her bottom line is this: never mix the grape and the grain. That’s good advice, although a little hard to follow in a book so filled with “good cheer.”
A creative dessert will crown any meal, and here Boxwood excels. Did you know that leftover candy corn makes a great ice cream topping, with or without the ice cream? Boxwood also provides simple centerpiece ideas to suit the season: a pine cone in an ashtray for the winter holidays, a bunny slipper filled with dried-up marshmallow chicks for a festive Easter look; the list goes on.
We look forward to Boxwood’s upcoming Dining after Divorce, a cookbook for women facing re-entry into the job market and a vicious custody battle. In the meantime, have a friend drive you to the bookstore to pick up a copy of What Fresh Hell and then toast yourself for being smart – and “loaded” with great new ideas!
Margaret Burnside
Food Editor
Manhattan, Fall
Dear Dad,
Do you miss the city?
You walked it all your life, and took me with you
through catacombs of schist and gneiss.
You showed me where the dead lie.
For what is this island
but the grave of those who came before
and lay down to make room for the new,
Lenape and Dutchman, free man and slave,
the immigrant and arriviste?
Like a coffin, lined by rivers.
I read about a woman who stood and
felt her husband’s body press against hers
in a rain of ash as the towers fell.
He was a fireman, a hero.
This was after you. You did not see this.
The dust settles, forms a new layer
on city fathers in famous churchyards and
long-lost slaves buried with their cowrie shells,
their babies tucked aside them.
I know there will be others.
A backhoe will find them and work will stop
for a day, a month. The potters field, the family plot –
it makes no difference.
The gap will close. New ghosts will join us.
Dear Dad, are you a ghost?
Do you walk the streets at night,
and scare late travelers and drunks against the wall?
Do you look for me?
Do you miss the city?
You walked it all your life, and took me with you
through catacombs of schist and gneiss.
You showed me where the dead lie.
For what is this island
but the grave of those who came before
and lay down to make room for the new,
Lenape and Dutchman, free man and slave,
the immigrant and arriviste?
Like a coffin, lined by rivers.
I read about a woman who stood and
felt her husband’s body press against hers
in a rain of ash as the towers fell.
He was a fireman, a hero.
This was after you. You did not see this.
The dust settles, forms a new layer
on city fathers in famous churchyards and
long-lost slaves buried with their cowrie shells,
their babies tucked aside them.
I know there will be others.
A backhoe will find them and work will stop
for a day, a month. The potters field, the family plot –
it makes no difference.
The gap will close. New ghosts will join us.
Dear Dad, are you a ghost?
Do you walk the streets at night,
and scare late travelers and drunks against the wall?
Do you look for me?
Perfume
I have worn five perfumes in my life, or rather, “scents,” the preferred industry term. The first was My Sin, by Lanvin, which someone gave me a tiny bottle of when I was nineteen. I loved it: My Sin. It smelled of dried roses rising from ancient velvet. I carried the bottle around with me long after it was empty, like a Victorian lady’s smelling salts.
Then a friend introduced me to Anaïs Anaïs, by Cacharel, one of the signature scents of the seventies. (Another was Brut, but let’s not go there.) AA was the tempermental opposite of My Sin – powdery, girlish, spring-like. I wore it for many years and still love it, but my body chemistry changed, or Cacharel changed the formula, and now it does not last on me more than a few minutes.
One of those irritating scented ads led me to Truth, by Calvin Klein. You must always say it that way: Truth, by Calvin Klein, lowering your voice on the “Calvin Klein” part. I wore it for about four years, until Calvin Klein stopped making it. For a while I could find end-of-stock bottles on random websites – I once ordered it from Wal-Mart – but eventually even those sources dried up. Betrayal, by Calvin Klein.
Unfortunately, the end of the Truth era coincided with the beginning of my Self-Loathing era, and I could not bring myself to go hunting in department stores for another perfume. I was not worthy. I could drag myself into the local Rite-Aid, but the featured perfumes there were inspired by celebrities like Christina, Jessica, and Sarah Jessica. I was too low for J-Lo. I did consider buying one of the Olsen twins’ perfumes, but decided Mary-Kate’s bag lady persona was too close to home while Ashley’s All-American classic was too much of a stretch.
Close to desperation, I started using a perfume sample that a friend had given me -- J’Adore, by Dior. When I had first tried it, I disliked it. It was dark and lugubrious. I still disliked it, but anything was better than the stink of failure and you couldn’t say it was cheap. I was also kind of fascinated by the fact that Charlize Theron was the perfume’s celebrity rep. I had last seen her as an overweight prostitute serial killer, and that did kind of fit my mood, so I sucked up the smell for Aileen’s sake. Wuornos, by Christian Dior.
Don’t worry. I’m in therapy.
Which is how I finally gathered the courage to take a shower and head out to Macy’s to buy my next “real” scent, one that might bear some relation to who I am and might yet be. I knew what I wanted and would not be deterred. I looked like hell and I think the saleswoman felt sorry for me. It did not help that my debit card didn’t go through and my first credit card was turned down. Christ, I thought, it just gets better and better. The second card worked, and I was able to slink out of the store only mildly abashed by the clerk’s solicitous comment: “We all need a little something special sometimes, don’t we?”
Yes we do. And I have gone back to the source, the ur-scent of the modern era, to nurse my battered ego: Chanel No. 5, my parfum nombre cinq.
Then a friend introduced me to Anaïs Anaïs, by Cacharel, one of the signature scents of the seventies. (Another was Brut, but let’s not go there.) AA was the tempermental opposite of My Sin – powdery, girlish, spring-like. I wore it for many years and still love it, but my body chemistry changed, or Cacharel changed the formula, and now it does not last on me more than a few minutes.
One of those irritating scented ads led me to Truth, by Calvin Klein. You must always say it that way: Truth, by Calvin Klein, lowering your voice on the “Calvin Klein” part. I wore it for about four years, until Calvin Klein stopped making it. For a while I could find end-of-stock bottles on random websites – I once ordered it from Wal-Mart – but eventually even those sources dried up. Betrayal, by Calvin Klein.
Unfortunately, the end of the Truth era coincided with the beginning of my Self-Loathing era, and I could not bring myself to go hunting in department stores for another perfume. I was not worthy. I could drag myself into the local Rite-Aid, but the featured perfumes there were inspired by celebrities like Christina, Jessica, and Sarah Jessica. I was too low for J-Lo. I did consider buying one of the Olsen twins’ perfumes, but decided Mary-Kate’s bag lady persona was too close to home while Ashley’s All-American classic was too much of a stretch.
Close to desperation, I started using a perfume sample that a friend had given me -- J’Adore, by Dior. When I had first tried it, I disliked it. It was dark and lugubrious. I still disliked it, but anything was better than the stink of failure and you couldn’t say it was cheap. I was also kind of fascinated by the fact that Charlize Theron was the perfume’s celebrity rep. I had last seen her as an overweight prostitute serial killer, and that did kind of fit my mood, so I sucked up the smell for Aileen’s sake. Wuornos, by Christian Dior.
Don’t worry. I’m in therapy.
Which is how I finally gathered the courage to take a shower and head out to Macy’s to buy my next “real” scent, one that might bear some relation to who I am and might yet be. I knew what I wanted and would not be deterred. I looked like hell and I think the saleswoman felt sorry for me. It did not help that my debit card didn’t go through and my first credit card was turned down. Christ, I thought, it just gets better and better. The second card worked, and I was able to slink out of the store only mildly abashed by the clerk’s solicitous comment: “We all need a little something special sometimes, don’t we?”
Yes we do. And I have gone back to the source, the ur-scent of the modern era, to nurse my battered ego: Chanel No. 5, my parfum nombre cinq.
Junior
When Arthur Schlesinger Jr. died a while back, I found out from his obit (a full page in the New York Times) that he wasn’t a "junior" at all. He had changed his middle name as a young man to that of his father, a distinguished historian. Pursuing the history racket himself, young Arthur made sure he had a leg up, which he needed, because he had quite short legs.
I know this because I used to share an elevator with Junior from time to time, since he taught at the graduate school I attended. Although "taught" might be too strong a word. I was never aware of any course he actually offered. I imagined the school paid him a six-figure salary just to pad around, greet visiting dignitaries, and wander out in the afternoon for a few drinks at the Century Club, one block away. I could be wrong.
I did have one more intimate encounter with Junior, in the drug store right next to the school. It was a wonderfully cheesy place, more like a dollar store, although you could, if you were foolhardy, have a prescription filled there.
It was a few days before Christmas and Art was in the store buying gifts. Yes, at the drug store where the cat food tins were dented and the pharmacist actually smoked at the counter. Art was loading up on cheap perfume and body wash combos, on Old Spice and three bars of lavender soap for two bucks. And he was having them gift wrapped, in a sad drugstore paper with silver diagonal stripes.
You should know that my graduate school was located right off Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Lord and Taylor’s was nearby, as were any number of fine stores. I went back upstairs to my friends, starving doctoral students all, and said you won’t believe the shit I just saw Arthur Schlesinger buying. It must be Christmas gifts for the help at Hyannis Port. How pathetic.
And I was right. I left the building a few hours later, and there was Arthur, sitting out front like an elderly child in his topcoat, muffler and gloves, with a drugstore shopping bag of cheap gifts at his side. Waiting for the limo. And then it arrived.
I know this because I used to share an elevator with Junior from time to time, since he taught at the graduate school I attended. Although "taught" might be too strong a word. I was never aware of any course he actually offered. I imagined the school paid him a six-figure salary just to pad around, greet visiting dignitaries, and wander out in the afternoon for a few drinks at the Century Club, one block away. I could be wrong.
I did have one more intimate encounter with Junior, in the drug store right next to the school. It was a wonderfully cheesy place, more like a dollar store, although you could, if you were foolhardy, have a prescription filled there.
It was a few days before Christmas and Art was in the store buying gifts. Yes, at the drug store where the cat food tins were dented and the pharmacist actually smoked at the counter. Art was loading up on cheap perfume and body wash combos, on Old Spice and three bars of lavender soap for two bucks. And he was having them gift wrapped, in a sad drugstore paper with silver diagonal stripes.
You should know that my graduate school was located right off Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Lord and Taylor’s was nearby, as were any number of fine stores. I went back upstairs to my friends, starving doctoral students all, and said you won’t believe the shit I just saw Arthur Schlesinger buying. It must be Christmas gifts for the help at Hyannis Port. How pathetic.
And I was right. I left the building a few hours later, and there was Arthur, sitting out front like an elderly child in his topcoat, muffler and gloves, with a drugstore shopping bag of cheap gifts at his side. Waiting for the limo. And then it arrived.
Missing
I won’t hold a grudge – it was over so quickly. One minute I was at the wheel, making a turn; the next, I was dead. I went missing. The guy who hit me is fine. Hung over, of course, and waiting to see if the charge will be murder or manslaughter.
The thing is, the space, the place where it happened, couldn’t stop being itself simply because I died there. It was hard enough diverting traffic just to get the ambulance and cops to the site. Then the guys taking pictures of the skid marks and my brains splashed across the windshield. The city tapped its foot, trying to give me a decent amount of time, but it's Broad and Belvidere, for God’s sake. They can’t close the lane forever.
Forever. I died about 16 hours ago, and I have a long road ahead. Do I stay here and watch folks pass over that spot? It’s not the kind of place you leave a wreath. Just a few twisted pieces of metal.
The thing is, the space, the place where it happened, couldn’t stop being itself simply because I died there. It was hard enough diverting traffic just to get the ambulance and cops to the site. Then the guys taking pictures of the skid marks and my brains splashed across the windshield. The city tapped its foot, trying to give me a decent amount of time, but it's Broad and Belvidere, for God’s sake. They can’t close the lane forever.
Forever. I died about 16 hours ago, and I have a long road ahead. Do I stay here and watch folks pass over that spot? It’s not the kind of place you leave a wreath. Just a few twisted pieces of metal.
The Slashes
Slash Church – not as in community center-slash-church, but Slash Church as the name of the place. On Mount Hermon Road, in Hanover. It is the oldest wood frame church in Virginia, where Patrick Henry once worshipped.
“Slash” because that is an old word for marshes. This part of Hanover County was half under water half of the year, a network of rivers and creeks and sinking land. Yesterday, as it turns out, was the anniversary of the Battle of Slash Church, as Confederates unsuccessfully fought back the Federals in 1862. I drove over to the church, which I had never seen. There is little evidence of historic significance, just a white wooden building with a newer brick building nearby.
Mount Hermon becomes Sliding Hill, my road, which ends at an excavated pet cemetery on Route 1. They’ve been removing the remains for the past few months; a restaurant will be built there. A lawyer for the restaurant company says the land is too marshy anyway for a cemetery – it is better to remove these beloved pets.
So they will build a fast-food restaurant on the site, and it will sink and settle like everything before it has, and the slashes will take back what it wants.
“Slash” because that is an old word for marshes. This part of Hanover County was half under water half of the year, a network of rivers and creeks and sinking land. Yesterday, as it turns out, was the anniversary of the Battle of Slash Church, as Confederates unsuccessfully fought back the Federals in 1862. I drove over to the church, which I had never seen. There is little evidence of historic significance, just a white wooden building with a newer brick building nearby.
Mount Hermon becomes Sliding Hill, my road, which ends at an excavated pet cemetery on Route 1. They’ve been removing the remains for the past few months; a restaurant will be built there. A lawyer for the restaurant company says the land is too marshy anyway for a cemetery – it is better to remove these beloved pets.
So they will build a fast-food restaurant on the site, and it will sink and settle like everything before it has, and the slashes will take back what it wants.
Ex Cathedra
My former husband knew I was obsessed with popes, among other scoundrels, so he bought me a book he found on a street vendor’s table called “The Bad Popes,” or as we preferred to call it, “The Very Bad Popes.”
And they were very bad indeed. When not fornicating with their sisters, they were beheading various Muhammedans and plundering the world’s art and gold.
They were fun to read about. I’d do a few each night before I fell asleep, nudging Patrick to read him passages about exceptionally bad papal acts just as he was finally drifting off. Listen to this, I’d say, they actually called this guy “The Butcher of Belgium.”
They don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Or maybe they do. The jury’s still out on Pius XII’s collaboration with Mussolini, his suspected deal-making to keep the fascists out of Vatican City. (Note to Pius: they were in there already.)
One thing about divorce: assuming that you went so far as to actually marry someone, it was because you were bound by a common culture, one that you elaborated upon as you went along and that irritated the shit out of your friends. I don’t miss marriage so much as having someone to tell very bad pope stories to. Innocent the Third, Leo the Tenth – they were all bad, but they were ours.
And they were very bad indeed. When not fornicating with their sisters, they were beheading various Muhammedans and plundering the world’s art and gold.
They were fun to read about. I’d do a few each night before I fell asleep, nudging Patrick to read him passages about exceptionally bad papal acts just as he was finally drifting off. Listen to this, I’d say, they actually called this guy “The Butcher of Belgium.”
They don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Or maybe they do. The jury’s still out on Pius XII’s collaboration with Mussolini, his suspected deal-making to keep the fascists out of Vatican City. (Note to Pius: they were in there already.)
One thing about divorce: assuming that you went so far as to actually marry someone, it was because you were bound by a common culture, one that you elaborated upon as you went along and that irritated the shit out of your friends. I don’t miss marriage so much as having someone to tell very bad pope stories to. Innocent the Third, Leo the Tenth – they were all bad, but they were ours.
Two worlds: one above, one below.
No one imagines the 9/11 dead walking around under the wreckage or the pit that replaced it. Most of them were pulverized before the towers hit the ground. These men and women do not walk. They went into the air and across the harbor, lodged on windowsills and in the cracks between bricks. We breathed them in.
But the firemen who died a few weeks ago right next to them -- where did they go? They climbed a ghost tower and died in smoke and fumes, not from fire. They burned inside out.
The miners may still be walking, dead but walking, as well as those who tried to rescue them. But they walk on different paths, and may walk for a thousand years, tapping the wall, trying to make contact.
No one imagines the 9/11 dead walking around under the wreckage or the pit that replaced it. Most of them were pulverized before the towers hit the ground. These men and women do not walk. They went into the air and across the harbor, lodged on windowsills and in the cracks between bricks. We breathed them in.
But the firemen who died a few weeks ago right next to them -- where did they go? They climbed a ghost tower and died in smoke and fumes, not from fire. They burned inside out.
The miners may still be walking, dead but walking, as well as those who tried to rescue them. But they walk on different paths, and may walk for a thousand years, tapping the wall, trying to make contact.
Hilda Deptford Trammel, 1904-1976
Descended from Yorkshire yeomanry, Hilda Deptford Trammel was the first woman to rise to the status of Fellow of the Institute of African Studies. Her death last month in Kampala, where she was visiting her niece, leaves a void in her field that will not soon be filled.
As a child, Hilda displayed eager interest in history and the natural world, exploring the Druidic cairns near her home in Stoat-over-Hants and vivisecting church mice. Her niece, Mrs. George Lloyd-Llewellyn Jones, recalls stories about the young Hilda measuring the heads of local villagers in a precocious effort to demonstrate the degeneration theory of Cesare Lombroso, author of L'Homme Criminel.
Briefly affianced in her teens to a ministerial student, Hilda broke off the engagement and in 1922 entered Magdalene College, Oxford, where she received first class honours. She went on to study at the Institute of African Studies, where her thesis on blood-letting and bridewealth among the Nuer of the Sudan was the foundation of all her subsequent research. Hilda never regretted her choice of career over marriage and motherhood. At a speech to the Girls’ Explorer Club of Hampstead Heath in 1962, she urged her young audience to heed their own desires and to shun the “foetid swamp of diapers and dyspepsia” so often women’s lot.
While unable to secure a fulltime academic position, women in those days rarely achieving such distinction, Hilda did lecture frequently at the Institute and was visiting scholar at the University of Saskatchewan in 1933-34. A small inheritance from her mother, combined with the income from a family-owned sugar beet farm in Northern Ireland, allowed her to pursue her research and to travel with chums around the world.
Hilda’s contributions to the war effort were considerable, ranging from serving as air-raid warden in her Kensington neighbourhood to assisting the Colonial Office in its effort to alphabetize the names of more than 3,000 tribal clans located in the path of Rommel’s Afrika Korps during the campaign of 1942. No doubt the full story of Hilda’s role in this pivotal operation will some day be told. In 1946 she was awarded the Silk Garter of Princess May of Teck, an honour reserved for women who have “served their country during wartime with exceptional rigour.”
While committed at the highest level to her scholarship, Hilda Deptford Trammel considered it her duty to help educate the public. In the late 1940s, she was a frequent guest on the popular BBC radio programme “Know Your Natives,” where she regularly bested panel members Sir Henry Atkins-Smythe and Professor R. Zrydzlecki. From 1953 to 1957, she wrote a column for Ladies magazine, “Caravanserai,” a lighter look at anthropology that was well-received, even after the publication of her, at the time, provocative study of segmentary lineage and the semen cult of the northern Nuer.
The circumstances surrounding the incident in Khartoum in 1960 remain shrouded in mystery.
An avid gardener, Hilda enjoyed showing visitors her collection of rare African plants. In recent years, she had exhibited several times at the Chelsea Flower Show, where her exotic garden, “I Had a Farmhand in Africa,” took the bronze medal in 1971.
Hilda’s major work remains her comparative study of kinship and animal husbandry, Kith and Kine among the Swine (1937). She also contributed to the young people’s series, The Sun Never Sets, describing the customs and lore of her beloved Nuer. She was at work on a major revision of that monograph for the series, now called Capitalism, Colonialism, and Culture, at the time of her death.
In this age of “women’s liberation,” it is all too easy to forget the struggles and achievements of those women who, like Hilda Deptford Trammel, forged their own path through a man’s world, oft with their own machete. “Wuht eme le’ane mah’de ciekde le’hn” (All cows come to the watering hole, but only one drinks the non-diseased water), Hilda wrote in her unpublished memoirs, describing her ceaseless drive to overcome the obstacles she faced in her chosen field.
A funeral with friends and family was held in Stoat-over-Hants in April. A public memorial service is planned for September at the Institute of African Studies. Contributions to the Hilda Deptford Trammel Scholarship Fund may be made to the IAS. Gifts in her name may also be made to the Girls’ Explorer Club of Hampstead Heath.
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. XI, No. 2, May 1976.
As a child, Hilda displayed eager interest in history and the natural world, exploring the Druidic cairns near her home in Stoat-over-Hants and vivisecting church mice. Her niece, Mrs. George Lloyd-Llewellyn Jones, recalls stories about the young Hilda measuring the heads of local villagers in a precocious effort to demonstrate the degeneration theory of Cesare Lombroso, author of L'Homme Criminel.
Briefly affianced in her teens to a ministerial student, Hilda broke off the engagement and in 1922 entered Magdalene College, Oxford, where she received first class honours. She went on to study at the Institute of African Studies, where her thesis on blood-letting and bridewealth among the Nuer of the Sudan was the foundation of all her subsequent research. Hilda never regretted her choice of career over marriage and motherhood. At a speech to the Girls’ Explorer Club of Hampstead Heath in 1962, she urged her young audience to heed their own desires and to shun the “foetid swamp of diapers and dyspepsia” so often women’s lot.
While unable to secure a fulltime academic position, women in those days rarely achieving such distinction, Hilda did lecture frequently at the Institute and was visiting scholar at the University of Saskatchewan in 1933-34. A small inheritance from her mother, combined with the income from a family-owned sugar beet farm in Northern Ireland, allowed her to pursue her research and to travel with chums around the world.
Hilda’s contributions to the war effort were considerable, ranging from serving as air-raid warden in her Kensington neighbourhood to assisting the Colonial Office in its effort to alphabetize the names of more than 3,000 tribal clans located in the path of Rommel’s Afrika Korps during the campaign of 1942. No doubt the full story of Hilda’s role in this pivotal operation will some day be told. In 1946 she was awarded the Silk Garter of Princess May of Teck, an honour reserved for women who have “served their country during wartime with exceptional rigour.”
While committed at the highest level to her scholarship, Hilda Deptford Trammel considered it her duty to help educate the public. In the late 1940s, she was a frequent guest on the popular BBC radio programme “Know Your Natives,” where she regularly bested panel members Sir Henry Atkins-Smythe and Professor R. Zrydzlecki. From 1953 to 1957, she wrote a column for Ladies magazine, “Caravanserai,” a lighter look at anthropology that was well-received, even after the publication of her, at the time, provocative study of segmentary lineage and the semen cult of the northern Nuer.
The circumstances surrounding the incident in Khartoum in 1960 remain shrouded in mystery.
An avid gardener, Hilda enjoyed showing visitors her collection of rare African plants. In recent years, she had exhibited several times at the Chelsea Flower Show, where her exotic garden, “I Had a Farmhand in Africa,” took the bronze medal in 1971.
Hilda’s major work remains her comparative study of kinship and animal husbandry, Kith and Kine among the Swine (1937). She also contributed to the young people’s series, The Sun Never Sets, describing the customs and lore of her beloved Nuer. She was at work on a major revision of that monograph for the series, now called Capitalism, Colonialism, and Culture, at the time of her death.
In this age of “women’s liberation,” it is all too easy to forget the struggles and achievements of those women who, like Hilda Deptford Trammel, forged their own path through a man’s world, oft with their own machete. “Wuht eme le’ane mah’de ciekde le’hn” (All cows come to the watering hole, but only one drinks the non-diseased water), Hilda wrote in her unpublished memoirs, describing her ceaseless drive to overcome the obstacles she faced in her chosen field.
A funeral with friends and family was held in Stoat-over-Hants in April. A public memorial service is planned for September at the Institute of African Studies. Contributions to the Hilda Deptford Trammel Scholarship Fund may be made to the IAS. Gifts in her name may also be made to the Girls’ Explorer Club of Hampstead Heath.
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. XI, No. 2, May 1976.
French Hay
I went looking for the road to our house, but the road had moved, or at least been broken into bits, with each bit set at a different angle. I could not follow it. It was the road that turned east at Yellow Tavern and went up through the Slashes, past the river and the winding creeks, the family plots sinking into the marsh. Sometimes small bones would wash out onto the banks, but we left them there. They were our father’s father’s bones, we thought, or maybe Indians.
I do not know why I left the house. I had a cough, I remember. I was in the kitchen, hiding from my sister. It was November and I remember coughing. Then I was outside looking for the road, only it was summer and the thistles were sweeping up around my legs as I tried to move forward.
The house faced south – we could look across the valley for miles. But it was not there, only traces of the driveway, I thought. Did it burn? Was my family somewhere waiting for me?
The sun was setting and the shadows were so long; I could not see much distance ahead with the low sun in my eyes. I turned my ankle in the marsh but kept walking. I had nowhere else to go. I passed an old wooden fence and came to another brook – Stony Run? I climbed down the bank to try to get my bearing -- I have played here so many times – and saw a bone glistening in the shallows. This must be home.
I do not know why I left the house. I had a cough, I remember. I was in the kitchen, hiding from my sister. It was November and I remember coughing. Then I was outside looking for the road, only it was summer and the thistles were sweeping up around my legs as I tried to move forward.
The house faced south – we could look across the valley for miles. But it was not there, only traces of the driveway, I thought. Did it burn? Was my family somewhere waiting for me?
The sun was setting and the shadows were so long; I could not see much distance ahead with the low sun in my eyes. I turned my ankle in the marsh but kept walking. I had nowhere else to go. I passed an old wooden fence and came to another brook – Stony Run? I climbed down the bank to try to get my bearing -- I have played here so many times – and saw a bone glistening in the shallows. This must be home.
Jamestown in My Living Room
So I went to Diversity’s new store, over behind the Diamond, and it was great. Diversity Thrift fills me with joy – I cannot walk in there without feeling a world of possibilities awaits me. I rarely pay attention to the clothes. I browse the housewares, but my life is filled with tchotchkes; I don’t need any more.
It’s the furniture I crave – the unexpected gem hidden behind the 1960s faux-maple bedroom set. By gem I mean something that most folks would consider a disaster. Something you’d be embarrassed to leave on the curb for pick-up in case the neighbors saw it. I don’t like smelly stuff – I avoid upholstery at all cost – or trendy retro furniture, although I do have an old push-button phone from the Holiday Inn in Tyson’s Corner, with buttons for housekeeping and room service. Sometimes I press them.
No, what I really like is wood, old wood, wood that wears its nicks and stains proudly. I prefer things that are handmade and a little askew, and maybe not all made of the same kind of wood, but still it has to stand up straight and respect its right angles. These objects have integrity, I think, they won’t let me down. They’ve been let down themselves so many times.
So what was I doing at Diversity obsessing over a tacky veneer-covered end table, circa 1965? It was truly ugly. The legs jutted out coyly as though aiming directly at the floor would be in poor taste. It had one of those recessed shelves on the top where you are supposed to put a lamp, preferably one with a pebble-textured base.
The sales tag described it as “End Table with Native Design” and it was kind of accurate – that was its selling point. The main surface of the table had two inlaid, factory-produced tiles in attractive shades of aqua and peachy brown. One tile depicted a wagon train about to be attacked by a band of braves. The other tile was really sick, the pièce de résistance: an image of John Smith, trussed and lying on the ground, while over him Pocahontas and Powhatan debate whether he should live or die.
What is this, I thought? Who in their right mind would put this on an end table, clearly manufactured for a motel chain, unless it was the Manifest Destiny Inn? I walked away from the table and then circled back. It was appalling, but it was no good. I had to have it.
The two Goth kids who helped me load it into my car said they were sorry to see it go. They had wondered who would buy it. They had wanted it themselves. How fucked up is that? they said.
I love Diversity. I love a place where I can buy neglected furniture and have the proceeds go to a good cause. I love finding an old spool of thread in a drawer after I’ve brought a piece home. I love seeing the crayon marks made by a child forty years ago. Most of all, I love the possibility that no one else in Powhatan’s kingdom, here on the James, has an end table like mine.
It’s the furniture I crave – the unexpected gem hidden behind the 1960s faux-maple bedroom set. By gem I mean something that most folks would consider a disaster. Something you’d be embarrassed to leave on the curb for pick-up in case the neighbors saw it. I don’t like smelly stuff – I avoid upholstery at all cost – or trendy retro furniture, although I do have an old push-button phone from the Holiday Inn in Tyson’s Corner, with buttons for housekeeping and room service. Sometimes I press them.
No, what I really like is wood, old wood, wood that wears its nicks and stains proudly. I prefer things that are handmade and a little askew, and maybe not all made of the same kind of wood, but still it has to stand up straight and respect its right angles. These objects have integrity, I think, they won’t let me down. They’ve been let down themselves so many times.
So what was I doing at Diversity obsessing over a tacky veneer-covered end table, circa 1965? It was truly ugly. The legs jutted out coyly as though aiming directly at the floor would be in poor taste. It had one of those recessed shelves on the top where you are supposed to put a lamp, preferably one with a pebble-textured base.
The sales tag described it as “End Table with Native Design” and it was kind of accurate – that was its selling point. The main surface of the table had two inlaid, factory-produced tiles in attractive shades of aqua and peachy brown. One tile depicted a wagon train about to be attacked by a band of braves. The other tile was really sick, the pièce de résistance: an image of John Smith, trussed and lying on the ground, while over him Pocahontas and Powhatan debate whether he should live or die.
What is this, I thought? Who in their right mind would put this on an end table, clearly manufactured for a motel chain, unless it was the Manifest Destiny Inn? I walked away from the table and then circled back. It was appalling, but it was no good. I had to have it.
The two Goth kids who helped me load it into my car said they were sorry to see it go. They had wondered who would buy it. They had wanted it themselves. How fucked up is that? they said.
I love Diversity. I love a place where I can buy neglected furniture and have the proceeds go to a good cause. I love finding an old spool of thread in a drawer after I’ve brought a piece home. I love seeing the crayon marks made by a child forty years ago. Most of all, I love the possibility that no one else in Powhatan’s kingdom, here on the James, has an end table like mine.
Mugs
I got the mug from a show at the Corcoran. Childishly, I wanted to make a statement. I have taste, I go to museums. The mug says that I am not Number One Grandpa, or an habitué of Dunkin Donuts, or a customer of Jack Luck Chevrolet: Meeting Your Driving Needs Since 1948. My mug has snob appeal – it was bought one day after the exhibit opened. It should be numbered, like a lithograph.
It is only slightly less obnoxious than my James Joyce mug, which a friend brought me from a conference. James Joyce: Meeting Your Stream of Consciousness Needs Since 1904. Now that is one cup of java: “I go forth to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” No wonder people at work hate me.
It’s not that others don’t have impressive mugs. A friend told me about the one her son keeps at the office. “Fuck Cancer,” it says, ‘cause he did. And recently I was served coffee in what is probably one of the most sophisticated mugs in all of greater Richmond: it commemorates a speech by Mikhail Gorbachev at VCU in 1993. Since the person who offered me the mug is a gracious southern hostess, it really was a bottomless cup of perestroika.
I have a secret mug, a comfort mug, with a Peter Rabbit-like design. But it is ersatz Peter Rabbit. I bought it for a nickel in a Lutheran thrift shop. It is not elegant; it is not literate; it does not convey that I move in select circles. It is my little cup of home, and family. The me before I even drank coffee.
It is only slightly less obnoxious than my James Joyce mug, which a friend brought me from a conference. James Joyce: Meeting Your Stream of Consciousness Needs Since 1904. Now that is one cup of java: “I go forth to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” No wonder people at work hate me.
It’s not that others don’t have impressive mugs. A friend told me about the one her son keeps at the office. “Fuck Cancer,” it says, ‘cause he did. And recently I was served coffee in what is probably one of the most sophisticated mugs in all of greater Richmond: it commemorates a speech by Mikhail Gorbachev at VCU in 1993. Since the person who offered me the mug is a gracious southern hostess, it really was a bottomless cup of perestroika.
I have a secret mug, a comfort mug, with a Peter Rabbit-like design. But it is ersatz Peter Rabbit. I bought it for a nickel in a Lutheran thrift shop. It is not elegant; it is not literate; it does not convey that I move in select circles. It is my little cup of home, and family. The me before I even drank coffee.
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