Tending Wild Grace

Sorry for my absence here of late, but one of my excuses is that I’ve been both busy and enthralled with tending Wild Grace.  There is so much that can be said about that simple statement.  Let me attempt to peal away a couple of layers, and in the process sing the praises of this planet we call home. 

First, I like Ohio in winter.  I’m sure that isn’t a big surprise to many gentle readers of The Back Porch blog.  Part of my affection for this place in the cold can be traced to Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer/poet who celebrates the human/personal connections to all the places we call home regardless of the season.  

One of Berry’s biggest criticisms of contemporary society is that we have lost touch with the rich, rooted connections to the earth that, over time, shapes who we are and what we will become.  He is a proponent of taking gobs of time to learn that place where you live.  Canoe the rivers.  Walk the woods.  Take time to identify a flower.  Listen to bird song. 

One of my favorite Wendell Berry poems is ‘The Sycamore.’  The opening lines speak his truth more eloquently than I can: 

In the place that is my own place, whose earth 

I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,

a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.

The poem goes on to speak of how this beautiful old specimen has absorbed the tests of time, from fences being nailed to it to a lightning strike that will eventually cause its death.  But not now.  Not yet.  For now the lovely sycamore stands in the only place it will ever know, drawing energy from the soil and serving as a model citizen of the planet.  

Wendell Berry encourages us all to know our Natural place — our home — like the sycamore has.  And for me at this time in my life, my place is Wild Grace. 

As I write this, last winter is a melted memory.  While it’s been plenty warm for a while, summer will make its official arrival in a couple days with the sun reaching its northern most pinnacle in the sky at midday.  

All of this and so much more come together in my study and awareness of Wild Grace.  A few weeks ago I transplanted a few iris bulbs into a flower bed along the back patio, knowing that these purple beauties like lots of sun.  Yesterday I noticed that at noon the transplants were in full shadow, shaded by a tall shrub.  Can’t be good, thought I.  But then I reasoned that the sun is about to start heading back south, and within a couple weeks those bulbs will be free of the shade and should get a good dose of summer sun.  I trust they’ll be okay, but I’ll keep an eye on ‘em. 

All of the above serves as testimony to the understanding that I love being the tender of Wild Grace.  I’m not nuts about the sweating and the volume of work that never seems to get fully completed, but being present to the work of the dirt and rain fills me in ways that I’ve never known quite like this before.  

I started this blog writing about winter primarily because it is that season that keeps me inside, looking at the world and Wild Grace from behind picture windows. But with the first warm puffs of late winter zephyrs, the quiet earth awakens and a new season of biological miracles begins.  On the fresh, new canvas of ‘spring’ comes crocus and hyacinth first, then daffodils and iris, dandelion and maple tree sprouts.  

By mid-May I stand flabbergasted on the back porch witnessing the growth spurts of hostas, bleeding hearts, and ferns.  Where just a couple weeks ago there was seemingly bare ground, now these pretty perennials stand lush and green in their place, just like Berry’s sycamore.  I could swear that if you sat long enough you could actually watch the bleeding hearts grow, they come so fast.  It is a miracle worth observing. 

Lots of stuff gets cut at Wild Grace.  I must have removed dozens of little maples in the back yard this year so far, leaving the individuals I figure are situated to do best.  My goal is to groom Wild Grace to be as Natural as it can be.  Honeysuckle and garlic mustard are two invasives that will take over if not removed.  They don’t last long here anymore.  Native maples do very well. 

I do, indeed, love to tend Wild Grace.  I’m out there every day doing something, whether plucking a green interloper from the brick walk, which is lovely in moss, or cleaning the water intake of the pond pump.  Many days I brush out of the bird bath from the residue of robins.  (They are truly the ‘dirty birds’ of the neighborhood.)

Most of the time, however, I just sit on the front porch or under the my back porch canopy with a bottle of water and binocs and bird book, intent on just being present with the Natural residents of this lovely plot we call Wild Grace.  It is my home.  It is my place.  It has so much to see.  And I have so much to learn.

Today’s elder idea:   The closing lines of ‘The Sycamore’ are powerful indeed.  

I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling 

the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by. 

I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it, 

and is fed upon, and is native, and maker. 

from ‘The Sycamore’ by Wendell Berry.  

Collected Poems, 1957-1982.  North Point Press, 1984.

images:  From Wild Grace, spring 2014.

Enduring marriages

 Back in the early 1970s, those of us baby boomers who were coming of age began making life-long commitments to partners in wedding ceremonies.  Over time, some of us found our marriages broken and tried again.  Others divorced and stayed single, while some have lost their partners to death.  Some of us still survive and thrive in that first marriage made with promises in front of friends so many years ago. 

Back in the day when it seemed we had a wedding gift to buy every month and a ceremony and reception to attend, some of us offered various ‘gifts’ to the newlyweds that couldn’t be purchased at Rike’s or Elder-Beerman or Sears.    Old friends will remember a band I used to sing in, Collage, joined by John Lauer, Steve & Marty Doody, and Jeff White.  (We had a few different drummers over the years, including good buddy, Bruce Gunnell, and my brother, Ted, among a few others.)  

Fact is, Collage got organized as a musical gift to a friend who wanted some ‘different’ music at his wedding.  It’s impossible to calculate at this late date how many times our group sang ‘Wedding song,’ ‘First time ever I saw your face,’ and ‘For all we know’ at various and sundry weddings.   

Besides the music, another non-purchasable gift I gave to a few friends was a delightful verse from New Wedding, a 1974 book of fresh ideas from Khorem Arisian.  I remember being so taken by one prose poem included that I typed up my own copy and filed it for posterity.  My copy resurfaced a month or so ago as I went through old files, paring many into the recycle bin.  

But not the New Wedding excerpt. I still find this verse about house and home hopeful and full of beauty.  This time around I ‘re-typed’ it into my computer for further safe keeping. 

At this place in time when old friends are approaching 40+ years of marriage, I offer this fragment from New Wedding one more time to those in love.  I wonder how we feel about the verse now that we’ve had our chance to live out many of our wishes and hopes? 

from New Wedding 

We wish for you a home, not just a place of stone and wood, but an island of sanity and serenity in a frenzied world.

We hope that this home is not just a place of private joy and retreat, but rather serves as a temple wherein the values of your lives are generated and upheld.

We hope that your home stands as a symbol of humans living together in love and peace, seeking truth and demanding social justice. 

We hope that your home encompasses the beauty of Nature — 

that it has within it the elements of simplicity, exuberance, beauty, silence, color, and a concordance with the rhythms of life. 

We wish for you a home with books, and poetry, and music —

a home with all the things which represent the highest striving of women and men. 

Finally, we wish that at the end of your lives together you will be able to say these two things to each other: 

Because you have loved me you have given me faith in myself. 

Because I have seen the good in you, I have received from you a faith in humanity. 

***

My wish is the same for you all on this day.   ;-)

***

I wanted to mention here, too, that Cindy Lou and I were able to take my mother a week ago to Louisville to meet with one of her dearest and oldest friend.  

Both Mom and her friend were classmates at St. Anthony’s school here in Dayton until the fifth grade when, in the middle of the Great Depression, Betty’s father took a job in Cincinnati.  Many moves and many children later, both girls have worked hard over decades at staying in touch.  

And here they are at age 93 still caring for each other.  It is hard to imagine any friendship lasting so long.  They’re still cute, too!  

I like to call this image ’80 years on…’

Gertrude Zimmer Schaefer and Betty Perry Beckman  (1934/2014)

Today’s elder idea:  On this Earth Day, I offer a thought from one of America’s foremost Naturalists: 

Heaven is under our feet, as well as over our heads. 

Henry David Thoreau

.93 of a century

A couple weeks ago I achieved my 64th birthday, an event celebrated by playing the Beatles ‘When I’m sixty-four’ countless times.  I have been assured by Cindy Lou, by the way, that she will, indeed, still ‘need and feed’ me at this juncture in my life.  Thank you, my Dear!   ;-)

I’d like to think, too, that as I advance in age some elements of wisdom are working in me.  Currently I am dealing with recurrent issues with my two daughters that make life more difficult.  Both seem unable to hear Cindy and my calls for more words, more loving interaction, more caring.  My newly enhanced wisdom doesn’t seem to be making much impact on the Generation X front. 

Looking in the other direction, though, I must conclude that as local chief care-giver to my nonagenarian Mother, I perform a similar body of services for her I would like to get a glimmer of from my own children.  Spending time with Mother does get me to consider getting really old.  Sixty-four is one thing, but 93 is something completely different.

The other day I had the poetry-starting idea of comparing my Father’s age at his time of passing to where my Mother now finds herself.  Surely lasting into her ninth decade of Life is worth celebrating, at least on most days.  She currently has a rash on her arms that is setting her nuts and doesn’t know what to do next.  We see her doctor tomorrow for a better idea how to treat it.  And to be honest, the rash is just the tip of her ‘need to tend’ iceberg.

In any case, I took that first-line idea and let it grow into a narrative poem the other day.  I’m sure this could be revised and sharpened, but it works pretty well as is.  

And so, my blog entry today is a Tribute to Gertrude: 

My father died at age 79. 

My mother is still getting along at age 93.

I used to think Dad got the worst end of the Time deal. I figured he had a decade or more subtracted from his era on the planet.  I was disappointed for him and me and all the great-grandkids who would never learn to fish under his knot-tying tutelage.  Lives have been diminished because of this.

My mother, fifteen years now a widow, has learned to move through her Life more slowly

while keeping a close eye on how much milk is in the refrigerator, knowing that when it’s gone, she is out of luck.  She must always be thinking about tomorrow’s breakfast.

She has lost the freedom of movement she shared with Dad and must now await a willing soul deliberately paying attention to her schedule and asking what she needs.  Sometimes it’s a resident where she lives, but most often it is a son or daughter or granddaughter.  

Mom worries about messy morning bowel movements when she least expects them.  They always cause stress for her as well as a required clean-up that she thought she gave up years ago with the last batch of diapers in the pail.  Now it is her own panties soaking in the bathroom sink. 

She fell a week or so ago in her bedroom, thankfully not breaking a hip — that bone juncture, when rent, which seems to be the on/off switch of Life.  She is very aware that when friends go down with a hip a funeral is not too far off in the distance. 

Mother has learned to accept Sparky, her fire-engine red walker, as constant companion on any expedition, whether ferried by car to the dentist, or making the block-long trek on foot over to church in the other building.  She talks of someday going without it, but she must know they are wed ’til the end.  

The woman raised seven children and watched over a large handful more.  She values articulate language and judged children on their ability to express thoughts and ideas verbally.  A fond memory is of her sitting with two year-old grandson Noah on her back deck.  While I dutifully cut & trimmed the grass, the two of them carried on quite the discussion over glasses of lemonade.  

Because of that love of language,

all know to avoid calling her between 7 and 8 in the evening because that’s when Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! fill her living room with words and questions that both excite and annoy, but above all occupy her space with intellectual involvement.  

Which must make the many other hours spent in 

her small apartment all the more difficult to bear.  

There is no small child to pick up and cuddle. 

No son to sit with to discuss the news of the hour. 

No daughter to chat with while her hair is being cut.  

Just quiet.  Very quiet.  

A few residents have become friends, 

but most have quirks which makes her uncomfortable.  Like Jean, who questions the sincerity of Mother’s Catholic faith because she can not accept Jean’s retelling of her brief transport into heaven, only to be sent back because they weren’t ready for her yet.  

She used to love to play cards, but she competes for keeps and partners burn out quickly in contact with such serious heat.  She likes to read, but fifty years of eye doctoring has left one orb diminished and the other good only with glasses.  Muscles and brain tire more quickly now, which makes reading less the joy she always knew. 

Everybody says she doesn’t eat enough, though 

her weight stays pretty constant.  Her taste buds aren’t what they used to be, but she often speaks of how tasty a gift dessert was or how much she enjoyed her potato soup and lunch salad at Bob Evans. 

If she had her wish, she would be packed up and moved in with one of her children.  Best if it would be the daughter with two little girls still at home.  Oh, she would love that.  But such is not the case.  We all have lives and Mother has a safe place to be with people watching out for her. 

And so, I wonder if my Dad had the better of it. 

He knew he was sick and rode out his cancer treatments with grace, spending months under Mother’s care, his very last weeks under hospice tending. 

He never had to worry about running out of milk.  

Though his knees were blown-out by kicking in 

carpet for a career, he never had to be 

tethered to a walker.  He drove his Mercury until he couldn’t, which was well into his 79 years.  

Dad’s transition took many years fewer than Mother’s.  She has lost so much more since she lost him — so many personal gifts that made up the nectar of her Life. 

I am not so sure anymore Dad got the bitter part of the deal. 

Sometimes I wonder if Mother is jealous of that, too. 

Today’s elder idea:   Getting old is not for sissies.

A personal thought that comes to me often.

image:  Ted & Gert Schaefer around their 50th wedding anniversary.

Internet stream

Pretty often I wish America could return to the good old days of network neutrality and ‘equal time’ to all viable candidates in an election. 

Now we have Citizens’ United where corporations and the One Percent can spend their millions to discredit opponents just so they can get more influence… 

Oh, sorry.  That happens now and then.  The idea that corporations are people who can direct elections then influence who they get elected gives me such heartburn sometimes it just burbles up, you know? 

What I meant to say was that in this new electronic era where there are so many sources for information it absolutely wears me out reading and watching everything that gets pushed my way online, on television, in ‘fricking movie theaters, for Pete’s sake — along highways, and right there in your pocket or purse on that very convenient mobile device one can communicate on, and, of course, on which retailers can reach you while you are shopping.  

Indeed, I find the dumpage of data we all put up with day in day out a real violation of my time.  I’ve got to tell you, I don’t answer the phone much anymore.  I’m usually in the middle of something, and by golly, that’s what I’d like to keep doing right then.  If somebody needs me, feel free to leave a message.  I’m not very good at waiting to see who called, but more often than not its a robo call and no message is left.    

I respect those friends who tell me they have deliberately limited their screen time for emotional reasons.  The lovely Cindy Lou has said for years, after reading the editorial section in the Dayton Daily News, ‘You know, I really don’t like people very much.’  Actually, she used stronger language, but I wouldn’t want you to give the wrong impression of Cindy Lou. 

Okay, so after this personal tirade, I realize that we ain’t going back to no 1960 when we saw a vice-president sweat on television and lost the election.  The more rocks we turn over in the internet stream, the more varied sources we find.  I am sure that in the old days white separatists and the Klan did well enough distributing newspapers and flyers to promote their worldview.  I remember seeing a KKK regional ‘newspaper’ in grade school, an issue that on page 1 compared the cranial capacity of apes to black folks.  But the truth is, I didn’t see many ‘anti-stuff’ publications when I was growing up because those groups didn’t know how to find me.  At least I think so.  Nowadays extreme points of view get equal billing on the internet via interesting and engaging websites and social media posts.   

I can tell you this:  My grandkids have a much easier time finding absolutely anything on the internet whenever they want.  They do, indeed, impress me.  And that’s what concerns me as a grandparent.

My problem is that with all the stuff out there, how do young people learn how to sift through what they find, and how do they evaluate it?  In 60 seconds I can locate on my computer specific data that answers a question in a variety of ways.  How do I assess what to believe?  And heavens:  How do we teach the kids?  Torre and Alex and Ellie and Noah are going to have to assess what is right, wrong, good, bad, just okay, and absolutely excellent in a very short amount of time.  

And if they just go for the first hit, then what?  What bad could come of that?  Pick one.  No need to look any further.  

I could tell them what I do to answer a question these days.  Personally, I’m comfortable with checking at Wikipedia first for an overview of a subject, then visiting a few of the article’s links to see how content holds up.  Kids will be taught techniques to evaluate sources, I am sure, but having been a teacher for thirty+ years, my experience is that many, many students will take the easiest path provided.  If the first couple hits on a subject are unsavory, I’m afraid that’s what the kid will use as a resource.  That’s what the student will learn.  Flowing water finds the easiest path. 

Truth is, I always figured the universe of acceptable facts would get clearer as civilization grew older and more mature.  And as a country, when we realized that social security, Medicare, fair wages for middle class workers, affordable education, taxes that pay for needed infrastructure, and environmental protections were good for us all, Americans would be stepping all over ourselves getting the right programs in place for the benefit of the people.  

But as we have learned, that not how it goes.  Who needs to help citizens requiring health insurance?  That’s just big government.  Screw it.  If people go broke tending a sick kid, that’s a family’s problem, not the government that represents them. 

Shoot, the Republican controlled house just voted for the 50th time the other day to destroy the Affordable Health Care, better known as Obamacare, even though tens of thousands of Americans are better served under its protection over just the last few months.  

How about working for a health care fix?  Not so much either.  Surely the GOP can’t have a President from the other side of the aisle have political success.  The GOP mantra: cut assistance to those people who need it most because it’s the Christian thing to do — folks should stand up on their own — while doing nothing to cut government welfare given to farmers, the oil industry, and other multi-million dollar organizations.  

The idea that groups can pick and choose ‘facts’ that fit their worldview, while the majority of specialists in the field see it another way, sure sounds like a path to bad outcomes for generations to come.  

Surely my two daughters were imbued with my value system as they grew up.  That’s good.  But the world was simpler then.  

Now, with so many ways of hearing about so much alternative reasoning, how do we get kids to learn a reasonable way to think, using the accumulated wealth of the ages to make the right decisions?  

I wish I had an answer.  I surely don’t.  

Today’s elder ideas: The good thing about science is it’s true whether you believe it or not. 

Neil deGrasse Tyson

We are entitled to our own opinion. We are not entitled to our own facts.

Sen. Patrick Moynihan

image:  My Mac at Cumberland this winter.

A quick take on Nature’s people

Thanks to a couple of friends who I’ve talked to plenty of times about my Hog Island writing project and who still need to ask for basic details.  I’ll admit, I hate to make a pest of myself by dominating the conversation, but knowing the basic premise of this narrative might just go a ways toward promoting how interesting this darned story is. 

With that in mind, I present an abstract of my upcoming book, Nature’s people: The Hog Island story from Mabel Loomis Todd to Audubon. *

***

A quick take on Nature’s people

Mabel Loomis Todd entered into the Emily Dickinson legend through a friendship with her brother’s family.  As a new faculty wife, Mabel was welcomed into the Amherst community through soirees held at the home of the college treasurer and important-man-on-campus, William Austin Dickinson.  His wife Susan’s hospitality offered young Mrs. Todd a venue for companionship, engagement in the arts, and extended after dinner conversation.  Austin Dickinson’s participation in family activities was limited, but over time his friendship with Mabel grew.  

Mrs. Todd was quite taken, and taken in, by the Dickinsons.  But all was not right at the Evergreens, Austin & Susan’s home located just through the hedge from his parents’ homestead, then the residence of Emily and their sister Lavinia.  Story in town was that Susan’s friendships burned hot and bright for a time but then cooled.  The same could be said about her marriage with Austin, who subsequently spent many hours talking at his old home to sisters about life and his unhappiness.  

About a year after Mabel’s arrival in Amherst, her friendship with Austin had crossed what they lovingly referred to as their ‘Rubicon.’  Their affair, an open secret in town, would end only with Austin’s death thirteen years later.  David Todd, the new college astronomer and husband, tacitly approved of the pair’s intimacy because he was sincerely fond of them both and had a bit of a reputation himself.  Their only child, Millicent, grew up in that household.  Susan Dickinson was aware as well, and as story has it, did not make her husband’s time at home all that comfortable. 

Austin and Mabel celebrated their love as ‘of the ages.’  Surely sister Emily knew about them, though she never wrote about it, unless metaphorically in her poems and letters.  Emily’s own legend, in fact, has her in love with a married man herself, so perhaps she knew something about loving a man she could not have.  Mrs. Todd, by the way, did write about it.  A lot.  (See Polly Longsworth’s Austin and Mabel:  The Amherst Affair & Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd.) 

Following Emily Dickinson’s death and discovery of an unknown wealth of poetry, sister Lavinia ultimately turned to Mabel Todd to make sense out of the cache of paper scraps, written-on envelopes, and sewn-together, recopied poetry.  It was tedious work at a time of high family tension.  Within the next few years, Mabel Todd would publish three editions of Emily’s poetry and one volume of collected letters.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Besides their entanglements with the Dickinsons, Mabel and David Todd enjoyed full and engaging lives together.  Both were popular lecturers who often spoke of their travels on astronomical expeditions to far corners of an Earth linked, at the time, only by extended ocean voyages.  Besides Emily, Mrs. Todd spoke and wrote about mysterious destinations most of her audience could only dream about:  Japan, northern Africa, high in the Andes, Indonesia, Russia just as the World War broke out.  It should be noted too, that her voluminous personal written record of journals and diaries provides such in-depth personal insight into a woman of her era that it has been used in period case studies.  (See Peter Gay’s Education of the Senses: The Bourgeois Experience Victoria to Freud.) 

By midlife Mabel Todd made a one more move that would broaden her personal legacy beyond the humanities.  Big into trees, she bought half of a mostly wilderness island in Maine.  She bought a second standing forest about that time, too, that one near Amherst, just to preserve the dignity of the stand.  Besides saving the trees on Hog Island, the Todds would make a summer camp there that the family enjoyed for over fifty years.  Upon the death of Mrs. Todd and the advent of Millicent Todd Bingham as island owner, Audubon entered the picture with a summer camp for adult leaders that has for decades impacted global environmental education while engaging the bodies, minds, and hearts of myriad Nature’s people.  

I am one.  

Tom Schaefer

Lake Cumberland 

23 February 2014

*No need to camp out at your local booksellers yet.  I figure if all goes well the earliest the book could see print is summer 2016.   Who knows?

Today’s elder idea:  Give me your answer, fill in a form / Mine for evermore. /  Will you still need me, will you still feed me / When I’m sixty-four? 

Sir Paul McCartney

image:  ‘Lobster House’ c. 1915:  From the Todd family archive photo collection at Yale University.  Used without permission here, but I’ll get all the paperwork straight before this one makes it into the book.

The Cumberland movements

Cross-posted from The Dressy Adventuress blog:  Just trying to let y'all know the book is moving along...

The other day as I was jotting down writing progress notes, I found myself using the expression movements for the essays that make up the preface and chapters of Nature’s people: The Hog Island story from Mabel Loomis Todd to Audubon.

I surely like the rhythm and musical action such an expression implies.  I don’t know that I can reach those melodic heights, but the flow-through of musical and project energy permeates my writing process.  

So thinking in those terms today, I can report that I have three movements in decent early draft shape with another about to begin.  

The preface has been written at least once before. This newest version came late in week one down here as a writing rant to just get me started.  I just rambled on for a few pages about my Hog Island story, and before too long I felt ready to jump to chapter 1.  So the preface is pretty rough, but before I head back to Dayton I’ll be refining it, maybe even combining some ideas from the first one.  

Chapter 1:   Introducing Mrs. Todd  

Early draft put to bed a couple weeks ago.  Again, maybe things to add, things to consider, things to talk about with mentors, maybe some things to delete and/or reassign, but overall, an early draft I can be proud of.  I was thinking of telling folks during talks I’ll make, if you don’t read any more of the book, read chapter 1.  Overall synopsis of the whole story. 

Chapter 2:  Transcendental activist

Rebuilt and augmented this week; D1 completed yesterday.  Phew.

Argument made that Mabel Loomis Todd’s legacy deserves to include her belief and action taken for the preservation and appreciation Nature as well as the energy spent in bringing Emily Dickinson’s writings forward.  

Thanks to Julie Dobrow from Tufts for both her essay ‘Saving the land’ and her tip on reserving Mrs. Todd’s journals and diaries on microfilm from Yale’s Sterling Library.  

Now it’s on the movement 4:  Of astronomy & Dickinsons

Major interest in Mabel Loomis Todd is due her impact on the Dickinson family.  This chapter endeavors to describe the major players and the Emily Dickinson narrative as objectively as possible.  Dickinson publication issues will be covered, through the trial, into the 30 year hiatus.

Subsections:  Mabel Loomis Todd early bio to 1881/Amherst; David Peck Todd early bio to 1881; Susan and William Austin Dickinson in earliest Todd Amherst years; Emily Dickinson, publication drama, affair, subsequent court, case and the Emily sequester years; Millicent Todd Bingham as family rear guard and Emily Dickinson contributor in her own right.

Movement 5 (this spring):  Vacationland

Discussion of Maine’s development into vacationland:  boarders, summer villagers, then cottage builders progression.  Focus on 1908:  what was America like when Mrs. Todd signed the papers in Wiscassett?  Retelling the story of Hog Is origins and summers at the Point Breeze.  This section will follow the Todds through summer 1913 when Mabel has a debilitating stroke as she prepares to travel to Maine.  

Movement 6 (summer 2014):  ‘God’s own heaven’

The story of summers at Camp Mavooshen beginning in 1915.  David soon leaves the summer picture when he is hospitalized for a progressing brain disease brought about by syphilis.  But summers go on.  Lots of stories from Mrs. Todd’s daily diaries and a half dozen or more essays from her unpublished Epic of Hog collection.  

The Plan calls for working on this movement on Hog Island this summer while I serve as writer-in-residence and actually live — I kid you not — in Mrs. Bingham’s former cottage that hasn’t been occupied for decades.  Goodness.   

Movement 7 (fall  2014):  Mavooshen’s men

At a time when women were beginning to feel their political and social clout, the guys deserve mention for services contributed to the camp’s successful operation.  To include:  

David Todd:  his father wrote books about efficient home building.  David was significant in construction of camp buildings and maintaining water transportation.  Further/final description of his profession accomplishments & his giving Mabel great topics to write and lecture about through family travel around the world.  

Frank Lailer:  the local retired smack captain who became the handyman who kept the camp running.  Ran Romany Girl in assistance to Todds in many ways.  Family came to dinner now and then.  Not much on Frank, but he was key.  

Howard Hilder:  The camp artist who both created a studio in a summer dwelling he build just down the shore from the family camp (known as the Osprey cabin) and also painted the osprey and great blue heron murals in Mavooshen’s ‘living room.’  Great family friend and help to Mrs. Todd at camp. 

Walter vanDyke Bingham:  Millicent’s psychologist husband who made medical history by helping write the first aptitude tests for the US Army c. World War I.  Famous on island for his humous essay Homo sapiens auduboniesis which seeks to describe the peculiar island visitor, the Audubon birder.  

Then on to movement 8 (fall 2014):  The advent of Audubon

Pretty much the story of Audubon’s presence on the island from 1936 to Project Puffin today.  More later.  

At this point on the calendar I have 2.5 weeks left at this amazing winter writing sabbatical.  It’s been a cloudy, grey Kentucky winter week prior to now.  The sun is out, the day is warming a bit, and the birds are working very hard at finishing the sunflower seeds left in the feeder, while I talk to you all before plotting out how this next movement comes together and what sources I need to tell the narrative True.  

It’s a good job if you can get it.  

Today’s elder idea:  Now what we have to do is cultivate the love of the beautiful. 

Mabel Loomis Todd

‘The Village Beautiful’

Explaining what it will take to get folks to want to save forests.  

image:  The author’s photograph of the camp ‘living room’ as it stood in 1981, having been unoccupied for about twenty years.  Recent restoration efforts have improved the structure.   

Writing process

Well, the book is coming along, but as I just posted on Facebook, even here in writing sequester at lovely, solitary Lake Cumberland, one can be distracted by squirrels in the sunflower feeder and bald eagles flying by the window.  Let alone sitting for some zen time contemplating the extensive rock face just across the water from my perch in the Kentucky hills.  

The first week here I couldn’t get the television to work like at all.  I listened to music instead, and had a little more quiet couch time, I think.  After Shannon came by and showed me the right buttons to push it’s been NASA TV at lunchtime and Rachel at 9 with the occasional search for something good to watch.  Last night I turned it off and went back to music.  

I was going to make this pretty quick today, but let me address the issue of writing a book as I know it.  I think about this stuff a lot, but don’t write about it much.  Bear with me.  

Writing a book is hard on many levels IMHO:  

1.  One must be sure to have enough of the right material to tell an historical ballad true.  My protagonist was a prolific writer, accomplished artist, and popular lecturer, besides having a very interesting love life.  First, it’s tough to get one’s head around the whole story all at once, and second, there’s so much stuff to read — most of it unpublished and archived in an ivy league university library far away — you hope you got all the good stuff.  One can have doubts about these things, but I think I’m okay.  Still lots to read, anyway you cut it.  

2.  Sitting for hours concentrating on plan/outline, specific subject matter, word choice & sentence construction, noting sources, revising as you go, and hoping like heck you haven’t left anything out takes a toll on one’s brain.  This, I think, is what most folks think about when they say writing is hard.  

3.  And then there’s the issue of life’s free-will choices.  I believe I could have done work other than teaching junior high and high school kids for thirty years and feel more beat up than I do.  Shoot, I got to teach thirty years and walk.  Thirty years.  Retired at 52.  When I have friends all around who say they’ll never be able to retire due to their job and personal savings limitations, it’s hard not to feel guilty.  Humbled, for sure.  

So I rather enjoy doing lots of stuff in my life.  I find cutting out most of the fun stuff to write a book that is really hard to do, presents a book production problem.  You might be able to guess such is the reason I’ve been at this project for over ten years.  

4.  Still, when I get going with the words on paper part of the writing process — aiming for 500 words/day minimum [per the advice of a wise university friend] — the ease of syntax feels pretty good.  I most often fear the muse will leave me at any time, though.  So a couple weeks ago when I got started late morning and didn’t quit until failing light after 5 for two days in a row, I felt a warm satisfaction.  

I now doubt what I wrote then is really so good.  Taking chapter two apart and rebuilding it is next on my docket and I’d rather not go there, for some reason.  It just feels like hard work.  I understand, indeed, the necessity of revising and editing.  See #6 below.  

5.  Work on The Dressy Adventuress project continues in one way or another, however.  Besides re-crafting the ‘Transcendental activist’ chapter, I have begun detailed planning for the next ‘movement’ which brings in the Emily Dickinson connection.  I am eager to get there, where I feel much love and energy.  I hope to be there by Monday, but don’t hold me to it.  I also have the need to cull out specific details of summer life on Hog Island from the already collected diaries of Mabel Loomis Todd.  This newer generation synopsis will be on my desk as I construct paragraphs.  And then there is the composite list of all of David Todd’s global solar expeditions.  I should have this stuff at my fingertips when I write content.  

6.  The sage university professor told me, too, to expect ten rewrites of my book.  I don’t doubt that’s true, and that feels okay.  But rewrites can only follow ‘writes’ — or drafts.  

Having lots of time all by myself to find a way into that writing is a real blessing that I thought might help production.  It is working, but at a weathervane pace that points and takes me to places I don’t always know are connected.  

Have I ever told you how lousy my self discipline is?  I’ll save you the details…  

Today’s elder idea:  

for Bruce 

Yesterday on the phone

when you told the story of helping 

your unknowing mother 

relearn how to wipe herself

the feeling in my heart was warmth

for you and her sharing such a personal 

moment that breeched the parent / 

child continuum.  You came of age. 

In the coming to that place you 

did not welcome — where stature and 

family position reversed from caregiver 

to tended — I felt for you

a welcoming hand into the realm of the elder

where I, too, see a diminished mother

fighting tooth and nail the coming darkness —

one who will not go gently into that good night.  

I watch her struggle.  You watched your mother do the same.

Neither woman selected this path. 

Both would rather be baking on a hot summer day or

sorting laundry, wondering how one family could create so many dirty clothes. 

Maybe they might even rather re-experience 

the discomfort of the eighth and ninth months

of carrying us, struggling with weight gain 

and wanting, then, the ordeal to be over. 

Maybe not so much now.  

Both Nancy and Gertrude have become passengers swept

onto a nonreturnable journey that has served them well —

that has gifted them with time on this Earth 

in the presence of parents and friends and family

and the kids, like you and me, who now live into

our years as elders, singing & telling stories of what 

they taught us and what we now know as true.  

Tom Schaefer

Lake Cumberland 

4 February 2014

image:  In Mrs. Todd’s front yard on Hog Island.  (summer 2013)

Note:  This entry was also posted @ 'The Dressy Adventuress' blog / http://thedressyadventuress.blogspot.com