Hand-Me-Downs

A milestone birthday approaches. In the midst of the apprehension of reaching an age that once seemed so very far away and so very, very old, I've been helping to clear out my mother's little yellow house while settling her in a new, much-smaller space.

That intimate task brings to the surface a fact I cannot ignore. I am becoming my mother.

It's not just the times when my children will say "Yes, Grandma Barb" when her sage advice comes from my mouth. It's a whole collection of things - literally - that I have made my own. 

It's the colorful assortment of used twist ties in a kitchen drawer. It's the rinsed-out plastic bags and bread wrappers stored away for another use. It's the way I wash the kitchen towels and dishcloths and cloth napkins in a load by themselves, with hot water and every-so-often bleach. It's the perfectly-good jelly and mayonnaise jars with lids on the pantry shelf.

It's the boxes of photos sorted yet another time, one-by-one from one stack to another as the waste basket moved in front of the couch to receive the discards remains empty.

And this morning, pulling a load of work clothes (you know the ones - the patched ones, the stained ones, the ones with ripped seams and missing buttons) from the dryer, I decided that wonderful old soft blue t-shirt (a castoff from my then-teenage daughter) was just too immodest even for garden work.

I cut away the seams to make this pile of rags - so like those in the carefully-labeled bag I found in the back of  my mother's pantry just last week.

How The Community Feels

Coudersport Area School District Superintendent Drew Kyle said he wanted to know how the community "feels" at the September 13 meeting of the School Board. The meeting was the first scheduled after the Pennsylvania Department of Health issued a mandate to public schools that facial coverings would be required across the state beginning September 7. 

A school board member used his social media account to share the following with the public before the meeting: "To all the parents of students and faculty at CASD against the mask mandate. Now is not the time to sit back and hope someone fights this battle for you ... The only thing that matters now is that we convince my fellow board members that we will not mandate masks on our children, PERIOD.... There has been a clear line drawn in the sand. It's now US vs THEM. We cannot afford to be the silent majority any longer."

So there were lots of people filling the seats in the auditorium as the Board and Superintendent sat at the back of  the shadowy stage, some wearing the face masks as mandated by the Department of Health and some not.

Two local police officers monitored
the crowd filing into the auditorium

After the requisite Pledge of Allegiance came Mr. Kyle's mini lecture about respecting and appreciating the thoughts and opinions of those gathered and some vague comments about hands being tied by the Governor when the local decision makers were focused on "doing the right thing for our students, faculty and staff." "This meeting is not about public debate," he cautioned.

But then began the very public debate, complete with raucous applause and catcalls. It seems that most of those gathered were feeling that they're the public health experts.

The fellow who first stepped to the microphone: "Thank you for keeping masks optional. I would just pray that ..." He was the first of many who made reference to prayer and God in sharing their feelings.

"After a beautiful start of the new school year ... shameful," said a teacher, "... nothing to do with keeping others safe. No one is wearing them correctly." "Masks prohibit the immune system from doing its job," she boldy stated. 

Another citizen: "Masks violate our God-given rights. Covid is a genetically engineered bioweapon ... sold our souls to the devil. We must protect our health freedom."

Clad in a tank top and athletic shorts, another woman brought with her a letter from a State Senator, whose name I did not catch. "Parents want to control what is best for their child. This is misguided mandate." She mentioned supporting Senate Bill 846. "Let your voice be heard," she proclaimed.

A former school nurse thanked the Board for making mask wearing optional, saying that masks suppress our immune systems. "Why force them? Covid's here to stay," she stated.

Another teacher, armed with what he called 59 links to "studies" indicating masking was an ineffective infection control measure, cited an article from The Wall Street Journal that he claimed validated his opinions about the virus. 

And yet another teacher  cautioned that there would be "an exodus out of the schools" if the mandate was enforced. "Somebody has to step up and say no!"

Some used the old Trump/Fox News line "it's been widely reported" to express to the Board their feelings. There were those who spoke of "cancel culture" and others who had feelings about the highly effective and safe treatments that are being kept from us in order to enslave us or our children. Then we heard how masks are dehumanizing to our young children and the undisclosed ingredients in the vaccine that " 'they' are trying to hide." I even heard someone say "your body, their choice."

There were a handful of people who stepped to the microphone to encourage the Board to consider that the state mandate might be the best tactic to prevent transmission of the virus while keeping the students in school. Another presented a petition supporting the masking mandate, signed by over 70 Coudersport taxpayers. These folks were met with disapproval from much of the audience.

The September 13 meeting of the School Board was its regularly-scheduled monthly meeting. Board members were silent during the public comments, as the majority decision had been made to not require face coverings in the schools.

 Now a special meeting has been set for Monday, September 27 at 5:30 in the auditorium to discuss COVID protocols, according to a post on the school's Facebook page.

Could it be that Covid-19 is roaring through the school, striking both teachers and students? Could it be true that t0day more than 200 students are currently not in school because of quarantine or illness? Could it be that the administrators and school board members do not want to assume the personal liability for their decisions about public health and safety after ignoring a Department of Health mandate? Could it be that school funding is threatened?

Insular

A couple of weeks ago, I enjoyed a typical summer Friday afternoon here at home in Potter County. At the downtown Farmer's Market in Coudersport, vendors greeted me from their tables set up under the oak trees that circle the square. I picked up my weekly supply of eggs from Netra Baker who tempted me with her baked goods, artfully arranged on a patchwork quilt.

I selected a carefully crafted bouquet of flowers from a teenage neighbor who had often visited our farm with her father to pick up fresh vegetables when she was just a tot. She and her aunt have launched a business selling colorful blooms.

Next door at the funeral home, folks were gathered to honor the life of a schoolmate of my older brother, a history buff who could be counted on to set the record straight when those less knowledgable chimed in on social media sites.

Later at the grocery store, a former co-worker and her out-of-town grownup daughter were shopping for picnic supplies and we stopped in the aisle to chat. Other shoppers smiled a greeting as they steered their carts around us.

Does my experience sound like a page from the tourist promotion literature? 

"a friendly setting ... our small towns throughout the region will welcome you" 

It was a far different experience for a young woman I joined later that afternoon. She, too, had visited Coudersport on the same summer Friday afternoon. She stopped in town on her way to a nearby camp in the woods. But she had not been welcomed with friendly smiles at the grocery store. Rather she was greeted with glares and inpatient clucking of tongues and sighing as she slowly navigated the unfamiliar aisles to find needed supplies.

"It felt really uncomfortable. Unfriendly. People were staring at us and nobody smiled. All I wanted was to get out of there as soon as possible," she related. "My daughter and I were wearing masks because she isn't vaccinated and I am aware of your low vaccination rate. Do you think it's because we were wearing the masks? "

But I didn't have  to say what I was thinking because another companion did. "My husband won't go to the grocery store here anymore and it's not because he's wearing a mask - it's all about his skin color." And my friend looked over her shoulder to locate her dark-skinned, dark-haired little girl, swinging on the branches of a maple tree.

Ugly. Ugly. It was all I could say. I could not find other words.

There was another time when I couldn't - or didn't - find the words. It was a time when I made my living at the local hospital.

Recruitment of physicians to this rural area, always a challenge , led the recruiter and medical staff and board and hospital administration to make special efforts to find and encourage skilled doctors to practice medicine here. On this Sunday morning, a physician and his wife were wrapping up what had seemed to be a successful visit. They had met members of the medical staff, had toured the facilities and the young doctor with impeccable credentials seemed ready to make a commitment to sign a contract. But then his wife, wearing a hijab, stopped in the local grocery that day to pick up some diapers for their infant. It was while she was standing in the baby supply aisle that a person walked up to her and spit in her face. 

I don't often recount this story from my days working as Public Relations Director at my hometown hospital.  Mostly it's because of the loud sounds of silence that accompanied this unforgivable ugliness. And I was part of that silence. Of course, at the time we told ourselves we were being considerate of the wishes of the physician and his shattered wife who simply couldn't bear the thought having any spotlight shown on her. But now I wonder if openly talking about this incident would have given our community an opportunity to examine and call out this kind of prejudice. To perhaps have opened conversations, to perhaps have sparked outrage that this happened here. To perhaps have led to a greater understanding.

But instead, here we are all these years later and I must face again that this insular community is not only unwelcoming, it's racist.

And a postscript: My friend from away is a runner and planned to drive into Coudersport the next morning for a run. "I'll park my car in a place where no one will see my Black Lives Matter bumper sticker.

 

A Great Profusion Of Blooms

It goes with the territory of living still in the place where you spent your childhood. Add to that the forced isolation from the pandemic opening chunks of time to focus on my writing practice, and I am often resurrecting memories of childhood in 1950s. 

Our family's camp in the shadow of Denton Hill State Park on the Nine Mile looms large in those memories, partly because those were happy times, often with several generations of extended family. Ask my brothers and cousins about childhood memories and it's guaranteed all will talk about camp.

It seemed a place of woodland magic, presided over by the kinda cranky old man who sat on the porch with his fly swatter and gigantic portable battery-powered radio, often with the volume way up so he could hear the baseball game. We all knew to be especially careful to cushion the closing of the screen door when we passed by to avoid hearing him growl.

Daffodils still grow every spring at
the camp along the Nine Mile

Though he was through with his gardening days when I came along, I remember how he had pointed out to me the snow white daffodil blooms in a sea of yellow in the patch of woods beside the stone steps to the spring house. They seemed especially magical to this child's eyes.

"Daffodils are out in all their splendor. What beautiful flowers they are!" wrote my grandfather in his newspaper column in April of 1947.  "The first daffodils of the season opened into bloom at Golly's Folly in the Nine Mile Saturday, and they were beautiful! We picked a bouquet, and for green to go with it, we dug a few leeks. Incongruous! Maybe, but the particular shade of green of the leek is also beautiful. That's one of thee qualities of the leek that we admire."

It was also in 1947, in September, that he wrote:

"We harvested our crop of narcissus and daffodil bulbs. For some years, we have had a great profusion of blooms each springtime. In this case 'we' means Merve Chamberlin, who has a cottage close to our shack, and this scribe.

Would you like a half dozen Striped Chipmunk Brand of Nine Mile grown bulbs? You can surely have 'em for free  We'll even pay the postage to mail them to you.

There are no strings on this offer. No matter where you live if you'll write a letter to say you're interested, we'll mail the bulbs. Then we'll hope you will enjoy the beautiful blooms as much as we do.

This is our idea to scatter a little sunshine and brightness into a world too often clouded and drear.
Please do not be bashful. So long as the supply lasts, they are yours for free. Ask for 'em and they'll be mailed promptly. Now is the season for planting."

As would happen should such an offer be made today, my grandfather had lots of responses.   Miss Gladys Beebe, RD 3, Coudersport, replies:

"Of course I want some of the Nine Mile daffies, but should you pay the postage?" She went on, "I enjoy the wild life part of your writing. Do you see and hear chewinks? Do deer 'blow' under your windows at night? Do hedgehogs 'rattle" until you get up in self defense and drive them off, 'hunching' in the queerest way? Do you ever see by flashlight your cunning little flying squirrels? And again thanks for bulbs if any are left for me."

The story continues as the columnist writes the next spring:

"Recently Golly asked anyone who received bulbs from this office to please report any blooms. Here's the first letter in response, even if no blossoms have appeared. 

 Dear Editor: So you wish you wish to hear from your bulbs. I think every one of mine grew. I potted two or three to see if they would not bloom inside this spring; they didn't. So I set them outside in the garden where the others are tall and green. I am hoping that next year I will have something worthwhile to report. I also hope they will be a golden color. P.S. Just heard, for the first time wild turkeys ' 'gobble.' – Gladys Beebe.

The next year she checks in again: 

"Three beautiful golden daffodils bloomed in my garden this spring and I think it's the editor I have to thank.  This message came on a card from Miss Gladys A. Beebe of R.D. 3.

Fine – we wish there might have been 33 at least."

Family friend Steve Green, who today lovingly stewards the old Beebe place (known in this century as the Southwoods Farm Nature Preserve), reports daffodils still bloom there every spring.

Daffodils planted in the Southwoods
in 1947 still blooming in 2021 

 

  

Days Of Youth

There used to be an abandoned sugar shanty up the hollow at the far end of Pollywog Paradise. I'd ride my bike along the sandy road that ran beside the Allegheny River  - the spot now known as Coudersport Area Recreation Park.

That falling-down sugar shanty came to mind the first time I read this reminiscence penned by my grandfather, known to readers of the old Potter Enterprise as Golly.

"A memory of the days of youth –

A sugar shanty 'way back in the woods in springtime. One side of the shanty open and facing the arch where maple sap was boiled into syrup.

There was a very slow fall of snow, maybe two inches during the whole day.

A wooden sap bucked covered with a sheepskin that still carried its wool, made a throne fit for a king in the warmth from the crackling and cheering fire with its bed of live red coals.

A lad alone keeping the fire burning. A good book of adventure to read when not firing the arch and watching the flow of sap into the boiling pan.

Lunch time. A pail containing slices of bread and butter, sweet pickles, cookies and uncooked eggs. The business of a dipper of hot sap and the eggs placed in it and set back int he pan of sap to cook.

Not a sound in the woods, not the slightest breath of wind, silence.

Never was a king happier over his repast than was this teenage boy. Golly knows as he was the boy."

And since this is the weekend when maple producers of this century are throwing open their doors to welcome visitors, how about this idea Golly floated in the 1950s?

"A municipal sugar bush for Coudersport-- Splendid idea! Wonderful publicity for Coudersport, and  here's hoping the idea makes some money for Coudersport's Chamber of Commerce. This is a community effort and it may produce benefits to the town and county that cannot be foreseen. Here's hoping the whole town and community will go along enthusiastically."

One Year Later

It was cold in Colville, Washington on March 15, 2020. We were invited to breakfast at the Day house up on top of the hill at the end of Hofstetter Street. Maya barked her usual boisterous greeting as we pulled into the driveway in the space reserved for us that morning, the one closest to the steps. 

I can't remember what we ate for breakfast but I can remember goodbyes that came after. Rowan and Amelia asking, once again, why we had to leave. Me answering that it was time to get back to the farm but also expressing the thought that if we waited a week or two more, we may not be allowed to set off in the Subaru to drive across the country. "Because of the Coronavirus," said Amelia in that matter-of-fact delivery that reminds me of her mother.

Preparations for the trip - four days and three nights if we made good time - had sent us to Walmart the days before for a plug-in cooler to carry our own food and a supply of paper towels, plastic silverware and paper cups, plates, napkins. We already had some disinfecting wipes but no hand sanitizer was to be found.  I searched for pillow cases that I'd use to pack each day's supply of clothing and pajamas. Then when it was time to find a place to stay the night - not near a city but rather in small towns with their requisite Hampton Inn or LaQuinta not too far from the Interstate, we could carry in a garbage bag with the next day's clothing and use the pillowcase to rest our heads.

I  kept my emotions under control through the goodbye hugs and the whispered words of love and then Kate pressed a little bottle of hand sanitizer into my hand. 

I still have dreams about that trip - dreams that bring to the surface real settings with the kinds of offbeat complications that often trouble dreams. Where there is a guy coughing and coughing in a Missoula restaurant, somehow seated next to me in a crowded booth. Where there is no running water in the Interstate Rest Stop someplace in Indiana. Where we can't find a gas station as the yellow light begins to flash red on the dashboard. And the time the guy handing our McDonald's order through the takeout window swiped his hand across his dripping nose first. 

I describe that trip as surreal - little traffic, almost empty hotels, and every day on the radio news of more and more  shutting down. We couldn't stay away from the news channels and NPR on the satellite radio as we learned a new vocabulary with words such as quarantine, social distancing, Covid 19. Then there were the unsettling mixed messages from White House Coronavirus Task Force with the ineffective sing-song delivery of Mike Pence and of course, the strident voice rising over them all, Donald Trump promising us it would be done by Easter.

When we left Colville, the schools were counting on reopening at the end of April, and work from home was the order from the Forest Service. Now, one year later, the children have only recently returned to in-person school but only two days a week and their parents work from new home offices.

One year ago, we'd had a dress rehearsal for pandemic times at the end of February when the Colville schools were closed for three days because of a 'person of interest' who was awaiting test results for a suspected case of Covid-19. Washington was one of the first places where there was an outbreak and officials were acting out of 'an abundance of caution,' words we still hear almost every day.

On one of those cold days, we went to the shores of the drawn-down Lake Roosevelt where we searched for the foundations and sidewalks of the town of Marcus, abandoned when the Grand Coulee Dam flooded the Columbia River valley.

Human creatures had left a shrine of natural and man made treasures tucked under weathered roots of a tree long ago planted perhaps by another human creature, near the tumbled stones of what was once foundations of a movie theatre, pieces of its sidewalk still visible. 

I felt prayerful as I took this photo, capturing the mystery of that moment to hold close for a future time. Soon, the waters of the mighty Columbia would carry these talismans away. The swirling waters of what was being named a pandemic threatened all of us human creatures with a flood of sickness and death and sorrow and grief. And today, in marking this particular trip around that brilliant ball of gas we call the sun, I stop to remember all of it.

Wake-Up Call

A long time ago, morning coffee established its place in the way I begin my day. Over the years, a succession of coffee makers found a place on various apartment kitchen stoves. Then one Christmas, a gleaming white Corningware coffeemaker that plugged into the wall was under the Christmas tree. Though it was later recalled and banished because of its faulty handle design, mine is still tucked in the corner of a cupboard.

These days, morning coffee is brewed in a Cuisinart and savored in my living room, tucked into the back corner of this old farmhouse that used to be a bedroom.  My morning view is often dark - especially this time of year, and I watch for signs of sunrise in the eastern sky and on the hilltop behind the house. Today the sun reflects on the icy surface of the snow, after a clear night when the moon coming through the windows awakened me from sleep. It was then a night of fitful tossings and unease jumbled together to make for bizarre dreams.

I brought those thoughts with me as I settled  in to watch a little bit of television news. As with the kind of habits known as bad, looking at the morning news menu often starts my day with a peculiar kind of unease.

Channel surfing took me to Fox News where I watched a slick-looking white man interviewing my contemporaries in a jam-packed breakfast spot somewhere in North Carolina. It was at first disturbing because there was not a face mask in sight and they were jammed into the booths and seated at adjacent tables, relishing for their time in the Fox News spotlight.

But after I got beyond that particular optic, I noticed these folks in this southern state were obviously selected to appeal to Fox News audience - white, comfortable or comfortably retired. There was a woman decked out in patriotic sequined Trump paraphernalia, another woman who had recently gotten her hair just a little too dark at the beauty shop, and a booth of the kind of men you used to see at McDonald's in the morning - a couple of handsome white-haired retired businessmen, some crustier looking fellows in Carhartts and one heavy set guy in the front sporting a big black eye.

As could be expected, they were there to share with Fox News America their outrages of the day - immigration, killing babies, the important role that owning an arsenal of guns plays in their lives and the fact that they believe the election was stolen from Trump. 

The slick guy with the microphone had to chime in as he sent it back to the three anchors in the studio. "Lara Trump is one of them. They love her in North Carolina!"

But meanwhile in the real world, a new poll survey by Harvard CAPS-Harris reported that the new Biden administration meets with  the approval of 61 percent of voters, and 31 percent of GOP voters approve of the job being done by the new administration.  Confidence in the economy and in the future of the country are both growing as well.