Parts: Being a Needlework Update

Not been much fun around here lately. Mei Ping the Siberian Husky tore her ACL about three weeks ago. Or more precisely, we tore her ACL by roughhousing with her in the PA woods. She had a ridiculously expensive surgery approximately two weeks ago and contracted an e-coli infection while in surgery. The infection settled in her knee and an abscess formed. By the time the vet realized it, they misdiagnosed her the first time I brought it to their attention, the abscess was draining, leaving a large hole across the front of the knee with bone and the metal screws implanted during the initial surgery sticking out. Yesterday she got the hole closed up and remains one unhappy dog.

Like I said, it hasn't been much fun around here lately.

Whilst trying to keep her still I realized that if I sat still, she would eventually settle down too. Therefore I have been able to do more needlework than normal. I figured that now would be a good time to post some updates.

First up is a 12 part mystery sampler by Amy Mitten Designs. Mystery because one piece is released each month, and you don't know what the finished sampler will look like until it is done. Only this one was last year's mystery, entitled the Garden Plot Thickens, so I do know what the finished piece looks like. Anyway, this is part one:

Here it is from another angle so you can see the stitching better:

And, because they nearly killed me, here is a closer shot of the bullion knots. This remains one of my very not so favorite stitches:

Next up is a 14 part piece by Blackbird Designs. This one is called Anniversaries of the Heart and it is meant to commemorate family and friends. Each block is personalized by the stitcher in honor of someone important. I've done three blocks thus far. Here is the whole piece:

And here is part one, in honor of my revolutionary ancestor, Sgt. Samuel Yetter, who served in the Philadelphia County Militia during the American Revolution. In addition to his name, this block also contains my Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) number and the initials of Samuel's wife, Mariah Yocum.

Part two is in honor of my maternal grandfather, Raymond Kazuo Sakamoto. We visited his grave site a few months back in the Punchbowl cemetery blog entry.

And what is really part five, sitting below part one, is in honor of my paternal great grandmother, Hazel W. Rudduck.

This is proving to be a fun and addicting piece to stitch.

And finally, the updates on those crazy French kiddies, courtesy of Perrette Samouiloff. Eventually the 48 parts are going into a shadow box/printers tray - this one:

And here are the latest parts. I have finished eight and have only 40 to go! Only 40!

Starting with the three winter girls:

Then the boy and girl of spring:

And then the continuation of those somewhat tedious monthly children:

That is all that I have photographed for now. Clearly you can see that I have a long way to go on all these projects. I guess I need to get back to my needle.

Bordeaux diary #1: Hitting pause at the height of the day – Laurence’s lunches, and opining over mâche.

This is the first of a number of blog entries I intend to write about my recent walking trip through the vines of Bordeaux.

Without a doubt, one of the highlights of the walking tour in Bordeaux were the amazing lunches Laurence, one half of the tour company Walk and Wine, would make for us. Usually served outdoors, these homemade, thoughtfully prepared and simply presented lunches set the tour apart from any other in my opinion. After the large, carbohydrate-heavy breakfasts at the hotel I figured I would be good until evening. However, after walking through the fresh air of the French countryside all morning long I found that by 1100 I was daydreaming about the delights lunch would no doubt hold.

I learned the lunchtime routine after the first day. Starting off with two or three salads, a plate of fruit, one to two meats and fresh bread with wine from the area where we were visiting that day, the meal would progress to the much-anticipated cheese course, often so large and full of variety that it required not one but two plates for serving. It would end with chocolates and coffee. Most times it would linger on over the course of an hour, sometimes longer -- so divergent to my standard 10-minute lunch routine of walking to the microwave, taking my lunch back to my desk and abstractedly eating it in front of my laptop. And yet the time seemed to fly during these lunches. The companionship, food, atmosphere and wine rendered them over in the blink of an eye, so that now those lovely mid-day pauses in our walks are just warm memories, never to be forgotten.

Perhaps part of my deep-felt pleasure in these meals lay in the fact that they were so incongruous to what we feel is optimal and acceptable in our modern, outcome-driven society. To carve so much time out of the most productive part of the day to eat and, gasp, drink liquor, is just inconceivable in the world I populate. Fast, mindless and light (so as not to impact your afternoon productivity), our weekday lunches are often characterless, comprising of tired sandwiches made of stale bread, wilted salads with Styrofoam lettuce drenched in low-fat, high-sugar dressings, or in my case, leftovers that I have usually been acquainted with two or three times previously. No wonder Laurence’s lunches were like a kick in the pants. They made me realize how much I was missing, how much American society was missing, and how much richer life would be if we could just hit pause on the workday, relax and take the time to appreciate and enjoy our food, really interact with our companions and yes, drink a glass of wine or two.

Here is Laurence in action, holding sway over her makeshift outdoor kitchen under a stand of olive trees.

As an aside, I will note that I got my proverbial hand slapped on the first day when, noticing plates full of cheese, my number one degustatory weakness, sitting on the sideboard, I picked up my plate full of salads and meat and wandered on over. In a flash Laurence was beside me telling me in her polite but firm tone, no, no cheese now. The cheese was for later. And thus was this American schooled on the sanctity of the cheese course. In any case, like most of the good things in life, the cheese course was worth waiting for. I think it is telling that of the over 1500, yes 1500, photos I took during the trip, there is not one of the two cheese plates that made their appearance every day. I think that once the cheese came out I moved to a different plane of comprehension, where cameras and iPhones didn’t exist, or suddenly weren’t important. And that perhaps is what the relationship between French people and their food can teach us. That the things in life that are important are not measured by their data storage capacity or connectivity capability or processing speed, but in their fleeting, humble, simple and seasonal nature. It makes me pause and think. In my line of work, we view our mobile devices as our primary communication facilitators. Lunches like the kind we had in Bordeaux led me to the realization that no, in reality it is fresh and nourishing food, good cheese, wine and companions that create the conditions for true human interaction.

But I’ll be quiet now so you can see what I mean.

A table laid out with meats and salads. Here a cured ham, turkey rillettes and salad of shredded celeriac root.

In the Fronsac. Duck breast with cornichons and the magical wine made by the Mayor of the village of Saint Aignan.

Again in the Fronsac, hovering at the laden table under the trees and beside the vines.

Mid-day conviviality in the Fronsac.

An indoor table when the weather was iffy was usually as atmospheric as an outdoor setting.

The last lunch, by the water in the Saint-Estephé area of the Medoc.

The last lunch plate, eaten with the smell and breeze of the water in our faces. Smoked salmon, boiled shrimp, beet salad in vinaigrette, mâche salad and a white Bordeaux from Chateau Loudenne.

I will remember this last lunch, not only for the atmosphere of the perfect picnic spot, or the regretful realization that this would be our last outdoor gathering, or the fresh seafood and the momentously crisp white wine, but primarily for the mâche salad.

I thought I was fairly well versed in the various types of salad-worthy greens, thanks to my Mom, but I had never encountered mâche before. Sweet, nutty, incredibly tender mâche is sometimes known as corn salad, or lamb's lettuce. It isn't popular in the states for some reason. But it should be. The young leaves have a slight hint of bitterness about them, with a wonderful crunchy texture. I was in love at first mouthful. In fact after the bowl had been passed around multiple times, I asked, and was granted, permission to empty the bowl into my plate. I sat and opined at the table that I wished we were able to get this at home. And lo and behold, after getting home I was wandering slowly through the produce section at Whole Foods and there it was, amongst the other high end organic salad greens in an antiseptic looking plastic tub – mâche. It had a Whole Foods price tag, but I decided to try a tub just to see if it was indeed the same stuff as Laurence served us.

It was.

Oh why am I so expensive??

 

The tub made enough salad for two nights. The first night I made a potent vinaigrette (it makes the tip of my nose sweat just thinking about it) with apple cider vinegar and macerated grapefruit, leaving half the sectioned fruit to scatter over the salad. Dinner that night was the salad, a glass of red wine and grilled cheese sandwich on homemade European black bread. Perfect.

On the second night I recreated Laurence’s beet salad with mustard vinaigrette and tossed that into the mâche. Again, divine. Both salads left me with a longing for more mâche, but at that price it isn’t something I can do every week. So I thought about growing some and did some internet research. And of course, wouldn’t you know it, the time to sow mâche is early September. I am too late. It would have been perfect for winter salads, agh, if I had only known about it sooner. Still, it was comforting to know that I could reproduce, at least partially, some of the magic that Laurence created for us in Bordeaux. Next up I need to try my hand at that celeriac salad.

Returning with the story of a bone.

It has been a very, very long time…

The lack of postings does not mean there has been nothing worth posting about. On the contrary, it simply implies that life has gotten complicated, in ways both expected and unexpected. In late-July T reported to the Army War College in PA to commence his yearlong program. This involves weekday geo-bachelor/bachelorette-dom, weekly commutes up and down on the weekend and a serious crimp in our blog writing and Sunday supper routine.

Instead of cooking semi-elaborate meals on Sunday afternoon to be lingered over in the evening, I now somewhat frantically try to prepare multiple meals for T to take up to school for the week. A Sunday supper is usually made, but he often eats it on Monday night and I’ll eat it alone after he leaves.

Shortly after he started his program of study, I witnessed a milestone.

  Eep.

The day after this momentous event, I got sick. And except for a 10 or so day respite when I was out of town, I have been sick ever since. Initially it was the flu. Now it has morphed into severe, asthma-inducing allergies, brought on perhaps by the fact that since late-August, we have seen the sun only briefly and have had instead rain, rain and more rain, which means mold and mildew clinging to every available surface. In other words no fun. If this is what the 40s have in store for me, I say no thanks.

However, those 10 days of respite were wonderful. They happily coincided with my much-anticipated trip to France and walking tour in Bordeaux. The tour was my birthday gift from T and it will have to go down as one of the best presents ever. T being occupied with his program at the War College, I went with a good friend and we had a blast. Apart from the 2.5 “girl’s days” in Paris, we had a week in Bordeaux walking through wine fields, visiting vineyards, eating amazing lunches out in open air, spending wonderful hours with people who started out as total strangers but ended up being wonderful friends and companions. The walk was incredible - energizing and relaxing all at once and I’ll be writing more about it in the future, I promise. For now you will have to be satisfied with this, ripe on the vine in the Pomerol.

 
Today I will regale you with a story about a bone. A lamb bone to be exact. Several months ago I braised a leg of lamb. Not wanting to waste the bone and thinking it would be good for soup, I wrapped it up and threw it in the freezer where it continually reminded us of its presence by rolling out and falling onto our toes whenever we opened the door. After months and months of this routine, and after multiple queries from T on whether I intended to use the damn thing or not (my excuse being it was a particularly miserable summer and we were in no mood for soup), it hit my big toe on a day that was mild with a hint of fall in the air. I figured it was fate and picked it up off the floor, took out my soup pot, threw it in with some water and thyme and let it go. Before I went to bed I put it into the fridge, skimmed off the congealed fat the next day and started it up again, adding more water as I went.

In the intervening day I bought a can of white beans and a piece of lamb shoulder. There was little meat on the bone and I figured it would be a good thing to have something more than essence of lamb in the soup.

As I strained the broth I browned the meat in the same soup pot, threw in a chopped onion, some garlic and a couple of chopped carrots then threw the bone back in and let it simmer until the shoulder piece was fork tender.

 I then took it out, shredded it, and then put it back in along with the can of white beans and a container of sautéed kale that had been frozen some weeks earlier. After the simple addition of more thyme, salt and pepper it was GTG (“good to go,” as they say in my line of work).

 Honestly, I can’t remember when I have had a more satisfying “made up” soup. I’m going to say that the time in deep freeze aged the bone well, because the broth was rich and delicious. The vegetables and beans made me feel as if I was eating healthy too. I ate it with a cold salad of beets in mustard vinaigrette and chopped papaya and lime for dessert. It was a great mid-week meal.

In fact, the soup was so good in fact that I think I need to braise another leg of lamb soon so I can make it again.

Happily, the cooler weather brings the return of two of life's simple joys: Football season and bread making time. I can't bear to turn the oven on in the Virginia summer heat, but now that it has cooled off, it is all this all the time.

Mei Ping too is enjoying the change in weather. She is lethargic and acts like a relatively normal dog during the warm months, but as soon as the seasons change and it cools off she recalls her Siberian Husky roots and becomes once again the manic freak of a dog that I know and love and there she is at my feet, jumping on my back, desperately seeking another walk, run or play session.

Anybody want a dog for the next six months?

Okay, back again soon. I've got my trip to France to tell you about, needlework updates, a write up on our poignant trip to Mann Gulch and then there will be multiple posts about World War One, as T has finally resolved to write his big research paper on British national strategy and their decision to enter the war in 1914 in defense of Belgium and France. Partially thanks to my influence perhaps. Thank goodness he decided against the paper on African insurgencies.

Cemeteries and Memorials: Windows to the past and insights into our cultures

Perhaps some will find this an odd post, but we both find cemeteries to be quite fascinating, and over the years we seem to have accumulated a considerable number of photographs of various foreign- and US-based graveyards  which we thought we might share.  No, we have no fascination with the dead, nor are we students of cemeteries, and we certainly cannot compete with the multiple blogs out there completely devoted to discussing graveyards.  Indeed, it would seem there may even be some sort of "ology" on the study of places where the dead are buried.  For us, it has  more to do with our interest in history.  An old graveyard can provide a quick introduction to a community's history and culture; natural disasters, war, epidemics, folklore, language, ethnicity, community values, and religion to name a few things that are brought to mind while one wanders amongst the headstones.   

The Ossuary at the Verdun Battlefield, France.  It contains the unidentified remains of some 130,000 French and German soldiers killed around Verdun.  Through the tiny windows along the bottom of the structure, one can view the endless piles of bones and begin to understand the magnitude of the battle. 

In the grounds to the front of the Ossuary are some 15,000 graves of identified French soldiers.  Nearly 55,000 identified German soldiers are buried in 29 cemeteries in the vicinity of Verdun.

The Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial at Romagne, France.  It is the largest American military cemetery in Europe and contains the remains of more than 14,200 Americans, most of them killed during the Meuse-Argonne offensive.  A few have their date of death listed as 1919 and some are civilians; they probably died during the great influenza epidemic that ravaged Europe (and the globe) at the end of the war.  

In every American military cemetery, there are a more than a few unknowns.

We are not sure how an infant came to be buried here, but she likely died of the great Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919, which killed atleast 20 million worldwide; some estimates run as high as 100 million.  Interestingly, the outbreak probably started in Kansas and was spread by US soldiers at a nearby army base who carried the virus to Europe.

A family burial tomb on Okinawa.  During the American invasion of the island in 1945, the Japanese military often used these as part of their defenses.

The "Cornerstone of Peace" on Okinawa.  These walls contain the names of more than 240,000 individuals who lost their lives during the 82-day campaign for the island.  The vast majority are Japanese or Okinawan, but some 14,000 American names are also included. 

Confederate cemetery at Franklin, Tennessee.  Almost 1,500 Confederates who died during about 3 hours of fighting at Franklin in November of 1864 are buried here.

Monuments in the Franklin cemetery honoring the dead of each Confederate state.

More questions than answers.  Driving down a dirt road while looking for a place to picnic, we found this grave in a tiny cemetery stuck way off the beaten path in the "Land Between the Rivers" (Cumberland and Tennessee rivers), Kentucky. Who killed him? Why? Were they caught and punished?

Yes, the Laura Ingalls Wilder of "Little House on the Prairie" fame.  Her grave is in Mansfield, Missouri.  H is a big fan of her books and life. 

American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France.  This one sits on the bluffs overlooking the invasion beach code-named "Omaha," where US forces suffered heavy casualties.   It contains the remains of 9,387 Americans, most of whom were killed during the invasion and ensuing military operations throughout Normandy. 

More from Normandy.

To rest eternally overlooking the sea... a Chinese cemetery on Hong Kong's Cheung Chau Island.

Prohibited forms of traditional ancestor worship at the cemetery on Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong.

A missionary rests far from home in the cemetery on Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong. She was only in her 40s. I wonder how she died.

Korean Cemetery.

Punchbowl National Military Cemetery, Hawaii.

Small family cemetery in rural North Carolina near where T grew up.  Unfortunately, it has been seriously neglected over the years, which often happens when the land containing these small family plots changes ownership.  Compare the condition of this small plot with that of the US military cemeteries.

Individual headstone from the same graveyard.  This is one of several belonging to a single family which lost two daughters and the mother in 1879.  Local lore has it that the children died of diphtheria, a common childhood illness striking thousands of victims before immunization programs came into effect.  Perhaps the mother died of a broken heart.

Wooden headstone in the same graveyard.   I would venture to guess the cedar tree behind it must be well over a 100 years old.

Just down the road from that cemetery is this small plot which also has fallen into neglect over the years.  Vandals have stolen some of the headstones from the graveyard, which dates from the 1870s.

The graveyard also holds another case where the mother and this time three of her children all died within about a year in 1885-1886.  All the children were less than 10 and this one was an infant.  Again, locals recall the children died of a diphtheria epidemic.  While I have seen no records for this particular area of North Carolina, the Journal of the American Medical Association (volume 23) says there were 131 recorded cases of diphtheria in New York City from 1885-86, with 68 deaths.  Other sources report regular and deadly outbreaks of diphtheria in the 1870s and 1880s in states as far apart as Nebraska, New Mexico, and Michigan.

Same graveyard, but this guy lived to a ripe old age.

And then there is this cemetery near the tiny town of Murray, Idaho, which provides a fascinating peek into the history of the American West.  Murray sits in the Coeur d'Alene National Forest about half way between Wallace, ID and Thompson Falls, Montana.  In other words, the middle of nowhere.  In its heyday back in the late 1800s, however, Murray was a booming little town thriving on gold and silver mining.  Many of the town's founding members now rest in the Murray Cemetery, established around 1887 and still in use.  They lay side-by-side with others who plied their trade in Murray during the boom times, including hucksters, ex-soldiers, miners, prospectors, cowboys, railroad men, and prostitutes, like Ms. McCorkendale. 

Local volunteers maintain the cemetery and have replaced some of the original headstones so the curious like us can read them.

This may be the most well known gravesite in the cemetery.  Maggie Hall was born in Dublin, Ireland and arrived in New York City in 1873.  She apparently had trouble finding work there, so Ms Hall  headed out west to seek her fortune in the mining camps and became a high-class prostitute under the name Molly Burdan.  She also became something of a local hero.  According to local lore, while on her way over Thompson Pass in the winter of 1884, she saved the life of a stranded woman and child, and during a smallpox epidemic in 1886, she organized  efforts to care for the sick. She died from complications of tuberculosis at the age of 34.

Custer Battlefield National Cemetery, Montana.  Nearly 5,000 soldiers and their dependents are buried here, representing every US conflict from the Indian War era to the Vietnam War, and they too provide some snippets about frontier life in the American West during the 19th century. Some of the more interesting individuals interred include Lieutenant William Fetterman, who bragged he could ride through the whole Sioux nation with 80 men, but when he had his opportunity, he and his 80-man command were wiped out (see Indian Wars entry, part 2);  Mrs. Julia Roach, the first woman shot by her husband in Montana Territory; Major Marcus Reno, Custer's second-in-command at the Little Big Horn, who died a friendless and broken man in 1889; three unknown soldiers from the 7th Cavalry who died at the Battle of the Little Big Horn; plus, Corporal John Noonan, who was married to a Mrs. Nash, a frontier post laundress.  In the summer of 1878 while Noonan was away from post, his wife died.  The ladies preparing Mrs. Nash's body for burial discovered she was a man.  Word soon spread over the post and poor Noonan suffered so much ridicule that he shot himself.

The cemetery also includes several hundred Indians, including White Man Runs Him, a 7th Cavalry scout who served under Marcus Reno at the Little Big Horn; he died in 1929.  The US Army made extensive use of Indian scouts during the frontier wars of the 19th century.

This nondescript cemetery in Libby, MT, at the base of the Cabinet Mountains, is included because it too tells a story.  The ore Vermiculite has been mined in the area since 1919.  Vermiculite was used in insulation produced by the Libby-based Zonolite company and was widely used in the United States in the 1950s.  Unfortunately, the vermiculite mined in the Libby area was tainted with asbestos.  In 1999, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a series of articles documenting extensive deaths and illness from the asbestos contaminated vermiculite at the mine.  Federal investigators subsequently found that air samples from the area had high levels of asbestos, which is suspected to have caused asbestos related ailments among former Zonolite employees and their family members.  By some estimates, more than 274 area deaths are thought to have been caused by asbestos-related diseases, and a considerable number of those still living in Libby—17 percent in one study—have various forms of diseases (primarily cancer) caused by asbestos.  Libby is now a superfund site where the US Environmental Protection Agency has been cleaning up asbestos-tainted soil and other materials since 2000.  The EPA and Department of Health and Human Services in 2008 launched an $8 million investigation into the effects of asbestos exposure on the people of Libby.  Several film documentaries and books have covered the issue, including Dust to Dust, An Air That Kills, Libby, Montana: Asbestos and the Deadly Silence of an American Corporation,  Wasting Libby: The True Story of How the WR Grace Corporation Left a Montana Town to Die (and Got Away with It), and Fatal Deception.

This memorial is in the town cemetery of St. Maries, ID.  It marks the gravesites of 78 firefighters killed during "The Big Burn" fire of 1910, which burned about 3 million acres of forest in eastern Washington, northern Idaho, and western Montana (an area about the size of Connecticut) and destroyed several small towns.  It was the largest fire in US history, and incredibly, the majority of it took place over a 2-day period (20-21 August) when the fire "blew up" and overwhelmed thousands of firefighters.

A close up of the memorial.  Timothy Egan's The Big Burn:  Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America gives a fascinating account of the fire and its impact on the US Forest Service.  It won the National Book Award in 2009.   Stephen Pyne's Year of the Fires: The Stories of the Great Fires of 1910 is also worth a look.

Pyne's book is more of an academic study of the story of the fires, provides more detail, and is perhaps the better researched of the two, but Egan's account is more personable and lively.  For example, he provides stories of several of the individual firefighters, their actions, and their fates, including Dominick (Dominico) Bruno, an Italian immigrant who had arrived in America in 1907 and headed west in search of work.   He and his partner, another recent Italian immigrant, first worked in the copper mines of Arizona, then headed to the Pacific Northwest to fight fire because they heard the pay was good and anything would beat working in the mines.  They ended up on a firefighting crew near Wallace, ID and fought fires for 17 straight days.  During the Big Blow Up on the 20th and 21st of August, they tried to escape the conflagration by hiding in a root cellar.  They and five others were killed when the fire swept over their supposed refuge.