Apples and Autobiography

Cortland apples.

This is a classic "writer's autumn" for me: bringing out a novel in print at last, while also working on a book version of the Vermont memoir I began after Dave's death. (Segments piled up on Medium; if you're curious, read them here.)

In writing the memoir as segments that I placed online, I excavated a heck of a lot of trauma. That turned out to be healthy for me -- but only, I think, because I grew through it, and now I'm in a stage of life that I loosely label "getting off the trauma merry-go-round." Life is good, and I want to pull the pieces together and show how that happened.

So the working title for the book is LOOKING FOR THE LIGHT, and today in chapter 2, I'm writing about apples and related recipes and reasons.  Here's a scrap:

Today I still rely on a shelf of traditional cookbooks, but it’s leavened (that’s a baking powder term!) with vegetarian ones, a paleo gem, international and ethnic compendiums, and, most important for this region, the Bentley Farm Cookbook.

This astonishing volume, eight and a half by twelve inches across the front and more than an inch thick, contains the hand-lettered recipes of one of the region’s beloved home cooks, Virginia Bentley. When I complimented a slice of pie at a community dinner last year and (as we do here) asked for the recipe, the baker said, “Oh, it’s Virginia’s, from the book. You have the book, of course.” She wasn’t asking me whether I had it—she knew I must.

Here's the cookbook, with a bit of the apple portion of the index, and a recipe to show you how different Virginia Bentley could be in how she talked about cooking.

 

The Winds of Freedom: How Vermont's Northeast Kingdom Approached Abolition

In this presidential election season, I think it's been clear that the effects of the American Civil War continue to affect beliefs around the country. President Lincoln's long approach to the abolition of human enslavement in America gave us a fundamental piece of today's view of human citizenship in our nation. At the same time, the long delay in getting there, with some 250 or more years of enslavement behind that, contributes to an awareness that we are not always as "good" or principled as we ought to be. And now we have a nation divided on what goodness and principle mean.

In the 1990s, when I began writing my historic novels, I came face to face with prevailing myths in Vermont history that dismayed me. Many of them revolved around the Underground Railroad, one of the heroic efforts in America in the early to mid 1800s. What we know today, historically, is that the Underground Railroad in Vermont might as well have been called the Aboveground Railroad -- because in the theme noted now at Rokeby in North Ferrisburgh, Vermont, if you were Black and reached Vermont in the 1850s (or had lived here for many years already, like the Mero family of Coventry), you were "Free and Safe." No need for hiding places.

But many people couldn't process that idea when I talked about it. So, based on my personal connection with historic fiction, I opted to write about the 1850s here through the voices and experiences of local people, hoping that readers could internalize that experience and reshape their own vision of what happened.

That led to THE LONG SHADOW, book 1 in the Winds of Freedom series, set in North Upton (aka North Danville) in 1850, from the points of view of teenagers enmeshed in adventures there. At the moment, the printed version is out of stock, but you can get the ebook here. Also ask Kim at Green Mountain Books to watch for a gently used copy for you!

More about that story later this week ... and then about books 2 and 3.

If you'd like to hear how the abolitionists of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and the surrounding towns saw their world in the 1850s and how they entered the movement toward abolition, here's my talk recorded at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum. I hope you find some fascinating discoveries when you listen/watch it.

When Love Overflows in the Northeast Kingdom

Paul and Bernadette Berthiaume Chouinard

Look at the greatest love stories that your English teacher pointed to: Romeo and Juliet. Casablanca. Wuthering Heights. If you are hearing a bit of sad music as you reflect on these, you're not alone.

True love, in real life, however, rarely steps onto the stage or the movie screen. It persists through challenges, and it overflows in ways that brighten and enrich the lives around it.

A ready example of how this works: Bernadette and Paul Chouinard, of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.

Duchess, Paul, Duke.

This gracious couple celebrated 51 years of marriage this week. In addition to parenting and grandparenting with determination and grace, they continue to add to the richness of life in this region. Bernadette posts Facebook images of artfully plated meals she prepares, with the clear intent of nourishing both spirit and body. Paul retrieves images of the region's history and posts them in several Facebook forums that celebrate growing up here and the strong and creative people who've shaped the Kingdom. He annotates them with history from his own research, as well as a wider scope from his career as a teaching historian. 

Retirement is a fullness for this couple, rather than an emptying. Each day, they promote beauty and the ability to treasure what others have built, whether in the momentary beauty of a flower or the enduring resonance of architecture and photographed celebrations.

Paul and Bernadette treasure their Shih Tzu dogs, who are their babies now, curling on their laps, trotting around the lakeside home, and riding carefully along on automobile excursions. "Duke" and "Duchess" enjoyed a loving relationship with each other, as well as with their people.

So it was a terrible, heart-breaking shock when Duchess abruptly died on February 9. Nothing had prepared the Chouinards for such a drastic change. Most of all, they worried about Duke — how could he understand and how would he adapt to the absence of his small, sturdy companion?

There seemed no time to lose in finding a comfort for Duke. And when Paul asked online for word of another Shih Tzu to enter their home, blessings in the form of people who love pets came forward right away -- the next day, young Scarlet entered the family. As Paul explained, "She is not a replacement for Duchess, who will always be in our hearts. She will help to heal our pain and to reduce Duke’s anxiety."  

Duke, Bernadette, Scarlett

Small reports of the interactions of the two dogs -- who wagged a tail, who ate or refused to eat, who slept or could not sleep -- followed. And on the second day of Scarlet's presence, this report came:

"Duke seems to have experienced a day of mixed emotions. There are times when it is clear that he is looking for Duchess and feels confused by her absence. He did not eat this morning and was lethargic for a large part of the day. He and Scarlet have done well in adjusting to one another. They are respectful of one another and they are good about sharing their time and attention with each of us. We have been very aware of Duke's emotional struggle and we have given him lots of love."

The two little dogs were there as Bernadette and Paul marked 51 years of marriage on Sunday. Their most recent year held health challenges for both adults, as well as the tragedy of Duchess's passing. As Paul reflected on 51 years ago, he wrote, "We were married at the Church of the Nativity in Swanton, Vt, by Bernadette's cousin, Father Spear. It was a memorable event for many reasons. Our wedding took place in the midst of a major ice storm. We survived that challenge and many others related to our wedding and emerged as a married couple. Bernadette has been a major blessing in my life and in the life of our family. This past year, given the incredible health challenges that I faced, I would not have survived without her loving care. She has been a wonderful wife, mother, teacher, daughter and friend to all who are fortunate to know her. This week has been a particularly challenging week for both of us with the loss of our beloved Duchess and the adjustment for Duke with the acquisition of our new baby, Scarlet. Once again, we are weathering the 'storm.' I feel confident that with Bernadette's love and support we will emerge from it."

 

Bernadette marked the weekend of long-term romance — from wedding to mutual support to today's Valentine celebration — with a love-themed raspberry pie for Sunday's dinner.

As we who receive the daily Facebook photos and writings from the Chouinards continue to marvel at the beauty they infuse into their lives and those of the "babies" in their laps, I'm reminded of a "proverb" from the great writer William Blake: "The cistern contains; the fountain overflows."

Clearly, the Chouinards continue to craft a fountain of love. May this next year be an easier one, with many friends to appreciate the love they share. 

R.I.P., Duchess -- well loved.

 

Postcard Insights: Autumn in Vermont, via the Lens of Alois Mayer

This isn't a great day for me to make a road trip for foliage photos, but my late husband Dave's postcard collection can always fill in! Here, at the top, is a view of Jay Peak taken from a field of grazing cows in Newport (Vt.). Continuing the dairy theme, the middle card is an aerial view of Cabot, home of Cabot Creamery, surrounded by farms. The third (bottom) card shows Lake Memphremagog, looking from the north toward distant Willoughby Gap. The photos are probably from the 1980s, says Dave's note.

What intrigued me today is that all three cards feature photos by the same person: Alois Mayer. So of course I looked up the name, and found this in the Valley News from March 8, 2021:

BOMOSEEN, VT — Alois Mayer was born on March 23rd, 1938 and died on February 26th, 2021. He was raised in Maria Alm, Austria. Alois was the eighth of ten children of Sebastian and Katharina Mayer. As a young man, Alois was a ski instructor in Austria which led to his coming to America in 1963 at the age of 25 to work at Killington Mountain and eventually as the Ski School Director at Pico Peak for several years. Alois then focused his efforts into his considerable talent as a landscape photographer, selling his postcards and calendars across the State of Vermont for decades, through the business he founded Mayer Photo-Graphics, until his retirement.

Alois is survived by his two sons Jon and Kristian, his four grandchildren, his brothers Balthasar and Alexander, and his sister Susanne.

How remarkable! "Every picture tells a story" -- and this group of foliage photos led me to a very unexpected one. My sympathies to the family of this photographer, who has clearly made his mark in Vermont in at least two significant ways.

From the Earth Itself: Pottery Made in St. Johnsbury Center

Every time I pass a brick house in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, I'm reminded that these long-lasting house components came directly from the soil here. My understanding is that brickyards were once common in the region, especially along the streams and rivers, where clay beds could be found.

But it wasn't only bricks that came from such clay. Pottery, a classic of early American life, is formed from this specially elastic material, which can be shaped and then baked at high temperature in a kiln, to form waterproof containers. According to St. Johnsbury historian Edward Fairbanks, the products of the St. Johnsbury Stone Ware Pottery "were in constant demand until the introduction of tinware."

Studying the history of the Center Village, known today as St. Johnsbury Center, took me seeking the history of this pottery. "Early New England Potters and Their Wares" by Lura Woodside Watkins fills in the details that Fairbanks mentions in his history.

General (probably a militia title, perhaps from our Revolution) Richard Webber Fenton founded his stoneware manufactory about half a mile south of the village, on the west side of the river. His son Leander W. Fenton seems to have taken on the business and partnered with someone named Hancock; the "domestic ware" ("from jugs, jars, bottles and milk pans, at a dollar a dozen, to fancy flower pots at sixty cents each," wrote Fairbanks) were marked either "L. W. Fenton" or "Fenton & Hancock," along with the town's name. Power for the pottery, with its spinning potters' wheels, came from a brook spilling down the slope.

Watkins wrote that a great-granddaughter of Leander's, Mrs. W. W. Husband, lived in St. Johnsbury and had a list of the articles available in the late 1850s:

Both Fairbanks and Watkins mention the end of the pottery firm in November 1859, when a fire destroyed it. While working on my recent article on St. Johnsbury Center history for the October 2021 North Star Monthly, I found mention of the fire in the Caledonian, reprinted in the November 17, 1859, edition of the Green-Mountain Freeman:

 I don't know of any items from this potterymaker locally, although Watkins enthuses about a distinctive one of the water coolers, with cobalt blue decorations that she guesses might have been done by either Eleazar Orcutt or Edward Alonzo Crafts, both known to have been employed in St. Johnsbury.

Jugs with the Fenton & Hancock mark come up at antique auctions fairly often, and I have borrowed an image from one of these to show above. Look closely and you can see part of the name of the pottery across the top of the blue decoration.

Do you know more about the pottery? Have a fragment or whole item in your own collection? Have connections to the Fentons or Mrs. Husband, or more detail for who Hancock was? Please do comment!

Hiking Her Way Into a New Biography: Annie Gibavic and the Adventures of Writing

Annie Gibavic, who lives in Sutton, Vermont, says she's always loved to hike. In 2003, Bondcliff Books published her memoir of a 3-week "through hike" of Vermont's Long Trail. Called ALONE BUT NOT LONELY, the book was well received and demonstrated her ways of challenging herself and finding joy.

At that time, a woman hiking alone was still fairly rare; comments on the discussion site GoodReads reflect how the book was valued:

It's been a long time since I last read this book, and when I was a kid it inspired me to want to hike the Long Trail. Before I left for my own hike on the LT this year, I picked it up again to revisit Annie's story. Honestly, her trail journals are just like any other trail journals, but I think when I was younger, it was a lot more unusual to find a woman doing this kind of thing alone. I'm still thankful for how my own hike was sparked by this one book picked up in a thrift store so long ago. Vermont is a magical place, and the LT is a very special trail indeed. 

When Annie herself was a teenager, she interacted often with her aging great-aunt Dorothy C. Walter, a woman born in the late Victorian years whose life involved unusual paths for that time. Dorothy not only performed the expected roles of caregiver for several family members -- she also taught "Americanization" to many immigrants in Providence, Rhode Island, and brought back explorations of her adventures there to women's and church groups in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. For many listeners, Dorothy—an ardent writer herself—may have been the first to explain to her home-grown Yankee audience that immigrants need not be "dirty" or "ignorant" and that their foods, even though seasoned in ways Yankees never indulged, could be delicious. (You can read my recent feature on Dorothy here.)

Annie's personal memory of Dorothy from her teen years is really a classic of how a not-yet-grown girl sees things: She recalls Dorothy's large size, and the tremendous efforts required to assist her on the narrow staircase of the family home, when the elderly woman broke her hip!

But as an adult, Annie became a teacher herself, and with her mother Annette's edited packets of Dorothy's writing, Annie began to identify more with her great-aunt. At first she taught at an alternative school in Peacham, with a curriculum based on musical theater. "Dance was my first love," she explains, and it led her into work at a choreographer for the Vermont Children's Theater and for a high school. Further, as an art teacher at Miller's Run School in Newark, VT, for 25-30 years, she also taught ESL, or English as a Second Language -- that is, English for immigrants.  

And all the while, she hiked, and she re-read the family stories, especially Dorothy's. One day she suddenly realized that "Americanization" and teaching English as a Second Language overlapped substantially. She marveled that she hadn't realized until that moment how closely her life meshed with her great-aunt's adventures.

Over the past few years, Annie's been writing another book. This time, like Dorothy and like Annie's mother Annette, the writing focuses on a relative: Joseph Hall, the "adventurous brother," she says, of her great-great-grandfather Dudley P. Hall. Bondcliff Books, which published her trail book, is considering her manuscript. It would be both history and "family memoir," and pulls her life even closer to Dorothy's.

I met with Annie a few weeks ago to learn about Dorothy -- we sat outside Café Lotti in East Burke, so we could chat without masks. Astonishingly, we were sitting next door to the former home of Joseph Hall.

So how could I resist? When we finished talking about her family and their intriguing history, I asked Annie to step next door so I could take her photo with Joseph Hall's house behind her. I hope her book will be published soon, so I can enjoy this adept writer and hiker's view from the mountains today.

Investigating a Postcard of the Concord Coach

My husband Dave, who died in April, did enormous amounts of research for details I needed as I wrote my historical adventure novels set in North Upton (loosely based on North Danville), Vermont.

On September 1, 2019, I started writing the next book, tentatively titled O FIERCE AND KINDRED HEART. It will follow The Long Shadow (2018) and This Ardent Flame (accepted by the publisher, Five Star/Cengage; I am hoping for autumn 2020 publication). So this will be "Winds of Freedom" Book 3! And again it begins in North Upton, this time in 1854.

So of course, I went to Dave's stacks of postcards, and found right away this image of a Concord Coach: the kind of horse-drawn vehicle used to transport passengers and mail around New England and beyond. The card came from Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, mailed in 1961.

Notice the addressee? It's Flora Austin of Franklin, Vermont, and the sender is clearly her daughter or daughter-in-law, Susie. She starts by mentioning "Albert" and that she doesn't know when he'll be down, then says that Albert Jr. will soon be home for good.

It's easier to read this way, right?

Research, which Dave and I would have collaborated on after he'd identified the postcard publisher and probable photographer and photo year, becomes a chase for family details. And here's what I found:

Flora Bell (née Garrett) Austin was born about 30 September 1881 in Franklin, Vermont. She married Willard Charles Austin (born about 1861), and they show up in the 1940 Census. He was her second husband; her fist was Peter Chagnon (1863-1913), whom she married in 1897.

Flora's marriage to Willard bore a son Albert Willard Austin (1917-2000). His son, Flora's grandson (and either Susie's nephew or son), was Reginald Albert Austin -- presumably Albert Jr.

What fascinated me among the details is, this card's presence in the Northeast Kingdom was no accident: Willard Austin died in Lyndon on 29 April 1972, and although the recorded birthplace for Albert Willard Austin is Franklin, he died in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

Those details make me wonder whether that the Austin family connected to this postcard may also connect to Lyndon's noted Dr. Venila Lovina Shores, whose paternal grandmother was an Austen (spelled with -en, not -in); could that be? It's the kind of coincidence that often arises when working with Northeast Kingdom history!

Meanwhile, I am content to know that the Concord Coaches once drove just a few miles from where I sit writing today -- and to find that "DK" was ahead of me, leaving more for me to investigate in his collection.

Vermonters in Washington, DC, November 7, 1973

Maybe you are old enough to remember those days? The Vietnam War was a hot topic -- it was supposed to end in early 1973, when the Paris Peace Accord was signed, but the fighting continued. It would finally be over in April 1975, when Saigon would fall to North Vietnamese troops.  But who knew that then?

Everyone had a strong opinion, from living with the war and its effects for so many years. Technically it began around 1955, but the United States had advisors in place as early as 1950. Those who lived through it recall the escalation in 1964 with the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the 1968 Tet Offensive when the war reached a terrible peak of action.

Strong opinions? Vermonters had plenty. George Aiken, formerly Vermont governor and then Vermont's Republican Senator from 1940 onward, served as "Dean of the Senate" and tried to bring others together toward right action. Wikipedia's article on Aiken says this:

Aiken took an ambivalent position on the Vietnam war (1965–75), changing along with the Vermont mood. Neither a hawk nor a dove, he was sometimes called an "owl." He reluctantly supported the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964, and was more enthusiastic in support of Nixon's program of letting South Vietnam do the fighting using American money. Aiken is widely quoted as saying that the U.S. should declare victory and bring the troops home. His actual statement was:

"The United States could well declare unilaterally ... that we have 'won' in the sense that our armed forces are in control of most of the field and no potential enemy is in a position to establish its authority over South Vietnam," and that such a declaration "would herald the resumption of political warfare as the dominant theme in Vietnam."

He added: "It may be a far-fetched proposal, but nothing else has worked."

Lunenburg resident Mike Fournier watched the U.S. government's struggles with the war in the 1970s. He wasn't yet a journalist, but with others from Vermont, he journeyed to the nation's capital to see Senator Aiken in action and received his own Senate Pass for November 7, 1973. The photos he took are shown here for the first time; the energy that the white-haired Vermont Senator brought to his task is unmistakeable.

We think of Senator Aiken especially in March, because on March 24, 1949, when he was 57 years old, he made a speech in Lyndonville, Vermont, in which he used the term "Northeast Kingdom" to describe our part of the state. It wasn't the first time the name had been used -- Lyndonville resident Arthur W. Simpson and Newport publisher Wallace Gilpin used it in the 1940s -- but even back in 1949, when George Aiken said it, people listened.

And so the Northeast Kingdom accepted its name.

Many thanks to Mike Fournier for sharing these 1973 photos with us.

If you are in the mood to celebrate Northeast Kingdom Day this year, you can leave a comment here, of course -- but if you are close enough to northeastern Vermont, please join us on Friday March 24 at 9 a.m. at the Grindstone Café in Lyndonville, where we'll share what makes the region special, swap some memories or reflections on George Aiken, and lift our mugs of coffee or tea to this place: The Northeast Kingdom of Vermont!

Vermont = White Bread State? Evidence Says, I Doubt It!

There was a card game we played as kids where you held out a card, hidden, and asserted it was a particular item -- say, a nine of diamonds. Another player could say "I doubt it!" I don't remember all the rules, but I know there were rewards for good bluffs, and rewards for seeing through them. Sometimes local history research feels like the same game.

At every chance I get, I search through old postcards in stores and antiquarian shows, looking for evidence of the "old days" in my part of Vermont. A few months ago I picked up a fairly common picture postcard of Comerford Dam (a Connecticut River dam that changed the history of my small town, Waterford, although it's actually anchored in Barnet VT and Monroe NH). On the back was the message shown here, written in laboriously penned Italian.

Teacher Meg Clayton majored in Italian in college, and she translated the card for me, confirming my guess that the writer had some issues with his written Italian -- maybe a working man, not often putting things on paper. I wanted very much to be able to show that the card traveled from a workman in the Northeast Kingdom around 1939, to another Italian speaker in the blue-collar granite town of Barre, Vermont. And some of the pieces are indeed here.

However, here's Meg's actual translation:

Dear Friend,
I want you to know that I am well.  I send well wishes to you with your operation.
Salutations from your friend,
Domenico Zittoli
I went to see this dam.

When I added research into Italian family names in Vermont in 1939, I was able, with much excitement, to find the Zecchinelli family at 15 Central Street in Barre, in both the 1930 and 1940 Census documents. And I discovered that the postcard writer's surname was probably Zottoli, a family well spread through New England at the time.

But I can't find any Zottoli in records of life in northern Vermont in 1939. So, in spite of what I wanted from this card, I have to conclude that Domenico Zottoli may have just been headed home after a visit to Mr. Zecchinelli, and passing through where the dam had recently been built.

Still, I'm not discouraged. This sign below, displayed by the Concord (VT) Historical Society, shows clearly that Italians lived and owned businesses in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont in the early to mid 1900s.

And that's more evidence for what I'm painting into all of my writing: Vermont might look pretty darned white (especially in winter -- smile). But Vermonters have always been diverse. They answer the call to adventure, in many languages and styles. One hypothesis, not proved; the main theory, emphatically confirmed.