I have been reading the essays of E. B. White again, something I do every few years just to remind myself what a good essay is like. White wrote in the forward to his essays:
“The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new “attempt,” differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”
He was writing about himself, but I see something of myself in what he wrote. I have been writing these weekly essays for twenty years now. They started out as weekly updates to my family that I began writing after we moved here and they have gone on from there. I sometimes wonder why I still write them and why anyone would want to read them. I live a rather dull life bound by cycles and routines. I repeat myself as often as seasons do with daffodils and pumpkins and birds and the weather occurring like clockwork in their appointed times year after year. Sometimes when I’m pondering on what to write, I go back and read what I wrote on the corresponding date in years past. I’ve been writing these essays for so long now, that sometimes I don’t remember much of what I wrote before and reading them is like reading something written by someone else (perhaps a sign of senility). Sometimes I’m surprised by a good sentence or a paragraph and other times I cringe at the trite and boring things I wrote. No matter what, I’m always flattered that there are still people who read what I write. That’s the childish and self-centered part of me that E. B. White and I have in common.
“The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new “attempt,” differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”
He was writing about himself, but I see something of myself in what he wrote. I have been writing these weekly essays for twenty years now. They started out as weekly updates to my family that I began writing after we moved here and they have gone on from there. I sometimes wonder why I still write them and why anyone would want to read them. I live a rather dull life bound by cycles and routines. I repeat myself as often as seasons do with daffodils and pumpkins and birds and the weather occurring like clockwork in their appointed times year after year. Sometimes when I’m pondering on what to write, I go back and read what I wrote on the corresponding date in years past. I’ve been writing these essays for so long now, that sometimes I don’t remember much of what I wrote before and reading them is like reading something written by someone else (perhaps a sign of senility). Sometimes I’m surprised by a good sentence or a paragraph and other times I cringe at the trite and boring things I wrote. No matter what, I’m always flattered that there are still people who read what I write. That’s the childish and self-centered part of me that E. B. White and I have in common.
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| Ice on the beaver pond. |
We’ve come to that time of the year when the bare bones of the world are exposed and the season is still young enough that I can admire them. Later, when they are beautified by snow and frost, I will admire them again. But the time will come, after what seems like an endless ice age, that I will long to see them clothed in green again. The trees are especially beautiful in their nakedness. I am fascinated that there is mathematical order in the arrangement of their fractal branches. The pattern of their branching repeats itself over and over in smaller and smaller segments and, for some reason known to the Great Designer, there are never more than eleven nodes in their branchings. Nature is governed by geometric and mathematical laws – a testament to me that “there are many kingdoms; for there is no space in the which there is no kingdom . . . And unto every kingdom is given a law; and unto every law there are certain bounds also and conditions. And again, verily I say unto you, he hath given a law unto all things, by which they move in their times and their seasons.”
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| Maple branches. |
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| Wild cherry branches. |
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| Apple branches. |
This week we will celebrate Thanksgiving. I have an excellent memory when it comes to my early childhood years, but for some reason, I don’t remember any Thanksgivings from the first ten years of my life. During those first ten years we would have had celebrations with my grandparents and my cousin Rick, who lived upstairs. We might have had bigger celebrations with aunts, uncles, and other cousins. If we did, I don’t remember them at all. The first Thanksgivings that register in my memory start after I was ten years old and we had moved from New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, to Tallmadge, Ohio. I think being with just my immediate family, isolated by the miles and fending for ourselves, strangers in a strange land, made those memories stick. Or maybe it’s because after ten, I was old enough to help with the preparations for the feast.
I know people who remember their Thanksgivings by what team won which game that year, but we were not a football family – a tradition we carry on to this day. Our Thanksgivings were and still are focused on the food. Over the years growing up, I learned how to mash potatoes and make stuffing, roast a turkey, make gravy and pies and cranberry sauce. Cranberry sauce became my specialty. I always make it the way my mother taught me, using fresh cranberries and whole orange and apple slices all ground together with a hand cranked grinder and sweetened with a bit of sugar. None of that canned jelly stuff for me and my house.
For a while I experimented with elaborate stuffings. At various times I tried adding things like browned sausage, chestnuts, raisins, and different kinds of bread. Some of my creations were popular, some were not. If I make the stuffing now, I stick with a simpler recipe – cubed bread, onions and celery sauteed in lots of butter, a dash of pepper, a bit of ground sage. Now I’m hungry.
I know people who remember their Thanksgivings by what team won which game that year, but we were not a football family – a tradition we carry on to this day. Our Thanksgivings were and still are focused on the food. Over the years growing up, I learned how to mash potatoes and make stuffing, roast a turkey, make gravy and pies and cranberry sauce. Cranberry sauce became my specialty. I always make it the way my mother taught me, using fresh cranberries and whole orange and apple slices all ground together with a hand cranked grinder and sweetened with a bit of sugar. None of that canned jelly stuff for me and my house.
For a while I experimented with elaborate stuffings. At various times I tried adding things like browned sausage, chestnuts, raisins, and different kinds of bread. Some of my creations were popular, some were not. If I make the stuffing now, I stick with a simpler recipe – cubed bread, onions and celery sauteed in lots of butter, a dash of pepper, a bit of ground sage. Now I’m hungry.
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| The house viewed from the meadow. |
We won’t be home for Thanksgiving this year. Our oldest granddaughter, Ellie, Geoffrey and Joni’s daughter, has turned eight and all of my children and their families are traveling to Utah for her baptism. We will actually be traveling on Thanksgiving Day because flights were cheapest then, so we won’t even have a feast this year. This year the celebration will be all about family and Ellie. I’m sure there will be plenty of good food too.
We’ll be in Utah from Thanksgiving Day in the evening to the following Wednesday. We’re all staying in a big Airbnb near Geoffrey and Joni’s house. While we’re there we have lots of things planned besides the baptism. On Friday all the Shilligs in the area are coming for an early Christmas party. That’s a lot of people. The baptism is on Saturday. I hear rumors of a cousin outing to go see Frozen II. Sometime while we are there we plan to go up to Salt Lake City to see the Christmas lights on Temple Square. There will be lots of games and food and fun – all the things that happen spontaneously when our family gets together.
Since we’ll be gone until December 4th, the Potter County Journal will be late again next week. When we get back, I’ll have lots to report on and plenty of photographs to share.
I wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!
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| The house seen from across the orchard. |
Since we’ll be gone until December 4th, the Potter County Journal will be late again next week. When we get back, I’ll have lots to report on and plenty of photographs to share.
I wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!
