Walking the Berkshires

Athalia: Child of Happiness

There are so many thoughts and emotions at the loss of my grandmother yesterday.  There is so much to share to honor the extraordinary life and continued presence in our lives of this beautiful spirit.  As an historian and archivist, I am able to take a longer view, back before the living memory of anyone in the family, so while I will undoubtedly share my own experiences and memories of Athalia Ogden Barker in the days and months ahead, let us start with her name.

Her mother, Margaret Stearns Olmsted, wrote a genealogical memoir for her descendants near the end of her life in 1952.  In it she shares the origins of "Athalia" in our family, a name that continues with my Great Aunt, two cousins, and three 1st cousins once removed.

On a June day in 1837 when the petals of the apple trees all had dropped and rose vines bloomed on the old house a baby girl was born. - not such an event perhaps as she was the 10th baby to be born to Sarah and William Walker and the seventh little sister but important to us for they named her Athalia. The Biblical name is of Hebrew origin and means in the ancient language "Child of Happiness."  All the other Walker children have recognizable family names from one side of the family or another - sometimes in combination - but this little girl was given the name of a friend of her Mother's ; Athalia Lucilla Tiernan of Baltimore. 

For many years we knew only the name of this friend who visited 'in the Valley', but one day in the late '80s at Narragansett Pier where we were spending a summer holiday Mr. John Shier an old gentleman from Baltimore spoke to my mother who was wearing a pin forming the name 'Thalia''.  He said; "I am interested in that pin of yours, is it your name?"  And when Mother answered 'Yes' he said; "I have only known that name once before, it belonged to a gentle Quaker lady I was taken to visit when a child.  Her name was Athalia Lucilla Tiernan.'  Mother's reply surprised them both for she said; "The Aunt whose name I bear was named for her.'

Athalia Lucilla Tiernan Walker was pretty and gay and much loved by her brothers and sisters.  I have heard many of them speak of her.  They all called her 'little Thalia', the diminutive being a term of endearment.  She died when she was 21 - a great sorrow to them all.  5 of the sisters and brothers gave the name to their children and that name lives on and is often heard to-day not only in the Valley but wherever there are Walker descendants.

One of those sisters was Margaret Currie Walker, who married John Owen Stearns in 1842.  She gave the  name to her eldest daughter, Mary Athalia Stearns, the mother of the writer of the passage above who wore the pin to Narragansett Pier.  My grandmother Athalia Ogden wears it in this photograph from the late 1920s or very early 1930s, and I suspect if it remains in the family it has been passed along to my Aunt Happy, whose first name is also Athalia, or perhaps by now to her daughter Leila (another namesake).  If ever there were someone who embodied the name "Child of Happiness", it was my grandmother Athalia.

Gran

My grandmother, Athalia Ogden Barker, has just died in her sleep.  She was almost 97 years old.  My mother was with her, and earlier this afternoon there was a rainbow.

I am too full for words, but they will come. 

My children will have lifelong memories of their Great Gran, who they had a chance to be with just last week.  My love to any of the family who are reading these words.

Comfort Food Writing

There is a hint of snow on the wind on a gray morning that promises nary a glimpse of pale sunlight before nightfall.  By February I will be royally sick of the dark and spiritually starved for light, but these first true days of winter are welcome, especially as we enter December and its homecomings and celebrations. 

We add layers and lay down extra fat in cold weather, and the foods I crave usually are preceded by the adjective "hearty".  Just as poring over garden catalogs helps to bridge the gap between winter and spring, great food writing is one of the anticipatory thrills of the long dark season. 

So when I read something so toothsome and exquisitely described as David Churbuck's post On Chowder, it is a find too precious to keep to myself.  Churbuck is a gifted storyteller, erudite yet down-to-earth, spinning a yarn with the precision of an awl through sailcloth.

"Another memorable sight was the appearance of the evil meat grinder, a seldom used tool which was used to grind the clams into chowder-sized pieces. The Cuisinart has condemned the meat grinder to history, but nostalgia demands that I declare clams that are ground up by hand and not whirred into a formless paste simply taste better.

A large Alzheimer’s-inducing aluminum pot, scavenged from some civil defense bomb shelter or army camp, was set on the stove. Into it went a pound of diced salt pork – fatback to be precise – a primal meat from the 19^th century, when whalers would pack away barrels of the stuff to provide protein and hasten the arrival of scurvy during long voyages at sea. Every time I go to the grocery store looking for fat back I half expect to see it missing, discontinued because Ishmael has passed away and isn’t shopping at Stop & Shop anymore."

Treat yourself to a helping of the whole thing.

I have a predisposition toward Churbuck's tastes with my Buzzards Bay roots, which is also what initially drew me to the South African food blog Cook sister! with my years in that part of the world. The name of the blog comes from the delicious syrup-soaked fritters indigenous to both Afrikaner and Cape Malay cuisines, and the author is now an ex-pat living in London, an absence that gives her descriptions of the recipes of home an extra piquancy.  Today I found an exquisite paen to a succulent dish - slow-roast lamb - and a beloved cookbook by Nigel Slater from which the recipe is adapted.

"When the weekend is cold and rainy and you have friends coming over for lunch, what can be more satisfying than a leg of lamb, rubbed with spices and left to cook long and slow, till the meat falls off the bones at the mere touch of a fork? Served on cunningly clever chickpea mash with paprika (recipe to follow in a future post) with honey glazed cumin carrots, it simply does not get better than this."

Read the whole thing.

Sissy Willis does Yankee comfort food writing as well or better than anyone, and this one for the Perfect Apple Pie makes me want to reevaluate my relationship with lard:

"Fannie [Farmer] notes that "old-fashioned cooks use their fingers and work very quickly so that the shortening does not soften." Our sis adds to the mix with her own flaky lore:

'You can't mix it with your hands, like a meatloaf. You have to get that ridiculous mixture into a recognizable ball, without touching it with human hands. HAND HEAT is the enemy of a flaky crust.

I use two dinner knives to cut, set at cross purposes, but, if you have a pastry blender doo-hickey, it would probably be awesome.'

Close-up of the chilled ball shows butter (golden yellow) and lard (pure white) bits maintaining their separate identities within the dough, the secret to sublime flakiness. Instead of forming a spherical ball, next time we will flatten the doughball -- as our sis does -- to allow easier breaking apart for upper and lower crust and a head start in rolling, as well as quicker chilling (and thawing if dough is to be frozen for later use)."

Fruitcake at Dum Luk's is nothing like the dreaded bricks of yore.

"...the essence of fruit cake is the glacé fruit. This is a lengthy process of preserving fruit by   replacing the moisture in fruit or peel with a sugar syrup. Traditionally this is strictly cane sugar and water transfused slowly over several days to preserve the texture of the original fruit. In US manufacture the process is sped by the admixture of corn syrup, dye, and the rest of the food chemist's bag of tricks. For more on the process see here. Dorothy's recipe calls for two pounds of glacéd fruit, plus a pound and a half, each, of currants and raisins. This, with a pound of coconut and a pound or two of nuts, is divided among eleven loaves and a modest round pudding basin.

It makes for wonderful seasonal gifts ... always assuming that you are the sort who likes mostly people with a fondness for fruit cake. If they blench on opening, you have encountered one of the majority with no stomach for the crittur. Curiously there is no middle ground. No one can "take it or leave it alone" like Mr Thurber's bear. Growing up with the stuff, I belong in the minority who have a notion of what is good. At least I do when it comes to fruit cake."

As one of the cook's many fans raves; "Anybody who puts whole Brazil nuts in fruit cake can't be all bad!"

Maybe you can resist the recipes that these talented cooks and bloggers provide, but I find their writing evocative and delicious (and calorie free!).

Old School Conflict Resolution

I have just returned from one of those 14+ hour days when I get up before dawn and drive three hours to Boston and back for an all-staff diversity training on inclusion and sensitivity and power dynamics in the workplace.  The drive home got me thinking of how some of my ancestors settled their differences.

Here is a letter written in the late 1820s or early 1830s by my Gr-gr-great grandfather Edward Olmsted and left at the breakfast table for his mother.

Dear Ma, 

You will no doubt be surprised at not finding me in the house this morning; but the cause is I am requested to act as Second to a friend in an affair of honor, which is to take place this morning near Chester.  We leave home at 7 o'C in a hack & shall probably return between 11 & 12 o'clock.  You need be under no apprehension fear as to the result for an injury to be done to Either Party, as they fight with swords & are both inexperienced in the use of the weapon. 

Yours, E. Olmsted

Alas, there is no record of how poor Sarah Gilmore Olmsted responded to this bit of information, but as her son grew up to be Philadelphia City Solicitor, one assumes the outcome was neither personally injurious nor politically ruinous.  Andrew Jackson was in the White House, after all.

In another corner of the family archive, I find a letter written in 1909 to my Great Grandfather Archibald Gracie Ogden about his mother's people and a duel in which his own Great Uncle William Gracie (1787-1842) had been engaged nearly 100 years before.

Dear Archie; - The following extract from a letter written by my great grandfather March 28th 1812 to one of his daughters may or may not be of interest.  If he has said anything unpleasant about any relation of yours I am sorry, but it is too late to do anything as he died about 1820.

"You have no doubt heard, or soon will hear of a duel between W. Gracie (in which he has been tho' not seriously wounded) and a Mr. Hamilton.  All that I have heard of it is that it arose from the former's attentions to a Lady to whom the latter was engaged and that the latter (a Southern man) is gone back to his country and the affair between him and the lady at an end, a circumstance of which I do not understand that the wounded hero means to avail himself as it seems all that he intended was a little occasional conversation without any serious intentions of any further consequence.  The Lady's name is Heyward or Heywood.  She is also from the South [illegible] and a great fortune."

If this is of any interest pass it on to your sisters.  Sincerely Yours, Christopher R Carter

Thank heavens someone did think it of interest and that it remains a part of our family history.  William Gracie was something of a ne'er-do-well: the son of merchant king Archibald Gracie, the founder of that that family in America, and the fellow who owned and expanded the Gracie mansion, now the official residence of the Mayor of New York City.

We did not receive any instruction in these Old School Conflict Resolution strategies at today's training.  Pity.  I have a lovely pair of dueling foils in the attic that haven't seen any use since my midnight fencing days in college.  Why else have battlements on a dormitory?

Invest in Port-a-Potties: A Survivalist Shortage List

Don't forget duct tape.  It's #53 on the Top 100 Items to Disappear First - according to survivalists at The Power Hour.  When it's Mad Max time, and location, location, location will refer to the best place to hunker down and defend you and yours, perhaps you will wish you had gone shopping with these items in mind.  Me, I've got lots of cast iron cookware (#50) , but I'm a bit low on portable toilets (#3), not to mention and chickens and goats (#100).   Some of the items likely to become scarce after the Apocalypse might not be true necessities - candy and cigarettes - but could be useful in barter and bribe situations.  Other things likely to be in short supply: Internet service providers.  So you might want to print yourself a hard copy, and go shopping this holiday season.  And if you decide to stock up on Big Dogs (#40), make sure you get plenty of dog food.  Forewarned is forearmed.

CWCID: Charlottesvillain at Tigerhawk

Political Caption Redux

We are relatively bipartisan here at Walking the Berkshires, all things considered, and astute readers will note that there is no archive with the heading "Politics" on the sidebar.  That doesn't mean we have no interest in things political - far from it - but prefer to stick to issues and interests wherever possible.  Radically centrist of me, I know.

Except, that is, when there is an opportunity for a comedic interlude of an historic and political nature.  Back in the heady days of 1967 (which featured the Summer of Love in which I was conceived), a little volume entitled Beat It, Kid...You Can't Vote came out from a small Connecticut Press.  This bit of archival political satire is in my personal collection and can be had on eBay, but why settle for the dated balloon captions offered by the likes of Gloria Steinem for images like this when you can provide your own?  Surely with such classic material, one of you dear readers can do better than the original caption: "Have the Pure Food and Drugs people heard about this?" 

Though what immediately comes to my mind in this case may not be fit for a family publication, let the double entendres roll!

Intelligent Cuisine

Maybe I don't read the right blogs, but Pastafarianism was news to me.  Luckily, there is Wikipedia:

"The first public exposure of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its eponymous deity can be dated to January 2005, when Bobby Henderson sent an open letter regarding the FSM to the Kansas Board of Education. The letter was sent prior to the Kansas evolution hearings as an argument against the teaching of intelligent design in biology classes. Henderson stated that both his theory and intelligent design had equal validity; saying

' I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.'

Henderson explained, 'I don't have a problem with religion. What I have a problem with is religion posing as science. If there is a god and he's intelligent, then I would guess he has a sense of humor.'"

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism has its own cookbook bible now, and its satirical acolyte his own website and a following of decidedly secular non-believers.  As loathe as I am to put facts before faith, what is red sauce for the gnocci is clam sauce for the linguine and I do feel compelled to point out a fundamental tenet of FSM that does not stand up to even the most cursory of scientific challenges.  This is the supposed correlation between increasing global temperatures and a decline in the number of pirates worldwide.  The open letter asserts that during the past 200 years there has been a "statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature."  Actually, the Jungle Trader regularly reports that piracy is alive and well in the modern era, in a form that would be thoroughly recognizable to the likes of Edward Teach as well as Kansas school teachers.  Given that there is also the wildly popular International Talk Like A Pirate Day, we have no shortage of scurvy sea dogs to explain global climate change.   

Now had the Church of the FSM cited the inverse relationship between Equatorial Ice Fields and global climate as a core belief, I would have had little difficulty swallowing the rest of it.  With a good dusting of Parmesan, that is, and a nice Chianti.

Leftovers

The best part about the Thanksgiving meal, as far as I am concerned, is the leftovers (this is why, however, we eschew having turkey again for Christmas).  Given that blogging and blog readership tend to lighten up during the holidays, and since there are enough virtual Tupperware dishes of leftover blog topics near to hand, why not take the opportunity to make a meal of them? 

Here's a tasty morsel sent my way by Bill West, a meme that asks me to open the latest book I am reading to page 161 and transcribe the 6th sentence.  Well, Bill, I'm deep in Christopher Hibbert's Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution Through British Eyes, and page 161 contains a quotation from British Lieutenant Martin Hunter, a participant in the Battle of Germantown.  Line six (by my reckoning the sixth full sentence) reads; "I think I never saw people enjoy a charge of grape before, but we really all felt pleased to see the enemy make such an appearance and to hear the grape rattle about the commander-in-chief's ears, after he had accused us of having run away from a scouting party."  Anyone of my readers who wishes to take up this meme yourself and pass it along to others is welcome to do so.

The ecology blog carnival Oekologie #11 was at 10,000 Birds back on November 15th, where readers will find a grand assortment of the best in Eco-blogging on display.  Likewise I highly recommend spending some time at the 6th edition of Beautiful Africa, celebrating the many ways that this continent and its highly diverse ecology and cultures represent more than just a sad litany of degradation, corruption, war and famine.  If you haven't already had the opportunity to sample the 1st edition of Cabinet of Curiosities, why not "drop in one evening for a mess of potage, our specialty, just aubergine and carnation petals, with a six-shilling bottle of Mule du Pape, a feast fit for a King?"  And if you would like to host one of the upcoming CofC editions, contact me with your preferred month and we'll hook you up.

The much anticipated 2007 Cliopatra Awards for the Best in History Blogging are now accepting nominations in a handful of categories through the end of this month with voting to begin in December.  If you have a favorite history blog writer, a great new history blog, superb blog post, series of posts, group blog or individual blog with an historical focus that you would like to nominate for this honor, you may do so here.   

Finally, I enjoyed one of the best pecan pies I have ever eaten over Thanksgiving.  I was the cook, but the recipe came from the November 21st Culinary Corner segment of north country public radio WAMC's Roundtable Program.  The secret is the rum.  In case you can't find the recipe in the WAMC archives, I offer it here in full:

November 21, 2007

Jasper Alexander of Hattie's Restaurant in Saratoga returns to tell Joe how to bake the perfect pecan pie.

Pecan Pie

Filling

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2/3 cup light corn syrup
• 2 tablespoons dark rum
• ½ stick butter
• 3 large eggs lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 2 cups broken pecans
• ½ cup pecan halves

Crust

• 1 ½ cups flour
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 6 Tablespoons cold butter cut into small cubes
• 1 ½ Tablespoons vegetable shortening
• 3 teaspoons cold water

To make the crust:

1. Combine flour, sugar and salt in a food processor

2. Add butter & shortening in small pieces and pulse until it resembles course cornmeal

3. Slowly add cold water until the flour just begins to clump. (you will need to add less water than you think)

4. Stop the food processor and take some of the flour and squeeze it in your hand. If the flour stays together, you have enough water.

5. Turn the dough on to a floured work surface and kneed together. Careful not to over kneed.

6. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate for 1-2 hours
7. Roll out dough...

To make the filling:

1. Combine brown sugar, corn syrup, rum, salt, vanilla and butter in a non reactive sauce pot. Slowly bring all ingredients to a simmer, whisking frequently, making sure the sugar is dissolved with out reducing the mixture.

2. Remove sugar mixture from the heat and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

3. Combine chopped nuts and Eggs

4. Pour into the pie shell and top with pecan halves.

5. Place in oven at 350 degrees for approximately 35-45 minutes or until the center of the pie no longer wiggles and the nuts and crust are a golden brown.

I guarantee that there will not be leftovers (at least not in my house).  Bon Appétit!

"We Have Done Nothing, and Suffered Much...Conquest is Impossible."

The war was not going well, despite a surge in troop levels augmented by privately contracted military support.  In the halls of government, the opposition party declared that those members who supported an expensive and unjust war were criminally responsible for its mismanagement and that the public had been "deceived and misled" by the administration.  Casualties were on the rise and the cost of waging the war was becoming ruinously expensive.

It was widely believed that the insurgency, which had dragged on for years, would be impossible to suppress, for there simply were not enough troops available and the hit and run tactics used by the enemy were very difficult to counter.  They were often indistinguishable from civilians, and the insurgency was daily taking on the character of a bloody civil war pitting neighbor against neighbor.  Those who supported the occupying forces were especially targeted, assaulted and dispossessed.  While some of these who remained loyal to the government fought the insurgency alongside the regular troops, their numbers fell well below expectations and with a few notable exceptions they were unreliable in battle.  Atrocities were regularly committed on both sides, and the economy of the occupied territories was in shambles.  Nearly 1/3 of the buildings in one of its major cities were fire-gutted shells.

The war had stretched the country's military capacity very thin, emboldening its enemies and raising the specter of wider conflict.  Some of these enemies were known to be covertly supporting the insurgents with war material and foreign fighters.   There was increasing pressure to start drawing down troops and redeploying them where the real threat lay.

This was the situation facing Great Britain in the winter of 1778.

The Foist Thanksgiving? Caption This.

Here is a cover that is crying out for a caption.  Have at it.