Day Trip Diary: High Falls and New Paltz, New York



"Older people are always searching for treasure, but she thinks they look in the wrong places. If they knew about her herb garden, the roses in bloom, and Maman's horse, Beth is certain people would value all these things. They would love them like she does when she sits behind her house, breathing, dreaming." - From J.J. Brown's Brindle 24, set in New York state.

 

I went treasure hunting this autumn with my husband Steve and our infant daughter Grace. With a seven-month-old and only one income since I am a stay-at-home mom, we decided to take day trips instead of an extended vacation to save money and make it as comfortable as we could for ourselves and baby. I am capturing these memories in a diary series, with storytellers to entertain and inspire with their words. My treasures I seek are rarely things of large monetary value. The treasures we found in High Falls and New Paltz, New York: apples, peace and quiet in orchards, walks in a nature preserve, vegetarian food, and quality time spent together.

 

When I was researching apple orchards to go for picking this year, I had two requirements: a low-key, no frills farm without crowds and one that avoided or didn't use chemicals. I am in detox mode from my harried days commuting from New Jersey into New York City, seeking to avoid masses of people whenever I can.

 

Mommy Poppins gave a listing of options for low-spray and sustainable practice farms, since they say our climate isn't friendly for straight organics, which led us to the nearly-organic Mr. Apples.  When walking the dogs I see those signs from landscapers warning "Pesticide-treated area" and a green thumb. I always thought a skull and crossbones would be a more fitting symbol for pesticides. Right next to one of these "green" lawns is the drain to a local reservoir. A clean environment is a part of my American dream. Why isn't it part of everyone's?

 

Giving Grace as much organic food as possible will be a priority for us. From Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Mama, "Nasty chemicals used to grow conventional produce are up to 10 times more toxic to children's growing bodies than they are to adults. According to the EPA's Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment, children are exposed to 50 percent of their lifetime cancer risks in their first 2 years of life, and research done by both the FDA and eight of the leading baby food companies has led the CDC to single out as one of the main sources, not exposure to industrial pollutants or hazardous waste, but our food. Blood samples taken from children ages 2 to 4 showed that the concentrations of these pesticide residues are six times higher in children eating conventionally farmed fruits and veggies than in those whose parents gave them organics.

 

The Environmental Working Group found that 99 percent of apple samples tested positive for at least one pesticide residue, putting it on its "Dirty Dozen" list of fruits laden with pesticides, according to CBS News.

 

 

"No farmer's his own boss. He takes his orders from the sun and the snow and the wind and the rain." Daisy on Downton Abbey.

 

 

Honey, apple butter and red raspberry jam. There were a few other things for sale, like vinegars, but that was about it.

 

 

Old farm equipment repurposed for displays. No tractor ride needed, just stroll out into the orchard.

 

 

We were here on a Monday and there were just two others in the orchard. Heaven.

My heart happily remembers this moment, Grace in my arms, Steve reaching for the apples.

 

 

Our bounty, one peck of apples, $14.

 

In addition to apples for snacking, I've savored these on blustery fall mornings in apple cinnamon oatmeal and a warm apple crisp my chef husband Steve made. All the more enjoyable on two of my most favorite, comforting things in our kitchen: red-checked placemats (from a garage sale) and inviting dishes, here a blue and white plate that reminds me of my grandparents (from a charity resale shop). I like to reduce my impact by acquiring items second hand as often as possible, and to eat off of pretty dishes.

 

"Mother took the pie out of the oven and it hissed fragrant apple, maple, cinnamon steam through the knife cuts in the top crust. She was making her world beautiful. She was making her world delicious. It could be done, and if anyone could do it, she could." Death and the Dream, J.J. Brown

 

 

We just stopped for a beverage here, but I was so impressed by the vegan offerings at The Last Bite.

My lavender latte with soy milk.

 

A sign here recalls Helen Morgan, a torch singer of years past who lived in High Falls. So many shining stars of their day are largely forgotten now. My favorite old Hollywood stars are Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler. Whose star now will shine through decades from now, I wonder?

 

 

We read about the water being harnessed from the falls here for two centuries, powering cotton and woolen factories, flour, corn and plaster mills, a saw mill, cement factories, electrical generators, dyeing works, a leather tannery and a cooperage. Also too were signs about hydroelectric power which supplies thousands of homes. I considered how everything we do has an impact, good or bad, sometimes both.

I was observing the leaves on ground, fleeting works of art from nature each fall, and I spotted a spider, which is visible to me in the upper right corner over a twig since I know it's there. I was mindful not to tread on it. I think often of the life above us when I see the birds fly, and deer, chipmunks and other animals walking by, but not often enough about the world below our feet. I vow to tread lightly for their sake, both in my walk and in my journey.

 

A FrackFeeCatskills.org sign on a lawn here called to ban hydrofacking, the process to extract natural gas. Flashback to my post "Poison in the Well" for why I oppose fracking. The reasons are many, but the threat to the water supply from the chemicals used to frack and all of the wastewater it creates are on the top of the list of concerns. I see commercials regularly from oil companies, particularly during the nightly news, trying to convince the public about why natural gas is so wonderful, but ponder why they are trying to sell the masses on this? It's a bit like the ads Purdue runs with cartoon images of their farms and chickens. Can you imagine if their actual farms with thousands of chickens and slaughterhouses were shown?

 

 

I kept thinking about the idyllic scenery here, and as I flipped through a guide to the region, I saw how much of the upstate New York economy is tied to agriculture. Our breadbasket should not be polluted by these oil companies, nor the water supplies of these residents.

 

At a fracking protest where the singer Natalie Merchant, an upstate New York native and resident, sang, "New York was made to be frack-free" instead of "This land was made for you and me," a protester held a sign that said, "If we make the Earth sick we will never know health. Clean air and clean water are the only true wealth."

 

"Some believe that the shale holds an endless fortune - gas mined by the energy company.  Not everyone needs more money, she says. I don't. My family doesn't. You might not realize it, but we have our riches here, and we have our peace. We have the forest, the wildflowers. They're not weighted the same way your treasures are, not bought and sold. So you don't recognize the value in them." - J.J. Brown's Brindle 24, a cautionary tale on fracking.

 

Pope Francis revealed his top 10 secrets to happiness, which included respect and care of nature, reported the Catholic News Service. Environmental degradation "is one of the biggest challenges we have," he said. "I think a question that we're not asking ourselves is: Isn't humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature."

 

When discussing the song "America" off of her "Unrepentant Geraldines" album, singer/composer Tori Amos talked about America running through her veins wherever she goes in the world, maybe because her mother's people (eastern Cherokee) have been singing songs there and the song lines are there and it's in her DNA deep for thousands of years. She was interested in talking about not an America that Europe, Russia or elsewhere in the world sees but, "The other America that holds nature very close, Mother Earth very close. That doesn't see the earth as something to be used as a product. Not just consumerism."

 

"Clearly we as Americans have to think of our land and how it's being used. Native Americans would talk about seven generations, that you look ahead to seven generations, not just consuming for the next generation...and that type of thinking which was an ancient way of thinking is something we desperately need."

 

"Why did they all lay down

to sleep through the now

and if they all lay down

I'll be waiting for them

at the river bed

once they wake from their rest." - Tori Amos, America

 

We came upon this display of Redwood driftwood, reminding us of the logging of the old virgin forests.

 

Looking at the image of the driftwood refashioned as an art display, I had a flashback of being in Barcelona, Spain, in Antonio Gaudí's Sagrada Família. Rick Steves' Spain 2007 guidebook reveals, "Part of Gaudí's religious vision was a love for nature.  He said, "Nothing is invented; it's written in nature." His columns blossom with life, and little windows let light filter in like the canopy of a rain forest." Wherever I travel, in a nation across the sea or a sleepy town an hour away, I am always drawn to and reconnect with nature in small and grand scales. Nature is my religious experience.

 

 

We were off to Mohonk Nature Preserve. I hope to plant the seed of environmental stewardship in Grace. Nature books will definitely be in our bedtime routine, and I plan to use the library often.

 

 

Also making the happiness list for Pope Francis: "A healthy sense of leisure." He said the pleasures of art, literature and playing together with children have been lost. "Consumerism has brought us anxiety" and stress, causing people to lose a "healthy culture of leisure." Their time is "swallowed up" so people cannot share it with anyone. 

 

An area to read and play at the nature preserve. An employee here talked about bringing his children here and being reminded of the magic of it all seen through their eyes. Grace loves to look at the sky and the trees. I do too.

 

 

Tori Amos, when talking about her song Oysters, spoke of being physically fed but feeling starved in a relationship of love. This can too include feeling starved in your job she says, something I personally felt at two different jobs in cubicles. I took pride in my work, but felt unsatisfied for years and yearned to do more with my life. I know so many in the same position. As Amos says, "You can feel starved in your career path. You go there everyday, you get your check, you're able to pay your bills but you're starving." After hearing one woman's story of feeling starved, she said, "I started thinking of an old Native American saying about "chop wood, carry water" and how when you feel starved you have to get back to nature, whereby nature starts to give you what you need. It's not that you need to go to Barney's or Selfridges or Topshop. You might that that's going to fill you, or food or escapism, but that's not what you need."

 

"I throw back my head, and, feeling free as the wind, breathe in the fresh mountain air. Although I am heavy-hearted, my spirits are rising. To walk in nature is always good medicine." - Jean Craighead George's On the Far Side of the Mountain.          

 

 "We're close to where the nature preserve starts now, Charlotte says to Henry. The magic begins here. Can you feel it? She suspects he probably can't. She walks here daily, looking for something, peace mostly. The forest gives her more than she comes looking for, every time." - J.J. Brown, Brindle 24

 

Native American words are so often in the place we inhabit, of mountains, rivers and below, a mountain ridge. A sign here talks about Shawangunk being renamed Shogum by the Dutch settlers, and that Shawangunk may mean, "in the smoky air," a reference to the burning of a Lenape village by the Dutch.  "Both names represent a mountain that provides habitat for plants and animals, and scenic and recreational opportunities for people."

 

 

When I read Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain upon the recommendation by Bill Skees of the Well Read book shop  in Hawthorne, New Jersey, the fictional story of a young boy living off of the land in upstate New York,  I thought this transplant from New York City was just living as the Native Americans did. It was no surprise the author penned Native American tales too, like The Talking Earth, about a young girl and her spiritual search in the Florida Everglades after doubting the wisdom of the elders. I'm drawn to the Native American culture very much for their respect of both the earth we inhabit and the animals and plants here too.

 "Charlie Wind once told me we must keep the animals on Earth, for they know everything: how to keep warm, predict the storms, live in darkness or blazing sun, how to navigate the skies, to organize societies, how to make chemicals and fireproof skins. The animals know the Earth as we do not." - The Talking Earth 

 

Humans so often think they are the superior species, or have some sense of entitlement to how we treat, or mistreat, animals for food, entertainment and other uses as we see fit. I have nothing but awe for the animal kingdom.

 

"We humans will never know how meadows or mountains smell, but deer and horses and pigs do. Bando sniffs deeply and shakes his head. We were left out when it comes to smelling things, he says. I would love to be able to smell a mountain and follow my nose to it." - Jean Craighead George's On the Far Side of the Mountain

 

 

With the temperatures getting brisk and in need for a casual eatery with the baby, we stopped by the Karma Road Organic Café for their vegetarian fare. My husband is not a vegetarian but eats veggie food often (and almost exclusively at home since I don't eat meat). As a chef, he'll tell you he thinks people eat far too much meat and in too large quantities. My reuben (baked tempeh, Russian dressing, sauerkraut and lettuce) and an herbal chai tea.

Steve's kale salad with tenderized avocado, olive oil and lemon, topped with cashews, raisins, carrots and onions.

I feel a connection to upstate New York with the slower pace of life, less congestion, and gardens at so many homes. I wonder if maybe we'll live here one day or someplace like it, and lead a quieter life away from crowded, expensive northern New Jersey. Do you picture another place for yourself one day?  

Girl Blew West Diary: Blake Island, Tapping into Native American Wisdom

"The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst, they carry our canoes and feed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother. Man did not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." - Chief Seattle, in a reply to Washington about selling the remaining Salish lands.

 

Gathering my thoughts about my visit to Blake Island in Washington state, the birthplace of Chief Seattle which gives the Emerald city its name, I keep crossing back the coast to West Virginia, where in Charleston 300,000 people were left without clean water to drink, bath in, or even do their laundry in, after a chemical spill found its way into the water supply.

 

Remember how John Denver sang of West Virginia in Country Road,

 

"Almost heaven West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah river
Life is old there older than the trees
Younger than the mountains blowin' like a breeze."

 

What a mess has been made of this almost heaven. Somehow, it's supposed to be reassuring that the spill isn't tied to the coal mines themselves, but the chemical company processing the coal, one article noted. For some citizens, jobs - at any cost - seem to trump basic human needs of clean water to sustain life.

 

Says Bonnie Wireman, "I hope this doesn't hurt coal. Too many West Virginians depend on coal and chemicals. We need those jobs."

 

Steve Brown, 56, unemployed, who has worked in the industry says,

 

"You made enough to support your family.  But you also see what it's done to the environment. People stay away from fishing in rivers and streams near chemical plants. You have fish advisories. You know better. You just know." 

 

We need to hear the whispers of those who were the caretakers.

"He remembers what the visionary...Black Elk, a Lakota said – man's scratching of the earth causes disease like cancer. He meant the mining and drilling for coal, gas, oil and uranium. The scratching brings up the things deep in the earth that should have stayed down there. Henry shudders."- J.J. Brown, Brindle 24.

 

If we do not, Chief Seattle's fear may come true, "It will be the end of living, and the beginning of survival." 

I found Alice Hoffman's The Red Garden through lucky chance browsing at a thrift shop. The novel, about a fictitious Massachusetts town Bearsville which later becomes Blackwell, takes readers through two centuries starting from the town's founding in the 1700's. A running thread is how local legends shape their way into the townspeople's lives, but I think of how little sense of history most of have about where we live. How much do you know of the history of your town or city and state? Do you know who the founders were? I don't. 

Seattle pioneer Doc Maynard, a good friend of the peacemaker Chief Seattle, persuaded settlers to change the town's name from Duwamps to Seattle in 1852, a year after it was settled. I hope his legacy lives on.

More than going to the top of the Space Needle or visiting Pike Place Market, when going through a library guide book on Seattle, I knew I wanted to visit Tillicum Village on Blake Island for a Native American show and feast.

Steamed clams are given when you exit the boat. Throwing the clam shells on the path to stomp on for natural gravel is encouraged. No waste here.

Giving pause on this passage from an informational area about the tribe's ways, remembering our nation's founding ideals on freedom of religion, but not for those whose lands were taken, and the reverence for the spirit of the life-sustaining food when we are so wasteful with food today.

 "Many fishing methods still used today - such as the weir and the reef net - were designed and perfected by the Coast Salish. But their ability to catch salmon was seen as an act of generosity by the salmon, as much as an act of skill by the fisherman.

The Coast Salish see all spirits as "people" with feelings and moods. So an important aspect of Coast Salish custom is to show appreciation for the spirits' sacrifice. One important part of this is the First Salmon Feast.

The first salmon caught each season is treated with special care and placed on a bed of cedar boughs. The tribal elder greets the salmon and speaks words of thanks for its sacrifice. The salmon is then shared among the elders and the rest of the tribe before its head, tail and bones are returned to the water.

By treating the first salmon with such reverence, they hope that he will tell the other Salmon People that this tribe is worthy of their sacrifice, thus ensuring they will have plenty to eat. Native American ceremony and customs, including the First Salmon Feast, were officially outlawed by the U.S. government as a way to help the Native American people better "assimilate." However, some tribes still practiced in secret."

Thankful for my salad with ground rosemary dressing, wild rice, a bean salad, wild salmon and bread made with molasses. I follow a vegetarian diet 99 percent of the time (eating fish at most a handful of times a year). I wanted to partake in the wild salmon here. There was an unmemorable apple dessert after.

I never thought of salmon as "seasonal" until I read David Tanis' article, "Wild Salmon is Worth the Price" in the New York Times. He notes the season is May through October and that, "Wild salmon swims long distances, its color a result of a natural diet of krill, plankton and algae. Farmed salmon languishes in pens, and its pink color comes artificially."

 

A performer from the show displaying the mask he wore onstage. 

 

Roger Fernandes, (Kawasa) a Native American storyteller, educator and artist from the Lower Elwha band of the Klallam tribe, appears in a video as part of the show. From the informational plaques,

"As an art form that predates writing, storytelling has been used by the Coast Salish for thousands of years, and remains an important means to pass down the traditional values and lessons. Indeed, for centuries it was the only was for tribes to pass down language. While many people think of stories as entertainment, the Coast Salish use stories to teach. In their telling, native American stories convey lessons ranging from how to behave, to how to stay safe, even the proper way to treat the environment. And according to Mr. Fernandes, stories are a far more powerful teaching tool than books.'

 

"Reading and writing live in the head," he liked to says. "Stories take that message and move it to the heart." The strength of the Native American stories lies in their layers. On the surface a story may appear to be about a bear or a blue jay. Each listening then might reveal something new: how the starts were formed or why the salmon swim upstream. Soon the listener moves past these layers and reaches the heart of the message. This may be the importance of helping one another or why to be kind to animals or another key tribal value. And such lessons can then never become forgotten, because they become part of you."

 

The iconic Totem poles of the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. Animal spirits are carved lovingly here.

"Charlie Wind once told me we must keep animals on Earth, for they know everything: how to keep warm, predict the storms, live in darkness or blazing sun, how to navigate the skies, to organize societies, how to make chemicals and fireproof skins. The animals know Earth as we do not." - The Talking Earth, by Jean Craighead George, about a Seminole girl who goes into the wilderness and finds its wisdom after doubting the old ways.

 

A sign here talks about the knowledge passed down for centuries.

 

What plants are safe to eat, and what are useful as medicines. I think of how much of this information is available at our fingertips, yet how disconnected we are too from natural remedies.

An NPR article reported on the death at age 93 of Emily Johnson Dickerson, part of the Chickasaw Nation, a tribe in the southern part of central Oklahoma with 55,000 members.

"The people who still speak Chickasaw — now in their 60s and 70s — started learning English when they were forced to go to boarding schools for Indians or local public schools. Dickerson didn't learn another language because, Joshua Hinson [director of the Chickasaw Language Revitalization Program] says, she didn't need English. She was from a traditional community, Kali-Homma', and didn't work in a wage economy.

She lived like our ancestors did a long time ago," Hinson says. "What's important in Chickasaw is quite different than [what's important] in English. ... For her, she saw a world from a Chickasaw worldview, without the interference of English at all."

Can we be less dependent on the wage economy, living more frugally, being kinder to the earth and its inhabitants, and not having an economy based so heavily on industries like gambling and poor paying retail jobs selling cheap imported goods, far too many carelessly discarded in landfills? That is all part of my American dream.

Closing with a passage from one of my favorite storytellers, Louise Erdrich, from her novel, The Round House,

"During the old days, when Indians could not practice their religion - well, actually not such old days: pre-1978 - the round house had been used for ceremonies. People pretended it was a social dance hall or brought their Bibles for gatherings. In those days the headlights of the priest's car coming down the long road glared in the southern window. By the time the priest or the BIA superintendent arrived, the water drums and eagle feathers and the medicine bags and the birchbark scrolls and sacred pipes were in a couple of motorboats halfway across the lake. The Bible was out and people were reading aloud from Ecclesiastes. Why that part of the Bible? I'd once asked Mooshum. Chapter 1, verse 4, he said. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever. We think that way too."

In Pursuit of Happiness and Betterment: A Visit to Historic Philadelphia

Think of the people that inspire you, and make you richer. Not in the monetary sense, but in the path for a more rewarding life. Surround yourself often and abundantly with these forces.

David McCullough is one of our national treasures. This great historian has an infectious love of seeking the past and his storytelling in his books, speeches and interviews never fails to inspire me. Out of anyone, he gets me the most excited about learning more about history. He reflects in this 60 Minutes interview,

"The only way to teach history, to write history, to bring people into the magic of transforming yourself into other times is through the vehicle of the story. It isn't just a chronology. It's about people. History is human. Jefferson when in the course of human events. Human is the operative word." See part one below of his tour in Philadelphia, and part two in Paris and in wonderment of the Brooklyn Bridge here.



For my November birthday this year, I asked my husband Steve if we could take a long planned but never materialized trip to visit historic sites in Philadelphia. We've managed to vacation abroad and in the American West, but sometimes planning a trip so close to home (less than two hours for us) took so long. Maybe because it's always there, seemingly so easy to get to. Or maybe I needed the perspective of storytellers and time to take this trip in its due course. Our journey was less than two full days, one night, but really it was hundreds of years in time.

"You understand those other times by being in the buildings, walking the streets, hearing the music and eating the food," says Mr. McCullough. When asked about the last presidential election, he bemoaned the unconscionable  amount of money being spent and despite all the words being produced, none of them memorable.

"We should demand more of them. We should get to be like people who go to the theatre all the time or go to symphony all the time and they know a punk performance when they see one and don't like it. That's the way we should be." We should demand more of them, but we should demand more of ourselves. To better ourselves. Part of this trip was about the pursuit of happiness, but my own course of personal betterment. Education is a lifelong process.

Carpenter's Hall, where delegates form the 13 colonies met for the first time in 1774 to air their grievances.

We couldn't visit the lending library in the 60 Minutes piece since it's not open for public viewing, but a page here showed us a photo of it. Mr. McCullough talked about Benjamin Franklin starting the nation's first lending library.

"At the very beginning comes the idea of learning, of books and ideas."

My friend, scientist and author J.J. Brown, was interviewed by daughter and actress Lillian Rodriguez about what she loves about libraries in front of the stunning Brooklyn Public Library.

"You can meet people that you've never met through their books. Cicero said that if you have a library and a garden you have everything you need. So if you have a pubic garden and a public library lots of people have everything they need." Authors are communicating years after they've left the physical world.

I think of the words of Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, both authors, "The longest lives are short. Our work lasts longer."



Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and adopted. In the mood for a fairytale, I watched the Pixar film Brave, about a young princess named Merida in the Scottish Highlands who reminded her countrymen, "Our kingdom is young. Our stories are not yet legends." I think of the youth of our nation, and when these legendary figures decided our fate.

Listen closely. Can you hear the debates? Are you tuned into the debates and issues of our age? Are you a witness? Or an activist?

The Signer, in remembrance of those who signed their names to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States, forever changing the course of history.

The Liberty Bell. The crack seems almost fitting, since liberty at the start of our country wasn't equal for all.

Little Big Chief beside the bell at the Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915 in San Francisco. As the sign here reminds us, "Forced to choose between segregation and assimilation that insisted upon suppression of their unique cultural practices, Native Americans may not have seen the hope of fair treatment and equal rights embodied in the Bell."

A woman beside a replica of a bell in the fight for women's suffrage. I've written previously and still believe the culture now is a disappointment for women in terms of role models, who is getting the media spotlight on a daily basis, and the values that are promoted. After Miranda Lambert appeared on the country music awards after some weight loss (I thought she looked fine before), and the next day all the talk was about her slimmer frame and how she achieved it. Steve said, "See how quickly she's praised in the media." I'm so tired of these value being emphasized. How about emphasizing education?

"At no moment in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning." - from Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things.

One of my most memorable storytellers of 2013 was Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, a sweeping novel bout Alma Whittaker, a female botanist born in 1800 in Philadelphia. I thought of Elizabeth and Alma at once when I saw this poster for the Cornelius Varley exhibit at the American Philosophical Society Museum.


"Alma wished to devote even more time to the study of plants. She had bizarre fantasies. She wished that she lived in an army barrack of natural sciences, where she would be awoken at dawn by a bugle call and marched off in formation with other young naturalists, in uniforms, to labor all day in woods, streams, and laboratories. She wished that she lived in a botanical monastery or a botanical convent of sorts, surrounded by other devoted taxonomists, where no one interfered with another's studies, yet all shared their most exciting findings with each other. Even a botanical prison would be nice! (It did not occur to Alma that such places of intellectual asylum and walled isolation did exist in the world, to a point, and that they were called "universities." But little girls in 1810 did not dream of universities.")

"She also loved her microscope, which felt like a magical extension of her own right eye, enabling her to peer straight down the throat of the Creator Himself." - The Signature of All Things.

Benjamin Franklin writing in 1751 said the microscope, "has opened a world to us...a World utterly unknown to the ancients. There are very few substances in which it does not shew something curious and unexpected."

Off to the Betsy Ross House.

It's hard to conceptualize in our age of documenting so much digitally, but a sign revealed no one actually knows what Betsy Ross looked like. 

Not having money for luxuries such as sitting for a portrait, this image was painted by Charles Weisberger in 1892, decades after her death.

Betsy, I learned, was born at a farm in New Jersey on New Year's Day in 1752, the eighth of 17 children into a Quaker family. She was shunned for marrying outside her faith and was widowed three times, twice by the age of 30, her first husband dying while serving with a local militia, the second in an English prison after his ship was captured by the British. Two of her seven daughters died as infants, and her mother, father and sister died within days of each other during the Yellow Fever epidemic. Did you know the Yellow Fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793 was one of the worst epidemics in U.S. history? Nearly 5,000 people perished - 10 percent of the city's population, in three months. Recommended for readers young and old is Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson, a fictitious tale set during the fever. Learn more about the Free African Society, the city's coffeehouses, farmers' market, and historical figures of the day.

A "No Stamp Act" teapot. I caught a few episodes of the Sleepy Hollow television series, with Ichabod Crane transported from hundreds of years ago. Examining a receipt, he can't believe the taxes imposed and that no protests were happening against these levies. Maybe we're too distracted, I think intentionally, to protest as much as we should. I believe one of the strongest forms of protest is how you spend your dollars.

David McCullough champions the teaching of history and worries how historically illiterate we are. History puts everything into perspective for me.

An interactive kitchen invites children how to make a turkey pot pie as Betsy would (mine would be a vegetable pot pie). Cooking is another lost art.

An 18th Century garden getting ready for winter's slumber. A sign noted, "Neat pathways, geometric flowerbeds, small orchards, and gazebos are characteristics of early Philadelphia gardens."

My birthday dinner at City Tavern. A raspberry shrug (fruit sweetened vinegar with soda water) and a bread basket with Sally Lunn bread (chef Walter Staib described this in a video as an 18th century brioche), a bread with molasses, and Thomas Jefferson's sweet potato pecan biscuits (find a recipe and history for the biscuits here).

Creamed mushrooms on Sally Lunn bread. So comforting on a cold night.

Fried tofu over linguine and vegetables. On City Tavern's menu it notes, "In a 1770 letter to Philadelphia's John Bartram, Benjamin Franklin included instructions on how to make tofu."

Researching this post, I found a video Chef Staib preparing the mushroom toast and fried tofu. He said the tofu is one of his restaurants top sellers. I love the reaction of the host's first bite of the mushroom toast in using the word "earthiness."



The orange cake in the 60 Minutes piece isn't on the menu anymore, but fortunately Martha Washington's chocolate mousse cake is.

We stayed right across the street from City Tavern at the historic Thomas Bond House bed and breakfast.  A wine and cheese hour with local Pennsylvania wines.

Their inviting parlor.

Benjamin Franklin was an enthusiastic chess player, and a marker in a museum about him noted, "Franklin realized his passion for playing chess helped him be an effective colonial representative and later diplomat for the United States. Chess cultivated important traits of the mind. Strategic thinking in the game helped him anticipate moves during negotiations and checked him from making rash decisions. Chess led him to listen better, be patient and hope for positive change, especially called for during the debates creating the Constitution of the United Sates."

 Do you play chess? My husband loves playing and one day must show me how.

Breakfast at the Thomas Bond House. After strawberries and honeydew melon in almond syrup and banana bread, we savored eggnog pancakes with caramel vanilla syrup, cranberry juice and English breakfast tea.

The table decorations remind us to give thanks. Since reading the Signature of All Things, I've taken to visiting Elizabeth Gilbert's Facebook page, which I love for inspirational quotes, images of readers with her books, and their happiness jars. She shared this quote I love, "It is not happy people who are thankful, it is thankful people who are happy."

Inspiring me, this quote by Benjamin Franklin, and giving me pause if we shifted our attentions away from chasing after lost youth and pursuits of vanity, what would our country look like if instead we asked,

"The Morning Question, What Good shall I do this day? Evening question, What Good have I done today?"

At the Christ Church cemetery, pennies on the grave of Benjamin Franklin.

There are so many stories here, such as the resting place of Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a yellow fever survivor and a founder of the American psychiatry movement. From the appendix of Fever 1793,

"Dr. Rush was one of the most famous doctors in the country.

He gave patients mercury, calomel, and jalap to make them throw up and have diarrhea. He drained blood from them (a common practice) to get rid of "pestilence" in their bodies. Medical experts speculate that Rush's treatments killed many of his patience.

Rush's insistence on perilous remedies for yellow fever patients was a rare misstep for the energetic doctor. He was far ahead of his time on many issues. He fought against slavery and capital punishment, and argued for public schools, the education of girls, and the compassionate treatment of the mentally ill. He treated his insane patients with gentle understanding."

Most resters here have little fanfare and lie in quiet anonymity, but their lives mattered too.

"Fall is my favorite season because it reminds me of death. When the leaves fall and they turn a beautiful color and the tree gives up its year's leaves it reminds me of death and that there's something that endures and sustains beyond death because there's the tree and there's the trunk of the tree and the tree continues to live. So it reminds me although there's death, there's sustained life, there's strength." - author J.J. Brown.

Christ Church, founded in 1695.

Inside lie some resting places. Above one soul, a stone on the floor here noted the earth had been bountiful to him. I want to be kind to our earth and give thanks for her bounty. I loved Merida's reflection in Brave, "Some say our destiny is tied to the land, as much a part of us as we are of it."

Carmen's Cheesesteak and Hoagies at the Reading Terminal market. 

They had a vegetarian Philly cheese steak! Wheat protein is the substitute for the steak, and I added hearty mushrooms here too, with a root beer.

Elfreth's Alley, said to be our nation's oldest residential street, dating back to 1702.

A word I found invoked so often in historic or older homes: character. They seem to have a soul to them. What stories lie here untold?

I love the welcoming pineapple over the front door.

It was starting to get cold and blustery, the perfect excuse to duck into the City Tavern's pub area for dessert: an apple ginger cobbler with cinnamon ice cream and hot apple cider.

 



I had the Woodlands on my list to see after I learned it was an inspiration for the White Acres estate in The Signature of All Things, but we arrived just as dark was settling in and we needed to make our journey home. They have haunting cemetery grounds all around.

 

 

 

 

So many journeys to take in our short time here. I'll never reach all the lands I long to see. Thankfully we have the portals of books  to access those places and times beyond our reach.