The Education of a Civilized Mind

A particular friend and I share a passion for the topic of education, literature, and culture. Whenever we get together we argue good naturedly about what should be changed, what must not be tampered with, what has been lost, what must be rescued and preserved before it is too late, indeed what it even means to be "educated".

Part of any education—and certainly part of mine—has to do not only with books but also with films, music, documentaries and art. Cultural experiences that, when taken in at the eye, heart and ear, open the world to us in ways that make a deep impression on the psyche and refine the edges of the human spirit.  It's to be expected, perhaps, that as time passes, certain archaic cultural touchstones erode and slip away, slowly but inexorably. I'm sure there are sayings and cultural knowledge shared amongst my great-grandparents and their contemporaries that are no longer part of the popular mindset and would be unrecognizable to me.  And no doubt by the time this current century turns, much of what is familiar to us culturally, many times by osmosis, may be forgotten, usurped by different touchstones, sayings, knowledge and experiences. That is, after all, one of the meanings of the word PAST.... a word that has something of missing or vanished in it, even as we speak it.

 Who knows if anyone will have seen "Gone With the Wind", "The Wizard of Oz" or "To Kill A Mockingbird" a century from now; or if mankind will still pepper conversations with quotable Shakespeare ("to thine own self be true", "such stuff as dreams are made of", "we have seen better days") or the Biblical references we take for granted ("having the patience of Job").  [Does anyone under the age of 30 know that the titles of Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath and Lillian Helman's play The Little Foxes are from Bible texts?]

If young people are meant to perpetuate at least a fraction of what we have come to know as our cultural history—and one could argue that perhaps they are not meant to—then it is imperative to expose them to the books, films, music and art that we deem representative of man's and woman's struggle and pleasure on this earth, to ensure that these things do not forever vanish, fading into the oblivion that occurs when the last person who remembers has passed on. 

One of the exercises my friend and I devised was a sort of check list, enumerating what we felt must be known by anyone under the age of 30 if they are to forge onward into middle life with any sort of grasp on our cultural past.  Here are some of the questions we posed to one another:

• What 20 books (including complete works or anthologies) should be required of every young person?
• What 10 films (from any era) should they see?
• What 7 television programs (again from any era and including documentaries, series, cartoons, etc.) should they be familiar with?
• What 5 plays should they be required to see?  (In person, watching dust motes fly off the stage floor.... not on film!)
• What 3 operas, operettas or musical theatre pieces should they see or at the very least hear?
• Which 5 pieces of art should they try to see in person if possible?
  

Something to think about. 

And with that, I bid you adieu. Parting, after all, is such sweet... well, you know.

Gardener's Tea

 

Seed Swap

"Bring some seeds.... take some seeds."

Date: Saturday, 19 May 2012

Time: 10am-12noon

Place: In the garden

Bring "extra" seeds you saved from your garden 

(or packets you purchased at the store)

to swap with your neighbors.

Annuals, perennials, vegetables... all are welcome!

If they're your own seeds,
attach a small card describing
when and where to plant them,
how best to care for them,
and where they came from.

Cookies, Lemonade and Tea will be served

  * * *  

For several years I've been inviting my neighbors to walk up (or down) the road to my house for seed swaps in the spring, plant swaps in mid-summer, and bulb swaps in the fall. For every plant, bulb or packet of seeds you bring, you get to take one away. And in mid-winter, we have tea by the fire to talk about what plans we might have for our gardens in the coming season. We've also used this winter get-together to loan one another our favorite gardening books to take home, look over and be inspired.

So many of the plants, bulbs and flowers in my garden are the result of what I like to call gardeners generosity, and I love looking around a neighbor's garden and seeing plants that used to be in my own garden and are now thriving in theirs.

Anyone who has a garden—and who lives near others who enjoy gardening—can host one of these swaps. It's a lovely excuse to get together and a wonderful way to increase the bounty in your garden. (It's also a guilt-free way to thin out plants and seeds you no longer need!)  And if a neighbor you want to include doesn't have a garden?  

Bring a smile... take a smile!

Rite of Spring

"I was thinking of walking down to the cemetery to visit the greenhouse today... do you want to come along?"
At the foot of the road there is a cemetery that dates back to the 18th c. and my neighbor and I  take walks there throughout the year. Its wrought iron fencing runs along the road for about three quarters of a mile and then dog legs to the left and runs another quarter mile down the aptly named Cemetery Road.

The headstones range from early 18th c. slate tablets that rise from the earth like black jagged teeth, to late 18th c. coffin-shaped above-ground vaults, to mid-19th c. Victorian obelisks and dour mausoleums, to 20th c. granite monoliths.  Among my favorite headstones are the ones with young girls perched on top, strewing flowers, or small dome-shaped stones covered with carved baskets of flowers and birds, or the simpler ones which merely have a small Victorian hand on the front, pointing upward.  ("He went thataway...")  

The family names run the gamut, from the everyday to local brahmins whose surnames still grace city buildings, tree-lined avenues and university buildings.  Despite being surrounded by a highway to the west, commercial real estate to the north and south, and neighborhoods to the east, the cemetery is so vast that once you've walked into the center you feel entirely cut off from anything but its own lovely peace and stillness. All the lanes (barely a car's width) run willy-nilly up and down the cemetery's hilly terrain and each is named after a different tree or shrub, which isn't surprising since there are hundreds of trees throughout the grounds. Towering oaks, sugar maples, gigantic bronze chestnuts, weeping willows. There is even a small lake in the center of the cemetery, just down a hill, and the most prestigious mausoleum on the grounds has the very best prospect of the sunset on summer nights. 

By far the saddest area—potters field—is a flat expanse of land that I discovered only a year or so ago, no doubt because of its location down a small dirt road behind a stand of swamp maples... as if to be buried without name or in penury was not shame enough, they had to be placed a little distant from those who had the advantage of income when they passed.  Here there are only small cobbles set in the earth with numbers on them, but despite its forbidding location, some friends and families have come by and placed personal items near these numbered markers:  teddy bears, flags, flowers, cardboard signs with names and birth dates noted in brightly colored paint.  One summer a performance artist placed a small silver bell at each stone, and as the wind blew over them the tinkling sound could be heard past the swamp maples, down the road, and out into the cemetery proper, as if calling out: 'We are here... we are not forgotten."

Along the iron fencing there are several gates where pedestrians can enter and simply roam the grounds. By the front gates there is an overseers cottage and a large rambling greenhouse. Originally intended for the groundskeepers, in recent years the greenhouse has generously opened its doors to the public. A master gardener runs things and is there 6 days a week, selling beautiful healthy plants for a fraction of what they're worth and seeing that all proceeds go to charity. On any given day throughout the year you will find long tables filled with whatever is appropriate for the season:  Pots of pointsettias to adorn Christmas homes and chapels, bedding plants for spring gardens or cascading baskets of hanging flowers for summer gazebos. Throughout the summer my neighbor and I will occasionally go down to look over what's available and invariably bringing home flats of blooms for our gardens. My favorites are always the coleus: copper-edged, black veined, frilly leafed beauties of every imaginable color including lime green, oxblood, and ochre.  

But on this day in late March we didn’t go to buy anything. This was simply our annual “first trip of the season” to let the long-missed scent of soil permeate our lungs and the 80 degree temperatures warm our winter-weary bones. As is usually the case during this first spring outing, the tables were filled with potted Easter lilies, their green-egded buds standing at attention atop tall rigid stems. Within the week they would unfurl like angelic trumpets, their alabaster petals curled back on themselves; but on that day they were still "cooking" in the soil-drenched heat, waiting, as we were, for Spring to arrive in earnest.

On our walk home we indulged our usual habit of reading headstones, saddened by the small stones in family plots that simply said "Baby", and trying to figure out the obscure connection between relatives and offspring, and the convoluted relationships between 2^nd and 3^rd wives and their seemingly much healthier husbands. ("Okay so she was his wife, but this was his child by that woman...")  On this particular day we came across a tomb with a nearly illegible verse poem on one side. She began to read it aloud but then stopped.

“House of cod?  Was he a fisherman??”

I leaned in and read the verse myself and then laughed outright.

“Not house of cod....   House of GOD!?”

We studied another obelisk, clearly the resting place of a soldier, and it was apparently my turn to make a fool of myself. 

“What on earth is a SP.AM. war?" I asked, not noticing the periods. "This has to be over a hundred years old.... how could they have known about SPAM wars back then??”

She studied it for a minute and then turned to look at me.

“Spanish American War ... not SP.AM. !?!?”

Not all is dreary in a cemetery. Sometimes a bit of unexpected mirth lifts its face and winks at you and laughter rings out amidst the rows of the dear and departed.   I hope they didn’t mind.

It's all about the packaging

I am a slave to packaging. Vintage, retro, romantic, foreign. I even go so far as to buy certain brands because of the packaging. And when a company reissues their vintage packaging, as Morton Salt did several years back, I'm all over it. 

 Occasionally I'll panic if I see that a company has "updated" or "improved" their packaging. This means I'll have to find a way to re-use the older package that I have, which in the case of some items is virtually impossible.  (How do you pour the NEW Bon Ami cleansing powder through the holes of the old Bon Ami can?)

Here are just a few of my weaknesses when it comes to packaging:

 Bon Ami

It's the chick on the front that gets me every time... and the primary colors

Clabber Girl Baking Powder

I don't throw out an empty can until I have the new one in my hands .. 

again, for fear that I may never find it again or the packaging will change

Watkins soaps and lotions

A product that dates back to 1868 and still relies on its "apothecary" style labeling

Smith's Rosebud Salve and Minted Rose lip gloss

Anything in a tin and I'm there with bells on but Smith's tins are particularly lovely

 

Flavigny Mints

 I have been buying these since forever and I reuse the tins for everything

from paper clips to pen nibs

Healthy Hoof and Bag Balm "cuticle" cream

Okay, so it's really for horse hooves and cow udders, not human cuticles, but it does work wonders on "gardener's" hands, and the container designs are adorable

  Neals Yard Remedies

Their flower waters, creams, and skin care products are wonderful
and the cobalt blue bottles are icing on the cake.

Wise Woman Herbals
I have their gardeners salve which contains calendula, comfry, Vitamin D,
and beeswax and works wonders on cuticles and small cuts.

Call me nuts but as long as something comes in a pretty container, I'm willing to try it.
(And when the product is wonderful, all the better!)