Roamings

Friendship Focus

June 4th, 2024

Make new friends, but keep the old…One is silver and the other gold. This simple song has run through my mind thousands of times since childhood. I think I first learned it in Girl Scouts. Down through the years, though, I’ve never really considered which kind of friendship is silver and which is gold. To my way of thinking, both are platinum.

Interestingly, the author of the poem that led to the song was of the definite opinion that old friends are preferred. Friendships that have stood the test—time and change—are surely best, he wrote. New is good, but old is best.

Joseph Parry was born in a cottage in Wales in 1841. He was 13 when his family immigrated to America where he worked as a miner and an ironworker in Pennsylvania. Later, he returned to Wales, studied music, and became a professor at the University of Wales. He set to music several traditional Welsh writings that were performed widely in both the United Kingdom and the United States during the 1800s.

Joseph Parry

Perhaps the inspiration for Parry’s poem came from the Apocryphal book of Sirach: Here is the 1611 King James version of Chapter 9, Verse 10: Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine: when it is old, thou shalt drinke it with pleasure. If you prefer, here is an updated translation of the verse (New American Bible, Catholic Edition 1970): Discard not an old friend, for the new one cannot equal him. A new friend is like new wine which you drink with pleasure only when it has aged .

That word “only” bothers me.

Back in February, I drove to Savannah, GA for an annual book fair and an immersive weekend writing workshop. I did not know the couple, both authors and instructors at the University of South Alabama, who were conducting the workshop. When I first stepped into the candlelit private dining room at Savannah’s historic Marshall House hotel on Friday evening, I had never met any of the other dozen people who registered for the workshop. We and our instructor/hosts surrounded a long table narrow enough for conversation around and across. Bound by the threads of all being writers, we sipped wine, shared backgrounds, and forged new friendships. Our feast of conversation was non-stop that evening except for delicious bites of our crusted grouper dinner.

Our weekend home for the Savannah Book Fair 2024, the historic Marshall House is the oldest operating hotel in Savannah. Its building dates to 1851. Its cozy rooms and gathering areas, including the wrought iron-trimmed balconies visible here, helped forge new friendships.

Over the weekend, we listened together in small groups to established writers, including John Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried), Jeanette Walls (The Glass Castle), Alice McDermott (Charming Billy), and others. We checked out local restaurants, walked the beautiful squares of Savannah, and, in small groups with our instructors, critiqued each other’s efforts at poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction. These new friendships did not require aging in order to be appreciated. We dranke of that pleasure right then and there, and many of us have stayed in touch.

Jeanette Walls

Balcony gathering of the Bayberry writers

Sunday poetry session at the Marshall House

In May, an “old” friend and her husband invited me to attend the Santa Fe International Literary Festival. She and I had become friends years ago when we both served on the planning committee for the annual Writing Today conference at Birmingham-Southern College, and we’d stayed in touch even after they moved west.

At the other end of the friendship spectrum, we dranke the pleasure of many memories. We enjoyed together the opportunities of the Santa Fe festival, including on-stage interviews with David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon), Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See), Kai Bird (American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer), and Anne LaMott (Help, Thanks, Wow and Imperfect Birds), among others. We enjoyed meals inside Santa Fe’s oldest restaurant, on the patio of another, and in the plaza outside the festival venue.

Courtyard of a Canyon Road gallery

Book reading is alive and well.

Hospitality and fun with long-time friends

We drove and walked the Canyon Road, tastefully crammed with galleries of all sorts. And we relaxed and traded stories, as old friends do, long into the evening of my last night in Santa Fe.

Within that span of months from February through May, there were other encounters with long-time friends and with new ones: breakfast downtown with a log-time friend and her husband passing through Birmingham on their “visit every state” bucket list tour; a surprise visit with long-time friend and wonderful editor of one of my books; several new friends (and old) among the sculptors at the Magic of Marble Festival in Sylacauga.

I treasure the opportunities throughout the years to savor friendship—staying in touch and reconnecting with long-time friends on the one hand but also encountering new and often unexpected friendships just as meaningful. I am also grateful to have lived for thirty years in a neighborhood full of not just neighbors but true friends both old and new.

Platinum all around.
Exploring PEI

January 17th, 2024

Somehow, I read my way through childhood without encountering Anne of Green Gables. Knowing what I know now, I’m certain I would have liked the gregarious and adventurous Anne Shirley just as much, if not more, than I did Heidi, the four March sisters of Little Women, or Nancy Drew.

When we pulled up in a sprawling yard on Prince Edward Island one sunny morning last August, I knew nothing about the original owners of the quaint farmhouse in front of us. I had yet to understand a reference someone (who had read the book) made to the “Lake of Shining Waters sparkling just beyond the trees across the way. However, I soon learned that John and Annie Campbell, aunt and uncle to the author Lucy Maud Montgomery, had built this home in 1872 on land that had been in their family since 1775.

It’s not surprising that Lucy Maud Montgomery’s first major publication was the story of a young orphan girl. Maud herself was not exactly an orphan, but she might as well have been. Born in 1874, she was 21 months old when her mother died of tuberculosis and her father placed her in the care of her maternal grandparents. Grief-stricken Hugh John Montgomery remained in the area for some time but then took off for adventure in the Canadian North-West Territories (now Saskatchewan) when his daughter was seven.

The little girl spent much time alone, later acknowledging that this period of life helped develop her creativity as she played with imaginary friends Katie and Lucy who lived in the “fairy room” behind a bookcase in her grandparents’ drawing room. When she was a bit older, she often visited her cousins, children of the Campbells, and referred in her journal to their green-gabled farmhouse as “the Wonder Castle of my Childhood.”

The farmhouse and grounds are now part of The Anne of Green Gables Museum at Silver Bush, which James Campbell dreamed of opening after his cousin became a famous author. It was James’s wife Ruth who actually opened the museum in 1972 after her husband’s death. Today, George Campbell, son of James and Ruth, owns and operates the museum and farm with his family.

So here we were, more than a hundred years later, wandering through this wonder castle, from the cozy kitchen with its wood-fire stove to the upstairs guestroom that displays many of Maud’s hand-developed photographs and an intricate “crazy quilt” she worked from ages 12 to a6. Back downstairs, we admired the sunny parlor where Maud married in 1911. The original organ and furnishings are still there.

I bought a copy of Anne of Green Gables before we left the property, and it made for delightful reading during the rest of our travels.

A couple other things I didn’t know before that August morning: 1) It seems few Canadians use the elegant name Prince Edward Island anymore. Locals have permanently shortened it to PEI (not pronounced “pie” but rather “pee-eee-aye” with all three letters). 2) PEI is known for its potatoes, which have been grown in the island’s iron-rich red soil for more than 200 years. In 2013, approximately 88,000 acres of potatoes were grown in the Canadian Maritime Province known as PEI.

George Campbell wanted us visitors to appreciate the proper way to plant potato tubers on his Green Gables farm, so he took us over to a prepared patch of that iron-rich red soil, did a short demonstration, then handed out hoes so we could practice the technique.

George was standing off to one side in his straw hat, denim overalls, and boots when someone in our group commented that he reminded them somewhat of Grant Wood’s 1930 painting, American Gothic. Then someone else decided we should stage a scene for photographs and handed me a hoe. Our recreation of American Gothic is much more cheerful and not nearly as artistic, but you get the idea.

After all that, we were off up the road to Raspberry Point Oysters for a lesson in oyster farming. A local fisherman who specializes in oyster farming gave us an in-depth description of what goes on during the four to five years it takes an oyster to grow to harvesting size. He explained that PEI oysters are special because the salty influx from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, combined with cool water temperatures in the area, gives these oysters a clean, salty flavor with a “delightful, sweet finish.”

He then encouraged all of us to prove his point by “enjoying” a raw oyster, his definition of “enjoying” including actually chewing the oyster instead of simply letting it slide down the throat.

Now I do love oysters, but my preferred version is an oyster po’boy deep fried. I wasn’t keen on chewing a raw oyster, but my fellow travelers shamed me into it and then grabbed my phone to catch the experience on camera, as you see here. That oyster was a bit salty and a bit sweet, and I did actually chew it, but in future, I plan to stick to my po’boys.
Balmy Evenings and New Vocabulary

September 19th, 2023

I love dining outdoors when weather and view cooperate as they did this particular evening in Baddeck. Out on the pier, overlooking the beautiful waters of Bras d’Or, the Yacht Club offered a balmy setting with gentle breezes. We weren’t overly hungry, so we chose to share a nacho plate with three side orders of slaw. Our server wanted to know what meat topping we wanted–chicken, pork, or donair, which we had never heard of. Donair sounded to me like the name of a fancy car model or maybe an airline company. “It’s a kind of seasoned beef,” she explained, so we ordered that, and it was delicious. Lean ground beef bound together into a loaf with corinander, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, thyme, and cayenne, then cooked on a rotisserie and cut into thin strips.

My thanks to local chef Andy Hay and his website (theeastcoastkitchen.com) for a little background on donair. He describes it as an “East Coast delicacy” that tastes like summer nights, and I would agree. It first appeared in the Halifax area in the 1970s with various opinions about its origins. Some say it’s descended from the Greek gyro, and others think it traces its heritage to the Turkish “doner” kebab.

waiting for nachos topped with donair

early evening view of Bras d’Or from the Yacht Club pier

We finished the evening with a lively Ceilidh. This word, derived from Scottish Gaelic and Irish words for a social evening, is pronounced (kay-lee). In Cape Breton, such gatherings are often called “kitchen parties” because people gather neighbors into their kitchens and then invite a local music group to play.

Our Ceilidh took place in a tiny, white frame parish hall that seated no more than fifty people (locals and visitors) surrounding a raised platform with an old upright piano and some audio equipment. We’d been told we wouldn’t be able to keep from tapping our feet to the music, and that was certainly true. Melody Cameron played the violin, one foot tapping out the rhythm with every note. Her husband Derrick played guitar along with their friend Brian Doyle who joined them for the evening. The music was beautiful–poignant at times and lively at others.

heading for the Ceilidh

Derrick and Melody Cameron with Brian Doyle

A number of us loved the music so much we went back for a second lively evening. This time the piano player’s fingers moved so fast over the keys you could hardly see them. He also played a plaintive violin he’d created himself. The other musician, Neil McDaniel, treated us to masterful guitar, mandolin, wooden flute, and harmonica chords that seemed to echo out of misty hills somewhere. You can find the music of these folks and other Cape Breton musicians on YouTube if you’d like to hear them.

Both evenings featured a short break during which we were served hot tea in china cups and homemade oat cakes that reminded me of Scottish shortbread. After the second Ceilidh, the evening was just a bit crisp under a clear sky full of stars, so we all enjoyed our walk back up the road to the Silver Dart.

Our second evening entertainers
Hello World!

September 12th, 2023

Enjoying Cape Breton

This was the Cape Breton Island sunset I savored from my porch at the Silver Dart Lodge in Baddeck (Buh-DECK) two nights in a row. The lodge overlooks Bras d”or (Arm of Gold), one of the world’s largest saltwater lakes. Inflows from both the open sea and freshwater rivers make its brackish water a fruitful natural habitat. In 2011, the lake was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. I will remember it most for its gorgeous sunsets like this one.

I wondered why our lodge was called the Silver Dart, and I also wondered why this small Cape Breton town had an Alexander Graham Bell museum. Both questions were answered when we visited the museum. Apparently Baddeck reminded Bell so much of his childhood in Scotland that, beginning in 1885, he built a summer estate and several research labs there.

Alexander Graham Bell Museum

I knew, as we all do, about the telephone, but I didn’t know Bell had experimented with aviation and overseen design of the first powered flight in Canada. The Silver Dart (contraption pictured below) was pulled onto the ice of Baddeck Bay on February 23, 1909. More than 100 of Bell’s Cape Breton neighbors witnessed this first flight of a British subject, namely pilot J.A.D. McCurdy. Aviation has certainly come a long way since 1909!

The Silver Dart

As I wandered the various rooms of the Bell museum, I came across a display showcasing Bell’s demonstration of his first functioning telephone at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. That display triggered the memory that my own maternal great grandfather had watched that demonstration himself. Winters Sheridan Mitchell was a farmer in northwest Pennsylvania at the time and rarely left Crawford County. However, his handwritten 1876 diary, which is mostly filled with weather and crop reports, contains a detailed account of the grand trip he and his wife made by train to Philadelphia for the exposition. Among his notes is a reference to watching Bell demonstrate his telephone.