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Pretty typical mid-twentieth century memoir of buying a place in the country. The author says, "Every time I read another account of how some lighthearted nitwit bought a ramshackle barn in a wilderness just for laughs and turned it into a milk-and-honey paradise—and a book—I got madder." But she went ahead and wrote one anyway. There are three things in this book that might interest certain readers beyond the general "I bought a place in the country!" enthusiasm. The first is the information about maple syrup production (which I found interesting). The second, her stories and advice about wild bird rescues (which I didn't care much about). The third thing is that Elsyth Thane is the author of about thirty other books, the best known of which are the Williamsburg series, and she mentions a few of the books that she was working on, and also talks about her writing process and favourite libraries (which was why I read the book). On the whole, it is a solid entry in the back-to-the-farm genre, and it particularly appealed to me because of the references to her writing career. I suggest that anyone who reads this book would find a little bit of online research into Elswyth Thane's personal life enlightening.
-- About 70 yrs. ago Thane & her husband, naturalist Dr. Wm. Beebe resuscitated a farm in southern Vt. with money & capable neighbors. Initially Thane visited the farm on weekends & holidays & often alone. Her husband's career required travel. Sometimes mother accompanied her. Wooden buckets used to hang on maple trees to collect sap. Thane cared for birds found in the wild & shops. She became a beekeeper. She traveled to England & Williamsburg, Va. to conduct research for her novels. Thane was probably not a parent. Children aren't mentioned. Nonetheless she lived a full life with books, birds, & bees. Now I look forward to reading an historical romance novel written by her & available in local library. -- ( )
A city gal, a New York author of historical fiction, decides to use some of her earnings to buy a place in the country for quiet manuscript work and to give her mother room to grow flowers and relax. And so embarks on a learning experience for mind and muscle. With the simple beginning of a garden for food, the seasons also required work for sugar maples, bees, and haying, amidst which reclamation work of the old house and barns must be done. Learning to use the tractor, install electricity, avoid bears and skunks, to learn the what, how and when of each moment’s requirement – all things new to her – the author eventually wrests a home from the hills of Vermont.
Ms. Thane’s descriptions are vivid – of her acres in the hills, her neighbors, and especially of her adopted finch, Che-Wee. Not a spectacular book, but a sweet little read. If you read the CK, don't let the epigraph which contains some Bible verses scare you away; I don't recall even one other reference to religion anywhere in the book. So, this is a 'safe' one regardless of your ideology. You might especially enjoy it if you are a birder. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence comment my help. Psalm 121.1
Honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Psalm 96:6
Here among the beautiful hills of Vermont, spirit and grace are alive on the earth. The peaceful passage of days sometimes reminds me of a day in the autumn of 1939 when the war was only a few weeks old, and England was under blackout and air raid precautions ruled. I had accompanied a young English girl from London to join her family at Cheltenham, a dreaming town in the Gloucestershire hills. As an American guest at a comfortable hotel there, I was touched and flattered to be adopted as a friend by a beautiful old lady, frail but indomitable, who had already lived through the 1914 war, and having lost her husband was left quite alone in the midst of a new war. Her concern was all for me, the stranger, with a hazardous journey home still ahead of me. In the kindness of her heart she invited me to take tea with her in her own room “at the top of the house,” where she had an electric kettle and made her own teas, with little cakes from the bakery. Together we climbed two flights of stairs, and I at once exclaimed with pleasure at the view from her generous window, which looked towards the gentle rolling heights of the green Cotswolds. Her smile was sweet and brave. “Ah, yes,” she agreed, and added quietly, “’I lift up mine eyes to the hills . . .’”
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
To Elmer La Flamme
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
There must be an easier way to paint wooden sap buckets.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
It was the year 1947 – but for a few dazzling, unexpected moments I didn’t care, and nothing loomed, and all was joy, because the land under my feet was mine, in at least one direction towards the rising horizon of the westward hill the land as far as anyone could see was mine, timber, water, and meadow, and I was the land’s, and together we accomplished and produced, and it was give and take, turn about, and we were grateful each to the other, and we belonged. Yet I was not identified with the place by any chain of past generations who had loved it too and served it and been kept by it. I had bought it, rather impulsively, in rather recent years. But I had bought it was money I had earned myself, which perhaps in a way made it ever more my own than if I had just sat still and inherited it.
When the sun goes down on the farm … it prints the sharp shadows of the hill’s evergreens and maples on the hayfields in front of the house. Just as the tops of the shadow-trees touch the stone wall at the bottom of the field the sun is gone from our side, and all shadows merge into a general twilight, and only the upward slope of the opposite hill … still lies in brilliant light. I stood there, revolving slowly, knowing it had never looked so lovely, and that I had never been so aware.
The blinding flash of feeling, of sentiment, if the abused word must be used, was gone in the space of a few quickened heartbeats. Bu the memory of it has returned again and again – just that particular minute out of a whole autumn, with the shadows long at my feet and the late pink light creeping away across the fields – just that one special evening in the barnyard when swift, unreasoning contentment, all the brighter for being brief, blotted out the Atomic Age.
It was one of those peaks of acute perception, sometimes hardly recognized until after they are gone, which stud an eventful life like milestones.
[Moving many books to the farmhouse] left room on the New York shelves for our more recent purchases piling up on tables and even on the floor as they carried on their mysterious monthly multiplication. He points out that when he removes one book from a shelf the others maliciously spread themselves to fill the hold before another can be inserted, and we even entertain the idea that our library has pups when our backs are turned. It stands to reason that we couldn’t afford to buy all the books we seem to own, but they must come from somewhere, and we don’t approve of stealing so it isn’t that.
We had no animals of our own, but there were half-wild farm cats which hunted all over the place, and probably only the weather had preserved him from their notice so far. I didn’t want a baby bird, and I had no hope that such a drenched and exhausted specimen would live more than a few hours in any case. But at least I could save him from the cats, so I brought him in and dried him the best I could and got some bread soaked in warm milk down his throat and tucked him up in a Kleenex nest in a cracker box in front of the fire. When I went back to look at him an hour later, prepared to find only a little corpse, two bright eyes regarded me expectantly and his beak came open on a horse baby bird plea for More. I fed him again, and changed his Kleenex.
How Che-Wee made his unaggressive way into our unwilling hearts and became a cherished member of the family has been told elsewhere. He was a nuisance, and he still is, but we love him and he owns us. … Che-Wee is a lesson in the art of living. He can’t even read – so far as I know – to entertain himself, but he is never idle or aimless or sorry for himself. Even his resting, bunched up cozily on one foot with the other cuddled into his breast feathers, is purposeful and happy.
… there is the pungent, unmistakable Reading-room atmosphere, out of which occasionally emerge one or two identifiable whiffs like well-thumbed book-leaves or damp wool or latent pipe smoke, but mostly it is just a permanent, amorphous, all-over, not unpleasant Smell, which I am sure I could recognize blindfold in Timbuctoo a hundred years from now.
In the English style of country house nomenclature we have been advised to call the place Little Veracity. Some people don’t think that is a bit funny, but old Wodehouse, Punch, and Thirkell readers like ourselves appreciate the finer points. The fact is, it’s never going to be called anything, and there will never be a shiny station-wagon with a fancy name painted in green letters on the door.
We are still so far short of what we would like to accomplish and of what we might do that I feel a little foolish now about having made what may seem a premature report on progress. But nothing is too little, just as nothing is too much, to do for the land. However slowly you must proceed, whatever it may mean in more obvious and immediate luxuries deferred, it is worth while to do what you can. It may turn out to be more than you think. And in the meantime you have fun. And your values shift a little to the good. And you come a bit unkinked. And finally you may find that you have written another one of those Driven-Back-to-Eden books.
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
And finally you may find that you have written another one of those Driven-Back-to-Eden books.
Postscript: Jody’s life is secure and serene and on a delightful country routine of naps and meals and walks, and there is always somebody’s bed to sleep on the foot of at night if he gets tired of his own basket – and we hope to keep it that way.
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