Then I had to grow up and get a real job.
Do you remember your first job? How much you were paid?
I don’t have the first dollar I ever earned or my first paycheck, but I still have scraps of paper listing most if not all of the jobs I have had. And now I will publish it for the world to see. I have lots of memories (aided by notes) but very few pictures of me in a work setting–funny how that is and I bet I’m not alone.
Like a lot of girls, my very first job was babysitting for neighbors, Jim and Christine, when I was 11 or 12. I was paid 35 cents an hour. Now I sound like I grew up in the Depression.
Then I got to the age when I actually ran an ad in the paper saying I would do ironing, babysitting and cleaning. Ironing, really? Yes! I felt grown up, running and paying for my own ad which cost about $3.75. So that got me my first gig for someone I didn’t know, and earning 75 cents an hour babysitting and ironing.
Over the years I also cleaned houses, scrubbed floors (and waxed them), painted, picked up pecans, pruned shrubbery, picked up corn in fields (my notes say to pay for homescoming dresses), and lots of odd jobs earning money for various youth groups trips and projects.
By the time I moved to Florida my senior year of high school, one summer I earned $5 a day as a waitress for Carpenter’s Steak House (plus tips). Over other summers during college, I cleaned for the town judge and a dentist at $1.70 an hour, drafted blueprints for the mobile home factory my father was involved in for a few years ($1.80 an hour) and did clerical work for the Calhoun County School Board at $2.10 an hour. I worked about two months at a steak house at Panama City Beach (which I thought would be a dream job), earning 75 cents an hour plus tips, averaging about $10 a night. My most unusual jobs were tutoring a businessman in Spain at $2.50 an hour while studying abroad my junior year of college, scrubbing pots and pans for a cookware demonstrator, and altering sleeves on the clothing of a woman whose arm enlarged inexplicably after she had surgery for breast cancer.
And oh yeah, I was also a camp counselor a couple weeks, and a short order cook in my college’s snack shop, and later a dishwasher in the college cafeteria.
Counselor at Lakewood Retreat Mennonite Camp, Fla., me far right. Circa 1972.
My worst job ever was working the night shift at a lumber mill in Florida. I was a “runner” for a huge plywood drying machine earning $2.05 an hour, which would have been ok, but there were no coffee or lunch breaks and when I asked about that my coworkers said you had to get fast enough to grab bathroom breaks or eat your lunch. After two nights, I decided there had to be a better job in town. There was, packing flannel shirts in bags at a sewing factory. I learned much from my coworkers as they talked about who was stepping out on whome, who was pregnant, who was getting a divorce.
During a year of Mennonite voluntary service, I also taught nursery school (and discovered I didn’t want to be a teacher), and organized cooking and sewing classes for middle school girls.
One of the many office spaces I’ve occupied at Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc.,
Mennonite Media Ministries, Media Ministries, Mennonite Media, Third Way Media, and now, MennoMedia.
Some of my coworkers over the years, at a time when Choice Books
was housed in our building. Circa 1995, I’m near the middle in a kelly green dress.
Choice Books used me as a “model” on one of their brochures circa 1975,
as they did most new female staff members. Funky glasses.
And you thought all I’ve done my whole life is just be a writer. Nearing 38 years here, I’m still with my first real full time employer (although the agency has gone through numerous name changes and one merger). I started as a secretary and had to take a typing test on an old electric typewriter. That was before the Depression. Ha. I remember my first training session on a computer, the first time I used a mouse and how foreign that felt, the first time I saw a FAX come in, the first time I got online.
Giving a speech at an award banquet by Skyline Girls Scouts (still circa 1995 with those pearls and fav green dress).
Finding harmony between work and personal life is a gift that not everyone gets or achieves. I know it is a rich blessing to not only have a job, but to enjoy my work. I try to be grateful every day.
What was your favorite weird job you love to remember? Your worst job ever?
Check also my editorial in the summer issue of the magazine I edit, Living, for a piece on kids and helping them get valuable work experience over summer.
(Continued from yesterday’s blog post.)
Imagine two hundred 8 to 11-year-olds at 9 a.m. on a lazy summer morning. You’d expect them to be doing anything but learning difficult classical choral music.
Helen Kemp, a composer and world class conductor was teaching her composition, Prayer Litany, a lengthy and challenging piece based on St. Francis of Assisi’s classic, “Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace” to these children. Earlier Kemp wrote the piece dedicated to “The singing children of Montreat.”
All of my daughters were fortunate to have the opportunity to learn notes with her; in 1996, I got to watch Kemp conduct my youngest child, Doreen. As a writer, I took notes.
Kemp pulled a Slinky toy out to illustrate how if they let their bodies sag down, they would look like a Slinky being held at each end and drooping in the middle. Their notes would drag to the bottom and not come out open and clear.
Then she pushed the timeless toy together so its middle rounded to a nice arch. “If you pull your head up, your notes will come up and won’t be pinched,” she explained.
Helen Kemp, in background, left, conducts 200 children, including Doreen, blonde at far right, sitting up tall.
The children pulled themselves up straighter even while yawning, wiggling, swinging legs, jiggling, stretching, messing with their hair and jumping their legs up and down on the floor. They were kids, after all.
I marveled at Ms. Kemp having enough energy to manage and hold the attention of 200 children two hours a day, five days at a time, while perfecting exquisite music.
After one attempt, Kemp scolded, “Oh come on! That’s a little puny. You can’t sing it with your teeth closed.” She flung her arms wide open to illustrate how their mouths should fall wide to let out the word, “Joy.” For a few minutes, she had the kids sing while she paced around, bending her head to hear which words they were getting, which words they were mumbling. She began slapping her own leg to keep rhythm, gently poking the backs of children to get them to sit up straight, and motioned for heads to be lifted up.
“We don’t quite have the ending yet,” she noted, but it was an observation, not a critique.
Ms. Kemp told the youngsters, “If you can hit the high G on the ending, go ahead and sing it. But not all of you can hit the G, so sing the lower note. Now let’s try the whole thing.” Then she added with a happy look, “I’ve very pleased with you this morning. I know some of you are sleepy, but you’re doing ok.” She knew just how to talk to the children—admonishing and advising without condemning.
“Now this will be a test,” she proposes. “I want you to start the song without me.” A choir of 200 children getting started without their conductor? She goes to a chair and sits with her head bowed, just waiting. So they start, gingerly at first, and without her they sound like Captain Von Trapp’s children singing without him in “The Sound of Music.” They sing dutifully, but without spark.
Towards the middle of the piece, she can’t contain herself. She begins keeping rhythm on her thigh, then throwing her hand wide open again to a pretend audience so the children will be sure to hit “joy” with a full sound.
By the end of the song she is standing, swaying gently, directing with her body but not her hands. When they reach the tricky part where the tempo changes, she is now directing the children openly, waiving aside her proposal for them to sing without her.
The children finish. She takes her glasses off in satisfaction. The kids applaud, swept up in Kemp’s own spirit. She notes they still have “some cleaning up to do” but Kemp is clearly satisfied, knowing the children will be able to nail the number.
Anderson Auditorium on the campus of Montreat College, N.C.
At the song’s debut in Anderson Auditorium on the campus of Montreat College, it is a warm and muggy June morning. The children are children—acting causal, but they sing their little hearts out, hitting the high G on “joy” with enough power that I notice a woman in the seat in front of me shiver involuntarily. It is a goosebump moment, and others around me huskily clear throats and dab noses.
Later, in her after-performance talk with the children, Kemp told them, “This song was written for you. It took me a long time to think about how I wanted the song to sound, and you made it come out like I wanted. That was a gift to me. You made it come out right and helped people worship God today.”
Helen Kemp poses with my daughter, Doreen, right, and a friend from our church, Chris.
As a mom, I was so grateful: not only for this grand experience for my daughters, but for all the people who took the time to nurture our children through the years at camp, the congregation, small groups, their friends and the parents of friends.
Beverly Silver, longtime member at our church, helps comb my oldest daughter, Michelle, when she accompanied the children to Montreat as a chaperone.
And I’m grateful for experiences in the larger church, like at Montreat, and eventually also at Mennonite Youth Conventions which they attended with me because of my long employment working for the Mennonite church. In these larger venues they had experiences impossible to duplicate at the local level and had the thrill of working under masterful teachers like Helen Kemp, Ken Medema and many other lesser known but great musicians.
And worshiping with thousands of other like-minded souls. Like heaven on earth.
Parts of this post appeared originally in my Another Way newspaper column, published by MennoMedia for over 26 years.
I can’t imagine sending my children off to camp for a whole summer like people do in books or movies: not just the expense, but what are families for but to enjoy special experiences together in summer?
Of course I highly value new opportunities and experiences for children. But even a week away at a camp, multiplied by three children, seemed like a huge stretch on the family budget. So I’m grateful for all the experiences our church helped provide for the kids.
Michelle overlooking valley at Montreat, N.C.
For many summers of their childhood, they were able to participate in the Presbyterian Church’s wonderful Music and Worship Conferences held at Montreat, N.C.. They also went to a more traditional church camp in the woods and fields, Paddy Run.
Top: Doreen, middle in pink shorts, at drama camp, Paddy Run, Strasburg, Va.
Bottom: Friend Allison and Tanya at Paddy Run music camp.
For their music involvement we are indebted to John Held, who started a children’s choir at our church. With his beautiful tenor voice and charming Tennessean ways, he got the children interested in singing some pretty high falutin’ choral music, along with enjoying silly warm up music and folksy-guitar-led sing-alongs. He and his wife, Ann, our pastor, took them to the music conference at Montreat for a number of years. John is no longer with us, succumbing to cancer at the age of 59, but his legacy certainly lives on, in part through a fund at our church to help other kids have these enriching musical experiences.
John Held, in a cabin at Montreat, checking music literature.
In the spring of 1996, John told me that composer Helen Kemp would be again leading the elementary aged children at the Montreat Music and Worship Conference (organized through Presbyterian Association of Musicians, PAM). Our older daughters had already been privileged to sing under her inspired direction; that year Doreen would be the right age. Did I want to come along for the week and (ahem) cook for all the kids in our church’s group, and finally see Ms. Kemp at work?
I would and I did, taking advantage of her open rehearsals where I observed first hand her magical ways with children. More on that in my next blog post.
Augsburg Press store calls Helen Kemp “without question, the grande dame of children’s music in America. She knows the child’s voice and understands that the body and spirit are equally important.”
Kemp has been known internationally as a specialist in the area of training young voices. She has been a guest conductor in all 50 states, five provinces of Canada. She has written books and prepared resources that have become standard in the industry. One of her compositions, “Praise, O Praise the Lord” is billed as “easy two-part literature—a wonderful way to introduce the concept of singing in harmony.”
As recently as two years ago (2011), she gave a homily at her alma mater, the Westminster Choir College. I believe she’s still living but has to be nearing 90.
For some 38 years I’ve straddled Presbyterian and Mennonite worlds, having been brought up in the rich tradition of Mennonite a cappella singing. But I have to say our small (Pres.) congregation’s singing is not too bad either. We have a tradition of singing only with a piano, in a sanctuary built to enhance live acoustic sound (rather than the deadening effect of carpet and drape), so people actually sing heartily, rather than being drowned out by an organ. Plus we’ve had a long history of having the head of the vocal music department at James Madison University as the church’s volunteer musical director, John Lyon. Hearing and singing good music each Sunday is a gift not all kids get. I’m happy to say our current assistant to the pastor, Tonya Menard, continues the tradition of a fine children’s choir at Trinity.
All of our daughters found their high school niche and most of their friends in music programs at school: band (concert, marching and jazz), two in honors choir, piano, flute, trumpet and French horn lessons.
Music with friends: Tanya on flute, Michelle on French Horn, friend Allison on bassoon. Note husband in background enjoying his living room symphony.
Tanya eventually followed a career in music, majoring in flute and music industry at JMU, and is now artistic director for the Charlotte Symphony, N.C.
We found that most kids participating in music programs in the public schools to be the kind of kids who were so busy practicing with their various ensembles they didn’t have time for the typical high school vices of drinking and drugs. I also noticed that many of the kids in choir were kids who sang in church every week.
A music camp at Paddy Run.
One of our daughters, in her “senior sermon” at church before graduating from high school, talked about the theme of contentment and how much her study and practice of music had contributed to happiness in her life. And while she acknowledged that she learned a lot about music in school, she said, “The church has given me this gift, from Sunday after Sunday of singing hymns, and learning at an early age how to match pitch, which is a fundamental of music. I know that God gave me this gift of music through the church, for which I am so joyful. Music has given me a place to fit in through school and served as an outlet for my emotions. I will likely not follow it as a career but always enjoy it as a hobby.”
Next time I will describe what it was like to observe Helen Kemp, the grande dame described above, at work conducting this child and 200 others.
A tradition at Montreat: paddling on Lake Susan.
Come and enjoy musical Montreat with me tomorrow.
We moved five years ago and have not been able to grow spinach in our new garden. It is a great garden with much better soil than at our old rocky place … but spinach does not thrive here.
Here is my one lonely spinach plant that came up this year.
For several years, I’ve been listening to my neighbor, Harold, tell me I ought to try eating lambsquarter. Harold is in his eighties and whenever we have a gardening question, we ask him. (You can spell lambsquarter like that or as two separate words, the dictionary says).
If you garden in North America, you have likely seen this weed. It is ubiquitous and fierce to pull if you let it go like we sometimes do at the end of the season and it grows to be 4-5 tall.
Of course it is no good to eat when it gets like that, but when it is smaller and fresh especially in spring, Harold said he welcomes and loves lambsquarter—along with his dandelion greens.
Small lambsquarter growing all over my garden.
So this week instead of weedeating the tall plants that always grow along the edge of our house, we ate weeds, and loved them—in a fresh salad.
Lambsquarter with a bit of cilantro.
I’d like to try sautéing them with a bit of onion and garlic too and serve with a splash of vinegar like collard or turnip greens.
The dressing I used on my small lambsquarter salad was from a slaw recipe from my niece-by-marriage Jessica, who was about five months pregnant at the time she made this for our extended family when we were on a camping/cabin family vacation in Kentucky. She talked her dear husband into driving one hour each way to fetch soy sauce that had been forgotten. I thought that was pretty remarkable: that she asked her husband, and that he went! The salad was remarkable too: it is a very common recipe, but always tasty. First is her recipe, then how I adapted it for my small lambsquarter salad.
Keeping lambsquarter fresh in a jar of water until ready to fix.
Jessica’s “Kentucky” Salad (Cabbage slaw with Ramen noodles)
Salad
3 packages Ramen noodles only (I used chicken flavor)
2 one pound bags of shredded cabbage (or shred it yourself)
1 cup slivered almonds, browned lightly in butter in a skillet
2 bunches green onions, chopped to small rounds
(Can be prepared ahead of time; refrigerate until serving)
Dressing
1 cup sugar
¾ cup olive oil
½ cup cider vinegar
2 Tb. soy sauce
Shake dressing together to blend.
Add Ramen noodles and dressing to cabbage mixture at the last minute.
Serves 15 or more with leftovers, which are great, even though the Ramen noodles get a bit soggy.
Lambsquarter Salad
1 cup lambsquarter leaves
¼ crumbled Feta cheese
¼ cup pecans, chopped
½ cup fresh strawberries, slivered or quartered
Wash weeds thoroughly.
Snap off leaves.
Add cheese, pecans, strawberries or any of your favorite condiments. Serve with your favorite dressing.
I had some of Jessica’s leftover dressing (described above) from an earlier salad, which I had refrigerated. Naturally the olive oil congealed and looked gross. However, I put it in a glass measuring cup, heated it briefly in the microwave until I could stir it up again. I served it warm on the salad—it was like a hot dressing on greens which many people love.
I especially loved that we were eating free food and loving it! Here are some more recipes for serving lambsquarter leaves.
But guess what I spied in the garden today: a few shoots of new spinach that I had replanted. It’s a little late, but with the wacky weather we’ve been having, it may stay cool enough to mature. A gardener or farmer is nothing if she doesn’t have hope!
Do you have a tasty weed to recommend? Any recipes to share?
I often walk the nearby campus of Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community for exercise or as a break from my job at MennoMedia. From March to November, a wide array of flowers can be found. I used to walk this ground while a student at Eastern Mennonite University when it was “only” a pasture field filled with cows and cow pies. It was a place for me to escape back to my farm roots.
It is not lost on me that someday I may walk this campus as a VMRC resident; I certainly don’t have my name on a waiting list, but one never knows. It is a good place. I’m told that some flower beds are planted and groomed by residents who choose the varieties. So on a recent morning I “picked” (by photo only) some gems to share. Stroll with me and enjoy.
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.
Song of Songs 2:11-13
Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. Luke 12:26-28
All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,but the word of the Lord endures forever. I Peter 1: 24-25
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Genesis 1: 11-12
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. Song of Solomon 2:1
Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into. ~Henry Beecher, Life Thoughts
Earth laughs in flowers. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Hamatreya”
I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. ~Emma Goldman
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Afternoon on a Hill”
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. ~Walt Whitman
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. ~Chinese Proverb
Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they’re killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? “Sweetheart, let’s make up. Have this deceased squirrel.” ~The Washington Post
Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul. ~The Koran
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet
If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. ~Terri Guillemets
Bible quotations from Bible Gateway.
Flower quotations found at http://www.quotegarden.com/flowers.html
Growing up, no one (at least in my sheltered northern Indiana community) ever heard of putting fruit in a green lettuce or tossed salad. The first time I ever had grapes in chicken salad I thought, ooh, that’s weird, how can it be good?
Of course, kids are notorious for not wanting their mashed potatoes to touch their chicken or green beans—ever. Mom made jello salads with fruit in them, or fruit salads with just mixed fruits, but put fruit in a lettuce or green salad? Not so much. (In those days, we only ever ate iceberg or garden lettuce.)
It’s amazing how cooking in North America has changed in the last 50 years—and fun to imagine how cooking and foods might change in the years ahead.
An elderly neighbor and good friend lost his wife about ten years ago. Charles wanted to pass on to me some of her cookbooks.
Partial cookbook collection of Letha Townsend, a renowned gardener and one of the first farmer/couples to bring goods to the Harrisonburg Farmers Market. After she died, I wrote a tribute in my Another Way newspaper column here.
Even though I have little use for the actual recipes, they are fascinating to browse for the history and the community connections.
(I love the august names some of these have, such as “Woman’s Society of Christian Service.” Whoo. And I love the drawing of the firefighter on the front of the Ladies’ Auxiliary cookbook who ends up looking more like a witch stirring a brew, you know?)
Another type of cookbook that was very popular in the day was the one that came whenever you purchased a major piece of kitchen equipment, like a stove (of course) or a mixer, or even a piece of farm equipment: the famous Troy Bilt Tiller.
That one at least makes sense, given the fact that tillers are for gardens, ergo:
And in that cookbook, I did find a recipe mixing fruit in a garden salad: of course it comes from exotic California:
Unfortunately, most of these cookbooks don’t even have dates in them. If you’re going to the trouble of making a cookbook (and I have many more “fundraiser” cookbooks on my shelf) date them!
My most-used “fundraiser” cookbook, from my home congregation, North Goshen Mennonite, Ind.
But I have learned from friends, colleagues and church cooks the delicious art of mixing things up a little more, and the results are mostly enticingly good.
Here’s a simple salad perfect for the mid-Atlantic region in May when fresh strawberries are coming on, and some greens from the garden, and maybe some radishes. Add some nuts, crumbled feta cheese or other, and Kimberly’s simple but tartly tangy dressing and you have an awesome lunch or dinner side dish.
Finding harmony in the kitchen–between new dishes and older, or between the way your mom used to cook and what you enjoy now–can be a metaphor and example for appreciating diversity in other areas of life.
If you grew up in the 50s and 60s, what are your strong memories of foods from that era?
Enjoy. From my book with about 100 recipes, Whatever Happened to Dinner: Recipes and Reflections for Family Mealtime
Raspberry Poppy Seed Dressing
Kimberly Metzler
I tried a raspberry poppy seed dressing at Bear Trap Farm in Mt. Solon, Virginia, during one of my husband’s work Christmas parties. After hearing me talk about it, a friend made up this recipe for me.
1/3 cup / 75 ml red wine vinegar
1/3 cup / 75 ml canola oil
1/8 cup / 25 ml sugar (or splenda)
2 tablespoons red raspberry jam
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
1 small onion, chopped
2 teaspoons poppy seeds
Blend all but the poppy seeds in blender until smooth. Then stir in poppy seeds. Refrigerate.
Someone recently did a Google search and found my blog using the search phrase, “finding harmony working and mothering.” It showed up in my blog stats and of course I pounced on it for a topic I’ve been meaning to write about.
But you see, I haven’t written about it because, let’s face it, I raised my kids while holding down a half time job a generation ago. Swallow. That makes me sound old but since I’m finally gonna be a grandma I can deal with it. (If you haven’t read about that yet, it is here.)
And truly, raising children in the 80s and working outside the home was done without cell phones or smart phones or texting or even the Internet or blogs or Facebook. Mostly I wonder how I managed childcare and a career and all that juggling without a cell phone. But I think I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with the distractions of Facebook and smart phones where you are tempted to be “always on” even when you’re playing with your kids.
Michelle enjoying the electronic piano at the sitter’s house.
Mostly we did it with the support and wiping-noses-and-bottoms help of a wonderful neighbor, Linda, who took care of our children when I worked, for most of their first five years, and before and after school until they were old enough to stay home on their own. Linda was loving, involved, nurturing, and took time to read, color, play and more with the children. She was in many ways their second mom.
Our children loved their “big brother and big sister”, the sitter’s children.
I have written about these years extensively in my column and also a book, Working, Mothering and other “Minor” Dilemmas that was published in 1984 by Word Books who even put out a hardcover edition (some hardcovers apparently still available thru Amazon). It was one of the first mainstream Christian books published on the topic, I believe. If I had written that book today I would have also had to be blogging about the topic, tweeting about it, Facebooking, yeah. Getting books published, especially by a major Christian publisher was a lot easier in those days. Our staff photographer, Al Brubaker, from Mennonite Media even did a low key photo shoot for an article and the book jacket.
Article on “Taking kids along on business” appeared in Christian Living.
But the work of raising children, whether you are a mom or dad and holding down a full or part time job, either in or out of the home, has never been very easy. Many a morning my arms ached getting out the door with a baby in my arms, a toddler tagging along, while toting a diaper bag, briefcase, lunch bag, and pocketbook (if I was dumb enough to tackle that without making multiple trips). I’m afraid I drug my kids out of bed and to the sitter’s many a morning looking like rag muffins.
Honesty in blogs: Rag muffin number 3 looking bright eyed and very bushy tailed.
And even when you had the best babysitter in the county and the best back up and emergency plans, then chicken pox would come along and that changed everything.
What do you do when the kids get chickenpox? You hire the cat sitter.
When the children reached the age they could go to preschool, that brought them new friends and activities, but also new juggling as we tried to manage running them to preschool, then back to the babysitter’s, and then back to work. I had a very understanding employer.
Tanya, smiling cheesily like kids do on the back row, light blue shirt.
My job did involve some travel which I enjoyed even though it was another “dilemma”—can I take one or more of the children along? Who could I drop off en-route at Grandma and Grandpa’s house? Can the whole family go?
The trusty old station wagon carried us to Lancaster, Pa. for a Sunday night speaking gig.
I think each of my now-grown daughters would say they never really resented my work outside the home, and even find it somewhat reassuring as they contemplate how to do the same in the future.
Doreen’s very first dorm room, when I took her to the Mennonite convention, Normal, Illinois, 1989.
They turned out—with the help of Linda, a supportive family (Mom and Dad never complained when they had to help pitch in when I dropped them off on my way to Chicago or meetings in Indiana or one of many Mennonite church conventions), our church and their mostly wonderful teachers in our public schools—AMAZINGLY well. My oldest daughter wrote her own take,“The Daughter’s Revenge,” here.
Me and my oldest daughter, Michelle, lingering a few minutes on the babysitter’s porch.
But of course I’m prejudiced. And thanking-my-lucky-stars-and-the-good-Lord-happy.
Dropping off Doreen at the babysitter’s house.
Photo credits and more: My unending thanks to our sitter for all her love and care, and also for the top two and bottom two photos from her home.
Many of us grow up and find that foods we couldn’t stand to eat in childhood are now favorites. Many things about us change as we grow and mature, including our taste buds.
Rhubarb is one of those things for a lot of people grow into. It may also be like cilantro in that some people truly have an aversion to something in cilantro that is repulsive. There is even a blog (wouldn’t you know) on it with a list of cilantro-free restaurants!
I decided if there is a blog on cilantro, there’s probably a blog of rhubarb recipes, here.
As a child, we liked to try and chow down some rhubarb raw just for the fun of feeling the pucker up. At our house, my dad liked it, so Mom would make a rhubarb pie especially for him, which I thought was pretty awful. So I went through many years of having nothing to do with rhubarb, until my youngest daughter somehow fell in love with it and during the almost four years she lived at home after college before starting grad school, she bought and started a plant. It is now going gangbusters.
And Doreen found and perfected making this recipe that is too easy, adapted from Mennonite Recipes from the Shenandoah Valley by Phyllis Pellman Good and Kate Good, (Good Books, 1999). It was originally shared by Karla Good from Harrisonburg. I also have a few recipes in that book.
Get your hands on some rhubarb either from your local farmer’s market or your own patch and get cooking!
And I’m curious, did you like rhubarb growing up? Do you like it now?
Rhubarb Crunch
1 cup flour
¾ cut quick dry oatmeal
1 cup brown sugar, packed
½ cup butter, melted
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 – 1 cup sugar, depending upon your taste for tart rhubarb
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 cup water
2 cups diced rhubarb
(You can add 1 tsp. vanilla, but it is just as good without)
Mix together flour, dry oatmeal, brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon. Set aside.
In saucepan, mix together sugar, cornstarch, water and vanilla. Cook until thickened.
Place half of crumb mixture in an 8 x 8 pan.
Spread rhubarb over crumb mixture.
Pour cooked mixture over rhubarb.
Top with remaining crumbs.
Bake at 450 degrees for 30-35 minutes, or until rhubarb is tender.
P.S. I forgot to photograph my final product, we were in such a hurry to eat it! If you have good recipe and picture of rhubarb something, send it and I’ll share it here!
Local peeps: if you want some fresh rhubarb, let me know and I’ll cut and share some for free. For sure!
Thanksgiving 2012, at my sister-in-law’s home.
Jay B. Landis recently published a book of fine poetry, “Verse Assignments” which I have been enjoying. He was a professor of mine at Eastern Mennonite University and taught in the English department over 50 years, which was my major. But I’m finding out much I didn’t know as I’ve been reading both his small volume and his wife, Peggy’s “Kitchenary” memoir, both published at the same time.
J. B., as we called him in college (not much reverence for professorial Dr. or Mr. or Mrs. at EMU, I’m afraid) includes in his collection an evocative short poem entitled “When To Pass the Bread:”
At home, in Pennsylvania, we passed the bread first.
Always, for company,
and in aunts’ and uncles’ dining rooms,
the bread went first,
afterwards butter and jelly.
Marrying a Virginian, I learned
you can pass the meat first,
the bread later,
perhaps after the potatoes or even with the salad.” … (excerpt)
For more information on the book see the website Verse Assignments. Used by permission.
I grew up in northern Indiana, a Yankee for sure, and married my Virginia-born and bread sweetheart, Stuart. Luckily for him (and me too) I had already been broken into southern ways, living in north Florida for a year, and then Kentucky for another, and had three years of Virginia living (although let’s face it you don’t really encounter true Virginia living on a college campus, right?) before I ever ran into him (or rather almost fell down at his knees, but that’s a story for another time).
I think that usually when we had company in Indiana, the tradition was to pass the bread first. Mom frequently invited folks from church, which we loved, especially if they had kids. I loved helping Mom “set the table pretty” (as we said) and I can still see it in my memory but I doubt we have any pictures of her clear and bright green bubble china and the simple but special glasses we saved only for such occasions.
Dad ready for the blessing, my parent’s home, Indiana, Christmas dinner, circa 1988.
(Not Mom’s original green china or glasses.)
I still love to set the table pretty—and the moment when we all sit down and have a blessing. And then, well, somewhere along the line, without even realizing it, I guess I’ve gotten used to passing the meat first. I guess I’ve become Virginian or Southern if passing the meat first makes you that.
More likely, the controversy is whether you go clockwise or counterclockwise, and no matter how hard you try to get everything going one direction, something (the gravy, the butter, the salad) is sure to go the opposite. Not that it matters.
The thing I remember most though from my husband’s family is my late father-in-law’s usual post-prayer benediction of “Folks, take bread and eat.”
My father-in-law, Hershal, at the far end of this picnic table, circa 1987.
I think he said this partly to encourage us to get on with it—let’s pass stuff, I’m hungry. But it was also a blessing reminiscent of Christ’s own pronouncement and blessing at the last supper, in Matthew 26:26: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat ….’” My professor’s poem also points to the sacramental quality of passing the bread before the meal.
I’ve learned many other southern or Virginia customs, traditions, and tastes over the years, including a love for sweet tea, grits, country ham, turnip or collard greens with a splash of vinegar, the savory taste of green beans cooked for an hour with ham or bacon seasoning. I know: the long cooking ruins any hint of vitamins, (and I also love gently cooked or sautéed green beans with garlic or maybe seasoning salt) that have just turned bright green. But if you look at long-cooked green beans as a “savory” side and not your main nourishment, you can learn to appreciate them.
When we try to find harmony across cultures and families, a great place to start is the dinner table.
When do you pass the bread at your table? Or maybe you’re saying, uh, who passes anything? Who sets the table? I’d love to hear comments!
A table of mostly bonafide Virginia eaters, and at this meal the meat and bread would have been passed at the same time: in a sandwich! My bro and sis in-law Richard and Barbara, daughter Doreen, yours truly, husband Stuart, friends/former neighbors Bob and Barbara, bro-in-law Nolan, and neighbor Harold. Photo taken by his wife, Willie, who does a great job taking the time to get photos right: people looking at camera, curtains closed in the back to avoid glare. Thanks, Willie, for sharing this photo.
Our immediate family, Christmas breakfast 2012, clockwise:
Doreen, Stuart, Michelle, her husband Brian, Tanya and her husband Jon.
***
My 2010 book, Whatever Happened to Dinner? has some Davis Virginia specialties in it, but also recipes from a wider group of families from my office.
Reblogged from www.Mennobytes.com
One of my favorite stories in Fifty Shades of Grace: Stories of Inspiration and Promise is that of John Perkins. John is the author of the now-classic Let Justice Roll Down.
First a little background.
In the mid-’90s I was asked to be on an anti-racism team for Mennonite Board of Missions (which became Mennonite Mission Network in 2001). Many teams from the church agencies, colleges and some churches attended intensive trainings: five days at a retreat center here, four days at a conference center there, and eventually many follow-up team meetings in various cities. My three daughters were still school age so they weren’t necessarily happy when I went away, especially for a week at a time.
After intensive training and team work, one of our final meetings in that process just blew up racially. It was painful for all involved. We had tried to come to a consensus about a statement that would be made to the denomination, and ultimately our caucuses could not agree. We were angry and I was fighting tears. I had never been so disillusioned about hope for understanding across racial and ethnic lines in my life. I could not bring myself to participate in the closing communion. I went home severely disappointed.
Several months later I heard John Perkins speak at the annual meeting of the American Bible Society. At that time, the ABS invited and paid for representatives from various denominations to attend their National Church Advisory Council. The agenda looked good but my boss couldn’t go, so he sent me. I’m always up for a trip to New York City.
I was quickly and emotionally swept up in Perkins’s message of God’s love and desire for reconciliation between races. Perkins shared his testimony and many stories from his long and painful work for racial reconciliation, and economic and social justice. He had been beaten and tortured in the days of boycotts, marches and unrest in the South. Here was a man who had truly suffered (not just attending long meetings): his brother was murdered because of racial misunderstanding.
Perkins restored my hope and faith that people could get along across the many boundaries that divide us. He went beyond reconciliation to development: understanding innately that unless people are empowered to find the means to economic development, they will continue to struggle in many realms. To the old “give a man/teach a man to fish” adage, Perkins said it is the man or woman who owns the pond that will eat fish for a lifetime. Perkins had to drop out of school when he was in third grade but has received five honorary doctorates over the years. I could see he carried the wisdom of a Solomon. I wept as I felt that Perkins, and God, were speaking directly to me. It was a time of healing. As I was leaving the meeting, Perkins and I were able to share a taxi to the airport. I tried to put into words a little of what his presentations had meant to me.
Vera Mae and John Perkins filmed by Jim L. Bowman for the documentary, Journey Toward Forgiveness
Fast forward a couple years when Mennonite Media (now morphed into MennoMedia) began working on a string of documentaries, which aired on national TV beginning with Journey Toward Forgiveness. Our production team researched unusual and profound stories of forgiveness and my mind went to John Perkins’s immense suffering and, ultimately, forgiveness. I gave him a call. Would he be willing to participate in our documentary, telling his story? He would and did and actively promoted the documentary for many years, taking along copies of the video to his many speaking engagements.Fast forward a bunch more years to working on Fifty Shades of Grace. (Earlier I wrote about the editing/compiling process here.) Now in his early 80s, I wondered if Perkins was still speaking and writing. Would he let us share his story in Fifty Shades? I emailed the contact person at the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation and Development (which is now named for his son, Spencer Perkins, who died suddenly in the late ’90s).
A week or two later, I got a phone call out of the blue. We receive numerous phone calls at MennoMedia that I sometimes handle, from people who have heard our radio spots on various topics like mental illness, drug addiction, grief. It took me 10-20 seconds to realize it wasn’t a radio spot caller. It was John Perkins himself. He was responding to my email message. He wanted to make sure I had gotten the message that he was happy to have his story included and would look for ways to promote the book in his speaking and appearances. (I just learned he is speaking in Richmond, Va., May 15, 2013.) He has two recent books of his own out: a memoir, Love is the Final Fight and Leadership Revolution: Developing the Vision & Practice of Freedom & Justice (with Wayne Gordon).
To read John’s brief but dramatic story in our book, I hope you’ll buy Fifty Shades of Grace. And if you’re in the Harrisonburg, Va., area May 9, bop on over to Park View Mennonite Church fellowship hall between 3:30-6 p.m. on your way home from work or before your dinner to pick up a couple of copies. It’s on 30 percent discount until May 9.
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