Oscar Hamilton and the Really Old Tree

For two years (another reason I didn't blog at all!) I was a freelance contributor to our local newspaper, Commonwealth Journal. I wrote feature articles, mainly for their insert magazines, and also contributed my photography.

One of my favorite subjects, and articles, was a man who lived in Sawyer, Kentucky, in a very rural part of McCreary County not far from Cumberland Falls (and near the delightful hamlet of Honey Bee!). Oscar Hamilton was 92 when I interviewed him in January 2015 and spryer than either myself or my husband. He showed us around his farm, and brought us to the largest white pine tree in Kentucky. We visited for a while and before we left he gave us a quart of some lovely, dark unpasteurized wild honey that he put up. We promised to come back and visit in the spring when he wanted to give us some of his blackberry starts. We never did.

The other day I thought I'd look up Oscar again and make plans to go see him. Almost immediately I found his obituary. He died last October 10th at the age of "94 years, 10 months, and 24 days." It saddened me to learn this, not that he didn't have a good, long life, but for selfish reasons: we never got to see him again.

I know his life was full and he spent all of it on his farm in Sawyer, at the edge of the Cumberland River (made into Lake Cumberland when he was a younger man). But to think of the world without Oscar in it–well, it just makes me sad. We both knew many "old timers" like him back in New Hampshire–old bachelor farmers, or widowers, who were self-reliant and survived many of life's tribulations and passages, but always on their own steam and with their own resources. They are, indeed, a dying breed of men.

One of the first things Oscar shared with me (I didn't ask) was that he was a life-long registered Democrat. It used to be that most people in rural Appalachia were Democrats, before the Reagan era, in particular, and before other issues hijacked the Republican party (I'm not getting political here, I promise: one reason I'm on a social media diet right now). So I would have liked to have asked Oscar what his thoughts were on the very contentious 2016 presidential year.

We were glad to at least have met Oscar on that cold January day. And at 54 I'm realizing that there might not always be a "next time."

I also got to thinking about Oscar today as this would have been my father-in-law Tom Pond's 90th birthday: **March 9, 2017. Another great man but from a very different world as Oscar. A person is alive only as long as they live in people's memories: two of my children remember their grandfather and our youngest was only a year when "Badda" died in June 2011. Too soon–but there is never a right time to lose someone you love.

I'm going to try and upload the pages of the article here in this post: just click on the images, below, to enlarge and read.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

**March 9 is also our Old Order Mennonite friend Melvin Hurst's birthday (he is 66 today-another self-reliant soul-and his wife, Anna, is my best friend here). It is also Elisha Wilson's birthday. Another Kentucky native, Elisha is very much like Oscar but only a few decades younger–he installed the miles of fencing here on the farm and is true blue. We couldn't be here without any of them.

Rethink:Rural

In the years since I stopped blogging––has it been 2 now?––I have been a freelance contributor to a great website called Rethink:Rural. Recently I was also featured in their "Farming Women and Women Homesteaders" series as part of Women's History Month this March. The opening article, written by my editor Tiffany Wilson, provides some interesting background information. You can also link on my article index here, which is updated whenever I have a new article published on the site.

Rethink:Rural is a website dedicated to the country life and for those seeking to have it! Here's more from their site:

OUR PURPOSE & WHO WE ARE:

When people live in the country, you can’t drive down their long, private driveways to peek into their windows and see what their lives are like. But at Rethink:Rural, you can. 

We’re here to help those who are searching for a simpler, rural lifestyle to get a firsthand view of what that life could be like. We tell the stories of rural people and share how they found their paradise, what they wish someone had told them before they started, and how they made their land fit their dreams. 

We also talk to experts about how you can attain the country life, featuring advice for every step of the land-buying and land ownership process.   

In an age where 80% of the population of the United States resides in an area defined as urban, we challenge you to “rethink rural.”  

Rethink:Rural is operated by Raydient Inc. (d/b/a Raydient Places + Properties). Its purpose is to educate future landbuyers about the land-buying and land ownership process and to lead them to the right property to fit their dreams on RaydientPlaces.com. Raydient is the professional real estate services and development subsidiary of Rayonier, showcasing land for sale throughout the greater Southern United States to people that want their own unique property for outdoor recreation, rural living and/or investment.           

Rayonier has owned and cared for thousands of acres of forestlands across the United States for 90 years. A recognized land, ecological and conservation manager, Rayonier is a leading timber REIT with assets located in some of the most productive softwood timber growing regions in the United States and New Zealand. Rayonier owns, leases or manages approximately 2.7 million acres of timberlands located in the U.S. South, U.S. Pacific Northwest and New Zealand.

I know my editor would be grateful if you checked it out and visited often. Also, if you have any story ideas, don't hesitate to shoot me a line or two about a person, place, rural-related book to review, or interesting topic–even your own farm or country pursuit.

You can always email me at info@catherinepond.com or post below.

My thanks and gratitude for your readership here–it's nice to be back.

And you come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Unsocial Media

The title of this post is rather an oxymoron, I realize. But how "social" is media, really? Since I read it (and clipped it, and fortunately it's on line, too–so then why did I clip it, you ask? You'll have to talk to my inner hoarder...), this article by Andrew Sullivan has haunted me. "I Used to Be a Human Being," appeared as the cover story of September 16, 2016's New York Magazine. It is about what Sullivan calls "distraction sickness" and being bombarded by a constant stream of media, requests, emails, posts and commentary about every subject, as well as useless information. [Do I really need to know that Beyonce is having twins?]

Sullivan has a Smart Phone like most of the rest of the world. I do not. I have a cheap TracPhone that I load with more minutes every six months or so and I use it when on the road or in emergencies, or to text my kids when they're not here. I enjoy that part of it. I can't imagine having a more advanced phone near me 24/7 or the constant temptation to tune out–I was doing enough of that on my home computer, on Facebook, for the past eight years (since August 2008, in fact).

As you know we live on a farm. Stuff happens and phones are necessary. But I've never been able to justify a fancier phone and neither do I want one. If I had a job off-farm or traveled more than I do, perhaps I could justify having one (and yes, Instagram would be a blast but as it is I'm hardly on Pinterest–I enjoy it but it's not tactile enough for me: again, it's the recipe/article clipper hoarder in me). We got our oldest son, nineteen, an iPhone for Christmas on a basic plan. Three years ago my boys and husband each got an iPad (and my husband and other son, almost 17, each have a TracPhone, also). Since that time, with the iPads and the iPhone, everyone is in their devices on much of their down time. There is no letting the genie back into that bottle! So I am glad that we waited so long to computer-ize them (it was also my husband's first computer experience).

It's not that we're luddites (although you could argue that), it's that we're cautious. For a while I've seen how individually isolating this kind of thing is-even the home computer can be a kind of incubus for me. It is seductive, alluring, there all the time and where I can Google virtually anything in an instant and get way too many answers. I can send something to an editor in an instant, I can find many recipes for the same thing, I can spend hours just looking at different websites or searching and collecting things on eBay (that's another thing altogether). For someone with ADD, it is ironic that a computer can provide focus in its hypnotic capabilities. Sometimes I will be on the computer, whether writing, emailing, tweaking and organizing photographs, or, on Facebook, and I'm not even aware how much time has passed.

If I spent the same amount of time doing something productive (well, writing for pleasure, or money, is a form of production) that I spent on Facebook in a given day–without checking the time–I could probably move mountains (or at least laundry piles).

So for me, a Smart Phone has never been an option–not only am I "all thumbs," but I am used to keyboarding the old fashioned-way as I learned on a typewriter after twelve weeks of night classes that I took in high school (because I couldn't fit it in during the day). This summer, before he goes off to college, I will make my son do an on-line typing course, too. Invaluable. I type as fast as I think and, well, that can be a dangerous thing–especially on social media.

I'd reached the same saturation point that Sullivan spoke about, about two weeks ago. In the post-election and inauguration I was saturated by negativity and opinions from all sides and still continuing to give my own. It was a no-win and it was draining. I realize that some people need to vent and need to organize or whatever else they need to do. But for me it was keeping me away from more important things-like my own work, or ideas, or just doing different things with my day.

Obama was our first social media president in that most people over 40 joined Facebook during his presidency (he, too, used social media effectively and positively to help win his elections). During this time, the kids moved on to other social outlets and Facebook became hijacked by adults. For the first time in our lives everyone had a public voice, a forum, and a place to vent and share information about their opinions in an immediate way. I believe this also gave strength to false or alternative facts. We stopped fact-checking or thinking for ourselves and everyone, no matter what their political inclinations, seems locked in their own impermeable bubbles. And it can be exhausting if you let yourself go beyond family photos and sharing recipes or silly Youtube videos.

I've been off of Facebook for almost a week. I honestly don't miss it. I do miss some of my Friends there but they know where to find me (and I do enjoy keeping in touch with old friends who wouldn't otherwise write or even be in touch). I have to say that Facebook is an invaluable resource and I will likely return again, but more sporadically and then for just a quick check-in or post about something on the farm or when I've had an article out.

What have I done to fill that void? Well, I've started blogging again, and walking again. I have a better flow of thoughts and ideas–it's like a valve has been turned back on. There is less "mind clutter" bombarding me throughout the day and it's already cluttered enough.

I've also been writing with a new kind of energy because I'm not putting that same energy into trying to be right on Facebook or to prove a point. The fact is, no one is listening. No one cares. In person, they might but not when you are pontificating or ranting. People shut down, sometimes even if they agree with you. And if you are singing to the choir, wouldn't you rather save that energy for singing with them?

I have many bad habits but this one required my immediate attention. So far, it's working.

Now, about those "Real Housewives"...

You come back when you're ready! 

Catherine

Watching Caesar Go

The sun was out after some late winter severe weather in the past few days. I caught a glimmer of movement in the window that always occurs when a vehicle passes through the farmyard and is refracted by the shining light. Thinking that either my husband or boys were home early, I got up to look out. Nothing. Then I heard a low rumble on the other side of our small farm home and saw a truck pulling a cattle trailer. Inside of it, all alone, was Caesar with his big, black, Angus presence. Of all of the other bulls besides Edgar, who is our only bull for now, he would allow us to pat him on the head through the fence.

"I wish I hadn’t seen that,” I said aloud to the empty house (I am alone now here for long stretches—from 7:30am until 3:30 or 5:30pm—as my sons now drive themselves together to school). So I talk to myself a lot—or to two of our six cats who are allowed in the house.

I knew that Caesar would be picked up today and taken to auction but as I hadn’t seen him one more time since a few days ago I had already separated from the idea of him leaving. Every time an animal leaves the farm a part of us, and a part of our farm, goes with them. Their fate is undetermined as they go to auction—they could either live on another farm or go to the slaughterhouse. As a meat eater one has to accept that reality.

  

But to see that same magnificent animal, behind the relative prison bars of a cattle trailer, riding behind the truck up the hill away from our farm to an unknown future or demise—well, it was devastating.

I was reminded of another goodbye–of when my husband and daughter drove up the hill, pulling a small trailer, on their way out to Colorado where she would live. It was just after my 50th birthday and she had been living with us here in Kentucky for much of that year, in between two stages of her life. For the first time in five years I had everyone under one roof again. For a mother there is no greater comfort than that.

"What people don't tell you is that you lose your children. As beautiful and wonderful as you are now, the little girl whose hair I used to detangle and had bad dreams and used to crawl into my bed? She's gone." 

–Madeline, "Big Little Lies" (HBO)

All was quiet in the darkness of that early November morning-there were not even any birds. So it was fitting that it was like empty nest all over again watching my daughter drive off, at 5am, to an uncertain future where there are no guarantees, only possibilities. I watched until I could no longer see the small, piercing eyes of red tail lights on the back of the trailer–where my daughter's life was placed for safe transit. I listened until I could no longer hear the sound of the car engine on the ridge. I prayed for a safe journey for both of them–round trip for my husband and one-way for my daughter.

And then I went back into the house, and I cried.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Rebooting My Blog–& Middleaged Booty

I used to enjoy blogging, sometimes several times a week. Then, in 2012, we lost our satellite Internet from a lightning strike on our farm and the only time I could blog was on my (very slow-eg. ancient) laptop about once a week or so at our wonderful local city library in Somerset, Kentucky (both of my Mac computers are from 2004 with only one upgrade!). It took two full years for our local phone carrier to install our rural Wifi capabilities and I'd just let our satellite account go because when they came to repair it they said the equipment was outdated and I said, "Well, why didn't someone tell me that years ago?" I'm not a luddite on principal, and not as bad as my husband is, but upgrades are not something I am good at. Or reboots for that matter.

So, that, in short is how I got out of the habit of blogging.

I had also been working on another book, on the 1950s American kitchen, commissioned by a British publisher who decided to not proceed with their American list after I'd finished it in April 2014. [I am happy to say that the manuscript has now been shopped to another publisher, after languishing in a desk drawer for over two years. My bad.]

I was also preoccupied by too much social media (eg. Facebook, especially) which I've recently given up for Lent. I not only had extreme political fatigue from the past two years but I find social media can all too easily become a black hole of time-killing. When I wasn't blogging while we didn't have Internet for a few years, I also became more of a Facebook grazer. At the library, or wherever I could find free Wifi in someone's parking lot (eg. Lowe's or McDonald's), or even our local coffee house, I would check my wall for about ten minutes, maybe post, visit a few other walls and be done with it. Now I am on a complete FAST except for if I want to promote anything in my writing world (which I did yesterday).

A dear friend reminded me that I needed to blog again––and more often. I find this a wonderful way to connect and less psychologically immersive than on Facebook (as I don't have a SmartPhone I'm not on Instagram, as much as I might enjoy that with my interests in photography). Already, in writing this, do I remember how much I did enjoy blogging and the relative ease of writing here. It's often a warm-up to my other writing, too.

And finally, not only have I been busy with my two boys, and the farm world that I live in (more on the domestic end of things), but I was seized with an unprecedented depression. Part peri-menopausal, part situational, part locational (farms can be isolating), part biological––for whatever reason, there it was. Chasing me for many years and then backing me into a corner that I could not effectively get out of. Not without help, at least. This is something I am open about and want to write more about.

Depression in women and menopause have always been somewhat taboo in our mother's generation and even in our own. There are many things other women won't tell you about midlife and this is one of them: sometimes your mood swings and reactions are worse than when you were a teenager. I found out through experience. Then there is the other side of it all, the side that several writers have said that is like "getting your true self back again," after the hormonal broth of the past several decades of a woman's fertile years.

My friends, I'm here to tell you that I'm back. I'm writing more (for publication and for blogs--including Rethink:Rural), I've got a few book proposals in development, and I feel like my 25-year old self again in terms of attitude, outlook, and personality. Everything seems possible again, even if I am 54 and my mirror might say otherwise.

It's been almost a decade since The Pantry-Its History and Modern Uses was published. It's more than time to pick up the pen and start again. [You can browse and read some of my previous published articles here.] After all, I'm about to become an empty-nester for the second time with our oldest son who is graduating from high school, and his brother half out the door himself with his many activities, driver's license, and plans for the future. Both of them want to farm in some capacity––maybe here, maybe near here––and I doubt they'll ever be too far from our orbit. But either way, Mama has her own groove back and needs something to do in the years ahead.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine