"The Forest Woman's Monlogue"

[Hi folks: for your Tuesday enjoyment, a poem by Eberle.  She composed this as part of the prologue to an upcoming production of the Second Shepherds’ Play, for which she’s also composing the music.  The Forest Woman is based on a character in the movie Sorceress (Le moine et la sorcière).]

The Forest Woman’s Monologue

Soon the nights will be warmer
and soon the owls will leave this valley.
They always leave when the Moon
is in her waning and the Eldertree in flower.
That’s when I must be ready to pick the elderflowers
For they won’t wait.

When the owls leave and the nights are warmer
That’s when the fever comes to the valley
And when it leaves we are fewer,
there are always mothers mourning the hollow place
within their arms where a child once slept. 
I must be ready to pick the elderflowers
when they froth open in the moonlight of her waning
when the dew falls warm and heavy
I’ll fill my cauldron to the brim with their whitening blooms
For they save lives.

The priest looks at me sideways when I pass his door at night
on my way to the grove of the Eldertree – such a tree!
Her arms hold generations of us
in the moonlit hollows where her branches curve,
and in the dark where her roots cradle the earth
moistening among the worms and beetles.
The priest lets me go about my work because he has seen
the flower potion heal, and because he too grieves
When children die.

The priest has asked me how
I can have converse with the Eldertree -
for he has no mother and children with him
through the night and so his nights are occupied
with fears of demons and their many forms
leaping and prancing in the moonlight.
He asks me how the tree appears to me,
do I hear voices, he asks, how do I know
the meaning of the tree?
I point to the little black marks
in the sacred book he carries and ask how these
speak to him – does he hear voices? Do they take form?
How does he know their meaning?

He holds the book up, but doesn’t offer it to me,
he says: “This is the Word of God.”

I tell him that the tree is also the Word of God -
how else would the healing flowers bloom
just when the nights grow warmer and the owls
leave the valley, just when the warm dews
settle on the ponds and the fever comes?

But I don’t have time to tell him more,
the Moon is in her waning and the tiny pale fists
of the elderflowers open to her, one by one.
I must go now, to the grove and pick them
For they won’t wait.


Eberle Umbach
© 2010
 

Writers Talk with Eberle Umbach

I’m so happy to see the Writers Talk series beginning & I’m even more happy because we’re starting it off with my dear wife Eberle Umbach.  The facts: Eberle has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Oberlin College & an M.A. from Johns Hopkins, also in creative writing.  She has had her short fiction published in several literary journals as well as The Whole Earth Catalog (I've always thought that was terrifically cool), & a very generous excerpt from her Weiser River Pillow Book was published in the Impassio Press anthology of fragmentary writing titled In Pieces  (you can read the complete Pillow Book right here on Robert Frost’s Banjo.)   Eberle also served as Idaho Writer in Residence in 1988 & 1989.  In addition, as a musician she has been awarded a number of grants by the Idaho Commission on the Arts, especially for scoring work she did (with some help from yours truly) for the films of silent film director/writer/actress Nell Shipman.  In short, Eberle’s creativity, not only in writing & music but in other forms as well, is truly inspiring. 

To get some sense of Eberle's writing, please check out the new Writers Talk blog, where you’ll be able to read the first chapter of Eberle’s novel, The Sportswoman’s Notebook.  So, without further ado….


When did you first realize your identity as a writer?

In grade school and high school I wrote poems that just amazed me by how beautiful they were. In some ways, this has become more complicated over time, and in some ways not.

Describe the creative process involved in any one piece you’ve written—this could be book, a story, a poem, an essay, etc.

I had an unvarying routine for my most recently unpublished novel The Sportswoman’s Notebook - make coffee, sit with my parrot and write in the Pillow Book, then go to my studio and work. I liked having a complete outline written out very neatly, even though I was constantly not following it and rewriting it. As seems to always be the case when I write, one inexplicable image was the start of it and what I kept returning to when I felt lost in it. In this case it was an image that came to me as I was reading Turgenev’s The Sportsman’s Notebook (I’d never read any Turgenev before or since, but I was living in rural Brazil and read ANYTHING in English I could find.) I thought of how the book might be if instead of a narrator who was a hunter moving freely between classes and expressing the dynamics of feudalism, you had a woman narrator/hunter who moved freely through centuries, expressing the dynamics of masculinism. In itself, this was no more than an idly half-irritated thought – but it immediately merged with an image of vampires and other immortal monsters - of Frankenstein, and Mary Shelley encountering in herself the monstrosity of female writing, a doubled narrator - and the image of Elizabeth Bishop who had lived in small-town Brazil with the lover she called her maidservant. The tension between those ideas was what encoded the whole story immediately, in a moment, and I knew all I had to do was unravel it. I think the thrill for me is the experience of being simultaneously the silkworm who spins the cocoon and the woman who unwinds the cocoon into a single thread and weaves it into a dwelling tent. If an image doesn’t make me certain I will feel like that, I know I will get bored long before I find the story in it that is real for me.

Could you describe your relationship to the publishing process (this can be publishing in any form, from traditional book publishing to blogging, etc)

In the years immediately following graduate school, I had several short stories published in literary magazines and felt quite pleased with myself. But I knew that novels were what I really wanted to write. When my first two novels went unpublished in spite of some interest, I was really abysmally crushed though I tried not to admit this (pride not only goes before a fall but comes after it?) I started playing more music and writing less. When I started working on novels again, it was with no illusions as to their probable future. Which was, in some ways, liberating – after I’d exhausted the other emotions. I’ve been working recently with an agent who’s interested in a somewhat fictionalized non-fiction book about the friendships between 19th century women authors that I’m writing and this has been a different kind of emotional roller-coaster than outright failure – sometimes I feel horrified by the thought that I’m selling out – other times horrified by the thought that I’m not even a good enough writer to succeed at selling out – even more afraid of the fact that I’m actually coming to love this book and it’s not really selling out at all. What I’m trying to do now is just stay open to wherever the encounter of writing this way takes me, knowing that that’s the only thing, ultimately, that has reality.    

How has being a writer affected your relationships?
A movie that absolutely possessed me at a strangely young age was The Red Shoes, where the conflict between a woman’s art (as a ballerina) and falling in love leads to her take her greatest dancing role into her own life and commits suicide by dancing herself into a moving train. I also ADORED the ballet in the movie, where a newspaper dances on stage, and an ocean comes right up to the footlights (I was young enough to think these things were real.) But it was the fatal and inevitable horror of the conflict between art and love that consumed me. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I plunged pretty deeply into destructive relationships in the early adult phase of my writing life…and this conflict of identity is still one that gives me vertigo at times. But I’ve learned a lot more about it, and John – you understand this in a way that always brings me back to earth, to you, no matter how far away I’ve gone.

How would you describe the community of writers you belong to—if any?  This may be a “real” or “virtual” (in more than one sense) community.

My primary writing community has always been virtual (in book form) and intensely energizing to me. From early on in my reading life I strongly preferred women authors to the other kind (is literary sexual orientation perhaps genetic?) and in the thrill of 80s fem crit was delighted that I could justify this preference in such an intelligent-sounding way by espousing (tee hee) and even disseminating (har har) theories about the irreconcilable difference between women writing and men writing. But it wasn’t really a theoretical decision – the sense of an imaginary community of women writers that I read, as women writers before me had read, was just this incredibly powerful thing for me. One of the great historic events of my life in this in this virtual community was when I met Audrey – a graduate student in literature – when we were both waitressing in Charlottesville, and our first conversation in that frat boy bar with sandwiches named after sports heroes we’d never heard of was about 19th century women authors and the remarkable happened – I met someone who felt the same way I did about reading and about our literary ancestresses. So we developed an actual friendship within this virtual community and it has been an extraordinary relationship – for 25 years now. I think our dead sisters-in-writing have enjoyed our relationship too; they occasionally appreciate an up-to-date perspective. Ask me about St. Cecelia if you’re curious.

What are your future goals in terms of writing?

Honestly, my immediate goal is to write a publishable form of this book of 19th century women authors and then find a publisher for the novel I’m writing now, Magdala Red. More honestly and possible even more embarrassingly I’d quote George Eliot (a sister-writer whose unabashed earnestness at times makes me feel somewhat less abashed about my own):
 
May I reach the highest heaven.
Be to other souls a cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smile that knows no cruelty,
So may I join the choir invisible,
Whose music makes the gladness of the world!

Bonus Question: If your writing were a musical instrument, what would it be?

I would like to say an Aeolian harp, or the spangled drum of Cybele and Miriam. But more honestly perhaps, a duet between a student-grade Tibetan prayer bowl and a kazoo. A poor thing, but mine own.

Sumerian Hymn to the Bridegroom

[Guest post by my wife Eberle—the only person I have ever known who owns a Sumerian grammar.  We’re off to see Natalie Merchant in Washington state.  There will be a Photo of the Week tomorrow, however, as well as the usual Sunday post on The Days of Wine & Roses blog]

I started reading Sumerian poetry and proverbs in translation about a year ago, and also learning a little bit about the language. Never having come across this body of literature before, I was fascinated by a number of things – these writings go back to 5,000 B.C.E., which is almost unimaginably distant to me, but the proverbs seem vividly alive and human:

“This is the fate of the poor man: when he finds bread, he finds no salt. When he finds salt, he finds no bread. When he finds meat, he finds no condiments. When he finds condiments, he finds no meat. When he finds oil, he has no jar to put it in. When he finds a jar, he has no oil.”

Or, something simple and clever to say before lunch: “Bread is the boat, water the punt-pole.”

The holy woman Enheduana lived around 2300 B.C. and wrote about her evolving relationship with the goddess Inanna. Inanna is a fascinating representation of divinity – warrior, bride and courtesan, occasionally male as well as female, the double evening and morning star, in love with a shepherd, mother of the gods, the Lady of Infinite Manifestation; she gave humanity not only language, but knowledge of arts such as weaving. Her journey to the underworld is the first written version of this descent that would be told in many ways for millennia afterwards. Here’s my translation of one of Innana’s Hymns – the way that sacred marriage in this Hymn unites the sensory and the spiritual is beautiful, I think – even inspiring.

Sumerian Hymn to the Bridegroom

Bridegroom, my heart’s beloved
Your body is golden as uncombed honey
Lion, my heart’s beloved
Your body is golden as sweet honey is golden.
You have transfixed me,
My body trembling like a cup of water in my hands.
Bridegroom, I wish you to lead me to the bedchamber,
You have moved my heart, my body trembles,
Like a cup of water lifted in my hands.
Lion, I long for you to lead me to the dais bed.
Bridegroom, I will kiss you
My caresses are more golden than honey in the mouth,
In the bedchamber, hived with honey
I will know your beauty
Lion, I will kiss you
My kisses are more precious than honey.
Bridegroom, we have found the place of delight.
Tell my mother, she will reward you with fruit,
Tell my father, and receive gifts at his hands.
Your spirit—I know where to befriend your spirit.
Bridegroom, sleep in our house until dawn.
Your heart—I know how to delight your heart,
 Lion, stay until dawn touches our house.
You, because you love me,
Give me your kisses. Caress me,
Prince of Love, in the sacred place of delight.
As Shu-sin delights Enlil’s soul,
Let your caresses dwell in me,
Let our meeting be in the place of delight,
Lay your hand on that honeyed place,
Cup your hand over it, caressingly,
Caress it as a silken shift fragrantly
Caresses the skin.

Translation by Eberle Umbach
© 2010


Image is "Inanna," Terracotta relief, Sumer c. 2000 BCE

Adams County Makes the News - Council Leader #7

The Council Leader
Ivan M. Durrell, Editor and Publisher
COUNCIL VALLEY FIRST, THE WORLD AFTERWARDS
Council, Washington County, Idaho

March 25, 1910
CLEAN UP

Yes, clean up. Ask your wife if housecleaning time is not the main idea at this season. Let’s get together and show the women that we men can become filled with the same spirit, can show the same pride in clean streets, alleys and backyards that the women show in clean houses. And right now is the time to begin.

Don’t wait. In a few days, the town will be filled with home-seekers—people who have grown tired of eastern ways, people who are looking for a better place to make their homes, people who are looking for better conditions. Surely we cannot afford to let them come into our town and find things in so filthy a condition as they will be if we don’t get together at once. It is a blow to our pride, we realize, to know that things are as they are, but it is true. The streets, alleys, and backyards are simply rotten, no other word will describe it. Now is the time to get at it and clean up. Let us inaugurate a movement that will cause out neighboring towns to turn green with envy. We can get busy in such a way that will turn the eyes of the whole state on Council. We have been advertised all over the country as being in the center of the greatest apple-growing district in the world. Why not be advertised as being the cleanest little town in Idaho?

July 5, 1910
FREEDOM FROM THE CORPORATE GRIP

Council is the only town in Washington County that is using the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone exchange, and the time is near at hand when the people of this vicinity will be operating an independent telephone exchange with decent instruments and at a reasonable charge. The time is nearing an end when the large corporations can extend an arm and hold the common people in their grip, unable to move, while they serve them with anything they want and at any price they wish to charge. Why should we be bound under the grip of this mighty corporation while our sister towns are enjoying their freedom? A meeting of the telephone users and those interested in the welfare of Council is called to be held at the Bowman-Holmes Company’s office next Wednesday evening, and every person desiring to maintain a telephone in his place of business is earnestly requested to be present.


July 15, 1910
NOTICE TO TELEPHONE USERS

Owing to the infinitely rotten service given the people of Council and Council Valley by the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company, together with the exorbitant charges inflicted upon the people residing herein, a meeting of all persons interested is hereby called to be held at the office of the Bowman-Holmes Company, in Council on Wednesday July 20th at 8:30 p.m. to take steps to organize an Independent Telephone Company.

This matter is of vital importance and should have the attention of everyone interested in the welfare of the Council Valley district, and if the people will but stand together, it will be a matter of only a few weeks until we will have decent telephone service and that too at a reasonable charge.

Committee.


April 22, 1910
BUYS AN AUTO

E.W. Bowman purchased a five-passenger White Steamer Touring automobile to be used to transport the land seekers over the valley. Mr. Bowman, with his worthy partner C. W. Holmes, has built up a very profitable real estate business, and this summer they expect to locate several new families on Council Valley apple soil. The auto will come in very handy as now-a-days a team is too slow for the rushing real estate business that is going on in Council Valley. Several families already came to Council this spring and are well satisfied that this is the prime apple district in the northwest. With a family living and prospering on every ten acres of Council Valley’s superior ground, we will be living in a city of fruit ranches in a very few years, where prosperity and liberty can never be excelled.

August 15, 1910
ASLEEP OR DEAD?
Submitted by E. W. Bowman

Council is growing and there is no reason why the town should not be a trifle more progressive. There is no reason why that part of town development the responsibility for which rests solely on the broad shoulders of the city’s manly councilmen should have been dropped with a dull and sickening thud.

To illustrate: last summer there was much activity, there was a vivid and glorious awakening astir and a general movement toward progress on the part of the city council. The people are still working for town advancement, but the council—well, the council has apparently been ushered into the whitherness of the whence. During that brief period of general activity, there was an ordinance passed-- marvelous effort—and it was a sidewalk ordinance. It provided that when the walks about town in the business section should have passed the age of usefulness, cement walks should be laid. As a result, some good walks were laid—a part of the main business street was paved, but when the east side of Billie Brown’s place was reached, there was a sudden cessation of the good work, and the aged board walk that for lo these many years has been a menace was permitted to lie on in undisturbed and ghastly agedness.

A year has passed. Another winter’s snows have dissolved beneath the warm
spring Chinook, and still the walk remains. Slowly, the decay of time eats into the life of the wood thereof while the honored city council sleepeth. In the dark silences of night, some good Samaritan nails down a loose board, causing the Thomas kittens which ramble around beneath this artery of commerce to crawl up from under the side instead coming straight through as is their wont and privilege. Another charming stroll that first greets the new arrival, is the stretch that extends from the depot. This was to have been a cement walk a long weary year ago. To the careless and casual observer, it still bears a marked resemblance to wood. But what’s the use? The city council sleepeth the long sleep. Perhaps by heroic effort or miracle they may again awaken.

E. W. Bowman

compiled by Eberle Umbach

Adams County Makes the News - Council Leader #6

The Council Leader
Ivan M. Durrell, Editor and Publisher
COUNCIL VALLEY FIRST, THE WORLD AFTERWARDS
Council, Washington County, Idaho

April 28, 1910
IDAHO WILL NOT BE OUTDONE

Last week the Associated Press sent broadcast over the nation the startling announcement that Missouri hens, strictly up to date, were laying “comet” eggs: eggs with tails to ‘em. In one instance the appendage was one inch in length and in another, two inches.

A wise old Meadows hen, hearing this wonderful story—by wireless on chicken telepathy— dusted herself, shook her plumage, and said to her spouse in chanticleer talk, “Humph! Idaho can beat Missouri any day!” And when Mrs. M. E. Keisur, the owner of this wise old fowl, went into her henhouse last Monday morning, lo and behold! The feat was accomplished: there lay a “comet” egg with a tail over five inches in length and more than an inch broad at the outer end. The boss chanticleer of the flock then crowed with lusty pride, “Oh, Missouri ain’t so much!”

Meadows Eagle

February 15, 1910

The Mesa Orchard Co. has started to haul the lumber for their seven-mile flume. With the completion of this flume, the big canal will be ready to deliver water to the orchards.

September 30, 1910
COUNCIL VALLEY APPLES ARE PERFECT

An expert orchardist declares that they are the best ever produced: “I believe there are more perfect apples to the tree in Council than any other spot on earth. I believe Council valley is on the map to remain for many years to come as the best commercial apple growing section of the northwest.”


LOCAL ITEMS, 1910

For Sale Cheap—Ten cords of No. 1 sawdust. Fred Cool.

For a nice refreshing drink of soda water go to Billie Brown’s

At the baby contest in Cambridge on the Fourth, Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Ward’s one-year-old baby boy won first prize.

The strawberry crop was unusually large this year. Mr. Whitney gathered nearly two hundred gallons from his strawberry vines.

Butter wrappers available at The Leader.


April 30, 1909
MEADOWS MENTION

We are having rainy weather the past two days and the hills are beginning to get green once more.

Harry Brown, traveling salesman for the Ogden Candy Co., accompanied by his wife arrived in town on Monday’s stage.

Little Orpha McCully has been very ill with typhoid fever.


April 8, 1910
CARE OF LACES

Always iron lace on the right side first, and then on the wrong side to throw up the pattern.

When ironing laces, cover them with clean white tissue paper. This prevents the shiny look seen on washed laces.

Use corn flour instead of ordinary starch for stiffening laces.

Laces and other delicate trifles should be placed in a muslin bag before being boiled. This prevents their getting torn and lost in the wash.


April 15, 1910
BOOSTERS CLUB ORGANIZED

A Boosters Club was organized a few days ago for the purpose of promoting the development of Council and Council Valley. Only those who are interested in the development of the town and country are eligible for membership. The agitation of good roads and a cleaner and better town will be among the foremost actions the new club will dwell upon.


July 8, 1910
The Council baseball team went to Payette Lakes and played a couple games during the Fourth of July celebration there. The first day they played the Meadows team and won by a large margin. The second day they played the Roseberry team and walked off with another easy victory.


July 8, 1910
COTTONWOOD

The Fourth was passed very quietly by most of the Cottonwood people. Earl and Glenn Kiser went to Weiser. Several went to Middle Fork fishing. There was a family reunion at the home of Mrs. Moser, all of her children being present except the oldest daughter.

compiled by Eberle Umbach

Adams County Makes the News - Council Leader #5

The Council Leader
Ivan M. Durrell, Editor and Publisher
COUNCIL VALLEY FIRST, THE WORLD AFTERWARDS
Council, Washington County, Idaho

April 1, 1910
POSE AS A CAPITALIST

For one dollar we will send you three handsomely lithographed, but worthless, stock certificates, which you can fill out yourself for any amount, and have lots of fun showing them to your friends as proof that you are wealthy. These certificates appear to represent railway, gold mining, and insurance enterprises and look just like the “real thing”, but must not be used to realize money on. One sample for fifty cents. Send two-cent stamp for illustrated circular. Independent printing companies, Washington, D.C.


August 6, 1909
IT SHOULD BE

The name “Weiser” is being placed on the mound in the park at the Short Line Depot. Weiser has the prettiest park on the line from Pocatello to Weiser, and it is intended to still further beautify it by the addition of flowers and trees.
Weiser Signal

Sure thing the Weiser park is the prettiest on the line, and why shouldn’t it be since it is made from good, rich, black Council Valley dirt hauled down to Weiser for that purpose. The above justifies our claim that Council Valley dirt is the best for apples, meadows, grains, or parks.

December 3, 1909
COUNCIL VALLEY APPLES ATTRACT ATTENTION

The World Herald of Omaha, Nebraska, tells the following story of the Council Valley exhibit at the National Horticultural Congress which recently convened at Council Bluffs, Iowa: The representatives of Idaho at the show are extremely enthusiastic over the gigantic project of the Council Mesa Orchard company, which is preparing to set out the greatest orchard in the world, on the famous Mesa or bench lands located in Council Valley.

J. A. Carr, who is in charge of the Council Valley exhibit which has taken so many prizes at the show this year, said yesterday: “Idaho does not have to take a back seat for any state in the Union when it comes to growing fruit. This Council Mesa proposition is a great undertaking and when it is carried out in detail, will be a revelation. Four thousand acres of orchard, cut up into five and ten-acre tracts, each tract to have electrical transportation facilities, each home on each tract to have electric lights, are some of the things contemplated in the project.

“Eighty thousand apple trees have been ordered for next year’s planting on the Mesa, the varieties being Jonathon, Rome Beauty, and Winesap, three of the most popular commercial varieties. Experts have told us that this is the finest apple soil in America, and I believe them. It seems to me that the man who is fortunate enough to get one of these tracts will make a fortune out of it.”

Oregon’s exhibit is small but meritorious. Another exhibit that has proven a drawing card is the citrus products of Florida.

December 3, 1909
IDAHO APPLES FOR ORPHANS

Last Friday, in a telegram to Mayor Busse of Chicago, Governor Brady said: On behalf of the people of Idaho, I desire to present to Chicago orphans, through you and the united charities of your city, 3000 Jonathon apples which took the grand prize at the National Horticultural Congress.


March 25, 1910

Mr. Fuller of Spokane made a trip to the valley last week in search of a home. Mr. Fuller reports that several people in Weiser told him that he would find this valley covered with a blanket of snow. Weiser should take the hammers out of the hands of these knockers.


February 25, 1910

According to the astronomers, the earth will pass through the tail of Halley’s comet next May, but it is probable that if the astronomers had not found it out, the earth would not have known the difference.

Hailey News Miner


April 28, 1910
WE MAY ALL DIE LAUGHING

All humanity may die laughing May 18, when the earth passes through the tail of Halley’s comet, according to the theory of Carmille Flammarion, the famous French astronomer. By means of the wonderful instrument called the spectroscope, it has been discovered that the comet’s tail is composed of gases called hydrocarbons. These gases might so combine with the nitrogen in the air we breathe that the atmosphere would be converted into the regular “laughing gas” employed by dentists. The world would then die in a “delirium of joy.”

At first, a delightful serenity would settle upon mankind, says Flammarion, and then would follow a contagious gaiety, febrile exaltation, a paroxysm of delight, and then madness. Flammarion even conceives the world merrily dancing a joyous, hysterical sarabrude in which it perishes laughing.
Weiser Signal

compiled by Eberle Umbach

Adams County Makes the News – Introduction – 4

[Here's the final installment of Eberle's introduction to Adams County Makes the News; posts of the actual letters will start next Wednesday]

Looking back over a hundred years of newspaper material, there are some surprises about what has changed and what hasn’t changed. The voice chiding county residents who go out of town to shop in 1902 has a distinct echo in the new millennium—and there is a slight shock in recognizing that the seemingly contemporary issue of “retail leakage” in rural Idaho goes so far back. This is one of many realms of concern in the county newspaper that have stayed constant over time. Other aspects of the newspaper have changed a great deal. A variety of national services provided the paper, and still do, with “filler” material—quotes and anecdotes and curious facts, convenient for filling up blank spaces left between articles in the paper’s weekly lay-out. I was surprised by the amount of casual racism and sexism in the short anecdotes used as filler in the past—the irrationality and cupidity of women is often a source of “humor,” as is the cunning laziness of blacks. I have not included any of this, or other, filler material, since my focus has been on local writers—who apparently accepted the presence of racist or sexist anecdotes as filler in the paper, while rarely expressing these prejudices in their own writings. Staff at the newspaper today describe the filler that is selected as falling into several main categories: science, self-improvement, business, and “country wisdom;” these were common in the past as well.

I was also surprised to find out that there was much more live music and entertainment in the Council area at the beginning of the twentieth century than there is today. As a musician, I felt a definite pang reading a request of local businesses to give “liberal support” to local musicians—and at the regularity of dances with live music. When the town invited the CCC camp to a celebration, local poet and songwriter Orianna Martin composed a song in their honor and the lyrics were published in the paper. But times have changed. The People’s Theatre—once the site of shows by Miss Willey the world-famous whistler from California, operettas by the high school, and movies such as “Park Avenue Logger” with locally provided musical accompaniment-- has languished abandoned for years down the street from the Adams County Record office. In addition to shows and dances, a significant part of entertainments offered locally included school programs, debates, and talks by local or visiting speakers. A debate on prohibition held in 1909 was packed with area residents, the paper reported. In 1911: “Mrs. C. W. Wight will give a lecture at the Congregational church December 14. Her subject will be ‘What is Woman.’ This lecture will be both humorous and instructive and everybody is cordially invited to attend.” The newspaper, as history, has the ability to recapture some of the more ephemeral aspects of daily life and include them as part of a community portrait.

The local focus of the Adams County paper makes for a particular perspective on political history. Issues that may be considered major in the early twentieth century, such as women’s suffrage and prohibition, take on a local slant. For instance, when women got the vote, an article on the subject was reprinted from an urban newspaper, but there was no wave of editorials and letters specifically addressing the event. However, anxiety about gender issues surfaces at that time in jokes about women in town bobbing their hair, in a facetious suggestion to have a local beauty contest for men, and an editorial questioning why most of the organizations in town are run by women.

Adams County in the twenties experiences a truly remarkable surge of club activity for women, with groups including the PTA, Ladies Aid, Red Cross, Worthwhile Club, Indian Valley Improvement Club, Bluebirds, Rebekahs, Witness, Women’s Auxiliary, and Royal Neighbors. The exact nature of all these groups is not clear from the newspaper record, but they identify themselves as groups to promote social good. Nonetheless, some doubts, apparently, had to be assuaged. In 1928: “Next Tuesday evening will be a red letter time for husbands of these beautiful ladies of the Worthwhile Club. Said husbands may have wondered many times during the past year what it is all about—this club business—but now they are going to be shown. It is the first annual banquet in honor of the husbands of the club members.” Prohibition receives more attention as a national phenomenon, but much of the commentary on this topic as well has to do with its local effects—an argument that Valley and Adams counties could not be merged because Valley is “wet” while Adams is “dry”; a letter from a local doctor deploring cases of alcoholism in Council before prohibition.

Other on-going themes in the first decades of the twentieth century include transportation, education, grazing and farming legislation—topics that continue with some degree of similarity today. Roads and the railroad take up a large share of discussion. Concerns over local natural resources are also voiced, but I was surprised by the differences between what those concerns used to be and what they are today. It is interesting to see that in the past, regulation of resource use didn’t necessarily spark the kind of anger that it can currently in the newspaper. I wouldn’t have expected to find such early tolerance of many Forest Service regulations—restrictions on fishing and fire building, for example. In 1919, violation of the order not to build fires on forest land “subjects an offender to a fine of up to $5,000 or ten months in a tomb of reflection, or both.” City ordinances on water conservation, restricting the time and days when irrigation could take place, were enforced by the village marshal in 1928. Locals recognized that over-use of resources would be a bad thing, and supported stream closures (although they blamed dwindling fish populations on over-fishing by tourists.) Similarly, there are letters both for and against killing animals such as bear or beaver. What’s remarkable is the absence of a group identified as hostile to local interests and labeled “environmentalists”—a perceived opposition that often dominates present-day local discussion about the use of natural resources.

The biggest conflict over natural resources expressed in the newspapers is the great huckleberry dispute of the late twenties. The huckleberry patch in question was one in the midst of sheep-grazing allotments that had been left voluntarily free of sheep so the public could pick berries there as well as camp and fish. The trouble started when a Forest Service supervisor, Mr. Rice, told grazers that if they didn’t actively use that part of their allotment, their allotment next year would be reduced by that amount. Things became very personal: “We understand Mr. Rice is from Kansas, where they raise huckleberries only in barrels. Mr. Rice seems to think that twelve cents a season for grazing sheep mounts up on four sections to huge sums, and he says that amount of land cannot be spared from the sheep to furnish a few thousand people with huckleberries and the incidental recreation of camping and picking them.… The Leader believes Mr. Rice is wrong. Mr. Rice intimates that there is only one person interested in huckleberries, and that that one person is an ignorant faultfinder. The editor wants to add at least one more ignorant faultfinder to the list.” The use of regulations to threaten a traditional local use of the land seems to have infuriated people in a way that other restrictions did not, and the furor didn’t end until that supervisor left town.

The process of editing newspaper material for this collection was influenced by the vision that I came to have of the material as a kind of community memoir. Memoirs inevitably involve omissions, and I have left out a great deal of material in order to follow what to me appeared to be vital and engaging threads and voices. I also made a decision to limit this collection to the first four decades of the paper’s history. I found this material to have an almost narrative cohesion, documenting the development of the first phase of the region’s economy. The thirties brought the first wave of “bust” after a series of hopeful “booms”—the agricultural ventures and local businesses that grew up in the wake of mining interests, as well as the once flourishing Mesa Orchards, all suffered decline during the depression. The next wave of boom and bust, associated with the timber industry, was just beginning at the end of the thirties and would create a different phase of the area’s identity. Focusing on the early decades made it possible to convey a detailed portrait of that era in the newspaper’s history.

To me one of the most interesting things about the newspapers is seeing how the use of language varies over the decades, making word-portholes back into time. It’s interesting to consider that application forms used to be called application blanks, and that an angel food cake pan was called a Turk’s head pan. Reading a phrase such as, “He sat in the saddle with the dignity of a bedbug on a hairpin,” is to experience armchair-travel back into time. The continuity of certain voices and usage is intriguing as well. People used to use the word “country” to mean region—the “country newspaper,” for instance, meaning the Adams County Leader, and people still use the word in this way: the “lower country” for Weiser and Boise, and “this country” for the local area. There are voices, too, which recur and seem constant over time: the voice that exhorts community effort, the voice of personal outrage, the voice that deplores gossip, and the voice that thanks the community for help during times of hardship.

Sorting the Adams County newspaper material has been, for me, archeology of a very amateur kind. I have enjoyed it in the same way that I like to poke around in an old homestead dump near my house—where tin cans and broken bits of china spark my imagination, not because of their rarity or exoticism, but because of the opposite. Their everydayness and their proximity to where I live are what intrigue me. This book comes from my curiosity about what is near instead of what is far—from seeking for the mystery in what is close to home, the beauty and value of what is close at hand.

Eberle Umbach
© 2003-2010

Pix from Top
A Pizza Restaurant for Sale in Downtown Council
The People's Theater, Council
The Ace Saloon & Branding Iron Restaurant, Council
The Weiser River in Fruitvale (north of Council)
Sheep on an Indian Valley Ranch
A View to Indian Valley from Our Upper Pasture
An Old Bottle in the "Homestead Dump"

Adams County Makes the News – Introduction – #1

[We’re really excited to begin a new long-running series—Adams County Makes the News. This is a manuscript containing letters from the Adams County newspapers from the early 1900s to about the time of World War II; Eberle compiled the collection, & also wrote a most interesting introduction. We’ll begin with Eberle’s intro, which will comprise the first three or four installments before moving on to the letters themselves. Enjoy!]
“Council Valley First, The World Afterwards,” proclaimed the Adams County, Idaho newspaper banner in 1910, with a bit of tongue-in-cheek bravado about its local focus. From early on, the paper exhibits this kind of self-consciousness about its small-town nature—a particular combination of pride and defensiveness that I see as persisting over its history. I walked into the newspaper office in Council a while back as people were discussing moving the old printing press, which has loomed hugely in a corner for many years, to the local museum. I asked Tim Hohs, the editor, if he was going to do a story on the move, and he responded with the recognizable 1910 spirit: “You know our motto here in Adams County: if it happens, it’s news.”

Since 1901, there has been a newspaper located in Council. For its first few years, it was known as the Council Journal, and then as the Council Leader. Adams County did not become a separate entity from Washington County until 1911; during World War I, the paper changed its name to the Adams County Leader, not to change it again until the 1990s. In the seventies, two other papers started up in Council: the Upper Country News, whose existence was brief, and the Council Record. The Adams County Leader merged with the Record in the nineties to become the Adams County Record, and the newspaper has retained that name through the present time. The continuity of the newspaper—its Council location and the stability of the population it served—has shaped the evolution of its unique relationship with communities of readers in the area.

The population of both Adams County and Council has been remarkably stable over time, with the town of Council having fewer than 1000 inhabitants over the course of its whole history. The entire county has had 3000 or fewer inhabitants. Council, with a population of 816, is still the largest town in a county that does not possess a single stoplight. With Adams County comprising 1370 square miles, sparse population has been an on-going fact in local community identity. Difficult travel conditions meant that many areas (such as Cottonwood, Alpine, and Mesa) used to be more identified as separate communities than they have been since the advent of paved roads. The newspaper would report, for example, in 1910 that: “The Fourth was passed very quietly by most of the Cottonwood people. Earl and Glenn Kiser went to Weiser. Several went to Middle Fork fishing. There was a family reunion at the home of Mrs. Moser, all of her children being present except the oldest daughter.” In 1925, a newspaper reader from Sourdough wrote in: “Why does our (county) sheriff’s office require a permanent deputy at a salary of $900 per year whose residence is at Meadows? Do they need a deputy up there more than we do down here at Sourdough? Is it because their moonshine up there is not as good as ours?”

Even given greater ease of travel, communities in the county retain their autonomy—and come into conflict with each other, on occasion, over that autonomy. Although self-identified over most of its history as serving the whole county, the Adams County newspaper is subject to periodic complaint that it is too focused on Council at the expense of other towns and communities in the county. One way the paper has addressed the reality of autonomous and far-flung communities is to print, on a regular basis, news sent in from other areas. However, New Meadows, for example, can experience a major upheaval in its city government without an Adams County Record reporter sent to the scene— the 52-mile trip being outside the paper’s current expense budget for travel. The populace of Bear can descend on the county seat in a fury over contested possession of the road to its cemetery or over county trash disposal policies, and express complaints about Council’s lack of understanding of the rest of the county. In the newspaper as well as within the county there is an on-going question about whose voices will be heard and whose ideas about the county’s identity will prevail—this is part of the way in which the newspaper participates in the community’s narrative about itself.

So Adams County, though sparsely populated, doesn’t exist as a single, monolithic community, but rather as a collection of communities. The low population density also contributes to the fact that communities at the borders of the county have some partial allegiance to the neighboring county—children of Indian Valley attend school in Washington County, for instance, and many residents of New Meadows work in Valley County. When county lines were first being drawn, these varying geographic and social contiguities came into play. Arguments in the newspaper over the drawing of county lines enact these underlying dramas of allegiance as points of crisis in the creation of local identity.

Historically, roads and the railroad occupy a good deal of space as topics in the newspaper. Geography is clearly a powerful force, and shaped the relationship between towns in the larger region of Adams, Valley, Idaho, and Washington counties more than I would have guessed. I expected to come across early evidence of relationships between the towns in the larger region, but very little in the nature of an active relationship is expressed, except for a recurring spirit of rivalry between the towns—over attracting settlers, over sports and contests, over who gets money for roads, who has a gymnasium, who has contributed most to the war effort. Within the larger area of the county’s interest, there are constantly shifting rivalries and alliances— for instance, on numerous occasions, the newspaper expresses Council’s animosity toward Weiser. In 1925: “To us, hell is just a place; and we used the word in the same sense that one might mention Boise, or perhaps, to be more exact, Weiser, for instance.” But newspaper readers can also be asked to band together with Weiser to face what is perceived as a shared threat, such as during the anti-mail-order-house campaign. Overall, the history of geographic isolation and a sense of very localized identity seem to be more powerful than motivations that would create more active partnership between towns in the region. McCall and Council, for instance, though only 35 miles apart, often don’t even provide information in their present-day newspapers about major local events in the other town.

The early economic history of Adams County is also directly connected to its geography. Council’s early existence as a town was very much linked to its role as a supply station on the route to outlying mining concerns. Business and agricultural enterprises grew up in the wake of that supply activity, making Council the economic center of the county. Council continued as the county seat, although other towns vied for that honor. Geography proved to be a crucial factor in the failure of mineral extraction in the surrounding mountains to become viable industries. The Mesa Orchards, referred to frequently in the newspaper, were a flourishing enterprise for a while, with expectations of becoming one of the nation’s largest suppliers of apples. They were the source of much hope for the economic future of the area, but declined through the twenties and thirties. Geographic isolation gave the orchard owners an economic edge at first, because they didn’t have to battle the infestations of insects which plagued other orchards in the nation. The arrival of the coddling moth was inevitable when better roads led to increased travel to the area. The costs of insect control and of irrigation proved to be huge blows to the orchards, which were eventually abandoned as any kind of major commercial operation.

Between mineral extraction, fruit culture, fox and fur farms, the railroad, farming, ranching, and the timber industry, Adams County has experienced several waves of boom and bust. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the spirit of hope truly springs eternal in the pages of the newspaper—possible grandeur for the county seems always to be appearing on the horizon during this period. There is a strong belief that Adams County can become “the garden spot of Idaho, and Idaho the garden spot of the earth.”

A remarkable spirit of “boosting” the town persists through all the vicissitudes of fortune. Those who “knock” the town come in for abuse that can get very personal, and the paper takes on these “knockers” in a serious way. In 1915, the editor writes: “While down at the depot one day last week we heard J. L. Griffith of Payette knocking the Council Valley as hard as he knew how in the presence of a homeseeker whom one of our real estate men was about to close a deal with. On coming up the street we were told that Mr. Griffith had been doing a lot of knocking which we did not hear. He was very imprudent to say the least. Mr. Griffith sells tombstones and he has practically a monopoly on the business in this part of the country, but such talk as he made on his last trip will certainly erect his business tombstone in this vicinity in short order. The people will not exert themselves to give their patronage to such knockers.” The way that the newspaper addresses individuals—with the understanding that its readers will know, personally, who these individuals are—is part of its community-created rural identity.

Eberle Umbach
© 2003-2010

Pix from top:
The Adams County Leader Building: January 10
The Outskirts of Council looking toward the eastern foothills: August 08
Bear School: May 99
Hay Bales in a Shelter, Indian Valley: November 09
The Old PIN rail line, now a Rails to Trails conservancy, in Glendale: October 08
Horses & colts with a view toward Mesa Hill: June 07
Adams County Rodeo Parade in Council: July 98

Mystery Post #1

[Here’s the first in a randomly timed but on-going series of Mystery Posts by Eberle, which will involve her exploration of Catholicism & ancient goddess poetry. I believe even those of us who are of a non-religious bent—myself included—can find a lot in these writings. A side-note: to read Eberle writing in a much different vein, please check out her Platypuss-in-Boots blog. Enjoy!]

For the past three years in September, I’ve traveled with Sister Beverly up North past Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint, across the lake where you can see the train-bridge described in Marilyn Robinson’s Housekeeping, to an old field campus where a group of women have gathered for twenty years now on retreat. Sister Beverly’s focus for the retreat last fall was: praying with the women of the Old Testament. Judith became an instant heroine of mine – rebel, warrior, poet/singer – her Canticle is stirring. When Sister Beverly suggested that writing a Canticle could be part of our solitary prayer, I thought: who could do that? And then I wrote this Canticle of Anna you'll find at the end of the post.

Sister Beverly spoke of Mary as the connection between the Old Testament and the New, and I thought quite a bit about Mary’s mother Anna - a vital and vibrant part of this connection as the Mother of the Mother of God. The Mystery called the Immaculate Conception (referring to Anna’s conception of Mary) is inaptly named or translated it seems to me. Such overtones of tidiness when it must have been the opposite to a pretty extreme degree – the union of divine and human, the merging of visible and invisible, all boundaries dissolving. Here’s part of a 12th century icon, the depiction of the Mother of God surrounded by the Holy Spirit, conceiving Christ.

Stories of women or goddesses conceiving divinely go way back – through Roman and Greek stories all the way to the first written literature, in Sumerian. It’s a thread in the Old Testament too. The other woman mentioned in this Canticle is Peninnah (a transliteration of the Hebrew word for pearl)- I took this word as one of my spiritual names, to reflect a devotion to this Mystery – but I didn’t know she was a figure in the Old Testament with a connection to divine conception until this retreat. I’ve learned that sometimes retreats are far from restful in any ordinary sense – I know some of the women stayed up most of one night around the bonfire – and others of us, like me, were writing alone, but with a sense of sisterhood.

CANTICLE OF ANNA

Sing to God a new song, the song of Anna.
Sing with the tongues of night birds
and the squeaks of flocks hanging head downward in caves
Sing with the vaulted clicking of cicadas
and the wet throats of frogs mantled in shining darkness.
Make the night fragrant with your joy.

For the name of God flowers in her body.
The name of God unfurls like a woman
unbraiding her hair in flowing waters
For the name of God leafs out the trees
gathered on the shores of the river
and perfumes the wind that moves them.

Not in kings or heroes did the mystery open
Not in soldiers or commanders did the banner of light unfold
But in a woman who lifted up her body
like a cup of water trembling in her hands
sighing with delight.
In Anna did the God of Peninnah
Knit the pearl.

Eberle Umbach
© 2009-2010

Weiser River Pillow Book #14

[Here’s the final installment of Eberle’s Weiser River Pillow Book—although some editing has been done along the way, the majority of the work is now available on Robert Frost’s Banjo, & the link to this writing will continue to appear in the sidebar for the foreseeable future.]

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE SHINY

The fake mother-of-pearl buttons on a rodeo shirt.

Windows on a mirrored glass skyscraper. When these are not shiny, it appears that the whole purpose of progress has failed.

Blackberries picked in late summer.


THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT BE SHINY

Cars.

The interior of a church.

The front doorknob of a house surrounded by trees.


SQUALID THINGS

The smell of an empty school corridor lined with lockers above which are student drawings of ways to save the environment.

A trowel that has rusted with dirt still on it.

Chicory that has flowered close to the ground after being mowed.

An unmatched sock.


THINGS WORTH SEEING

Magpies landing outside the kitchen window after the first snowfall.

On the floodplain of a river, an abandoned house through which vines are growing and covering half the roof with leaves.

A county fair where there are many kinds of poultry and pigeons, also goats.

A forest three years after a wildfire has passed through it.

You are walking through the woods thinking how silent it is and how alone you are, and then you notice at the base of a huckleberry bush, a hairbrush, ruined by weather, the gold lettering on its back almost legible.


THINGS THAT MAKE YOU THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE

The sound of a refrigerator late at night can bring an aquarium to mind—the tiny bubbling treasure chest and diver never reaching it—the trapped light.

It is the middle of summer and you know there is no chance of rain. Nonetheless, a truck going by on the highway makes a sound like thunder and for a moment you shiver deliciously.

When the cottonwood trees are releasing cotton in the spring, it does look like snow in the air and yet does not bring winter to mind.


ODIOUS THINGS

The plastic countertop where it has come loose from the edge of the kitchen sink,

The "Sealed For Your Protection" seals on aspirin and chopstick.

At a community meeting, sitting next to someone who bites his nails.

Gas stations and restaurants that are part of national chains, erupting in the rural landscape like the signs of an inevitable disease.


HAUNTING THINGS

The image of oneself as a child.

On the verge of sleep, repeatedly, being awakened by imaginary alarm cries coming from the guinea hen coop.

When the sun has almost set behind the highway, a passing truck blocks the last of the light and the house goes dark for an instant longer than a blink.


THINGS THAT ARE NO BETTER THAN THEY SHOULD BE

The mop bucket.

Crocuses after their first bloom, especially the large kind.

One's girlhood crushes.



THINGS THAT ARE AT HOME IN THE WORLD

A robin standing on a fence post.

An old seeder rusting on a hillside above abandoned fields.

A dinghy moored in the small pool of a rock-crushing pit.

The desk and window in my studio.

An eagle's nest on top of a power pole.


THINGS THAT LOOK GOOD IN JARS

Dried beans—especially black garbanzos and striped lima beans you have grown yourself.

Star anise.

Pickled beets.

Coriander seed from the garden.


THINGS THAT DO NOT LOOK GOOD IN JARS

Pig's feet.

Scientific specimens of any kind.

Leftover tomato paste.


THINGS THAT GIVE THE SENSATION OF FALLING

Standing in a supermarket aisle surrounded by varieties of canned tomatoes that seem to have proliferated since the last time you were there. Varieties of breakfast cereal also create this sensation; varieties of tea, however, do not.

Thinking about a phone number you have lost.

Being about to fall asleep and waking suddenly.


PAIRS THAT GIVE PLEASURE

When the leaves of the cottonwood trees by the side of the highway are the exact same shade of yellow as the double line.

When the line of a jet trail in the eastern sky is the same color as the clouds around the setting sun.

How sometimes I hear the traffic on the highway above my house and it sounds just like a river.

Eating pears and grapes together.


LARGELY UNRECOGNIZED MASCULINIST ASSAULTS ON THE WORLD

All music on the radio.

All systems of measurement.

Women who give their children the last name of their husbands.


THINGS ON A GIANT SCALE

Rolls of hay stacked in shelters; three rolls on top looking like an enormous clover leaf.
Erosion on the side of a small hill can create the impression of a massive distant mountain range seen from above.

Near the spring that feeds the house under a wild plum tree, there is an ant-mound that is two feet high. In itself it seems strikingly large; still, the yellow plum leaf resting on it looks huge.


TWO TOWNS NORTH OF HERE

There are many more new cars. There are stores selling clothes for outdoor recreation.

There are no magpies, quail, or black widows. Very few cottonwood trees, lots of pine trees.

In the streams, caddis flies use bits of pine needles in their shell-casings.


INEXPLICABLE THINGS

Electricity.

When continuing a diary in a new notebook, the desire to make a gesture of formal introduction of some kind, however subtle or oblique. To whom?

The pleasure of shining the old chrome-covered clock-timer on the stove. It doesn't work, is not attractive, and yet the tenderness I feel for it never fails to spring up when I’m cleaning the stovetop.


THINGS DESIRED FOR A WHILE BUT NOT ACQUIRED

A clothesline.

An extra steak knife.

Two large steel-covered bass drums.


THINGS DESIRED FOR A WHILE AND RECENTLY ACQUIRED

A blue enamel bucket to hold scraps for the chickens.

A medium-sized doumbek.

A jumper for fall. The perfect fall jumper is of medium weight, very soft, not binding anywhere. Long enough to give a feeling of serenity but still allowing for easy motion. It should not create a feeling of loudness or of primness.


THINGS THAT MARK A POINT IN TIME

Planting garlic.

Taking down the hammock.

Putting hats and mittens in a basket on the dryer.

Eberle Umbach
© 2000-2010

Hot Cockles in the Pantry

[Here’s Eberle’s examination of pantries!]

In kitchens without plastic wrap, bags, or containers, without refrigerators and freezers, food storage took up a great deal of time. It took up space too. Instead of a single room housing all kitchen activities, several rooms were designated for food storage and preparation: larder, buttery, pantry. Each had a different purpose.

The larder originally served to store meats—salted, smoked, or partially cooked and kept in barrels of lard. In Medieval times, huge quantities of preserved meats were kept in multiple larders. As the need for storing large amounts of meat disappeared (few nineteenth century households anywhere were storing 50 – 100 deer carcasses at a time) larders changed their nature to some degree although they kept their name. Rural families still butchered in the fall when the weather was cold and the meat would keep the longest. They made use of traditional preservation methods—salting, drying, smoking, storing in brine or lard, and sausage-making—but on a smaller scale. A single farm family could not consume all the fresh meat from a large slaughtered animal before much of it went bad. However, in urban areas or places with large regional markets, animals could be slaughtered and the meat sold fresh before it spoiled. As meat became regularly available year-round to separate family residences, the larder shrank and became home to other food items such as cheese as well as meat. To keep the larder cool, householders located it on the north side of the main dwelling. Sometimes the larder, as a small room or simply a cupboard, contained a screened window open to the outside to allow for air circulation.

The word buttery originally referred to butts (or pipes—units of measurement) of ale and wine. Casks of cider, ale, and stronger spirits were kept, ideally, in a cool, dry, dark place, and by the nineteenth century, the buttery had become the wine cellar. Here the master of the house could pride himself on his knowledgeable choice of wines —and demonstrate the length of his purse to his dinner guests. The rather pig-headed archdeacon in Barchester Towers is not shy about holding forth on the subject during a visit that included a tour of the wine cellar: “This cellar is perfectly abominable. It would be murder to put a bottle of wine into it till it has been roofed, walled, and floored. How on earth old Goodenough ever got on with it, I cannot guess. But then Goodenough never had a glass of wine that any man could drink."

The cellar makes special appearances in gothic tales as well. In Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, a host murders a guest by luring him to the cellars beneath the house, promising a taste of a rare wine and pretending to want the guest’s opinion of it. Instead of presenting him with the promised sherry, the host walls his guest up alive in a niche in the cellar, stopping his work occasionally to listen to the doomed man’s screams.

Things like this just didn’t tend to happen in the pantry. The nineteenth century home provided an architectural division of the sexes, and the cellar was excluded from the female realm. The housekeeper held the keys to many doors and cupboards, but the butler kept a firm grip on the keys to the wine cellar. The pantry, the larder, the linen closet—this was the province of women, described by Susan Ferrier in Marriage: “Their walk lay amongst threads and pickles; their sphere extended from the garret to the pantry.”

The word pantry comes from the Latin word for bread, panis, and originally the pantry was the room where bread was kept. Also the ingredients for making it and for waging the battle against mice and rats that inevitably ensued. Over time the pantry took on multiple identities—it could be a cool room separate from the kitchen where some food, especially leftovers, were stored, and it became a storage area for china and glassware as well. Pantries were not merely shelves for storage, as they often are today, but self-contained rooms where a variety of activities could take place. Provisions could be unpacked there and a housekeeper could sit and have a snack in comfort. A festive treat for a housemaid in Lady Morgan’s Wild Irish Girl is “a game of hot cockles with the butler and footman in the pantry.”

The Game of Hot Cockles
A Penitent chosen by chance, or by his own choice, hides his face upon a lady’s lap, which lady serves as Confessor, and places herself in an armchair in the midst of the company. The Penitent places his hand behind him, —not on his back, which might be dangerous if the person who is to hit it should forget the proper moderation, but on his hips. Then a lady or a gentleman hits this hand and the owner of the hand has to guess who struck. If he succeed, the person he guessed is to take his place; if he is mistaken, he goes on till he has shown more penetration.
Catharine Harbeson Waterman, The Book of Parlor Games 1853

A specifically masculine version of the room evolved in the nineteenth century, distinguished from women’s territory by its name: the butler’s pantry. The butler’s pantry served mainly as a storage place for the more valuable china and silver, and also as a staging area near the dining room where the butler could decant wines, add last-minute garnishes, and heat chafing dishes. A good arrangement of these storage and preparation areas was essential to the harmony of the household in Jane Austen’s opinion. In Emma she mentions the “inroads on domestic peace to be occasioned by no housekeeper's room, or a bad butler's pantry.”

In 1869, Harriet Beecher Stowe chided men and women both for wasting so much space in extra rooms like pantries when storage and prep areas could so easily be incorporated into the kitchen itself. Harriet gives detailed plans for how this could be done in The American Woman’s Home. Her designs look very much like one of today’s kitchens, though her concept did not catch on in any general way until the next century.

In spite of Harriet’s pleas, the pantry persisted in being a room of its own—perhaps women had an incentive besides utility in preserving this often exclusively female space. Women could retreat to the pantry with the excuse of household business, and find a legitimate escape from the social or conjugal duties associated with almost all other spaces in the house. A solitary refuge, a place where women reigned, the kitchen pantry was where Emily Dickinson wrote parts of her poems. One of tasks performed daily in her household was filling the lamps with whale oil—a shelf in the pantry was devoted to this use.

As the master of the house might pride himself on his wine cellar, the mistress took pride in her arrangement and operation of the pantry. Women were charged with preserving civilized order and decorum as well as fruit, and the pantry was guarded as a feminine sanctum that stood for more than jam. Louisa May Alcott describes a grandmother who “stood in her pantry like a culinary general, swaying a big knife for a baton, as she issued orders and marshalled her forces.” The pantry generals were not always successful in protecting their territory from invasion. Pantry raids became a stock feature of nineteenth century children’s literature—and boys were almost always the culprits. One of the most famous of these raids is Tom Sawyer’s theft of jam in Aunt Polly’s pantry; outraged, she assigned him the task of whitewashing her fence as a punishment for his transgression.

Eberle Umbach
© 2007-2010

Pix from Top: [Note: I realize most of these images all come from a time before the era Eberle's writing about, but has there ever been more magnificent food painting than in the 17th century?]
The Pantry: Franz Snyders, 1620
Stilleleben: Albrecht Kauw, 1678
The Way You Hear It: Jan Steen, 1665
Still-Life with Cheese: Joris van Son, 1650s
Der verlorene Sohn (The Prodigal Son): Gerard van Honthorst, 1623
Besuch bei einem Lord: Pietro Longi, 1746
Stilleleben: Floris Claesz van Dyck, 1618