The Pretty Room

This post is really for my kids. I came across this old photo of the Pretty Room in the house on High Street, which I've written about before on this blog. (Follow the links and you'll find the story about how we came to live in our very own 1770 New Hampshire Colonial home, ghosts and all).

This was the room that always felt like a quiet, peaceful island in the middle of a busy house. When the window behind the sofa was open you could smell the garden and the little white climbing roses. It makes me smile to think of it.

What We Did On Our Summer Vacation

You'll have to pardon my excitement, but this was our first trip to Europe, so you'll be hearing a bit more about it. I thought it might help if I told you all the places we went.

First, we headed to New York from El Paso, so that we could meet up with our son, who was traveling onward with us. Because we are such country mice and were quickly exhausted by wandering around crowded Manhattan on foot, we made our way to this peaceful sanctuary of a cemetery just across from the World Trade Center site.

St. Paul's Churchyard

The next day, we left New York and headed for Iceland, where we had a very brief layover--just long enough for a beautiful open-faced smoked salmon sandwich. Yep, it's always about the food with us. 

Can you tell that I'm excited about becoming a world traveler?

After our late-night "lunch" in Iceland, we headed off in the summer twilight (it doesn't really get dark this time of year in Iceland) and on to Paris. Pausing just long enough to figure out the controls on the rental car and to program the navigator, we headed south through the Loire Valley to the beautiful blue-shuttered house, Les Volets Bleus, that we had rented for the week. The link below the photo will take you to many more views of the lovely interior. It was a dreamy place to stay, and it was all ours--for the week, anyway.

Les Volets Bleus

After an all-too-short week in the countryside, visiting chateaux and abbeys, street markets and gardens, beautiful villages and the sea, we drove back up to Paris and turned in the rental car. From that point on, we explored Paris as the Parisians do--on foot, by metro (subway), by boat, and by le taxi. But not by bike or Vespa--I drew the line there!

An amazing piece of interactive street art. Look closely (click to enlarge)
and you will see that the sidewalk appears to have heaved upward. The little boy
was using it for a slide. I can still hear his laughter. This is located off of the Boulevard Saint Germain, on the south side, at the intersection of Rue de Rennes and Rue Bonaparte. It's in the Place du Quebec and the sculpture is Charles Daudelin's, l’Embâcle http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_du_Qu%C3%A9bec

In Paris, we visited museums, strolled through parks and gardens, ate at sidewalk cafes, became philosophers for an afternoon, indulged ourselves at the Angelina Tea Room, and took an evening boat ride on the Seine.

Sunset over the Seine

Then we flew back to Iceland, swam in the geothermal waters of the Blue Lagoon, and continued on to Boston. In Boston, we did a bit of shopping and a bit of eating (you're not surprised by now, I'm sure), then drove up to New Hampshire for two days of visiting, partying, and reuniting with old friends. And then we flew once more, back to El Paso.

Phew. It's no wonder that some mornings I wake up wondering which hotel I'm in, and which language I'm expected to understand for the day!

Speaking Locally

When I first moved to New Hampshire from Washington state I really had trouble understanding what some New Englanders were saying. A man was telling me about "Kearsarge" (the place) on the phone--it sounded like "keeaahsahj" to me and since I had never heard of the place I couldn't figure out what he meant. Asking him to spell it didn't help... K-E-A-Ahhh-S-A-Ahhh-G-E just didn't make any sense either.

An odd question I got when first working at a New Hampshire library sounded to me like "Wayah's a bubblah?" which I asked the kid to repeat a great many times until he gave up in disgust and went away. I couldn't begin to translate what he was saying and besides, had no idea what a bubbler (drinking fountain) was or where he could find it anyway.

My then 9-year old son earnestly got us all to agree that we would never get accents like "these people" in New Hampshire. Of course he considered himself accentless, as we all do. However, within a week or two he came home one afternoon enthusiastically asking for something called ottahpups, which he had eaten as a treat over at a friend's house. We had no idea what he was talking about until we discovered "Otter Pops" in the frozen food case at the grocery store. Still a weird name, if you ask me. Poor child, he was getting an accent faster than any of us, as we could tell when he referred to the "arthur and title" (author and title) of a book he had been reading. He could leave out and insert the letter "R" with the best of our neighbors.

When we left New Hampshire after 23 years and moved to New Mexico I had a whole new set of accent and language problems. I worked in a southern New Mexican school and while I was on my first lunch duty, a little boy asked, in Spanish, if he could go to the bathroom--which I somehow mentally translated to "May I have some more pizza?" That led to all kinds of trouble when I told him to go over to the lunch lady and she would help him!

Beehive Ovens

The house on High Street

Our house back in New Hampshire was a center-chimney Colonial that had been built in 1770. We were charmed by its fireplaces. There were four, all built around that huge center chimney which gradually widened so that the base down in the cellar, built with a big brick arch, was at least twelve feet square. Each of the fireplaces had metal cranes, hinged at the side of the firebox so that they could be swung out over the hearth. You could hang your iron pot, if you had one, on the crane and swing it back over the fire.


The biggest fireplace of the four was in the old original kitchen, the room to the right of the front door in the photo above. Next to the fireplace opening was a small wooden door, covering what we supposed was a box for holding firewood. We struggled to pull that door open but just couldn't budge it. Several weeks after we had moved in, we heard a great crashing downstairs in the middle of the night. Because so many other "interesting" things had already happened to us since moving in, we chose to pull the sheets over our heads and wait until morning to investigate.

The next morning we cautiously came down the narrow curving "captain's staircase" that was built around the chimney. We were amazed to find that the little door, jammed fast the last time we had seen it, was now all the way across the room and up against the opposite wall. It was just as though the house was inviting us to look at what the door had been concealing.

What we saw were two openings, one above the other, built into the brickwork next to the fireplace and running back along the depth of the great chimney. The top opening was a much-coveted beehive oven and the bottom one revealed a storage space with all the old iron pots to hang on our empty cranes! We were thrilled to find that we owned a further bit of history. Research at the local library (in those pre-Internet days) showed that the Colonial housewife would build a small fire in the oven, close it up with a hinged iron door until the whole thing was thoroughly heated, rake out the coals and brush out the ashes with a long turkey feather, then do her baking. A good oven could hold as many as 17 pies, and could certainly bake up a quantity of bread and baked beans.

We searched around the property for years for the missing iron door to cover the oven but we never found it, although the hinges were there.

When we moved to New Mexico I was fascinated to see that many yards in the older parts of Las Cruces had beehive-shaped outdoor ovens, or hornos, made of adobe. According to this National Park Service website for Petroglyph National Monument near Albuquerque, NM, the Spanish explorers brought wheat to the Pueblo Indians, who had previously made their bread from corn meal dough flattened and cooked on hot flat rocks. The Spaniards taught them how to build hornos, which can be built of sandstone, lava rocks, or adobe bricks.

The photo below is one I took of an horno at the Pecos National Historical Park in Pecos, New Mexico.

Life in a small New Hampshire town, remembered with fondness

Back when we lived in New Hampshire, I worked at the school, and we lived close to the center of town. Here are some of our favorite things about living there...

Hanging my laundry out on the line on a Saturday and having the kids at school on Monday giggle about seeing our family's underwear.

Having kids ask me year after year to set aside the book I was going to read aloud in the library and tell them, instead, the ghost stories about our house that they had heard about from their older siblings.

Having all the kids from the park across the street come over to our house for a potty break because they had heard we had a new "jet" toilet.

Finding another line of kids at the door one day waiting for a tour of all the haunted spots in our house (our son was apparently charging admission).

Hearing stories about our old house having been a stop on the Underground Railroad from the volunteer firemen that time our furnace caught on fire.

Having the 8th grade English teacher write a play about our house and the Underground Railroad.

Going to the Town Clerk's office for some car-related business only to find that the office was in her 250-year old house and that those of us waiting in line, sitting in lovely old chairs, were to be entertained by her two-year old playing the piano. This was a LOT different from the motor vehicle offices I had dealt with before.

Watching that same two-year old grow up to adulthood and start raising her own family.

Hearing the carpenters run away when they were fixing one of the sills and some snakes came slithering out of the wall of the bathroom/laundry room. They said there were 14 snakes.

Being asked two weeks later about the 14-foot snake that "people were saying" we found inside our clothes dryer. We loved the way stories grew as they were passed on and joked that if the "carpenter/14 snakes" story continued to circulate it might eventually morph into 14 belly-dancers-with-snakes discovered in the attic.

Pumpkin Pancakes in Sugar Season

Back in New Hampshire during maple sugar time, we sometimes took the family on the beautiful drive to the Monadnock region to visit Parker's Maple Barn. There was always a line to get in for breakfast, so we would get our place reserved and then head over to the sugar house to watch the syrup-making process. It was usually freezing cold, and often snowing or raining, so when we got too chilly we would warm up in the gift shop. When our names were finally called over the outdoor loudspeaker, we would step into the big restaurant/barn that smelled of wood fires, maple syrup, and breakfast.

My favorite was the pumpkin pancake breakfast. What follows is not the Parker's recipe, but one that I put together that reminds me very much of the great breakfasts we had together there.

Pumpkin Pancakes

3 eggs
1 cup yogurt
¼ cup molasses
1 cup cooked or canned pumpkin
2 tbl. melted butter or vegetable oil
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
¾ tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. each: cloves, mace, ginger
Strong coffee

Mix first five ingredients together in a large bowl; sift the dry ingredients and add to the pumpkin mixture, stirring in enough coffee to make the batter the consistency you like.

Serve pancakes with warm applesauce or maple syrup.

Images from Winters Past

Buried Bug

Back in New Hampshire where the snowfall is serious stuff, we misplaced our VW Bug one winter. We really love the "snow" here in Clovis--especially when we hear that some people clear off their sidewalks using a hair dryer! The buried bug photo just made Photo of the Day on the Clovis News Journal's online edition at http://www.cnjonline.com/sections/editors-notebook/photooftheday/. Too bad, it was just there the one day and I can't find a way to get to the photo archives, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Find the VW Cabrio

Snow up to the second floor!

New Hampshire Primary

When we lived in New Hampshire, we hosted house parties to organize early campaign strategies in the last election for governor. That, together with the fact that my husband once ran for the state legislature, put us on all kinds of mailing lists. We were invited to "meet the candidate" house parties, big dinners for the party faithful, and picnics and rallies all over the state. Of course, we were also invited to contribute either time or money to the campaign of our choice.

This is such an exciting time for people who live in New Hampshire. Yes, I'm sure plenty of them will be relieved when the media rushes away tomorrow in the early hours and life starts getting back to normal. However, I don't think that there is any other place in America where regular people get to take part in politics in such a personal way. Every person there has a chance to meet the candidates--in a living room, a school gym, or a restaurant.

My friend Francine had the opportunity to introduce Hillary Clinton to the crowd in Dover, NH yesterday. Here are some photos commemorating that occasion that were taken by friends in the crowd. Sorry they are blurry, but they were the best that could be captured at the moment. Right now Francine is out doing what so many in New Hampshire are doing today--standing up for the candidate of her choice, shaking hands, and holding signs. Stay warm, Francine.

Thinking About Fall in New Hampshire

Back in New Hampshire right now it is time for the big fall preparation for winter. Between Labor Day and Columbus Day it seems like there is never enough time to get everything accomplished. The days are crisp and beautiful, sunny and windy, but although we would appreciate the weather leading up to the first big frost, we were way too busy to take out much time to enjoy it. Here are the main chores and tasks that I recall we packed into those six or seven weekends:

• Get the behemoth furnace down in the cellar cleaned and serviced


• Be sure that the oil has been delivered and the oil guy will come automatically to refill the 250 gallon tank a couple of times


• Stack the dry firewood, get some green wood delivered to be drying for the next year


• Decide about when to close the pool, traditionally done on Labor Day weekend. If you wait until later you can get in some nice warm Indian Summer swims, but then somebody (me) has to take one last chilly dip to get all the leaves out before putting the cover over the pool


• Decide when to take out window air conditioners, gambling on the weather staying cool


• Put the garden to bed: Plant bulbs, weed, mulch


• Rake the leaves


• Wash the windows one last time or spend the winter wishing you had


• Put the storm windows down and the screens up or off


• Make sure you have a good relationship with the plow guy and have a plowing schedule set up


• Be sure the snow shovels are in good order and available


• Get buckets of sand from the town sand pile to spread on icy walkways


• Visit that great farm in Deerfield to get squash, apples, pumpkins, mums, apple cider


• Make a straw man for the porch or use the summer's scarecrow


• Decorate the porches with pumpkins and mums


• Go to as many local fairs and farmer's markets as you can


• Freeze and can fruits and vegetables


• Grill outside a lot while you can


• Get ready to store deck and patio furniture before the first snow


• Have cars checked out for the winter—change window cleaner for non-freezing kind, put on snow tires


• Put emergency supplies in car: cat litter to shovel under the wheels when you're stuck on ice or in snow, shovel, blanket, flashlight


• Put away summer clothes, get out winter clothes, and hope you didn't do it too soon

The fall rush to get things done was always ended for us by the first hard frost. Then it was time for us arthritic types to hunker down by the fire and enjoy our quiet indoor winter pursuits by lamplight, leaving the skiing and snowshoeing and snowmobiling to the younger and more mobile folks.

Here are a couple of pictures of winter at our house in New Hampshire. The first one is of our VW Bug, buried in a single snowfall a few winters ago.

Here in eastern New Mexico, on the other hand, I'm not really sure what the coming winter will be like. I do know that we will not be in for those six months of winter we endured every year in New Hampshire. I haven't noticed that our neighbors are doing much preparation, other than putting out some porch decorations of fake fall leaves. Personally, the only change I've made so far is to occasionally wear a long-sleeved shirt with my shorts on my early morning bike rides.