Home

In the days after 9/11, I could not escape the pull of television news. It seemed one of the few ways I could take part in my country's sorrow. Then there came a day when I realized that I had to find my way back to what I could do, and that was to go on in the only place I could--in my home and with my family.

It was mostly at home that I could make a difference. And so like countless others, I began to pick up the pieces and look around me, see what was being neglected and try to do something about it. 

Home, the place we return to at the end of the day, if we are one of the lucky ones.

We cook and we sit down at the table together and clear the dishes and feed the pets and sweep the floor and watch a movie or read a book and turn back the blanket and go to bed. 

All very good stuff, things denied to some and things not enjoyed under present circumstances by many others. 

Homemaking. Making a home.

There was a book by Elizabeth Goudge called Pilgrim's Inn that I read years ago that was a revelation to me and remains to this day one of my favorite books. This quote contains what is, to me, one of the most important themes of the book:


"Lucilla knew always, and Nadine knew in her more domesticated moments, that it was homemaking that mattered. Every home was a brick in the great wall of decent living that men erected over and over again as a bulwark against the perpetual flooding in of evil. But women made the bricks, and the durableness of each civilization depended upon their quality, and it was no good weakening oneself for the brick-making by thinking about the flood."

[Pilgrim's Inn by Elizabeth Goudge]

Think back some years with me, will you? Back to a time we really don't like to think about. To the weeks after the war in Iraq began. Not to the yay or nay of it, but to the interviews journalists did in what was left of Iraqi  homes.

Do you remember the camera going into houses where women were still doing their best to make a home for their families? There were curtains hung, a vase of flowers on a bright tablecloth. Food being cooked in a pot for the family meal. 

These women knew, more than any of us, how important it is to make a nest, a home, even under terrible circumstances. 

Obviously there is much sadness in this world of ours today, much evil. But we have to go on with our brick-making, don't we? 

"Danse Macabre"

"It's farewell to the drawing room's mannerly cry,

The professor's logical whereto and why,

The frock-coated diplomat's polished aplomb,

Now matters are settled with gas and with bomb….

So good-bye to the house with its wallpaper red,

Good-bye to the sheets on the warm double bed,

Good-bye, dear heart, good-bye to you all.

W. H. Auden

When Auden wrote this in the 1930s, already the diplomat was becoming obsolete. The statesmen of old? What use would they be now? Can you reason with a terrorist? 

I try to keep Dewena's Window positive, try to keep its issues within my sphere of influence. But how many years will pass before any of us awake on September 11 without immediately thinking of that day in 2001? 

The day the World Trade Center collapsed into ashes, part of the Pentagon was destroyed, and major airlines were hijacked as weapons of murder. A day that changed our lives forever even if we were not among the day's victims.

That morning here in Tennessee began as a lovely early autumn day with our windows open to a refreshing breeze and the sky intensely blue and cloud-free. It turned out to be similar to another day that Richard M. Kitchum wrote about in The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941: America on the Way to War.

"The one thing everyone in Europe could agree on was the weather: it was the most hauntingly beautiful springtime in memory--soft, radiant, dazzling days stretching on one after another as if to blind people of what was to come."

These are the things we remember after catastrophe strikes: how we stretched when we awoke that morning and threw back the covers in anticipation of the day ahead, what we had for breakfast, waving goodbye to the children before they got on the school bus, the grocery list the most important thing on our mind. 

And all along, if we had known, "It's farewell to the drawing-room's mannerly cry."

That is what I'm thinking of today. That farewell to a life of reason. Of being blind to what is to come. Tomorrow I will move on and cope. Today I will mourn as W.H. Auden did in "Danse Macabre" and pray that we heed his warning.

Russel Wright

There was a fascinating article in my vintage Woman's Home Companion magazine written by Russel Wright himself called "…any man can keep house". Mr. Wright's wife, his design partner Mary Wright, had passed away leaving him as a single parent to little daughter Annie. 

He wrote: "I organized my menu files into a Menu Book containing 60 complete menus with a recipe for each dish and detailing the service and accessories for each meal."

Think of that! A man, not a chef, taking the time to make a Menu Book with 60 meals in it? Yes, he had a housekeeper, but once a week he drew up menus for the week ahead out of his book for the housekeeper to follow--with the dishes to be used at each meal. I am so impressed.

[Woman's Home Companion September 1956, photo by Jerry Cooke]

Mr. Wright wrote: "My spice shelves and other grocery shelves are arranged in an alphabetical filing system. Our kitchen cupboards have pictures on the doors to show the location of groceries, china, glass and serving accessories. Everything possible should be stored at the spot at which it is to be used."

The other pictures in this article were too small to be of good quality but even his refrigerator shelves had labels where everything was to go. I repeat, I am impressed. 

[Woman's Home Companion September 1956]

I am so intrigued by this man who designed such beautiful mid-century ceramics. When our first two children were young, we drove to Florida to visit my parents who had moved there. We stopped along the way at an antique store, much too pricey for us to buy anything, but there was one big box filled to the brim with dishes. They were all a lovely pale gray and I turned them over to read "Russel Wright." 

They looked like these...

[source]

They were all only about $25, a small amount today but a much bigger amount in the early 1970s. I begged for them but R.H. said he'd think about it, that we could always stop there on the way home. Of course we did not stop. Have you noticed that when you're headed home you just want to get home? 

That box of gray Russel Wright dishes has stayed in my memory for all these decades. I know we all have things we passed up buying in a little antique store or on eBay that we regret. My advice--if you really lose your heart to something, buy it.

I love the look of these Russel Wright dishes in the pretty pinks, blues, grays and yellows...

[source]

And these Wright glasses look as if they'd never been put in a dishwasher...

[source]

But it was this collection that I saw on Pinterest that has me in major envy mode--stunning!

[source]

And look at this piece of Wright's blonde furniture manufactured by Conant-Ball...

[source]

I would adore having this Wright designed serving cart...

[source]

The cart was part of the design philosophy that was typical of Mary and Russel Wright's plan for streamlining living and entertaining in a beautiful but easily managed manner. They wrote about it in their 1950 Guide to Easier Living. I haven't read it yet but ordered a copy of the paperback edition and can't wait to read it. 

Maybe there's still hope for me yet? 

I couldn't end this post without including an ad from the Woman's Home Companion issue that Russel Wright's article was in. A turquoise kitchen built of steel. I wonder if Mr. Wright would have approved? I can see those gray dishes in it with pink ones too. Darn, why didn't I pester R.H. just a little bit for them?

"A Besotted Reader"

"I also am a Besotted Reader,

often lost, as I was last night, in a book."

David Grayson

The Countryman's Year

These books have been some of my nighttime reading lately:

Collected Stories of Jessamyn West

(anything by West is good)

Delicious! by Ruth Reichl

(loved her food memoir Tender at the Bone,

Delicious!, not as much)

All My Yesterdays, autobiography of Edward G. Robinson

(still reading it, loving it)

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

(saving this for a Penny post soon)

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

(couldn't resist finally reading the book

as I remembered wishing I could be as perfect

as a Stepford wife when I saw the movie back in the '70s,

not as chilling as his Rosemary's Baby)

and

As I Am by Patricia Neal

(fascinating woman, admirable in her 

honesty about her own flaws--and those of her ex)

Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

(could not put it down but I wouldn't

stand up in Sunday School and recommend it)

September by Rosamunde Pilcher

(I reread this every few Augusts when I

absolutely cannot wait for September)

The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks

(better than the old movie)

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

(don't read when you're depressed but as always

Didion's writing is marvelous--on second thought,

this book gave me strength in a difficult time)

That's all for now. 

If only I could ask you what you're reading,

and it's tempting to turn on comments.

I'm afraid I'd be back where I was at Across the Way

with no time to read if I did that!

I hope you understand.

I do appreciate it so much when I see my old

blogfriends are visiting.

Thank you for that and I hope that

you're a little relieved not to have to comment here!

Instead, be a besotted reader of books!

Audrey Hepburn in War and Peace

Every once in a while when I pull out one of the magazines from my vintage magazine collection I turn a page and am gobsmacked. That happened this week when I was pulling out old September issues and set aside a Woman's Home Companion from 1956. 

There she was, Audrey Hepburn on page 40 in full page color…

This picture of Hepburn is from the 1956 movie War and Peace where she plays Natasha Rostov.

I read the book long ago but somehow have never seen this movie. 

WHC said:

"Natasha is 17, naive, romantic, rapturously in love with life. At her first ball she meets and enchants Andrei (Mel Ferrer, her real-life husband), the vital, dashing cavalry colonel. Andrei is married to a vain woman whom he hates. He is disillusioned by his first bitter taste of war. He turns to Natasha for fulfillment. when their love waivers, Andrei's close friend, the idealistic Pierre (Henry Fonda), tries to reconcile them--and instead finds himself falling in love with the luminous child-woman, Natasha."

Miss Hepburn's wardrobe in the movie, and the woman in the wardrobe, inspired fall fashions for 1956.  Here is Natasha at her first ball (the quality is poor as the picture was so small):

And here is the dress made for holiday parties in 1956:

Here is Hepburn at the end of the movie in the red dress she made famous:

And a dress inspired by it:

Wouldn't this red dress still turn heads in the autumn of 2014?

I love the fashions of the 1950s.

And who doesn't love Audrey Hepburn?

First Day of School?

It's the day after Labor Day,

so what happened to the first day of school?

Oh, the joy of a 3-month long summer vacation!

Time for playing outside with kids from

the neighborhood till darkness fell.

Time for weekly trips to the library,

to the market for comic books,

and to Pleasant Green swimming pool.

Time for a week at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

And most important of all,

time for doing absolutely nothing.

There once was a magical time for children

when the school bus didn't stop until--

The Day After Labor Day

Lollipops from Heaven

I called to R.H. to get the camera.

Lollipops were falling from heaven.

They were everywhere.

Yellow and red.

Lollipops were falling from heaven.

We looked up to see a few more.

"Call my baby lollipop, tell you why
His kiss is sweeter than an apple pie…"

September is here and lollipops are too!

"Spring is spendthrift,

summer is lavish,

but September has unexpected gifts

to offer her special legacy of jewels in berries,

orange and garnet,

ruby and indigo,

or black as jet,

scarlet as sunset."

Faith Baldwin