Lea Wait's Blog, page 71

The Search for Rosanna C.

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, once again ecstatic to have solved a genealogical mystery. For a long time, two big questions about my family tree have gone unanswered. I was frustrated by my inability to find any source for the Irish DNA Ancestry.com kept insisting I have—between 5 and 8 % of the total. And I hadn’t been able to figure out how my German immigrant great-great-grandfather, who lived from the age of sixteen in a little town in rural New York State, could have met and married a “southern girl” from the state of Georgia. The answers, as it turned out, were in the same place—the 1850 census for Goshen, NY. Much like solving a murder, climbing a family tree involves following clues. Here’s how this investigation went.

My great-great-grandfather, William Coburg was born in about 1828 in Coburg, Germany. Family stories had him arriving in this country as one of two brothers, ages sixteen and fourteen. In the New York State census taken in 1855, he stated he was twenty-seven and had lived in Goshen, in Orange County, New York for eleven years, making his age sixteen and the date of his arrival 1844. In 1855, he had a wife, “Rosana Coberg,” age twenty-six, born in the state of Georgia and a resident of Goshen for nine years. They had two children, Mary, age two, and Henry, seven months.

Henry Coburg, Rosanna’s son, the oldest family photo we have from this branch of the tree

Census takers were notoriously bad at spelling names and often got other details wrong, as well. Some people were skipped in the enumerations. Still, without the information they did collect, it would be a whole lot harder to find ancestors. In later census records, Rosanna is spelled Rossina, and in some she’s given the middle initial C. Her birth in Georgia is consistent, which goes along with the family story that William married “a southern girl.”

Assuming she had lived in Goshen for nine years, she should have been in the 1850 census. I already knew William did not show up in that one, but it didn’t occur to me until a few months ago to try a different approach. Using the search feature for that census, I typed in the first name Rosanna, no last name, a probable birth date of 1828, and Goshen as the location she lived in. She would have been around 21 in 1850. Her middle initial suggested her maiden name might begin with a C, and given the mystery in my DNA profile, the odds were also good that her family might be Irish.

A search for the name Rosanna in the 1850 census for Goshen turned up only two. One of them was a black woman. The other was Rosanna Conolly, age 22. Although this census states that she, her father (Constantine, 52), and her sister (Catherine, age 28) were all born in New York, in a later census Constantine’s birthplace is given as Ireland.

These details seem to suggest that this is the Rosanna who married William Coburg. Also suggestive is the fact that Rosanna’s nearest neighbor was a shoemaker, which was William Coburg’s profession. I had to wonder if it was possible that my ancestor was apprenticed to him, giving him the opportunity to meet and court the proverbial girl next door.

William’s ad from the 1872/3 Sullivan County Directory

Variations on the spelling of his nane made tracing Constantine a challenge, as does the existence of other men with the same name in both the U. S. and Ireland. Constantine turmed up as Constantine, Constine, and Constant. His surname was spelled Connolly, Connelly, Conolly, Connely, Connoley, Conley, Conoly, Conly, Canley, and even Gourley, The Goshen Constantine, whose age in 1850 indicates a birthdate of 1798, doesn’t seem to have any direct connection the state of Georgia, but there was a Constantine Connolly who lived in Georgia between the years 1823 and 1859, opening up the possibility that Rosanna might have been born on a visit to a relative in Savannah.

Documentation of the life of the Goshen Constantine begins on September 28, 1828, when the Presbyterian church in Goshen recorded his marriage to Rachael McLaughlin. Rachael’s death is also noted in the church’s records, occurring on September 20, 1835. Later census records reveal that Constantine was married twice. His first wife appears to have been the mother of both his daughters. Even though census records are not consistent about the year of Rosanna’s birth, the age given in her obituary, in February 1878, is fifty-one, placing her birth in 1827.

In searching for Constantine in other records, I found more evidence to suggest that Rosanna Coburg was his daughter. Constantine does not appear in the 1855 census, but in 1860, when he was also recorded as being deaf, he was living with Pat McLaughlin (b. Ireland 1810). Constantine’s age is given as 65 (b. Ireland 1795), and his occupation as laborer, but his relationship to McLaughlin is left blank. Given McLaughlin’s age, he could have been the brother of Constantine’s second wife. Even more likely is that he was Constantine’s son-in-law. Pat’s second wife, Catherine McLaughlin, was 36 in 1860, and therefore was born in about 1824—close enough, given census irregularities, to make it possible she was Rosanna’s older sister.

The final proof (as much proof as I ever expect to find) is in the census taken in 1870. Oddly enough, I already had this information. I just didn’t recognize its significance. By 1860, you see, William and Rosanna Coburg had moved to Wallkill, in nearby Ulster County, New York. Their family had continued to grow, adding another daughter, Frances. Then, in 1870, they were living in Bloomingburgh, in Sullivan County, about fifteen miles from Goshen, but, in Goshen, in the household headed by “Patrick McLauclin,” the census taker recorded three more names: Constantine Conley (75), May Coburgh (17), and Frances Coburgh (14). The presence of two of William and Rosanna’s daughters in residence on the day the census was taken makes perfect sense if they were there on a visit to their grandfather and their aunt.

the final “proof” in the 1870 census

In 1875 the McLaughlins were still in Goshen and the Coburgs were still in Bloomingburgh, but Constantine no longer appears, suggesting that he died between 1870 and 1875.

Rosanna C. Coburg died on February 12, 1878 in Port Jervis, New York, where she had gone to visit her married daughter, Mary Kinner.

 

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others, including several children’s books. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Her most recent publications are The Valentine Veilleux Mysteries (a collection of three short stories and a novella, written as Kaitlyn) and I Kill People for a Living: A Collection of Essays by a Writer of Cozy Mysteries (written as Kathy). She maintains websites at www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.

Mystery novels avid readers recommend again and again

Charlene D’Avanzo: Several mystery novels avid readers (including me) repeatedly endorse:

The Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries have gained dedicated fans over 17 novels (and counting). The first, Still Life, introduces Gamache who investigates murder in tiny Three Pines, Quebec where folks don’t lock their doors. Serene small town life is upset when a woman is found in the woods, an arrow in her heart. Locals call it a hunting accident, but the police inspector senses something is off. The story evolves as a classic whodunit but feels like anything but with deliberate pacing, dry wit, and lyrical writing. Reader note: These stories are best read in order.

 

Agatha Christie is the queen of mystery and Murder on the Orient Express is one her most famous works, a genre classic. It was supposed to be the perfect crime. But an avalanche stops the Orient Express in its tracks just before a passenger is found murdered in his berth, foiling the perpetrator’s escape, and trapping 13 potential suspects – each with an airtight alibi – on the train with Inspector Hercule Poirot.

The bingeable mystery series by Jacqueline Winspear is a perfect balance of cozy and compelling, with darker details of WWI as backdrop and a wonderful heroine to root for. Book one introduces Maisie Dobbs who trades wartime nursing for her own private investigation practice at the Great War’s end. Her first case seems like a run-of-the-mill infidelity, but looking deeper Maisie finds disturbing secrets connected to the war, and she must confront her own trauma to solve the case. Maisie’s strong empathy and nurse’s training make her uniquely suited to detective work, and learning more about her is just as enjoyable as following the mystery.

Gaudy Night, a Lord Peter Winsey-Harriet Vane mystery, is Dorothy Sayers’ tenth Lord Peter novel, the first told from the perspective of Harriet Vane’s perspective, and one of her finest. (They needn’t be read in order.) When Ms. Vane returns to Oxford for her college’s reunion (the title’s “gaudy”), a festive mood is threatened by an outbreak of murderous threats. Sayers makes this much more than a crime novel, though it’s a good one—through Harriet who struggles with questions of love and friendship, life and work, gender and class, and the writing life. Read this and then go back and read all the Lord Peter mysteries, beginning with Whose Body?.

 

Sue Grafton is best known for her Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Mysteries. In A is for alibi Kinsey sets up a new detective agency in Santa Teresa, California. She’s a classic noir detective—twice-divorced, a loner, fond of the underdog—and she finds herself drawn in by a woman out on parole for her husband’s murder. As twists keep coming (and the bodies stack up), Kinsey is more and more danger. Kinsey is a great character: rough around the edges, tough and motivated.

I’ll end with a book sitting on my bedside table: Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon whose books are called “the next best thing to being in Venice.”  Here, a world-renowned conductor’s intermission refreshment comes one night with a little something extra – cyanide. Guido Brunetti, vice-commissario of police and detective genius, finding a suspect isn’t a problem but narrowing the large group of enemies down to one is. As Brunetti pieces together clues, a shocking picture of depravity and revenge emerges, leaving him torn between what is and what should be right — and questioning what the law can do, and what needs to be done.

Weekend Update: November 26-27, 2022

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Charlene D’Avanzo (Monday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Thursday), and Kate Flora (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

 

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

Happy Thanksgiving

Have a wonderful day everyone!

Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) by Matt Cost

On Aug. 4, 2020, Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force.

That’s right. UAPs are the new UFOs.

On June 25th, 2021, the task force presented a preliminary report that there is definitely something going on in the skies, but they have no idea what it is.

The Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of pictures and videos gathered by the Task Force, purportedly showing “what appears to be pyramid-shaped objects” hovering above the USS Russell in 2019, off the coast of California, with spokeswoman Susan Gough saying “I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations.”

I believe that the government is trying to obfuscate what is happening above our heads so as to not create alarm. The task force has gone through various increasingly confusing name changes over the past two years and have had little luck in getting to the bottom of hundreds of sightings.

The phenomena of UFOs began during WWII when pilots began to see unexplained oddities in the sky that they called ‘foo fighters’.

This was followed by the Roswell incident of 1947 in which debris was found at a ranch in New Mexico. The government claimed it was the debris of a weather balloon. People did not believe them.  Some conspiracists believe the wreckage was spirited to a hush-hush military site in southern Nevada called Area 51, where study of the aliens and their craft continues to this day.

From 1952-1969, the US government investigated 12,600 mysterious sighting through a program called Project Blue Book. This investigative committee was disbanded and there was no official program looking into UFOs or UAPs for almost fifty years.

On November 14, 2004, a UAP was recorded about 100 miles southwest of San Diego, CA. The USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, including the missile cruiser USS Princeton, were performing drills. Among the group were two F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter pilots. During the training, they were suddenly asked to proceed to new coordinates for a possible real-life situation. Before this, a radar operator in the group had been picking up anomalous aerial vehicles (AAVs) — the Navy’s term for UAPs — for several days at an altitude of over 80,000 feet.

However, after detecting AAVs at lower altitudes, the two pilots were sent to intercept the objects. At first, the pilots couldn’t see the AAVs, but they did notice a disturbance in the water. Suddenly, a Tic Tac-shaped aircraft appeared, moving quickly and erratically before speeding off. While the encounter wasn’t captured on video, a different pilot was able to record the aircraft leaving. This report was buried for almost twenty years, until the implementation of the Unexplained Aerial Phenomena Task Force in 2020.

This and 143 incidents have so-far been unexplainable by the UAP task force. They have recently listed five purposes of the program. Number four is to mitigate and defend US airspace. Possible explanations include foreign aircraft (Russia, China), secret US programs, or aliens.

It would seem that UFOs or UAPs are real and fascinating. And now, for the shameless plug. This is also the basis for the December 21st publication of my fourth Clay Wolfe/Port Essex mystery, Cosmic Trap. Clay, Baylee, and gang are tasked with being the local liaison for two UAP Task Force members investigating multiple sightings in the skies of Port Essex.

About the Author

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published four books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, Mainely Wicked, due out in August of 2023. He has also published three books in the Clay Wolfe/Port Essex series, with the fourth, Cosmic Trap, due out in December of 2022.

For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. In April of 2023, Cost will combine his love of histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

Yet Another Writer Platform?

Those of you paying attention to social media know that things have gotten a touch weird online. Facebook has mainly become a way to stay connected to old friends and family members you’d maybe rather not see at Thanksgiving. Twitter, after its acquisition by Elon Musk, is slowly degenerating into fingerpointing, snarky memes about the new owner, and general crabbing about what it used to be. I’m mostly interested in social media as a way to keep in touch with writer friends who don’t live close enough to lunch with and to keep up with publishing news. I hadn’t given much thought, beyond the monthly blog post, to actually presenting my writing online.

I ran across Substack by following Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, an invaluable source of sane commentary about American history and elections in the context of everything that has gone before. If you haven’t run into it, I highly recommend a sane voice that also makes serious points about the seriousness of what we’ve been going through.

Poking around the site, I got interested in the potential of Substack as a two-pronged approach for my work: first, as a single place to archive the writing I wanted to preserve, and second, as a venue for presenting that writing to the world.

Substack is a free service, at least at the moment. You create an account, which allows you to post items and build your subscription list by supplying email addresses. You can make some or all of your postings free to your subscription list and, if you like, you can put certain items behind a paywall. I know several romance writers who are using the Substack platform to serialize novels and present them to their subscription lists (as paid posts). As a subscriber, you receive an email every time I put a new piece of writing online.

If the notion interests you, you can look at my (skinny at the moment) Substack, called The Far Northeast. Subscribe, if you like—there’s no cost—and follow as I build up a library of material that I thnk is suitable for the outside world. I’ll also be writing about my experiences with the platform as I get more comfortable with it. And coming in January, I plan to pull a Dickens and serialize a new novel. I’d love to hear what you think about it.

So if you see me disappear from Twitter (and I’ve already been disappeared once from Facebook), come look for me on Substack. Comments encouraged . . .

Never, Ever … Buy or Eat the Big, Tasteless Ones

Sandra Neily here.

My family and friends have given me a reputation for quick or novel fixes to more create strategies that add “yum!” to food. My sisters still call me in the middle of gravy-making as that’s always a daunting thing. I love that. (Scroll down for gravy and more tips.)

(And right now, I am writing a character …Patton … who’s hiding out in a hunting tree stand, eating moose jerky and drinking rainwater, so I get no vicarious food-joy from the keyboard.)

The kids Thanksgiving table with siblings and cousins. Long ago. I am in the headband front left. High school.

I’ve collected some of my go-to tips to share with you during feasting season. And below, look for more info on Maine berries and how to find them.

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Better cornbread, muffins, even brownies. Put a couple of very heaping tablespoons of yogurt in all muffin and cornbread recipes (mashed banana too; I keep ‘dead’ ones in the freezer in their skins). Makes everything wonderfully moist: cornbread is fabulous this way.

Bob will eat fruit salad. Except for bananas, cut up fruit works for most of them. Stuff is camouflaged.

Quick Fruit Salad. Well, there’s a prerequisite. Always have Wyman’s Wild Blueberries and unsweetened whole strawberries in the freezer. (Big, non-Maine, or generic-brand blueberries not allowed. Tasteless.) I combine the frozen fruit with fresh: apples cut into small bite-size pieces, orange or Clementine sections (cut up if large). Great way to use up sad-looking fruit. My guilty pleasure are fresh raspberries (can be frozen if not used in a few days). I heat, cut up, and mash strawberries to create more juice. Add some fruit juice of any kind for more moisture. (Juice acid keeps fruit from going brown.) I sweeten with bit of real maple syrup, but you don’t need to. Done in 10-15 minutes; lasts about a week. Is it getting a big old? Toss in a blender with yogurt for a yum smoothie. Eat on Giffords Vanilla ice cream.  (More berry uses: warm strawberries on waffles or pancakes. Blueberries get tossed into yogurt or into pan drippings from chicken, turkey, or pork for a yummy sauce.)

Muffins as matrix.  I cannot eat most commercial muffins as they do not apply this mantra: the flour stuff should never overcome the guts of a muffin. I like 3-berry muffins (2 will do but Wyman’s has a great 3 berry frozen product). Add about a good cup of frozen blueberries (dust w flour before adding). Add raspberries and whole cranberries.

just harvested cranberries at LYNCH HILL FARMS, Harrington, ME

           (I buy whole cranberries in the fall and freeze them. Good for years! Craisins too sugary.) Of course, I add some yogurt (any kind) and a mashed banana, sometimes a handful of oatmeal (any kind). I don’t always add all this, but sometimes I live dangerously. And there’s always chocolate chips for grandkids. Or Bob.

My dear friend Leslie is very excited about this ONE (one!) kale plant from her garden. It’s headed into her freezer so she can trick me this winter. She knows I am not excited.

Impress ‘em salad dressing. Take any Italian or Balsamic dressing. Add a bit of soy sauce, lumps of Grey Poupon mustard and mix vigorously. Heat a couple of generous spoons of honey until it bubbles. Add and mix forcefully. (Finely minced garlic is welcome, too.) Pour on. Got bitter lettuce? Add warm honey to whatever you dressed it with, just before serving. (I think I could eat kale salad if folks used honey.)

Fast coleslaw. Buy a bag of undressed mixed slaw of any kind. Add bit of mayonnaise (not much!), warmed-up raisins or Craisons, bit of maple syrup (honey), and use mostly any kind of Italian dressing. Should not be a mayo-fest; use only a little bit as a binder. Even folks who hate coleslaw seem to like this. Is my go-to camping salad; undressed, vacuum-packed slaw lasts pretty long in coolers.

Homemade duck sauce. Heat good-brand marmalade with soy sauce and a bit of butter (just a bit for a binder). Yummy for a dip or add-in for anything Asian. I think it’s better than any store brand.

Revive your rotisserie chicken (or poultry). Marmalade again. In a fry pan, some marmalade again with some soy sauce and a bit more butter this time.  Add slices of leftover (and usually dry) chicken/turkey.

Quick potatoes. Keep a few cans of whole, white potatoes in the pantry. When stuck for a side dish, drain, slice them angular and a bit chunky, and fry in butter with generous salt and pepper until getting a bit brown. Hide the cans, no one will know … (Also a camping go-to thing.)

I will never, ever top my daughter’s cranberry coffee cake. Looks like she was well aware of that. Yum.

OK, the gravy. Have a lemon on hand in case your bird is stingy. The trick is to cook the flour so it does not taste starchy. Make a roux by leaving a couple of tablespoons of juice/fat in the pan. Reserve the rest. Add 1 tablespoon of flour for each tablespoon of pan juice (1/1 ratio). Stirring vigorously over good heat, cook the flour mixture even as you scrape bird bits off the sides of the pan. After a few minutes of cooking (bubbling a bit), when it looks like brown/tan waffle batter (will be thick), add back the rest of the juices and stir. I slowly add in liquid (and also a bit of milk … not much) to get the sauce consistency I want. If the juices are kind of tasteless, very slowly add a bit of lemon and a bit of soy sauce (just bits!) until you get a flavor you can live with. During one desperate TDay, I also used orange juice to save the gravy. It turned out to be kind of elegant and delicious.

Camping no-fridge tips: cucumbers, sliced very thin replace lettuce in sandwiches. The long wrapped ones last better. Vacuum-packed, sliced deli ham lasts forever even in wet cooler bottoms so sandwiches can happen after many days. And vacuum-packed thick, dinner ham is still great even if floating in cooler’s bottom: great on the grill. I fry up a few apples and add raisins picked out of the gorp to make a compote to go on top of the ham.

Canned French-cut beans on grill: arrange big double pieces of tin foil. Drain beans. Spread in a thick line down middle of the foil. Add salt, pepper, butter, and I use lots of fresh Parmesan cheese. Roll up, tuck ends up (up!) carefully. Heat, always folded side up … do not turn … at end of the grill, moving package around a bit. (I always grate Parmesan before a trip and put in an airtight jar. Lasts in cooler. Makes everything better: eggs/omelets, soups, noodles, old bread on the grill….be inventive. (Ick on the prepared parm; has cellulose.)

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BERRIES, BERRIES …Maine ones of course. (Wyman’s will be in your store’s freezer section.)

Get Maine berries from Lynch Hill Farms.

Find the famous Wyman’s brand selling more blueberry products here.

Here’s the Wyman’s story.  And an amazing how-they-do-it video.  The company has flourished over 148 years, growing from a scrappy little fish cannery to the largest brand of frozen fruit in the U.S. Wyman’s processes up to 2.3 million pounds of wild blueberries a day. The company employs 200 people year-round, and more than 500 during the summer harvest. More than a third of employees have a tenure of more than a decade ….

A Sandy note about finding Wyman’s home: In October, during our last camper outing to check out Donnell Pond public lands (just inland from Acadia), we drove through many small Maine towns. They look like the towns of my Boothbay youth. We found Milbridge, a very small, small Maine town where the Narraguagus River meets the sea. The Wyman’s sign just outside of town had us stopping in the unassuming parking lot filled with well-used trucks and well-used family cars. We were amazed by the size of the building and left with a new appreciation of how berries in our freezer … the ones that would fill muffins, pancakes, and fruit salads … the berries sent all over the world … came from this tucked-away part of Maine. Treat yourself and watch the factory video.

Sandy’s debut novel, “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine” won a national Mystery Writers of America award, was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. The second Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Turn,” was published in 2021. Her third “Deadly” is due out in 2023. Find her novels at all Shermans Books (Maine) and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

Weekend Update: November 19-20, 2022

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Sandra Neily (Monday), Dick Cass (Tuesday), and Matt Cost (Wednesday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

Stealing a Memory From My Mom

Kate Flora: With the holidays on the horizon, I’ve been thinking about holidays past.

Kate begins to learn about marketing beside the orange mailbox

These days, there are far fewer people around the table, yet I still enjoy making all the food I grew up with. A too-big turkey with lots of stuffing, mashed potatoes. Creamed onions–because my dad required them. Squash and peas and gravy. Two or three kinds of cranberry sauce. Today, as I was feeling sentimental (and stuck on a short story I promised to write for an anthology) I was browsing through my late mother, A Carman Clark’s book of her collected columns: From the Orange Mailbox: Notes from a Few Country Acres.

I landed on a column from November about our dining room table, and I thought I’d share it with you.

The leaves which extend my old oak table are reminders of the important part this piece of furniture has played in country living. Closed, this drop leaf table measures only 2 feet by 3 1/2 feet, but, with four leaves added, a dozen people can dine together with comfortable elbow room.

Stripped of the table cloth its seven-foot surface stirs creative projects. It’s splendid for cutting and pasting wallpaper, making Christmas wreaths, laying out patterns for sewing, or organizing a bean factory to see how many quarts might be canned on a summer day.

Family Thanksgiving on the farm

About thirty years ago I received a phone call asking if I could us an old oak table–not beautiful but serviceable–and set forth in the farm truck to pick it up. Ida Hughes had sold her house and was negotiating with several dealers to dispose of her furniture. When one dealer offered her $2 for the kitchen table, Ida declared, “Before I would sell that table for $2, I’d give it to a good woman. My volunteer work at the elementary school where Ida was principal apparently earned me the opportunity.

Since Ida Hughes was born in 1899 and the table had belonged to her mother, it can be classified as an antique. When the white paint was sanded from the top, the golden oak turned out to be stained with ink. Several bottles must have spilled in those years when Ida corrected papers and wrote reports.

The extension leaves were missing. Ida had loaned them to someone years before and they

Gathered around the old oak table

had never been returned. The search for oak leaves with four pegs led us into second-hand shops and country auctions where–if the price was right–we picked up leaves of many shapes and sizes with a plan for splendid bookshelves. Eventually, during our annual family “apple stealing” event, when we drove back roads picking apples at abandoned farms, we found a neat rack holding four-pegged leaves, and an old iron bed with gargoyles grinning down down from the head of the bed. Applesauce and an extended table followed.

Over the years, the table has served some function in every room, even the bathroom when it was being papered. The summers when we hosted exchange students, it was moved to the shed where it could be opened full length to accommodate a steady stream of guests. The summer I gambled on turning down teaching jobs and gambled on earning the same amount of money by writing, the table became a desk in my bedroom.

The table accommodated an extended family for Thanksgiving. There were years when the disappearing taillights of those Thanksgiving guests gave way to the rattling of bowls as we used the table to make the Christmas cookies that would be mailed in tins to friends and relatives. When college years brought a need for evening gowns, lengths of red velvet and bolts of silver-flecked white were spread over the table as soon as the holiday meal was finished.

Around this old table 4-H girls learned to make yeast bread where eight could knead in harmony. Woman’s Day magazine published my article “Bowl Breads for Beginners” based on these many aspiring cooks, and many cooks who had never tried making break before started baking using these recipes.

Digital StillCamera

Evergreens snipped from woodland walks were woven into wreaths and ropes on this table. Smooth stones collected from beach walks were built into a crèche and driftwood from Moosehead Lake was polished and shaped as a background for Christmas figures to decorate the mantel. Scissors and paste covered the table surface for completing school projects. One art assignment, requiring originality, incorporated colored lint from the dryer.

Shaggy Turkish towels worked as a base for stringing necklaces from collections of broken beads. Designs could be tried and changed before the fishline was threaded through to hold them.

My dog, Miss Badger, escaped to the shelter of the table when too many people disturb her doggy privacy and the grandchildren climb under to pat her soft ears. There’s room for all of them.

View from where the table sits now

Christmas gifts are wrapped on the spacious surface and puzzles sorts to check for missing pieces. Here we enjoy Thanksgiving as a family and the grandchildren spread their papers and markers for drawing dragons. When I join them, my efforts always produce dragons that resemble fat goats.

As I put two leaves away and change the table pad and tablecloth size for a smaller supper party, reminders flow in. This old drop leaf table is probably the most practical article of furniture any country house could have.

KF note: The table now lives in an oceanside cottage in Maine, where it lends its surface to other projects. Following in my mother’s footsteps, several novels have been written on its venerable surface.

One lucky commenter on this post will receive a copy of my mother’s first mystery, The Maine Mulch Murder.

The Maine Mulch Murder by A. Carman Clark

 

The Eyes Have It

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today recounting my recent (and continuing) experience with cataract surgery. I’m extremely grateful that this surgery exists. Even a quarter of a century ago, cataracts meant, at the least, coke-bottle glasses and permanently impaired vision.

That said, it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses, especially for someone who normally spends most of her time either reading or writing. Like so many people over 65, my vision was getting worse. My right eye was doing most of the work, since the left was both blurry and extremely nearsighted. Even so, I put off having cataract surgery for years, mostly because the description of the process gave me the willies. I’d still prefer not to think about that part of things. Anyway, since it was getting harder and harder to focus properly, even with bifocals, I finally decided it was time to bite the bullet. Because my husband had his cataracts fixed a couple of years ago, just pre-Covid, I thought I had some idea what to expect.

Wrong.

For one thing, where he opted for the super surgery that would remove his need for glasses altogether, I wanted to keep wearing glasses. I’m also cheap. I went with the standard surgery, which is completely covered by Aetna Medicare. This was not a mistake, but it was undertaken while under a major misconception concerning how much time would have to pass before I would actually get new glasses and be able to see at all distances once again.

My first surgery was back on October 12. I don’t even get my eyes tested for the new specs until November 21. Since that’s Thanksgiving week, I doubt I’ll have them before November 28. That’s a looooong time not to see properly.

obviously, I’ve worn glasses for a long time

For those of you who may not know much about cataract surgery, it’s a pretty simple process, but since it does involve making a laser incision at the side of the eye, it isn’t trifling and it takes time for the eye to heal afterward. The surgery itself lasts about seven minutes, and the patient has to be awake in order to focus the relevant eye on a rather bright light. There’s no pain—numbing eyedrops take care of that. And there isn’t a lot of nervousness during surgery, thanks to the wonderful world of pharmaceuticals. However, there is more than an hour of prep time (instilling drops into the eye multiple times) and since we live where we do, there was also an hour’s drive to get to Eye Care of Maine in Waterville—entirely too much time to wonder whether I really wanted to go through with it.

Obviously, I didn’t chicken out. With the left eye (the worst one) done, I had a follow-up visit in Waterville the next morning and then, a week later, an appointment with my own eye doctor in Farmington. All was good. I could actually see stuff with that eye again. And everything was brighter—glaringly so! Two weeks after the first surgery, it was time to get my right eye fixed. Again, there was a follow up the next day and a visit to my eye doctor the next week. After each surgery, I had to put steroid eye drops in the affected eye: four times a day for a week, then three times a day for a week, then two, then one. For each eye, for a week, I had to wear a eye shield taped to my face to protect that eye from random contact with, well, anything.

All that was as I expected. I also knew going in that I’d end up farsighted instead of nearsighted, and that’s certainly true. Within a day of the second surgery, I could see well enough to legally drive without glasses. Watching TV was no problem. I could even, a little more than a week after the second surgery, work on the PC without glasses, although the screen still seems awfully bright.

typical page during revision process

But here’s what I didn’t anticipate: everything closer than two feet is blurry. Until I picked up a pair of “cheaters” at Walmart (3x magnification), I couldn’t read. Even the food on my plate was out of focus. Worse, I couldn’t edit. As regular readers of this blog know, I revise by hand, often using asterisks and stars to insert new material. I couldn’t see the printout well enough to read it, let alone make changes. I have reached the point where I can see the printout when it’s next to the monitor on my PC, and therefore could type corrections into a doc file, but since I still can’t focus properly on the printout when it’s in my lap . . .

So, here I am with an enforced month and a half off from any writing projects I can’t do directly on the computer. I did not expect that!

I guess I shouldn’t complain. I can still read other people’s books on my iPad, thanks to enlarged fonts. I can even reread some of the trade paperbacks I bought, years ago, in large print format. My eyes aren’t completely working together on this yet, but they’re improving.

the bags are there, but they’re harder to see in this pre-surgery photo

There is, however, one other side-effect I didn’t anticipate. Now that I’ve essentially gone from being nearsighted to being farsighted, I am aware of some things that, to be truthful, I’d just as soon not be. For instance, it’s hard to pretend I’m a decent housekeeper when that I can see the dust on the baseboards. I don’t even want to talk about being able to see the walls and floor of the shower stall. I’m not likely to become any better at cleaning than I was before, but ignoring what needs doing is no longer an option.

Worse, though, is what I see every time I look in the mirror. Poor eyesight combined with glasses frames did a wonderful job of hiding the bags under my eyes. Ditto for assorted wrinkles. I don’t much care for looking ten years older than I thought I did, or for the fact that I still won’t have new glasses when the family gathers for Thanksgiving. I’d consider wearing the “cheaters” if they didn’t blur everything farther than a foot in front of me.

Oh, well. I don’t suppose there’s much point in vanity once you hit seventy-five. I can’t undo the surgeries, and honestly, I wouldn’t want to. My overall vision is much improved, even with the current drawbacks.

But I sure will be glad to get those new glasses!

BIG glasses, back in the day

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others, including several children’s books. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Her most recent publications are The Valentine Veilleux Mysteries (a collection of three short stories and a novella, written as Kaitlyn) and I Kill People for a Living: A Collection of Essays by a Writer of Cozy Mysteries (written as Kathy). She maintains websites at www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.