Hope Vestergaard's Blog

Pig-a-Palooza

These are some of our May piglets…they are about 90 lbs. now.

Not much time for writing lately but I have been finding time to take photos. A couple of our sows have had piglets in the last two weeks. We usually make each sow a small private pen until the piglets are ready to be weaned at around six weeks old. This time, we put six huts in a fenced-in area with trees, grass, and plenty of room to roam. These are all first-timers so we were very curious to see how they’d do. So far, so good.

Spring piglets.

I took a LOT of pictures.

Click on the thumbnail to view full size.

Seriously. The light was so beautiful tonight.

Sigh.

Even the not-ready-for-prime-time part of the barnyard looks nice in the evening light.

Favorite Things Friday: Yearbook Notes

I am a sucker for an inscription. I like to see who gave a book to whom, and why. I like to know who dog-eared a book’s pages or underlined certain passages; who left a shopping list or pressed a flower between its chapters. I have a couple of really good books with inscriptions tucked away in my collection that I can’t find right now because we’re moving and much is packed away. But! Something else surfaced recently which is a related pleasure: a tiny little book of autographs belonging to a schoolgirl named Dorothy Deddins.

The book is about 3″ x 4″ with an embossed cover and gilded paper edges. It was given to Dorothy in 1926 by Sherrill for a Christmas gift. There’s a note that says U.A. 29, which I’m assuming is her school initials and graduation year.

The notes are almost all short, affectionate verses.

8/21/27

Dear Sis,

As sure as the grass grows round this stump,

You are my sweetest sugar lump.

Yours always, Wilma.

Dear Dorothy,

Here’s to the girl that when she kisses,

Runs and tells her Mother.

But here’s to the one that when she kisses,

Smothers it with another.

–Wally Stiflig ’29

The handwriting is impeccable, even when the grammar is not.

Feb. 3, 1927

Dorothy Dear:

If I was a head of lettuce

I’d divide myself into

Give a leaf to all my friends

Give my heart to you.

–M. R. Braitling

Mar 3, 1927

Dearest Dot,

When sleep has closed your loving eyes

And sweet your slumbers be

Dream of the one who loved you best

And you will dream of me.

Your’s Always,

Mary Rose Risling

They’re not all sunshine and light, however. Take this one from Sister Mary Dolores…it feels slightly ominous.

My dear,

Each act you do,

Each word you say,

Think —-! How will it sound

on Judgment Day?

Lovingly,

Sr. M. Dolores

Feb. 12, 1927

This last selection is the funniest and has the clunkiest rhyme, but it’s still charming.

March 13, 1927

Dar Pal o’ my heart:

Love is a funny thing,

Its just like a lizard.

It wound’s itself

around your heart

And finally crawls

into your gizzard.

-Elsie or John L.Z.

It is striking how sweet and thoughtful these inscriptions were. When I was in high school, the only yearbook poetry was of the “2 good 2 be 4gotten” variety, or maybe something rock and roll-ish that rhymed with “class of ’87″. Where did the old verses come from? How many did each writer have ready, in case someone used the one they were planning to use? Did girls back then compare verses and try to read between the lines to see if this one secretly meant true love or if that one was meant to be snide like they do today?

When I thumb through these autographs, I can’t help but wonder what the writers looked like. How did their lives turn out? The Depression was around the corner. Were their lives happy? Did Dorothy ever see them again after graduation?

I also love old yearbooks, even from schools I don’t know. It’s fun to flip back and forth and match inscriptions to photos. I haven’t seen my high school senior year yearbook in decades. I know it is a little damaged because one of my brothers peed on it while sleepwalking (he was in preschool at the time!), but I unstuck many of the pages at some point and it’s still browsable. I can view old yearbooks at the library. But I’d get a kick out of the signatures. High school graduation is an unsettling time for most kids, as friends scatter off to new adventures. I suffered from a particular kind of melancholy because my family moved mid-year and I was staying with a friend most of second semester. I was set to leave for summer camp a week after school got out and then I’d go to a college I’d never seen, 12 hours away on the east coast. Everything felt so final. Who would I miss? Who would miss me?

I don’t remember who I asked to sign my yearbook–not many people. I’d wager that most of the signatures were blithe or sarcastic. I confess to hoping for a surprise, should I ever find my senior yearbook. Maybe someone left me a little bit of sunshine that I didn’t recognize at the time. Apparently I left a nice note in a friend’s yearbook that I didn’t remember writing until I saw it a couple years ago. It was sweet and insightful and, most surprisingly–pretty open-hearted, considering how discombobulated and insecure I felt at the time. Which brings me back to dear Dot. Which inscription was her favorite? How often did she revisit her little book? I think she had kids because one scrawled on many of the pages in pencil. Did they read it as adults and wonder at their mom’s inner life like I do?

[Sighs dreamily...] Oh, to have that “something crawled into your gizzard” feeling again.

I’m back.

I’ve been gone a long while. The reasons for my sabbatical are many, but not so interesting in list form. So I’ll fill in the gaps over time. For now, I’m happy to be here and if anyone else happens to show up, that’d be even better. 

Favorite Things Wednesday: Vintage Photos, volume 2

my pictures bring all the toys to the yard

I have earlier mentioned my affection for old photos. Even though I am downsizing my household and generally trying to be a thoughtful curator, I keep picking up new ones. Here are my justifications for continuing to collect snapshots of people I don’t know…

They don’t take up much space. (At least I’m not collecting suits of armor or big dusty teddy bears.) 
They are cheap. They can be expensive but those ones don’t come home with me. I gravitate toward the 2 or 3 for a dollar bins.
They make good gifts. I like to tuck them into letters or books. A good photo is almost like a poem for me. Makes me pay attention, reflect, remember.
They inform my writing. Sometimes an idea starts with a photo, or sometimes finding a photo helps me make progress on something I am already involved with.

I thumb through my pictures and think about the subjects. What were their names? What were their lives like? What would they think if they saw a picture of me in the moment I am studying them?

I like photos that show relationships: people with friends, family, and animals.

I like pictures that document a moment in time: products & fashions. I use vintage kitchen tools because they are attractive, sturdy, and useful. I love to find my things in other people’s pictures, or just admire the old-school fonts and design.

I have a stack of pictures of this woman. I feel as though I know her through her pictures.

I am attracted to photos that capture emotion. Some are easily identified…

Others are trickier. At first glance this man seemed put out and awkward. But when I looked closer at his facial expression, it’s mild. So now I think maybe he was indulging the photographer, and I’m guessing that was a person who liked him very well, just as he was. I see no criticism in that photo.

man holding up a tree

I’m drawn to photos that represent hard work. I want to shout back in time, “Yay, you!”

my arms ache looking at this

I’m not sure why I like this next photo. There’s something attractive about “journey” snapshots. The young woman also looks my sister, Hilary.

she’s holding a brown paper package tied up with string!

Same sister noted the unusually modern looking watch (?) her doppelganger is wearing. It seems out of sync with everything else in the picture. Maybe she was a time traveler, Hilary suggested. The possibility delights me.

modern watch? time travel gizmo?

What do you collect, if anything? Why?

Favorite Things Friday (Wednesday Edition): Cheerful Cars

I have always loved a cheerful car. There are a couple in Ann Arbor with plastic dinosaurs and toys all over them. There are also some spectacular custom paint jobs. When we lived in Milan, there was an awesome, junky ice cream truck that was painted solid pink and had zebra fur lining. It played the Pink Panther theme song as it prowled the neighborhood in case of treat-loving street urchins. Best ice cream truck EVER!

I don’t exactly know what cheers me so about a well-appointed or obviously beloved car…maybe it has something to do with the fact that I spend a lot of time in mine. Less so since I now have 1.5 young drivers in the household, but there were years when both kids were doing travel soccer when I practically lived in my car.

My family had a lot of kooky cars over the years. My dad was quite fond of Volkswagens. Nothing wrong with that, but there was an odd disconnect between the size of cars we drove and the size of our family. When my mom dropped us off at school late, kids in the classrooms would stand at the window and point and laugh as we did our version of the clown car routine.

The tightest squeeze ever was a Christmas party trip to Toledo when my dad worked at Owens Corning. Dad (6′ 2″ tall) drove, mom (7 months pregnant) rode shotgun. In the back seat were six kids, the biggest of us on the bottom. There was no need for heat or safety restraints, as we had nowhere to go. We were our own airbags. (Toledo is about a 1-hour drive from Ann Arbor, in case you are doing the math.)

ours were not nearly this pristine, but still adorable

A car does not have to be expensive or new or even very fancy to be cheerful. Some of my favorite happy cars sport home-grown paint jobs. When I was around 10, my dad had an old green ’62 or ’63 Chevy pickup. It was quite beat-up and smoky and we used it mostly to haul stuff to the dump. One day something possessed me to paint a heart on the driver’s door with my parents names or initials in the middle of it with brown paint. Perhaps they had been fighting and I wanted them to stop, or perhaps I was just seized by the intense romanticism that occasionally possesses me to this day. In any case, Dad handled it with aplomb. As I looked at him looking at it, it struck me that it may have been a bad idea, but he didn’t rant or rave. A somewhat wincing chuckle was all I recall. (When asked, Dad said it made him smile. Time heals all wounds. )

My current joymobile, I must confess, is new and shiny, a Mini Cooper Countryman named Maybelline. I love her to bits. She’s sporty, fun to drive, and gets 30 miles to the gallon! She also hold a lot of stuff, more than anyone can believe. I don’t plan to outfit her with long eyelashes or a fake wind-up key, but I appreciate drivers who do accessorize their rides, as well as those who take great care of theirs. We also recently adopted a cherry VW bug which awaits a little restoration with the original parts and such procured by the previous owner.

So back to the car that inspired this post…I was having a rough day earlier this week and I was actively looking for something to cheer me up as I finished my errands. I was thinking about a cupcake, but then I came upon this gem:

Hand-painted, great colors. The inside was fancied up, too! Stickers and figurines on the dashboard. I couldn’t get a good picture of the backseat, but that confirmed that the car owner was someone who shares my vintage affinities…the seat was covered by an old chenille bedspread and on the seat rested a vintage train case, one of my favorite gifts for travelers.

It surely cheered me.

Vintage Advice: Here’s How to Be Healthy

Here’s How to Be Healthy

Bengamin Gayelord Hauser

Tempo Books, Inc. 1934

Poor complexion? Lethargy? Slow stomach? Indigestion? Weight loss or gain?

(cue the trumpets…) Never fear, Gayelord Hauser is here!

Most vintage recipe or health books and pamphlets seem to be thinly (or not at all) disguised advertisements. I was surprised to find the first mention of a brand name on page 27, a suggestion to use a Health-Mine Juice Extractor. Although he was a partner in its manufacture, the author seems to be more than just a brand mouthpiece. Gaylord Hauser believed a vitamin-rich diet cured his tuberculosis of the hip and he made it his life’s work to learn about and spread the word about naturopathy. Hauser was popular with celebrities and became close friends with Greta Garbo and advised many others including Marlene Dietrich, Wallis Simpson, Gloria Swanson, Grace Kelly, and Ingrid Bergmann. Earth Kitt even gave him a nod in the song Monotonous: “Gayelord Hauser sends me vitamin D…”

a vitasphere juicer, circa 1938

Hauser published nineteen self-help and nutrition books. Some people dismissed him as a quack, but the advice he gave seems to hold up. It’s mostly in line with today’s popular diet recommendations: avoid sugar and white flour and eat many fruits and vegetables without too much handling/heat/modification.

In the spirit of taking vintage advice seriously, I decided to try a few of the recipes. First up: Celery cocktail. It didn’t taste bad at all (though I’d stop short of “delicious”) and was pretty refreshing, as promised.

fights indigestion, sour stomach, and rheumatism

Next: Iron cocktail. This one I feared the most. It didn’t taste bad, but it did taste “good for you.” Not something I’d ever look forward to, though I could easily get it down.

spinach, parsley & orange juice. good for anemia and all-around health.

Lastly, Beet Cocktail. Beautiful. Tasted like earth, even though the beets were well-scrubbed. I found it more than palatable, my husband actually liked it. It definitely seemed vitamin-rich. (Also, my kitchen looked like a crime scene until I cleaned this one up.)

isn’t it pretty? beets + pineapple, drives out acids

After three rounds of chopping vegetables and cleaning the numerous pieces of my modern juicer, my verdict: these health cocktails tasted much better than I expected. I buy the logic about eating fruits and vegetables that are relatively unmolested by heat and additional ingredients. That said, a few of Hauser’s promises seem hyperbolic…

“The carrot cocktail, if faithfully imbibed, is warranted to produce that schoolgirl complexion.”
“This party cocktail is a specific against gloom and depression.”
Regarding another book he wrote called Child Feeding: “If [these] methods are followed, a child has a far greater chance of growing into splendid manhood or womanhood.” (Editorial pause to let that sink in.)

The back of the book features an add for another Hauser piece, Keener Vision Without Glasses. The blurb suggests good diet and “Eye Gymnastiques” will free people from “…unsightly spectacles– eye crutches!” The horror!

I found this mostly reasonable little advice book quite entertaining. And though I am out of patience for juicing today, I would love to think that drinking carrot cocktail might give me a school girl complexion. We shall see. For now, I leave you with another tasty treat, the fabulous Eartha Kitt, who is definitely not monotonous.

A little bit about the Legend…

You might also like:

Eating Gruel and Loving It
I Tried Greta Garbo’s Horrifically Strange Diet

Favorite Things Friday: Halloween!

So it’s the day after Halloween. But I have been thinking about this post for weeks. That counts, right? Also, there may be a follow-up post when my missing pics surface in the (hopefully) near future. You have been warned…

Halloween is one of my favorite celebrations. I like to be scared and scare people; I like to dress up; I like to make things; I love a parade. Oh yeah, and the candy! I am a bit of a candy freak.

Here is the earliest Halloween picture of me that I have. I was four. I was a witch. My costume had purple trim, which I thought made it extra fancy.

at Bader preschool

Most of my costumes were homemade. They might be pieced together with staples, chewing gum, and duct tape moments before it was time to wear them, but we could always count on having costumes. When I was younger, I coveted those plastic costumes that came in a cellophane box from K-mart. The costume was about as sturdy as a thin plastic garbage bag and the mask was sharp and sweaty–and often so scary you were grateful you didn’t have to look at it yourself. But I learned to love the one-of-a-kind homemade outfits we produced. As the flock grew, my mom had less time and patience for sewing us all elaborate costumes so she grew more inventive and required more assistance. No complaints here!

Some memorable years:

1st grade: a fortune teller (silky blue fabric with fringe trim and pink roses on it; a balloon covered in foil sitting in a bowl for a crystal ball)
3rd grade: Princess Leia (I rocked the cinnabon hairdo, so wish I had a photo!)
6th grade: full face paint vampiress
7th grade: a Lipton Tea bag (interfacing+ leaves + paper tag attached to my braid=genius)
9th or 10th grade: a twisted sister (pregnant nun) (yes, I attended Catholic school that year. I blame my heresy on the popularity of hair bands at that time).
11th grade: Cinderella (we didn’t really trick or treat…much. but we earned every piece of candy we scored.)

Other favorites: a giant Hershey’s kiss; a bunch of grapes (in college); a bag of jellybeans (first year as a teacher); a seductive alien (ugly mask plus sexy 70′s dress…my most “attractive” costume ever. Everyone begged me to take off the mask but after disappointing the first few who asked, I decided to maintain the air of mystery.)

boys at work

It seems like the hardest thing about Halloween (in Michigan, anyway) is placing your bets on the weather. Do you throw caution to the wind and make the costume you want? If it’s sheer, the weather will be cold and wet. If your costume is warm and heavy (say, Bigfoot), you’re pretty much guaranteed that Halloween will be one of those 80-degree late fall days.

No matter. We sweated and/or shivered for our art.

Being a parent on Halloween is just as much fun as being a kid. Even though most years, my kids changed their minds at the last minute, (“but mom, I only thought I wanted to be Inspector Gadget but I really wanted to be a superhero!”) the crazed hunt for props was part of the fun. I only sewed from a pattern once, a teletubby, and I cussed all the way through that project. But it was cute. And I learned my lesson: improvise.

baby cow

We did have a few Halloween fails as parents…the year Carsten was a man-eating shark, we bought some fake blood makeup at the dollar store. (Don’t laugh). It smelled funny and plastic-y, but pretty much all store-bought Halloween paraphernalia smells weird, doesn’t it? While we were painting Carsten’s face with it, he said, “That smells funny.” Then, a minute later, he said, “I see sparkles!” Luckily Mike realized Carsten was going to faint and he managed to catch him.

Mostly my kids were not interested in super bloody costumes. In second grade, Max wanted to be a ghoul with a scary but not bloody face mask and black suit cape. When the letter came home from school saying no weapons and no scary costumes, they’d be confiscated, I obeyed. Oh, how Max argued! But I didn’t want to be that mom. When I got to the school parade, I watched as legions of ghouls, many of them with weapons and gore and some of them with recirculating blood squirting masks proudly trooped around the playground. And there was my Max, in a black cape and outfit, no mask, scowling like all get out. I learned another lesson: don’t ask, don’t tell. Kids know the score.

Another thing I love about Halloween is vintage pictures. Things were quite a bit scarier in olden days, even though we have super gory costumes nowadays. I find creepy costumes way more fascinating and/or terrifying than obviously violent ones. I’ve included a few oldies from my collection below.

After all that build up, all that fun getting dressed and traipsing around in the dark, then there was the candy to sort. And count and trade and stockpile and sneak for breakfast. The best!

Favorite Things Friday: Buttons!

a bunch of buttons

I don’t know where the picture is, at the moment, but there is at least one photo documenting one of my favorite childhood pleasures: playing with buttons from our button jar. We sorted, counted, traded, grouped, admired, and made art with them. It was quite a cooperative effort considering there were 5-10 of us doing this at any given time. We shared buttons much better than we shared Legos.

I read a Scholastic book once where the main character finds a precious pearl in an old jar of buttons. It doesn’t look like a pearl, though, and she doesn’t know what she has for a while. Even though I knew my mom had amassed the buttons in our family jar at sales and such, I still hoped to find a treasure there some day.

My childhood affinity for buttons continues. The jar pictured above is one we found at an antique store in Iowa City. (Hey, Artifacts! Are your ears burning? Your treasures feature in many of my Favorite Things Friday posts!) We didn’t need it (as you’ll soon see) but my lovely sister-in-law Dimitra saw how excited Carsten and I were about it and she got it for us. A perfectly impractical gift, the best kind! It is remarkable for the quantity and quality of buttons. My favorites are 40s or 50s vintage (60s aren’t bad, either), brightly colored and unusually shaped. This jar is full of them. When my nieces and nephews visit, they often haul out the button jar and dig in.

surveying the riches

(Speaking of digging in, you know that scene in Amelie where she plunges her hand into a sack of beans at the market? Plunging your fingers into a bucket of buttons is pleasant like that.)

In fact, I have a little pile of buttons in a candy dish that sits on my coffee table for little and big people to peruse. Sometimes the buttons are sorted by color or some other attribute, other times they mingle gleefully.

Sometimes I’m compelled to collect things just because I like them, but I have a general policy about things needing to be useful. I use buttons for decorating, making birds, sewing projects, gifts, etc. I also like collecting old jars. One day when I was setting up my crafty nook, I realized the buttons and the jars were meant for each other. I sorted them by color and shape, which let me display two treasures and made both more useful.

Like many of the relatively practical treasures I hunt for in flea markets and estate sales, I can’t help but wonder about the lives these buttons had before they came my way. What kind of coat did they adorn? Did the wearer finger them lovingly as she went about her errands? What kind of vintage fabric were they paired with? Did someone lose one button from a set, and did they miss it terribly?

Buttons are perfect souvenirs. They take up little suitcase space, they’re inexpensive, and many regions have their own pretty kinds of buttons. I have some lovely Czech buttons that I got in Denmark, and I like to think about how they traveled there. I have buttons that somebody must have worn in Europe during World War II. So much history.

Buttons are also a perfect token of affection. You can keep one in your pocket like a worry stone, or tack them to your bulletin board to perk it up, or keep them in your change purse for a hit of nostalgia when you’re out and about. I have a few friends who I know love buttons and they often share my stash, but I’ve also noticed that non-button people start to love buttons if they are given a good one. I often tuck them inside treasure boxes or greeting cards or the shrines I make.

My favorite buttons resemble candy, perhaps not surprisingly. Here’s a gander…

Favorite Things Friday: old banks

There are some treasures that I like to collect–tiny chairs, vintage fabrics, old clocks–and some that I mostly like to visit…old lamps, vintage hats, bowls. Ok, I do like to take bowls home but they take a fair amount of space so I’m trying not to bring any home without sending others packing. (There are a lot of uses for bowls, but I feel like I have capitalized on most of them!)

Today’s object of desire is vintage banks. This post was inspired by a particular one: a chippy, cheerful birdhouse bank.

build a little nest

I usually just admire banks when I come across them. I like kitschy advertising banks, or the totally practical tin ones with slots for different expenses: rent, food, fun, etc. When I find one with handwritten slot labels, I can’t help but imagine the person the bank belonged to and what his or her life was like. I wish I had a picture of one of those category banks. I will try to find one when I’m on the prowl and add it to this post later.

When I got married, our finances were so tight that we has something like twelve flexible dollars left for fun at the end of each month after we paid our bills. Each time we got paid, we put the cash budgeted for day-to-day expenses in labeled envelopes to keep it straight. If you borrowed too much from the grocery envelope, it meant we’d be eating more mac and cheese and ramen noodles. I didn’t know those slot banks existed then or I would have had one!

There is just something so hopeful about a bank. You’re making plans for the future and taking action to make them happen. You’re thinking carefully about resources and priorities. And a slowly filling bank is a testament to the fact that little efforts — pennies, dimes, dollar bills — do make a difference over time.

I found the birdhouse bank shown above at Goodwill in Iowa City this summer. It didn’t meet my main criterion for treasure hunting this year: only bring home things you NEED…but it has so many of my favorite elements. The colors, the bird, the idea of nesting, its well-worn edges/evidence of use, and its generally optimistic posture (if one can say such a thing about a piece of porcelain). I loved it. And at $1.67, it didn’t bust my budget.

Where do you put your pennies? What are your plans for them?

Vintage Advice: Bird Homes

Birds at Home

written by Marguerite Henry

illustrated by Jacob Bates Abbott

1942

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a how-to or self-help book. But it does offer plenty of suggestions (some helpful, some not so much, read further…) about birds in your backyard so I think it qualifies for a feature here.

First, thanks to Lisa Wheeler who picked up this gem for a song (see what I did there?!)  and shared it with me!

Isn’t it gorgeous? The colors are so rich and the pages are soft and sturdy. Some young aspiring artist decorated several of the pages with pen and pencil, but not so much that we can’t enjoy it still. (Plus, for twenty five cents, who’s complaining?!) I even love the endpapers.

The text is very poetically written, full of details about where each bird likes to make its home and any other interesting habits it might have. On the back side of each color print page, there’s an epic (or nearly so) quote. “When swarms of insects attack a green field, the birds fly to the feast as if mother nature had rung a giant dinner bell.”

The original owner of this book scribbled on some pages, but it wasn’t completely thoughtless. Notice the text on this page: “Orioles’ eggs look as if a small child had scribbled on them with a leaky pen. They are covered with scrawls and blots.” Coincidence? I think not.

just because lord Baltimore does not help with the weaving, he is not a thoughtless bird

In spite of the beautiful art and quaint language and interesting information, I have a problem with this book.

And I quote:

“Black people, white people, red people–all like the Martins…[the Indians] hollowed out gourds for their nest boxes and hung them on little trees…the Martins had their own way of thanking the Indians…Today white people build miniature apartment houses for the Martins, and negroes in the south copy the Indian custom of hanging up gourds for them. All races seem anxious to invite these little black members of the swallow family to live near them.”

While I know that the terms “red people” and “negroes” were acceptable at the time the book was published, it is still jolting to read them out of context. Red people is one of those phrases that is often accompanied by noble savage imagery, so it always chafes. But the remark about negroes copying the Indian gourd custom, followed by the note that white people build (presumably improved) little apartment houses, really irritates me. It  highlights the racist hierarchy…where being Native American, though supposedly inferior to being white, was at least preferable to being black. I’m certain people of all races use gourds and build birdhouses — why call them out by race? And being called a copycat is rarely anything but an insult.

I know this is relatively petty in the scale of ways to be racist, but…did we have to be discriminatory about birdhouses, on top of everything else? Really?! Every once in a while a casual little example like this drives home how pervasive bias was in our society. Ick.

Anyway. I chose to enjoy these pictures and other quotes, and I have decided I should appreciate the reminder of how obnoxious people can be to each other, even though it stings. Nostalgia is a double-edged sword.